Once More Unto the Breach @krems-chair - Tumblr Blog

Jan 26

I don't know what to entitle this essay beyond Girl, The B l i g h t: a Veilguard Essay

I normally don't respond to stuff like this because it's a bit like, to pull a phrase a friend used just yesterday, like sticking your dick in the bee hive and then being shocked when you get called a dick-stung honeyfucker. But. This was maintagged, so there appears to at least be an invitation to responses.

✨Let's actually take a look at the arguments here

The first argument needs citations because the writer argues that Solas was going to bring down the Veil, but there's two elements here that are not being driven into that are crucial for understanding the condescension beyond the fact that Rook is a fucking nobody and Solas is an unfathomably ancient being with a much more grounded view of the stakes at hand:

The first is that Solas was not, to our knowledge, actually bringing down the Veil in that moment. We don't know this for sure. He never tells us that is what he was going to do, we merely have it on the good authority of Our Pal Varric that this is what is going to happen. That is, by definition, unreliable narration. Varric may certainly have believed that was going to happen in that moment. And Rook may certainly have believed Varric in that moment. But that doesn't inherently make it true.

The second is that we know for a fact that what Solas DID intend was to transfer the blighted evanuris, Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain, to a different prison that was not continent on the presence of the Veil. That this ritual was botched, that the blighted evanuris were set free from their prison and given license to terrorize Thedas with the blight -- Rook is directly culpable for this. That is their fault. That Solas is angry and unhappy about this and blames Rook for it is... both justified and appropriate for the situation. That Solas is angry and unhappy about being trapped in the Fade due to Rook's actions because he is unable to meaningfully mount a counterdefense against the blighted evanuris which now roam Thedas is... reasonable, justified, and appropriate. Framing this as Solas blaming Rook for a crime that Solas textually did not commit is... wildly inappropriate, and textually incorrect.

Alas.

The second point: blood magic is bad.

I'll return to that in a moment, but I want to briefly touch on the supporting claim that "Solas is a narcissist." The question is what, exactly, makes a narcissist, and the only evidence provided is that he "only does things that will get him what he wants." There's a lot of questions here, but the core of them is centered around the fact that this does not inherently define narcissism. There is a certain hypocrisy in lambasting an antagonist for being pragmatic and driven to achieve a goal no matter what, and then lionizing the protagonist for doing the same thing. The slogan of the Veilguard, if anyone has forgotten, is, after all, "Whatever it takes.

One has to imagine, then, that "whatever it takes" is itself not the problematic element at hand. If it were, we would rightfully be condemning Rook and Co. for espousing and actioning along the same moral leyline. "Whatever it takes" is another variant of the old saying, "The end justifies the means." But since that is being called to question based on two separate actors and their intentions, it follows then that what must differ is the means itself, and the inverse question of, does the end actually justify the means?

It goes without question that the game narrative wants you to believe that the end the Veilguard is working toward is justified. They want to stop the evil gods - which is admirable! Solas wants to do this, too! They also want to stop the blight from spreading, which is similarly admirable. Solas wants to do this, too! Finally, they want to stop Solas from brining down the Veil.

This is the crucial difference, the crucial conflict. The game says Solas is wrong for wanting to do this. Varric says Solas is wrong for wanting to do this. Rook therefore believes Solas is wrong for wanting to do this. There are some major flaws with this conflict which are predominantly rooted in one thing: there is either no writing, or it is underwritten.

What will happen when the Veil comes down? We don't know. The beginning of Veilguard depicts Rook being told by their mentor Varric that it will flood the world with demons. This is ostensibly reinforced by Solas' ritual at the beginning of the game -- which we learn is not intended to bring down the Veil, but to move the blighted evanuris to a different prison -- and then we are offered... essentially, zero further explanations. We are also not offered any counter-arguments.

