As well as countless of others from the AI generator community. Just talking about how "inaccessible art" is, I decided why not show how wrong these guys are while also helping anyone who actually wants to learn.
Here is the first one ART TEACHERS! There are plenty online and in places like youtube.
📺Here is my list:
Proko (Free)
Marc Brunet (Free but he does have other classes for a cheap price. Use to work for Blizzard)
Aaron Rutten (free)
BoroCG (free)
Jesse J. Jones (free, talks about animating)
Jesus Conde (free)
Mohammed Agbadi (free, he gives some advice in some videos and talks about art)
Ross Draws (free, he does have other classes for a good price)
SamDoesArts (free, gives good advice and critiques)
Drawfee Show (free, they do give some good advice and great inspiration)
The Art of Aaron Blaise ( useful tips for digital art and animation. Was an animator for Disney)
Bobby Chiu ( useful tips and interviews with artist who are in the industry or making a living as artist)
Second part BOOKS, I have collected some books that have helped me and might help others.
📚Here is my list:
The "how to draw manga" series produced by Graphic-sha. These are for manga artist but they give great advice and information.
"Creating characters with personality" by Tom Bancroft. A great book that can help not just people who draw cartoons but also realistic ones. As it helps you with facial ques and how to make a character interesting.
"Albinus on anatomy" by Robert Beverly Hale and Terence Coyle. Great book to help someone learn basic anatomy.
"Artistic Anatomy" by Dr. Paul Richer and Robert Beverly Hale. A good book if you want to go further in-depth with anatomy.
"Directing the story" by Francis Glebas. A good book if you want to Story board or make comics.
"Animal Anatomy for Artists" by Eliot Goldfinger. A good book for if you want to draw animals or creatures.
"Constructive Anatomy: with almost 500 illustrations" by George B. Bridgman. A great book to help you block out shadows in your figures and see them in a more 3 diamantine way.
"Dynamic Anatomy: Revised and expand" by Burne Hogarth. A book that shows how to block out shapes and easily understand what you are looking out. When it comes to human subjects.
"An Atlas of animal anatomy for artist" by W. Ellenberger and H. Dittrich and H. Baum. This is another good one for people who want to draw animals or creatures.
Etherington Brothers, they make books and have a free blog with art tips.
As for Supplies, I recommend starting out cheap, buying Pencils and art paper at dollar tree or 5 below. For digital art, I recommend not starting with a screen art drawing tablet as they are more expensive.
For the Best art Tablet I recommend either Xp-pen, Bamboo or Huion. Some can range from about 40$ to the thousands.
💻As for art programs here is a list of Free to pay.
Clip Studio paint ( you can choose to pay once or sub and get updates)
Procreate ( pay once for $9.99)
Blender (for 3D modules/sculpting, ect Free)
PaintTool SAI (pay but has a 31 day free trail)
Krita (Free)
mypaint (free)
FireAlpaca (free)
Libresprite (free, for pixel art)
Those are the ones I can recall.
So do with this information as you will but as you can tell there are ways to learn how to become an artist, without breaking the bank. The only thing that might be stopping YOU from using any of these things, is YOU.
I have made time to learn to draw and many artist have too. Either in-between working two jobs or taking care of your family and a job or regular school and chores. YOU just have to take the time or use some time management, it really doesn't take long to practice for like an hour or less. YOU also don't have to do it every day, just once or three times a week is fine.
Some of our most greatest lore masters joined as one to fortify our Lore:Apotheosis article. It now has over 300 sources and almost twenty-thousand words exploring this topic. It covers how to achieve a mantle (The Wheel and The Tower and The Tri-Angled Truth), divine metaphysics (The divine dreamworld, rewritten narratives, divine hypnagogia), individual cultural beliefs, and even specific examples. We really think you should check it out.
help me out with a search filter? I'm sure there's a way to do it, but I can't figure it out. for example:
I never want to read RPF. it's a big squick. There's music RPF and Actor RPF and SPORT RPF but people rarely TAG their fic as "RPF".
So if I'm searching an author's or collections 'works' or searching through an existing canonical tag's results (let's use #Dom/sub);
HOW do I exclude all the fics within the RPF genre?
I'm going to recommend using a site skin instead of using filters. This is because there's a limit to how many filters you can apply. Each filter adds on to the length of the URL that populates your results, and at a certain point that maxes out and you won't be able to load the page anymore.
Not to mention, there are a lot of fandoms, for example bandoms, that don't use RPF tags at all. The fandom itself is for real people, so the RPF/RPS tags are assumed and not necessary to add on. Using something like -RPF in your filters therefore, won't filter those out.
With a site skin, you'll be able to hide fics with any number of tags that you want, and the list will be infinitely expandable. You only need to create the skin once and then edit when there's a new tag you want to hide. You won't have to save a set of filters - in fact, you won't have to think about it at all. You'll just browse the Archive normally and none of the works with those tags will appear for you.
Instructions for how to block tags with a site skin can be found here. Bonus instructions for blocking a user, a work, or a series can be found here.
i recommend creating a site skin just for blocking those things. That way, you can pair it with any other site skin you might want to use.
To combine skins, create your blocking skin and then scroll down to the bottom of the CSS box and tap on the button that says Show.
This will open up a menu where you can Add a Parent Skin
Just start typing the name of the skin you want to combine your blocks with, and it will autopopulate for you from a dropdown, just like searches and filters do
Once you've got all of the tags (and works and series) blocked that you want to block, you can browse AO3 normally. The things you've blocked will be invisible for you on the site, so if an author has 10 works and 2 of them use tags that you've blocked, you'll only see 8 on their profile.
This might make the numbers on your filtered results look weird, but as long as that doesn't both you I think this might be your best bet.
@auressea I just realized there's a way to filter them all out 😆 Clearly, I have site skins on the brain. Instead of this method (which will, of course, work for any tag, individual fic, or series), you could just filter out the parent and meta tags for RPF
Tags on AO3 are arranged kind of like a family tree with parent tags higher up the tree and child tags lower down. The Parent tag for RPF is Celebrities & Real People. There's also a Meta tag, Real Person Fiction.
For anyone who wants to know how to find the Parent tag, this is how I did it:
Hover over the word Search in the header bar (it's between Browse and About) and choose Tags from the dropdown.
Enter the name of tag you know for sure exists in the backend system. In this case, I entered RPF (because I know that's at least part of a LOT of canonical tags)
Select the tag type. In this case, I selected Fandom because those are the relevant tags for what you're trying to do.
Specify canonical tags. These are the ones that appear in dropdowns and filters, and they are the tags that other tags are synned to (made synonymous with).
Search tags.
Click on any of the tags. In this case, I clicked on 11th Century CE RPF (because why not?)
On that page, I can see the Parent tag Celebrities & Real People. I can see the synonymous tags (that have the same meaning), and I can see the Meta tags, Historical RPF and Real Person Fiction.
If you're doing the same searches all the time, you can save your filters by using your browser to bookmark your search results page. Revisiting that page will give you the pre-filtered latest results.
If you just want those filters applied to every search that you do, try out reisling's Saved Filters on AO3 bookmarklet.
And of course, you could also just add those two tags to the site skin solution I originally gave you and save yourself some time on that version.
Editing to add: Just in case I didn't make it clear, filtering out the parent tag filters out all of the children automatically too.
Dragon Age: the Veilguard Was Packed with Lore — But Many of Us Overlooked It
— PART ONE —
[ 2 ]
Welcome back, friends and travellers. If you've been here a while, you'll know that I wrote 30,000 words of predictions in the week and a half before DA:tV released. But here's the most surprising thing—I was right, for the most part.
I spent my first Veilguard playthrough grinning (and then sobbing) at all the lore reveals. And here's the thing: I think most of us missed a lot of them, including even me.
So let's begin with...
