Cassandra: the champion killed the Arishok in single combat? it just sounds so⦠romantic⦠actual duel:
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@fuckusolas
Cassandra: the champion killed the Arishok in single combat? it just sounds so⦠romantic⦠actual duel:
i Love that andersā clinic delivers babies and treats STDs. thank you for calling planned parenthood of Kirkwall. we are one guy in the sewer. theyāve been trying to catch him for Years . for birth control inquiries, press 1. for hormone therapy, press 2
go white boy goooo
no white boy not like that
white boy i've never seen anyone fuck it up like that
the vivienne post is getting mileage again and it just reminds me of how many people who hate vivienne fucking adore anders š
i'm just saying if you're williing to uncritically swallow the narrative that vivienne is a manipulative power hungry bitch that hates her fellow mages and would be happy to see them all die if it meant she could secure more influence then why aren't you also constantly condemning anders as the mass murdering lunatic with a creepy obsession with hawke that vocally advocates for selling a brown man back into slavery. why does one get the benefit of doylist examination but not the other. literally why are you so terminally uncurious about your own opinions on this
the bisexuality was there. it didnt change anything. it didn't save anyone. there were just too many forces against it. but it still matters that the bisexuality was there
solas: idc who does it, but someone drink from this well right now
also solas: I BEGGED you not to drink from the well, what the fuck
inquisitor: ?????????????
so i replayed DA2 recently and oh my god i love them so muchhh ahh, my favorite companions in any game ever unhinged party banter, i wish kirkwall had group therapy... they'd be hilarious at it
(found in a comment thread about dragon age 2)
do you mean. fucking
BODAHN???
I'm sure you'll be pleased with the goods my boy and I have collected. And with your discount!
hey guys could you maybe do this somewhere else
dude i mean in theory it would have genuinely been so cool to see both felassan and solas come to terms with the modern elves in two completely different ways right. felassan spending more time with the city elves who he might believe have been completely cut off from their culture and now live as hollowed out versions of what the elves once were, but learning eventually over time how much resilience and love and Strength it takes to live this kind of life and still strive for something better, and that's where he decides to focus on helping the city elves
and then subsequently solas spending more time with dalish (im using lavellan as an example specifically because them being dalish plays such a big role in that dynamic, but like even without a lavellan inquisitor his story revolves SOOO much about restoring elven glory so?) and going from deriding them as pretentious glory-seekers who only value the """aesthetic""" of elvhenan to understanding everything they've lost as a result of HIS actions and how even despite that they're still here digging their feet to the ground and refusing to conform, determined to preserve the culture that's been stolen from them. which like. living in active rebellion from the people who seek to mold you into their image is EXACTLY what solas was fighting for. it could have been soooo sick
how do you introduce all of these obvious pieces by complete accident i simply don't understand . like yeah sure white canadian centrism but šššš dude the bioware writers shift so left this should be legitimately fucking impossible to do by accident unless you just legitimately hate indigenous people (who they have admitted were inspiration for the dalish. not like that isn't obvious but im covering my bases in case someone decides to get wacky with me) like it's not just racism it is literally cartoonishly ghoulish racism
we need to bring back mage hawke's ability to straight up beat the fuck out of enemies with ur staff when they get into melee range like.....you're not coming near me lmfao
love that lyrium causes paranoia if you take too much of it. lets put a lot of paranoid guys with swords and authority in a tower where they can constantly doubt the "was that a demon" "is that blood magic" "was someone being controlled recently" surely this will go well
in kirkwall. straight up "blowing it" and by "it", haha, well. let's justr say. The chantrey
like people like to point out anders' weird jealous confrontation with hawke's LI as a reason he's a bad person and it's like objectively i understand. but also i don't think you will ever be able to make me see that scene in a bad light because literally nothing is funnier to me than trying to assert that you would be a better partner to the guy you're currently tricking into being your terrorism accomplice while in a sewer collecting piss samples
and the thing is i've said so many wildly conflicting things about how flawed solas' character portrayal was in veilguard but like. i unironically do believe they're All True and like i think i can kind of(?) articulate why
like solas in veilguard to me was a pretty perfect example on how clear it is that dragon age has suddenly and drastically regressed from being an exploration into moral ambiguity and that fine smudged line between "hero" and "villain" to a sudden inexplicable refusal to allow any sort of grey area in character motivations in favor of forcing them into a binary box like its a dnd alignment. and i think this specifically because there is literally No Way to write solas in a morally uncomplicated manner while still maintaining anything that makes him an interesting character.
