Brace Yourselves; Feels are Coming

I think I realized that I truly just do not agree with the thesis statement of Veilguard. They focused on the theme of “regret”….as if regret itself is a character flaw.

No, we should regret. That’s a very good thing. We should analyze actions we’ve done, and if we realize our actions hurt others, have caused ourselves harm, have caused the world harm…we SHOULD regret those actions.

DATV attempts to highlight Solas’ regrets as a fatal flaw, when I actually think that’s one of the best things about his character. His regrets show his heart.

And yet, they try to make the protagonist as the one who “understands how to handle regret” yet they simply just do not handle it at all. It makes it seem like the right answer to feeling grief for one’s actions is to just simply not care.

I just hate how this is the message they wanted to focus on, and how they tried to make regret a “flaw”. No, I argue instead we should absolutely use our regrets to show us what matters, to help us focus on moving forward and bettering ourselves to make better decisions in the future. But it never took the opportunity to make that statement, it just made fun of a character trapped in the pain of regret, and upheld a character who didn’t care.

Did you know the fantasy MMORPG Final Fantasy Fourteen only uses the word "okay" 9 times in dialogue throughout the entire hundreds of hours long story? And each use of "okay" that got through seems like an actual mistake that simply didn't get edited out?

There is no use of "okay" in A Song of Ice and Fire. There is no use of "okay" in the entire The Witcher series. It's something that's like... just really largely accepted for fantasy. I would argue that vocabulary choice and word choice does a huge amount of heavy lifting to make something "feel" like a fantasy!!!!! It's a part of the genre expectation that I think is largely agreed on.

If you're writing a medievalish fantasy in a fantasy land, and you chose to establish a unique vocabulary and to minimize modern anachronisms to facilitate the feeling of being in a different fantasy world than our own modern mundane world, in a way that is commonly accepted for fantasy, and you've done it in all 3 previous of your games except for deliberate exceptions for artistic reasons, then you expect that to continue into the next part of the story so you feel like there's continuity.

the FFXIV English localization team made a point never to use "okay" commonly because it DOES make it feel too modern. It's actually a really easy thing to keep an eye on, editing wise.

and FFXIV is a game that has ACTUAL MODERN CARS and PARKING LOTS!!! and the English writing team STILL cared about eliminating "okay". Because they cared in a basic way about how word choice affects fantasy experience. Anyway, so that's how it feels when fantasy writing cares about the little details :)

Anyway, I'll continue to look at it as the most easy softball lob toward the writers' and editors' bats that they just fucking whiffed for no reason. Or whiffed on purpose, which is even fucking worse.

And after this week's revelations that BioWare always HATED and devalued the medieval fantasy Dragon Age and LOVED and valued the futuristic sci-fi Mass Effect, this style change is even more important to me. When a company looks down on fantasy PERIOD and suddenly in the latest game even the very language is changed to not feel as much as a fantasy game.... HMMM Hmmmm hmmmm I'm sure it's nothing!!!!!! but yeah it's childish to have basic expectations for a fantasy setting

if solas could just change back into being a worm anytime he wanted, he would just to avoid being dorian's barbie doll

not even to say that i believe white men are INCAPABLE of writing these issues but there has to be a conscious effort and a willingness to listen to other voices. and we've seen david gaider talk .

honestly making three year timejumps between acts was the smartest decision character development-wise dragon age ever pulled. i don't think da2 has more character interactions/romance content than other games but i think the main reason kirkwall squad's dynamics and relationships with hawke and each other feel so fleshed out and real to me is that the game implies these people were spending time together during literal years. the plot itself moves very quickly but its structure creates an impression that the characters were still given enough time to breathe. like yeah anders' dramatic love confessions would feel hilariously out of pocket if it happened like a week after he met hawke but the guy was pining for a very long time. hawke's reunions with their sibling (whose personality also drastically changes in this time period) would fall flat if they were separated for like a month but they haven't seen each other in years. and i think da2 also conveys the passage of time nicely. character models might not change (would have been a nice touch tho but this game was made in less than a year) but they themselves change due to their circumstances that get progressively worse and this is also the reason why their questlines don't feel rushed. the quests are connected but the Next Big Thing doesn't happen the second you finish the previous quest. it takes time for danarius to get to fenris. it takes time for sundermount demon to ruin merrill's relationships with her clan and her keeper. and it takes time for the qunari and mage/templar conflicts to reach their breaking points and every companion is inevitably affected by it and it wouldn't hit half as hard if all these events happened in a year or so. yeah this is the shortest dragon age game but to me it feels the longest in the best way. i got to spend almost a decade with these guys watching their lives slowly and inevitably fall apart and it successfully devastated me

The god of lies retcon is really boring tbh

Okay I wasn't planning to but I think I'll reblog to elaborate on my thoughts instead of going to bed.