The lack of further argumentation for Varric and therefore Rook's perspective is, fine. It's underwritten, but serviceable enough as a perspective from people who poorly understand the nature of the blight, the Veil, the evanuris, the Fade, the impact that the Veil has on spirits, the impact the Veil has on elves, how its history has impacted the dwarves, and so on so forth. That's thousands upon thousands of years of lived history that would need to be condensed and contextualized.

The utter absence of argumentation for Solas' perspective is far more egregious, particularly for a narrative in a series that has historically been choice-based and predicated on concepts like unreliable narration (Varric being the poster-child for this), incomplete histories, and layered truths that force us to confront the nature of ontological evil and raise the question of whether or not situational morality is appropriate.

It's also just bad writing. Argumentation 101 is that you are writing or speaking for an audience who may not agree with you. As a matter of fact, your argument is worth making in the first place because your thesis will not be obvious—or obviously correct—to everyone who considers the question you are asking or the topic you’re addressing. This is also how counter-arguments are constructed. The game, however, has decided that Solas' argument is not worth listening to. The outcome is a foregone conclusion. We do not need to prevaricate around the central conflict of the story: The Veil.

There are plenty of examples where Rook is given rein to castigate Solas for his alleged many crimes, and Solas is given no space to actually put forth his perspective, and his motivations. Perhaps one of the more egregious examples of this is the "argument" between Solas and Varric at the ritual site, which occurs while Rook is busy sabotaging Solas' ritual to move the blighted evanuris and which will culminate with Rook being responsible for unleashing them and the turbo-blight on Thedas:

VARRIC: "So how is this time going to work out for the better? Can you tell me that?" SOLAS: "I understand your hesitance but what I do now must be done. Despite it being past your comprehension." VARRIC: "I'm not saying you're evil, but if you truly believed what you were doing, you'd be able to give me a straight answer." SOLAS: "You would rather cast aspersions than admit that this is mine to solve!" VARRIC: "C'mon Chuckles, who are you trying to convince here? Me, or yourself?"

Real writers really wrote that, and really made sure that Solas simply could not tell anybody anything. In this framework, we as players don't need to know what he is thinking or doing, because that's not important. Varric is the arbiter of truth and grounded perspective (he's a dwarf, of course he's grounded) and if he tells us that Solas is the lying liar who lies, then who are we to question that? Who are we to wonder if there might be more dimensionality to this conflict?

We again are treated to the writers of The Veilguard refusing to really engage with Solas’ goals when he and Rook have their first Fade Prison conversation. What’s so interesting is that it actually does start to explore the fact that a/ Solas starts explaining the stakes and b/ he explains what he did and what he was doing – but c/ Rook merely dismisses this and regurgitates, again, what Varric has told them.

SOLAS: The Evanuris. Or as you would call them, the “elven gods.” The creatures that escaped. In ancient times, they ruled the elves, but that was not enough. They sought not just to be obeyed but to be worshiped. When I rebelled, they drew on the horrific magic of the blight, corrupting all they saw until I trapped them. Thanks to you, though, I am now trapped, and the blighted “elven gods” walk free. ROOK: “Right. You were innocently doing nothing when we came along.” SOLAS: “The prison in which I had trapped them had begun to crumble. I was moving them to another—” ROOK: “So you weren’t tearing down the Veil and drowing the world in demons and wild magic?” SOLAS: “I had a plan.” ROOK: “Varric always said you’d have a big explanation for why none of this was your fault.” […] ROOK: “Yeah. He said that’s your style. Never quite lies, clever half-truths that let you convince yourself you’re doing the right thing.” SOLAS: “Varric is… quite practiced at shading the truth himself.”

Interestingly, Varric and Rook also allude to what has been a canonical writing tenet of Solas’ character: he doesn’t outright lie. Half-truths, obfuscations, certainly, but outright lies? No. We also have a brief moment in time where The Veilguard was considering approaching the idea that Varric isn’t necessarily someone who can be held up as the arbiter of objective truth, and that perhaps we ought to take what he has told us with a grain of salt. That the game ultimately never chooses to explore that Varric might be wrong about what Solas plans to do with the Veil, unfortunately, is never explored. The game and Rook alike will remain steadfast that the Veil must remain, and neither ever entertain the question of what it might mean to bring the Veil down beyond “drowning the world in demons and wild magic.” Solas says he had a plan, but who cares. We already know what needs to happen, and Solas is wrong.