people who hate solas hate veilguard because it removed literally any nuance to his character and repeatedly paints him as a poor mistreated victim whose only crime is that he was Forced to do things He Didnt Want to by a significantly underwritten and highly anticipated female character, and his regrets are all varying degrees of "it's my fault because i was right and they didn't listen to me :(" and no actual agency in his own decision making. his romance with a lavellan is literally front and center in the game and the only one that even gets more than a passing letter or (in dorian's case) like. two full lines of dialogue. the narrative does everything to silently paint him as the misunderstood tragic hero that no one truly appreciates and even rewrites the inquisitor so they always want to redeem him regardless of their previous disposition
people who love solas hate veilguard because it somehow managed to simultaneously do the same thing in reverse. solas has no genuine regrets or sense of guilt or actual reflection about his past behavior in the entire game. he kills his best friend and the game makes sure to zoom in on his face as varric is falling down just so you can see the sneer of contempt. the war table finebros react segments where its literally just the writers unapologetically utilizing the companions as mouthpieces for their personal opinions makes sure to tell the player that solas is unforgivable and a hypocrite and a coward for his actions. they even like. rewrote an entire part of his character specifically to remove that layer of complexity and dumb it down to the Lying Liar Who Lies. where the narrative silently wants you to sympathize with him, the characters LOUDLY want you to condemn him. your most sympathetic dialogue choices are lukewarm "well... i GUESS i understand why..." delivered in a consistent tone of disapproving resignment.
people who are neutral to solas? you're not ALLOWED to be. here you go. Dragon Age: Solas. everything is about solas. you have to make all your choices based around solas. we've written an entire game to revolve around solas. we rewrote like 4 characters to make sure that you are forced into one of the two extremes.
and it's all because you have a game that physically cannot help itself but to make you make the Good Decision and so they can't decide which decision is good and which is bad so they wrote two completely conflicting stories about him at the same time. he is the best boy. he is the worst. it genuinely feels like the writing team was actively wrestling with each other behind the scenes over whether or not solas is a Bad Guy and thus their only means of compromise was writing him as though he was dr jekyll and mr hyde without any transition or consistency. he is a villain. he is a hero. you are a bad person for not seeing his point of view. you are a good person for peacefully redeeming him. and i know there's people who think this is some sort of ingenius character study but none of this is intentional. he isn't like loghain who commits bad acts in service to a greater good. he's the prideful god who lied to the inquisitor about wanting to free the elves and instead his goal has been about his own personal ego all along. he isn't like flemeth, who does good by people and manipulates the story in your favor all for the sake of her own mysterious ends. he isn't even like the architect who lies and murders and manipulates the warden all in the service of his own deluded vision. he's the guy who wants to destroy the world because his abusive ex is forcing him to. but also he's the guy who wants to destroy the world because he thinks mortal life is insignificant and he should be in control because hes The Best.
all complexity of what was previously a deeply nuanced character has been removed, and it's because he used to be so complex that it's so disjointed and bad because they refuse to actually commit to any one direction because in that case they'd might as well make another character. but they can't. they have to make it solas. because solas is their cash cow and their baby.
they want to make a perfect solavellan happy ending because they want to please the people who love their baby but they're so fundamentally divorced from what their audience wants for solas that they ended up writing a caricaturized ai-generated romance novel for teenagers.
they want to make a cathartic fight scene where you beat the bad man because they want to please the people that hate their villain but they have such blatant contempt for criticism of their precious little baby that they make sure to infantilize and misrepresent his flaws as much as they can so he can be the sad little elf boy that you need to hug.
and despite all of this they ALSO wanted so desperately to avoid making you sympathize too much with the antagonist they were building up to that they had to make sure he acted in the most unforgivably evil ways that they could think of just so players knew this is the Bad Guy and you're the Good Guy and don't you forget it.
it's just constant self contradictory writing. it is so blatant that it's genuinely hard for me to even see veilguard's solas as being the same character. i find myself nodding my head in agreement to his most ardent haters because yeah you're right. they did spend an insane amount of time forcing you to see just how innocent and well-intentioned and pure this egotistical mass-murderer was. and i also find myself nodding in agreement with his biggest fans because yeah. you're right. they did randomly turn this character into a moustache-twirling villain who does everything short of tying rook to railroad tracks and cackling as he runs away to tear down the veil. and all this because they couldn't stand to not have him be in the game in the biggest and most impactful way. they literally could not have a story without solas.
saw a recent post from epler about his decade long burnout, where he wrote that what you do manage to create when burnt out becomes thinner and thinner, and you don't really realize its happening until you're out of it.
and like. yes. i absolutely feel that, 100%. we can definitely see it in vg. not an attack on epler or anyone else, but an honest assessment of a game that i found deeply disappointing
ofc, it is obviously Not Helpful to harass professionals bcos their work was disappointing. on a related note, i think it is also Not Helpful to fawn over their disappointing work and profess how grateful we are to have anything at all
bcos i am not! grateful! for a half-baked game that burnt out and traumatized the team that made some of my favorite video games! i am not! grateful! that that same team then had to go on marketing campaigns and lie about what they'd created! im actually quite pissed about all of that!
idk idk i had lots more in mind abt like, the corporatization of art and the positioning of video games as a commodity first and foremost ergo capitalism is the Real Villain in the great da4 letdown, but its actually quite busy at work today. so. im gonna go do that ig. fuckin capitalism womp womp
i think people are afraid to bring this up mostly because like. morrigan's character arc as a mother actually did turn out to be surprisingly sweet and well-executed and i guess there's this idea that that somehow like. negates the horridness that preceded it.
but can we be honest. the dark ritual was the most overt display of mindbogglingly shameless misogyny the franchise has literally ever seen .