the dragon's crooked spine will never straighten into line

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[aravellan]

Just for general info, my spoiler tag is "da4 spoilers"!

Update: I might share some live commenting while playing, which I'll additionally tag "roos plays da4" :))

[icharchivist]

I still find it genuinely fascinating how Morrigan's character gifts in DAO ends up being a simple handheld mirror and it leads to her breaking crying, while her other gifts are otherwise her mother's grimoires.

Morrigan was raised and groomed by Flemeth to be a lonely, isolated person. She had to stay to the woods, only interreact with others if it was to harm them, kill them, or bed them (highly fucked up when we meet Morrigan when she's in her early 20s). She isn't to form relationship or friendship... or personhood for herself.

We learn Flemeth intend to possess Morrigan's body later on and has been grooming her for this very purpose: to become her vessel in the future.

In DAI we learn that the soul couldn't be forced onto the unwilling.... But does that change that Flemeth specifically groomed Morrigan so she wouldn't want anything else? It's not lost to me that this cutscene happens after we learnt about the Well of Sorrows where Samson or Calperina were groomed by Corypheus with promises he did not intend to keep in order to be the vessel to the will of Mythal. Back again to the famous "it's not abuse if i ask"/"not always true."

But the other important gift for Morrigan is a mirror. And she tells you that when she was a kid she stole a beautiful mirror from a beautiful woman she saw nearby, and hid it, but once Flemeth found it out, she smashed the mirror and scolded her for taking something for herself.

Morrigan was not allowed to have anything for herself. Not even her own self reflection. She was not allowed to see herself. She was Flemeth's future vessell first. She was not allowed the personhood to perceive herself.

By gifting her a mirror, the Warden allows her to see herself for who she is. Who she wants to be. Able to look at something that reflects her desire to become her own person. Not an extention of her mother.

And i think it's even more efficient with the knowledge Morrigan then ends the game looking for ways to fix Eluvians. Those are mirrors, but not quite. She was put on this path by her mother, and is pursuing it to escape her: those are mirrors who don't show your reflection, only path forwards.

As long as Flemeth is in the picture, she steals Morrigan's self reflection, her image. She threatens Morrigan, reminding her she still Belongs To Her.

"A soul could not be forced onto the unwilling" and Morrigan being mad that "so she thinks i would have accepted such a thing?" yes my love. Because she raised you to not even see your own face as your own to own.

I do think Flemeth cared for Morrigan in some way, but she was a means to an end, the same way Kieran was supposed to be a mean to an end for Morrigan. Except Morrigan actually realized this is not the type of mother she wanted to be. Morrigan choose loving her son over becoming like her mother.

In the first three games, Morrigan still had to run from her mother. But at least she was reclaiming herself.

She was never meant to become her mother's mouthpiece, at least not that way, and i'll forever be mad about DAV for forcing her in this situation without nuance.

[mooreaux]

I think they should have been in Inquisition and also married

[anxident]

a secret kiss art print

[zazun]

replaying inq. sketched my two canonically queer queens :]

[sunlight-shunlight]

part 1 of zevwarden gloves comic here

(tags from @pistachioinfernal bc i thought they were funny)

pack it up boys! we made a social blunder!

[sunlight-shunlight]

i haven't played dao in a really long time but my most important opinion is that i think mahariel should have made zevran the dalish gloves. it would just be really cute ok.

[sunlight-shunlight]

part 2 of zevwarden gloves comic here:

i burst in 2 months later with my own tags and several jpgs

[steelsuit]

Ten of Swords

[sunlight-shunlight]

anyway it's solavellan time

[wyllravengards]

Nightingale's Eyes

Southeast Asian Leliana inspired by a post I saw that I sadly lost >.> If anyone knows the post I'm talking about pls share!!

Also please reblog if you like it, I spent all day painting and now my hands hurt so I'd really appreciate some likes and reblogs <3

[acquired-elfroot]

just thinking about the way Veilguard had Emmrich and Davrin state, in a way that brokers no argument, that the Darkspawn are NOT PEOPLE and that’s the only time it’s ever brought up asdsfjdsjkf 

can we talk about the fact that the consecutive reveals that both the darkspawn and the demons/spirits, both of the mindless hordes of Always Pure Evil enemies that we can kill without a second thought, are PEOPLE is such a compelling earth shattering revelation that happens in the series leading up to veilguard

followed by the setup of an antagonist that can potentially wilfully refuse to acknowledge the personhood of the people of thedas, when every measure of what marks someone as a Person with a capital P by the standards of the society they’re from(spirit, mage, elf) marks someone as less than a person in the current world of thedas

that so clearly holds the mirror up to our own cruelty when the inquisitor responds to "it was like waking to a world of tranquil" with "we're not even people to you" betraying that our own hero does not view the tranquil as people

when the first spirits were born of the dreams of the dwarves but we read codex entries from ancient elvhenan that say "we hunt the pillars of the earth and their WITLESS SOULLESS DRONES"

the "mages are not people and should not be treated as such" the way they qunari refer to everyone outside of the qun as Bas - literally THING the way the chantry compares kissing an elf to kissing a dog ect ect and forever

When we speak to the architect when we meet justice when we meet cole when we meet maddox when we meet countless other characters from groups that get so utterly dehumanised by either theodesian society or some magical contrivance that exists as a metaphor for such

when the story beats you over the head with THEY'RE PEOPLE THEY'RE PEOPLE THE TERROR IN THE NIGHT IS A PERSON THE MINDLESS ZOMBIE HOARDS ARE PEOPLE THE PERSON ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BATTLEFIELD IS JUST AS MUCH A PERSON AS YOU AND YOUR ENEMY THAT DOES NOT SEE YOU AS A PERSON IS A PERSON

and the conclusion that we come to about that is actually

don't worry about it kitten <3

what was the point of it? this is a story about how efortlessly we can be persuaded to dehumanise others...

