#the discourse age

[blakbonnet]

as i grow older and age in fandom especially, i have waning patience for 2012 style fandom wars. i don't have time for the type of person who goes "why is this the 2nd top ship on ao3 when it bugs me", i don't have the energy to be friends with people who go "i specifically expressed dislike for this ship and people still write it?" and i have absolutely no time for someone who goes "this very personal trauma i have projected onto this random character and ship should be recognized and agreed by everyone else, otherwise they're bad people"

[txttletale]

its really crazy how people love to blorbopost about how their blorbo is a War Criminal Scrunkly but those same people will act like you ate their dog if you so much as imply that scrunkly has any textual relation to sexual violence

[foone]

Bad idea: Age gap discourse but in a fantasy land where there's multiple races who have vastly different lifespans and life styles.

Is it wrong for a 27 year old human to date a 140 year old stone elf, considering most stone elves don't get out of diapers till their 30s?

Is it wrong for a 80 year old dwarf to date a two year old fire wisp, when fire wisps only live up to 5 years (between the eruptions) and have memories of their past lives, so in a way they're "born" at age 400,000+? That octogenarian dwarf is way younger than the fire wisp that's only physically younger than some of the socks the dwarf has!

Is it wrong for a chronomancer who was never born to date, well, anyone? They are zero years old and infinity years old and negative one hundred and seventeen years old all at once. They look like an old human, sure, with the long white beard and the wrinkly skin, but as far as anyone can tell, they've always looked like that. We've seen the cave paintings.

Is it wrong for a 30 year old lizardman (that's old in lizardman years) to date a human who is 60 years old in biological years (because of aging spells), 26 years old in lived-experience years, but only 13 years old in calendar years? (ie, they were born 13 years ago, but spent some of that time in sideways timelines, so they've lived more years than have passed in their home timeline?)

Is it wrong for a 12,000 year old dragon date a pile of 400 kobolds when kobolds only live like 10 years on average, but reach full maturity in one year? And if you disagree, can you do anything about it? You do know what happened to the last policeman who tried to arrest a dragon, right? Their city is still smoldering, 50 years later.

Is it wrong for anyone to date the time worm? It's the same age, every year. So the age gap can only intensify. If you start dating the time worm when you're both the same age, when do you break it off because you've become too much older than them?

And most confusing of all... What about the fairies? They could be anything between a thousand and a day old, they would lie about their age either way, and they can look like whatever they want. There's fairies we know for a fact have been around since the founding of The City of Towers, who met the silent mother herself, and also look like they're at most ten years old. Is it wrong to date them, or just really uncomfortable for everyone who sees it? And on the other side there's fairies who are "born" (hatched? They come from plants, I'm not sure what the verb even would be. Seeded? Sprouted, maybe) this week who are already appearing like middle-aged men and dancing with widows in what looks like a scheme to run off with her fortune but they never take the money, because what would a fairy want with worthless metal discs? Maybe fairies have a hive mind or genetic memory or reincarnation with full memories, they'd never tell you or give you a straight (or consistent) answer anyway.

Stonefolk are really the only inter-race dating situation anyone can agree on. They're unthinking & unmoving solid rock during the day, so those hours don't count. Thus their "real age" is a nice even half of their true age. So if you meet a stonefolk who was dug out 30 years ago, watch out: that's a 15 year old, and if you're a 25 year human, that's too young for you, even though their dig-date is five years before your birth-date.

EDIT: 2024/01/12: Changed the name of the Stonefolk

[apostaterevolutionary]

Remembering ye olde days in the DA discourse trenches

[fefairys]

getting real fed up with my peers treating teenagers like shit. how did you forget so fucking quickly what it's like to be them. shame on you.

[nucleos]

if you are complaining about dragon age veilguards artstyle being inconsistent with dragon age's overall artstyle then I know for a fact, that you have not played all the games. You are lying, because consistency?? in dragon age?? this is Alistar in all three games

[valtsv]

You allow yourself a moment to indulge in the fantasy of yourself as their chosen companion—their trusted right hand when their own fails them—before the sheer laughable impossibility of anyone finding comfort in such reliance on you clamours and shoves its way to the forefront of reasons why that can never be. You understand this. You truly do. It’s only that—

sketched some scenes from my fic

+ better quality under the cut:

[sunderwight]

It's wild to think that liushen probably has a bigger age gap than bingqiu. Especially by the end of the story.

