homosexuelves

cole and sera 

Leliana: My mother’s dead

Zevran: My mother’s dead

the first tranquil mage you meet is in redcliffe and he’ll tell you that the tevinter mages have kicked out the tranquil and asks to go with the inquisition because they can be useful. which makes no sense because literally in the same part of the game you can find a bunch of tranquil skulls in a shed, because the venatori have been killing the tranquil. you get commentary from EVERYONE about how the circle mages abandoned the tranquil. you talk to minaeve in haven and she implies that the mages somehow didn’t see the tranquil as people and that’s a fault of the mages themselves.

like… who made the rite of tranquility? who lobotomised them in the first fucking place and then USED THEM to handle lyrium to make money for the circle??? who displays tranquil mages all around the circle to remind mages of what will happen to them if they disobey?? WHO USES THE RITE OF TRANQUILITY AS A PUNITIVE MEASURE AGAINST MAGES??? the chantry and the templars themselves level the tranquil as a threat and use them as things but somehow it’s the circle mages’ fault that the tranquil were killed off??? whose fault is it that the mages fear and are uncomfortable with the tranquil?? who DESIGNED it that way??? whose purpose does it serve???

and it’s literally the stupidest thing anyway. how did tranquil mages END UP in fucking redcliffe in the first place IF THEY WEREN’T WITH THE MAGE REBELLION??? like??? hello??? tranquil mages HAD FRIENDS in the circle. they had LOVERS in the circle. they were people before the chantry ripped everything away from them and there’s evidence that MAGES ACTUALLY WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY TO BRING THEM OUT OF THE CIRCLE TOO

there’s NO commentary or dialogue or even shock about avexis being made tranquil in dai even tho cassandra is RIGHT THERE and PERSONALLY KNEW avexis. you can make mage prisoners tranquil as a mage inquisitor which is SO fucked up because it’s literally the most horrible thing that could happen to a mage? EVERY SINGLE MAGE, irrespective of personal political beliefs about the circle, fears tranquility??? the only time a mage doesn’t fear it is when they genuinely think the templars will otherwise kill them??? wouldn’t it make more sense for a templar spec inquisitor or an andrastian inquisitor specifically to have that option?? why make it so MAGE inquisitors can do it, like they didn’t grow up with the threat hanging over their heads the entire time they were in the circle AS CHILDREN??

cass’ quest where you find out they always knew how to reverse it and simply … didn’t, essentially permanently lobotomising millions of mages for a thousand years, is less impactful when you don’t understand how horrific tranquility is. finding out they’ve essentially abused the rite to abuse mages and then telling cassandra that actually no, the seekers dont deserve to be rebuilt, the chantry deserves to crumble, generates disapproval! she DISAPPROVES of you disapproving of their abuse of power! and you can’t do ANYTHING about it afterwards! cass just decides to keep it a secret until they can find out more about it… when? how will you find out more if no one else knows the reversal exists? there’s NOTHING about helping the tranquil even as a throwaway line in the epilogue slides! there’s no tranquil walking around discussing it, making note that cassandra approached them or anything like that at all!

there’s just NO real exploration in dai of what the tranquil are – why the rite of tranquility is used (other than the “claims” of it being to “help save mages” who otherwise can’t control their magic), what function the tranquil have in the circle (there’s literally an economic motivation for the chantry and the templars to keep making mages tranquil bc tranquil mages can manipulate lyrium for enchantments), and there’s NO conflicting opinions on the necessity of the rite in the first place and NO REAL TRANQUIL VOICES. the one person who DID have the rite of tranquility used against them punitively in kirkwall ends up working for one of the antagonists!

#Thing is you have to remember each game is told from the perspective of those around the main character. A human mage would know for sure ab#but a Dalish might have heard about it but not know much and those they speak to only have their perspective to share

like… yeah, that’s kind of my point. as the PC, who may not know about the rite of tranquility whether that’s the result of the PC’s in-game bg (dalish, qunari, dwarven) or because it’s the player’s first DA game, it’s insane that NO ONE ELSE AROUND YOU has any insight to offer. almost unanimously, they all agree that the deaths of the tranquil at the hands of the venatori are the mage rebellion’s fault. that they like. abandoned the tranquil during the rebellion. at no point does anyone consider it the fault of the templars, who made mages tranquil using the rite and then left them to die when the circles fell despite their apparent “duty” being to take care of mages, or the fault of the chantry, which uses the tranquil to essentially fund their military arm and also uses the potential of the rite as a threat to keep mages in line thereby alienating them from their own mage peers. 

NO ONE disagrees with this opinion, not vivienne, a circle mage who is pro-circle (she believes in reforming the circle but insists on their necessity because mages need a place to study) but templar critical (she thinks templars have their uses and if she’s made divine, she tightens chantry control over the templars which is certainly. A Method. A Choice. but i think it speaks to her views about the “freedoms” and liberties she believes the chantry allows templars over mages, and her shifting that power imbalance using the chantry’s control over templars), and not solas, who is pro-mage and anti-circle. not cassandra who will get angry that the templars shirked their “duty” in COTJ and is touted to be templar/seeker critical, and who even says they should’ve investigated what was going on kirkwall properly. everyone has an opinion on it, but it’s just the same opinion expressed in different words. there aren’t any differing perspectives on it. that’s gotta be deliberate; they (the nebulous out-of-narrative they, the devs or the writers or bioware itself) want you to think a certain way about mages, and the mage rebellion, and so they basically killed off the tranquil and still somehow made it the southern mages’ fault.

you can speak to fiona in skyhold, but not about the tranquil mages. you can speak to leliana, the left hand of the divine who absolutely knows what tranquility is, and she has nothing to say about the tranquil mages. you can speak to cullen but all he’s got to say is that meredith (and only meredith, apparently, because no one else ever abused the rite? because the rite isn’t an abuse in the first place?) would basically use the rite for any small infractions. you can speak to helisma, a tranquil mage, and she says nothing about the tranquil mages. helisma and avexis both display a vague discomfort at the idea of not being tranquil anymore, because it would cause them distress that they were made tranquil in the first place, and that’s just the end of that, then. 

the cure to tranquility is just swept under the rug, because it doesn’t fit the overall theme driving inquisition which is to paint a “grey morality” aspect to the templar v mage “debate”. hard for the issue to be “grey” when one side has literally been lobotomising the other for a thousand years, a procedure which could have been immediately reversible but specifically WASN’T to allow a method of exerting control over this minority, without shedding blood (as ameridan points out), and so that the order (seekers, templars, maybe even the chantry itself? it’s never clear where the money from the circle goes, but it’s clear it’s not to the circle itself) could make money off of tranquil mages handling lyrium to make enchantments.  

#and there should have been more about the tranquil in the game considering the bombshell you find out#i think they might be paid off in the next game though

But you can’t. And it’s ridiculous that the game doesn’t let us tell at least her, the leader of the mages, about this new information that directly affects mages.