i'm grim, he/him. adult. english isn't my first language. da critical.
characters: varric, dorian, davrin and fenris are my favorites. bellara, drayden, lucanis, neve, emmrich, zevran, anders, blackwall, loghain, anora, jowan, cullen, solas.
ships: generally ship protagonist x love interests (i.e. hawke x fenris) but hawke x varric is a forever favorite. i ship davrin with everyone, mostly, with emile, and lucanis.
Some petty "two nickels" type clips I didn't feel like putting into their own videos
To clarify the "solas memory" one, as I recall the lines I included are all within a few minutes (less?) of each other, that wasn't like "we get this information again because the beats of the questline repeat" (though that happened too.)
I'm curious if some of these are the result of needing more overworld dialogue and just shoving alternate takes in there hoping that it will suffice. The "fade tear and revenant" one repeating like it does feels like a genuine mistake.
The problem with Rook, on a technical, writing/structural level is that they are in the exactly on the nadir between an established RPG character and a blank-slate character.
By an established RPG character I mean a character like Geralt in the Witcher, or Kratos from God of War. This is an established character, who cannot be customised. You might be able to choose their actions, but they will have a very specific in character reason for doing that thing, and you can't really decide their thoughts on a subject. Not good for creativity, but excellent for narrative structure.
A blank slate character is literally that, a blank slate. Think Skyrim. You have complete creative control, but this often comes with narrative limitations. There's just not currently capability to account for everything a player might want to do, so the more freedom you have often the looser and more vague the narrative gets.
All RPG characters will sit somewhere on this spectrum. The Dragon Age protagonists all sit in slightly different locations, and prior to Veilguard Hawke was probably by far the most established character on the spectrum, although they still sit pretty far towards blank slate.
Rook, on the other hand, is an established character masquerading as a blank slate character. While Rookās lineage and backstory and appearance are all customisable, their personality isn't, and your ability to choose their actions and reactions are highly limited. For example, during one of Bellara's early companion quests, we get to the end and she tells me about Cyrion, and then completely unprompted by me Rook starts talking about how she needs to let go of her guilt and I'm sitting there like????? Am I not allowed to play an emotionally constipated Rook? No, you aren't. Rookās personality is preset. They make jokes whether you want them to be jokey or not. They want to punch the First Warden no matter what choice I make regarding him. They aren't my character - but nor are they a fully established character. They end up innthis weird grey spot, and I end up feeling lied to about who this protagonist actually is.
Or course, it's entirely valid to like Rook. Maybe you don't have a problem with this setup at all. I just felt like having a shot at trying to describe what my problem with Rook as a character is, and how I ended up disliking them so much. Frankly, it's less to do with them as a character, and more to do with the fact I feel lied to, as I said.
i do think the argument of "oh you're being EXTRA harsh on veilguard for being racist/misogynistic/etc! what about all that stuff in previous games??" is actually in very bad faith.
bc firstly: people have already talked about previous games at length. it is weird to expect old arguments to be rehashed when a new thing is available to discuss.
and secondly: yeah, i will actually hold veilguard to a higher standard! i don't think that's unreasonable at all. time is linear, and 10 years passed in between the last game! there have been so many highly public social movements since then, the entire world has changed. most people have had growth in their awareness of the world and how they understand history and politics in that time, just from being alive and reading the news occasionally. they SHOULD have improved! i was never expecting it to be showstoppingly good or like a masterpiece of writing, but... i think "not getting worse, and perhaps being 2% better" is a completely reasonable expectation.
but, it did not improve, and did actually get worse, unfortunately! i do not think it's reasonable for a game published in 2024 to have such a regressive, flat way of depicting women; their implications on the worldbuilding became incredibly similar to irl racist or antisemitic conspiracy theories, while the writers crowed about how they were so proud of ~giving the elves a win~; the portrayal of the qunari only got more flat and islamophobic, somehow; and the entire idea of "i can excuse being nb but i draw the line at being an immigrant" is so stupid that it sends me into space.
i think it's completely reasonable to expect better from Progressive Writersā¢ļø in this modern era! this is a very low bar to exceed, and they still managed to dig under it, on such basic topics as "can women visibly age or be rude and still be major characters". previous games were managing to reach this standard, minor as it was! whether it's a failure of the writing itself, or corporate interference, it is completely valid to expect better.
