#rant review

SIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. Ok. So. I'm just going to say this right at the top and get it out of the way. The misogyny that has always been part of this series has gotten worse and I am so over it and out of patience with it at this point. Harry Dresden is a raging chauvinist pig and cannot handle boobs. It shows and KEEPS SHOWING. It's systemic in the series, it's baked into Harry, and it's not cute anymore. It's in the little details, like referring to Justine as "Thomas's woman" and an off-hand "I'm thinking a lot about Kipling" and being casually dismissive of the difference between knitting and crochet. Like it's just so casual and off-hand and...holy fuck Butcher, maybe take a look at your biases because they're showing in places I don't even think you KNOW they're showing. Then there's the whole "Harry has zero issues with a male apprentice because Fitz can't have complicated feelings about Harry personally and Fitz doesn't have friendly boobs to distract Harry. Like...maybe we could have grown and had another female apprentice and Harry could have matured and not fucked it up like he did with Molly, but noooooooooooo, it's "the problem was that Molly was a girl." We even get something that is a spiritual successor to "Battles are ugly when women fight" when Matias mentions that only most of the women ended up in the basement with the kids. Hell, Bear frames good men fighting as MEN fighting while their families shelter. It's misogyny and ableism and Karrin Murphy would kick people's asses up and down the street for it.

It's a damn good thing Maggie has the Carpenters, because holy SHIT Harry is going to be a godawful teen girl parent.

I'm also super pissy with the sheer amount of page and word count that was given over to Harry's man pain over Murphy's death in Battle Ground. Like yes, he's allowed to mourn and he's allowed to grieve, but I literally lost count of the number of iterations of the "get off the mat" conversation Harry had for the first 300 or so pages of the book. I'm also going to say that Harry got more detailed and specific thinking about how much he loved his brother than he EVER did when playing board games with Murphy's shade, so I'm not budging on "Murphy got fridged" because that is what happened, and no amount of Harry in man pain is going to change my mind on that. Murphy is given lip service mourning because it's a book and we have to, but it's pretty fucking clear that Butcher's heart isn't in it.

I'm also SUPER not ok with the underlying assumptions that only able-bodied people who can fight should be allowed to survive. This is carried from Peace Talks and frankly it's really shitty. Butcher, like so fucking many people, has fallen into the "BURN IT DOWN AND LET US RISE FROM THE ASHES" heroic bullshit where the people who die because of a lack of infrastructure and medical care are somehow acceptable losses. Which...No. Fuck you. AND ANOTHER THING: When Harry was yelling at Mab that Murphy would have hidden and survived the battle, my question was, "and how long would she have been ok in the aftermath?" She was vulnerable. She was medically complex. You're telling me she wouldn't have had significant enough issues in the aftermath that she'd have been guaranteed to survive? The book doesn't think it through or address it (we get some bullshit line from Mab that Harry would have lost her anyway because...warrior can't do warrioring or some such nonsense, but that doesn't count). It's so fucking frustrating that the book is like...walking that weird line of "unless you're literally on page, you live in a gritty realistic world so have fun dying, bitches" and being FANTASY with MAGIC. I hate this trend in fiction, and it's worse because the ultimate outcome in this series is that Harry has fallen into "humans are weak" and isn't even SEEING that.

I should also throw out a token irritation about the compulsory allosexuality of the series. Ace and aro characters don't fit into the magic systems of ANY of the species, and the sheer amount of character motivations that boil down to "do the sex at the thing" gets old really fast. It's frankly kind of a travesty that in 18 books no White Court Vampire has ever been completely stymied in their attempt to seduce someone because they picked the ONE asexual person in the room.

Ummmm, ok. Let's take Twelve Months as a book first, and then we can talk about the trilogy structure.

When we were doing literally anything but Harry's man pain, I actually found myself enjoying parts of this book. The factional politics are always good in the Dresden Files, and frankly I like that we're getting more of Mab personally and more of the White Court. That was interesting and Harry navigating politics is never not interesting. Drakul as a new player is also intriguing, particularly as even the big guns are wary of his ass. The varying scales of politics and the cat's paws of the protesters were also really fun. The power plays between Harry and various other people are also interesting and show more of Harry than ANGST AND MAN PAIN.

Thomas's angst and man pain was also annoying, but blessedly had less page time. Justine is getting done dirty by Butcher's misogyny. Frankly so are Lara and Mab, but they're not human so I'm less inclined to hold them to human standards of misogyny, because fuck it, they're literally not human in the universe of the book.