I write Solas for like fun and he's really a blast to write. Just a super engaging character and part of his appeal as a writer is there is so much care in his words. It's carefully pieced together to still be the truth while shading it enough it works in his benefit. You also have to think about his motivations in saying that.

Each sentence can have so much depth and meaning and at so many different angles I really enjoy it as a writer. I enjoy character interaction and the concepts of why we saw what we do to others and how we interact with other. I like thinking about why he does things. Why he said what he said? What other meaning can be derived and how can I best use and shape Solas' words to engage with the story.

It's boring to wipe that out and just have him be a liar. I'm fundamentally not interested in a character like that. Why give a character a trait that means you can just throw out all that he says? There is no point in deciphering his words if he's a liar and that's really boring. it's a boring character trait. It's just not fun to read or write.

at least for me

The retcon makes Solas boring and that's such a shame because Inquisition Solas is sooooo entertaining.

Or you could just… kiss? you don’t have to!! But you could😌

me when the plot won't plot like it should

finished this between commissions 🫶

Honestly something that really affected my view of Varric (and again, I say this with great love for the character) was playing my Terrible Hawke, Emilia, who ends the game an absolute anti-mage fanatic who believes that magic is a curse and it was a blessing that the Maker called Bethany back to His side before she could fall to demons. She is a Hawke who is mainly diplomatic, well-spoken, respected, and absolutely unhinged in her views on magic. She is the Viscount of Kirkwall, and by the time she comes to the Inquisition she's also taken Chantry vows and become an actual templar (after having practiced the discipline off the books for years). She singlehanded kept Kirkwall under Chantry control after Meredith's death. She slaughtered every mage to a one, even the ones who surrendered.

She's Varric's best friend. And he's just as starry-eyed about her in Inquisition as he is about any other Hawke. I love what a deeply unsettling side of Varric that is to see.

She's the best. She's a hero. She saved his city.

Some of the tags on this post are suggesting that this is a flaw in Varric's writing stemming from the fact that it doesn't account for the branching possibilities of Hawke's personality, and while I respect that people may read it that way, I just don't think that's true. For one thing, while there are a lot of choices in DA2, the ending choice is extremely binary. Hawke either supported the annulment or defended the mages. As world state quantums go, that's not a difficult one to write around.

For another, if the writers wanted Varric to have a strong opinion on the mage issue, he would have had one in DA2, which he very pointedly does not. He deflects the question when asked, and is dubious about the prospect of supporting the mages at the end, but when it comes down to it, he supports Hawke no matter what. In terms of game decisions, Varric feels strongly about two things: Kirkwall itself, and Hawke.

Like I wasn't just being glib in that last paragraph up there: Varric is so loyal to Hawke no matter what because Hawke saved his city. Twice. In that regard he sees Hawke's interests as aligned with his own regardless of whether Hawke did so by supporting the annulment or the rebellion. There was a crisis, the city Varric loves was on fire, and Hawke fixed it. For this Varric is not only deeply loyal to Hawke, he supports decisions that are like Hawke's decisions from then on, with his approval for the Inquisitor depending on how much the Inquisitor acts like Hawke. His absolute loyalty to Hawke, however unsettling it may be in certain circumstances, is a feature, not a bug.

Yeah. Certainly video game mechanics played a role, they want to make sure that companions can stay with the player regardless of what choices we make. But usually they still express their opinion and you need high approval or pass persuasion checks. That is what shows us their real personality, their real values and what they stand for. For example Zevran speaking up against killing the mages is his “true position” so to speak. We lose some approval but then we can give gifts and companions forget, the story moves on and they still love the warden. We understand that this is just the video game mechanics.

Varric however is a different matter. He is written in a way where all of this makes sense for his character as OP explained. However I would like to add that not only is Varric just as starry-eyed about an evil Hawke, he is actually more starry-eyed! Just like the other companions, Varric expresses an opinion. His position is simply less set in stone, he doesn’t need to be persuaded. But in the end Varric does speak up! and he mildly objects if we support the mages! Meanwhile he expresses his approval if we kill the mages.

