[sunlight-shunlight]

i keep thinking about the dalish and city elves beef in dragon age bc like.

it is actually SO pointed that merrill spends... 7 years staring at a mirror, before even considering helping the alienage! and will call feynriel a slur! like LITERALLY staring at her own reflection, rather than at the people outside, bc she wants to Preserve Culture, but doesn't value the actual living people of that culture in the way most of them practice it.

sera's anti-dalish and anti-city elf beef could be really interesting too, bc she essentially watched the blight + the rampaging nobility + slavers all tear through the alienage one after the other, and then thought "ugh, the dalish didn't help, the city elves' traditions didn't help. clearly all useless. rip to them but i'm different! i'm normal". and then she gets adopted by a rich human noble who probably gave her some chantry based education along with feeding and housing her, so... this gets fully entrenched. and she's convinced that the elves' problem is that they aren't assimilating enough and the non-andrastians are giving all of them a bad name for no reason.

and actually, i would go with: she's capable of passing as a human. bc she's tall, and picked up enough mannerisms and etiquette from her adoptive mother that she can mimic human nobles for a bit, and this helps her infiltrate places. but her writer didn't think too hard about it, so somehow she's distinctive and obviously fereldan but getting orlesian servants to do crimes with her, is afraid of new situations or ideas, and isn't very good at winning people over in arguments. and this somehow still works as a red jenny. fhdsfjfhjdf. the writer simply hates anarchists i fear...

AND. briala's anti-dalish thing of "ugh why didn't they simply come save us?" and willingness to immediately kill and betray clan virnehn, could be a reflection of how at heart, she is orlesian. and orlesians generally have this idea of dalish as being either highly dangerous killers, or as romanticized figures who are just frolicking in the woods and have no troubles in life. and neither of these are accurate. and so she takes out her frustration on the dalish when they don't live up to her standards, rather than recognizing they're just as precarious as the city elves, and have the same enemies.

anyway this was all accidental and goes nowhere. bc the writers are so extremely white and have trouble with "immigrants exist" let alone any more nuanced conflicts 😭

[rockleaves]

refusal to examine cultural anxieties in folklore is also a big part of why so much wicca/neopagan shit clings to that divine feminine nonsense. is magic being associated with women because a misogynistic society in which women are legally property is threatened by women who live alone, who are well-respected and knowledgeable in their communities, who so much as have the audacity to live past childbearing age? no, it must be because women are uniquely primal and spiritual unlike rational men <- the thought process of a person who is very thoughtless.

there are some things where you can just tell by looking with your eyes and brain — ex baba yaga, powerful old woman who lives alone, a lot of descriptions of her sagging breasts — but there are others where it’s like. okay all these examples are going to be from russian folklore because that’s my area of study but the bannik, the spirit of the russian bathhouse, was usually regarded as a very temperamental and dangerous spirit. it’s primarily an expression of anxiety about the danger of the bathhouse itself: the banya was central to life and hygiene but there was always a very real and present risk that it would burn down with you inside. but despite this women typically gave birth in the banya and it was widely believed the bannik would protect them during it. so what does it say about the perception of women and of childbirth that it was believed they would be welcomed by a dangerous and unpredictable spirit during birth?

another example: the stove corner. the stove was the center of the russian peasant home (figuratively. physically it was in a corner) and there are endless stories about the stove and the magic/spirits associated with it: accounts of the domovoi, the house spirit, living under or behind it; the practice of perepekaniye, gently baking a sick baby in the stove to cure it; etc etc. the supernatural in russian folklore is collectively termed the unclean force, and because of its associations with the supernatural, there are accounts where stove corner is referred to as the unclean corner, particularly when it’s described in comparison to the red corner (alternate term: the beautiful corner), which was the diagonally opposite corner of the home where orthodox icons are housed. but also: while the term women’s corner more accurately refers to the curtained-off portion of the stove area where the majority of women’s work — dishes, needlework, breastfeeding, etc — was completed, it is sometimes used to refer to the entire stove corner because women were in charge of keeping the stove burning. so again we have the association between women/women’s work and the supernatural, the unnatural, the “unclean.” is this because women are uniquely tuned into the spirit world? or is it instead revealing of attitudes towards women and their capabilities? there is a right answer.

