I mostly post big walls of text about vidya games, and sometimes other media. Having previously been in mourning over the death of my beloved, Dragon Age, I have fallen deep down the well that is Cyberpunk 2077.
In fact due to this I have recently started a sideblog with my friends where we post incorrect Johnny Silverhand quotes for the sole reason that it amuses us endlessly.
I enjoy giving out recs, especially for indie games or niche fantasy/sci-fi books and shows. See here my list of recs for Dragon Age fans!
Here's my AO3 page, where some of my writing ends up.
And here's my Artstation, where most of my art finds its way to.
Feel free to send me asks! About my opinions, recs, or anything really. Idk I'm just an attention whore at heart :)
> weekes believes that Writing Romance Novels during fascism is inherently a revolutionary and useful act. as opposed to using the romance novel money to materially help people in danger
> they talk at length about how they intend for rook to be a self insert, and the lack of choices is (ostensibly) bc they assume every player wants to be a Hero™️ and self insert as rook too
> rook's entire shtick is that they're incurious about the world, and refuse to extend any empathy to someone they've decided is Bad. anyone who opposes rook is comically evil and has no depth at all
> as per weekes' worldview, fascists don't have depth or reasons to exist, they just Appear. rook's opposition is all fascists, bc they're clearly bad people, and those are super easy to identify, and everyone knows they're bad
> rook steals an ancient safehouse that could shelter hundreds of people in a crisis, and instead uses it as a cozy home base for their selected friends and no one else
> the heinous, slavery based empire that's created by conquering and subjugating the elves... is basically good, bc it has a nice middle class and the majority of the population toootally hates the slavery
> and actually every problem was the elves' fault, so they're the ones who need to apologize and abandon their religion and atone. bc of their ancestral blood libel esque sins. why did they even bother existing, when it was unnatural and a bad idea? they are repeatedly described as jewish/indigenous/roma analogues, so this is such a normal way to think about them 😁👍
> entire game has a takeaway of "never ever try to change the status quo. you can and should unleash as much violence as necessary to maintain the status quo, but any violence in pursuit of a better future is Evil and Bad and deserves eternal jail. and eternal jail is fine as long as the prisoner deserves it btw."
the shadow dragons could’ve been so good if they were good. instead they were so laughably bad in every possible way. largely a product of the complete sanitization of tevinter but good god what a mess of a faction. led by 3 wealthy human mages one of whom directly profits off of slavery as his day job another of whom is the “man on the inside” in the government but see the only people who do slavery in this game are evil venatori! so why do you even need a man on the inside in the government then, it’s not like he’s even accomplished anything in his 8 years of holding a seat, he almost punched a guy once but that’s all we hear of. and the third of whom is literally one of the richest people in tevinter and maybe thedas who has used her immense wealth and monopoly over tevinter’s business ties to orzammar to apparently do absolutely fuckall. there’s also a human templar for some reason. there is one named character who is a former slave but you learn this from a codex entry and you cannot talk to her about it. and she operates the front end of the pawn shop: she is the first in the line of fire. she is expendable. if you save treviso you find her body in the street.
so what do the shadow dragons do? they assist in slave revolts, apparently. but when you work with them in one of the first missions in the game you’re tracking down a red lyrium “relic.” no explanation as to what this is or why it’s important other than the venatori have it. so surely during the shadow dragon companion’s quest you must do something dealing with slavery right, since that’s the shadow dragons’ whole thing? no? aelia is (checks notes) trying to unleash a demon sealed beneath minrathous, for evil reasons i guess? if i want more context i have to read tevinter nights? apparently she’s venatori but there is no connection between what she’s doing and what the other venatori are doing in the main plot of the game, and neve’s plotline is about the threads, not the shadow dragons? the shadow dragons are just kind of fully irrelevant?