Titans: Dark and Light, Compassion and Rage, the Eternal Hymn and its Endless Listeners (1/2)
This is your warning: This post will contain spoilers for the entirety of Dragon Age: the Veilguard, and all Dragon Age content made before Veilguard.
Alright, pals. If you've been here a while, you know how this goes. I always start by listing what we're going to cover, like anyone who's never fully recovered from academia.
Today's Discussion:
What Veilguard (Re)Taught Us about the Titans
The Titans the first Shapers of the known world.
The Titans are beings of the Abyss.
The Titans are sleeping, dormant—but alive.
Dwarves are the Titans' children, created to tend them.
The Evanuris mined the Titans' bodies to create people.
The Titans—the Earth—fought back.
What Veilguard (Re)Taught Us about the Titans
The best thing about Dragon Age, as someone who loves the series to death, is that its worldbuilding is consistent, but also bears the unique quality that we, as players, are not aware of it all. Our protagonists in each game don't know everything; the people they learn from also don't know everything. We learn what we can through codices that are all biased and need an extra layer of decoding. This is a feature, not a bug.
It also means that we did not know how to understand the Titans before. Even my 30,000 words of theorycrafting, especially my piece all about the Titans, had elements of speculation. I had to check that speculation against other sources like the Chant of Light, which is a source that we REALLY did not know how to decode when it was revealed piece by piece in DAO, DA2, World of Thedas, and Inquisition.
Here, I'm going to break it all down, piece by piece.
The Titans were the first Shapers of the (known) world.
It is said in the Descent DLC that Titans are enormous beings whose singing shapes the world. Their existence predates much of Thedas, if not all of it. The Titans are called the first Shapers for this reason, and in Veilguard it is restated several times over that they did, indeed, shape the world—for instance, by Cole in Inquisition.
"Their ancient shapers were mountains drawn of all their wills, walking their memories into valleys of the world."
—Cole dialogue.
Inquisition told us so much more about the Titans than just that, though. The Titans have a realm all their own, a counterpart to the Fade, mentioned over and again in the Chant of Light and referenced as a quest name in Inquisition.
Here lies the abyss: the well of all souls.
The Titans are beings of the Abyss.
Now, it's important that I mention right here that the Chant of Light has existed long before Inquisition. In fact, its tale is what opens DA:O as the game begins. Recently Eurogamer stated that BioWare has had a massive lore document for the 20+ years of its existence, and I believe that there is no truer example of this than in the Chant of Light itself.
The Abyss, for a long time, was a mystery to us. Inquisition cleared it up a lot—not only with its game content, but with World of Thedas' publication shortly thereafter.
Not only is the Abyss referred to in many elven codices, but we go there. The key locations of the Descent DLC—the Forgotten Caverns, Bastion of the Pure, and the Wellspring—are in a region called the Uncharted Abyss.
Now, with Harding, we go deeper into the Deep Roads than the average dweller. The same is true in that instance: venture down far enough, and we reach a Titan's heart.
We find a Titan's heart there. But the Titan does not wake—none have before DA:tV, and even then, they have not fully woken. Because, for as long as we have known...
The Titans are sleeping, dormant—but alive.
"It's singing. A they that's an it that's asleep, but still making music."
— Cole dialogue.
There is so much Cole dialogue in Inquisition that speaks on the sleeping Titans, on their old songs that once sang the same, on how they will never wake up, that it would be folly to try and post every codex here. Suffice it to say: Cole knows of the Titans, knows of their songs, and knows they are asleep. He is one of the pathways to our knowledge of the Titans in Inquisition, and his words are peppered throughout the game.
The Chant of Light also makes reference to a mountainous Maker, who oft speaks about a forgotten mountain. When Andraste meets the Maker "in darkness unbroken," specifically, these words are used:
The Maker Appears to Andraste
(7) Eyes sorrow-blinded, in darkness unbroken
There 'pon the mountain, a voice answered my call.
"Heart that is broken, beats still unceasing,
An ocean of sorrow does nobody drown.
— Andraste 1:7
Heart that is broken, beats still unceasing — a being who has been broken, but whose heart still beats. We can hear that, in the Descent DLC.
Veilguard confirms that both sources are true through Harding, her personal quest, and the codices for the Dwarven people.
Records that exist outside of Orzammar mention "great sleeping Titans" and "the First Ancestors."
— Codex Entry: Harding's Notes: Orzammar and Titans
Harding's experiences in Veilguard, in this way, serve to prove Cole right. That is a deliberate narrative choice: BioWare's way of saying, Yes, this is true. Yes, you should take Cole's take on Titans as correct.
We also know, from Cole, that this state of being is permanent. Not only are the Titans asleep, but they don't know how to wake.
Songs screaming far away. It wants to wake up but can't remember how. No one should be here.
— Cole dialogue.
This becomes crucial information in Veilguard, and central to the main plot. It serves as the backdrop for what actually matters most to the characters living in Thedas right now, which is...
Dwarves are the Titans' children, created to tend them.
By now, a lot of people have seen this reveal in the art book: the dwarves were created to tend to their Titan hosts/makers. But we knew this before—we just didn't know it in context, and therefore we did not believe it to be objectively true of Thedas.
In truth, we've known about the elves and the dwarves' origin since the Chant of Light came out in full with World of Thedas volume 2.
At last did the Maker
From the living world
Make men. Immutable, as the substance of the earth,
With souls made of dream and idea, hope and fear,
Endless possibilities.
— Threnodies 5:5
I talk about it in more depth in my Chant of Light dissection, but what this verse says in context is that the dwarves (the Maker's second children) are beings crafted by the maker: bodies made of lyrium, souls made of the same "dream and idea, hope and fear" as the original spirits.
This concept has already been massively hinted toward with both Valta (who has become The Oracle in DA:tV) and Dagna, who both connect to isatunoll during Descent and Inquisition's base game, respectively.
We've known about the Evanuris' horrible crimes since before Inquisition, as well, for the same reason and from the same verses in the Chant of Light.
Until, at last, some of the firstborn said:
"Our Father has abandoned us for these lesser things.
We have power over heaven.
Let us rule over earth as well
And become greater gods than our Father."
(8) The demons appeared to the children of earth in dreams
And named themselves gods, demanding fealty.
— Threnodies 5
With the context given to us by Trespasser and Veilguard, we know without a doubt that the Evanuris are those "jealous spirits" that comprise the Maker's first children.
And just like the Chant describes, they sought to conquer the earth: the realm of the Titans.
The Evanuris mined the Titans' bodies to create people.
Trespasser taught us so much of what we needed to know about the Evanuris' and Titans' conflicts. Its codices in the Deep Roads outline how it was Mythal, specifically, creating some of the first elves in the coffins found in that zone. The Temple of Solasan features coffins of the exact same kind.
Ir sa tel'nal
Mythal las ma theneras
Ir san'a emma
Him solas evanuris
Da'durgen'lin
Banal malas elgara
Bellanaris, bellanaris.
— Codex: Torn Notebook in the Deep Roads, Section 3
My (updated) translation:
Isatunoll
Mythal gives you dreams
Lyrium within
Becomes Solas evanuris
Little stone boy
You give nothing to the Titan (anymore)
Forever, forever.
Trespasser reveals that Mythal mined the bodies of slain titans and rendered their demesne unto the People: she conquered Titans and used their bodies for her own ends. The hints about these actions, however, are not exclusive to Trespasser, nor to Solasan. These seeds were planted all the way back at the Temple of Mythal.
Elgar'nan, Wrath and Thunder,
Give us glory.
Give us victory, over the Earth that shakes our cities.
Strike the usurpers with your lightning.
Burn the ground under your gaze.
Bring Winged Death against those who throw down our work.
Elgar'nan, help us tame the land.
This codex to Elgar'nan makes reference to Elgar'nan giving victory over the Earth (capital-E, the Titans). Trespasser would follow this up with much context—that it was Mythal who was first known to have slain Titans, "rendering their demesne unto the People."
