CerysAmell

He can have some soft as a treat.

The Rotunda and the Fresco

I don’t want to die. Not knowing that the world still needed me.”

“The failure was mine. I should pay the price.

But the people…they need me.”

i think actually the whole chantry situation would be significantly influenced by the fact that they have control over all the tranquil? and the tranquil are... literate, unpaid, tireless, detail-oriented labourers, who will never get bored or cranky or want to quit. so they would actually be like the backbone of how southern thedas makes any kind of printed material, in scriptoriums attached to the circles or whatever?

which is also really convenient for the chantry. since then they have a chokehold on what gets disseminated. any independent groups that make manuscripts or print material would be less efficient, since by necessity, they would need to... pay their scribes and give them days off, and occasionally have them goof up a page and waste time.

and this raises really interesting questions about stuff like the book of shartan and the heretical chant verses being spread around - can people quietly bribe a chantry official to get them to assign a tranquil to copy it out under the table? is there part-time scribe work going on in alienages to keep these texts circulating? do mages (also literate and have access to materials) themselves manage to do this type of thing covertly, or do they have enough loyalty from the tranquil that the tranquil would be willing to lie about it and help them make some contraband?

anyway, THIS is how the popularity of varric's serialized novels, spurring the development of the printing press, and therefore more secular decentralized sources of media, could create a Chantry Reformation Chaos Era, when the chantry loses its grip on information and archives-

which would even make sense to explain why varric's novels are such notoriously beloved hits, bc while also being entertaining, they were some of the first to be published, and presumably set the precedent for what serialized, mass-printed, non-chantry approved literature even looks like in southern thedas...

and the answer is... the problem was not the genre or smuttiness! the problem is that varric "centrism dwarf" tethras has been making widespread, popular, secular literature that has no dependence on the chantry for distribution.

so they HAVE to spin it as "oh, these are trashy... poorly written... sinful, even 😔" to try and save face. but it didn't really help, bc fundamentally people love reading that shit, and if it's cheap, quick to distribute, and serialized, that's even better than what the chantry publishing system was doing before.

if the inquisitor romances dorian, vivienne receives a letter from an acquaintance in tevinter expressing shock at the “disturbing rumors” of their relationship, and vivienne responds by ripping the acquaintance a new one

repeatedly expresses sorrow at civilian deaths (”the defenseless are always the first casualties of war”)

cole said this about her harrowing “no, I will not fall, no one will control me ever again…shaking, hollow, harrowed but smiling at templars to show them i’m me, i am not like that”

despite her insistence that cole is a demon, she was worried for him

unlike solas, she is afraid of demons

finds it delightful that varric is writing a story with her as the villain

“my dear, if i didn’t want people to fear me I wouldn’t dress like this”

wants to send a sternly worded letter to varric’s tailor

was born in wycome 

has read hard in hightown

“i am the most dangerous thing in the room, darling”

treats bull like a favorite son and teaches him to dance

bull compares her to a qunari dreadnought, which she enjoys

greatly admired divine justinia

sees templars as a useful tool

“that which makes you different can be a burden or a source of strength”

was taken to the circle at such a young age that she doesn’t remember her parents

passes information on to sera and the friends of red jenny

There are only two companions who you gain approval with if you go out of your way to rescue people during the attack on Haven. Varric is one, as one might expect, but Vivienne is the other.

they literally say it gets damaged permanently by any death or warfare or violence. in a dark fantasy setting where people are fighting nonstop. and then that damage causes the area to become uninhabitable, and alters the nature of the spirits to become evil and attack people. and this has been going on for millennia, and people are just kind of used to it, and very few people are considering that it's largely irreversible and the damage will grow over time!! and the dalish elves/mages/poor people are forced to live in places where the veil is worse, and just accept the increased danger bc they have no other options.

so this seemed very very obviously like. either it tragically finally crumbles and kills the thedas in [whatever amount of time creates enough wars to fully destroy it], or it's optimistically altered significantly to prevent thedas from dying?

To be honest, this is why, until Veilguard was released, that I was fully in favor of the Veil staying up. I felt like the Veil was this poignant metaphor for climate change, and that even though some consequences are permanent, we can still work to mitigate the damage and make the world a better place. That we can always reverse course, even if some things can never be fixed.

𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘴𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘦𝘵

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