Like, we don't have firm ages for anyone other than Luo Binghe, but we know Shen Yuan is vaguely in his twenties when he dies the first time, that the Qing generation of peak lords are all within a reasonable age range of one another, and that Yue Qingyuan was a grown adult when he helped seal Tianlang Jun under the mountain. And that this happened after Shen Qingqiu had been accepted into the sect and become the successor of Qing Jing Peak, which, consider Shen Jiu was considered a late addition and also that he presumably didn't climb the social hierarchy of his peak overnight, probably means Yue Qingyuan was closer to 30 than 20 when he fought Tianlang Jun (assuming they weren't even older than that).

Which would put the Qing generation around their 40's, most likely, by the start of the story. Probably mid-40's, which works out for simplification sake because that would mean the best guess is that Shen Yuan is about 10 years older than Luo Binghe at the start of the story, and Liu Qingge is about 20 years older than Shen Yuan.

I mean we could absolutely take more generous estimates to get it closer to one end of a range or another, especially for a particular fic or whatnot, but this is like, the most reasonable guesstimate without doing any of that. I think? I mean you could feasibly make the bingqiu age gap as small as six years or as big as fifteen without really defying canon, and if we want to be very generous to Liu Qingge we could say he's the youngest of the peak lord and just barely squeaked into their generation and is closer to 30 than 40 and shorten the liushen age gap to 10 years instead, but there's also no real reason to assume that either. All things being equal, Liu Qingge being like 45 seems to be more likely than him being 30 or than him being like, 100, even though both are technically possible (to be honest we don't even know if he's actually younger than Yue Qingyuan, since peak lord hierarchy is about the rank of your peak, not your actual age).

Anyway of course eventually Shen Yuan dies again and stays dead for a few years, Luo Binghe gets to catch up to him a bit but Liu Qingge keeps going. Which just widens the liushen age gap (whatever it is) while shortening the bingqiu one. So even if the liushen gap's closer to a 10 years than 20, by the end of the story it's still probably bigger than the bingqiu gap.

I think what makes this extra amusing is that nobody would enjoy the revelation of all this, though. Luo Binghe and his age gap kink would be appalled to learn that his shizun is barely older than him. Liu Qingge (who is firmly in the thick of things with his childhood-enemies-to-lovers arc) would also probably not take it well to find out that he's been unwittingly attempting to rob a cradle.

Nobody likes this!

[dunyun-rings]

I saw a post that said “Dragon Age discourse walked so that Baldurs Gate 3 discourse could run” and that’s absolutely false. Dragon Age discourse sprinted, foaming at the mouth, so that BG3 discourse could skip happily through a meadow

[fanlore-wiki]

Meta Monday: Your favorite fic author is probably over 30.

In 2017, Tumblr user Xochiquetzl posted an essay in response to discourse about adults in fandom, discussing ageism in fandom and explaining why “your favourite fic author is probably over 30”.

The essay seemed to strike a chord with fans and inspired many to share their own positive stories about their experiences with older fans and the fanworks they created.

Are you curious about this essay? Read more on Fanlore!

-----

We value every contribution to our shared fandom history. If you’re new to editing Fanlore or wikis in general, visit our New Visitor Portal to get started or ask us questions here!

[gloomygloworm]

hi i'm here to cause more problems in the fandom!

ive seen some posts recently talking about "why the hell do people WANT to see slavery in veilguard, why are they so obsessed with oppression?" and i can answer this, as a brand new member of the fandom!

cause i had no fucking idea that elves were considered second class citizens until my friends told me!

i had no idea that the crows were so severely flawed, or that the antaam were proud warriors (other than canon fodder,) or that minrathous and tevinter as a whole had this huge problem with slavery.

i just yesterday after doing research into other games discovered alienages, about the dales, about who andraste was and who shartan was. because even reading the codex entries the game seems to fail to make any general connection to all previous games and the world they crafted at all! what the fuck is the chant of light? whats the major religion? what IS andrasteism? what do you mean the crows buy children and torture them - what do you mean they arent just exaggerated circus clowns that kill people? i get it, part of it is perspective. but you'd think dock town - a VERY POOR section of minrathous, would have an alienage? that we'd see more elves doing menial labor or trailing behind nobles as slaves?

also i keep hearing shit about the viper being the pope? or tarquin? where the hell is this info? quite frankly the game doesnt make the codex tempting enough for me to want to 100% it (ESPECIALLY finding out about this terrible "secret ending" that makes me fear picking up ANY MORE codex entries since i already have 2 out of the 3 you need to get it???)