I theorized that Mythal's mining of Titans for lyrium to make elvhen bodies was what angered the Titans, based on codices in Trespasser and the Temple of Solasan. (I go into much more depth there!) Veilguard confirms this theory in Solas' Memory #4: A Memory of Manifestation.
Solas: I have the Fade. Besides, this talk of taking on a solid form. When you took the glowing stone to build your body, did the earth not shake?
Mythal: The lyrium gives us the strength we had when we were of the Fade. We are the best of physical and spirit.
Mythal's crime was what took the war with the Titans in a new, darker direction. It was what would set off the chain of events that would change the very nature of the world—and it was foreshadowed, back in Inquisition, by Cole.
The Titans—the Earth—fought back.
"They made bodies from the earth, and the earth was afraid. It fought back, but they made it forget."
— Cole dialogue.
In this post, I theorized that it was Solas' creation itself that caused the first Titan to "go red." That is to say, to change its nature and fight back. I used codices from Trespasser and Solasan to get there, as well as one paragraph from World of Thedas and this codex on Fen'Harel that describe the Forgotten Ones as "beings of terror, malice, spite, and pestilence."
Thinking about those words, and specifically terror, I read the codex in the secret Deep Roads room in Trespasser with fresh perspective.
For a moment, the scent of blood fills the air, and there is a vivid image of green vines growing and enveloping a sphere of fire.
The vision grows dark. An aeon seems to pass. Then the runes crackle, as if filled with an angry energy.
A new vision appears: elves collapsing caverns, sealing the Deep Roads with stone and magic.
Terror, heart-pounding, ice-cold, as the last of the spells is cast.
Terror. The first of the turned Titans. The fire/plant/ice imagery also caught my eye, and when I went back to Solasan to check, there were many hints that this was, indeed, where Terror came into being. (For more, go look at the most recently linked post in this section!)
Huge implications for Solas aside, what this codex taught me is that Titans' natures could change. This was confirmed in Veilguard many times over, yes—but my point here is that Inquisition taught this to me, just a few days before I gained the context of Veilguard. This was never a retcon! However, this lore plays exactly to BioWare's rules: we did not have the full context, and so almost no one read that Deep Roads codex as it was meant to be interpreted—including me, the first few times I read it!
It was only when I'd seen the achievement icons before Veilguard's release that it all clicked for me. All of the lore of Inquisition and everything before it made sense. That was never a bug, never a retcon, but a genius twist on BioWare's behalf: one that almost no one guessed at for an entire decade.
One that changes everything.
Titans, we know for certain now, behave as spirits. Obscure hints in World of Thedas, Inquisition, and the previous games have been confirmed in Veilguard. This new understanding changes not just the Titans, not just the dwarves, but reframes everything we know about the entire history of Thedas and how its magic system works.
______
Thank you for reading! It means a lot when people engage with these. And don't worry: I'm not nearly through with them. It's taken me a while to compile everything, but with more of Veilguard added to the wiki every day, it's a lot easier to compile things for these posts!
(Immense thanks to the wiki staff, of course. <3)
Up Next: Titans and Spirits are far more similar than we think, and it means everything.
What Dragon Age: Origins and The Stolen Throne Do Not Understand About Occupation, Colonialism, and State-Building
Realpolitik for babies, a bit of historical examples and what the Orlais-Ferelden war could have been in a tonally different franchise. VERY long post for history nerds.
Colonialists do not come to your country just to rape women and abuse the locals for the sadistic thrill of a power trip. They come to extract resources.
Orlais should have come to Ferelden for high-quality wool, lumber from Bresilian Forest, ore from Frostback Mountains and untouched lands that can be turned into plantations, to grow grain there and sell it to the highly urbanized Free Marches, Nevarra and Antiva.
Stealing Loghain's dog or killing his mother is not an example of colonialism. It is a simple moral tale: evil individuals harming those less powerful in a personal way out of sadism. This could happen anywhere, between people of any ethnicity — an Orlesian lord and an Orlesian peasant family, or a Ferelden lord and a Ferelden family. Such atrocities occur because of economic inequality between the participants, it is the economy that drives conquest, transforming that inequality into both an economic and a racial hierarchy.
If the writers aimed to depict a real occupation, the Old Imperial Highway wouldn't be the only road on the map. Orlesians would have built an extensive network for two reasons: to connect mines and granaries to ports like Highever, Denerim, and Amaranthine, and to allow rapid military response to rebellion. Did you think the Orlesians were like Mongols, sweeping across the steppe on horses? Of course not. To be honest, even the Mongols brought infrastructure, just in different forms, like language (many Russian words related to taxation and trade have Turkic origins. Guess why).
Actually, I can use Mongols as an excellent illustration of my next point: colonialism is impossible without collaborators, and when the colonialists leave, it is often the collaborators who become the new rulers.
Don't believe me? Look at the history of Russia. Moscow became the capital only because its rulers used the Mongols to crush their rivals. They were the Khan's most ruthless tax collectors, brutally oppressing their own population to maximize profits. The logic is simple: the more you pay the colonialists, the more they allow you to keep for yourself. This is THE reason why countries that have suffered colonial rule often have a dictatorship problem.
The military is the most developed infrastructure occupiers leave behind, because its primary purpose is to terrorize the population into compliance. And that population is not afraid to use such tactics on itself, because surprise, rich people are assholes everywhere.
Colonialism creates a sick society that cannot survive on its own, composed only of enforcers and peasants. The enforcers cannot rule in the absence of the metropole; all they know is how to scare, torture, and kill. The peasants cannot rebel or gradually develop civil society, they have been terrified into submission. Colonialism systematically destroys the very social class from which civil society is formed: the free urban population. The metropole has no use for artisans, merchants, and scholars from the colony. At best, it will bring them to the capital as exotic curiosities for the elite. At worst, it will actively destroy them.
That story beat from The Stolen Throne, where Orlesians drive some of Fereldan farmers off their land, makes no sense. Why would you destroy your own profits by killing the workers for your mines and plantations? Are you stupid? Such a tactic only makes sense in the specific case of settler colonialism, which is a very different type of evil, and I don't think that's what's depicted in the canon.
We do not see Orlesian peasants moving into Fereldan farmlands. We hear nothing about Orlesians burning down forests to make space for new farms. We are shown no new cities, towns, or villages built by Orlesians. If this were true settler colonialism, about a third or a quarter of Ferelden would be Orlesian or of mixed heritage, with border regions and new towns being 90% Orlesian. King Maric wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. How do you deport a third of your country? That's the whole point of settler colonialism: it alters a nation forever, or simply destroys it over time.
Let's return to my historical example. Do you know what happened to the sophisticated artistic traditions of Kievan Rus' during the Mongol occupation? None survived, because the artisans were not needed by the new state. Do you think it was just the Mongols' fault? No, absolutely not. The only place where older traditions survived was Novgorod. And do you know what Moscow did to Novgorod when it "liberated" the country from the Mongols? It fucking destroyed it. The "enforcer" class forged by occupation will do anything to remain in power. It will colonize its own people and destroy their very soul if necessary.
The Muscovite rulers did not abandon the tactics they developed to serve the Khan. They perfected them. They could have made the country more democratic, like Novgorod, they could have invested in resurrecting artistic traditions and regrowing the urban population. But no. Their state model was built on extracting raw resources, and for that, you only need dirt-poor farmers and a military to keep them in check — and to conquer new ones from time to time.
Realistically, after liberating itself from the Orlesian yoke, Ferelden would have been primed for its own expansion, perhaps into the Korcari Wilds. It's more convenient to cut down their forests than to further deplete Ferelden's own. The occupation and rebellion would have given Fereldens the military experience to crush scattered tribal neighbors. Other Fereldan exports could have been furs (as with Russia) and perhaps pearls (did you know that northern rivers used to have them in abundance? Korcari Wilds have a colder climate and enough rivers). The fur trade alone would be an excellent excuse to conquer the Wilds, much like the push into Siberia.
