The Dread Wolf

This is exactly how that convo went

love all the concept art of lavellan just touching solas' chest. finally the answer to his ass grabbing

it's all so tiresome

Art by The Unclean

At my most bitter, it genuinely feels like they just did not Know how to write the elves in a way that wouldn't invite discourse (i.e, they didn't know how to write their struggle compassionately. or they didn't want to.) So when they realized that they were getting highly criticized for increasingly treating them like disposable punching bags, they decided to just write them as little as possible. Which feels like the height of incompetency to me, but that's where we're at.

Like how (at least it feels to me) they took out the Chantry from the story entirely when they got criticized for (in Inquisition) constantly giving the Chantry a pass for their genuinely evil history. They'd rather not write it at all than criticize it.

I want to believe that there were writers on staff who genuinely cared about these things, but they either left in development or lost influence on the final product to people who only cared about getting better optics.

let me share with you this post i reblogged a few days ago that has stayed with me ever since

something something Felassan telling Solas they have to keep up the Dread Wolf act to give people a reason to believe someone is strong enough to fight for them and something something the Inquisition advisors telling Inky they need to believe they were sent by Andraste to give people hope. the Solavellan parallels continue to slay

sosal? (извините)

The Last Unicorn Elvhen

i dont remember the post i saw or who made it so this doesnt count as a vague but 'actually it's good bioware retconned the agents of fen'harel because it would've been Bad Representation to have an antagonistic faction made up of the in-universe oppressed minority' well no it was straight up cowardice and the refusal to grapple with the reasons why marginalized peoples might come to believe their best recourse for a world that wants them dead top to bottom is fundamentally changing the nature of the world in a way that, yes, may read as apocalyptic to those currently in power, but the alternative is for the forgotten to continue slowly bleeding out to sustain their comfort

Not that bioware could have landed that but don't pretend it's More Nuanced not to even try. and it's literally just narratively stupid as hell

sometimes self-care is consuming a piece of media for the 174th time