so what about rook mercar? as a rook who works with the anti-slavery faction, you must have some input on literally any of this, right? no, you don’t know your base of operations or the leaders of your organization or the fact that mae lost her seat which happened years ago and is the reason the shadow dragons even exist and it was a public smear campaign so rook not knowing this is literally insane. you’re explicitly raised by a wealthy military family from a city that isn’t this one, and there’s no explanation as to how you got to minrathous or why you started working with the shadow dragons. the only mercar-specific dialogues you really get are saying “shadows stick together :)” a few times. you have broken chains in your bedroom from a slave rebellion you helped. why the fuck did you keep those? rook mercar is useless and toothless and stupid on purpose so that you don’t think too hard about the issues that supposedly drive your character but are barely present in the game. and at the same time, they were sent away from the shadow dragons for being too radical and not going along with the safe plan! 😭
and then for some reason you get to choose the next archon—the ruler of a system that is built upon slavery. for some reason one of your queer liberal friends gets to be president even though it’s an internal election process within the magisterium and dorian has probably fewer than a dozen allies and mae is believed by most of the imperium to have committed some sort of vaguely-alluded-to treason. we are not even going to confirm whether all the magisters blighted by elgar’nan were killed or not. literally don’t worry about it kitten ❤️. nothing about the system is going to change. dorian using spies and blackmail and assassins to accomplish his goals is framed as radical when he spent an entire game making snide jabs about how that’s the essence of tevinter politics. mae says you can get the people on your side and show them the truth as if tevinter being a complete farce and magisters doing blood magic and the nation running on slavery isn’t the stereotype everyone outside of the country knows and as if all of that isn’t known more deeply by the people who live there. as if “having the people on your side” means anything in tevinter and can accomplish change without revolution and without any violence.
it’s just all such a nonsensical disaster it hurts to think about. and of course weekes says that they didn’t want to write about revolution because they “don’t have that sort of attitude”—it’s so painfully obvious how terrified they are of actual change and addressing the deep-seated issues of empire and colonialism (and they make it blatantly clear on a panel about writing about empire. lol). it’s obvious that they just didn’t want to deal with the intricacies of a society built on slavery because they are perfectly fine with their status quo and not examining what the settler state they live in is built on. obviously weekes is not the only writer of this game but this mindset bleeds into its entirety and certainly does not come from only weekes. it shows so clearly in every part of tevinter and dock town and the shadow dragons, both in what they are and in what they aren’t
also all of this is not even to mention that iirc veilguard doesn’t show or describe any slave uprisings that were successful without the aid of the shadow dragons—again an organization that is headed by 3 wealthy highborn human mages. this is to demonstrate that “hey, look, the shadow dragons do do something!” but what happens as a consequence is it gives off the impression that the writers believe enslaved people cannot gain freedom on their own without the aid of these extremely privileged people who are cosplaying rebellion from the comfort of their estates. when you do interact with slaves in like one or two quests they’re helpless captives and you rescue them and then they sing your praises. it’s a blatant white savior fantasy and it’s rancid
ALSO also. sorry i’m not done with this post. the shadow dragons being The Queer Faction is very intentional. do not think about the slavery do not think all the suffering and exploitation going on in tevinter. see, our leaders are a trans woman, a gay man, a trans man, and (squints) matt mercer i guess. the shadow dragons are an idyllic queer haven and that is the part of tevinter you are shown. there’s no corruption just your faction of fun cool gay and trans friends who would never do anything as evil as profiting off of slavery or owning slaves or working for the state to capture escaped slaves (tarquin is literally a templar and sure he’s “corrupt” (in a good way don’t worry) and “looks the other way” but he wouldn’t still have the job if he never did it.) mae is your nice friendly mom friend who wouldn’t hurt a fly, dorian i cannot emphasize enough has done absolutely jack shit in the magisterium, ashur may or may not be the black divine wink wink we’re going to give you enough information through missable codices and banters to confirm it but we’re not going to outright state it or you’ll realize this whole faction is a sham. but i digress i have too many thoughts on ashur. anyway. tevinter is progressive actually look at all your trans friends❤️. the pinkwashing happening here is off the shits!!! hello!!! insert weekes quote
I can write people living in an empire despite that empire. Because I am several things the United States has currently said they're making it a priority to get rid of. And I'm not going to write a novel about destroying the United States because I'm not good at that. I don't have that sort of attitude. I don't want to destroy the, I don't want a civil war. So many people would die. But what I can do is write a novel about someone who is neurodiverse, someone who is trans, someone who is not straight, living defiantly because that is something in the empire that I can push back against directly.