Ferelden should have had a strong collaborator class. Ruthless teyrns, arls, and banns who kept their titles and enjoyed King Meghren's favor by being his best tax collectors. Puppet rulers are necessary to make occupation palatable and efficient: they would be hated but tolerated because they are Fereldan. Meghren's court should have been split between them and imported Orlesian nobility — the latter likely from poorer, ambitious families, as well-established dynasties don't typically cross the sea to seek new opportunities.
A farmer's son is unlikely to make history. If I were rewriting the rebellion, I would make Loghain the son of a minor loyalist bann, murdered by the Orlesians for failing to quell a rebellion. His father would have seen serving Orlesians as the lesser evil, a way to ensure his people still had a Fereldan leader. The Orlesians would kill him for being a poor manager—if you allow an uprising to happen without alerting the authorities, you must be disloyal yourself.
This way, the tragedy of Loghain's father would still be tied to Maric. He would die in the crossfire between the rebellion and Orlesian paranoia. Loghain would learn a bitter lesson: his father was a bootlicker, but it didn't save him because he wasn't ruthless enough to be a good manager. He would be torn: "Do I join the rebellion to avenge my father, even though he was a collaborator? Or am I too smart to join this suicidal crusade of naive fools and thugs?". In the book, Loghain isn't thrilled about the rebellion at first, so I would keep that intact.
The view of rebellion as a fight between "The People" and the occupiers is a mythologization that comes later. In reality, it is almost always a civil war between collaborator elites and anti-collaboration aspiring elites. ALL. EMPIRES. RELY. ON. COLLABORATORS. IT. IS. THEIR. WHOLE. DEAL. The people who joined Maric's side weren't "noble liberators"; they were a different faction of the elite, fighting to take control for themselves.
Look up real rebellions:
Do you think the Spanish Reconquista was a simple Christian vs. Muslim war? It was a complex civil war where Christian kings routinely hired Moors as mercenaries and allied with Moorish taifa (petty kingdom) rulers against their Christian rivals. El Cid, a national hero, fought as a mercenary for both Christians and Muslims. It was not a crusade but a slow, political land grab.
Do you think the Sepoy Mutiny was a war for Indian independence? It was old Mughal and Maratha elites versus massive sections of India that supported the British. The British ruled through a network of collaborator princely states and employed vast numbers of Indian soldiers, the Sepoys. Even this iconic rebellion was an alliance of convenience between disgruntled elements of the old ruling class trying to oppose those benefiting from the new order.
Do you think that the Algerian National Liberation Front led unified people to freedom? The FLN spent as much time massacring rival nationalist movements as it did fighting the French. It used terror to coerce an often-ambivalent population, assassinating "collaborators" who were sometimes just people who wanted to live in peace. This should have been an element of Maric's rebellion! A peasant doesn't care who is his lord, and doesn't want to die just so his wife and children can pay taxes to a different man.
This pattern holds even for slave revolts, because freed slaves don't want universal freedom, they want to have their own slaves. Free people of color joined the Haitian Revolution for equal rights with white people, not for the abolition of slavery. They owned one-third of the plantations and one-quarter of the slaves. After the French were defeated, the revolution devolved into a civil war between Black leaders over who gets to control the new state.
The conflict between Ferelden and Orlais is loosely based on the Norman conquest of England. While William the Conqueror did systematically replace Anglo-Saxon elites, he also allowed many to keep their power in exchange for loyalty. It was the dispossessed elites who resisted, the collaborators had no reason to rebel. Norman rule left a lasting legacy: new bureaucratic tools, Latin-derived vocabulary, architectural influence, and a shift in England's political axis from Scandinavia to Continental Europe.
Realistically, Loghain should have been a ruthless, dispossessed minor noble with military genius and a grudge against everyone. He would have picked Maric as the only viable leader who didn't want him dead and could best serve his ambitions. Maric would make him Teyrn of Gwaren because he is fucking terrified of him. A ruthless pragmatist who owes his position not to lineage but to his own cunning and blade? That's a potential kingslayer. Gwaren is both a reward and a punishment: a position close to the king, but in a logistical nightmare of a region that makes gathering allies for a coup nearly impossible.
A "liberated" Ferelden would be a failed state in the making. The new houses coming to power would be a junta, seizing the juiciest lands from defeated loyalists. The new crown would be bankrupt, forcing Maric to grant his elites significant autonomy and tax exemptions in exchange for their loans and troops. They would essentially be independent warlords. This is the classic post-revolutionary fallout: the central authority is weakened by the very powers that created it.
Ferelden would remain a client state in all but name. Its economy would still be tied to exporting raw resources, with Orlais and its Free Marcher clients as the primary buyers. The new Fereldan oligarchs would own the enterprises left by the Orlesians but lack the expertise and capital to run them, they would have to take new loans and hire foreign specialists. The skeleton of the nation is still foreign.
Many collaborators would have survived, fleeing to Orlais and the Free Marches with their wealth and expertise. They would form a bitter diaspora — a permanent fifth column waiting for a chance to reclaim their holdings.
The war would have devastated craftsmen and farmers. The new powers, to service their debts, would enclose common lands for more profitable sheep runs. The very people who cheered for liberation would be economically crushed by their "liberators." Some will turn to banditry.
Denerim's alienage would swell with refugees from the war-torn countryside. The new regime, even more cash-strapped and xenophobic than before, offers them even less. The elves become a social bomb. Loghain's deal to sell them to Tevinter would be a brutal form of social engineering — quelling unrest by "relocating" a surplus, discontented population to "countryside" and "coastal cities". It would take a lot of time for the elves to realize what is truly happening and to where they are really being deported.
Let's get back to my historical examples! I mentioned Novgorod specifically for a very good reason. The main danger to Maric after the rebellion would be his most powerful ally, the Couslands.
They are the Novgorod to Maric's Moscow — mercantile, naval, cosmopolitan, and likely seeing themselves as the king's equals. Their power is dangerous because it isn't based solely on feudal loyalty. Considering that they're a well-established dynasty with a port city, It's logical that they might have been collaborators, perhaps negotiating a separate peace with Orlesian commanders on terms favorable for all sides involved. Maric and Loghain would have discovered this. The result? A new deal. One Cousland is executed as a traitor and another lives as a "loyal vassal", with the house's history rewritten to glorify a patriarch who "died heroically in battle."
The Muscovite state is a very good analogy for a more realistic Ferelden. The army, the only organ fully developed under colonialism, would become the primary institution. Maric would rely on forces modeled on the Orlesian legions he fought—used as much to crush internal dissent as external threats. Unable to trust the old feudal elite, who either longed for a return to Orlesian rule or plotted to start their own dynasty by killing the last Theirin, Maric's power base would be a new "service nobility" — people like Loghain, military men and tax collectors from politically irrelevant families, chained to the throne by a "land for loyalty" scheme.
In this world of realpolitik, Cailan's plan to marry Celene isn't stupid. It might be immoral, but it is very pragmatic. He represents a significant faction of the elite who look at the ledgers and see only one solution: reintegration with Orlais on better terms. Nobles drowning in Antivan and Marcher loans want the Imperial treasury to assume their debt. Those who profit from exporting wool to Orlais want tariffs removed. Some simply see no value in Fereldan sovereignty when compared to Orlesian universities, canals, superior architecture and chevalier academies. Ferelden has only mud, stone keeps, and debt.
Becoming a semi-autonomous Grand Duchy within the Empire would be good for many. Oligarchs would become counts with seats in the Orlesian government, their sons would become chevaliers, trade would flow freely. The Blight would become Orlais' problem to solve.
Loghain knows what the cost will be. Could Anora, raised in the authoritarian, land-owning oligarch style, ever play the Grand Game? Could she be a banker? She is a warlord's daughter, not a smooth-talking merchant's heir. Loghain's decision to elevate a despised man like Rendon Howe is brilliant realpolitik: a tyrant with no other allies is far more dependent and less dangerous than a strong, popular leader.