[elphael]

nobody is saying you can’t like revealing character designs but idk I still think it is important to be able to look at women in media being designed with exaggerated curves and revealing outfits and being able to identify it as misogyny. especially in media where (as far as developers are concerned, regardless of actual audience) men are the primary target. like where am I. who are you. what year is it. sorry

[biancadavri]

WILDLY different reactions from getting kicked out of orzammar forever here

[yukirandom]

Welcome back Tei

[whereismymonsterlover]

Man something obvious just clicked in my brain.

Ciel wears shorts in his everyday wardrobe, which very quickly determines that he is in fact a child. When he goes to Weston, he's expected to wear trousers as part of the uniform, but when he leaves, he reverts back to shorts without hesitation.

I wish we got a moment where he commented on the trousers because he seems to NEVER wear them.

As someone so self-conscious of his appearance as a social elite, and his hatred for being undermined for his age, it's really interesting that he still dresses himself in shorts. On the other hand, it's great storytelling because while he might be this super cunning and intelligent 13 year old who tries to put himself on such a high pedestal, we and everyone around him know he is a young boy.

Particularly at this time in high society, clothes are incredibly important for portraying your character, wealth and status. Perhaps Ciel enjoys confusing his new acquaintances with his Earldom and smart shorts. Again, it could just be aesthetically pleasing to have this anaemic Victorian child to have his pale legs out, juxtaposing the tall black mass of hell towering next to him.

[annoyingttt]

What I love about Ciel is that despite having this whole deal with his being a child, he doesn’t try to hide his age at all. He doesn’t pretend to be an adult, he doesn’t want to be seen as an adult, he wants to be seen as worthy of respect. And that’s a different thing. In the first anime story we see that he’s well aware of how he is perceived, and instead of denying being a child he underscores it and uses it as an argument and everything. This man is wrong, but he’s not wrong about Ciel being “just a child”, he’s wrong about children not being worthy of taking seriously. So I feel like Ciel dressing in a child-like fashion is him expressing pride and commitment to the only group he has an allegiance to: mistreated children. Pretending to be something that he’s not would undermine the significance of what he is.

[bocchanhive]

I know it’s late as hell to post this but who cares I KNOW ONE OF YOUS 🫵 IS UP!

[lesbisoka]

the fact that this matches their faces exactly

[fireyfobbitmedicine]

Mattel has shown time and time again that they are capable of making MH dolls with textured hairstyles

and yet the most textured hair that Clawdeen, the most prominent black character of MH, has ever gotten is some measly poly micro braids atop pin straight hair

[defrogatoryposts]

Mattel giving the new Venus doll textured hair as reparation for her last doll having straight hair is perfection and now their challenge is to do it for Clawdeen 🔫

[dollsdreams]

Okay now let me just say, I wanna see some curls and kinks in clawdeens hair. We know mattel can and will do it. Gimme clawdeen with CURLS

[yukirandom]

As my Monster Fest Clawdeen had some defect on her hair and was out of stock, Mattel offered me another doll. Obviously got another Clawdeen 😛

I'm not a big fan of beach/pool lines but, just like Skull Shores, this one is so pretty, I love the transparent pants!

[feymaid]

Someone said that the veilguard theme doesn't sound like a hero's journey and instead sounds like an anti-hero theme and now I can't relax.

[droodlebug]

please listen to this it is destroying me its so funny

[rifa]

A little princess

[explodingchantry]

dai harbors such disdain for the elves it's honestly baffling. Both of your elven companions hold disdain for the dalish. neither of them ARE dalish. a dalish inquisitor barely gets a say in being forced to carry the title of herald of andraste and inquisitor. their clan can be wiped out in a war table mission with no consequences, no cutscenes, no dialogue, no nothing as a result. you can get one of the most beloved companion of the game defending slavery to you. you can get an elf to command orlais from the shadows but the game goes to great length to let you know that she is corrupt and untrustworthy, too, like the humans.

solas, who is FRAMED as being not just trustworthy, but extremely knowledgeable and wise, denies his connection to the elves. he believes himself better than the dalish who are foolish worshippers of the monsters who enslaved them millenias ago, and better than the city elves who let themselves (in his eyes) be persecuted by humans. if you romance him he takes away your vallaslin, one of the most culturally significant symbols of the dalish, because it actually used to be a marking forced upon them by their evil slaver gods. ther dalish are constantly, over and over, portrayed as foolish and misunderstanding their past and heritage, with very little opportunity to argue against that even as a dalish inquisitor.