While researching for my Pillars of Eternity TTRPG, I discovered the existence of pages on a Korean-language wiki about this franchise, and they have all been (I presume) poorly machine translated into English. Let me take you on a quick adventure through the absolute joys of poorly translated Eora. I will provide screenshots where comically relevant, but rest assured that I will not misquote the website.
I've been laughing for nearly an hour now after reading this with @adozentothedawn.
Where best to begin than with the various gods of Eora - also known as the 'Shin', of course.
While many of these are familiar to me, I was somewhat surprised by the addition of Woody Car, though I can see why the team behind such games as Pilars of Eternity, Pillars 2: Deadburning, and About (also called Irbawood) would choose to add her in.
I appreciate the gods being pointed out in the art, or I might get Skaen and Woody Car confused. It is here on Woody Car's page that we learn about the Lead Key Society, led by Taos who we meet early in the game at the ruins of Sealent Rease.
Anyway, onto our protagonists.
There's a lot to discuss here. I love Sad Mother, for one. I enjoy that Kalisha has been written how you pronounce it. But why, oh why, has my good friend Aloth been replaced by multiple allos?
Oh alright then. That explains it all. The sequel also has fascinating characters - sorry, I mean Colleagues.
Now I've never used Murky because her voice annoys me but I presume that's just what she's called. It would appear that Ydwin has been force-masced into becoming a Victorian boy named Edwin.
Exploring Fascina's page, I came across the powerful magical society known as the Guild of Archmages... though, if you ask them, they have all sorts of names.
Speaking of Leng Grass, it is important to note that she doesn't exist.
Additionally, she's helped Tae-in out of some legal trouble
With all of that said, it's time for the most important revelation about the entire franchise, and that is the war that kickstarts the plot hooks behind the first game! This is, of course, the War of the Saints, featuring our favourite divine avatar:
It's your boy, Wide Wen. He worshipped Eotas but was killed by the Godhaem-mer Bomb :(
Wide Wen's Legacy becomes a known thing, with Hollow-Bone children being born all over the place. Because of this, the people employ spirit magicians to perform heart marriage on the children.
Oh...
Anyway! This is all important because it leads to the most important moment in Eoran history: the writing of a very important book entitled Very Nice Farmer. The wiki describes it as such:
That 'BL' does indeed lead to the wiki page for boy-love. Anyway, the contents of the story suggest that Wide Wen was in fact genderfluid:
And that is the end of my dive into this wiki today. Here is the wiki, if you want to have a look around yourself. May Woody Car protect you if you delve too deep!
i was talking about this on my server earlier but i really think "cozy" is one of the worst genre labels out there in the gaming space. like people dunk on the terms "metroidvania" and "first person shooter" a lot for being uncreative or limiting but at least those are like... falsifiable descriptors. you can look at a game and go "yeah this game's mechanics and core gameplay loop generally operate like metroid/castlevania" or "yeah this game primarily uses a first person camera paired with some sort of projectile weapon" so i don't think they're completely useless. but "cozy" is just nonsense. fully subjective. i see a lot of games popularly labeled as "cozy" that share almost zero mechanical features between them and don't even always match in tone or aesthetic. hearing a game described as "cozy" doesn't tell you anything about what to expect as a player beyond maybe giving you a sort of forewarning about the fanbase and their discomfort tolerance. "cozy" is not a quantifiable metric. like imagine if someone offered to buy you takeout and asked you what kind of food you'd like and you told them fully unironically, and with no further elaboration, "i want to get yummy food." that's what hearing "cozy games" sounds like to me
i especially chafe at the way "cozy games" just seems like a "woke" way to say "girl games" and conflate certain game mechanics or aesthetics with a non-cis/het/male identity (to equally useless effect from a buyer's pov). gender stereotyping by any other name is still gender stereotyping. i'm not cis het or male, but i've spent decades enjoying pvp shooters and feel bored to tears by cutesy cottagecore farming sims. and i find those pvp shooters very "cozy" to play, too! @_@;
Throughout the history of Thedas, there had been multiple attempts to set the Litany of Adralla to music, both to serve as a memory aid and to have the melody provide a sense of comfort to the petitioner, in addition to the protection from demonic forces the litany itself provides.
