I thought I'd make an introductory post since it's been a while.
Hello, I'm Asher and I'm a ~fandom elder~ (derogatory).
Kidding aside, I'm 35+, an Australian, Jewish and queer (she/they) writer and artist. Most of my blog is Dragon Age, but I have dabbled in other fandoms. Probably my most recent was The Arcana.
My personal blog is @emotionalsupportgolem where you're welcome to follow me.
Once upon a time I drew art and you can find it here
I also write and you can find it here or here
I also help run a fantasy food blog over here @foodofthedas (which got a mention in Bioware's recent cookbook!)
I have a Simblr blog at @jewishsimming
I do a lot of blogging about my Dragon Age OC, Nyssa, who I've been working on for 10 years now. I'll do a write-up of her and link here when done.
Other things to note:
I have anons turned on, but overly rude/abusive/aggressive messages get deleted. I'm not your punching bag and I'm not required to put up with it.
This blog is occasionally NSFW so I prefer minors didn't follow or interact.
I'm not really interested in starting or participating in fandom drama. Those years are behind me TBH. I'm just here to talk and write about my characters.
FYI, I don't really use this sideblog much because Veilguard killed my interest in Dragon Age and no-one cares about my OC anyway. So if you want to reach me, you're better off going to my main, @emotionalsupportgolem
Seriously though, let's be real. The theatrical virtue signaling is a) ridiculous, b) deeply antisemitic and c) won't do anything meaningful to stop Israel from committing war crimes in Gaza, nor will it grant Palestinians the peace, dignity and self-determination they deserve.
I'm also not your "good Jew" and I'm not going to apologise for being concerned about antisemitism, because it's a real issue that deserves the same due consideration that other forms of bigotry like racism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, etc.
Anyone who wants to know more including about my own stance on the I/P conflict (if you care), you can do the one thing that very few people seem to do: you can actually ask rather than making assumptions
Currently trying to dredge up the creativity from my tired brain to continue my fic but I want to confirm a couple things
Nyssa is Jewish if that wasn't obvious already
I deleted those messages I received and turned off my anons because I don't deserve to be used as a punching bag and this is a reminder to myself as well as everyone else who receives these types of messages (aka every Jew on the internet since Oct 7th). You can turn your anon off and the weirdos disappear like magic! You don't have to tolerate it!
FYI, I don't really use this sideblog much because Veilguard killed my interest in Dragon Age and no-one cares about my OC anyway. So if you want to reach me, you're better off going to my main, @emotionalsupportgolem
Seriously though, let's be real. The theatrical virtue signaling is a) ridiculous, b) deeply antisemitic and c) won't do anything meaningful to stop Israel from committing war crimes in Gaza, nor will it grant Palestinians the peace, dignity and self-determination they deserve.
I'm also not your "good Jew" and I'm not going to apologise for being concerned about antisemitism, because it's a real issue that deserves the same due consideration that other forms of bigotry like racism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, etc.
Anyone who wants to know more including about my own stance on the I/P conflict (if you care), you can do the one thing that very few people seem to do: you can actually ask rather than making assumptions
NOTICE: As more and more fanfic writers are using generative AI for their works (you uncreative dweebs), I hereby swear on everything I hold dear that I have not and will NEVER use generative AI in ANY of my written work. Everything I post will be organically and creatively my own.
Fanfiction is a conversation. It's an attempt at community. If you don't stick around and socialize at the community potluck, we're gonna stop throwing them because we think you're just here to score free food and not to meet your neighbors.
this whole idea in both the fandom and the games themselves that being a people attached to their past & a lost civilization is a failing whereas a celebration of the present is something to strive for wrt elven & dwarven culture is something that reads as fundamentally western & liberal to me.
responding to prev tags as my last addition of the day but the common thread IS western liberalism (which is an inherently racist ideology) and it has been baked into dragon age from the start. our beloved series has always been written by canadian liberals & its core messaging has not changed. look to origins and you will find condemnations of the dalish for being too angry and too focused on their past. you will find the idea of change = good, tradition = bad in the dwarven narrative. it was always there (and it is & will always be the favourite dogwhistle of western liberals! and the BACKBONE of anti-indigenous & antisemitic rhetoric!)
sharing these tags from @/krogans-give-the-best-cuddles for a good retrospective on dragon ageās liberalism & dgaiderās perspective on the series he authored. if you havenāt followed his interviews before, it will be a really informative read. in conclusion:
I am so serious when I say if you want to learn about light, you NEED to at least look at modesevenās tutorials. even if youāre not pursuing a painterly style, this is all essential theory that can be easily adapted to different coloring styles. notice how none of these ever say ālight with these colors and shade with these colorsā? notice how this is teaching how light works on a mechanical level, and reminding the audience to adjust the actual colors they choose by context? THAT is good advice.
(if youāre thinking āwow I want to study more of this persons art!ā I encourage you to do so, but proceed with the knowledge that modeseven draws pretty much exclusively weird as hell kink art. sometimes wisdom comes from horny places)
If you want a sign to continue Nyssa's story, this is it. Even with the state Bioware and Dragon Age are in, OC stories are one of the ways in which I have had the most fun in Dragon Age ever since I entered the fandom, and I believe it can be a great source of joy for you too. Take as long as you need, rest, feel sad, feel angry, but don't let things outside of your control prematurely cut off a possible source of joy and fun and new friends. Wishing you all the best!! šš
This is one of the loveliest asks I've had in a long time, and I really appreciate that you took the time out of your day to write such nice, encouraging words.
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.
I keep going back to that one scene in Dragon Age 2 where Fenris kills his enslaver (and possibly his sister who ratted him out) and heās like, back to the camera and covered in blood, and heās like āim aloneā and if the player chooses the option, hawke can step forward with a soft āim here, fenrisā and fenris turns to give hawke this lookāone thatās like, a mix of pain, exhaustion, adoration, longing, doubtā before quickly pulling back and the walls come back up
And like yeah that feels very color spectrum duo to me