SOLAS: “They said they were gods. Blight, tyrannical, sadistic gods.” [...] SOLAS: “It took all my power to imprison them millennia ago. But I am certain you will be fine.” [...] SOLAS: “Their power outstripped my own even before they embraced the corruption of the blight.”

It is a little annoying that we have to deal with two different claims from Varric regarding Solas: simultaneously, he is the lying liar who lies, yet he never actually tells a lie. Here, we have to ask ourselves, do we trust Solas when he says that they’re powerful? Do we trust him when he says that they are blighted, and sadistic, and tyrannical? Do we trust that they will blight the world in pursuit of power? Well, even if we didn’t, we kind of don’t have to, because the narrative proves him right on every count. They are blighted, they are sadistic, they are tyrannical, they are using the blight to take over the world and they are doing this by blighting everything they can.

So: assuming that Solas is telling the truth – and why wouldn’t he, when he a/ doesn’t lie and b/ what he has said is self-evidently true and can be independently corroborated – maybe we can trust he is also telling the truth about how powerful the evanuris are and what the stakes are. Maybe he is also telling the truth about the personal cost that imprisoning them in the first place exacted. And maybe what we have here is a Solas who is aware, more than anyone else in the world, just exactly the amount of power, knowledge, and finesse that goes into making something like the Veil. He made it, after all. And it has held for thousands of years, after all. And maybe we have a Solas who is aware, more than anyone else in the world, exactly the amount of power, knowledge, and finesse that is required to shape a prison that will hold back the blighted evanuris. Likewise, maybe he is aware, more than anyone else in the world, of what exactly will hold back the full brunt of the blight, which is held from the world by the Veil.

Likewise, Solas is also aware of a crucial fact that has been made abundantly clear over and over and over again throughout the course of the previous installments of this series: the Veil is failing.

Let that sink in. The Veil is in tatters. There are places in the world where its gossamer strands are so paper-thin it might as well not be there at all. In Dragon Age: Inquisition Solas, despite having a goal to bring down the Veil, spends the entirety of the gameplay locating objects of power which can help strengthen and reinforce the Veil. He also assists in closing the Breach, which is a giant gaping wound in the Veil and which in all likelihood would have eventually destroyed the Veil. Many rightfully questioned why he would do something that seems fundamentally at odds with his professed goal in Trespasser, and the answer is, honestly, he doesn't just want the Veil to go down.

If it was just a matter of the Veil going down, it would be simpler, and there are other things he could have done. He could just wait - as an immortal elf, he would have that luxury. He could help the Grey Wardens find the two remaining archdemons and ensure that they are slain, therefore slaying the remaining blighted evanuris, therefore allowing the Veil to come down on its own. He could also just wait for another war, another cabal of bloody magisters, another blight--the scale of death and destruction which has been damaging the Veil for centuries all on its own without his help or intervention.

But it's not just a matter of the Veil going down. Because if the Veil simply goes down, there's another problem: the full, unadulterated, unfettered might of the blight.

SOLAS: “First, the blight. What exists in this world is a bare fragment of its power. The rest is imprisoned… until they release it.” ROOK: “The blight didn’t escape with the gods?” SOLAS: “Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain escaped largely empty-handed, fortunately. Most of the blight is still trapped in the prison I created ages ago.” ROOK: “So what we saw at that village [D’meta’s Crossing], that’s them not at full strength?” SOLAS: “Correct.”

Thedas is ill-equipped to deal with this. When the Magisters Sidereal broke into the Black City, they unleashed a mere fraction of the blight. The first one raged for nearly two centuries and absolutely devastated the Anderfels to the point that nearly a thousand years later the land is still fallow and scared. Successive blights have also been extremely damaging and difficult to deal with. The loss of life: incalculable. And the people of Thedas are at least fortunate enough that they can slay an Archdemon to stop a blight.