None of these compositions have quite managed to rival the popularity of the rather controversial Mother Nicana version, which will be presented to you shortly.
Born in Jader in 7:56 Storm, Revered Mother Nicana was a figure as beloved by her faithful as she was inconvenient to her superiors.
Ever practical, as well as a fierce advocate for following the spirit of the Chant, regardless of the politics of the time, she faced criticism from peers in the Chantry for choosing the original Tevene text as the basis for her composition. When pressed, she simply answered that if she could find a single translation that fit the original's metre, she would consider it.
In spite of this short-lived controversy (or perhaps because of it), this version became popular especially among those who had need of the litany for practical uses, such as the Mourn Watchers of Nevarra.
The following are two performances of Mother Nicana's Litany of Adralla. One was performed by the lay sisters of the Tantervale Chantry. The other was heard sung in Kirkwall's Lowtown by an initial survivor (presumed to have been a minstrel employed in the Hanged Man tavern) of the catastrophic fallout of Anders' destruction of the Kirkwall Chantry in an attempt to protect himself and several others from the demons that surrounded them.
Austin Langer was able to interview former BioWare narrative designer Sylvia Feketekuty. She discusses how the teams tackled exposition, pla
there's not a lot in this article but this made me laugh (despairingly)
(One thing I’d like to mention: there was a misconception going around at one point that I wrote all of the codex entries in Veilguard. This is not the case! They were split evenly among all of the writers.)
so. the writers were all responsible for secrets are lies that are true, and golden tevinter scissors, and fahrenheit recipes, and the noble anti-imperialist elf ally antivan crows.... and also none of them could use a string variable for the inq or rook's names :')
The passage that made me the most insane was this:
There’s things you can do to make it more inviting. When I was working on the Lore Glossary with editor Cameron Harris, we discussed with the rest of the narrative team how many terms we actually wanted to define. We limited it to a maximum of thirty. Throwing a bunch of new, setting-specific jargon at people can really overwhelm them. So thirty basic terms to define some of the most important parts of Dragon Age, with descriptions that never went over three sentences, seemed like a good limit.
You're telling me they picked... thirty??? lore terms for ALL of dragon age??? the game series built on lore terms??? THIRTY??? And you made sure to never describe them in more than THREE SENTENCES???
media: we have an anti-authoritarian story for you!
me: sweet hit me with the good stuff
media: so there's this marginalized underclass of people, right?
me: okay
media: and they're like, stigmatized for something that's mostly an aspect of how they are born, or where they're from, or they're badly misunderstood, right?
me: yup, got it, I'm with ya
media: so these people are rebelling against the current social order, because it's the instrument of their suffering
me: oh good great sure
media: but also they're violent and deranged and need to be stopped
me: ...what
media: yeah they're going too far, they're trying to overthrow the system and assassinate the nice cop trying to help them and also they burned down an orphanage
me: ...why? would they burn down an orphanage??
media: extremism is bad
me: still not seeing what this has to do with their fight though???
media: also now they've shot a dog. oops they shot another dog
me: what?! why? I though their motive was to overthrow oppression??