Alistair's naivete represents the mythology of the rebellion — the pure, heroic tale people tell after the dirty deeds are done. His shock at the realpolitik is the shock of a boy raised on stories confronting the monstrous machine his father actually built. It is soul-crushing.
This is the story Dragon Age: Origins could have told: a civil war for the soul and future of a nation. Maric could have been a liberator who became a tyrant to secure his liberation; who betrayed his allies; who built a state in the image of his oppressors; and who left a legacy of institutional paranoia that doomed his sons, his friend, and his kingdom.
The canon wants players to feel like heroes restoring a broken kingdom, but in a devastatingly realistic version, the kingdom was born broken, forged in the fire of betrayal and built on the rotten foundation of colonial collaboration. The Blight is the physical manifestation of the spiritual corruption that has festered in Ferelden's soul since the moment it "won" its "freedom".
I’m all in favour of LGBT reimaginings of popular media, but with respect to some of the Labyrinth fan-castings I’ve seen floating around lately, there’s really no getting away from the fact that the Goblin King is a sexual predator.
Like, that’s the straight-up text of the film, and it’s not especially subtle about it.*
I’m not saying gay people can’t be villains, but the whole point of Jareth is that his attraction toward Sarah is sick, and her rejection of him represents a triumph of good over evil – it’s very much a film born of the Stranger Danger narrative that was all over popular media in the 1980s. I’m sure it’s possible to do a same-gender version of that without falling down the slippery slope of Unfortunate Implications, but it doesn’t feel like that concern is even on the radar in a lot of these proposals.
* Though the subtext isn’t slacking off, either. Remember the scene where Sarah first encounters Jareth, where he starts fondling a crystal ball, smirkingly invites her to play with it, then snarls and thrusts a snake in her face when she declines? That ain’t the reading-too-much-into-the-curtains kind of symbolism!
I feel like it’s more complicated than that, though? like… I feel like being a cis man there’s some nuance you’re missing?
CW: Long meta, rape mention, frank discussion of Problematic Teenage Fantasy Boyfriends
Labyrinth is pretty clearly a Symbolic Coming-Of-Age Story ™ about the Role Of Fantasy in the life of a Young Woman, right? it’s about how you need to have a healthy relationship with fantasy. you can’t let it push away the people you love, you can’t let it control you or blind you to what’s there. but it can help you make lasting friends, and when you need it most- for any reason at all- it’s there.
it’s pretty much text that everything in Labyrinth is part of Sarah’s imaginary world. Everything in the Labyrinth is either something she sought out and loves- her plushies and statuettes, her music boxes and books- or some part of herself, some want or fear or dream, given form.
And a lot of girls like Sarah- bookish, daydreamy, intellectually gifted but emotionally immature girls who’ve been steeped in a lot of crap about relationships from the world we live in - have a Fantasy Lover who looks and acts a lot like Jareth.
He’s Intense and kind of scary– because when you’re at that age, anything to do with romance or sex is intense and scary. He’s passionately, obsessively devoted to you, because it feels good to be needed and a teenager hasn’t got the life experience to realize that IRL that kind of obsessiveness is a red flag. He’s an older man- sometimes much older- so that he knows what he’s doing and can show you what to do, but he’s as pretty and graceful as an age-appropriate crush would be. He’s Flawed and Broody and a bad boy- but it’s blatantly obvious that he has good qualities; he will gladly make a fool of himself dancing just to make a baby smile.
And the Fantasy Lover is often… yes… kinda predatory. He’s a vampire, or a werewolf, or a Phantom, or a Goblin King. He comes onto you, not the other way around; he chases you, and you run for a while before falling into his arms and being Ravished. He leads when you dance; he tells you “do everything I say, and I will be your slave”.
But there’s a reason for this. in modern American society- and this was even more true back when Labyrinth was being filmed- women are not supposed to want sex. even having fantasies about having a passionate lover you sought out that you want can get a bit ~taboo~. and if you’re a teenager- especially if you’re a sheltered teenager with no female friends or family, no one to tell you that what you want is okay and normal- it can feel weird and bad and scary to fantasize about, well, initiating consensual sex. you don’t feel like you’re allowed to; Nice Girls don’t.
so oftentimes, the Fantasy Lover blurs into rape fantasy territory. he knows exactly what you want and he gives it to you, no matter how many times you say no. you deny yourself any agency within the context of your fantasy, but since it’s just a fantasy, you’re having your cake and eating it too– after all, you can stop whenever you like. you still get to be a Nice Girl, a Good Girl- you didn’t do anything wrong, even in your own head- but you get all the poorly-choreographed Imaginary Romance Bodice-Rippin’ you want.
normally, this is a pretty harmless coping mechanism. the thing is… “denying herself her own agency” is one of Sarah’s big flaws.
She tends to immediately deny that she made bad decisions, to act like bad things just happen to her because It’s Not Fair, to balk when there’s a problem she can’t immediately solve. heck, selling Toby to the Goblin King in the first place is sort of a backhanded denial-of-agency – she doesn’t want anything bad to happen to Toby even though she resents his existence, oh no no no, it was the Goblin King that stole the baby.
And Sarah’s never in any real danger from Jareth. the snake scared her, but it didn’t bite; the poisoned peach would have made her lose her memory and stay in her fantasy world forever, which is something that Sarah knows is bad, but still kinda wants on some level. at their final confrontation, he doesn’t try to kill her, doesn’t try to fight her– because he can’t.
Jareth is Sarah’s Fantasy Lover. He can’t do anything that Sarah doesn’t want him to. he’s predatory because Sarah wants him to be, because then she doesn’t have to accept that she wants sex and romance; she can pretend it’s just another thing that happens to her. the reason Jareth is so out of control in the text is that Sarah has given away all control.
the final confrontation in Labyrinth, isn’t Good Versus Evil in the sense that you mean; it isn’t Sarah destroying Jareth forever, or kicking him out of the land. Hell, he shows up at the end in barn owl form, while all the muppets are having a dance party in Sarah’s bedroom– he’s a part of her inner, fantastic world, and has just as much right to be there as Ludo or Hoggle or the little dudes with the ostrich hats. but he’s only a part of that world, and he’s not the part that matters most, or the part that has say.
their final confrontation is Sarah accepting, and taking responsibility for, her inner life. she is the one in charge of her destiny; she wants what she wants, she needs what she needs, and she will take responsibility for both. she doesn’t need Jareth to do things “to” her so she can pretend she doesn’t want them to happen. her will is as strong as Jareth’s, and her kingdom as great. he has no power over her.
so like…I get where you’re coming from with recognizing the Unfortunate Implications and all. “Gay people are sexual predators” is still A Thing, and in the real world, yeah, Jareth would be a creepy pedo stalker. assuming our civilization survives and all, I hope that someday people look at Labyrinth the way we look at Baby, It’s Cold Outside and completely miss the point. :V
…but c’mon. a kid who grows up being told that they don’t really want the things they want– and if they do want those things, they’re Literally Satan– is gonna have so very much more trouble accepting their own sexuality as they get older.
you can’t tell me that there aren’t plenty of queer teenagers out there who have the same problem denying their own agency, magnified and exacerbated by the fact that they’re queer. or that plenty of us didn’t want the goblin king to come take us away, and didn’t really understand why until much, much later.
There’s another element I might like to add to the archetype of the Fantasy Lover, based on my own experience and observation:
When the Fantasy Lover is not human – vampire, werewolf, or Goblin King – then it comes with the understanding that the way he behaves is simply in his nature. There’s no need to fuss over wondering why he became this way (or whether he might become worse in the future) or whether you have an obligation to try to Fix Him with your love, or whether there was something you said or did to make him this way. He simply is.
