I don't know if this is the case, but sometimes vg-enjoyers seem to have the idea that the crit crowd is focusing on things they hate or dislike all too much, rather than just enjoying things.
Which... to me feels like they're overlooking the fact that most of the criticism comes from identifying racism & other such gigantic issues in the game - I personally cannot just ignore blatant racism in the writing and just enjoy things. Looking at what went wrong & how it got there is how we make sure we don't make the same mistakes and perpetuate racism, amongst other things.
It's fine to enjoy things. But as a nonwhite person I can't just ignore racism, I can't just ignore what I understand to be poor handling of colonialism, race, queer identities, etc- list goes on.
And to me whenever white people go: "you're just being negative!" Yeah? I wonder why?
nevelara is incest is just josiana is incest all over again which in itself is just merribela is incest again. and the real question to ask is Hey bioware why do you keep trying to make all positive female relationships in your series #sisters and why are all the toxic ones lesbians
Hi, I really like your lore pages! I've been trying to figure out what DA The Veilguard Bellara's Dalish tattoo is related to, the one primarily on her forehead. Usually they represent one of the elven gods, but hers doesn't look like any of the gods tattoos I've seen. Though I have not found any tattoos for the Forgotten Ones, so it's possible it could be from there. Though those gods are considered to be evil. Any ideas?
Hi!
Hers and the Warden companion's Vallaslin look like things we didn't see before, which made me feel very suspicious about how much this new game will end up breaking lore just to make it look cool or just to pursue a "shock effect", narratively speaking.
Davrin, in any case, seems to be a retcon redesign of Falon'Din's or Dirthamen's or Ghilan'nain's Vallaslin [check Evanuris], which I hate, you can't really decide which one among those.
Why do they have to redesign these Vallaslins again? They claimed that "every Dalish clan developed their own vallaslin" since they are not a very homogeneous community and each Keeper ends up modifying their "ancient history" in order to obtain some desired effect: keeping the young people of the clan safe, making the clan less reckless in some explorations, helping the clan with some mourning process, etc. After all, DA lore teaches us that legends and cultural symbols are conquered, used, co-opted, and modified in order to obtain some political or social benefits/effects [you can explore these concepts in Dragon Age Iconic Patterns: The Sun or in The Chantry and the Mythology of the Chant of Light]. I don't think the Dalish would be an exception to this natural process that even happens in our real life history. This, on one hand.
On the other hand, even when something evolves and is co-opted and modified, you can trace their origin; you can see the source that inspired it. Pretty much we can see this on a design level in the Dalish Banner in DAI, for example: compare it with the Elvhenan Banner and the Orlesian decorations you find in all Orlais [see Patterns and Styles: Orlais],
and you will see that the Dalish banner is a combination and amalgamation of both, testament of their Elvhenan culture influenced strongly in the Dales by the Orlesians during the time of the Halamshiral [when humans and Dalish tried to co-exist before the Exalted March on the Dales]. And this is a single example, DA lore has tons of them. I don't see this process in these new companions' Vallaslin. I feel, with all the ignorance we have about the Veilguard, that they may have retconned the dalish vallaslins just "to make them look cooler" once again, and put a cheap explanation: Dalish clans are not a monolith, [which is true], but they are not modifying all their own lore extremely apart from what they consider their "true history", aka the unreliable Dalish legends. After all, we know via Merril, that all clans try to gather once every few years to exchange knowledge and relics; they have mechanics to still keep their own "culture" as one with slight modifications. So far as we played all games of DA, we know that every Dalish considers their Vallaslin as something to be proud of and, with the lore given by game files or Bioware itself [they gave us all the Vallaslin's names in DAI], we know that these are related to the Evanuris. So, we can fairly assume Dalish see it that way: they are honouring their gods.
However, in DAI, we were told that the Vallaslins are marks of ownerships on slaves, and we also know, due to Bioware and game files that they belong to the Evanuris so far. Even Felassan's [Felassan and bits of lore] is Mythal's Vallaslin. So, in conclusion, so far, we always have been seeing and being informed that these Vallaslins were related to Evanuris, who [according to Solas shared Lore Part 2] put this mark on their slaves/servants.
Her Vallaslin is basically an aesthetic third eye, symbol of knowledge and insight, which is a very cheap design detail for her characterization, in my personal opinion. Why could she not use a variation of the one of Dirthamen one, for example? Even the retconned design of the Vallaslin from DAO to DAI have some resemblance, one another. This feels like a "whatever cool symbol we can put on her face".