media: yes but their suffering has also made them evil
me: ...???
media: don't worry though, the good guys will defeat them and restore the status quo
me: the status quo that's been killing people?
media: well it turns out it was only killing the kinds of awful people who burn down orphanages and shoot dogs :)
me: oh. this is actually a pro-authoritarian story, isn't it?
media: nooo of course not don't be sillyyyyyy we're super progressive look one of the cops is a black lady don't be sillyyyyyy
okay real talk DA fandom, i know it's fun and cool and popular to use Solavellans as the fandom whipping boy (gn) and it has been since 2014 and especially since 2015, and i know that there are indeed a lot of Solavellans that are extremely cisheteronormative and do/say insane things that absolutely should be dunked on, and I also know that the writers opted to make Solas mechanically a straight romance because they were erroneously of the opinion that it would be bad and wrong for him to be a bisexual villain and that does have some really unforch implications, and i know it's frustrating that Solavellans seemingly got a fuckload of bones thrown to them in the festering shit sandwich that is Veilguard, esp when considering how bipoc and more openly queer characters and their romances were treated narratively which is absolutely a problem, but like. you gotta stop throwing solavellans under the bus. esp the solavellans that have been in the trenches with you over how bad veilguard is and also how stupidly neoliberal the series is in general. we could all be getting hammered in the forum and having beautiful discussions about lore and politics and and and but the infighting is so ugly. the real enemy is the fucking cullen tradwife shortbread mfers and i-never-bothered-to-examine-my-penchant-for-antiblackness mfers and also bioware. amen.
in my rook hating mindset now after that post this morning and cannot stop thinking about how they are literally the worst protagonist maybe in any story i have ever experienced JRHGKJERHGJERG. and like if you love your rook i am not saying you shouldn't. if you love your rook i am so so happy for you genuinely but you are also probably brilliant and have a huge brain because what the game gives you to build off of is so abysmal.
i literally cannot stop thinking about how insane it is that rook literally causes a double blight and worldwide catastrophe on a scale which thedas has not seen probably since the creation of the veil itself and just. experiences no remorse. and the story tries to tell us thats a good thing and makes them better than the villain/their foil. JHREGJKHERGJKHERG. HELLO?!!??!?!?! literally no one ever goes "hey maybe you shouldnt have done that" except solas and hes framed as the VILLAIN!!! WHAT!!!!!!!!!! hawke blames themselves for not putting the pieces together fast enough when a bouquet of white lilies arrived at their door? the narrative gleefully condemn anders with the immediate opportunity to kill him for his crimes. nearly every single character in origins immediately puts the entirety of the responsibility for the fifth blight on loghain's shoulders, regardless of the CLEAR SUGGESTION that the battle at ostagar could never have been won. and all of these makes sense for the world and characters!!!!! of course hawke would blame themselves for their families deaths when they were given the role of protector by leandra after malcom dies. of course the city of kirkwall is going to want anders dead for his extreme act of violence rather than start the uncomfortable process of acknowledging the beloved chantry's complicity in large scale abuse happening in the mage circles!!!! of course alistair and the warden are going to blame loghain for the blight and cailan's death!!!! it doesnt matter if they are right or wrong, it makes sense for their perspective and worldview to feel this way!!!!