"maybe being the lead writer of a fairly dark fantasy game is not the ideal role for someone who gets stressed out by conflict in fiction"
yeah I can't stop thinking about this either, ever since I first read it. There's so much going on. I read the first chapter of this book, and the tension that was so unbearable in it was "main character's uncle dies and main character's father talks about maybe keeping the inheritance from her" - that's the stressful plot point that couldn't be handled.
I had some people upset with me years ago about suggesting (and grimly sticking to my gut) that maybe the writers of the video game had something to do with the deeply different writing tone and scope and depth of the video game (experienced subjectively by many people). none of the many interviews since then with the head writer talking about comfort in fiction have proven me wrong at all. I cannot imagine the situation where they would willingly add a distressing conflict where it wasn't already there, or fight to include a darker tone. They said "we're going to proudly do this our way and it's not going to be the same as if Gaider was there to lead" and called it a day. And I think they genuinely still don't understand what happened because the tone genuinely pleased them.
Fun fact: there isn't a single text variable in veilguard. Lines that alter based on pronouns are simply repeated with a new string ID. This is why letters from the inquisitor or codices you might expect to name your Rook are always "Inquisitor" and "Rook."
Compare this to how codex entries were formatted in inquisition, using the same engine:
i don't even like mean companions* but after playing as a good girl once, i wanted to play as my, not even evil but a little brash rook, and i was shocked over and over again. about how little things changed.
click the mean choice explicitly told to oppose the companion: *says the same line as the other options, just %4 less quirky*
companion: *smiles less than they do to other options* yeah
"If we use force against our enemies, our allies will remember it": an exploration of the Archon Quest in DAtV.
Not everyone will have gotten this quest, as it's only avaliable if you saved Minrathous over Treviso. So let me start by setting the scene:
Rook has just found a secret list of Venatori plans in a Venatori vault. This includes a list of magisters who have been engaging in 'illegal slavery' and also a list of the backers of said magisters.
Dorian and Mae are arguing over how best to use this information. They have decided that one of them should become the Archon, however, they both have different ways they would go about it:
Dorian wants to 'crush our enemies by any means neccessary' - 'destory them and their networks by any means neccessary'. Maeveas describes this as 'swords and spies and blackmail; the devious means [Dorian] learned in the South'.
Mae wants to 'do this in the open. Show the people of Tevinter that we're here for them'. She wants to make this information public in order to 'inspire'.
Both will support the other, depending on what Rook decides. Both of them want to abolish slavery and get rid of the rule of Altus mages; 'the Soporati deserve a say in their own governance'. They say they have the same aims, but they would go about getting them in different ways.
Except...none of what they say actually makes any sense whatsoever.
Tevinter is Not a Democracy
Tevinter is not a demoracy. People do not 'vote' on who represents them.
Instead, there is a magesterium made up of magisters. These roles are hereditary (although you can have apprentice who take your title instead). You rule, because of your birth, or because you were lucky enough that somebody who rules because of their birth picked you.
There is not an election cycle. The magisters do not have to do anything to remain in power beyond making sure people aren't angry/scared enough to stage a coup.
Political factions exist within the magisterium, but you have to work to gain those who already are in it onto your side, you can't just get people to vote more of your faction in.
So....with this in mind, how is Mae's plan ever going to work.
Mae talks about wanting to do things out in the open. She wants to show Tevinter that politicans can be here for them. But those people...don't have a say. They can't meaningfully change things, or vote, or do anything beyond have a (probably violent) revolution.
And yet, we are led to believe that Mae's option will be the path of least resistence. Mae's option is 'working within the system'. What system? Mae won't be able to do anything, even if the public is on her side. It doesn't matter.