Could Bellana's Vallaslin belong to the Forgotten Ones? Maybe, if you read all my posts, you may know that I've been playing with the idea that the Evanuris may have worshiped the Forgotten Ones first, who were dragons, and once the Evanuris acquired power [divinity] through the use of Titan's blood and other unknown elements extracted from them, they chased the Forgotten Ones [Andruil in particular], forcing them to hide in the "Abyss", a word we have seen many times in all the games to be related to places deep into the Deep Roads [complete analysis here: Attempt to rebuild Ancient Elvhenan History ]. But the Evanuris not only took divinity power for themselves, they wanted to have the divine shape ["winged shape reserved only for the Divinity and their chosen ones"], and I think it's not too far-stretched to think that they co-opted all the symbols of their previous "ancient gods" to become Gods themselves. Remember that Solas doesn't say "vallaslins are marks of the Evanuris", but "of the gods that nobles worshiped" and yet the Dalish kept the name of the Evanuris attached to them:
Solas: I've discovered what those marks mean.
Inquisitor: They honour the elven gods.
S: No. They are slaving markings, or at least, they were in the time of ancient Arlathan.
I: My clan's keeper said they honored the gods. These are their symbols.
S:Yes. That's right. A noble would mark his slaves to honor the god he worshiped. After Arlathan fell, the Dalish forgot.
I: We try to preserve our culture, and this is what we keep? Relics of a time when we were no better than Tevinter?
S:[…] You deserve better than what those cruel marks represent.
But can we question if these marks are truly from the Evanuris? Maybe the Dalish got this wrong too. The answer seems to imply that no, this part was correctly preserved: we had this curious example in Orlais where an elf who visited an old Temple of Mythal when he was a child had a dream during DAI in which Flemeth talked to him, and he woke up with the Vallaslin of Mythal on his face [I talked about this in Until We Sleep]. So we can be more or less sure that Mythal's Vallaslin is the one that the Devs gave us in DAI. Flemeth applies it on this new servant. Could this apply to all Evanuris? Well, that depends, since I don't know if it is Mythal the one who has double nature [Forgotten One and Evanuris] instead of Solas [I talked about this point all over my blog, many times].
However, it's also true that the tabletop core book [so questionable if its information is canon or not] says that some Dalish clans from the Tirashan forest wear red [blood based] Vallaslin and perform human sacrifices, and they are told to be related to rituals of the Forgotten Ones.
So far, we only know unreliable legends about the Forgotten Ones, as vague as they are, and only in the last DLC we may have found one of them, Geldaraun, who was, curiously, a dragon [read Frostback Basin [DLC]: Elvhen Tomb and Frozen Gate]. So, in general, Forgotten Ones are an immense mystery in all DA lore, and no game, comic, or book put a bit of light on this topic. It's as obscure as it was the first day.
On the other hand, and trying to debunk myself, we also have the example of Merril's Vallaslin, which was unique [maybe because they wanted to make her more unique herself? hence "let's made out a vallaslin out of nowhere"?], but also we can excuse that it was inherited from DAO [a game with a lot of visual difficulties, for example, they were unable to make the sun-mark on the tranquils' forehead, even though they knew it had to be there, lore-wise] and later, in DA2, we even find strange inconsistent vallaslin used on some elves that make no fucking sense [for example Huon, the blood mage elf who wears a castless dwarven mark on his face, is a blasting, enraging big wtf, lore-wise].
So, in short, can those strange Vallaslin be a representation of the Forgotten Ones? Maybe, we know so little about them that we can't truly answer with certainty.
We really don't know if the Forgotten Ones were evil, we only know that the Evanuris clearly made a big effort to erase them from History and indoctrinated their slaves to prosecute anyone who wanted to follow the Forgotten Ones [Pyre of the Forgotten]. Can we be sure that something is Evil just because the Evanuris considered so? We know Solas' story with Fen'Harel, and how the Evanuris saw him: as a rebel, a danger, someone you should not follow, and yet, Solas and the idea of Fen'Harel is a lot more complex and less evil than what the unreliable legends of the Dalish tell about him. So I have my doubts if someone or something is Evil just because the legacy of the Evanuris tells us so.
We only can glimpse a level of rivalry between Forgotten Ones and, at least, some of the Evanuris in Geldauran's tomb [read Elvhen Tomb]. We don't even know if the Forgotten Ones were elvhenan. Hence, all my speculation about them being Great Dragons. We only know three names: Geldauran, Anaris, and Daer'thal. Fen'Harel is considered a Forgotten One according the unreliable Dalish legends but I have my doubts, since Solas claims he has always been this elf you see, even though there is another part of him wandering the Fade [according to Cole's words]. However, Mythal is the only one of the Evanuris who has 2 different versions of her mosaic: one in elven form [a mother] and another in dragon form. If for a moment you consider the speculation that the Forgotten Ones were dragons, Mythal seems to fit better this dual condition than Solas.
