I mostly post big walls of text about vidya games, and sometimes other media. Having previously been in mourning over the death of my beloved, Dragon Age, I have fallen deep down the well that is Cyberpunk 2077.
In fact due to this I have recently started a sideblog with my friends where we post incorrect Johnny Silverhand quotes for the sole reason that it amuses us endlessly.
I enjoy giving out recs, especially for indie games or niche fantasy/sci-fi books and shows. See here my list of recs for Dragon Age fans!
Here's my AO3 page, where some of my writing ends up.
And here's my Artstation, where most of my art finds its way to.
Feel free to send me asks! About my opinions, recs, or anything really. Idk I'm just an attention whore at heart :)
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There's a recurring online tendency to aestheticize consensus itself. The imagined future village is full of emotionally compatible people who enjoy communal gardening, conflict resolution circles, acoustic folk music, mutual aid potlucks, and repairing bicycles together at sunset. Which is nice for the people who genuinely enjoy that lifestyle. But plenty of humans are solitary, prickly, obsessive, urban, nocturnal, sensory-seeking, technologically attached, contrarian, novelty-seeking, private, or just plain difficult. Those people do not evaporate after the revolution. They do not get Left Behind while you are Raptured into the Utopia. They become your neighbors.
It's always the same damn dream. You didn't really escape Coldridge prison that time, Corvo. You get out, you fall into the river. You are unable to move and the hands just keep clawing you back. They pull you under water, drowning you, suffocating you.
And then you just wake up.
Back in that cell again. Dark, desolate, quiet. As if nothing ever happened.
For this year's @dishonoredgiftexchange fugue feast for @endymionatlatmus
Hope you like it!
(i threw a bit of the first prompt in with the second, I hope that was ok)
This year I got assigned @aut0mne for my giftee and I was very excited to try and bring the vibes of the Flooded District and their OC to life with my piece!
Thank you so much to the mods at @dishonoredgiftexchange for hosting this fun event every season!
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My gift for @pyra-raptor for the @dishonoredgiftexchange! They wanted kids of Dunwall and I love the idea of capturing a slice of life, like the art books do. Perhaps Dunwall once was a bright and optimistic place to live...
Thank you for your lovely prompts, I hope you like it, Pyra! I had a lovely time making it :)
I was also inspired by one of their other prompts about the wildlife and thought I'd add a little bonus piece to explain what the kids are catching!
Prompt was the Outsider watching a sunrise for the first time after millennia. I know it was intended as a writing prompt, but the visual concept was so striking I just had to to a bit of both! Hope you enjoy!
Thanks to @dishonoredgiftexchange for organizing the event!
> weekes believes that Writing Romance Novels during fascism is inherently a revolutionary and useful act. as opposed to using the romance novel money to materially help people in danger
> they talk at length about how they intend for rook to be a self insert, and the lack of choices is (ostensibly) bc they assume every player wants to be a Hero™️ and self insert as rook too
> rook's entire shtick is that they're incurious about the world, and refuse to extend any empathy to someone they've decided is Bad. anyone who opposes rook is comically evil and has no depth at all
> as per weekes' worldview, fascists don't have depth or reasons to exist, they just Appear. rook's opposition is all fascists, bc they're clearly bad people, and those are super easy to identify, and everyone knows they're bad
> rook steals an ancient safehouse that could shelter hundreds of people in a crisis, and instead uses it as a cozy home base for their selected friends and no one else
> the heinous, slavery based empire that's created by conquering and subjugating the elves... is basically good, bc it has a nice middle class and the majority of the population toootally hates the slavery
> and actually every problem was the elves' fault, so they're the ones who need to apologize and abandon their religion and atone. bc of their ancestral blood libel esque sins. why did they even bother existing, when it was unnatural and a bad idea? they are repeatedly described as jewish/indigenous/roma analogues, so this is such a normal way to think about them 😁👍
> entire game has a takeaway of "never ever try to change the status quo. you can and should unleash as much violence as necessary to maintain the status quo, but any violence in pursuit of a better future is Evil and Bad and deserves eternal jail. and eternal jail is fine as long as the prisoner deserves it btw."
