Many of you have reblogged this with some variation on “but the Veilguard characters are so nice!” or “they’re all too stable to be unwell, no one’s actually bitchy!”

I am terribly afraid that you have conflated “the ability to be pleasant despite the horrors persisting” with “actual lack of personal horrors.”

DRAGON AGE: THE VEILGUARD

PLEASANTVIEW FAMILIES THE SIMS 2 (2004) dev. Maxis

sorry but being mad that characters were upset with you about which city got destroyed in dragon age the veilguard is the most unbelievable, incomprehensible complaint in the world

i apologise, i mean, yeah, it’s SOOOO irrational and unfair that characters were mildly upset with you and angry in the heat of the moment that you either a) abandoned a defenseless, already battered city to the full force of the blight or b) didn’t stop a venatori coup in minrathous, allowing them the power to execute anti-slavery activists in the street and pile their bodies up in wagons for months to come. did the companions who come from and love these cities leave the party for the duration of like two whole quests? did they make you feel bad? did the game not allow you to rationally explain your choice until they forgave you completely? oh my god. that’s wild. that’s so unlike how real people would act.

WERE YOU FORCED TO MAKE A CHOICE YOU’D REGRET EITHER WAY AND STILL HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE CONSEQUENCES? IN THE GAME ABOUT REGRET? IN THE GAME THAT REQUIRES YOUR CHARACTER TO GET LOCKED IN A PRISON OF THEIR OWN REGRETS? THAT’S CRAZY. WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS TO YOU. THAT’S CRA

Solas is so funny like... 'this is YOUR FAULT. YOU unleashed the Blighted Gods!' solas you did nothing but act weird, make people worry and imply you were going to destroy the world for ten years while acting all mysterious and distant. you rushed to do the ritual in the most worn down place possible and you did nothing to truly assuage fears that you were going to destroy the world, all while releasing demons on city streets. be serious. be so serious. how is this anyone elses fault. you were the shadiest dude in the world and you made everyone think you were about to destroy it, and you're STILL not denying those allegations. this isn't on anybody but you buddy.

this aged like fine wine in my opinion.

You had it in one

Unfortunately there's that group of fans who believes everything he says.

these two gossiping about their love lives is so fucking cute

bonus lucanis confirmed canonically having had a crush on viago!!!

I'm playing through Dragon Age 2 again and I just can't get over how... idk how to say it exactly, but the way you feel, in every moment of this game, how much Varric loves Hawke. It feels entwined with everything, it breathes through every part of the narrative, it blooms diegetigally through the integration of story and gameplay, makes you a co-conspirator in that love in a way maybe only a video game could.

It's in the way I don't think this story is a defense of Hawke only -- or even primarily -- directed at Cassandra, but at Hawke themselves. Beneath everything else going on there's the quiet, utterly unshakable refutation of Hawke's worst fears: Did you think you mattered, Hawke? Did you think anything you ever did mattered? . . . You're a failure, and your family died knowing it. Rising through the story as Varric tells it there's a fiercely tender voice saying: Yes, you did matter. In tragedy or in triumph, for better or for worse, in love or in hate, you always mattered. The ultimate tragedy of Hawke is always right there in the open before the story even starts letting you in on telling it; they couldn't fix anything. They couldn't stop the downward spiral Kirkwall was set on -- the real truth is that no one person ever could. And yet the point of DA2 is that it matters that they tried, and it matters that there were people who loved and were loved along the way, however badly it all failed in the end. Hawke is the Bioware protagonist who succeeds the least, and they're the character who matters the most, to me. (This is also why the Absolution reveal did not shake me in the least haha, my love for Hawke has nothing at all to do with whether they succeeded or failed at anything.)

What Varric is saying, in the only way he seems to be able to say the really real things -- through stories -- is so simple and so fundamental. You were here, and I loved you. There's the emotional heart of it, at the end of it all, that love and grief and recognition. It's so dizzyingly intimate. There's so much distancing, layers upon layers of obfuscation, to be able to say it. It drives me insane!!!! It makes me feel the same way that 'Poem' by Langston Hughes does:

I loved my friend.  He went away from me.  There's nothing more to say.  The poem ends,  Soft as it began,— I loved my friend. 

He loved his friend. They went away from him. What more is there to say. (Many, many, many things, when you're a compulsive liar and storyteller, but hey sometimes you have to deploy a whole armada of lies to tell one simple truth, I understand, I'm a writer too lol)

Inquisitor Orlesians-Can-Burn-In-A-Ditch-For-All-I-Care Lavellan. + Josephine, Leliana, some noble / Dragon Age Inquisition (c) Bioware

Dragon Age II - Dragon Age: The Veilguard

First 30 minutes of Dragon Age™ Inquisition gameplay

*irving voice* oh uldred is so good at manipulating these dumb motherfuckers apprentices. which could mean nothing

the first time i read this it somewhat escaped me that irving was legitimately considering having uldred chair a gaslighting workshop. most normal first enchanter at a circle.

SOLAS || ending slides

I kinda like whatever the hell Morrigan and Alistair have going on. They should fuck once and then be really weird about it for the rest of their lives

like

they're insufferable together I love it

Hey everyone. do Morrigan and Alistair fuck

when you get into a new thing and all you really care about is that thing and you’re destroying your blog spamming that thing so you have to start pretending to care about other things so there’s some variety