(I mean, I Can Fix Him With My Love is also a fantasy, but a different one. Sort of how like “I overcome the oppression” and “I don’t have to face the oppression in the first place” are both important fantasies for many minority groups, I Can Fix Him and I Don’t Have To Fix Him are both important fantasies for young girls.)
For young girls who have grown up with a *lot* of messaging that the good behavior of boys around them is in some way their responsibility and the bad behavior is somehow their fault, this is a *very* freeing narrative.
A LOT of stories would be terrible in the real world (not just romantic ones). But they aren’t in the real world! And this one especially is about the teenage protagonist discovering her own power through the stories she imagines for herself. Of course it would be creepy if the Goblin King was her real-life teacher or older neighbour or whatever. But he’s not! He exists only for her, and has only the power she gives him. And it’s fine if she wants him a bit predatory - she’s allowed to explore any kind of fantasy she wants, she’s allowed to discover what she likes to think about, she’s allowed to grow up.
There is extra context that should be applied, in extras and cut scenes we learn about sarah’s mother, who was an actress in the play “the labyrinth” which is what we see Sarah performing in the park, and the male lead in the play is David Bowie [on Sarah’s desk is a photo of her mom and David bowie] and she left Sarah’s dad for Bowie
so Sarah’s fantasy is caught up with the fact that Jareth has already taken her mom
everything in the film - even Jareth, is represented in toy form except Toby, and she resents Toby because she’s angry and she’s not allowed to be angry at what happened, and the labyrinth is in many ways Sarah’s anger at the situation. Jareth took her mom and left her with a stepmom we know nothing about and a screaming crying baby in its place
Sarah has to fight for Toby, whom the goblin king is spoiling with dance numbers and goblins - and she has to choose to ler these things go
Jareth isn’t a sexual predator because Sarah isn’t there yet, he is a child’s ideal of a fantasy lover, he is caught by the rules of her fantasy, he can only offer her ballroom dances and promises. He never touches her, or even looks at her, like she might be a sexual being, she is as much an ideal to him as he is to her.
Sarah is processing her anger, her resentment and frustration and Jareth is a vehicle for that, and in comparison he’s much better than Heathcliff, he’s not a byronic hero, he’s a fairy king and fairies have rules they have to follow and that make him safe. He is both safe and dangerous, think of the thistlehaired man from Mr Norell and Jonathan Strange, the things that make him safe also make him very dangerous. He tells the truth when he says that he is exhausted by rewriting the rules of his universe for her - he HAS to
he’s not a predator, certainly not a sexual one, he’s bound by her as much as she is in his world, because she is in his world which she chose, and the line defines it so well - the one she can never remember - “you have no power over me”
me, suddenly sitting up and pointing wildly at my pepe silvia board: "what if the titans were like the seekers, in that they got tranquilized briefly, and then reconnected to a spirit. but in their case, the spirit is the primordial dwarven lyrium writers, which were the origin of the dwarven shaperate in modern thedas-"
the elves and the surface dwarves both originally worshipped the great dragons, which were like sapient emissaries/extensions of the titans. bc the blood of the dragons is the blood of the world, etc, and dragons are considered the special divine form by the evanuris, and there's that concept art of a bunch of them living in a titan.
there are 3 semi-permeable planes, so speak - fade, normal earth, and the void, and the titans are kind of "stationary" but connecting all three, and dragons can move freely through all of them. the titan-linked dwarves funnel their worship energy into the titans, which manifests that into a great dragon, that essentially becomes a deity to them. the great dragons have the archdemon style immortality of being able to body-hop into a nearby connected dwarf if they die.
the titans themselves are kind of eldritch and have geological scale thoughts, but the dragons are much more quick-thinking and have "personalities" in a way that's comprehensible. thus, they can be the old gods.
the initial spirit-born elves were mimicking casteless surface dwarf exile communities (since exile from the stone is a very old concept and could've had an actual magical effect of being Detached from the hivemind in ancient dwarven culture) to pick up Emotions and Concepts. they came through without any lyrium, largely out of curiosity to see the world directly and to interact with the dwarves. this explains why solas isn't particularly surprised by cole, bc it's not "necessary" for lyrium to be used to take a body, it just creates a somewhat more confused/less powerful body. cole came out as a moderately talented and somewhat eccentric rogue, not evanuris material.
the exile dwarves were already taking little bits of lyrium to do their fine dwarven crafts and enchantments - this increased after the elves came through, bc with the elves' fade connection, they could start doing More with the lyrium. they start making larger cities and joint settlements using the lyrium. this is sort of a mosquito bite to the titans, but the dragons get more upset, and wipe out nearly the entire first batch of elves, bc they were unused to most things about the physical world, and can't defend themselves well.
elgar'nan is currently a benevolence spirit watching all this from the fade, and goes "hey i didn't like that >:( i'm feeling New Emotions outside of my usual purview >:( someone make me a strong body and i'll protect you from the dragons >:(". they put him into a lyrium-infused body, and he comes out super buff and really coherent! many more spirits are inspired to take lyrium and follow, elgar'nan fights the dragon and wins... except it respawns out of the nearest titan-linked dwarf immediately, bc it is unkillable. so now he's basically fighting the same increasingly angry dragon (belonging to the kirkwall titan) every few days. war ensues. elgar'nan is getting increasingly weird bc he's drinking dragon blood as a protein shake. see also, his claw hands on the mosaic.
it's discovered that in the same way that the titan-linked dwarves beam worship energy to the titans, vallaslin on elves can be used to beam it towards elgar'nan. this is also interesting in the context of maferath, bc he was also doing some weird stuff with wyvern blood(?) was this to make him stronger to support andraste(?) was it a misremembered story of elgar'nan that got put onto him(?) was this dude a reaver actually(?). more of the early elven leaders start doing this, and become the evanuris/forgotten ones. lyrium is required for the vallaslin formulation, so this increases the amounts being mined.
somewhere in this era, is the precursor to the vhenadahls/the elven funerary custom trees. getting Killed For Real is very scary to the immortal first elves, so they plant a tree and go "ok maybe my friend's spirit will reform someday :( and it'll know to come back to this tree and we can hang out again :(" which may or may not work, but at least makes them feel better. the "tree of the people" concept/mythal's tree symbol is a bigger and more effective version of this - it's a magically infused tree that kind of functions as a landmark or bridge between the earth and the fade. people can go up to it and communicate with spirits even without a strong fade connection (like the surface dwarves), and it draws in spirits that reflect the nature of the surrounding community and try to protect it. this becomes a symbol of the dwarven/elven combined settlements (see also, the tree icons in orzammar + the surface dwarven ruin in dai). and THIS is how the city elves can still win-
the kirkwall titan, now Really Upset, starts sending out its hivemind dwarves as soldiers bc it's not enjoying how much lyrium is being removed + its dragon getting killed every week. the surface dwarves are having second thoughts bc they've now lived through several generations of war by their standards, with no end in sight, and had to fight their estranged cousins, and the elves are really chugging lyrium to a point where it's a bit weird. multiple titans are now involved. there's creature vs creature warfare where the titans are making Beasts to attack the surface, and ghilan'nain is making Counter Beasts. ecosystem is in shambles, earthquakes are hitting all the population centres on the surface, normal dragons being sent to attack, etc.
this is when you start getting spirits draft dodging, and compelled to take forms with vallaslin. bc it also has the effect of keeping them "solid" even if they don't really want to stay and would prefer to dissolve instead. for instance, if they're kind of ambivalent wisdom spirits who don't enjoy being a physical entity,
mythal enters the field alongside an emotional support embodied wisdom spirit, to try and help in what seems to be a war of survival now. mythal provides enough force to actually enter the kirkwall titan. she claims it as a joint elf/surface dwarven settlement. elgar'nan bypasses the "dragon can reform out of any dwarf" problem by... killing all of them. so the dragon can't find any to reform out of. this is very bloody and horrible, and perhaps the first time the elves have actually seen the hivemind dwarves in their natural living conditions (not soldiers). solas corrupts into pride out of stress, but is considered to be mythal's very useful attack dog for his contributions to the slaughter.