As you can see, my answer is very cautious, and basically I can't say much about these Vallaslin that they brought me a bit of worry of hardcore retcon. That's all what I can say with certainty. If they make a good in-lore explanation that justify these two strange Vallaslin, we may be in peace. Otherwise, it should be yet another retcon we have to endure, as we did with previous games. Although, DAO consistency is super low because the immense amount of visual difficulties they had, so DAO always sucked at environmental telling; DA2 and DAI are a lot more consistent one another [despite the difficulties that DA2 also had!], except with the Qunari lore, which was changed each time in each game, unfortunately.
Update: In Interview with John Epler, we learn that Bellara's Vallaslin is, indeed, Dirthamen's [??? wtf] and Davrin's.... Epler doesn't even remember the name of the god. So yes, imagine how careful they are with the lore details. I mean, we can only need to listen to the podcasts to realise they were absolutely careless with lore in the majority of the time. All these symptoms are giving me Marvel-like vibes from a game that should be the opposite.
sometimes i still think about how the dragon age series was about all sort of ways slavery kept existing and the different shapes it took and how deeply engrained into society this type of exploitment is, culmunating with it's future antagonist being a radical anti-slavery person who talked about all the things he saw being as slavery and that he would see the world be freed of, only for the fourth game to refuse to acknowledge slavery, to call the anti-slavery crusade the character had "a failure so why should he try it again", to have a slaver order around said character who was implied to have been her slave as the good ending, where we were deep into slave societies only to be told slavery was something only extremists were doing, and then when asked about it the devs just went "everyone knows slavery is bad we didn't need to talk about it" making people sound like some sort of perverts for wanting to see slavery be actually acknowledged on screen..... still the stupidity of all time.
Don't forget the pope of the slavery empire deciding that the best way to combat slavery is to be a street level vigilante who doesn't even focus on burning records or slave ships, instead of just making it illegal to own or sell other people. And also he has a rug in his secret hideout depicting elven slaves in manacles but don't read too much into that
Or how the Crows, who we know since DAO that they partake in slave markets, have Heir explains that the children who gets chosen to become Crows are chosen after being watched to make sure they would be able to live through the life of a Crow but that they don't do torture unless the kids want to and it's supposed to be something to find really cool about the order, meanwhile te devs mentioned that clearly we're following a group of idealist and it's why we don't talk about slavery at all... in the plotline that leads Lucanis to become the leader of the "some people do slavery and are not stopped by their leaders" faction.
And who could forget the Shadow Dragons writing pamphlets to try to persuade people that slavery is bad, or that there were no reason to portray slaves in the specific part of Tevinter we saw, which was a port (famously where slaves are wont to work)
but look! a Venatori sat on a slave's back once! aren't you happy we're acknowledging it?
#the whole way datv thinks about slavery is absolutely so disconnected from ANY kind of reality#whether it be past or present#today's slaves are in prison complexes or are working for wages that you cant survive on. etc#then there's the whole recent memory chattel slavery of the americas#which is full of brutalities but also “everyday” slavery.#there's “soft” labor and then there's brutal physical labor but none of it is done freely#and even if the devs didnt want to take a hard look at their own american and canadian legacies of slavery#they couldve looked at much older (and thus emotionally removed! no guilt!) empires that did slavery#roman empire especially#and also like mentioned in this post its wild how the devs pick lower class tevinter areas#as if there wouldnt be any slaves or signs of them there. regardless of what ~flavor of slavery theyre going for#the docks! historically a place where they work! ships too!#that bread being sold in the market? who's grinding the grain?#anyway. if i think about this too long i go crazy.#it's just so. insulting in every way. (via @griffonsong)
those are excellent tags that deserve to be part of the post.
What's so frustrating is that the previous games set up some of the more insidious way slavery acts, like, i think about the reasons Krem's father became a slave all the time, the way this should affect the politics of Tevinter with what is conveiniant should have been a major issue in the game. The "Public Service Slaves" should have actually been mentioned.
And yeah, especially them mentioning "the Tevinter Empire is like how the US is an Empire and i don't want to see the Empire be toppled down because regular people are living their lives there" is so telling there that they have a level of projection onto the Slavery state that makes them uncomfortable and trying to exempt the Median American Who Is Just Buying Bread, and for that Slavery must be this boogey man of the past rather than something that does in fact very much still serve Imperial Systems Through The World Even Now!!!
And then they twist it into "why would anyone want to see this bad thing" while they're burrying their head in the sand on both their fantasy system that was SET UP like this to start with and that we should expect for consistancy alone, and on the reality of how the system functions to That Day and the reality that People Who Buy Breads (made by whom? with grains that have been cultivated how?) are still part of banalizing and affirming the reason the state is doing slavery to start with.