The magisters who are Venatori may die by the end of the game, or they may simply step down and give their titles to their children to avoid public disgrace. Maybe, maybe if people are angry enough, the heirs and apprentaces from other houses and magisters will take their place. But I don't see how Mae publishing this list of people and their backers will get her into power.
Especially in a country where slavery is legal. You know the people who would want Dorian and Maevearis's plans to succeed? Slaves. Because they're the only ones unlikely to be culturally indocronated to believe slavery is a good thing. Those a 'rung above slavery' like Krem, may also want their plans to succeed, but they'd likely have to be convinced, or have something happen to them (e.g. like how Krem's family struggled to remain in business because slaves can do their work for free so the products never cost as much) to push them into seeing all this. I highly doubt most people in this society as is would distinquish much between 'legal' and 'illegal' slavery. What even is illegal slavery? Taking people from other nations into slavery without the consent of said nations? That's most of the nations in thedas then. And if slave imports are continuing then surely everyone already knows that this is taking place and that people are arranging it.
AND EVEN IF THEY DID THERE ISN'T A DEMOCRACY FOR THEM TO VOTE MAE IN. To get Mae in, Mae has to convince the magisterium - and that includes convincing them to let her back in ON TOP OF convincing them to elect her as their ruler OR she has to have a violent overthrow backed by the people. That is the only way that 'inspiring' the people can succeed here.
Meanwhile, We have Dorian. Tarquin acts like Dorians plan will mean another Anders style chantry explosion, with things getting worse before they get better. But Dorians plan is vague to say the least. Blackmail? Okay. Working within his place in the magisterium? Now that makes more sense to me; if he can work within his place that might get him to be archon which would in turn allow him to potentially effect meaningful change from the top down with less tape around what he can and can't do.
But Mae implies Dorian is going to start killing people; 'if we use force against our enemies they will remember it'. But....what? Okay maybe Dorian plans to assassinate some people? But if he does, their kids will just get in. Maybe he just plans to threaten to assassinate people (interesting move as that's what got his father, but I think that COULD be an intersting direction for him) and that's what it means by blackmail etc. But if that's the case, is he really going to get to be Archon for long?
Dorians way looks way more like working within the system or...maybe turning the system into some of kind of dictatorship in order to make it a democracy so that Soporati can vote? Do ex-slaves get the vote in this world?
None of this makes any sense, their plans are so so so vague, and what they pitch and what they want means their pitches should be switched.
Who should be the Archon?
Towards the end of this place, Maevaris and Dorian say that a quater of the magisterium are Venatori. This is the implied quater that we have information on, and who needs to be taken out of the magisterium. But...okay, how?
In DAI, three of our companions (Vivienne, Leliana and Cassandra) are up for the role of Divine. But the reason they're up for the role despite all three of them being in some way a break with the past, is that there is nobody else. Everyone else who was up for the position died in the conclave explosion. All three of them have also gained large leaps forward in their reputation based on their actions in the inquistion.
But in DAtV....even if that quater are all killed in the final fight with the Gods, that means 75% are left over. I can see perhaps Dorian - who has maintained his seat in the Magisterium - being able to elbow himself into that power vaccum, win over the 75% and become the Achon. But Mae has been kicked out of the Magisterium already. She's lost her title. How is she going to get herself back in. As detailed above, it won't be by democracy. The Viper talks about her 'triumphent return' but nobody has actually given me a plan to get her to that triumphent return???
Basically; it makes very little sense that these two people are up for archon, even now we know the current one is dead. The archon is usually an inherrited title, either by blood or by being the apprentace of the previous Archon. The Archon can be voted in by only the magisterium if the archon dies without either of these things, however, so that's what they're going for here. But why would any of these 75% of magisters vote for Mae or Dorian?