the shadow dragons could’ve been so good if they were good. instead they were so laughably bad in every possible way. largely a product of the complete sanitization of tevinter but good god what a mess of a faction. led by 3 wealthy human mages one of whom directly profits off of slavery as his day job another of whom is the “man on the inside” in the government but see the only people who do slavery in this game are evil venatori! so why do you even need a man on the inside in the government then, it’s not like he’s even accomplished anything in his 8 years of holding a seat, he almost punched a guy once but that’s all we hear of. and the third of whom is literally one of the richest people in tevinter and maybe thedas who has used her immense wealth and monopoly over tevinter’s business ties to orzammar to apparently do absolutely fuckall. there’s also a human templar for some reason. there is one named character who is a former slave but you learn this from a codex entry and you cannot talk to her about it. and she operates the front end of the pawn shop: she is the first in the line of fire. she is expendable. if you save treviso you find her body in the street.
so what do the shadow dragons do? they assist in slave revolts, apparently. but when you work with them in one of the first missions in the game you’re tracking down a red lyrium “relic.” no explanation as to what this is or why it’s important other than the venatori have it. so surely during the shadow dragon companion’s quest you must do something dealing with slavery right, since that’s the shadow dragons’ whole thing? no? aelia is (checks notes) trying to unleash a demon sealed beneath minrathous, for evil reasons i guess? if i want more context i have to read tevinter nights? apparently she’s venatori but there is no connection between what she’s doing and what the other venatori are doing in the main plot of the game, and neve’s plotline is about the threads, not the shadow dragons? the shadow dragons are just kind of fully irrelevant?
so what about rook mercar? as a rook who works with the anti-slavery faction, you must have some input on literally any of this, right? no, you don’t know your base of operations or the leaders of your organization or the fact that mae lost her seat which happened years ago and is the reason the shadow dragons even exist and it was a public smear campaign so rook not knowing this is literally insane. you’re explicitly raised by a wealthy military family from a city that isn’t this one, and there’s no explanation as to how you got to minrathous or why you started working with the shadow dragons. the only mercar-specific dialogues you really get are saying “shadows stick together :)” a few times. you have broken chains in your bedroom from a slave rebellion you helped. why the fuck did you keep those? rook mercar is useless and toothless and stupid on purpose so that you don’t think too hard about the issues that supposedly drive your character but are barely present in the game. and at the same time, they were sent away from the shadow dragons for being too radical and not going along with the safe plan! 😭
and then for some reason you get to choose the next archon—the ruler of a system that is built upon slavery. for some reason one of your queer liberal friends gets to be president even though it’s an internal election process within the magisterium and dorian has probably fewer than a dozen allies and mae is believed by most of the imperium to have committed some sort of vaguely-alluded-to treason. we are not even going to confirm whether all the magisters blighted by elgar’nan were killed or not. literally don’t worry about it kitten ❤️. nothing about the system is going to change. dorian using spies and blackmail and assassins to accomplish his goals is framed as radical when he spent an entire game making snide jabs about how that’s the essence of tevinter politics. mae says you can get the people on your side and show them the truth as if tevinter being a complete farce and magisters doing blood magic and the nation running on slavery isn’t the stereotype everyone outside of the country knows and as if all of that isn’t known more deeply by the people who live there. as if “having the people on your side” means anything in tevinter and can accomplish change without revolution and without any violence.
it’s just all such a nonsensical disaster it hurts to think about. and of course weekes says that they didn’t want to write about revolution because they “don’t have that sort of attitude”—it’s so painfully obvious how terrified they are of actual change and addressing the deep-seated issues of empire and colonialism (and they make it blatantly clear on a panel about writing about empire. lol). it’s obvious that they just didn’t want to deal with the intricacies of a society built on slavery because they are perfectly fine with their status quo and not examining what the settler state they live in is built on. obviously weekes is not the only writer of this game but this mindset bleeds into its entirety and certainly does not come from only weekes. it shows so clearly in every part of tevinter and dock town and the shadow dragons, both in what they are and in what they aren’t
also all of this is not even to mention that iirc veilguard doesn’t show or describe any slave uprisings that were successful without the aid of the shadow dragons—again an organization that is headed by 3 wealthy highborn human mages. this is to demonstrate that “hey, look, the shadow dragons do do something!” but what happens as a consequence is it gives off the impression that the writers believe enslaved people cannot gain freedom on their own without the aid of these extremely privileged people who are cosplaying rebellion from the comfort of their estates. when you do interact with slaves in like one or two quests they’re helpless captives and you rescue them and then they sing your praises. it’s a blatant white savior fantasy and it’s rancid
ALSO also. sorry i’m not done with this post. the shadow dragons being The Queer Faction is very intentional. do not think about the slavery do not think all the suffering and exploitation going on in tevinter. see, our leaders are a trans woman, a gay man, a trans man, and (squints) matt mercer i guess. the shadow dragons are an idyllic queer haven and that is the part of tevinter you are shown. there’s no corruption just your faction of fun cool gay and trans friends who would never do anything as evil as profiting off of slavery or owning slaves or working for the state to capture escaped slaves (tarquin is literally a templar and sure he’s “corrupt” (in a good way don’t worry) and “looks the other way” but he wouldn’t still have the job if he never did it.) mae is your nice friendly mom friend who wouldn’t hurt a fly, dorian i cannot emphasize enough has done absolutely jack shit in the magisterium, ashur may or may not be the black divine wink wink we’re going to give you enough information through missable codices and banters to confirm it but we’re not going to outright state it or you’ll realize this whole faction is a sham. but i digress i have too many thoughts on ashur. anyway. tevinter is progressive actually look at all your trans friends❤️. the pinkwashing happening here is off the shits!!! hello!!! insert weekes quote
I can write people living in an empire despite that empire. Because I am several things the United States has currently said they're making it a priority to get rid of. And I'm not going to write a novel about destroying the United States because I'm not good at that. I don't have that sort of attitude. I don't want to destroy the, I don't want a civil war. So many people would die. But what I can do is write a novel about someone who is neurodiverse, someone who is trans, someone who is not straight, living defiantly because that is something in the empire that I can push back against directly.
