29, she/her -- Artist proudly working in Animation 🇧🇪 I post art of my oc's and the occasional fanart of whichever fantasy world I'm currently obsessed with.
you fly like a thousand birds, and your laugh
is like the spray of the sea, your head
is a star between my hands, the world
grows green again when you smile
My family, my dear friends and everyone who knows me or not.
My name is Issam, I live in Gaza, and I'm 29 years old. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a reserved, quiet and reclusive person. I have always been an independent person and used to do everything myself for my family. So, I hope you understand that today it's difficult for me to talk about my personal issues and finally ask for help
I will tell you my story briefly, after I realized some of my dreams a short time ago by marrying my life partner and moving into my house, which we only stayed in for a few days until we were in the middle of the war, we fled to save ourselves and stay alive, we lost hope in life after all our dreams that we had dreamed of since childhood were shattered
One of our dreams was to settle in the house we built stone by stone and be happy like other couples, but we couldn't because of the war.
I used to work as a lawyer in several companies, I am unemployed, I lost my job, I have no source of income, and everything I saved I put in the house, the house was destroyed and I have nothing now.
This is a picture of me as a lawyer with the head of the Bar Association
My wife and I decided to start a fundraising campaign so that we can get some money to evacuate us after we lost everything, to rebuild our house that was destroyed by the occupation, and to get food, water and other necessities of life so that we can live first and then think about our future, which we don't know anything about.
Now, this is our house, which was destroyed by the occupation after my wife and I equipped it
The place where we live now is devoid of all the necessities of life, and we struggle with access to water, food, safety, and all the necessities needed to live.
I realize that we're all going through tough times, so anything that helps, whether it's your love and support, your donation, sharing my story, or sending love and prayers, it's all accepted and greatly appreciated, and I hope that anyone who is able to help me will help me and spread the link, because literally every dollar makes a difference.
Here is the link to the private fundraising campaign
I am Sahar, a Palestinian from Gaza.
After I had a beautiful life and my rosy d… Sarah El abbassi needs your support for Help Sahar and
@vhenan-writes brought my attention to IGN once again rolling out the red carpet for some truly insane choices by Epler himself. So many of them could be analyzed but right now this is killing me the most.
I'm so glad Tevinter doesn't have the capacity to work Lyrium. Good news, guys. Someone should tell Fenris. Let him know it's all good.
the ‘lords of fortune make sure we dont take artefacts of cultural importance’ is wild for many reasons but IDK if youve studied even a little bit of a humanities subject like history or archaeology or anthropology (or just thought about it rly) it is easily argued that EVERYTHING they could feasibly be taking is of cultural value
its such a wishy washy statement that appears to flirt with this vague notion that colonialism is bad but doesnt actually decide to engage with this in any deep way. really just salt in the wound given how staggeringly orientalist the depiction of the rivaini and qunari are
i would love if the lords of fortune were presented as a group of people who do plunder things of important cultural value and then actually made the player engage with this idea. it could be a really confronting thing given how ‘looting’ is such a core mechanic of so many games including this one. not saying to get didactic about it but make the player think about something thats v much taken for granted
Maybe this is me being really uncharitable, but I cannot STAND to listen to bioware writers talk about their writing. Like, even before Veilguard eroded my trust in their ability to tell a story competently.
But what's really set me off is Epler "clarifying" what he meant to imply with the secret ending. "The word choice is VERY DELIBERATE"?? No shit, John. That's how writing works. You choose which words to put and in which order. Just because you can discount the implications of those words doesn't mean the rest of us can.
I really don't like being this ornery, especially since the absolute deluge of criticism that can happen online is not fun to be the subject of. But every time I hear something new from them in the context of the Exposition Palooza that was Veilguard, I can't help but feel like they must think I'm an idiot.
Why Fenris could Never Cameo in Dragon Age: The Veilguard
In the run up to Dragon age: The Veilguard, I was almost certain that Fenris would be our main legacy character from previous games. Not only has he been central in the comics released between DAI and DATV, he is an escaped Tevinter slave who's plot revolved around magisters, magic and the structural prejudices surrounding elves in Thedas. Not only that, but he's canonically in Tevinter killing slavers currently so he's geographically in the right place for us to meet him.
About halfway through the game though, it was clear to me: Fenris could never cameo in The Veilguard. Because he'd break it.
How the Veilguard treats Thedas is...odd to me, to say the least. I will be writing another post about how much I adored the expanded big lore in this game (the titans, ancient elves were spirits, where the blight came from etc.) and yet while these large lore expansions worked for me, the actual culture of modern Thedas is entirely softened, its sharp edges filed down until it's a sanitised fantasy world devoid of what made the franchise so vibrant and compelling in the first place.
So let's start with Fenris and slavery. In all three games, the reality of slavery is pushing at the corners of the world. In DAO Loghain allows Tevinter Magisters to enslave elves in order to raise money for his war effort. In DA2 Fenris is fighting to be free from slavers who will not leave him be, let alone the reminders that the city was built by slaves which are everywhere. In DAI one of the two possible mini-bosses is Calpurnia who was a slave, and characters such as Gatt and Dorian both show us how much slavery is tied into Tevinters culture and success.
But DATV the first game actually set in Tevinter where we get to see the famed Minrathous...it's like the game purposefully wants to avoid the issue. I can feel it tilting the camera away to not allow me to see. Slavery is mentioned, but never talked about in depth or as a specifically ELVEN problem in Tevinter. This might have been done to be less problematic, it feels ignored.