And even if you argue that the Venatori list had the illegal dealings of more than just those 25% so Dorian and Mae could blackmail them for the position; firstly, Mae has already said she's not blackmailing anyone. So that leaves only Dorian. But the Magisters can pass their seats onto their children, instead of giving in to Dorians demands. That way even if Dorian exposes them, they're no longer in the Magisterium. Similarly, it surely is well known that the magisterium are dealing in 'illegal slavery' and surely even if it isn't, there are ways those within the Magisterium can use their money and power to pretend that they weren't involved with that. Polticians in the real world get away with these lies all the time!
Violence and Thedas
I'm not planning on making this point at length, but I do think the quote I opened this with also makes no sense for Dragon Age. 'If we use force against our enemies, our allies will remember it'.
In a game. Which is. About fighting enemies.
Like, this is a fighting game. We fight our enemies in this game. We don't sit down for tea with the Gods. We don't invite the red templars over to discuss politics. We don't ask the darkspawn if there's any way they won't do what they want.
We've been killing venatori for the WHOLE GAME by this point. We've ALREADY been using force.
I guess that the writers are trying to make a distinction between political violence vs. the rest of the game but uhhh. That doesn't really work either, especially in a game series which has had political violence pretty much at its core (we start with a game about CIVIL WAR and then move swiftly into a game where one of your companions commits an act of terrorism to inspire an overthrow of an unjust system) but also like. The implication that all groups who are bad are just 'evil' and have no motivations beyond 'power' and 'being evil' is dumb, and dragon age games used to be better than that. The Venatori, the Antam, the Crows, Butcher, Illario, The Grey Wardens, all of these people are playing with politics. Dragon Age games used to know this, they ahve a whole thing about 'the great game'.
But. Whatever. I said I wouldn't labour this point and I won't, but this quote makes no sense in a game where we've already spent the whole time using force.
(and also...isn't trying to abolish slavery perhaps a good thing to use force against? This quote implies that both the enemies (pro-slavery) and the allies (anti-slavery) have a similar moral standing which uhhhh i wouldn't say is true)
Why did this happen; some closing remarks
DAtV is vague enough about Tevinter politics that I feel you could, without knowledge of the previous games lore/the codexes believe the following points
slavery is a fringe practice in Tevinter
tevinter is a democracy
In this set of circumstances, their plans would make a lot more sense. Mae really could hope to get people on her side to vote out magisters who are engaging in 'illegal slavery' and other unmentioned things. She really could try and get elected on the promise of honesty and doing things differently, but still working within the system and eventually being Archon.
But this isn't the case. What's happening here is 21st century Demoractic (American Centric) politics are being placed onto a system which is essentially ancient Rome with absolutely no effort to try and make either confirm.
These days there are serious questions surrounding democracy, truth and lies we tell the people, whether its better to work 'behind the scenes' for a better world or not etc. These are all questions that have becoming increasingly relevant in the rise of the far right since 2016. And those who think the system need to change have MANY MANY arguments about whether we need to burn down the system, or whether we need to work within the system and with the backing of everyone to achieve our aims.
But that doesn't work in Tevinter. It doesn't mean anything.
I think the writers were trying to short hand some contempary politics into this world, were purposely vague about the parts of tevinter that don't fit that mould, tried to act like slavery was some form of modern discrimination that can be easily brushed to one side, and then just...released the game like that, with this choice.
But thinking about it for more than 5 seconds makes it SO STUPID. I literally spent ALL of that cutscene going 'wait what??? huh???' i watched it back three times before I understood what they were doing and why Mae and Dorians views were supposed to make sense before I wrote this post.
Another example of the writers not taking established lore/politics/culture in this game seriously. Another example of this game not taking its setting into account. I just. Yeah. This one really pushes me.
td;lr this storyline about who is the future archon doesn't work because Tevinter is not a democracy and they don't actually take into account the political implications, nor lay out actual political plans on how they'd achieve their aims.
But what I know about myself is that my skills as a writer don't lend themselves to establishing the challenge and the bleakness, which are equally valid and equally important. But they're just not mine.
Ok but genuinely is this why so much of the dialogue and so many of the companion quests have to do with food?