While researching for my Pillars of Eternity TTRPG, I discovered the existence of pages on a Korean-language wiki about this franchise, and they have all been (I presume) poorly machine translated into English. Let me take you on a quick adventure through the absolute joys of poorly translated Eora. I will provide screenshots where comically relevant, but rest assured that I will not misquote the website.
I've been laughing for nearly an hour now after reading this with @adozentothedawn.
Where best to begin than with the various gods of Eora - also known as the 'Shin', of course.
While many of these are familiar to me, I was somewhat surprised by the addition of Woody Car, though I can see why the team behind such games as Pilars of Eternity, Pillars 2: Deadburning, and About (also called Irbawood) would choose to add her in.
I appreciate the gods being pointed out in the art, or I might get Skaen and Woody Car confused. It is here on Woody Car's page that we learn about the Lead Key Society, led by Taos who we meet early in the game at the ruins of Sealent Rease.
Anyway, onto our protagonists.
There's a lot to discuss here. I love Sad Mother, for one. I enjoy that Kalisha has been written how you pronounce it. But why, oh why, has my good friend Aloth been replaced by multiple allos?
Oh alright then. That explains it all. The sequel also has fascinating characters - sorry, I mean Colleagues.
Now I've never used Murky because her voice annoys me but I presume that's just what she's called. It would appear that Ydwin has been force-masced into becoming a Victorian boy named Edwin.
Exploring Fascina's page, I came across the powerful magical society known as the Guild of Archmages... though, if you ask them, they have all sorts of names.
Speaking of Leng Grass, it is important to note that she doesn't exist.
Additionally, she's helped Tae-in out of some legal trouble
With all of that said, it's time for the most important revelation about the entire franchise, and that is the war that kickstarts the plot hooks behind the first game! This is, of course, the War of the Saints, featuring our favourite divine avatar:
It's your boy, Wide Wen. He worshipped Eotas but was killed by the Godhaem-mer Bomb :(
Wide Wen's Legacy becomes a known thing, with Hollow-Bone children being born all over the place. Because of this, the people employ spirit magicians to perform heart marriage on the children.
Oh...
Anyway! This is all important because it leads to the most important moment in Eoran history: the writing of a very important book entitled Very Nice Farmer. The wiki describes it as such:
That 'BL' does indeed lead to the wiki page for boy-love. Anyway, the contents of the story suggest that Wide Wen was in fact genderfluid:
And that is the end of my dive into this wiki today. Here is the wiki, if you want to have a look around yourself. May Woody Car protect you if you delve too deep!
