rebranding from ghil-dirthalen to @nadasdirthalen bc I donât want people to confuse me with the Other Person who uses that name in dragon age spaces lmfao (I was chronically offline and blissfully didnât know of this individual)
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@nadasdirthalen
rebranding from ghil-dirthalen to @nadasdirthalen bc I donât want people to confuse me with the Other Person who uses that name in dragon age spaces lmfao (I was chronically offline and blissfully didnât know of this individual)

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im watching critiques of veilguard bc im in a Mood and someone just played the clip of that line from Flemeth in DA2 where she says:
"We stand upon the precipice of change. The world fears the inevitable plummet into the abyss. Watch for that moment⌠and when it comes, do not hesitate to leap. It is only when you fall that you learn whether you can fly."
and now im remembering the fact that I thought because of that line about the abyss, the quest Here Lies the Abyss in Inquisition was about Hawke and how if you chose Hawke then they would be fine because Mythal said that to Hawke
I am genuinely
so
fucking angry
that that NEVER came to fruition and meant NOTHING in the 4th game.
lol. lmao even. christ.
Vivienne my beloved
One of dragon age's most underappreciated characters
i keep rotating it in my mind that the veilguard Conceptualization of slavery is like
slavery is bad, and therefore, the majority of the population knows this, and is against it! and slavers are extremely obviously and exaggeratedly evil, and will be using their slaves as human furniture, so you know that it's just needless cruelty for the sake of it. and this is all in the context of the Redeemable Democratically Reformable Empire, where the average people at the bread markets (we are not going to question who bakes the bread or harvests the wheat or grinds the flour) are nice. so therefore slavery is not actually intrinsically tied to the economy, it's just this evil act that people do purely bc they are villains.
however. if you blood magic bind solas and use him as a sort of forcible battery to hold up the veil.... that's fine, bc it is actually for the greater good to support the continued existence of the bread markets. even though this should actually be considered as enslavement or forced captivity. which is even sadder if you consider that he was the most anti-slavery character in the games up to that point.
so then the conclusion incoherently becomes like... slavery is actually ok, as long as it can be justified as being in other people's benefit(?) and the person being held against their will is Problematic and Not Nice To You(?). putting my head in my hands and lying down on the floor and rolling myself down the street like a tumbleweed.
please write the paper ;0; i would read it ;0;
i keep rotating it in my mind that the veilguard Conceptualization of slavery is like
slavery is bad, and therefore, the majority of the population knows this, and is against it! and slavers are extremely obviously and exaggeratedly evil, and will be using their slaves as human furniture, so you know that it's just needless cruelty for the sake of it. and this is all in the context of the Redeemable Democratically Reformable Empire, where the average people at the bread markets (we are not going to question who bakes the bread or harvests the wheat or grinds the flour) are nice. so therefore slavery is not actually intrinsically tied to the economy, it's just this evil act that people do purely bc they are villains.
however. if you blood magic bind solas and use him as a sort of forcible battery to hold up the veil.... that's fine, bc it is actually for the greater good to support the continued existence of the bread markets. even though this should actually be considered as enslavement or forced captivity. which is even sadder if you consider that he was the most anti-slavery character in the games up to that point.
so then the conclusion incoherently becomes like... slavery is actually ok, as long as it can be justified as being in other people's benefit(?) and the person being held against their will is Problematic and Not Nice To You(?). putting my head in my hands and lying down on the floor and rolling myself down the street like a tumbleweed.

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@ghil-dirthalen it is a very long post already so i can't peer review your tags, but they're so good. thank you for the ted talk đ
it drives me crazy bc... it wouldn't actually be hard to make vg ~escapist~ and upbeat if they really wanted to! they have this cheesy, feel-good unrealistic empire, which is democratically reformable, and a majority of the people are totally not racist and hate slavery. why couldn't they have an equally cheesy, sanitized version of a rebellion, that's completely ethical and pure in ideology, and wins the entire population's hearts bc they're so moral?
it's just wild to me that people argue that this is ~optimistic queer escapism~. it's not escapism if you identify more with the oppressed people in this narrative! it's only escapism if you identify with the comfortable upper class who are Benevolently Providing Rights.
it's wild bc by most standards of fiction tastes/things i'm creatively interested in making, i'm actually quite wimpy and soft? i don't really like tragedies or very grimdark stuff, bc i feel like i need a bit of morale boost at times, ahaha. if it doesn't have a semi-upbeat ending i get Sad. and i can feel that way by reading the news anytime, so i do try to avoid that currently.