Non dalish know more than you even when you are a dalish inquisitor. Morrigan, a HUMAN, teaches you, a dalish elf, about ancient elvhen magic and artifacts. Solas, who through the game is portrayed as a non-dalish elf, teaches you about ancient elvhen magic and artifacts whilst at the same time mocking the dalish who wish to retain their culture, heritage and knowledge

it is so meanspirited. the reveal that solas is fen'harel does very little to soften the blow, especially since it's hand in hands with the reveal that flemeth, a HUMAN, is mythal.

i know there's some interesting lore bits that ties ancient elves to humans, but that doesn't matter, okay? What matters is that the fucking writing is biased against elves. the writing could've raised these questions, offered these earth shattering discoveries, without being so mean spirited and biased against elves and especially the dalish.

imagine being a player who doesnt care to dig into the deeper lore, whose never played a dragon age game before. you would be left scoffing about how foolish the dalish are, obsessed with their past to the point they'll happily believe falsehoods and venerate evil slavers. you wouldn't care about any of the lore implications. and even if you did, it wouldn't remove the negative bias the game really shoves at you. it's literally baffling how no one in the writer's room was like "hm, maybe we should offer a proper dalish point of view to some of these things. maybe we should hold back on the fantasy racism just a teensy bit, considering our fantasy races and cultures are deeply tied to real ones in the real world with very obvious inspirations. it might be best to not portray one of our marginalised races and people as stupid idiots who got their entire heritage all wrong. maybe."

[explodingchantry]

there's also something especially shitty in the way that dragon age 2 continuously frames merrill as foolish for trying to restore the eluvian, whilst in dai morrigan is so cool and smart for getting the eluvians to work for her and for teaching a dalish inquisitor about their heritage. i dont really hold it against morrigan as a character because she has surprisignly very little agency within the writing (a completely different issue i could rant for a while about as well) -- but it's just. interesting, i think. those choices theyve made.

[explodingchantry]

Being a dai hater is so hard because it's like. You recognise the writing is boring, hollow, prejudiced, cheap, and meaningless. You recognise the open world is empty and boring as hell. That the story and villain is lackluster. But no one else... Does??

Dai is game of the year. Dai is the most popular da game. Dai brought dragon age into the spotlight. "we know you love your inquisitor" people do ?? Every piece of promotion for veilguard is themed around Solas. It's just so strange. Like I feel insane playing dai because I'm so bored and most of the writing either doesn't hit or just pisses me off but it's the most wildly beloved da game after origins and I'm like... Why????? Why is this one the most popular, am I just. Dumb? Do I just have bad taste? Do I not know what a good video game and a good story are? Omg it's just wild

[explodingchantry]

I think it's just especially weird because I know when I dislike something out of simple personal taste. I'm not as much of a fan of dao's gameplay not because it's objectively bad but because it's not my cup of tea and because I'm more used to more modern, snappy rpgs. It has however an incredible amount of value and depth and I fully understand why some people might like it

And I really tried to be objective and open minded during this replay of the whole dragon age series. I'm ten years older than when I first played. I'm much more mature, I've had many more life experiences, I've got a degree in writing, I know way more about video games than I used to. And it's been really interesting seeing what parts of the writing of all three games aged badly, and what parts still work. And I really tried to give dai a fair shot, to be open minded, and experience everything a normal player would but it still leaves me feeling so empty and annoyed, hence all those longass posts. And there wld be more too if my computer didn't crash when I was in the middle of my here lies the abyss analysis that I never finished rewriting again. It's just wild