Just off the top of my head, we have:
Bellara and Lucanis' banters about cooking
Taash asking Lucanis about the fried things he was making at 2am
"Ham and Jam Slam"
"Ham and Yam Slam"
Harding being a bad cook
Getting coffee with Lucanis
Getting coffee with Lucanis x2
Grocery shopping and picking up food for the team with Lucanis
Telling Lucanis your favorite drink
Having Lucanis make you a dessert to go with your favorite drink
All of Lucanis' lines about coffee
All of Lucanis' lines about cooking
Emmrich asking Lucanis to make him a vegetarian dish
Getting fried fish with Neve
Neve making horrible coffee
Gingerwart truffles for Assan
Gingerwart truffle tea with Davrin
Not one, not two, but three banters between Taash and Davrin about what Davrin feeds Assan and how it affects the consistency of Assan's poops
Having tea with Emmrich and Manfred
All the references to Manfred pouring tea
Davrin getting harassed by Manfred and Assan for treats
Gathering dinner for halla with Davrin
Feeding the dragon in Taash's recruitment quest
Having dinner with Shathann x1
Having dinner with Shathann x2
Bellara eating the last of the garlic knots at the Hilt
That one conversation about Dalish food and Tevinter Khachapuri with Neve and Bellara
Bringing Karash fruit x1 and him saying he likes the cookies better
Bringing Karash fruit x2
Harding trying coffee and hating it
Bellara and Davrin talking about dalish food and what the Veil Jumpers eat in Arlathan
Walking past publicly executed Shadow Dragons in Minrathous and listening to the npcs debate whether or not Halos makes the best fried fish (yes, I'm aware this dialogue happens when you save Minrathous as well)
No but seriously, is this why? Because Veilguard's obsession with food has confounded me since release.
beaming my strongest psychic energies to edmonton, to hope that disaffected ex-bioware employees win their severance payment lawsuits. and perhaps drop the black codex or their original joplin story notes. pspsps.
solas put the veil AND the black city up together to seal the blight. but then it began failing and inevitably leaking out. and he seemed like he was rushing his whole plan really fast on an immortal timescale, so getting ahead of the time pressure of another blight would make sense. pre-veil, when he had his full power and his orb, it still knocked him out for 5000 years to put the veil and lock the black city to begin with. so you'd think that relocking/moving the black city would require a comparable amount of force, and the veil to be down to access it, right? which would make sense as to why solas keeps going "ough i have no choice... i must do this, and it will save the world... i wish i could be wrong, sorry :/". but then the blight just gets "don't worry about it kitten" and somehow soothed offscreen. and solas was planning on transferring just the evanuris into a Vague Emotional Concept Prisonā¢, without needing to even access the black city in the process? if he could lock them away and move them around without huge veil-changing measures to reach the black city, then why did he make the veil and crash his whole civilization to begin with? if the veil wasn't needed for the security of the cage, then why did he bother with ever creating it-?
like veilguard suddenly and incomprehensibly introduced solas' ability to: put the evanuris into a Regret Prisonā¢ļø, and soothe the blight. ok!
on a doylist level, this is just kind of boring. since there were three games of setup to foreshadow all these things, and then the resolution is just "solas does something handwavey offscreen to deal with it, idk". disappointing!
but also, on a watsonian level, if solas can do these things, in the modern world with the veil up, where all magic is weakened, and where he doesn't have his orb, then... what on earth was he doing in arlathan? when he says "every alternative to creating the veil was worse :/" in trespasser, does that now mean "well, there WAS a better alternative. i could've put the evanuris in Regret Jailā¢ļø, and soothed the blight myself. or maybe even done a few boss battles and killed the evanuris pretty easily. i just didn't feel like it, and i decided to destroy my entire civilization and go into a coma instead š"? that's absolutely wild! it's nonsensical! it retroactively makes the previous games make less sense and be less emotionally impactful. this is like mass effect 3 style writing fjhgjfdkgfd.
