i get why they can’t but man. i wish there was some ~magical shenanigans~ way they could meet :’(
Claire Keane

JVL

★
NASA
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
dirt enthusiast
styofa doing anything
KIROKAZE
todays bird

#extradirty
Cosmic Funnies
No title available
hello vonnie
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

@theartofmadeline
ojovivo
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
cherry valley forever

tannertan36
seen from Greece
seen from United States
seen from New Zealand
seen from United States
seen from Switzerland
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Germany

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Canada

seen from Netherlands
seen from United States

seen from Germany
seen from Greece
seen from United States
@mistycrunch
i get why they can’t but man. i wish there was some ~magical shenanigans~ way they could meet :’(
Fuck it *mugshots your anders*
sick to my stomach when i think about how clearly inquisition set up a major worldview shattering revelation regarding the personhood of spirits and how they have been dehumanized for millennia and framed by thedas' major political and cultural institutions as worthless, soulless evil demons that everyone should fear and revile. but then inquisition, through cole's story and through solas's dialogue, asks: what makes a person? what does it mean to be a person? are you willing to expand your definition? or will you shut out any being that seems strange, confusing, or unknown to you? we were taught that demons take over bodies because they want to join the physical world, that they are jealous of the spark of humanity and want it for themselves. solas confirms that spirits are drawn through the rifts in the veil due to their wish to join the living, they want to experience life, and are corrupted by the shock of the change. jaws of hakkon presents us an alternative to the spirit-fearing chantry ideology; the avaar live in peace with spirits alongside them. it leads right into the reveal of the titans as incomprehensible, alien, almost eldritch being beyond understanding: what about them? if you accepted spirits as people, will you accept these beings too?
trespasser then explains why spirits have such a desire to be with the world, because they are not supposed to be separate. they are not jealous, as the chantry teaches, but trying to unite with a half of the world that was lost. veilguard continues the message - some ways more artfully than others. spirits became the first elves, there is little argument against spirit personhood now. the mourn watch, in all of their ret-conned glory, treat spirits as beloved friends and coworkers and adopted children. rivaini seers chat with spirits regularly. its unambiguous now. spirits are people. the chantry's dehumanization efforts are wrong. we should do something about it, right? theres someone who has experienced the corruption and dehumanization of spirits firsthand? first used as a tool and then demonized beyond recognition? who wants to fix the hostile environment that leads to the constant corruption of spirits into demons? we should want that, right? nope! its ok. just leave them! they are indeed people but who cares :)
Watching a video of the "fight Solas" ending and I find myself really disliking the fact that Rook declares that the Veil must be tied to the life of an elven god. It is treated like a fitting punishment for Solas, and even in the redemption ending, Rook all but orders Solas to sacrifice himself to maintain the Veil (or the status quo). I also can't help but feel that Solas, the last of the elven gods, is being sacrificed to maintain the Veil that he, alone, is somehow expected to magically maintain, allowing everyone else to go on their merry way. The implication here is that the elves are losing the last of their history, or pantheon, and this is a GOOD thing, and now we can all move forward and live peacefully. Am I overthinking this? 'Cause if this was the intention it does sound kind of bad.
yeah. i do agree and i dont think you're overthinking. and even if you were, im about to overthink way harder so don't worry. forgive me for getting on my legal philosophy soapbox but thats my whole brand at this point so here we go: it is a very retributive view of punishment and desert (deserved-ness) that i morally disagree with and feels outdated in the political landscape of 2024 to me PERSONALLY!! the foundation of retributive justice is:
(1) that those who commit certain kinds of wrongful acts, paradigmatically serious crimes, morally deserve to suffer a proportionate punishment; (2) that it is intrinsically morally good—good without reference to any other goods that might arise—if some legitimate punisher gives them the punishment they deserve;
obviously this is how much of the western world conceives of punishment and western media is consequently saturated with narratives that espouse this. most of the time, restorative justice is seen as mutually exclusive with retributive justice, though there are some people who say they can be used in tandem. i disagree anyway.
i think solas's endings grapple with these ideas in a way that is... messy. its confusing because we dont actually know if he is truly imprisoned, in the sense that he cannot leave. we know he is in A prison, though its unclear whether its the new regret prison that rook was in, or the black city (epler refused to clarify this during the AMA because of "spoilers", while trick said the implication is he is "going back to the prison", the epilogue slides imply he is in the black/golden city, as does his quest to heal the blight which only exists in the black city). we also do not know what capacity he has to leave. with lavellan or after being "redeemed" by willingly binding himself to the veil, he does not have the lyrium dagger but he does have the capacity to free himself from his regrets (if hes in the regret prison) or heal the blight (if he's in the black city), exemplified by his golden epilogue slides. if he is tricked or fought, he is not in a mental space to overcome his regrets and does not swear to atone by healing the blight, but he does have the lyrium dagger with him, so we can assume he can just use it to leave, the way we literally see him do earlier in the game lol. whatever message they are trying to send with his "punishment", i think it is muddied by the vagueness of what actually happens to him in the end and where he goes.