But what sort of pervert would want any of that to be acknowledged?
my friend to me when i showed them what i was building: "Are you medicated, by chance"
the big terrain isn't even big enough, unfortunately, i need a few more tiles, lengthwise. i guess i could try to finagle it, but with the angles it's really hard to figure out how to scale it.
the weird wallpaper is just for me to see where the levels are.
not the first time i did this in a game, i also did it (partway) in enshrouded:
HOWEVER enshrouded is locked on a grid system (minecraft style) so angles and circles are SOOOO hard.
I've switched snapping on and off and afaik there's no extreme angles that should cause any issue. At some point the game stopped letting me put on even a single standalone wall in the middle, saying it couldn't do anything more. So I think I must've hit some sort of bug or limit.
sorry to all dorian fans but i would fire him out of a cannon out of vg if we instead got this far better original scene. rook still has some rookisms but snapping back? having some personality?? the first warden not being a complete fucking buffoon? he makes sense??? charter????????? is relevant???????? seriously the canon one is SUCH a downgrade.
The goal of this survey is to collect data on the demographics of and choices made by the Tumblr-based Dragon Age fandom. Everything is 100% anonymous, and all questions on the form are skippable - just keep in mind that the more questions you answer, the more accurate and thorough the data will be!
The form is split into the following sections:
Voter demographics and series-wide preferences - this asks things like your age range, gender, favourite game in the series, and which mainline and side-content installments you've played
Choices specific to and your preferences within Dragon Age: Origins
Choices specific to and your preferences within Draon Age II
Choices specific to and your preferences within Dragon Age: Inquisition
Choices specific to and your preferences within Dragon Age: The Veilguard
And a very optional bonus section where you're invited to share your more specific opinion on each individual main game and companion, along with a place to share any feedback on the blog and suggestions for future tournaments!
This form will remain open for a month - submissions will be accepted until July 7th, and results will be shared shortly after.
my friend to me when i showed them what i was building: "Are you medicated, by chance"
the big terrain isn't even big enough, unfortunately, i need a few more tiles, lengthwise. i guess i could try to finagle it, but with the angles it's really hard to figure out how to scale it.
the weird wallpaper is just for me to see where the levels are.
not the first time i did this in a game, i also did it (partway) in enshrouded:
HOWEVER enshrouded is locked on a grid system (minecraft style) so angles and circles are SOOOO hard.
my friend to me when i showed them what i was building: "Are you medicated, by chance"
the big terrain isn't even big enough, unfortunately, i need a few more tiles, lengthwise. i guess i could try to finagle it, but with the angles it's really hard to figure out how to scale it.
the weird wallpaper is just for me to see where the levels are.
not the first time i did this in a game, i also did it (partway) in enshrouded:
HOWEVER enshrouded is locked on a grid system (minecraft style) so angles and circles are SOOOO hard.
Remembering how DAVG made thr blight something so trivial you could walk it off- unfortunately not the first instance of trivialising something that was established to be horrifyingly powerful. Like the red lyrium in dai, we could just bash down giant crystals. When a single little shard drove bartrand absolutely mad before in da2.
I think that's just one example of issues that's prevalent across the series. But at least there were no ther aspects we could look at and still enjoy. Davg had like. Nothing.
Also another addendum to my previous post about why dissect something i dislike -
In this era where people are becoming less capable of critical thinking (i can feel mine slipping away with every doomscroll) - its more important than ever to sit down and analyse media & what is given to us. It is not anti-hope or anti-kindness or anti-happiness to sit with our distaste and analyse what is it that we don't like.
FTR I also critically analyse the things I do enjoy- but I have a lot more enjoyment from them because I feel more like I'm picking up what the creator is laying down for me and I'm finding all the hidden threads that make the tapestry happen
LLMs & AI models are already frying people's brains and our daily vernacular - soon enough society will end up with people that sound the same or be too stupid to function without technological assistance. i'd like to think that reading discourse and exercising my own thought trains/ rambles on them help me keep my brain functioning lol. I've got bad brain fog most days already, I don't need a further fuck-up
it is so wild to me that unromanced solo king alistair and solo queen anora end up without even a vague political marriage to pretend they're going to have an heir eventually, celene is Fully Childfree, and gaspard is also childfree. what's wrong with them....
actually i'm fascinated by the idea of deadbeat celene. she does not know this child. she meets them like once or twice a year to check on their report cards from their tutors, gives them some weird backhanded insult/compliment remark that's meant as a test of their ability to understand her Galaxy Brain Verbal Repartee, and then leaves. she doesn't even remember their birthday. briala gets them a present on celene's behalf, bc she feels 5% bad about this.
also she Commemorates her poor dear late husband's death, every year, by wearing a new, cutting edge fashion mourning gown each time, and crying one or two beautiful crystalline tears at his ashes. she does also drag the kid along for this, for PR purposes.
