I am begging people to engage with stuff beyond the literal.
Like obviously this is extremely important for understanding poetry, mythology, fiction etc. But it’s also vital for seeing the value in cultural practices and such.
Take divination. Lots of folk will dismiss it because nothing can predict the future and all that. It’s fine if you think that, but contemporary divination is more than that. Many contemporary magical practices are focused on changing consciousness before reality. Divination is no different. The cards, runes etc. force you to connect abstract ideas to concrete people and events in your life. This symbolism elevates subconscious connections to a conscious level, leading you to introspection and more emotionally aware decision making. The belief that this process is somewhat spiritually or supernaturally empowered can enhance the experience but is not all it is.
Same with many cultural practices. There’s a “literal” explanation, which opens people up through the invocation of the magical & the supernatural, but there’s also the psychological, social and emotional meaning that goes much deeper and is completely missed by literalist “hard science is the only truth” NA readings.
If you’re just reading spiritual texts and practices through a literalist lens, you are choosing a reductive approach. This is very likely to lead culturally imperialist behaviour when you try to dissuade people from their practices because “they aren’t real” not because of any actual harm.
If you are an empiricist to a fault, then you need to look at actual violence and harm caused by practices, not the abstract harm that “religion” or “superstition” does in a generalised manner according to your bias, which often ironically ignores materialist readings.
aglaya’s eyes look more hazel than brown or is that just me
yea i'd consider them hazel as a subset of brown... her eye texture color is a very dark brown, but due to the way eyes are modeled in p2, there's a shiny filter over them that lightens the color a ton (visible in the mark pic above)
this is 99% of why i think we're confused by aglaya's eye color since it makes her irises look very gray in dialogue:
of course since it's texture- or material-based i've been trying to get rid of it all day... no promising results yet haha
If you don’t mind, and whenever you’re able to, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the whole of inquisition especially the whole forcing your character to take on the role of being the herald of andraste. Provided this isn’t a weird or too much ask!
It’s not too much, I appreciate any excuse to be able to yell about the problems I have with the games.
I hate it! I mean, I already wasn’t expecting much when I was going into the game but god the vibes of playing DAI (especially as an elf, though any non-human inq has it rought). My first playthrough was an a Lavellan (my Inq Badr al-Din Lavellan) and I opted for elf because: I think elves are neat, I can relate to many of the experiences an elf in DA endures (racism, complete ignorance about culture/faith and constant disrespect of culture/faith, I related my hijab to Vallaslin [post about that, angry meta post ref’d in that post]), and while none of the games have been kind to elves, Dragon Age: Inquisition really took the cake on being the worst. Just, personally, the colonialism vibes are just off the chart for me and it’s super uncomfortable. And even aside from that, the pc being forced (I suppose you could go along with it, but I’ve never done that) to be a Herald of Andraste is just…. Yikes.
The TL;DR is: I hate it, it’s incredibly upsetting to me, as is the whole game, honestly.
But if you want a more in depth look at my thoughts, you’re in luck because I wrote quite a bit about this (this whole thing is 1.3k words or so). Also as a preface, I’m going to be looking at Inquisition from the point of an Elven Inquisitor, as it was my first playthrough and the most upsetting. Also apologies for any language issues or if things seem disjointed, I’m trying my best. [Also yes, this post is okay to reblog]
While every game needs a Hero pc, regardless of Origin (at least in Inquisition in Origins, DA2 you have absolutely no choice in your Hawke’s history or race but that won’t stop me from using mods to have an Elven Hawke), so I knew my character was going to be some sort of leader, but making the PC an Inquisitor? I’ve always had a negative association with words relating to inquisition, what, with you know, Catholicism and myself being a Muslim. But not only are you a leader of an Inquisition, which historically in the real world was a Catholic institution to combat “heresy” (the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions primarily targeting Jewish and Muslim people by forcing them to convert to Catholocism under threat of death!), but the PC is also labeled as a Herald of Andraste, regardless of their own faith. Even though the PC wasn’t actually saved by Andraste and given the anchor from her, they still have to spend the game where people across Thedas see them as such.
The game really gives of Bad Vibes from the moment the talk of an Inquisition starts, whether it be Cassandra’s disapproval if you try to say you’re not the Herald of Andraste. Right from the get go you get ignored and no matter what you say, you will still be the Herald. There’s also the matter (which blends into the being labeled Inquisitor) that if you ask Cassandra is she’s starting a holy war, her answer is less than reassuring. I believe her response is something along the lines of “There’s already a war, whether or not you want to be a part of it. As to if it’s holy, time will tell”. And like any fucked up interaction in the game, there’s no option to say “Hey, what the fuck??”.
While I often struggle with empathy, I have no issue feeling how horrifying and heartbreaking it would be if I were in Lavellan’s shoes. You leave your clan for an important mission, things go to shit, you wake up in prison and everyone wants you dead. But wait! Not everyone, some people have decided you are the Herald of the Prophetess of the religious organization responsible for the continued oppression, slaughter, and erasure of your people and their culture. You end up not being killed because of this, and then are given no other option to join an inquisition, of which you are eventually labeled inquisitor, whether you like it or not. I literally don’t like to think about it, it’s such a legitimately upsetting thing to think about. I suppose metaphorically, if I, a non-white Muslim, was labeled as some figure in Christianity and the Catholic Church picked (forced) me to lead an Inquisition, it wouldn’t be too far off from essentially what a Lavellan goes through, no?