if the message truly is that he "deserves" to be imprisoned in the fade for his long list of crimes, i find that lazy and nonsensical. first of all, he loves the fade and has been dying to return to it so thats not really a gotcha, but more importantly, which crime warrants this punishment? and is his punishment proportional? this is impossible to answer because we do not know what the punishment truly is. we also dont really even know what crime he's being imprisoned for. taking down the veil? he didnt actually get to do that. are we punishing him for something he didn't do yet? is it for killing varric? sure, i guess that one works. its the strongest of the options we have, but the game is also pretty clear that its not what varric would want. what about all of the other people he has killed? the spirits he sacrifced in that siege on elgar'nans temple? the mages who summoned and corrupted wisdom which he incinerates alive? flemythal and felassan? do they deserve retribution via solas's imprisonment? would they want that? would they find it just and satisfying? the game does not ask these questions. so we dont know. does he deserve to be imprisoned for for what he did to the titans? ok, maybe. this is stronger than the others at least. but in the trick/fight endings he doesnt vow to heal the blight, so what does his imprisonment do for the dwarves and the titans spirits? this is what i mean when i say his imprisonment is retributive, but it is not even thoroughly retributive. it does not think deeply about what solas deserves for his crimes and the proportionality of such a punishment, but it is clear that we are supposed to that he deserves to be in prison, it is morally good that he is receiving "justice", and rook is a hero for imprisoning him. his punishment is presented as a moral good because he deserves it. unfortunately for veilguard, i dont think i would ever be convinced by this message in any narrative anywhere, even if it was better written, because this is not a moral philosophy that i subscribe to.
his redemption endings feel so much better and more satisfying because his vow to use his immortality and knowledge to heal the blight that he created is restorative and has a direct correlation to his crime of creating the blight by tranquilizing the titans in the first place. his imprisonment achieves nothing outside of removing him as a "threat", which is ruined by the fact that he has the dagger and can just leave lol. devoting the next significant portion of his life to alleviating the titans suffering is not just reparative remedy that directly affects the people and creatures he has harmed, it also actively makes the world of thedas a better place. to be clear, im not saying solas is innocent. he is guilty. of a lot of things. he bears responsibility for a lot of things. he would qualify as a war criminal. but i do not believe in retributive justice. veilguard having solas kill varric because trespasser made me sympathize with him "too much" is not going to make me believe in retributive justice. for the non-atonement imprisonment endings to feel satisfying you have to subscribe to this ideology of moral desert and punishment and a lot of people do. the entire american carceral system is founded on it. so is christianity. and bioware clearly subscribes to it as well. you might disagree with me and subscribe to it yourself. thats fine. but i believe it has caused a lot of harm to our world and continues to do so. seeing it manifested in media is always disappointing to me.
regardless of the technicalities of his imprisonment, his binding to the veil is the one thing that happens regardless of his ending, and i agree that it is icky for similar reasons. the veil is his responsibility, as is the blight which he will be keeping contained with his life, so i guess you can interpret it as proportional? but again, what crime is he paying for with binding his life to the veil? is he not paying for a crime at all? is binding his life to the veil even part of his punishment? or is it just something he has to do because he's the only person alive that can do it? if that is the case, that it has to be him because he is the only proper sacrifice, and not that he deserves it, then what does it say about rook that they sacrifice someone undeserving? if he is deserving, why exactly? if he wasn't the only elven god left alive, would he still be deserving of such a fate? if the answer is no, then he does not deserve to be bound. what gives rook the right to make this call? based on the convo they have before the ending where they plan to bind him to the veil, its not clear if rook binds him because they think he deserves to be bound to one of his greatest regrets, or because he's quite literally the only option. either way, i think there is an argument for it being cruel, and unearned coming from someone like rook, who really has barely been a victim of solas's sins outside of a 2 week time-out. literally harding binding him would've been far more satisfying. or imagine if fragment mythal went rogue and did it, or morrigythal did. mythal would not be justified either but at least it would be fucking banger and evil and interesting of her. anyway.
i think your point about what it means for the elves to lose their final living god, outside of mythal who is [redacted] ? is a fantastic point. through solas's binding, they also lose the veil-less future he represented that was promised to be a better world for them. would it really have been? probably not. solas clearly thinks so. but we will never know lol. the failure of the story to grapple with the dissolution of the elves entire belief system is one of its most egregious ones, and i think this is a symptom of it. dragon age's elven lore got itself into a weird spot by veilguard and i think they just abandoned it rather than attempting to write themselves out of it. i love stories that grapple with the average person's culpability as complacent in imperialism. this is part of why fullmetal alchemist is my fav story of all time and you should watch it (fullmetal alchemist:brotherhood on hulu please im begging. but you have to watch the "brotherhood" one not the other one. its complicated dont ask). veilguard seemed to want to do something like this, but they got themselves into weird spot with the elves because their evil, slavery-based empire is a thing of the distant past, and in the present they are systemically oppressed and have no social or political power.