it's discovered that the titans can be mined for their... worship vessels? vessels of dreams? hearts? whatever the orbs are, and this allows the wielder to thrall a dragon, get a ton of magical power, and become more or less unkillable - if they die, they develop the dragon's ability to body-hop to the nearest vallaslin-bearing person linked to them. elgar'nan can now do this, and the kirkwall titan is extremely near death and wounded and angry bc it no longer has a dragon or any dwarves. so with its last coherent impulse, it goes "woe. eternal winter be upon ye" and starts withering up all the land - it's not the blight, but just normal style desertification. the other evanuris start picking fights with the other titans too, bc they're powerhungry + want an orb to stave off the Withering on the surface.
this becomes controversial with the surface dwarves. elgar'nan thinks this is fine, bc he's feeling great and is willing to massacre all the other titans and fix the withering landscape All By Himself if need be.
june (an elf-allied surface dwarf leader) develops lyrium writing, which is the precursor to the modern dwarven shaperate. this allows the dwarves to connect to the titan's consciousness directly, without the dragons as an intermediary, though it weakens the connection significantly. mythal manages to negotiate with one of the calmer titans, and it gives her a connection to a dragon voluntarily (this is why she can shapeshift and has an affinity with dragons + can remove blight), and attaches itself to the dwarven shapers instead. this is probably the sacred ashes titan/orzammar's titan. it conveys that the kirkwall one needs a dragon to calm down and at least be put into hibernation before it wrecks the surface. mythal puts a dragon egg in with the kirkwall titan, which calms it down to an extent, and manages to subdue elgar'nan from going on his rampage, which makes the surface livable again.
removing the dragons basically made the titans like the seekers, where they're briefly tranquil, but then their emotions get put back by a spirit. but in this case the spirit is the... collective knowledge and opinions of all the dwarven shaperate feeding it information. this explains "they made the earth forget" line in trespasser. this process is done to the rest of the titans except for the kirkwall one, which is essentially on life support. it has some dragons in it, but allowing it to wake up is considered a danger (by the elves), bc it was never attached to any shapers and has 0 dwarves left alive who could do that. so it might just get back to setting off earthquakes if it becomes conscious again.
this comatose state is enforced by... mythal's lyrium idol. it's not currently red lyrium, but made of just normal style lyrium, that serves as a magical focus for the city built over the titan. this keeps the titan asleep, and holds a tremendous amount of magical power - fortunately nothing bad will happen to it-
solas is offered an orb + a dragon thrall as a token of appreciation for his contributions to all this. he declines the dragon thrall, and elects to stay on as mythal's lackey instead. this leaves him in a weird spot of having a borrowed orb, which makes him killable, but still way more effective than a normal elf. he's a very useful lackey bc no other evanuris would risk giving their servants an orb, bc of the risk of being deposed. solas is both loyal, and has ethical objections to the dragon thing, and would not attempt a coup like that.
mythal and elgar'nan end up as the top two leaders, with the other evanuris underneath them, and an assortment of other unaffiliated elven leaders who also had vallaslin + orbs and ended up as the forgotten ones. fortunately they're all really peaceful after this-
the elves have now been on earth long enough to develop Society. the lyrium-born are on another level from the cole-esques or the physically born elves, and they start jockeying for power. everyone now knows that getting an orb out of a titan provides genuine immortality + a way to control a dragon if they can catch one. and they're Immortal and perhaps Better than the dwarves, so really, they deserve a little extra lyrium as a treat.
june is uncertain about this, but has married sylaise (it's genuinely cute and legolas and gimli-esque probably) and become an evanuris, and is pretty happy being immortal, and they're not bothering HIS specific group of dwarves in orzammar, soooo....
arlathan gets more and more dependent on lyrium, and more stratified - no one is allowed to just make bodies and vibe anymore, they NEED to be attached to an evanuris. any dissenters are hunted down or slapped with vallaslin, which does have the side effect of being like a blood magic gps tracker (chantry mage style), as well applying a level of compulsion. there's more and more conflicts with the dwarves and the forgotten ones, who also have their own batch of followers with vallaslin and contraband orbs. solas starts thinking about becoming the joker.
june and dirthamen develop eluvians together. and then, ofc, it would be too dangerous to allow randos to travel like that! so the vallaslin track their movements, dirthamen can spy on everyone, and access can be revoked :) for safety :) yay :). this takes out most communities of "neutral" elves just trying to live their lives without vallaslin, as they're effectively forced to swear allegiance to someone or be removed from infrastructure they need to survive.
the evanuris' immortality isn't quite as seamless and fast as the archdemon style body hopping - it takes them a while, maybe requires some time spent in uthenera while transferring over, and leaves them weakened. there's a spree of warfare that takes out one of the milder evanuris (maybe june or sylaise) Multiple Times in quick succession. in response, they develop the Well Of Sorrows Prototype. this basically boils a bunch of their most suitable followers' souls into a delicious electrolyte beverage, that makes the drinker into an ideal body-hopping candidate + completely unable to disobey any orders.
solas goes to mythal and says "hey, this is terrible, shouldn't you do something?" and she says "but i already sent a stern letter, what more do you want?". solas offers to go on a mission to sabotage the wells, mythal signs off on it and sends him off, and then...
...much like briala/celene, elgar'nan puts on a scandalous play, accusing mythal of letting her dog offleash and listening to the forgotten ones' podcasts. mythal feels politically threatened, and midway through his heist, solas abruptly drops unconscious/develops an inexplicable urge to turn himself into the guards, bc she activates the vallaslin's compulsion to force him to get caught.
after being caught, mythal doesn't pull strings to get him out of trouble, and solas has his orb confiscated and is sentenced to imprisonment in his own temple - mythal thinks this fine, it's a thousand years, at most, and she'll even bring him enrichment for his enclosure! solas does not think it is fine, fully becomes the joker, and chews his leg off (this is the bound pride demon at solasan illiteracy temple) to escape, and burns off his vallaslin too.
solas' first major act afterwards is to steal his borrowed orb from mythal (with felassan's help as a man on the inside, bc felassan figured out how to remove the vallaslin compulsion while keeping the outward appearance) before he starts taking swings at the evanuris and the forgotten ones to take advantage of the chaos. all the other evanuris, minus dirthamen, bc of his Secrets Security, get a well by this point. mythal develops her own well too, bc she just lost her most reliable lackey and needs a substitute. this is solas' fault, they did all their wrongs together, etc.
solas' orb + growing dread wolf reputation begins to actually empower him enough to take on a Cool Wolf Form, despite his lack of dragon or vallaslin (moral objections to both). ghilan'nain, not yet an evanuris, just a powerful neutral elf, is sort of mildly helping him out in a "this might as well happen, i like chaos" and "can you rate and review my creatures while running around?" way.
the hibernating titan is in a precarious state - the city is doing ok, and there are enough dragons in the titan to keep it on life support, but the rest of it is spooky and weird and closed off, bc it's effectively made of the feverish nightmares of an entity that can rewrite reality. however, to the forgotten ones, it is simply free real estate. this is The Void. they start living inside it to avoid the evanuris, and juice themselves up on dragon blood as a substitute for lyrium. maybe this is even how qunari were invented, idk.
this status quo is messed up when: ghilan'nain is offered an orb and apotheosis in exchange for making her creatures more regulated. she accepts, however, she wants more dragon blood for her Experiments. and gets either andruil or the forgotten ones to hunt dragons in the kirkwall titan's insides for her.
the Void gets spookier and worse, and the titan begins dying for real. its dragons become fully feral and nearly rabid in their aggression, and have to be killed. i think the entire settlement is caught up and infected with proto-blight, and then slowly starves to death, which is what this codex is about. mythal orders the area sealed off as red lyrium pours out, but does not actually prosecute the perpetrators in any meaningful way. this is what happens here. solas is involved in the re-sealing bc he has an orb and is familiar enough with the titan after helping fight it the first time.
the evanuris start getting restless, bc they see mythal as unnecessarily letting the rebellion continue instead of crushing it and letting them refocus on the forgotten ones. mythal is unwilling to place reforms that would end the rebellion peacefully, bc then the evanuris would break away from her, nor is she willing to fully obliterate the rebels. Centrism.txt.
then... the evanuris start getting even sillier. as solas' rebellion gains strength, andruil refuses to follow directions, goes back into the void, comes out covered in red lyrium. uh oh! mythal lures her in by getting solas to be the dread wolf and annoy her until she chases him into a trap, then mythal beats her into a paste, uses her voluntary dragon connection to clear the red lyrium, and gets dirthamen to remove her memory.