He says this to an apostate Hawke who has maxed out friendship with him:

He says to his friend “I’m not sure, maybe you should commit genocide against your own people. Eh. But I’m with you bestie.”

Meanwhile he is very supportive of killing all the mages:

“Defending innocent people, preserving our way of life? This is worth doing.”

“Preserving our way of life” is a line straight up from every conservative politician’s mouth.

Basically Varric’s “true (or original) position” is pro-templar, anti mage revolution, anti mage freedom. His approval in Inquisition suggests that a mage supportive Hawke has shifted his view, still that is a less comfortable world state for Varric.

I think Varric is a very realistic portrayal of the type of guy who has friends who are minorities or friends who have been mistreated in some way in society. However he doesn’t understand their struggles.Those individuals might be his friends, but... well, he is callous to their experiences. And when it comes down to it, he may or may not throw his friends under the bus because their pesky rights are an inconvenience. He doesn’t understand why everyone can’t just get along. That’s what he wants. And he sees this conflict as equal squabbling on both sides. Because he grew up in a world where the status quo has been comfortable for him and therefore “preserving our way of life” is good. To the point where even horrible inhuman acts are not only justified but it’s the right thing to do. As long as that is the “normal thing”, the way it has always been done. Anything else is the strange unknown and causes conflict which he doesn’t want.

(“Defending innocents” (cough cough protecting the children) is a worthy cause because otherwise it’s “helping dangerous people run amok”. Notice that these innocents who need defending from the circle mages during The Last Straw do not exist... the templars are the ones attacking the mages and therefore the mages try to run for their lives, away from the circle. In Varric’s view the innocents who need defending are not the people who are under attack, but future imaginary potential victims who might be harmed if the mages are simply allowed to be free.)  Varric just wants everyone to know their place and play card games together. He doesn’t want anything to change. He goes along with a revolution only out of loyalty towards a good Hawke. That loyalty overrides everything, however he did have an opinion to begin with and that was actually anti-mage freedom. (Contrast that with Isabela who also goes along with whatever Hawke decides out of loyalty because Hawke didn’t hand her over to the arishok. But actually she expresses disgust when attacking the mages “crushing the rebels? how dare they wish for freedom” Her “true position” is pro-mage freedom.)

This was such a strong addition I couldn't not reblog it. Yes, you're absolutely right. Those responses to Hawke's endgame decision are very important pieces of characterization for Varric, revealing that at the core, when push comes to shove, he does have an opinion. That opinion is and has always been trumped by loyalty to his friends--not just siding with Hawke at the end, but also paying off street gangs and city guards and probably templars to keep his mage friends safe. (And he absolutely did consider Anders a friend no matter how grumpy he sounds about him in Inquisition, and others have pointed out that even though he claims not to know or care where Anders is, he does suddenly mysteriously know how to get a letter to him if a Hawke who romanced him is left in the Fade--but I digress.)

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that Varric doesn't want anything to change. I think he avoids taking a stance on the mage situation for so long because he doesn't want to have to take a position. As long as the mages are over there and someone else's problem, I think Varric would really rather just not think about it. He doesn't know those mages. It's not his problem.

Varric suddenly has an opinion real quick when his city is on fire. And you're absolutely right that functionally, being pro-status-quo was being pro-templar whether he thought of it that way himself or not. Personally, I think he thought about it as little as possible until it was right in his face and impossible to ignore. His "It's a lot of humans in skirts" comment comes in Act III (whereas Isabela actually admits that she has an opinion in Act II.) Varric really, really wants this not to be his problem. Him expressing any kind of opinion at all at the end of the game is basically him heaving a big sigh and going, "Now it's my problem."

And I think that's a real turning point for Varric as a character despite the fact that he's just going along with Hawke! Varric's arc in Inquisition is all about deciding to actually take a stand for something on his own--but that's probably a whole other post. 😉

Varric is a lot like many of the guys I've known over the years who didn't care for politics and ignored it entirely until suddenly everything became a crisis point and they had to start caring about where they stand.

just a PSA that all my solavellan meta posts and headcanons are freely and joyfully applicable to lavellans of all genders- ik i often default to a femme lavellan (bc my own lavellan is, and i am looking thru her lens most of the time), but y'all, bi/pan solas is the gospel truth to me and you are welcome to apply my little thoughts to whatever lavellan you like.

yeah im a solas husband so WHAT!!!