but ohhhh my god. the Escapismâ˘ď¸ in veilguard was like. fascinatingly fucked up, so i can't look away from it. vividly detailed and unsettling self-portrait of canadian liberals. i was trying to figure out what the thought process could be, behind taking a well known, popular, semi-dark fantasy setting and turning it cozy. and i think it's something like this:
@dreamingofthewild @acquired-elfroot @icharchivist i am adding your tags to a collage and shaking hands with them đŤĄ
i also wanted to add one final element of the Escapismâ˘ď¸ in veilguard. it is not escapism in "society is good and people are nice and things are calm!" type of way. nor is it escapism in a "things start out bad, but through perseverance and empathy, people make it better and find solutions!" type of way. these are fantasies of either living in a better world, or being able to seize control and create a better world, in a way that most people can't achieve in their normal lives.
in my opinion, veilguard's escapism is that of escaping responsibility, stress, or discomfort from world events, even as they have a terrible impact on other people.
for a comparison, let's look at the previous 3 games.
i will add this banter here bc i really didn't have to write all that. it was just literally in the game. rip to all those people dying of blight in ferelden who could be rescued with the eluvians and sheltered in the lighthouse, but, have you considered: stealing solas' house and then renting it out as an expensive airbnb đ
I remember that Trick Weekes once expressed something like "Solas is a mirror to the player character and the player shapes Solas based on the protagonist they play." (my memory is really muddled here, so please correct me if I am wrong.) I have always had a strong, uneasy intuition about this writing philosophy since thenâYes, it appears to highly respect player agency, as an NPC's arc dynamically changed by player actions can provide feedback and satisfaction, and the depth of their characterization seems to be reflected in this high malleability. However, the fatal blind spot of this philosophy is that when a characterâs many âfacesâ are built entirely around player-dependent variables or projections, the characterâs core identity will eventually start to fracture. There are always some values ââand personality development directions that are simply incompatible. The divergence between the character's different facets in different subsequent timelines can gradually lead to the fragmentation of their ostensibly unified psychological core, making them contradictory and ultimately incoherent. The consequence of this is not necessarily "depth" but narrative failure.
The Solas of DAI, in both the high-approval and low-approval paths, still possessed a relatively stable core: he pitied the suffering of modern Thedosians, affirmed their spirit of resistance, actively thwarted the Qunari's plan of eliminating the leaders of Southern Thedas, and even spared an Inquisitor he mutually despised to avoid unnecessary suffering for the south. He held complex emotions towards modern elves, tinged with sympathy, sorrow, indignation, and disappointment, and his stated motivation was ultimately to restore his people (whoever they are) and the world of elves. His perception of modern Thedas was not entirely dictated by the quality of his relationship with the Inquisitor; his on-going interactions with the modern world continuously modified his views and forced him to re-evaluate his own understanding in many subjects. His journey in Inquisition lasts at most only less than two years, and there had already been several significant changes in his assessment of the world and the peoples in it.
However, Solas's character arc was incomplete in DAI, as his interaction with modern Thedas had not concluded, nor was it completeâthe final missing puzzle piece was his current interaction and communication with the people he considered "my people." If the sequel had continued the narrative of the organized group of Fen'harel's agents, it would have forced Solas to directly confront his relationship with modern elves once more. His self-perception, his possible character growth, would have been revealed in his reactions and conclusionsâwhether he saw himself as a herald, an illuminator, a protector, or even a gadfly to his people (or a segment of them), or whether he believed his people (or a segment of them) lacked agency and that he had the right to choose for them, or even the worst case: that he had genuinely fallen to become like his own enemies. All of this needed to be revealed through his interactions with his people, especially the newly organized modern elves. This interaction was thoroughly set up in the Trespasser DLC, in Tevinter Nights, and even in Joplin, and it was the crucial step in completing his arc and revealing his true nature. The issue of whether his cognition and actions are unified was still set to be revealed in his communication with the collective of modern elven revolutionaries/spiritual successors: was he a hero, albeit a misguided one, belonging to the mortal sphere (a "non-god" whose knowledge and capacity are limited), or a self-proclaimed god, a coward, or even a hypocritical tyrant? And we must account for the time span of this interaction and communication. Given the cost constraints of a DAI sequel, let's be realistic, these completely opposite character directions are nearly impossible to happen compatibly within the same game; of the two opposing interpretations and predictions of Solases in the fandom, only one could ultimately be closer to the "real" one. I absolutely do not believe that the "Solas is a mirror to the player character" approach is good writing for the sequel to DAI, at the conclusion of his personal journey.