have yall gotten the low approval conversations in inquisition????? solas's "Inquisitor. Tell me. How does it feel? Being you. Are you blissfully unaware or, deep inside, is some part of you banging on the walls, screaming?" cassandra getting drunk and practically spitting in your face how she regrets raising you up to such power? blackwalls' "Are you proud of yourself, of what you’ve built here? How about the lives you’ve destroyed along the way? Given much thought to those lately? Is this Inquisition all you wanted it to be? Because I’m disappointed. All I see is a gang of thugs led by a self-serving tyrant." and these SCATHING comments from those who once believed in the inquisitor enough to join their cause come from decisions that affect a fraction of the population that dies under the southern double blight. people will rip the inquisitior to fucking shreds when they fuck up. THATS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE TRESPASSER DLC EHRGKJHERGKJHERG. like holy shit every decision carries the weight of "oh my god whos gonna hate me. who is going to die because of my choice. how is this going to come back to bite me." have we forgotten what its like to return to varric after leaving hawke in the fade and confess what we did? the call we just made? to look him in the eye and tell him that we sacrificed his best friend? WHY IS ROOK NEVER ASKED TO PARTICIPATE IN ANY OF THIS INTROSPECTION?????????? TO EVALUATE HOW THEIR DECISIONS AFFECT THOSE AROUND THEM BOTH PERSONALLY AND SOCIETY AS A WHOLE????? OH MY GODDDDD
the regret prison scene is so insane. first its insane because its solas at his best and most cunty. but secondly it makes no fucking sense even if im largely distracted by pookie being fun and villainous. solas tries desperately to play up rook's regrets during their conversations and we are supposed to believe that it was that manipulation that allowed him to swap with them in the prison. how does this actually work? blood magic? dont worry about it, kitten. but then when we get into the prison.... the only two regrets that manifest are things that just happened within the last 3 hours - your two party sacrifices. lets be clear that these are not even real sacrifices because literally all of these people volunteer to go and then argue about why they should go. this is so fucking stupid. then rook looks at the statues and says "i dont regret this because this was your choice". YEAH????? OF COURSE YOU DONT FUCKING REGRET IT WHY WOULD YOU. HELLO???? THIS WAS NOT ROOKS CHOICE THIS WAS ROOK JUST SAYING "SURE I GUESS". AND THEN THATS ENOUGH! THEY JUST LEAVE BC THEY CONQUERED THEIR REGRETS!?!?!?!?!??! WHAT!!!!!! there is no discussion of rook being responsible for the blight in the south that we find out via ooc inquisitior letter has KILLED LITERALLY EVERYONE. no suggestion that their recklessness and willingness to act WITHOUT ALL THE INFORMATION at the ritual is the reason for every single thing the evanuris do following their release.
and let me be very clear bc i know this was causing drama on twitter last week. i am not saying the double blights is rook's fault. i actually dont think it is their fault, although i do think they are stupid and reckless and shouldn't have acted so carelessly. but although rook is responsible for ghilly and edgar breaking free, rook is not responsible for the their actions following that freedom, and rook is not at fault for being put into an impossible situation (the need to stop solas's ritual) without all of the information on what the ritual was and what stopping it might incur. however, the double blight is rook's fault in the same way that the veil, the fall of the elvhen empire, elven mortality, and every demon's existence is solas's fault; which is to say, it is and it is not. solas was backed into a corner, in a desperate situation without knowledge of the potential consequences, and was forced to make a decision for the good of the world when he imprisoned the evanuris and blight with the veil. rook was backed into a corner, in a desperate situation without knowledge of the potential consequences, and was forced to make a decision for what they thought was the good of the world when they interrupted solas's ritual. but while solas feels immense guilt and responsibility for the choice he made, rook feels.... absolutely none. and the game tells us that... they're right? people should just not take accountability for anything? i will give credit where it's due here that varric's contribution to this scene is quite good and his line where rook tries to take responsibility for his death and varric says smth like "no, that was my own choice and you dont get to take that from me" is B A N G E R. WHERE WAS THAT ENERGY IN THE REST OF THIS FUCKING GAME!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?
