andaran atish’an. @dreadwolfkissed - Tumblr Blog

I think it's cute that one of the first pieces of Solas approval you can get from Solas is from saving the scouts on the mountain pass in the prologue of Inquisition. And to be clear, this whole time my guy has been like 'we need to hurry' 'we need to concentrate on the Breach', and then you save the scouts, but just saving them isn't what gets you the approval. Saying 'it was worth saving you if we could' is what gets you the approval. It's the declaration that your intent was always to try and save them, if you could, despite the urgency of your task. He's always pretending to be a ruthless pragmatist, so much so even he forgets that he's really an idealist.

#solas #dai

asharaks

hope this is fine. love your posts about the racism around the writing of the qunari especially in regards to equating/treating them like animals and like. i was thinking about the whole thing of how the qunari have a "breeding" system thing going on and that always made me uncomfortable bc like. breeding is such a specific word that we as people immediatly are going to associate with animals and also bc i think it also ties with that thing you said about the sexualization of them? bc i think it is a word that most people would also associate with sex (bc one time i was like man why did they have to use breeding, why couldnt it just be smthg like oh they match people up or smthg and then i saw your posts about all that and i think its linked?). anyways sorry for rambling, it was smthg on my mind after some discussions and i think you have great points

oh for SURE it is a way of dehumanising them! and breeding when used to refer to People has these real eugenecist implications, which goes hand in hand with this sense of the Qun as like. an evil overlord directing their cattle-like people to some nefarious purpose. which, as is pretty evident in the writing, you're meant to infer is expansionist violence. the qunari aren't people, the qun isn't a civilisation with citizens and people, it's an army that's been created, and outside of their use in violence, their other function is as fetish objects for the (presumed) white player stand-ins.

you're not allowed to discuss the shared dehumanisation of the qunari and the elves with bull - he will actively talk about his experience of fetishisation and objectification, and you as a qunari or elven character can't respond to that with "yeah me too", or express solidarity in any way. because you're meant to take that as confirmation of how sexy he is - he Exists to be a scary, brutish, walking cock.

in the same way that cullen gets sexually harassed as a way of affirming his desirability, bull gets objectified as a way of affirming that he is an Object, and that's what the writing intends. and there's potential, right?? like, his whole thing about making himself an object - dehumanising himself, naming himself after an animal, being referred to as a "mindless object" - is very very interesting to me ( @ikarons and I were literally just talking about this), in the context of a character who is terrified of his own feelings and incapable of looking inwards and expressing needs and desires of his own. but because racialised people aren't meant to demand, or even ask, things of their (white) partners, they aren't meant to have feelings or interiority, it becomes a problem to be avoided. bull doesn't get to address his lack of interiority in-game because he exists to fulfil the fantasy of the stoic unfeeling 24/7 dom who doesn't need to communicate or be communicated with.

and yeah, use of the word breeding specifically absolutely has connotations of both inhumanity - this is how we talk about animals - and kink. it's intentional, and whether or not weekes is conscious of the racism of it, they wrote it in on purpose and I don't think we can effectively separate any aspect of bull's character from that context.

#iron bull #dragon age critical

paradoxspaceheater

THE devotionshipping trope is "are they loyal to me or to my title" and the answer HAS to be that they genuinely don't differentiate between the two and are confused and slightly alarmed by the question

rosieofcorona

fen’harel, after leighton’s lachrymae

#solas #art

breaddo

[guy who is Not feeling It] i need to lock in

average-mako-enjoyer

You might not know this, but you can activate my trap card by mentioning Bull's romance in front of me.

I hate this shit with the power of the thousand suns. It's so bad. So, so bad, god, fuck, it makes me both upset, angry, and wheiejejdnswjehsksmemsnsisksnsnwinaisownfisjndsnsniwnshekamsjnsis!!!!!

Yeah.

Fuck Trick Weekes.

average-mako-enjoyer

I'm still pissed, and I need to rant to calm down.

I know I'm repeating myself , but this is important.

A BDSM scene is essentially a play-pretend, and a safe word is a direct way to communicate that the game should stop immediately.

A safe word is not a way to tease your partner or tell them that the scene is too good. It's a way to revoke consent or signal a boundary. It's equivalent to saying, "I don't want to play this game with you anymore."

If your partner wants to use their safe word multiple times, it means you're a shitty dom who can't read people's cues and a shitty person, who doesn't know how to communicate properly before or during the scene.

This whole dialogue–the lack of it actually–is extremely alarming. It's not good, Bull! It's bad! It's really bad! You're shit at communicating, understanding your partner, domming, and being a fuck buddy.

Notice how he avoids communicating what exactly this relationship would entail and refuses to clearly say that he would stop when Inky asks him about it directly? This screams future abuse! It's not romantic or sexy; it's scary!

Also this dialogue (thank you for the screenshot @andrewknightley ) is so dhdkejeiencdbss!!!!

A safe word isn't how you ask your partner to stop edging you, Trick, you stupid fucking dipshit! It's how you tell your partner to stop, release you, put away all toys, wrap you in a blanket, give you a cup of tea, apologize and communicate more thoroughly.

