bittersweet fool

AND ANOTHER THING

this would actually be so neat on like a low approval chantry stooge dictator type of inquisitor worldstate. bc solas is completely disaffected and grief stricken and miserable for the entirety of dai, and is just like "ah yes. my civilization is dead and i killed felassan and the blight is about to get loose and render the world uninhabitable. all because of these fucking idiots. i hate it here fr" and does not really get attached to the world very much.

and meanwhile, dorian is, experiencing micro and macroaggressions in an unprecedented way. bc no one in the chantry stooge inquisition is really going to treat him any better than a regular apostate. and he's having arguments about slavery with solas. who, despite not really caring and thinking dorian is a wretched slave-owning noble scion, is still capable of out-arguing anyone on this topic out of pure habit.

this may be assisted by the hated chantry stooge inquisitor nodding and going "yeah so true :) elves really do only have the options of poverty and slavery :) it's unrealistic to want more for a naturally servile race you know :)" which makes dorian go "oh god, i don't want THEM to agree with me" haha

and THEN, solas retakes his power and becomes the dread wolf again. but now that annoying nepo baby magister's son is... running around trying to free slaves... at huge personal risk and abandoning most of his privilege to do so.... bc he was actually listening to solas' ted talks and thought about them even after solas left. wow.

actually this got a note so i remembered it and had a further brainwave

i think solas attempts his dinan'shiral omelas plan of locking himself into the black city with the blight. and then dorian. as per his Cultural Heritage. breaks into the black city again. but for niceys reasons this time jkgjfhd. he's looking like this the entire time

Morrigan was raised and groomed by Flemeth to be a lonely, isolated person. She had to stay to the woods, only interreact with others if it was to harm them, kill them, or bed them (highly fucked up when we meet Morrigan when she's in her early 20s). She isn't to form relationship or friendship... or personhood for herself.

We learn Flemeth intend to possess Morrigan's body later on and has been grooming her for this very purpose: to become her vessel in the future.

In DAI we learn that the soul couldn't be forced onto the unwilling.... But does that change that Flemeth specifically groomed Morrigan so she wouldn't want anything else? It's not lost to me that this cutscene happens after we learnt about the Well of Sorrows where Samson or Calperina were groomed by Corypheus with promises he did not intend to keep in order to be the vessel to the will of Mythal. Back again to the famous "it's not abuse if i ask"/"not always true."

But the other important gift for Morrigan is a mirror. And she tells you that when she was a kid she stole a beautiful mirror from a beautiful woman she saw nearby, and hid it, but once Flemeth found it out, she smashed the mirror and scolded her for taking something for herself.

Morrigan was not allowed to have anything for herself. Not even her own self reflection. She was not allowed to see herself. She was Flemeth's future vessell first. She was not allowed the personhood to perceive herself.

By gifting her a mirror, the Warden allows her to see herself for who she is. Who she wants to be. Able to look at something that reflects her desire to become her own person. Not an extention of her mother.

And i think it's even more efficient with the knowledge Morrigan then ends the game looking for ways to fix Eluvians. Those are mirrors, but not quite. She was put on this path by her mother, and is pursuing it to escape her: those are mirrors who don't show your reflection, only path forwards.

As long as Flemeth is in the picture, she steals Morrigan's self reflection, her image. She threatens Morrigan, reminding her she still Belongs To Her.

"A soul could not be forced onto the unwilling" and Morrigan being mad that "so she thinks i would have accepted such a thing?" yes my love. Because she raised you to not even see your own face as your own to own.

I do think Flemeth cared for Morrigan in some way, but she was a means to an end, the same way Kieran was supposed to be a mean to an end for Morrigan. Except Morrigan actually realized this is not the type of mother she wanted to be. Morrigan choose loving her son over becoming like her mother.

In the first three games, Morrigan still had to run from her mother. But at least she was reclaiming herself.

I

Was

RIGHT

Oh how I've been saying for YEARS that this is the real Noelle

The one with Freedom, the one with Power, the one who is finally able to smile because she Chose To, not because she Had To

I didn't get specifics, I'm sure, but I was so close that I'm still taking all this as a Win

So, for anyone reading this hopefully correctly tagged post I won't relitigate the Weird Route's new ending

Other than gushing about it being the best scene in Chapter 5, a relief after the dog shit seen on the Main Route

2nd best part of the chapter was when my new 2nd favorite character, The Roaring Knight, kills Flowery, thank GOD

Anyways, Noelle as we see her is precisely in line with my predictions, the need for freedom, and strength, and to stop being what was forced on her

What I didn't know, was that what Noelle was actually rebelling against was The Prophecy, was this fundamental force in the Universe of Deltarune, and not simple, normal mentally ill girl stuff like Social pressures

It's why she sees herself as so weak on the Main Route, and further explains her infatuation with Susie, as Susie (until ch 5 beat her with a "I Wear Ribbons Now" Stick and shoved a ten foot twenty Lobotomy Needle up her snout) was the great fighter of the Fate, someone who vowed with all her heart to avoid the ending

Susie just lacks whatever power, whatever agency Kris has to Change, being US, of course, whatever that means now, to actually break this course of Fate

As such, she, like everyone else, just has to follow the road, and is gonna crash into the ending regardless

As such I would also like to mention the Abort, where Kris and Noelle get rubber banded back into events that, are literally impossible to have happened, but Had To

It's... jarring, and purposefully so

It's like fighting Gravity mid fall, but you were able to Coyote Time for a few key moments, to walk away from the cliff and away from the dreaded bottom of the pit, but failing to continue the Route just puts you right back to falling, even if it has to yank you up a few feet, defying all logic and Laws of Nature, to do so, so that you Fall the "correct amount" before your Asgorey death on the bottom

Because Nothing Changed.

It's so, so very, very interesting

And I'm super excited to see the conclusion in ch 7, not so much for more Lobotmized Susie lmao

Showing off the Arapaima I made! (Pattern also made by me)