with all the fire of the sun

Reminder that Sebastian’s parents were real assholes and the only reason he ended up staying in the Chantry in Kirkwall was because he thought he had no worth anywhere else

This guy introduces us to the lore of the Blight by asking if we want “the chantry version or the truth.” If we ask if they’re not the same thing he smirks and says with some attitude “they rarely are.”

He sums up his religious beliefs saying he’s “not especially” Andrastian, and that “believes in the Maker well enough.”

He’s actually LESS religious than Zevran, who describes himself as fully Andrastian with a regular prayer routine in optional conversation branches.

The things that people use to categorize Alistair’s supposed “Chantry Boy” boy status all have non-religious motivations.

For example, the big one, his virginity, is because 1. He’s nervous around women, which is the gender he finds most attractive 2. He’s actually the youngest Party Member, being freshly 20 years old. 3. And most importantly, he correlates sex with love and was brought up to see them as requiring the other and so feels uncomfortable having sex without what he sees as “true love.” And he just hasn’t been in love yet.

Another example would be his reaction to the Urn of Sacred Ashes. He reacts with wonder akin to Leliana where many others react with a contrasting blasee attitude. Even the Andrastian Zevran.

But you gotta read between the lines here. Zevran doesn’t hold remains as sacred. He’s an assassin. So his prophet’s body is in that urn. It’s a body. The least remarkable and most mundane, perhaps even the hardest to swallow, thing she could ever be to Zevran is a corpse. Kinda takes the wonder out of faith for an assassin if she dies and rests just like any one else.

But Alistair is fascinated, in awe. 1, probably because the Chantry he doubts so much now has some kinda proof that something they said was true, unlike what he previously believed. 2, Alistair is WAY more patriotic than he is religious and we gotta remember that the Fereldans pride themselves on Alamari heritage, and Andraste was probably the most powerful and influential Alamari person to ever live. 3, he’s actually a giant history buff. He info dumps history on you often, with the memorized readings of whatever question you ask. If asked about the King and Loghain before the betrayal at Ostagar, he shows respect for Loghain’s service in the War for Independance, and knowledge of his tactics. And when speaking about his time in training with the chantry as a child, he says the education was actually what he liked most. And a lot of his gifts are things like replica soldiers, Fereldan historical things, maps, (along with his interest in magical artifacts but that’s for another day.) etc. Given his patriotism and love of learning history, yeah, the Urn is a big deal to him.

I have more things I could say, but really, I just find Alistair to be one of the most misrepresented by fandom characters. His character has a TON of subtext that challenges you to look beyond what others represent him as and the low opinion he holds of himself.

The perception of him as Andrastian and devout is one pushed on him by people like Morrigan (and others to some degree) who fights Alistair more like a straw man representing society than she engages with him as himself. She sees him as a Templar even though he left the order specifically because they abused him And he fundamentally disagreed with their practices, The Harrowing specifically being what pushed him to fight to leave.

There are, textually, two ways to interpret Alistair. Through face value aesthetics and symbolism pointing to association with the Chantry and by observing other’s opinion of him. Or through actually listening to what he says and watching what he does.

I like big boats, I cannot lie.

this was so much fun to draw! I'm kind of gutted about how much worse it looks on my phone than on the screen I drew it on, where the colors were more muted and harmonized better. But I am Tired and done so this will have to do :''')

Matthieu smooths the map out onto the surface of the table and grins at Arden through a cloud of pipe smoke. “Well, then,” he says, “to work!”

👆not only bc it’s key to understanding what kind of Politics bioware is trying to allude to wrt vivienne but also bc to understand viv you have to put into perspective how much that image contrasts with the actual lived reality of vivienne who is (1) of immigrant (rivaini) origin (2) hardly in a comparable class position at all.

margaret thatcher leaned heavily on this idea of being a “shopkeeper’s daughter” to push back against the idea that conservatism was an Elite ideology while she was middle class at worst & used her political position to destroy working class communities.

whereas in the context of thedas vivienne cannot expect any real support from her own “shopkeeper parents” (merchants from dairsmuid, living in wycome) when she is ripped away from them as a child. they may or may not have had a surname. that we never LEARN of one indicates that in either case her parents could not protect from the consequences of being a mage.

so what i’d like to establish is that a) mages are really in-world using these common spells and knowing them by their names i.e. they literally think “i’m going to cast winter’s grasp” and not just “i’m going to freeze that guy” and b) they have very good reasons for doing so. and the main three reasons for using established, known spells would be:

efficacy. spellcasting in dragon age is, as i mentioned, about imagination, belief, and willpower. isn’t it much easier to imagine an effect, and to force it into existence with your willpower, if you’ve seen it done? i think this is probably one reason why getting a teacher for magic is so important. you want to see a spell done a hundred times before you can replicate it with the kind of confident willpower that makes it enforce itself on the world and do decent damage. (incidentally, i think this is also why elemental damage is popular rather than more inventive obviously magical styles; the elements can be observed and replicated, we know what to expect and to imagine. i think baby mages spend a lot of time looking at candles and mages in icy regions are better at ice and so on.)

predictability. “friendly fire” exists as a mechanic in these games to demonstrate that once a spell is cast, it is no longer in the mage’s control, and can cause harm they didn’t intend. “free casting” instead of using a known spell could lead to even more unintended consequences.

resources. mages are reliant on their own reserves of magic (and occasionally lyrium or blood) to allow them access to the fade. they would know exactly how much a known spell will “cost”, whereas “free casting” could cost anything and immediately exhaust them or push them beyond their reserves.

of course, none of this means that mages can’t invent their own spells. after all, someone had to invent them in the first place. it’s likely something that mages often do once they’ve reached a certain level of skill, and i think it’s really fun to imagine. (a circle mage apprentice required to make a small, frivolous spell of their own as a project; a tevinter magister fashioning something new and flashy to impress their rivals; a dalish keeper regularly crafting fresh spells to suit their clan’s new needs.) loving the image of a mage excitedly making a new spell only to dig through the books and then grimace and groan as they realise some enchanter from the towers age already published a better version. i think there are lots of mages who try to branch out from the standard elements and so on, and find that it doesn’t “catch on” because what’s familiar becomes efficient becomes familiar and so on. i also think a mage who never invents their own spells could do perfectly fine

all this also doesn’t mean that one person’s winter’s grasp is necessarily the same as another’s. i think it would be sooo fun if something always slightly changes about a spell as a new mage adapts it for their own, and for spells to become unrecognisable over the centuries as they keep passing between hands. that would also be a neat way to explain differences between versions of spells between games.

da2: as soon as you finish the prologue and gain free will

dai: it depends on how long you spend in the hinterlands