THAT was the lesson solas needed to learn, not that his regret was wrong but that it was MISPLACED!!!!!!!!! and that is why it is mythal acknowledging that their burden is shared and not his alone is the culmination of his entire story and what finally allows him to move on. pride stands alone, wisdom seeks out the input of others to make an informed and wise decision. this is also why he leaves such breadcrumbs for the inquisitor (a high approval one, at least) because he respects their opinion and their input and their existence and the way they treat him turns him back into wisdom from pride. this is why a romanced inquisitor mentions his name being pride and how its possible that hes not even CAPABLE of changing his mind because it would be so against his nature, and he needs someone whose opinion he values to show him the way. his flaw is his SELF INFLICTED LONELINESS!!!!! NOT HIS REGRET. varric even fucking says this in some random banter you get with his ghost in the infirmary but im too lazy to go find it on my desktop. its something about how he sees attachments as a weakness rather than a strength. his pride causes him to take on responsibility that is not his, his wisdom -> pride corruption has led him to believe he is the only one capable of fixing the world's problems and he will destroy both himself and those he loves in the process. he asserts that he is just a man but is unable to stop making decisions for the world like a god.
THIS is the solas/rook foil that should have been: rook relies on their friends and that reliance is ESSENTIAL; after all, the neve/bellara and davrin/harding sacrifice is essential to win. in contrast solas refuses to rely on anyone, and this isolation makes him increasingly cruel. when he has no one to mirror the way a spirit should, he becomes Pride, too proud and too god-like. his attachments make him more human. he is terrified of depending on others and will kill them rather than risk the vulnerability of dependence after what it has done to him (mythal, felassan). he has to unlearn this avoidance and fear, he has to admit that there "could have been a better way" that someone else saw and he did not. he must learn that he does not have all the answers. he is not Pride. its NOT that rook doesnt experience regret and doesn't take accountability for mistakes while solas is trapped by his own regrets. the message we got instead is so incoherent. but it was SO CLOSE TO BEING GOOD. the bones of this are littered everywhere in both the game and in the datamined content and for some reason it just could not be brought together in a way that makes sense.
the message that rook is "right" and better for not having regrets is genuinely insane, especially when the "regrets" they have to conquer are literally just. other peoples decisions. the fact that rook has the audacity to say to solas that he could never escape the prison while they could so easily because he is trapped by his own regret as if rook is better than him is genuinely so fucking dumb it makes me want to claw my eyes out for having been forced to read it. rook sacrifices nothing and learns nothing. the sacrifices within the game belong to the characters that make them, rook does not order people to their deaths in the same way that solas or even THE INQUISITOR do. rook never is asked to grapple with the fact that they ACCIDENTALLY unleashed a double blight, no matter how good their intentions. WHY DOES NO ONE BLAME THEM FOR THIS???? regardless of if it is their fault or not, the objective truth of fault does not matter, what matters is that you make decisions and PEOPLE JUDGE YOU FOR THEM!!!!!!!!! THIS IS LIKE FOUNDATIONAL TO THESE GAMES JEHRGJKREHGJKRHG. this is what the entire game is about doing to solas. judging him. based on his choices. and the game clearly wants you to have empathy for him in the end. but its so OBVIOUS that the vessel for building up that empathy should have been ROOK EXPERIENCING THE SAME THING!!! THE SAME JUDGEMENT!!! THE SAME GROWTH!!!!! FEELING THE BURDEN OF THE WORLD ON THEIR SHOULDERS. FEELING THE DREAD OF GUILT AND SHAME AND REGRET. TRYING TO DEFEND THEIR INTENTIONS!!! I DIDNT MEAN TO I DIDNT MEAN TO IT WAS A MISTAKE!!!! LEARNING THAT THEY HAVE TO OWN UP TO IT BUT THEY ALSO HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO MOVE FORWARD!!!!!! HELLO!??!?!?!?! they BARELY even express remorse for the treviso/minrathous sacrifice, even when faced with neve/lucanis's anger they just go "a decision had to be made and i made it". well. YEAH? LIKE YEAH THATS RIGHT BUT HUMANS HAVE FEELINGS??? YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE A PERSON, NOT A BLANK SLATE VIDEO GAME PROTAGONIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ITS OKAY TO FEEL BAD!!!! YOU MADE A DECISION THAT RESULTED IN PEOPLE DYING. ANY HUMAN BEING WOULD FEEL BAD ABOUT THIS. ITS KIND OF FUCKING WEIRD THAT YOU DO NOT. HOW IS ROOK JUST BORN BEING OK WITH THIS. ITS SO ROBOTIC AND ARTIFICIAL LOL