and of course, the Regret Jailā¢ļø as a concept is hilarious if you remember it's ostensibly meant for the evanuris, and solas was going to try and put elgar'nan in it... solas might be burdened by 473654 regrets every moment, but elgar'nan has very few! he's doing great! his only regret is that he didn't kill his wife AND her little dog too! presumably he can process that healthily within 10 minutes and get out. what an awful plan. the regret prison literally only works for solas himself to go into? anyone else can just walk out lmao.
so then the only thing about solas' plans, that was revealed in veilguard, and that was consistently foreshadowed in previous games, and makes sense with the setting at all, was the "archdemons are sealing the black city/veil, and when they die it all breaks open" bit. which is THE most sympathetic motive for solas to have.
but then they handwave the entire blight issue, in that rook accidentally blights most of southern thedas and then goes "whoops. at least it's not drowned in demons!" and doesn't worry about it too much. no one bothers fixing the titans or anything. and solas still has to go into... eternal solitary confinement and captivity for the city of omelas status quo of thedas? the same thedas which is now half-covered in blight, with multiple countries nearly eradicated, and has tevinter as the remaining Diplomatic Capitalā¢ļø. and this is considered a cheery optimistic ending, rather than an incredibly bleak and morally fucked up one. bc the writers decided to include camping trips and book clubs in the narrative previously.
anyway i don't know what the point of this ted talk was, but i think the game industry needs to unionize, and no one should legally purchase aaa games on release š«”
the problems (many, imo) with how they wrote solas in veilguard to me are like... i started looking over my lore notes for my fic, and it is just straight up inconsistent to the point where his motivations seem to shift wildly.
(i am protecting everyone's dash by putting this under a read more)
dai solas:
general traits: argues with iron bull that it's not appropriate to be happy about random bandits dying bc they had lives and families, approves of all your random sidequests to help people. generally thoughtful and you can ask him a bunch of questions.
elves/spirits: is really invested in the elves (for better or worse, with his Dalish Problems lmao) and cares a lot about spirits. there are some ancient elves left in the world.
dwarves/titans: does not seem to know anything about the dwarves or titans. is not mentioned in any of the myths surrounding them. keeps asking varric awkward questions about them, which implies something drastic happened after he went to sleep (likely the effect of the veil) that changed them from what he remembers them as. the titans seem to be hibernating, but one wakes up and reconnects to valta, and dagna also briefly connects to one.
blight: is terrified of the blight, gets mad when the grey wardens nearly kill the archdemons, says something worse will happen when they do.
evanuris: the evanuris are clearly nearly unkillable, since mythal got attacked by all of them at once, and is still kicking around gaslight gatekeep girlbossing. flemythal is older and more powerful than solas, and had been talking up her reckoning long enough that one would expect she would be using him for it. implication in cole's banter that solas was once wearing mythal's vallaslin. solas gets upset with a romanced well-drinking inquisitor and says they'll be under mythal's control.
magical stuff: says he doesn't know blood magic, bc he has no moral objections to it, but it prevents access to the fade and he prefers having that. is probably telling the truth, bc it's objectively less dangerous near the chantry to just say "no i hate blood magic >:(" and leave it at that. and it's established that blood magic weakens the connection to the fade.
trespasser/other media solas:
general traits: "i treasure the chance to be wrong again." seems to genuinely want another solution to whatever it is he's considering. rejects being called a god. you can still ask him a bunch of questions.
elves/spirits: has a whole host of elves/spirits that are in league with him, and seem to agree with at least some of his goals. seems to have some ancient elves working for him as well.
dwarves/titans: vaguely refers to "a war" and the evanuris starting as generals and becoming gods. still no indications he was pivotal in winning the war.
blight: he toppled his whole civilization to prevent the blight from spreading. is hinted to be not only removing the veil for elven/spirit wellbeing, but also preventing something else. the common theory was that the black city was being sealed by the archdemons, which was then confirmed but also made irrelevant later(?).