This is all textual, by the way: if nothing is done, the Veil will collapse, and the full blight will be unleashed. If a fraction of it is devastating -- to the point that almost all of the dwarven kingdoms have fallen and only Orzammar and Kal-Sharok are left standing -- to the point that the Anderfels is a wasteland to this day -- what is the full blight going to look like? In The Veilguard we get a taste of this -- while Rook and Co are busy jumping around the eluvian network in northern Thedas, southern Thedas is... obliterated. All the power of all the people of the south and they're gone. Couple this with the fact that the extent of devastation being meted out is a “bare fragment” of what Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain have to work with, and the idea of a Veil simply collapsing with the blighted evanuris given free rein of its almighty power, the picture is. Well. Unfathomably bleak.

This is, quite literally, quite textually, quite canonically, the very apocalyptic, world-ending scenario which Solas was trying to avoid at all costs, the very scenario that led him to nuke his own civilization to prevent.

So at this point, his options are: a/ do nothing, let the world burn; b/ do something, try to stop the world from turning to ash.

At this point is we cannot emphasize enough: literally nobody else is powerful enough to do something about the evanuris. Nobody else is powerful enough to do something about the Veil failing. Nobody else is powerful enough to do something about the looming spectre of the blight. We also learn from Inquisition and Trespasser that the Veil was intended to do two things: contain the blight and contain the evanuris: and it was failing to do both of those things, and on top of this it had numerous unintended consequences for the people of Thedas that irrevocably changed the landscape of the world as all people then knew it. It's all horrible, it's all devastating, it's all a series of bad options stacked on top of bad options. But something has to be done because the alternative is absolutely untenable, and Solas actually not wrong to understand that there is nobody else who could even possibly have the requisite knowledge or power to address this enormous issue that is a ticking time bomb.

So why don’t we actually explore this aspect of the narrative? Well. The reason is because the writers didn't want us to grapple with it. They didn't want to present an alterity to their foregone conclusion that bringing down the Veil is unequivocally Bad. They carefully constructed a very specific narrative that requires stacked assumption on stacked assumption, and any exploration beyond the bounds of the narrative construction would (and does, and rightfully should) send it tumbling down. That we never get to explore what exactly is going on with the blight and what Solas’s motives are with the Veil and how he planned to handle that in addition to how he was handling the evanuris and the sword of damocles that is the blight’s containment being tied to the health of the Veil is actually a very stark departure from what was being set up in previous entries.

It is perhaps tempting to believe that this refusal to engage with the aforementioned considerations in Veilguard means that it’s not important or that it should not be taken into consideration when we ponder the events of the story, but that would be a mistake, because Veilguard does not exist in a vacuum, its story is part of a larger narrative, and how it does and does not cohere is absolutely worthy of consideration. What we then have is an experience where the game itself as well as Rook as a protagonist are both shockingly incurious about Solas, and Rook asks very, very few questions in general – having more in common, in turns out, with the antagonist Elgar'nan than with the primary deuteragonist of the game. Very strange.

The fact is, as established by the previous games as well as in The Veilguard, Solas is trying to prevent literally the worse thing that could possibly ever happen to all the people of Thedas. What is incomprehensible is that this is ... somehow. Framed as delusional, self-aggrandizing, hubristic, narcissistic, etc. Not giving space to Solas's perspective while running with the operational framework that is given to us by, I quote, "a self proclaimed liar and a self professed scoundrel" -- is not only bad writing, is not only a failure of argumentation 101, but it is also directly contradicted by the text of both The Veilguard and the series writ large.

This is ignoring the obviously very fraught issues with arm-chair diagnosing characters with personality disorders, and with the way personality disorders are used to villainize people that are deemed disagreeable. We will also ignore the way that these kinds of diagnoses are frequently used as a way to justify denouncing someone as a criminal or abuser. I just don't think we have to call someone a narcissist in order to hammer in that we don't like or agree with them, and I don't think a personality disorder needs to be wielded as a cudgel against people.

