#durgeapologist

[durgeapologist]

To be honest I've never took Solas seriously as an abolitionist. Not in the traditional sense of the word anyway. He is anti slavery when it comes to his own people (spirits) but he doesn't actually have that much interest in ending it on a universal level. For the most part his objection to slavery in Tevinter seems purely ideological when he's talking to Dorian, almost like it's a philosophical debate and nothing more (Wild that they had a British coded white man lecturing a brown Indian coded man about slavery). He isn't interested in helping Briala better the plight of modern elves and he's not going to lift a finger himself to abolish slavery in modern Thedas. Abolitionism is all or nothing, you can't just care about your specific group of people and then be passive about it when it comes to other groups. I guess what I'm saying is that it's all well and good for Solas to SAY he's against slavery on principal but I think he'd be more than content to be the oppressor himself if he could tell himself the means justify the ends. This has been pretty consistent with his characterization from the start with Trick Weekes as his main writer and I believe Weekes was still his writer on DAV. Why are people so mad at Epler but not Trick Weekes?

abolitionism is all or nothing

YES. THANK YOU. if not purely for the fact that solas stamped out the modern elven rebellion when he 1) killed felassan because he tried to speak in favor of briala's plans and 2) wrenched the eluvian network from her hands, then solas' disinterest in dwarven, qunari, and human suffering within their own systems of slavery says enough. even more, you cannot be an abolitionist if you're racist and selective about who you want to free. and, even tho plenty of his diehard fans like to ignore it, he is egregiously racist and prejudiced. it's like. a whole thing in dai. one of his conversations with inky lays out his horrendous views on inky's people and if you're low approval, he straight up says he was right in thinking their people thuggish and brutish. like. cmon.

and my biggest guess for why certain kinds of fans place all this blame on epler instead of weekes (aside from the crazy fans who got angry about solas' non-canon kinks (be so fr)) is because epler has always had fairly non-apologistic and vocal views about solas' journey as an antagonist. the ama after dav was released and that subset of fans' reaction to his very normal and (imo) correct comments about solas and his journey pre-dav really soured me. i think it's ridiculous to expect someone to make excuses for solas' actions in order for them to like/appreciate his story or his character as a whole. i'd refer to fang's post about him not being strictly good or evil, but i'm refraining for now.

[durgeapologist]

Let's Talk About Ir Abelas, Da'ean

As some of you may know, I am vehemently against the dishonest use of AI in fandom and creative spaces. It has been brought to my attention by many, many people (and something I myself have thought on many times) that there is a DreadRook fic that is super popular and confirmed to be written at least partially with AI. I have the texts to prove it was written (at least) with the help of the Grammarly Rewrite generative feature.

Before I go any further, let it be known I was friends with this author; their use of rewrite features is something they told me and have told many other people who they have shared their fic with. It is not however, at the time of posting this, tagged or mentioned on their fic on AO3, in any capacity. I did in fact reach out to the author before making this post. They made absolutely no attempt to agree to state the use of Rewrite AI on their fic, nor be honest or upfront (in my opinion) about the possibility of their fic being complete generative AI. They denied the use of generative AI as a whole, though they did confirm (once again) use of the rewrite feature on Grammarly.

That all said: I do not feel comfortable letting this lie; since I have been asked by many people to make this, this post is simply for awareness.

You can form your own opinion, if you wish to. In fact, I encourage you to do such.

Aside from the, once again, high volume word output of around 352K words in less than 3 months (author says they had 10 chapters pre-written over "about a month" before they began posting; they are also on record saying they can write 5K-10K daily) from November until now, I have also said if you are familiar with AI services or peruse AI sites like ChatGPT, C.AI, J.AI, or any others similar to these, AI writing is very easy to pick out.

After some intense digging, research, and what I believe to be full confirmation via AI detection software used by professional publishers, there is a large and staggering possibility that the fic is almost entirely AI generated, bar some excerpts and paragraphs, here and there. I will post links below of the highly-resourced detection software that a few paragraphs and an entire chapter from this fic were plugged into; you are more than welcome to do with this information what you please.

I implore you to use critical thinking skills, and understand that when this many pieces in a work come back with such a high percentage of AI detected, that there is something going on. (There was a plethora of other AI detection softwares used that also corroborate these findings; I only find it useful to attach the most reputable source.)

Excerpts:

82% Likely Written by AI, 4% Plagiarism Match

Originality.ai - AI Content Detection

98% Likely Written by AI, 2% Plagiarism Match

Originality.ai - AI Content Detection

100% Likely Written by AI, 4% Plagiarism Match

Originality.ai - AI Content Detection

Some excerpts do in fact come back as 100% likely written by human; however, this does not mean that the author was not using the Grammarly Paraphrase/Rewrite feature for these excerpts.