Yet, Veilguard did not bridge this gap; it violently cut all the established narrative threads. His peopleâno matter the combination of spirits, ancient elves, or modern elvesâwere completely wiped out in the story. He failed to have any communication with his people building upon the foundation of DAI, and his motivation has been completely rewritten. (This certainly avoids the dilemma of choosing between the two character directions mentioned earlier, as Veilguard seems to want to cater to all, "yes we want both his fans and his antis".) The result is that this Solas is not any version of Solas extrapolated from an understanding of DAI, but a completely new, unfamiliar character with the same name from a different timeline. This Solas acts as if he never experienced even a minute of the DAI storyline, and is not even a low-approval version, because even that version of Solas would have to process the new insights gained from nearly a decade of working with his own agents, even if those insights were all negative.
just thinking about the way Veilguard had Emmrich and Davrin state, in a way that brokers no argument, that the Darkspawn are NOT PEOPLE and thatâs the only time itâs ever brought up asdsfjdsjkfÂ
can we talk about the fact that the consecutive reveals that both the darkspawn and the demons/spirits, both of the mindless hordes of Always Pure Evil enemies that we can kill without a second thought, are PEOPLE is such a compelling earth shattering revelation that happens in the series leading up to veilguard
followed by the setup of an antagonist that can potentially wilfully refuse to acknowledge the personhood of the people of thedas, when every measure of what marks someone as a Person with a capital P by the standards of the society theyâre from(spirit, mage, elf) marks someone as less than a person in the current world of thedas
that so clearly holds the mirror up to our own cruelty when the inquisitor responds to "it was like waking to a world of tranquil" with "we're not even people to you" betraying that our own hero does not view the tranquil as people
when the first spirits were born of the dreams of the dwarves but we read codex entries from ancient elvhenan that say "we hunt the pillars of the earth and their WITLESS SOULLESS DRONES"
the "mages are not people and should not be treated as such" the way they qunari refer to everyone outside of the qun as Bas - literally THING the way the chantry compares kissing an elf to kissing a dog ect ect and forever
When we speak to the architect when we meet justice when we meet cole when we meet maddox when we meet countless other characters from groups that get so utterly dehumanised by either theodesian society or some magical contrivance that exists as a metaphor for such
when the story beats you over the head with THEY'RE PEOPLE THEY'RE PEOPLE THE TERROR IN THE NIGHT IS A PERSON THE MINDLESS ZOMBIE HOARDS ARE PEOPLE THE PERSON ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BATTLEFIELD IS JUST AS MUCH A PERSON AS YOU AND YOUR ENEMY THAT DOES NOT SEE YOU AS A PERSON IS A PERSON
and the conclusion that we come to about that is actually
don't worry about it kitten <3
what was the point of it? this is a story about how efortlessly we can be persuaded to dehumanise others...
... unequivocally in favor of the dehumanisation?Â
or at the very least of the opinion that thereâs no point in doing anything about it?
Solas + bindings
The thing that feels genuinely very dark about the Veilguard endings is that ultimately they all amount to Rook using Solas as a power source for the Veil, like he's just an object instead of a person. One reason this is so dark is because Solas is a former spirit, and what Rook does to him is exactly the same thing mages throughout Thedas are constantly doing to spirits - binding them to use for magic.
In Inquisition, Solas frequently expresses distress about how the personhood of spirits is commonly denied throughout Thedas: he literally tells us that binding spirits is 'abuse.' We know that this is a major part of his motivation for wanting to take down the Veil. But in the end not only is no one willing to even listen to his concerns about the spirits, they turn around and do the exact same thing to him, binding him just like a spirit.
Even the atonement ending is not really much better in this regard. In Inquisition, Cole says of bindings that 'It isn't abuse if I ask' and Solas himself says 'Not always true.' Binding him in this way is still a dark thing to do even if Rook uses his guilt and shame to convince him to do it voluntarily. We are left with the final message that the abuse of spirits will continue indefinitely and now it's all founded on the very same dehumanizing treatment directed toward Solas himself.