I also adore the Spice 'Goyles. They are perfect, I have no notes. I want to cuddle them.

Uhhhhh...oh shit that might actually be all I enjoyed about this book because so fucking much of it was Harry bitching and moaning.

So let's look at the structure of the trilogy formed by Peace Talks, Battle Ground, and Twelve Months. Because it DOES form a three-act structure...but I also think Butcher fucked up the act and book breaks. So Act I being Peace Talks works. It's fine. I have no complaints. However, Battle Ground was just...war porn and ableism, and was entirely too long as an Act II, particularly because ACT II DIDN"T END WITH BATTLE GROUND. The end of a battle is a logical place to break a book, but the actual Act II didn't end until a couple hundred pages into Twelve Months, when Harry emerges from his dark night of the soul and starts living again. Then the last couple hundred pages of Twelve Months is Act III, which Henry V's the FUCK out of readers. Act II was too long, broke in the wrong place, and frankly got stupid repetitive in both books. So if this is, as my theory goes, a dry run for the Big Apocalyptic Trilogy, then I hope to GOD Butcher learns that Act II needs to be more than battle porn and angst and it needs to be SIGNIFICANTLY shorter. I'd also happily have a longer Act III, because that resolved and was happy pretty fucking quick. That said, we NEEDED the uplifting ending, because JAYSUS, but it was too fast an on some level felt like it was...too easy? Like it wasn't EASY, but after everything else, it was awfully neat.

It is a slow, foreboding march.

Even when I played it the first time, their were two inevitable conclusions that loomed over the story.

Solas did this. (Something that's actually pretty nicely foreshadowed. Don't get me wrong, I would absolutely crack the egghead open if given the chance, but he is a brilliant character.)

The second is that the Inquisition isn't politically convenient anymore. And that only ends one way. (That's made obvious by the fact that the Inquisitor either has the relinquish all power or let the the powers that be have final say.)

And every interaction along the main story, just fills you with more dread. It becomes more and more apparent that there isn't a good ending here.

This is what happens after you got the 'good ending', where everything was wrapped in a neat bow. The thoughts about probable implications for the holy war you started just are swept away.

The best part about Trespasser is that it claws you back into an epilogue where you have to face those implications.

Given the Dragon Age world and universe, it actually seems a lot more like the ending we should've gotten in the first place.

In fact that's the worst thing about Trespasser, is that the true ending/epilogue to the game was put behind a fucking paywall. (and new game plus because god EA is a dogshit company)

There's also just an air of finality. This is the last time the Inquisitor is going to be around their inner circle, so you're all the more compelled to see everyone's dialogue and really take in the downtime. Because you know that by continuing your heading towards the destruction of everything you've built up for the last 40-60 hours.

Your companions have other things they need to pursue, they promise they'll provide whatever aide they can to help the Inquisitor find Solas, but the quiet part.

The unspoken trade off, is that means the amount of allies the Inquisitor actually has side by side with them, dwindles each time they're promised the nebulous all aide that can be offered.

Then Solas takes the last thing he can. I fully believe he intended for the Inquisitor to die after ripping the anchor from them. He only paused the reaction killing them, so he could have one last opportunity to justify his actions, in hopes that person he was about to murder in cold blood didn't think him a monster.

And there's the opportunity to give him exactly that.

If promised that he can be changed and it doesn't have to be like this. Then everything he's done, the skulls he's crushed, and the bodies he has left to bury, were all for a higher, greater cause, and even one of the people, or the person he betrayed most, in some small way can see that.

If promised, he will be defeated. That changes nothing, that prospective comes from someone that simply can't see reason and barely a threat worth considering.

Either way, he leaves the Inquisitor to die, to be consumed by the very magic he helped create, one final act of betrayal that it wouldn't even pass his mind to rectify.

The thanks, the celebration, the accolades after that.

After your Inquisitor had lost who they were to be a religious martyr for a god and a country they might not even believe in.

After they potentially save the lead monarchy.

After they purged the world of the apocalypse that literally scarred the sky.

After defeating lost legends and long dead gods.

After stopping yet another war from breaking out.

After having their arm severed from their body because the people around them couldn't handle the thought of them dying forgotten in such a place.

They have to walk into a room of people who have hated them and every god damn thing they have stood for since the start.

There is no hesitation in being handed the entire list of the things you and your inquisition have done to piss these people off.

A complete bombardment, the full intention to spell out every good deed that will not go unpunished.

Finally there is that ultimatum.