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i was talking about this on my server earlier but i really think "cozy" is one of the worst genre labels out there in the gaming space. like people dunk on the terms "metroidvania" and "first person shooter" a lot for being uncreative or limiting but at least those are like... falsifiable descriptors. you can look at a game and go "yeah this game's mechanics and core gameplay loop generally operate like metroid/castlevania" or "yeah this game primarily uses a first person camera paired with some sort of projectile weapon" so i don't think they're completely useless. but "cozy" is just nonsense. fully subjective. i see a lot of games popularly labeled as "cozy" that share almost zero mechanical features between them and don't even always match in tone or aesthetic. hearing a game described as "cozy" doesn't tell you anything about what to expect as a player beyond maybe giving you a sort of forewarning about the fanbase and their discomfort tolerance. "cozy" is not a quantifiable metric. like imagine if someone offered to buy you takeout and asked you what kind of food you'd like and you told them fully unironically, and with no further elaboration, "i want to get yummy food." that's what hearing "cozy games" sounds like to me
i especially chafe at the way "cozy games" just seems like a "woke" way to say "girl games" and conflate certain game mechanics or aesthetics with a non-cis/het/male identity (to equally useless effect from a buyer's pov). gender stereotyping by any other name is still gender stereotyping. i'm not cis het or male, but i've spent decades enjoying pvp shooters and feel bored to tears by cutesy cottagecore farming sims. and i find those pvp shooters very "cozy" to play, too! @_@;
Throughout the history of Thedas, there had been multiple attempts to set the Litany of Adralla to music, both to serve as a memory aid and to have the melody provide a sense of comfort to the petitioner, in addition to the protection from demonic forces the litany itself provides.
None of these compositions have quite managed to rival the popularity of the rather controversial Mother Nicana version, which will be presented to you shortly.
Born in Jader in 7:56 Storm, Revered Mother Nicana was a figure as beloved by her faithful as she was inconvenient to her superiors.
Ever practical, as well as a fierce advocate for following the spirit of the Chant, regardless of the politics of the time, she faced criticism from peers in the Chantry for choosing the original Tevene text as the basis for her composition. When pressed, she simply answered that if she could find a single translation that fit the original's metre, she would consider it.
In spite of this short-lived controversy (or perhaps because of it), this version became popular especially among those who had need of the litany for practical uses, such as the Mourn Watchers of Nevarra.
The following are two performances of Mother Nicana's Litany of Adralla. One was performed by the lay sisters of the Tantervale Chantry. The other was heard sung in Kirkwall's Lowtown by an initial survivor (presumed to have been a minstrel employed in the Hanged Man tavern) of the catastrophic fallout of Anders' destruction of the Kirkwall Chantry in an attempt to protect himself and several others from the demons that surrounded them.
Austin Langer was able to interview former BioWare narrative designer Sylvia Feketekuty. She discusses how the teams tackled exposition, pla
there's not a lot in this article but this made me laugh (despairingly)
(One thing I’d like to mention: there was a misconception going around at one point that I wrote all of the codex entries in Veilguard. This is not the case! They were split evenly among all of the writers.)
so. the writers were all responsible for secrets are lies that are true, and golden tevinter scissors, and fahrenheit recipes, and the noble anti-imperialist elf ally antivan crows.... and also none of them could use a string variable for the inq or rook's names :')
The passage that made me the most insane was this:
There’s things you can do to make it more inviting. When I was working on the Lore Glossary with editor Cameron Harris, we discussed with the rest of the narrative team how many terms we actually wanted to define. We limited it to a maximum of thirty. Throwing a bunch of new, setting-specific jargon at people can really overwhelm them. So thirty basic terms to define some of the most important parts of Dragon Age, with descriptions that never went over three sentences, seemed like a good limit.
You're telling me they picked... thirty??? lore terms for ALL of dragon age??? the game series built on lore terms??? THIRTY??? And you made sure to never describe them in more than THREE SENTENCES???
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media: we have an anti-authoritarian story for you!
me: sweet hit me with the good stuff
media: so there's this marginalized underclass of people, right?
me: okay
media: and they're like, stigmatized for something that's mostly an aspect of how they are born, or where they're from, or they're badly misunderstood, right?
me: yup, got it, I'm with ya
media: so these people are rebelling against the current social order, because it's the instrument of their suffering
me: oh good great sure
media: but also they're violent and deranged and need to be stopped
me: ...what
media: yeah they're going too far, they're trying to overthrow the system and assassinate the nice cop trying to help them and also they burned down an orphanage
me: ...why? would they burn down an orphanage??
media: extremism is bad
me: still not seeing what this has to do with their fight though???
media: also now they've shot a dog. oops they shot another dog
me: what?! why? I though their motive was to overthrow oppression??
media: yes but their suffering has also made them evil
me: ...???
media: don't worry though, the good guys will defeat them and restore the status quo
me: the status quo that's been killing people?
media: well it turns out it was only killing the kinds of awful people who burn down orphanages and shoot dogs :)
me: oh. this is actually a pro-authoritarian story, isn't it?
media: nooo of course not don't be sillyyyyyy we're super progressive look one of the cops is a black lady don't be sillyyyyyy