the obsession with slavery isnt because i want to be oppressed, if i wanted that all i have to do is go be in public because im both queer and disabled living in a red state. its about what THEYYYYY the GAME CREATORS put in their own game. slavery! which now, despite how RAMPANT it supposedly is, i have no clue about! i only know about half the shit i do because my friends have been in the fandom a decade and im playing through origins now with them. which, btw, whoa what a game! not afraid to be icy and bitchy and HARSH in an environment where they cultivated that exact reaction.

i like the scenery in veilguard. i like the amount of mingling npcs in locations that make it feel more full, i like the soundtrack and the graphics and the companions as characters. i dont like the story! i dont like the lack of environmental storytelling or the discrepancies in information that i feel like i should know. it feels like its taken the same landslide that pokemon has - going from being called a loser by Gary to having no less than 3 best friends at any given time. There's such a lack of conflict like the game is scared to express the spectrum of emotions and personalities that people deal with day to day. i like my escapism the same as anyone else but if im walking through a city known for treating elves like second class citizens no i wont be surprised if im called a "knife ear" casually by some drunk moron who cant even stand straight.

no ones looking to be oppressed. we're looking for what you advertised to people ages ago - a complex story with serious consequences for the actions of others!

[samcarter34]

At this point I'm largely 'it was what it was' vis a vis campaign 3.

But occasionally I'll think about how the climax of campaign 1 is Scanlan having to sacrifice his one chance to save Vax's life in order to stop Vecna from escaping, how the cast has multiple times acknowledged how strong the story of the tragedy of Vax is. Then I'll think about they consciously made the decision to undermine that, and I get a little annoyed again.

[bardicinspired]

Also while I'm on my Vax/Keyleth bullshit. I understand the criticisms that CR3 somehow took away the tradgedy of CR1's ending. But I have to disagree

And while I don't agree that Keyleth should've been Not Coping for 30 years, that was ultimately Marisha's decision and I respect it.

However CR3 didn't change the ultimate ending of Vax and Keyleth's relationship. Keyleth was always going to reunite with Vax, she even remarks upon it herself in CR1 "I'll see you again, Vax." -because while Keyleth is going to live for thousands of years she knows she will eventually die. And she knows that Vax is out there, waiting for that moment, just as in love with her as he was when the matron stole him away.

I mean if you know the love of your life is out there as a quasi-Death god, the afterlife is real, and he is still desperately in love with you wouldn't you find it hard to move on too?

What I'm saying is, the ultimate ending of Vax and Keyleth was always going to be reuniting. It was the time they were seperated that was the tradgedy. All CR3 did was shorten that time.

And you know? 30 years of mutual yearning is still tragic enough. On top of that, they are fundementally very different people than who they were when Vax died. Keyleth has 30 years of confidence, leadership, and life experience under her belt. Vax spent 30 years as the Grim Reaper and has forgotten what it is to be alive. They are different. They don't exactly fit together any more. They have to relearn who they are to each other and there's beauty in that but there's grief and tradgedy as well.

The Vax'ildan Keyleth knew died. The Keyleth Vax'ildan knew grew older & changed. They are strangers to each other and so very much in love. And they are reunited, as they always would've been. It just took several decades instead of several millennia.

[beatsheetromanroy]

HUGE missed opportunity to not have one of the angels make fun of castiel for cradle robbing. yeah yeah yeah he's a divine being, dean is a human, it's sacrilegious whatever. what about the angels needling cas cause he's over 400 million years old and now settled down with....a 40 year old.

[mayvette]

“bonnibel bubblegum” plot summary

[acquired-elfroot]

The annoying thing is that reducing Solas to a dislikable two dimensional caricature in Veilguard didn't even come close to fixing the problem they set out to fix in doing so, and it was never going to.

I can’t pull up the exact quote, but I believe one of the writing team said something along the lines that they needed to make Solas less sympathetic because at the end of Trespasser too many people agreed with him and wanted to end the world. Which is why they chose to have him kill Varric, among other things. 

While I will say that I agree with the choice to have him kill Varric(I like the idea of him making Rook hallucinate him too, that could have been sweet if it had been well executed rather than a bland set up for a M. Night Shyamalan level twist) to raise the stakes and set Solas up as a serious antagonist for a new audience, or an audience that hadn’t been paying particularly close attention to him - but there is no way it could have ever suddenly made his goal to tear down the veil unsympathetic for those who found it to be so.

The writers seem to have been under the impression that members of the audience sympathised with Solas’ plan to tear down the veil not on its own merits, but for the draw of his sparkling personality alone. Not for well established lore related reasons, or for extra-narrative reasons rooted in a desire for emotional catharsis and narrative satisfaction (which a fictional body count has even less bearing on besides) but because he’s a sad pretty elf boi and we want to kiss it all better.