We are in DOCK TOWN. We are at the DOCKS. You would think that slaves from all over Thedas who are being smuggled and bought by various groups would be everywhere. You would think that the injustice in dock town would be partly built on the back of ships we've seen in the comics crammed with elves in chains. This is the world Dragon age set up for us. And yet...nothing. zilch. A tiny easily skippable side quest where we free a couple of venatori slaves, but only one of whom is an elf.
None of our Tevinter characters seem to have been influenced by their culture even a little bit when it comes to how they view elves; there is no moment when Neve fucks up and says something prejudiced, no moment when Bellara or Davrin are distrustful of her for being a Tevinter mage.
The same goes for Zevran; a character who epitomised the issues with the crows. The crows have consistently been characterised as very morally dubious assassins who kill for the highest bidder and who buy children on the slave market and torture them as they grow in order to assure that they reach maturity able to withstand torture without giving away a client's name. Zevran is very explicit about the fact that if you fail a contract your life is forefit.
Nobody responds particularly to you if you're an elf. Nobody trusts rook less for it in Tevinter. Nobody treats Rook any differently. Even DAI had better mechanics for this; with nobles in Orlais less likely to trust you as an elf.
Considering one of the main plot points of this game and what makes Solas sympathetic is the fact that he was fighting against the slavery of ancient elves...you'd think the game might want to mirror that in modern Thedas. It might want to show us how characters fighting to end slavery in Tevinter are similar to Solas and how the society Solas fought against was similar to the one that characters we love such as Fenris have fought against in modern Thedas. Maybe we'd want to explore how in a world of slavery like this, how could the answer NOT be to tear it all down? Maybe we should have that option at the end of the game so it really can chose whether we agree with Solas and his plans or not.
Adding Fenris to this game would entirely break the game because Fenris refuses to allow you to look away from this horror. He is a sympathetic character who had to learn to trust mages again because of course he didn't trust them. Of course he didn't. Fenris wouldn't allow the camera to shift focus because he's literally covered in the lyrium scars that show how slaves are used as experiments in Tevinter. Fenris WOULD question Neve on how she feels about elves and slaves. Fenris WOULD have things to say about Lucanis and the crows (let alone the fact Lucanis is an abomonation). So he could never be in this game; he'd drop a bomb on it's carefully constructed blinders to the very society its supposed to be set in.
And yet, in DATV, the crows are presented as...a found family of misfits and orphans? The politician who opposes the crows having absolute power in Antiva is framed as a comically evil idiot who doesn't understand that the crows are ontologically good. Yet...they're NOT. Crows in this game act more like a secret rebel group than an assassin organisation. We see no crow taking contracts with the VERY RICH venatori magisters despite being hired killers. We see crows just refuse to kill people despite having a contract because 'its crueler to leave them alive'. The crows don't feel like the crows here, they feel like a softened version of a cool assassin group who are cool because they wear black and purple.
Our pirate group are also sanitised; the Lords of Fortune are good pirates who only steal treasure that's not culturally significant. Theyve clearly read the modern critiques of the British Museum and have decided to explicitly stop anyone levelling similar critiques at them. There is no faction of the Lords of Fortune who aren't like this, no internal arguments about it. Everyone just. Agrees. And is able to accurately tell what a cultural artifact is vs. what treasure that you can have yourself is. Rather than showing us why a pirate stealing cultural artifacts might be bad (like in da2 where such a situation literally causes a coup and a war) it just tells us it's bad. But also pirates are cool so we still want them in our world.
This issue seaps into Thedas and drains it of any of the interesting complexity and ability to SAY anything that this franchise had before this game. It becomes a game about telling and not showing rather than the other way around. The games have ALWAYS asked questions about oppressive structural systems and their interplay with society, religion and culture and how these things can affect even the most well meaning character. Dragon age at its best IS a game about society and how society functions both for and against it's characters and what happens to societies built on cruelty and indifference. The best bad guys dragon age has given us are those who are bad because they embody these systems or have been shaped by them. Our main characters have had to wrestle with questions surrounding how to exist in these systems, fight against them, learn and grow.
Yet every group you come across in DATV is sanitised and cleaned up to the point of being as non problematic as humanly possible. None of our cast of characters have to wrestle with where they came from or the world that shaped them. None of them have to confront their own biases. They start the game perfectly non-problematic and end it that way too.
And this just...isn't what Dragon Age has been in the past. It isn't why I love the franchise. The whole game just felt, in a way, hollow. And this was a CHOICE and it is why the legacy characters are few and far between. Too many dragon age characters are just too...angry and complex for this game. You can feel them pulling their punches on this one. I have to imagine they did this because they didn't want to be criticised or have too much controversy? But I think it honestly goes far too much in the other direction and just makes it bland.
I can't imagine what I say here will be unique, but it is the basis for a LOT of my other thoughts on this game so I wanted to get it out of the way first. The softened Thedas and characters make this game by far the weakest in the franchise.
Something about Davrin just fucking hurling this rock at this venatori is so funny to me. This happens in the finale of the game, and while I'm gonna keep this as non-spoilery as possible this man just fought a fucking colossal goddamn statue and singlehandedly brought it down, he pops out of the rubble like a jack-in-the-box and then just chucks this rock at this dude. He's so goddamn tired of this shit. Imagine being part of a magic eugenicist cult and dying via rock. So embarrassing. I love Davrin so much
catch me weeping to this at all hours of every day for the foreseeable future. weeping on the train, weeping at the office, weeping in my bed, weeping on the toilet, screaming crying throwing up
2087
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