I think what is especially upsetting, is as we see in the Jaws of Hakkon, the previous Inquisitor was also a Dalish elf, though his race and culture were completely erased from the Chantry’s history (the Jaws of Hakkon is a whole other think I hate for many reasons, namely stuff with assimilation, also having the Inquisitor of old be a Dalish elf is certainly… a choice. I’ll admit I know little of the timeline in DA and the history of things, but just by the pure nature of what an inquisition is I can’t imagine it was a good thing in any way. An inquisition lead by a minority is still an inquisition. I dunno my feelings are complicated). So Lavellan can probably feel that their race and culture will be erased, their name might live on but it might be used to justify violence. I always when playing get this sickening feeling that I (my character) has been forced to joined the side of their oppressor, and it brings my heart and soul much pain.
I said at the beginning, none of the games have been great with elves (or let’s be real, any non-human race or culture). When I first played Dragon Age: Origins, I remember I humouresly said in the live-reaction messages to my friend “I already experience racism, I don’t need a video game to supplement that” and “Do white people know they can write a story with conflict that doesn’t involve racism?”. I played through it and grimaced my way through microaggressions my character had to endure, the sexism, the slavery. I white knuckled it through the sexual assault and r*pe in the city elf origin and Cullen’s upsetting feelings towards f!Surana. In DA2 I winced at how much slavery was involved (my father told me one, “You shouldn’t gamify racial atrocities” and honestly he not wrong), at the way mages were abused and still framed as just as bad as their abusers, and people that were pro-mage framed as crazy. I struggled through the Chantry Explosion and MotA. But at the end of the day, I could still think the games were fun, at least Origins (DA2 gets dicey and the game mechanics aren’t as fun, but I like the characters and some of the game).
Dragon Age: Inquisition, however, takes the “uncomfortable to play” knob and turns it up to 100. Sure the graphics are shiny and it can be fun to trapeze around the Hinterlands and the Storm Coast gathering elfroot and riding a Hart or a War Nug, and WEWH is kinda fun when you know how it works (otherwise it's a nightmare). But the name says it all, Inquisition. I didn’t have high hopes for a game named after such a horrendous event in history (though also I know a lot of people don’t know too much about Inquisitions in history).
I really could analyze a lot of Dragon Age: Inquisition and the choices the Inquisitor makes, but when looking at tought or dubious choices in the game, I can’t ignore the fact that the entirety of the game and it’s choices were written by (white) people who choice to make this story. (This also comes up when I was talking about how uncomfortable some companion dialogue made me, people pointed out the character making the dialogue didn’t know better, but the writer of that dialogue did, ya sabes? but back to the issue at hand.) They chose to have all the racism, they chose to have it be an Inquisition, they chose to have Elven gods to be revealed as just sadistic magister slavers, to have elves slaughter and holy ground desecrated (some thoughts about that trope here). Every microaggression or macro aggression was written because someone wanted to include it, every reference and parallel to Inquisitions was because they wanted to include it. The lack of basic respect and sensitivity for the cultures and peoples that have faced atrocities as racism, colonialism, genocide, slavery, and Inquisitions and the ripples that affect people in even the smallest of ways is truly upsetting and speaks volumes.
can I just say I LOVE your griefs and andreys and I ESPECIALLY love that you draw men hairy
HEE THANK YOU I’m glad you appreciate it... there are so many patho characters I think deserve to be hairy dude rep. Especially the stamatins I will not forgive 2 for taking their almost unibrows away :/
The Liver of Piacenza, with a diagram and Etruscan inscriptions.
The Liver of Piacenza is an Etruscan artifact found in a field on September 26, 1877, near Gossolengo, in the province of Piacenza, Italy, now kept in the Municipal Museum of Piacenza, in the Palazzo Farnese.
It is a life-sized bronze model of a sheep's liver covered in Etruscan inscriptions (TLE719), measuring 126 mm by 76 mm by 60 mm and dated to the late 2nd century BCE, i.e. a time when the Piacenza region would already have been Latin-dominated (Piacenza was founded in 218 BCE as a Roman garrison town in Cisalpine Gaul).
okay I was gonna reply to that post with theirs but hit word limit smh. a lot of stuff gets said to be terf rhetoric these days (which honestly downplays how damaging and harmful they are) and I wouldn’t say that about that statement so much as like. terfs have tried to adopt it in a way, with how it’s such an easy statement to hide fuller meaning behind. I’ve never actually seen it irt trans men, but there are definitely some trans men who are misogynistic and try to use their identity as a leg up on going “how can I be misogynistic” which is completely dodging any responsibility. I know there are trans men who get bothered upon finding out that they’re no longer welcome in safe spaces for women and it’s just like. that’s just how it goes, ya know? You’ve gotta respect the distrust/discomfort or trauma that some people may have towards your gender, but even THAT opens the door a crack for transmisogynists to crawl through and try to defend their hatred.
I’m trying not to ramble and end up making this some long thing so all in all it’s not necessarily terf rhetoric but terfs have definitely adopted it and I would largely listen to trans women about how they feel about that type of statement more than anything as it is definitely more and more so being used against them. That whole statement is mainly just a slippery slope at this point. I hope any of this makes sense, I’ve kinda lost the plot.
yeah honestly i totally agree, like i said i can see where the harm for trans women lies. it’s just the version of the conversation i always see, which is the one surrounding trans men and not mentioning trans women at all, seems pretty ridiculous