rooks actions are such a clear, perfect parallel to solas putting up the veil and the guilt that haunts him afterwards that i KNOW it was intended that way and somehow it just got completely shafted. it literally feels like they did have a coherent parallel going and for some reason were forced to change directions last minute and thus we got some mish mashed barely cobbled together incoherent nonsense with clear echoes of its former self. instead rook has no flaws, makes perfect judgements at all time, has unconditional support from all of their friends who also make perfect judgements, are immune to making mistakes, and the message is its actually just really easy to not have regrets if you just choose right every time and refuse to take responsibility for anything as long as you had good intentions :D
I didn't play religiously but I remember the very first time I booted up the game with two of my friends, they ended up kicking the ball around at the farm while I worked my way up to the top of the windmill and did a funny dance
And another time, much later, when we finally managed to get the big ball to spawn at the Tower
We stopped playing not long after it went live service and they took away our favourite maps but honestly the best moments for me were just kicking a silly ball around with friends :)
Daww these are such cute moments! 🥺 I miss the Farm, what a fun location it was, and so meaningful lore wise too! ♥️
you're missing out on all the crazy euphoric moments where you execute an idea flawlessly, sending it to your friends and feeling the genuine happiness at their reactions to something you made authentically. you're robbing yourself of something beautiful.
and I get it, writers block, artists block, depression can really be terrible, but once you break out of it (and you will) it will feel like climbing Mount Everest.
We understand that Broodmother is a reflection of the brutality of Orzammar and its use of women’s bodies explicitly for breeding, right?
In Orzammar women are always already broodmothers.
Broodmother is a narrative reflection of that use and that reality, a use of women which is justified in Orzammar as having to replenish the Warrior and upper castes due to the constant pressure of Darkspawn, but in the deep roads is stripped away of all its social pretence.
Orzammar’s narratives are entirely about people being used, abused and consumed in the service of caste and necessity, and how this particularly effects people who are assumed to be able to give birth, how it creates not just sex work but pregnancy work, and the coercive ways necessity operates on people.
It’s not at all a subtle parallel. The darkspawn do not defeat House Branka; Branka- Paragon, Noble, highest caste and most powerful woman in Orzammar- feeds her lessers to the darkspawn.
She has all her story reasons for doing it, but at the base and inescapable level, she (like all the other Dwarves of Orzammar) use and discard lower Castes because they can, because they have the power to, because the caste system organises them to be able to.
I honestly absolutely hate with a spitting seething passion the kind of analysis that sees horror, especially horror against women, being committed in a narrative and immediately becomes incapable of saying anything about media other than “it’s just edgy/gritty/grimdark” and dismissing it.
Life is edgy gritty and grimdark for a lot of us. I was a teenage sex worker. My life was edgy gritty and grimdark. I experienced some of the most vulgar expressions of how gender works in my society, and I experienced them bluntly.
And to dismiss depictions of sexual, gendered violence as “purely for shock” when they are not, when they have something to say about gender and power and violence in a setting, is to assign stories like my real life as “shock value”.
There is more feminist shit to say about Orzammar alone than anything in Veilguard, because Orzammar is actually interested in gender and in the social roles and violences that create, reinforce and are a consequence of gender systems*.
And personally, I will pick a story that clumsily tries to say something about power and violence and society over a smooth story that says nothing about those things every single time; but that doesn’t mean Broodmother isn’t worthy and deserving of criticism (it is!) but can we please at least start from a place of criticising it for what it actually is and what it is actually doing in the game? The work and text that is the game?
*I am not saying Orzammar is feminist or is doing feminism, but you can analyse it from a feminist standpoint because the cloying weight of Gender and Gender In Society as a faucet of the setting is inescapable.
