Athea

Okay, so. I was the one who made the comment in the second screenshot on the latest episode of a popular BioWare related fan podcast ("Split the Veil"). The person I replied to and then immediately posted about my comment on bluesky (and I know she was referring to *my* comment, because she posted this literally minutes after I wrote this) is part of the podcast and still one of the biggest Dragon Age content creators on YT, Ghil Dirthalen aka Caitie. Meaning that she and this podcast is for many people still the main source of information for everything DA and Bioware related, including *critical commentary*(!!) (but only if doesn't hurt the feelings of the devs she's friends with I guess).

She also loves Veilguard. Which is totally fine (although very confusing to me still, because before Veilguard, I always assumed from watching her old videos that she loved DA for the same reasons I do) and whether that came across or not, I never intended to "convince" her that something she likes is bad. That's just my opinion.

The thing is, this specific episode of the podcast was them talking about everything Bioware related that happened within the last year or since the last episode (which was a long time ago). 

And I mean EVERYTHING. What former Bioware writers are up to now (she even posted a 2 hour interview with two former DA writers), how pissy she is at the Mass Effect team now because, as we all know, the ME team had beef with her besties the DA team on Veilguard... Literally anything. 

However, you will never catch them mentioning anything about the *lead writer of Veilguard* going on public panels and saying.... a lot of things about slavery and imperialism and a comparison between Tevinter and the US that were, imo, very indicative of why the writing of Veilguard turned out like this, aside from all the corporate meddling.

So here is her providing insider knowledge about Veilguard's development in the comment section, and here is me, very frustrated about how most of the constructive criticism and the lead writer's revealing comments are never addressed in the podcast, despite talking about literally everything else, replying directly to her comment, because, well, *I was specifically referring to the things she said* in this public comment section of this popular podcast that she's part of, pointing out the contradicting statements that she and Weekes have shared ever since DAV released, that "the game is bad because of EA/corporate meddling", but wait, "the game is actually amazing and the critics and all the disappointing fans are wrong/bigots and just don't get its message" and "Dragon Age was never dark fantasy anyway" (*head in my hands*).

But sure, I am an "asshole" now for not even disagreeing with her (which I guess she never saw, because she said she didn't read it? lol) and literally just pointing out quotes from the lead writer that she has never addressed and that I would expect a podcast like this to cover. Because who knows, maybe there's the slightest chance that she's not actually aware of these things or forgot and might bring it up in the next episode./s (Ok, I know this is just me being salty now, but the way the positive Veilguard people are just so dismissive of constructive criticism and defensive about "their baby", as she calls it, is imo just mirroring the immature writing of the game itself or the way the game pretends complex issues just don't exist, which makes it frankly very frustrating to have a discussion.)

And the way she's talking about my comment here now makes it seem like I was being the Mean Hater randomly searching for an unrelated comment of her and writing a "paper" about why "VEILGUARD SUCKS and here's why you should hate it!!!!111", when that just wasn't the case.