I’m going to be real with you, if they had surgically transplanted Ogrehn’s personality onto Solas and had him stone cold murder every other beloved character in the series, I would still want the  Veil to come down, or at the very least a better solution than leaving it just as it is. How likeable he is or isn’t has fuck all to do with it? 

Making Solas more dislikable does nothing to change the effect the Veil has on spirits and mages, it does nothing to address the question of the value of mortal lives weighted against immortal ones. It does not change the narrative role of a trickster in bringing enlivening chaos and upheaval to a stagnating world, in this case one that’s been forced to stagnate in service of the illusion of player choice; nor does it quiet our desire to see the rotten roots of Thedas’ corrupt institutions torn up and put to the torch ect. ect.

Most annoyingly, attempting to use Varric's death to accomplish this betrays the writer's assumption that players that did sympathise with Solas’ goals did so out of a naive misapprehension that he’s some sweet uwu softboy that could never do anything truly ruthless or cruel in order to accomplish his goals, and that once we had been disabused of that belief we would clutch our pearls in horror(you mean he’s willing to kill people? In a video game series with protagonists that each have kill counts numbering in the thousands? Quick, summon my fainting couch!) and tidily dismiss the notion that he might have ever had any worthwhile motivations at all. 

Look all you silly little girlies that want to kiss the fictional man, I feel like you don’t understand that he’s the *bad guy* here, glad we’ve cleared that up for you sweetheart. And isn’t he just sooo condescending?

It does not seem to have occurred to the writers that, to his fans, his stone cold ruthlessness is both one of the most well understood and deeply compelling features of the character.

I would happily give that writer a pass on a wicked case of foot in mouth, but the way Anaris & Cyran are written seems to very much enforce their the stance that an overabundance of sympathy for Solas as a person, as well as a desire to see him vindicated are the primary reasons any of the audience would ever agree with his goals. 

So to fix this issue, it stands to reason that the writers needed to de-emphasise everything that humanised(for lack of a better term) Solas and made him sympathetic as a person. Because apparently the problem is that their attempts to do so in the previous game worked a little too well on some people, right? 

As @mythalism pointed out, we cannot see him comfort his friends through their panic or grief or their crisis of faith, or have hushed philosophical conversations with them. We cannot see him flirt awkwardly, or try to pretend he didn’t just set his own coattails on fire.

We never see the god of liberation free so much as a wisp bound to a teaspoon.

And all of those compelling character motivations you thought he had about free will and self determination? Don’t worry kitten, we’ve sanitised all of the conflicts those might be applicable to right out of the setting anyway. Yay <3

At the same time, it feels like they’re too scared to upset the very same audience that they imagine has this woobified rose tinted view of the character, lest they scare them away. They’re too afraid of the audience to let him be truly unwaveringly ruthless, prejudiced, bitchy, vindictive, and even genuinely sadistic towards his enemies, because that might upset our fragile sensibilities too much! 

He can’t ever say anything mean to Rook - that might hurt our feelings!

He doesn’t really do anything bad, and if he does he doesn’t really mean it. He committed war crimes, but only because Mythal asked him nicely. He killed Varric, but it was an accident. He makes Rook hallucinate Varric, but he doesn’t use that to manipulate them; Varric just hangs out and vibes. He uses blood magic on you, but he doesn’t do any of the truly fucked up violating things that we know full well blood magic is capable of. He misleads you when he says “the Veil will not fall by my hand”, but it’s so transparent that it’s laughable. He’s never allowed the conviction to really follow through on any of his misdeeds, while still he’s bizarrely framed as outright villainous for them. 

So what we’re left with is a character divested of most of his admirable qualities, but with most of the rough edges filed off as well. Toothless. Boring.

It feels so much like they’re talking down to their audience? Like they don’t trust us to see a character with BOTH vices and virtues in spades come to our own conclusions about them? 

So we get this bland mealy-mouthed version of the character that we apparently need watered down further with ‘our team’s’ insipid commentary, much of which is blatantly based on bad takes people were spewing online almost a decade ago, and many of which have no bearing whatsoever on the actual story we’re being told because ohh my godd apparently we need to have our hands held while we’re walked though every opinion the audience might theoretically  have about the character and gently reassured by proxy that it’s a hashtag #valid opinion and why does this game insist on speaking to us like we’re morons??

For all that they incessantly bring up how condescending Solas is, I’m not sure if I've ever felt more spoken down to by a story I had been so invested in.

So Solas is boring now and I still l wanna tear down the veil lol