the journey is a work of art

commission for @sidneysussex!

(commissions are open!)

my friends r so talented. rb if ur friends are talented

Part two of drawings I forgot about: a rough painting of my dnd oc, Kore. she's a water genasi i played for a oneshot (that turned into a threeshot) that just wrapped up this past weekend....I miss her already

I like my body when it’s with your body

"Despite frequent offers of new bedmates, Zevran never loved again."

the world is beautiful because my friends have ocs

I tag my posts for three reasons

The last one is my favorite.

dinner

little quick messy drawing of my inquisitor and solas in some far off world where things go well

oh dear. pour one out for @staff today folks

(for those of you who have been living under a rock since late 2019, automattic owns tumblr)

Pride's Fall

So, people keep saying Veilguard is "sanitizing" Dragon Age because it’s not letting random NPCs hurl slurs at your character anymore, and listen. I get it. There’s a real fear that the game is smoothing over the sharp edges that made Dragon Age’s world feel raw and oppressive. But here’s the thing: oppression in storytelling isn’t just about how much overt cruelty a game throws at you. It’s about how a world is structured, how power moves, and what choices the player is given to respond to that.  

Veilguard isn’t getting rid of trauma or struggle—it’s just shifting the focus. Instead of telling a story where the PC is explicitly victimized because of their race or status, it’s exploring grief, loss, and the way people hold onto each other through suffering. And yeah, maybe that’s not the same power fantasy as "you called me a slur so I’m going to stab you in the town square," but does that automatically mean it’s bad.. What it does mean is that Veilguard is asking different questions.  

Origins threw you into a world where the first thing you did was fight back against the system that tried to break you. Veilguard is looking at something else: what happens when fighting back isn’t an option? When your world has already fallen apart? How do you rebuild? How do you find strength in kindness instead of just revenge?  

veilguard recognises that oppression isn’t just big, dramatic acts of cruelty; it’s also the slow erosion of hope, the systems that make resistance feel impossible, the way grief isolates people and makes them vulnerable. And what Veilguard seems to be doing is giving the player a different set of tools to push back.  

Because let’s talk about mechanics for a second. Veilguard is letting you build alliances, resolve conflicts, and use emotional intelligence as a tool and that’s not a weak approach to oppression. That’s a different kind of power fantasy. One that says, hey, maybe dismantling oppression isn’t just about vengeance. Maybe it’s about survival. Maybe it’s about finding people who won’t let you fall apart. Maybe it’s about healing.  

Like, yes, I understand why people loved the City Elf origin. It was cathartic! It was painful and messy and let you tear down the people who hurt you. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only valid way to explore oppression in a game. Power isn’t just swinging a sword—it’s also choosing to be kind in a world that tells you kindness is useless.  

Veilguard isn’t saying "oppression isn’t real." It’s saying, "What if we looked at the ways people actually survive it?" And if the idea of a game that values understanding and emotional resilience as forms of resistance makes you uncomfortable, maybe ask yourself why you think the only valid response to oppression is cruelty in return.

This is a really good post, and I think it gets to the core of what I think is one of the things people are missing about Veilguard - it's just a different type of story.

In Origins, you play as one of the two people in the country who can save the world. You are fighting impossible odds - you and Alistair and the mishmash of people you've managed to recruit - against a ceaseless mass of mindless creatures. Not only are you fighting darkspawn, you're fighting against the system, controlled now by a man who sees his fears around every corner. Depending on your Origin, you may feel more strongly about certain factions in the game, and by the end you can feel hope for the future as you ask for a boon (self-governance for the Circles, or land for the Dalish clans, or a noble seat for the City Elves). It's one type of fantasy - and it's a good one!

In 2, you're playing as a hopeless refugee, who manages to build something for yourself through hard work. But the core of 2 is that in the end, it didn't matter. Nothing Hawke did ever mattered, because you still lose basically everything, and even if Hawke wasn't there, and did nothing, things would play out the same. Things in Kirkwall would have come to a head, Anders would still have blown up the Chantry. It's another type of fantasy, and a particularly dark one on a personal level, imo.

In Inquisition, you're someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time (or arguably, the right place at the right time), thrust into a leadership position you didn't ask for but that you have to take. In some ways it echoes Origins, with you and your allies standing against people in power, but the difference is that you can accumulate a significant amount of power and become a force to be reckoned with. One again, a different type of fantasy for people to enjoy.