The Grammarly Paraphrase/Rewrite feature does not typically clock as AI generative text, and alongside the example below, many excerpts from other fics were take and put through this feature, and then fed back into the AI detection software. Every single one came back looking like this, within 2% of results:

So, in my opinion, and many others, this goes beyond the use of the simple paraphrase/rewrite feature on Grammarly.

Entire Chapter (Most Recent):

67% Likely Written by AI

Originality.ai - AI Content Detection

As well, just for some variety, another detection software that also clocked plagiarism in the text:

15% Plagiarism Match

Detect AI-generated text with GPTZero's dashboard

To make it clear that I am not simply 'jealous' of this author or 'angry' at their work for simply being a popular work in the fandom, here are some excerpts from other fanfics in this fandom and in other fandoms that were ran through the same exact same detection software, all coming back as 100% human written. (If you would like to run my fic through this software or any others, you are more than welcome to. I do not want to run the risk of OP post manipulation, so I did not include my own.)

The Wolf's Mantle

100% Likely Human Written, 2% Plagiarism Match

Originality.ai - AI Content Detection

A Memory Called Desire

99% Likely Human Written

Originality.ai - AI Content Detection

Brand Loyalty

100% Likely Human Written

Originality.ai - AI Content Detection

Heart of The Sun

98% Likely Human Written

Originality.ai - AI Content Detection

Whether you choose to use AI in your own fandom works is entirely at your own discretion. However, it is important to be transparent about such usage.

AI has many negative impacts for creatives across many mediums, including writers, artists, and voice actors.

If you use AI, it should be tagged as such, so that people who do not want to engage in AI works can avoid engaging with it if they wish to.

ALL LINKS AND PICTURES COURTESY OF: @spiritroses

[durgeapologist]

me, wanting to engage in good faith debates and discussions about whether solas was actually enslaved to mythal and whether vallaslin possibly represented something other than slave markings at the beginning of the ancient elven empire

also me, knowing if i straight up ask, "can someone please show me where the fuck it says solas was enslaved to mythal and don't use either of cole's two easily-missed and ambiguous lines in dai?" i will be brutally beaten with sticks

[durgeapologist]

very gently: a year of discourse is nothing, da fandom has never been unified in liking a game. some people have waited for a game they paid for for 10 years only to be disappointed + VG marketing was genuinely deceptive if you kept track of it at all. i get the frustration with grifters but most critical posters aren’t that. just the top of datv critical tag is proof that the critiques are reasonable. relax (?)

not gentle at all: did you even read my post? nowhere did i mention anyone who has valid criticisms of dav. i actually fucking hate that dav enjoyers are forced to say this to people like you, but i have plenty of criticism about dav myself. i have plenty of criticism for the entire series, actually. lots of it. but why the fuck would i focus only on the negatives, instead of what i did enjoy?

my post was about people who do nothing but shit on veilguard, with the most obnoxious and ridiculous criticisms, an entire year after release. and no, this is not an exaggeration on my part; there are at least fifty popular da blogs that i have had to block because they literally only post dav critical content now. curating my feed helps, but it does not stop other blogs that are the exact same from coming across my dash. if you had read the post, or even the tags, you would have known that.

i was talking about a specific demographic, addressing a specific issue that my moots were also talking about on their own blogs.

also, i just have to say: as someone who was sucked into the da series because of the marketing for dav, it wasn't any more deceptive than origins or da2 or inquisition. do i always have to bring up dao's fuck ass trailer? da2's? the way inquisition marketed with long hair models just for them to only implement fifty flavors of bald once more? like. be so for real with me for a second.

anyways all i have left to say is i hope you learn to read and comprehend what you're reading so you avoid spewing nonsense in people's inboxes on anon. find something that brings you joy and stop making your online presence about being miserable. (?)

[durgeapologist]

i think we as a fandom don't talk enough about how solas consistently tries to distance himself from the evanuris, knowing full well he was and is considered one of them by almost everyone familiar with the elven pantheon.