Circling back to the blood magic. The contention is that Solas is an abuser because:

- he uses blood magic

- he uses blood magic to manipulate Rook

- he uses blood magic to trick Rook

I contend that blood magic itself is not ontologically evil, and I've written several essays on the nature of evil in Thedas that specifically digs into blood magic and the way it is woven throughout the setting. You can read my essay on [Corypheus and the Second Sin] and also my essay on [Why The Evanuris Are Weak Villains] to get a broader sense of my critiques on The Veilguard’s relationship with the wider thematics of Dragon Age as a series. Namely, I explore what exactly the nature of evil in this series is, and the ways in which The Veilguard necessitates that we must ignore or even outright reject the successive groundwork laid by previous installments in order to accept the moral framing of The Veilguard. Blood magic is a good microcosm for this exploration, as it appears to be one of those things that has a situational morality in the previous games -- but by The Veilguard the writers have chosen to present a reductive 'good guys good' and 'bad guys bad' framework that is a significant departure from the thematics of the previous installments; not only does this fail to build on previous storytelling, but it also fails to cohere. Condemnation of Solas for use of blood magic requires that we accept it is Bad™.

We must also accept that Solas doing "whatever it takes" on his end is bad, while also accepting that Rook doing "whatever it takes" on their end is good. There is a palpable hypocrisy to this framework. It is fine that Rook has imprisoned Solas against his will and violated his bodily autonomy. It is fine that Rook will ultimately forcibly bind Solas to the Veil in order to ensure that it is upheld. It is fine that Rook can use a trick ending to ensure that their goals are met. But it is not fine for Solas to trick Rook in pursuit of his own goals. It is not fine for Solas to violate Rook's own bodily autonomy in order to ensure that his goals are met.

How do we contend this against the fact that Solas professedly originally contained the blighted evanuris and staved off the blight apocalypse through trickery? Was this also a crime? Are we going to tell the Trickster God that he’s bad and wrong and evil for pulling a trick against the big bad evil blighted evanuris?

ROOK: “But you did imprison them.” SOLAS: “Through trickery.”

Again, it is not the actions themselves which we are condemning -- if this were the case, we would be tarring Rook with the same brush we tar Solas with. At the core, what is being weighed and judged is the goals themselves: again, the question of, does the end actually justify the means.

Veilguard posits, unequivocally, that yes, whatever Rook does is justified, and no, whatever Solas does is not justified.

And again. Girl. The blight. The apocalypse. The apocalypstic end of the world via the turbo blight that nobody else understands and is equipped to actually do something about. The working of magic that was so difficult and so dangerous that Solas nearly died in the undertaking of, and which he spent thousands of years sleeping to recover from, and which he was still profoundly weakened from when he woke up right before the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition. The Blight. (The poison. Kuzco’s poison. The poison for Kuzco.)

It’s troubling that so much of the discourse around Solas and his role in the narrative seems to ignore the glaring issue of the blight in favor of centering around how people feel about him personally and how their player character has been treated, and it also seems to emphasize the idea that Solas is a liar when textually, he is proven right time and time again. He isn’t lying about the blight to endear Rook to his cause. If you are familiar with the previous games’ lore, you know he is not lying. If you pay attention to what is happening with the blighted evanuris and the blight at large in The Veilguard, you know he is not lying. It’s also troubling that The Veilguard then also contradicts not only the previous games but its own narrative by reducing the blight to what amounts to a status effect. It is rendered toothless by necessity of the gameplay and by necessity of power-scaling to give Rook as a protagonist a fighting chance to deal with this horrifying apocalyptic scenario. The entire narrative of Veilguard is predicated on softening or outright undercutting the severity of the impact of the blight as well as the threat of the blighted evanuris. In the end of The Veilguard, the narrative is tantamount to going “skill issue” at Solas for not being able to shrimply defeat the evanuris on his own terms, nor for being able to shrimply cure the blight, and we render his narrative role obsolete and unnecessary, the Veil’s narrative role obsolete and unnecessary, and we’re left wondering, what was the point of all that?