... unequivocally in favor of the dehumanisation? 

or at the very least of the opinion that there’s no point in doing anything about it?

[jack-of-blades]

I'm confused, you're a Sollavellan romancer? I thought you were queer and nonbinary????

I am all three?

[jack-of-blades]

Happy Pride

[eastern-lights]

Throughout the history of Thedas, there had been multiple attempts to set the Litany of Adralla to music, both to serve as a memory aid and to have the melody provide a sense of comfort to the petitioner, in addition to the protection from demonic forces the litany itself provides.

None of these compositions have quite managed to rival the popularity of the rather controversial Mother Nicana version, which will be presented to you shortly.

Born in Jader in 7:56 Storm, Revered Mother Nicana was a figure as beloved by her faithful as she was inconvenient to her superiors.

Ever practical, as well as a fierce advocate for following the spirit of the Chant, regardless of the politics of the time, she faced criticism from peers in the Chantry for choosing the original Tevene text as the basis for her composition. When pressed, she simply answered that if she could find a single translation that fit the original's metre, she would consider it.

In spite of this short-lived controversy (or perhaps because of it), this version became popular especially among those who had need of the litany for practical uses, such as the Mourn Watchers of Nevarra.

The following are two performances of Mother Nicana's Litany of Adralla. One was performed by the lay sisters of the Tantervale Chantry. The other was heard sung in Kirkwall's Lowtown by an initial survivor (presumed to have been a minstrel employed in the Hanged Man tavern) of the catastrophic fallout of Anders' destruction of the Kirkwall Chantry in an attempt to protect himself and several others from the demons that surrounded them.

Visit Original Link

Visit Original Link

[jiabisu]

[sh00kspeared]

Solas kissing beautiful men on the lips send tweet

[blackberry-sage-tea]

One of the major faults of Veilguard's dialogue is how often it's shaped by generic platitudes and sound bites instead of actual specific things happening or being talked about in the narrative. "Sometimes people let you down", "Family makes things complicated", "Bullies are always drawn to power", "It's just people trying to live their lives", "You have to take care of yourself every once in a while", "When your heart and your gut are both telling you, 'Do what you can'--"

My biggest issue with this is not a quibble over whether or not these things are true (like all platitudes they are trivially true, whether or not they're appropriate or correct things to say in the context the characters say them), but that they are a style of placeholder dialogue that exists to avoid having to give specific details or actual development. They could only be interesting if they were argued against, demonstrated, or interrogated for meaning in some way. Instead, the characters often take these things as read, and so nothing comes of it.

Like the line "How many exceptions 'til tyranny?"--a one-off sentiment expressed by a Lich at the end of Emmrich's questline. It doesn't exist to provide meaning or create a conversation. It exists to provide a cheap explanation as to why Emmrich is not allowed to both become a lich and to revive Manfred. There is no impassioned argument on behalf of a grieving Emmrich, torn between the protege that he loved and the life's work that he is about to give up, spurred on by the phobia that defines his motives. Nobody thinks to argue that as a wisp Manfred wasn't a "mortal" who is "supposed" to die to begin with (but then, it's either canon-breaking that they can resurrect Manfred at all, or it's no big deal and they don't need lich approval to do it, and there is no in-between on this one I'm afraid). There is no exploration of what it looks like when a Lich has "exceptions", whether in the past or during the course of the story (since Johanna was obviously not trying to resurrect people in terms of what made her a bad lich). And are there circumstances where "no exceptions" can also be a form of tyranny? How would that work? Could Rook argue that on Emmrich's behalf?

Of course not, this is cheap glue holding the scene together, we can't interrogate it or it'll fall apart.

All of Veilguard's platitudes are like that. Neve says "The gods were people, and people can let you down"--no one wants to challenge her on this? No one wants to argue that "let you down" is a MILD phrase to use for "the people you selected to protect you decided to enslave and torture you instead"? No one wants to argue that they SHOULD have been better, they were practically gods! No one wants to push their basic faith that sometimes people DON'T let you down? If someone were to push back on this line, then it might have told us something about Neve or the character arguing with her. It might have given us actual specifics in terms of what is going on--in what way were the gods "people" and what made them tyrants? Could someone else have done better? Is there no other way this could have gone? But this is filler dialogue. You're not supposed to think about it. It is supposed to paper over the scene in your head so the writers don't have to tell you any more than that. You are expected to nod your head at this aphorism and keep going.

This is, incidentally, why so much of the dialogue comes across as blandly lecturing the player.

And it's not a SURPRISE that the game with the amateur writer as narrative head where they spent the majority of the development time with no idea what the hell they were doing with the story is chock full of filler dialogue, but it is, you know, irritating when it's the sequel that was supposed to explain shit to us. What is Tevinter like? Oh, you know. Like any place with people living in it. What were the ancient elves like? They were people trying to live their lives, of course.

I don't need the game to be having arguments with itself all the time to be clear, but platitudes are something you write when you don't have anything to actually say. When you know that Bellara's problem is that her brother has become suckered in by a charismatic cult leader and is about to do a ritual that will kill/torture people, then your advice to her should be about that and not that she needs to “do what [she] can but take time for [her]self too”. "Family is hard" CAN describe this situation, but it can also describe a million other situations and so if I was Bellara I think I'd get kind of pissed that it feels like no one's actually paying attention to my specific problem.

[tawnyfool]

𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘴𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘦𝘵

--

the aragorn/arwen ear touch but solavellan, featuring my very first lavellan, Leto.