I'm not trying to be moralistic and tell anyone that they shouldn't enjoy Trick Weekes' "50 Shades of Bull" or whatever. I'm just saying that:

a. Whether knowingly or not, Trick described an abusive relationship in which one of the partners is constantly on the verge of revoking their consent, and this should be taken into account when discussing Iron Bull's romance, his character, and Trick Weekes as a writer.

b. Shit like this is exactly why the kink community has a bad rep. Please know that this is the opposite of what a kinky relationship should look like. If someone tries to do this to you, RUN.

iradeum

I wanted to look it up in the game, but doesn't Bull also insist on a BDSM relationship with him as the dom because that's what the Inquisitor "needs"?

I found his framing of it incredibly creepy, even if in practice it's just because they weren't going to design additional scenes for Inquisitors who would have said no/demanded switching.

The idea of "I'm doing it for you, because I know what's best for you, regardless of what you think or say" is really fucked up though, as is putting the additional pressure on using a safe word that bull does in those screen shots.

People don't necessarily think super clearly during sex and checking in with one's self and recognizing one's own boundaries can be incredibly difficult, if the Inquisitor also has to factor in "what would using my safe word do to this game I've got going on with Bull", they're a lot more likely to just push through situations they actually werent okay with.

I was personally also bothered by having bull just choose what the safe word is, and it being in a language that many Inquisitors just aren't familiar with. A safe word is supposed to be easy to access, trying to remember what the word you were told was again isn't that (in that sense I was honestly a bit relieved by the Cole banter bc it at least shows the Inquisitor is capable of recalling it during a scene)

average-mako-enjoyer

I wanted to look it up in the game, but doesn't Bull also insist on a BDSM relationship with him as the dom because that's what the Inquisitor "needs"?

He does that twice, actually.

The Inquisitor can ask him about switching, to which he says this:

So, yeah, he insists on being the dom in the relationship because that's what the Inquisitor needs.

Inky can disagree, and this won't end the relationship.

The message is very clear. Bull doesn't switch and Inky should accept that if they want to continue the relationship.

It all doesn't necessarily read as "I'm doing it for you, because I know what's best for you, regardless of what you think or say" to me because he immediately backs off when Inky tells him no (and Inky can end the romance in multiple scenes), but it's still BAD.

Bull is a shitty dom and a shitty person, who's convinced that he's the hottest piece of ass or dick; who cares in the entire Inquisition. Inky is a shitty sub and a dumbass. Neither of them knows what consent is or how to practice kink safely, and their entire romance looks like this:

It's dumb and cheesy, and it genuinely pisses me off how the fandom completely removes this context from Bull's romance.

Weekes wrote about an abusive relationship, but they had no idea they were doing it, imo. Things like Bull simply telling Inky what the safe word is instead of choosing it together illustrate this very well.

It's about how dumb and dangerous it all is. The cheesiness makes it seem less horrible, which is why, imo, we shouldn't remove the context from this romance and trust Cole with the "sweet release" and "brighter burst" ffs.

#thank you!#this is why I never romance Iron Bull #dragon age critical

sevibun

a little respite after the winter palace masquerade

#josephine montilyet #art #dai

felderwin

… girls have we considered morrigan/merrill

felderwin

in my new vision for dragon age inquisition morrigan and merrill are both the eluvian experts but they’re like those gay scientists from pacific rim. you understand

#I see your vision op #genius #m

peachymermaids

"Are you a vulture, I wonder? A scavenger poking amidst a corpse whose bones were long since cleaned? "

or, pov: mere seconds before Morrigan turns you into a frog

#morrigan #dao #art

andhumanslovedstories

Reblog this poll with your age in the tags. Are you younger, older, or the exact same age as the person you reblogged this from?

Older

Younger

Same age

Voting ended onSep 12, 2025

#34 #polls #in the tags

sunlight-shunlight

i'm always gazing into the distance thinking about city elves bc, despite bioware forgetting them entirely, there's stuff like this dagger from the tabris origin in dao:

elves are not allowed to own weapons in denerim to begin with. so this means that they went to SIGNIFICANT effort to keep this thing at all.

it survived hundreds of years from the dales collapsing to the present day thedas, with the name and story attached, despite the various displacements and woes the elves went through in between then.

the fact that it's named after fen'harel, and yet has this positive connotation of defending a home rather than betraying allies, is huge actually! like that's wild. not only did the city elves remember fen'harel at all As A Concept despite their forced conversion to andrastianism, they ended up with a very different view of it than the dalish.

i would argue that given how the city elves are always struggling under corrupt and brutal nobility, they might have retained a stronger cultural memory of the arlathan rebellion as a positive thing in their stories. and the dalish clans are technically descended from dales nobility too, so that would also have an effect on their ideology?

FURTHERMORE. if we assume there were multiple felassan-style immortal elves running around, with varying loyalties and agendas, then... i am once more on my "the dalish Historical Misinformation Nightmare has been fomented intentionally by immortal elf agents to keep them worshiping the evanuris" ted talk.

which also explains why the city elves didn't get affected by that! bc... the type of immortal elf who would be an evanuris partisan, would also see the city elves as hopeless and not even worth the trouble to influence.

THIS is how the city elves can still win-

#dragon age

ilgattopatata

she's a bard. she's a spy. she's a nun. she thinks god is talking to her. she likes shoes. she has a hairless rabbit as a pet. she broke a guy's neck with her thighs. she's the late pope best friend. she's the new pope. she's bisexual.

#leliana #my beloved #dragon age