I again direct everyone to read Sammakesart’s wonderful essay [Castles in the Fade, or What Was the Point of the Veil Anyway] which really digs into some of the failures of the narrative to stick the landing regarding the Veil as this omnipresent character and conflict in its own right. Sam drives into an important consideration for narrative construction and literary analysis, which is the understanding that characters are characters, and above all else, they are there because they are narrative devices that fulfill a specific role in a story. For example, regarding Solas, who is presented to us as a Trickster God:

“It seems our trickster god caused his apocalypse thousands of years before our story started, when he created the Veil. His role in this tale was over before ours began, and he really is just some relic from a long-past age. He has no role, no purpose in this story. He is here to be thwarted. He is no Loki at all.”

It is just. So strange.

Finally, if we move on to the third point of this argumentation, what is being said is that "Rook should always punch Solas" because "Rook doesn't care about Solas." Ignoring that not liking or caring about someone personally is is like. Not a good reason to punch someone, actually. Rook suffering™ so much™ because of Solas is... not really that much at all? The mess Rook finds themselves embroiled in is, as established, literally their own fault. They are culpable for sabotaging the ritual, unleashing the evanuris, and inflicting the turbo-blight on everyone.

What actually is Rook suffering from at the hands of Solas? Blood magic manipulation? Yeah okay that's sad, but maybe understandable considering Rook just sabotaged the ritual that would have safely transferred the evanuris to a different prison, they’ve instead unleashed the blighted evanuris on Thedas, inflicted the turbo-blight on Thedas, and then imprisoned the one person in all of Thedas who actually is powerful enough and knowledgeable enough to combat the aforementioned blighted evanuris and turbo-blight, and who, textually, without whom, in the end we would not have been able to defeat Elgar'nan during the final battle in Minrathous.

Maybe it's understandable that this same person, who has been imprisoned -- had his bodily autonomy fundamentally violated -- who is effectively locked out of being able to do anything about this very pressing issue that is in fact a terrifying and devastating apocalyptic scenario that he had just spent the last decade trying to prevent, might do "whatever it takes" with whatever options he has at his disposal to try and... do something... about this problem that has exploded because of Rook's actions. If all he has at his disposal is tricks and manipulation, and if the only connection to the imperiled world is someone who fundamentally has no interest in actually hearing him out, then, perhaps, tricks and manipulation are exactly what are called for in that situation.

Rook suffered because they... got locked in the Fade prison? For like two seconds? The exact same thing they did to Solas, who was locked in there for far longer? Rook suffered because a friend died? Yes that is sad; I can think of a number of characters who have also lost and mourned friends that died because of the State Of The World. I know a guy. His name is Solas.

But you know what is sadder? The whole world dying because of the turbo-blight apocalypse.

The core of the entire argument presented boils down to the idea that Solas did things to Rook that Rook didn't like, and because the narrative is intentionally overlooking Solas' own justifications in favor of uplifting Rook as a protagonist using a framework known as "protagonist-centered morality," everything Solas does is bad and nothing Rook does is remotely comparable.

Nevermind the blight.

Nevermind that Rook is directly and personally responsible for the widespread devastation of Thedas that follows the ritual at the beginning of the game.

Rook is always right and everything they do is good and just, and therefore if Solas opposes Rook in any capacity he is wrong and everything he does is bad and unjust. Ergo this means we need to punish Solas. This relies on a desire for and in the justification of retributive justice, and it hinges on the tenet that everything Rook does is justified, regardless of who it harms or how much damage they are responsible for, because as the protagonist in a protagonist-centered morality, they must always maintain the high ground.

#veilguard critical #finally some good fucking food #read this as a little post-work snack #we have to stop equating personal vibes re: a character with how their story should conclude #story should come first #and it doesn't #the game exists to punch Solas in the face and I get that's gratifying for many #but it fails everyone who cared about three prior games' worth of story

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