usually in these sorts of stories, someone currently living in an imperialist society who is directly benefiting from that imperialism is confronted with their complacency and asked to rise to the occasion of standing up for what is right, despite their material best interest. they often sacrifice their privilege as a benefactor of imperialism in the present to attempt to make up for the evils that system has inflicted on others. fmab does a wonderful job of this. there is at once both an acknowledgement that no, this is not literally YOUR FAULT, you did not order a genocide or press the nuke button, but you have benefited from it and/or participated every day of your life, whether that is through the stolen land you live on, the fact that you have never seen war in your home country, the way you can buy whatever fruit you want at the grocery store any time of year, or the way your tax dollars fund the bombs being dropped on children thousands of miles away, and you do have a moral obligation to do whatever you can to fight back. i believe this is a very important lesson for the average american (and canadian since we are talking about bioware), and anyone that lives in an imperialist country, that a lot of people have not yet learned ... lol.
this feels along the lines of what veilguard was going for (or maybe they werent and this was accidental, idk which is worse), but it fails because the elves are not currently benefiting from their past empire, like at all. actually, they live in squalor and at risk of constant violence from human empires. they have experienced centuries of genocide, violence and slavery at this point in modern thedas. the imperialistic success of the elvhen empire has absolutely no bearing on their current lives, it provides them with no privilege, and it gives them no culpability in its evils. they are thousands of years removed from it. and its not like "oh the british empire was dissolved 50 years ago so imperialism is over" no. because britain's wealth and power are a direct result of that imperialism, thus they do still benefit from it presently, even if the "official empire" is dissolved. this is true for most empires. but with the elves of thedas, they have none of the power or privilege that the elvhen empire accrued through its evils. if anything, it is tevinter that benefits most from the lost elven empire considering how much of their society is founded on its technology, and the fact that. you know. they are currently, modernly, presently an empire based on slavery. OF ELVES. so why, then, does veilguard present the elves as culpable? why does the angry titan harding creature say they are "thriving" at the titans expense? why does bellara take personal responsibility for the evils that elgar'nan and ghilan'nain commit when she had nothing to do with them? the messaging with this is so strange. it would make sense if elves were still the ruling class but... they're not. the only remnants of the empire that they have access to is their own bodies... which are systemically, bought, sold, and mutilated. though the game does erase much of the racism they face in what i can only assume was an attempt to make this work.
the combo of this + solas's trick/fight endings for what is fundamentally, according to this game itself, a desire for a better world for elves and spirits, no matter if it is misled or his methods are violent, is a depressing, bleak message that i find to be irresponsible to be sending in 2024 and considering the real world groups of people that elves are based on, most notably of the dalish as indigenous north americans. veilguard sees elves lose not just their understanding of their past, dissolving their entire worldview, their conception of their cultural identity, and their relationship to their religion, all without sufficient (or any) exploration of how devastating such a process would be, but by imprisoning solas, erasing his followers and supporters from existence, and binding him to the veil, it also robs them of the possibility of a more just future... while asking you to cheer because he deserved it. dont try to make the world a better place unless you do it the right way. work with the world as it is. your attachment to the past (when you werent being genocided regularly) is a disease. you deserve to go to jail because you tried to change the world in a way that that was too disruptive. get over it! move on! rot in jail!
I was forced to post it here
I traced the outline, you can call cops on me
rainy day doodle of anders 🌧️
oh so this so-called herald of andraste can blow up the entire temple of sacred ashes with the divine still inside, but when i, anders—
Spirit companions
March's vsartparty piece! My victim was @moonlit-grove's Anders fan character >:)
This is one of my favourite handers moments for many reasons:
Anders was giving Isabela an STD test seconds beforehand.
Hawke's tone-deaf flirting (yeah dude, tell the man who escaped mage prison 7 times that you're going to lock him up)
Anders trying to steer the conversation back to the Templar problem but said insane flirting is still clearly working on him.
Anders then losing the battle and dropping the most intense romantic line, especially considering-
They haven't even kissed yet.
They are having this conversation in front of a corpse.
just wanted to see how these two would interact with each other. :D maybe something like this.
I'm in love with Anders in the Awakening.
He has done nothing wrong, I will die on this hill (with him in my arms)
A life that eats and eats and eats and crunches your bones but leaves your heart
they're just little guys.. 🥺
I had this sketch lying around and finally got to colour it a bit I love them so much I finished the game and I'm unwell ;______;