...however, ghilan'nain is now SO curious about the blight. and is sad that her gf got beaten up. so she starts fiddling with it, since andruil brought her a little bit of red lyrium before going on the rampage. she is acquiring status effect: blighted.
andruil doesn't remember anything about what happened, but does vaguely remember that Mythal's Yappy Off Leash Dog was involved and might know more, so ghilan'nain lures him into a trap, bc solas is still in contact with her, since they were quasi-allies. i don't think the fen'harel and the tree myth is based on any sexual intent on andruil's part, i think that's a mistranslation over time. andruil tried to force him to take on her mind control geas and put his knowledge into her well, (which was a concept that's fully incomprehensible to the post-veil elves, and they replaced it with a more clearly understandable motive), and solas manages to escape by fluke when anaris also shows up to beef with him.
dirthamen, meanwhile, is starting to become uneasy allies of convenience with solas, bc while he can excuse slavery, he draws the line at blight killing everyone. he starts to suspect ghilan'nain is using the blight, and when he gets close, she does several things; messes with his reputation to distance him from mythal, sics andruil on him (i think he's the huntsman in this), and then tells falon'din "hey, your brother knows this COOL SECRET you don't! isn't that bad? you should kill him"
so falon'din goes on a jealousy rampage and nearly kills dirthamen. this is why dirthamen's temple is so shambles, his followers seemed terrified after he suddenly disappeared, there are few statues of him, and one of them features him with a giant sword in his back. mythal does eventually beat falon'din back and subdue him, but not before dirthamen is put into uthenera from injuries and the Blight Location is forcibly extracted from him and his followers.
this culminates in: the evanuris all get together and go, "hey isn't it suspicious that mythal could remove the red lyrium from andruil, but she still doesn't want us to have it? smh. we COULD just kill her and drink her blood and remove red lyrium ourselves, and use it safely and defeat the forgotten ones, if she wasn't such a drag. oh, you don't want to kill mythal? well, your choice, but... enjoy not having blight resistance after this i guess :/". so they all go ahead and ides of march her and drink her blood. this is a precursor to the joining ritual.
then things progress badly very fast. it turns out it does NOT work without mythal actually being alive. also, mythal's idol was actually compensating for the dying titan and preventing blight from fully spreading out, and it stops doing this when she's dead. but the evanuris only notice after acquiring status effect: blighted and becoming unhinged. horrible things are growing out of the titan's corpse, and are in danger of infecting even other titans, bc they all technically share the same Void Space if you dig deep enough. this would kill the thedas.
solas, fully becoming the joker, gets his rebellion to seed the land with his little... veil strengthening contraptions from dai, which are also focused in a way to Physically Grab blighted areas and throw them into the black city when it goes up. this is why the waking sea exists and is called that - it's right next to the red lyrium thaig, and was presumably like ground zero of blight leakage. huge amounts of earth/the titan's insides got zapped into the black city when the veil went up, and seawater filled the gap.
solas uses the evanuris' bound dragons as a way to channel the locks on the black city and the veil. the titans recall them underground, and they go into hibernation after the veil goes up. he passes out from the effort, and uses all his Orb Energy in the process. he also loses most of his followers, so... his orb takes ages to recharge at all. the dwarves seal off the red lyrium titan again, and rebuild their civilization - the veil going up also puts all the titans to sleep, so the shapers are no longer in contact with them, and the hivemind is gone beyond a very slight stone sense.
the hibernating dragons are now the old gods, occasionally whispering Cool Facts into the dreams of humans. eventually, after thousands of years, the dwarves forget the location of the red lyrium titan and... accidentally dig it back up while exploring. whatever spooky thing happens then, scares them SO much that they decide to strike the titans from their records entirely, bc they assume that all titans are like that. but it's... slightly too late.
the red lyrium leaks out just a little bit, and slowly starts growing into dumat, one of the sleeping old gods, and eventually overcomes its natural blight resistance. the evanuris reconnect with it using the blight that they share. and it starts calling up the magisters to break them out. corypheus goes up there, gets Fully Infused with blight, and then goes down and wakes up dumat for the first blight.
this is also why the dwarves think the darkspawn came from underground, and the chantry believes it was the magisters thrown down from the sky - technically both are true. the red lyrium infested some random dwarves/deep roads creatures after dumat got overrun, but until dumat got in physical contact with something Fully Blighted (the magisters, called underground to find dumat), the red lyrium creatures stayed mostly dormant. and then afterwards the darkspawn started creating broodmothers to create more troops faster than red lyrium would. and many of the dwarven kingdoms fell, so no one remembered the initial red lyrium part or any efforts made to contain it, in comparison to the much scarier and more obvious hordes of darkspawn soon afterwards.
just finished Expedition 33. Maybe I'm getting too old for this (or maybe it would take less time and nerves if I didn't play on PC and used a console instead), but the plot was a little bit overdramatic even to my standarts. The game was beautiful, the music was incredible, but... for me it was such a tearjerker.
Plus, I didn't get how could real Verso die 33 decembre, do they have some unusual calendar too? (upd: i'm not sure if the french calendar is any different from what I used to, so i checked french republican calendar but it doesn't seem right too)
Love, Vampirism, and Metaphor in Dracula: Van Helsing and the Suitors VS The Harkers
I’m writing this on the day of the September 29th entry, fresh from the second death of Lucy Westenra, Bloofer Lady and Beloved of Many. I see myself posting this on October 3rd, the day of Dracula in the bedroom and the holiest love quote. You know the one.
‘To one thing I have made up my mind: if we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many; just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks.’
Harrowing, horrifying in its implications for our good friend Jonathan Harker, and, when held up against the wall-to-wall likeminded alignment of the Suitors Three, of Van Helsing, and, it seems, of Mina ‘Down to Self-Sacrifice’ Harker, a quiet but unmissable sore thumb sticking out of the rest of the novel’s dogma. Let’s turn the pages back a bit.
so remember that bit where Fabien finds Gideons glasses in Lou's serial killer trophy basement?
Except those arnt Gideons glasses
These are Gideons glasses. Round not cateye
The ones in the basement look exactly like Safias
Dev oversight, deliberate clue or did Safia take the original pair and replace them with her own assuming lou wouldnt pay enough attention to notice the difference? You'd think Fabien wouldnt make that mistake and his abilities woudlnt work on the wrong pair but its not clear whats malkavian insight and whats him effectivly talking to himself - and at this point he's remembering something he's already worked out multiple times. ( heh imagine fabien using spirit touch on Safias glasses thinking theyre Gideons and getting some truly unexpected answers about what their owners been upto)
Ok realisticly its a dev mistake/crunch bung rather than a plot detail, perhaps they already had a separate asset for Safias glasses but not one for Gideons and decided to save time. But i like coming up with watsonian explainations for doylist problems
Edit: Check out the comments/tags on the reblogs there are some really good theorys about this in there. i keep forgetting that fabiens dream memorys actually act like proper dream memorys and are not meant to be fully accurate