Do you keep the Inquisition's forces with direct and full communication with both governments, that barely get along at the best of times. And face complete military retaliation if you step a single foot out of line.

Or.

Do you disband the Inquisition. Let the world take the very last thing it can from you. Give into the final set of demands made, and hope that the bonds with allies made will be strong enough to survive complete, willful annihilation.

The closing scene is the Inquisitor in a room and dagger in a map, pointed to Solas, Tevinter.

Then there's my Inquisitor. Salmon.

A Dalish Elf. An archer. Iron Bull's lover.

All of these things just add to the tragedy of this ending.

He always promises to kill Solas. It's just what needs to happen.

The game, and surrounding dragon age lore, makes it pretty clear that Lavellan doesn't really have a place back with their clan. They've strayed to far. Gotten to involved in human politics for the clan to be anything but a target if they were to return.

Even if the keeper welcomed them back, the act of returning would in itself be irresponsible.

Then there's the lost of an arm.

Apart for the general rehabilitation that would need to take place, an archer specifically, would lose just another piece of their identity.

Sure Salmon would preserve with another weapon, but he would never be able to use a bow again, something he's probably had with him from birth.

And then Iron Bull. Another thing made clear is that Iron Bull doesn't bring the Inquisitor along for a far amount of the mercenary trips. Even in the base game ending, this is true.

(This is the one thing thing I also know to be confirmed in Veilguards)

So he probably spends months, by himself, learning how to fight again, using whatever connections he has, focused on the one goal of finding Solas, just so he has a fleeting chance to kill him.

It's just so sad to think about.

Trespasser is a depressing, miserable, spiteful, loathsome experience if you cared about this game. Which I clearly do.

And I haven't even gotten into the whole 'the elven gods are the only true gods and thus centuries of oppression and hate were over complete falsehoods' and what that means for any of the Inquisitors.

And yet, it has got to be one of the best endings to a game I have experienced.

It was a crash grab. I'm not even going to deny that. It was the entire set up to selling a fourth instalment.

However it felt like dragon age. All of the other games had similar themes for the endings, where yes, you saved the world, but at what cost?

There was always that effort to make you think of the sacrifices you had to make in order to get that far. And I think Trespasser just did a really good job of that, by literally stripping the Inquisitor of everything they cared about.

You can't even marry Cassandra if you help her achieve her dream of being Divine.

Even if you romanced Iron Bull, he'll still betray you if you didn't do the Charger's mission, or let them die in said mission.

Dorian is going to Tevinter and you can't follow.

And then there's the fucking Solas romance.

And that's top tier. I adore the fact that there isn't a happy ending here.

It makes subsequent playthroughs a lot more interesting, in the fact that making certain decisions that seem like the right thing only ends in fucking you over more in Trespasser.

So do you play, in a way that makes the Inquisition's death sentencing a little easier, or do you go through in spite of it.

That your inquisitor is going to end up stripped of all personal identity, so should they do the best with the one they're given. Or lash out and make it everyone's problem, because they won't be remembered as who they are, and depending on your choice in Trespasser, they probably won't be remembered as the Inquisitor.

I don't really know how to end this whole rant.

But do keep in mind if any of this changed or was recontexualised, or was just reconned in Veilguards, I don't have knowledge of that.

I haven't played Veilguards, I don't plan to, so I'm not familiar with any of that game's canon/lore. And to be fair both DA O and DA 2 are more like hazy memories to me at this point as well.

Fuck it, it's 10PM and there's a tornado watch so I am hunched over on my bathroom floor with sirens blaring. This is the worst, longest, most dragged on, least character developed, poorly written book I have ever read in the 26 years I have the misery to call "life". This book is actually so bad that I had to pull out my laptop to write an even more scathing review of it. Just a couple points:

This book starts off with NO trigger warning (in the KU version at least). There is just a note from the author saying this book will ChAnGE UR LyFe!!! and to say GOODBYE to the person you were before you read it! Man. I do miss the Caps from before this book. So sweet. So innocent. Anyways this book has MULTIPLE content warnings that the author gleefully skipped over, including sexual assault, harassment, attempted rape, sexism, murder, fantasy racism and mentions of genocide. Whee! Changed for sure!