evanuris: he says the evanuris were such a huge threat that they nearly ended the world, and he had to seal them away. fought a rebellion against them for a long time, presumably would have killed them if he could.
magical stuff: turns people to stone by looking at them too hard. can lock and unlock eluvians. very magically powerful. implies that his plan is going to do something catastrophic to the whole world. does a bunch of weird stuff with dreams, can kill people in their sleep.
veilguard solas:
general traits: "people die, it's what they do š". refers to himself as a god in one of the endings. everyone else keeps referring to "the elven gods" unironically. you don't get to consider any other solutions to the elf or spirit problems, or the blight. you can't really ask him questions about his plan either.
elves/spirits: the elf and spirit problems are Never Mentioned. and in fact the elves have white guilt now. and the spirits are ok with being summoned and put to work. his only stated motivation is vaguely "the veil is bad" and "mythal š„ŗ". he laid off all his elf agents offscreen, and there are no ancient elves at all. everyone says that his plan will also turn the spirits into demons.
dwarves/titans: he singlehandedly tranquilized the titans, actually. and invented the blight. and made better eluvians. and was pivotal to winning the whole war. somehow the evanuris still managed to call him a lapdog after all that, and no one thought it was weird that their lackey was basically outdoing them at their own domains. the titans are alive, but their time is over, and the lyrium mining will not be addressed. don't worry about it kitten (?)
blight: the black city is no longer relevant, and somehow he expects to transfer the evanuris out of it without trouble. he can somehow soothe the blight himself in the fade. blight is also a temporary status effect now. the whole south of thedas is blighted, but this is optimistic. don't worry about it kitten (??)
evanuris: it's actually not that hard to kill them for rook. skill issue. if solas had simply fought a few boss battles, the entire rebellion would've been unnecessary. flemythal is fridged offscreen and never does anything about her reckonings. regular mythal is never addressed in terms of the... marking people as property aspect, nor is that addressed for solas in terms of his culpability for stuff done under her orders. the well never comes up again. don't worry about it kitten (???)
magical stuff: his ritual gets disturbed by toppling a few pillars. leaves eluvians open to the ritual site. does not think of casting "mind blast" and bopping varric out of the way, instead starts knife fighting him like he's a normal person being mugged in an alley. suddenly knows blood magic. does not do any weird dream stuff. tries to put the evanuris into a regret prison, despite the fact that he's the only one who feels regret out of that whole situation. describes the veil going down as killing "thousands" but has spirits ready to mitigate it - which begs the (unaskable) question of whether rook's Double Blight Whoopsie was worse for thedas. he somehow fills in for 7 evanuris worth of Veil Holding Batteries, despite being one guy, who's not immortal, and who may have been stabbed beforehand by the God Killing Knife. don't worry about it kitten (????)
So... I finally read that Imperialism Panel... I know I'm a million years late to this. And I just have to drag this dead horse out and beat it one more time. Here's the full transcript (link) if anyone wants to subject themselves to the meandering ramblings.
Firstly, I'd just like to point out that Weekes did not give a definition of imperialism at the beginning of the panel but instead went on about Andorsš. But luckily, another panelist, Eric de Roulet did provide a definition:
So, basically Gunder Frank's theory of dependency, whereby in his book, he defines imperialism as a characteristic of a centre/periphery process, which produces and reproduces development (in the centre) and underdevelopment (in the periphery).
āEmpireā is a political mechanism, the control over a larger multisociety region by a single state. Empire, in functional terms, is a political machine for the maintenance and/or direct organization of imperialistic economic processes. In other words, it consists in the direct control over an already existing larger economic network.
āFrank and Gills (1996)
However, it is worth pointing out that there is limitation to Gunder Frank's theory,
Gunder Frankās thesis implies that the third world will have to continue to be exploited as capitalism advances, till it is overthrown by the working class in the advanced countries. Thus it locks advanced and underdeveloped countries into a relation of near-perpetual inequity.