Veilguard is once again a different type of story. It's about saving the world, yes, but it's also about making that world a better place to live in, both in small and large ways. It's a story about hope in the face of hopelessness, looking to the future in the face of loss. It's about acknowledging your regrets and your failings, but getting to your feet and saying "I can do better."

And for me, that was a really cathartic story. Being positive and hopeful doesn't suddenly mean it's sanitized, and it certainly doesn't make the writing bad. It's a different type of story.

And it's okay if that story doesn't resonate with everyone! Not every story will! It's okay to look at something and go "that's not for me, thanks." The problem for me comes when someone looks at something and instead of going "oh I don't think that's my thing", they go "I don't like this thing, which means it must be objectively bad".

I think it's honestly a symptom of a bigger problem in wider fandom spaces, how they've evolved into this less nuanced place where some people seem to think it's unthinkable to go "no thanks, not for me".

It's okay to just dislike something. Veilguard being different doesn't erase the joy you found in the other games.

it seems like everyone is really fixated on the slurs thing but is kind of missing the point of that vein of criticism. it's not about wanting to be called slurs to fulfil some power fantasy, it's about the level of suspension of disbelief required to believe that an elf or qunari running around a city like Minrathous, given everything we've been told in previous games about that culture and environment, will never once be questioned or have assumptions made about them due to their race. it feels flat, and like my character is less a part of a dynamic world and more a narrative device.

complaints about the lack of choice/railroading isn't about wanting to be evil or be a dick to your companions, either. in previous games, companions all had defined value systems, and would react to decisions you made accordingly. and this wasn't always disapproval for "evil" choices, it was just when you acted out of line with THEIR values, which weren't always good or evil either, they were complex and formed by that particular character's experiences and world views, and the game gave you, the player, the opportunity to be in dialogue with that and challenge those beliefs or support them, and therefore to think more deeply about the questions raised by the world and story itself. Veilguard doesn't really have this, either - approval being tied to companion exp really hampered this, imo. I also don't like how fundamentally incurious Rook is about all the information presented to them in the story - there are sooo many moments where all the dialogue options essentially boil down to some variation of "lol... what?" from Rook. it's fine if you enjoy roleplaying characters like that, but for me, it stretched the limits of plausibility, especially for an elven or dwarven Rook being presented with the bloody truths of their people's history.

and finally, I really felt that the lack of any ability to engage with the factions in any other way than wholesale support felt a bit hollow. none of the characters fundamentally question the values or goals of the faction they are a part of, and Rook isn't given the opportunity to do so, either. there's no option to criticize or even question the Crows about their murder-based shadow government populated by stolen and tortured children. there's no opportunity to meaningfully engage with the ethics of what the Mourn Watch is doing. the Veil Jumpers act as a weak stand in for the notably absent Dalish, despite the fact that the WHOLE GAME deals with the reckoning of their pantheon. the Shadow Dragons feel like a limp way to sidestep all the ickier aspects of working with the Tevinter nobility. Davrin never truly questions the goals or values of the Wardens, despite the fact that once again, the whole game is shedding new and horrible light on what exactly the blight is yet doesn't really address the more granular (or even broad) implications of these revelations.

I didn't hate Veilguard. I played it 4 times, to completion, very thoroughly, and really wrang it dry for content. I left no stone unturned. I didn't miss anything. I enjoyed playing it a great deal, but I was left feeling like there was a significant amount of depth missing that was present in all the previous titles in the series, and that was ultimately more than a little bit disappointing. Dragon Age has always been at its best when it forces the player to think deeply about the implications of their decisions and values and how they apply to the complex situations presented by the story, and Veilguard simply does not really do that effectively. even Solas is ultimately flattened into a story about personal regret, rather than actually engaging head on with the ethics and implications of what he is trying to do.

Dragon Age games have always engendered deep discussions and critiques of the ways the games both succeed and fail at the stories they're attempting to tell, and trying to broadly write off any criticisms of Veilguard as being rooted in bad faith takes, a desire to roleplay bigotry, or a lack of understanding of the game feels really disingenuous to me, and I've seen a lot of takes that imply one or all of those things. you can love something and still point out the ways in which it has failed. it's not just a matter of the game not meeting my expectations or telling an equally deep and complex story that was just different than what I personally wanted - it's the lack of depth and complexity that is the issue, not the themes themselves. all of the things I mentioned here have ALWAYS been part of the DNA of Dragon Age, in all its iterations, despite the variations in style and scale of each of the games, so their absence in this title is notable and disappointing for players who loved the series for those reasons.

anyway, this got really long so I'll leave this here. I don't usually engage with posts like these, but felt the need to put some of these thoughts into writing.