The characters are so weak if I blinked they would blow over from the breeze of my thin white girl eyelashes. We have SO MANY instances of Tempura (Temperance is a DUMBASS name) saying I AM BRAVE AND NOT WEAK and then being weak. She pouts when Carpet is mean to her, or lies, and then she mopes to Leo, who comforts her and flirts with her (and she flirts BACK?!?) and then she goes back to Cambry. The snake boy is also dumb as hell and he isn't even the ACTUAL Snake King. that's his dad. Who she bangs in front of Corbin and his whole family. Anyways Calender is SO GOOD AT SEX OH MAH GAWD and he has banged many women relentlessly but then he LOOKS at this twenty year old and gives her a claw buttplug telepathic dildo because just seeing her changed his life. Also Tailgate decided she loves them both and proceeds to flirt with both men, get engaged to them both, and lead them on without, you know, telling them. Coriander also knowingly is teaching Torrence to be good at sex for the prince and then gets pissy when she, you know, does it. Oh. And she has FRECKLES U GUISE. No one else does! Wow! So original! Also she's A VIRGIN WOW and thus somehow the best at sex because spoiler she's half basilisk wow shocker) and she's like WHATS THIS CALLED while pointing at her vagina. She's TWENTY. In a VERY sex/fertility based society.

Leo and Temperature's mother did not deserve this bullshit. She constantly dogs on her mother for being a SINGLE MOM and is so busy getting rammed by the telepathic dildo claw that she feigns being sick to send her mother into a town that HATES HER. Like more than they hate Teal or whatever the fuck her dumbass name is.

Okay so the stereotypes are horrible. She has a Hispanic coded gay best friend who is mean and sassy and slutty, and the village favorite and resident bully, Vera (who everyone hates but apparently is the "village favorite"?) is plus size ("curvy") and the only bully. And blonde. And there are ACTUAL villains in this book and Tem is like "WAAAH this Regina George wannabe is worse than them". Strong and independent, my ass.

There's this bad guy. Rowe. Right? He's mean and evil and yadda yadda. Anyways Torque can't figure out with her dumb dumb girl brain why he hates Cupid. Turns out. Central "crested" Rowe's dad (which is where the snakes give someone such a powerful orgasm they TAKE OVER THEIR MIND?? Unless I misread that??) and thus. Rowe hates him. And Tem by extension. His dick gets ripped off.

The world building sucks. Example:

Everyone worships the goddess of fertility, and all pray to her, and have the same depiction of her... across species over entire centuries? The one goddess?

Men are expected to be good at sex and women are too but women are shamed and harassed and called whores. Which like, isn't inaccurate from real life, but in a society built on sex...? And one that has worshiped sex? Typically don't have a regressive view on women being sexual??

Also, in a society that fears basilisk, where Roosters are the number one way of scaring them off and everyone is buying roosters and chickens from Tailspin and her mom... Why are they frowned upon? They're called "Chicken Shit" (and Tem is told her v@gina thus, tastes like Chicken Shit by Vera), they're looked down on for being farmers... They should be rolling in the dough if everyone is trying to buy roosters from them.

Little tangent on the previous: the king hates Tummy and even says, in front of Leo, "ew, chicken girl, you don't want her because she's a working class bitch" (that's paraphrasing). But he's... fine with just all the OTHER village working class girls? And like yeah, he dated her mom, but why do they not call the kingdom next door and work out a political marriage? This would strengthen them against the basilisks? But no that's called "thinking" and something that the author cannot take the courtesy to extend to her readers.

Okay, let's talk about the basilisks then. Their "form" isn't a snake. Just hot people who are naked with big pwenises and bewbs, and they get... shadowy and have scales. And they lost the war to humans centuries ago and the king at the time told them... to teach village girls how to BONE?? That's IT? Not enslave them? Not sell them to other kingdoms for higher up marriages? Not try to incorporate them into society as sex workers and warriors, which they are formidable as? Like that's ALL the king thought to do with them? When they get Horny they also HISS?? Miss ma'am. Have you MET a snake?? Ugh. Also oh tem is so hot she makes ALL the snakes horny.

The sex was awful. Every time is OH SO SPECIAL and OH THE BEST O SHE HAS EVER HAD and OH ALL THE DIQUES ARE SO LONG and OH THIS MOMENT IS SO IMPORTANT my guy it is mediocre at best. also. she has so much sex at the snake orgy (or as I have dubbed, "snorgy") that her vagina starts to bleed and her pelvis breaks. Good. Fucking. God. This is the most booktok sex I have ever seen and I mean that in the most derogatory way possible.

Anyways if I keep going, I'll just have more to say. Do yourself a favor and do not read this book unless you are high, you are dead, or both. This is 600 pages of bullshittery with no trigger warnings and this book made me go to the exotic meat store, buy snake, fry it, and eat it because that is all this book made me want to do. Eat snakes. And not in the sexy way.