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How DAV went wrong with the old god lore
If there's one thing that continues to infuriate me about DAV it's the lore related to the old gods and dragons in the game. Significant chunks of it make no sense and make the setting worse all around. A lot of it seems to stem from some kind of desire to streamline the lore. So here's a list of all the issues I have with the Old God lore in DAV:
1. The Old Gods are high dragons
So this is the first mistake they made. Turning the Old Gods into high dragons. In the comic books we were introduced to the concept of great dragons and how they were extra powerful and connected to dreamer magic. In the previous games there were several codex entries that hinted that the Old Gods were supposed to be great dragons rather than high dragons.
The Old Gods were like unto dragons, as the first human kings were like unto ordinary men. So it is written in the Tome of Koslun. -Sten, Those Who Speak
Codex entries: The Old Gods; Dumat, the Dragon of Silence; Dragon Cults, Drake's fall
DATV Spoilers - The Story We Lost
Posted earlier that I was compiling a list of lore/story threads that have been dropped with DATV's handling of Southern Thedas. The sheer number of things means that I've made this into two parts - this one focusing on all the story threads that have been effectively dropped.
Spoilers for the game ahead, of course.
this is why i sort of avoid bsky bc like. what do you mean. is it that imperative to pick on people's exact tone and wording to... imply they're stupid and don't know what fanfiction is, bc they're being mildly negative about something? lmao?
actually i'll be even more of a bitch and turn the reblogs on:
explain Quickly, why anyone concerned about racism must be both a Mansplainerâ˘ď¸ and a Fake Fanâ˘ď¸ who doesn't understand the amazing (very racist) lore :)
I know they were planning it since forever and it was already heavily implied in DAI but I dislike the whole reveal about the blight and how elves came to exist.
So you're telling me there's this whole specie of people who... Technically "shouldn't" exist? Whose literal existence is the reason why the Blight exist? That's the whole thing?
Alright, elves came from spirit, I don't mind, cool I guess. But them making bodies for themselves and hurting the Titans in the process is what started the war between them, ultimately escalating into the Titans being made tranquil by Solas and Mythal, resulting in their dreams becoming the Blight.
Not to mention all the implication in the Chant of Light.
It's just so fucked up to me, and like, not in a good way/interesting way, more like in a "why would they write it that way".
i hope you don't mind me adding onto this, bc i was thinking about this a bit and wrote a very long ted talk :')
so, the elves are first introduced in dao as a very clear jewish/roma/indigenous sort of allegory, in how they're legally considered lesser, blamed for any societal problems, forced off their ancestral lands and into desperate poverty and segregation, and are hunted by the Fantasy Church for practicing their culture. this was clear both just from playing the game, and the writers' own out of universe statements about their historical inspirations. the dragon age elves are relatable to tons of people, bc as ham-fisted as it's sometimes written, i think anyone of a minority ethnicity/religion, or a history of colonization, will find it resonant to their own experience and feel a sense of sympathy with them.
then, they bring in the ancient elf empire stuff - which kind of starts to break this allegory, because now it's like... ok, this very oppressed group USED to be super powerful, decadent, really cruel, and ~as bad~ as the worst empire currently around. and actually, they were SO powerful and full of hubris, that they caused their own problems and oppression! which is kind of a difficult message to put across, bc it's unpleasantly similar to irl arguments for colonization and slavery - basically saying "oh well, their culture was really fucked up to begin with, so it wasn't even the colonizers' fault for the terrible state they're in now (after the colonizers invaded and plundered them)"
i personally think the ancient elf stuff can work ok, with a sort of caveat - there is also the sort of irl toxic historical nostalgia where people try to argue that past cultures were super peaceful and perfect and enlightened. when really, it was never perfect, and trying to idealize any historical period will only backfire. so that can kind of work as an analogy for the ancient elf stuff. but it REQUIRES there to be development for the modern elves, and for them to have differing opinions on their own past - some can be full blown elf nationalists who are pining for the Old Days without understanding them very well, others are more ambivalent, others are fully rejecting it, others are into the art and culture but not the militarism, etc. this is my personal opinion, probably others would find the entire ancient elf concept more or less irritating based on their own cultural viewpoint.