"...all of the evanuris were monsters in their own ways..."

hm. does he know that we know that includes him? does he know it should be, "...all the evanuris were monsters in our own ways"?

and before any gets their feathers ruffled, it is absolutely fair to claim solas is a monster, in his own way.

creating a body using the blood of another living being, helping to wage war on said beings, crafting a weapon that literally sundered those beings from their spirits and altering the fate of an entire race, sending spirits to their deaths and lying to them about it, getting entire villages of his people wiped out due to his own impatience, causing the explosion at the conclave and the death of near-every leading figurehead in the south, lying to people who might've considered him a friend or lover for close to a year, using blood magic to manipulate the mind of a protege of a friend he just brutally murdered ("at least you still have varric to talk to"), betraying said protege time and time again while lying to their face, and trying to tear down the veil that he knows will inevitably result in the death of hundreds of thousands of people (if not more) instead of trying to find an actual solution to the veil weakening and failing.

and the list goes on. like, that statement definitely includes him.

i don't know. i think he's insane and neat, actually. what a fucking freak.

[durgeapologist]

“I’m not a higher power, I just live in the ceiling ‘cause I’m lonely on the fringes and it gives my life some meaning.”

A huge thanks to @fenrelmercar for the Solas captures. Had this moodboard in my head and needed it out immediately; they are the absolute best.

starparkdesigns/Nikita Gill/Sarah J. Maas/Fyodor Dostoevsky/Ryan O’Conell/????/Nikita Gill

[durgeapologist]

God give me strength. Today I saw a Solavellan call Harding "Karen levels of offended" over what Solas did to the titans. This fandom really does not give a shit about what Solas did to the dwarves. Heck SOLAS cares more about what he did to the dwarves than the fandom does.

HUUUUUUHHHHHH??

"karen levels of offended" WHAT THE FUCK DO THEY EVEN MEAN BY THAT???

solas literally severed dwarves' connection to dreams. he severed their connection to the titans. he likened them to a bloodied, severed arm while in conversation with varric, a dwarf. he walked past, smiling at harding daily and playing nice, knowing what he did. she literally says as much.

if you think harding is a karen for being mad at solas for quite literally comitting a war crime against her ancestors, or if you believe the titans were 'monsters' who 'deserved what they got', close the app and go touch grass because i fear you actually don't know how to engage critically with this series.

[durgeapologist]

I think the thing that rubs me the wrong way about the whole woobification/victimization of Solas and the demonizing of Mythal is that I think it has the effect of making Solas less compelling because it removes so much of his agency.. The moment you take his agency you strip him of his complexity and you dull the impact and the consequences of his decisions. What is the point of a character who consistently refuses to change and fanatically clings to his misguided quest if that isn't a choice he's making of his own free will? If one of our options is to save Solas from HIMSELF then shouldn't he be the one who's responsible for his own actions? We weren't supposed to be saving him from Mythal. We were supposed to be given the opportunity to change his mind and redeem him. You can't redeem a character who hasn't done anything wrong. There's no point. If his guilt isn't real because he's not responsible for his own actions then his regrets don't mean anything.

"You can't redeem a character who hasn't done anything wrong."

EXACTLY! i know i sound like broken record at this point, especially considering i have this post and this post and this post arguing these same exact points, but i do think it's still absolutely a notion that gets overlooked and ignored in favor of making solas someone who is helpless and not complicit in his own crimes.

never have i ever seriously said mythal did no wrong. she did! all the evanuris did! they were fucked up people! but once again, i come to you on a soapbox to reiterate the fact that solas himself was an evanuris. he was made part of the pantheon and looked up to by many, many elves in the rebellion for a reason. he earned his title of cruelty and wit and trickery and deception for a reason. and, to me, hardly any of it has to do with this so-called evanuris propaganda i see people talk about.

his relationship with mythal, whether you see it as romantic or platonic, and whether or not you think she was abusive, is not an excuse to use it as a sudden absolvement of all the things this man chose to do and the crimes he chose to commit all on his own.

he still went forth and sacrified spirits without letting felassan know what he was doing. he still went forth and let his impatience cost the lives of the very people he was trying to save. his hubris and his inability to sit down and plan things out cost him and the ancient elves their empire, freedom, and immortality. he still woke up and killed felassan because felassan "saw them as people." them being the modern elves. he still wrenched the eluvian network from briala's feet and snuffed out the modern elven rebellion for his own agenda. he still caused the explosion at the conclave because he allowed his agents to lead the venatori to his orb. he still lied and manipulated his way into a standing (good or bad, romanced or not) with inky strong enough to influence them and their actions. he still killed varric. he still used blood magic on rook to manipulate them. he still betrayed them and trapped them in a nightmarish hellscape he didn't think they would ever get out of.

his flaws make him so intriguing. his pride and ego problems make him multi-faceted. his desire to be right, his desire to prove to those around him that he knows best, make him insanely human (for lack of a better term.) the woobification of him and the demonization of mythal (or anyone else) only strips him clean of all that delicious and purposefully placed characterization. i just wish more people understood that and stopped trying to make him out to be this helpless and blameless victim that he very much is not.