āLoomba (2002)
Also, Gunder Frank's theory of development and underdevelopment contributes to the colonial framing that flattens the 'Third World.' And that they could never 'develop' without waiting for revolutions in 'First World.' As if liberation is equivalent of queueing for checkout at a grocery store, and the 'Third World' has to 'get in line' for development and modernisation.
So, right from the start we have a very narrow understanding of what is imperialism.
I would like to use Loomba's definition:
The OED defines āimperialā as āpertaining to empireā, and āimperialismā as the ārule of an emperor, especially when despotic or arbitrary; the principle or spirit of empire; advocacy of what are held to be imperial interestsā...While royalty were both financially and symbolically invested in early European colonisations, these ventures were in every case also the result of wider class and social interests.
āLoomba (2002)
In other words, the emperor reflected the interests of his subjects at home. And as time went on, imperialism doesn't necessarily require an emperor anymore especially in today's world. Hence,
[I]mperialism...is best understood not by trying to pin it down to a single semantic meaning but by relating its shifting meanings to historical processes.
āLoomba (2002)
Another thing I want to touch on with regards to the other panelist, one of Eric de Roulet's comment that is factually incorrect:
Singling the US South out as the sole exploiters is just flat out wrong, when the entire Unites States of America were benefiting off of plantations. Where did all those cottons go? Robert fucking Lee's house? These American liberals really ought to retake their history class. Read your Du Bois, I fucking beg you Americans.
Black labor became the foundation stone not only of the Southern social structure, but of Northern manufacture and commerce, of the English factory system, of European commerce, of buying and selling on a world-wide scale; new cities were built on the results of black labor, and a new labor problem, involving all white labor, arose both in Europe and America.
āDu Bois (2017)
Now let's move on to Trick Weekes,
This one is really funny, wdym Americans know that they're living in an evil empire? Was ever there a good empire in all of human history? So what if they know that they are living in an empire? They still voted for a fascist regime. Or did Rome fall because the Romans suddenly realised that they lived in an empire?
This one is even funnier, I wonder who wrote the evil empire without actually doing the work? I wonder which character's the imperial force devoid of humanity? Perhaps some elf with a name that rhymes with naan?
And I wonder who has set up a straw man for empires.
Okay, jests aside, let's get to the part that really pissed me, and a lot of people off.
To speak of imperialism is, perforce, to speak of two distinct elements ā distinct as regards their origin and historical status, yet closely linked, in recent times, by the dialectics of hegemony and subjugation. On the one hand are the peoples, social formations, nations, countries, and states occupied or wholly or partially dependent on the European and American metropolis during the colonial and imperialist eras. On the other hand, are the centers of hegemonic power, colonial and imperialist, of the West.
āAbdel-Malek (2008).
In other words, one cannot talk about imperialism without the Other/the subjugated/the dependent. The fact that Weekes could be so comfortable erasing the entire population being exploited and solely focusing on the population that is benefitting from exploiting the former is just telling. And as if invoking queerness or neurodivergency is a "get-out-of-jail" free card for their inability to be self-reflexive. The very fact that they remembered to mention their positionality as queer and neurodivergent, but not their positionality when it comes to their white supremacy tells me all I need to know.
Before I end, I just want to invoke some words from Spivak (2023):
[Epistemic violence] is also the asymmetrical obliteration of the trace of that Other in its precarious Subjectivity.
References to cleanse our souls with:
Abdel-Malek, A. (2008). Geopolitics and national movements: An essay on the dialectics of imperialism. (link)
Du Bois, W. E. B. (2017).Ā Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a history of the part which black folk played in the attempt to reconstruct democracy in America, 1860-1880. Routledge.
Frank, A. G., & Gills, B. K. (Eds.). (1996).Ā The world system: Five hundred years or five thousand?. Psychology Press. (link)
Loomba, A. (2002).Ā Colonialism/postcolonialism. Routledge. (link)
Spivak, G. C. (2023). Can the subaltern speak?. InĀ ImperialismĀ (pp. 171-219). Routledge.