but THEN, they don't do that at all. they actually sideline the modern elves entirely, so they have very little opinion or reaction to their past, and no distinct modern culture either. and it goes even further with the Ancient Sins. not only were the elves super powerful, they also caused every problem in thedas. and they were literally born from forcibly stealing blood out of other creatures. which to me is honestly like... an insane sort of conspiracy theory style racism, where a marginalized group is framed as evil and unnatural just for existing? except they made that Literally True within the setting. so the conclusion is... elves aren't just a group of people who look slightly different and have a unique culture/religion that is frowned upon. they ARE unnatural and caused problems just by existing, so it would have been better for them to not have existed in thedas? the elven gods ARE all evil and it's better if the elves become andrastians or atheists instead? tevinter empire ideological win? đ
and then there's really silly stuff like bellara apologizing to harding for her ancestors attacking the titans... when bellara has no rights anywhere in thedas. she is a dalish apostate, in a world where apostates get killed or imprisoned, nobility hunt dalish elves for sport, and there's an entire city elf origin showing how poorly elven women specifically are treated. and harding is... a surface dwarf who was just chilling and living on a farm before dai, haha. in what way is bellara or any other elf benefiting from the titans being harmed? no one explains this, and no one actually makes an attempt to fix the titans either, so it kind of comes off as... empty guilt tripping with no actual goal of reparations.
which is exactly how many white people act irl when doing a sort of hollow signaling of acting guilty to Be A Good Person, but not wanting to actually change their behaviour to help anybody. so it's very goofy that they haphazardly put that plot line onto bellara, the asian looking elf who logically has zero social standing anywhere in thedas. and then harding herself doesn't do anything much for the titans either? what exactly is the end goal of this apology? makes no sense. doesn't compel me.
this is a very strange understanding of colonialism, which seems like it's not based on "this person is benefiting from oppression or stolen resources" but "my 5000 year old ancestor may have killed your 5000 year old ancestor :( i'm so sorry :(" haha. which is not the point of why people care about inequality - if you go far back enough in history, probably everyone's ancestor has killed someone else's. who cares. the problem is when that violence or theft has measurably benefited one group over another, to the point where even their descendants now are still privileged from their ancestors' crimes.
which the elves are not! they're in shambles! objectively speaking, they have no resources, no unified leadership, no place of safety at all, their culture nearly got eradicated multiple times. but the writers somehow want to position them as both victims of oppression who are facing hardship all over thedas... as well as having Evil Deitiesâ˘ď¸, whom they have to disavow to be Good Peopleâ˘ď¸. and also their current oppression was kind of their fault for toppling their own society to begin with. and their ancestors only existed by stealing blood, and invented the blight, which threatens everyone. and the modern elves get nearly zero content beyond that. so... what is the conclusion there besides either incoherence, or an uncharitable "this culture was actually bad from the very start, and has contributed nothing to thedas except blight and evils?"
meanwhile no one mentions the chantry or tevinter's various atrocities much, so it comes off even worse. no one worry about the crimes of the fantasy roman empire or fantasy catholic church! make sure to emphasize the crimes of the very small marginalized culture, with the outlawed religion, instead đ
yeah i agree! i was honestly hoping vg would add some ~grey morality~ in there, for once, bc otherwise it was SO awkward to just... pin literally every crime in thedas onto the elves? like framing them as first the most oppressed group, and then responsible for Original Sin Itself, just by existing, is kind of sad, and has terrible implications.
it was already set up that the dwarves themselves erased the titans from their own histories. and how their "hivemind" actually worked is unclear - if they all liked it, surely they'd have tried to remember it? and there were hints that the idea of "exiling" people from the stone was very old, and the casteless in dragon age are a remnant of a really ancient idea, which must have actually HAD a physical effect beyond social ostracization when they were still a hivemind - similar to how the vallaslin are just cultural to the dalish, but had an actual magic effect on the ancient elves.
so i figured they'd go with like... there was a pro-titan and anti-titan civil war situation already happening with the dwarves, and so the elves, naturally, sided with the anti-titan faction. they could've EASILY even spun it to other elves as a moral argument of "ohh, the titans are oppressing these poor little flesh people :( we can help them if we take bodies :) and also then they give us lyrium afterwards :) :)" which is still a very standard colonial method! and makes sense as a "this was a slippery slope, and they became powerhungry and violent over time", but adds more nuance, and gives the dwarves something to do in the narrative.
like what actually happened to the dwarves after the elves won against the titans? were they trading with the elves? were they pissed off and fighting them as retaliation? did they mean to hurt the titans that badly, or did they not realize it would have a permanent effect? was it the war, or the veil, that had the major effect on the titans? there had to be tons of time in between the titans getting killed/tranquilized and the veil going up, so... they had to have some kind of interaction between the elves and dwarves? why does june have such a geometric and dwarven vibe to his mosaics? was there disagreement on whether to remove the titans from the memories or not? why did they decide to do that? etc.
but instead they just kind of made it very one-note, removed the interesting mysteries from the dwarven side of the history, and made the implication like "yeah, we DID actually make this very oppressed jewish/indigenous/roma inspired group. and they are responsible for inventing the Monstrous Plagues Upon The Land, and they literally stole blood from others and their existence is unnatural, and their gods are evil <3" which i did not care for đ
Hi. Romani person here.
I'm gonna make it worse. I'm struggling to believe the writers could have been this offensive accidentally. They made the Blood Libel a fact in universe. They made the religion of the Native RomaJews explicitly a deception when the Christianity stand in has escaped that treatment. In doing so, they evoked the conspiracy theory of the Cabal- a sinister order of Jewish wizards who secretly control the world.
And you know the wells? It was said that Jewish and Roma people poisoned wells during the Black Death, and that's what caused it. Roma are still blamed for spreading disease in this day and age- it impacted how communities were dealt with during Covid-19 lockdowns. So while most people probably don't know this one, it's not some misty remnant of the past. Making the people with a close bond with their noteworthy animals which pull their extremely obvious caravans; who are portrayed early as having bared midriffs and also have spiritual markings (not common these days but not from nowhere) be responsible for a plague by simply EXISTING?!
CHOICES WERE MADE.
(There are blood stealing lizard people?! THERE ARE BLOOD STEALING LIZARD PEOPLE. That is... CHOICES. Just. Siiiiigh.)
After Trespasser, I didn't have much hope that they'd turn this bus around. But somehow it's worse than I thought it would be.
You know what, I got something else to say. In DAO and DA2, "mages are too powerful to be allowed to just exist" was framed as in universe propaganda "justifying" their enslavement. By DAI, this wasn't framed the same way. It's very easy to buy into the sentiment as factual.
And in Veilguard they are doubling down on the sentiment that it is possible to DESERVE oppression.
It's not. Not ever.
And also, belief that people have powers beyond "normal" people is a thing in real life as well. Gypsy curses. Superpredators. "Women-and-or-Black-people don't feel pain". These are real beliefs people profess which are still used as justification for real world oppression. Hell, I'm having a dawning realization about the arguments against trans people in sports. It's the same old story.
I think Bioware and I are done.
something something the poetry of science etc
woah
yeah

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this whole idea in both the fandom and the games themselves that being a people attached to their past & a lost civilization is a failing whereas a celebration of the present is something to strive for wrt elven & dwarven culture is something that reads as fundamentally western & liberal to me.
I do think one of the things that made me saddest about Veilguard was the sheer lack of continuity. And I'm not even talking about worldstates.
Where are the Varterral? Why is Arlathan forest guarded by magical robots instead?
Where are the merchant princes of Antiva? You know, the people who really run Antiva? Not the king, not the Crows?
Why does the Lighthouse exist? Wasn't it implied in the last game that Skyhold was Solasâs fortress? The place where the sky is held back?
Why was Emmrich never a member of a Circle? Why have we forgotten that Nevarra had Circles (although presumably those who managed to become Mortalitasi had much greater freedom than mages elsewhere, they would presumably also all be Harrowed mages from the Circles in Nevarra originally)? Why have we forgotten that Cumberland was home to the College of Enchanters?
Where is the Felicisima Armada? That Isabela was part of? Why does the timeline of Taash's storyline and their mother's work with the Lords clash completely with the Kirkwall timeline?
What do you mean, the Titans are done? Then what was going on with the Titan in the Descent? The one that woke up and started moving around and got soothed by reconnecting itself with Valta? It seems like that Titan was very much alive and well, where are the others? Given that lyrium is alive and the Titan's blood, I can only assume that anyplace where you have actively growing lyrium, you have a living Titan? Why can't the dwarves reconnect with them?
A lot of these are little things...but they all add up. This, combined with the fact that quite a lot of the characters don't seem particularly integrated into the world of Thedas either...