#then there's no way to feel much complexity or conflict over - for example - what solas is trying to do and why he's so motivated

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Veilguard vaguing:

It's not automatically a good thing, actually, that the game de-emphasizes or even outright removes racism against elves, and bigotry against other groups, from the story

[broodwoof]

davg spoilers

talking with @skip-the-clumsy-dragon about this has led me to really thinking it through, and i want to explore how dragon age can be viewed through an ecological/environment lens

particularly with respect to the actions solas has taken in the far-distant past and what he wants to do in the present

the veil as an inciting factor for a trophic cascade... the removal of the veil as an inciting factor for another trophic cascade...

the dissonance between a desire to restore and a desire to preserve. how sometimes preservation can mean maintaining the status quo; how sometimes restoration can mean destroying much - or even all - of what has supplanted what was

how complex the morality is in either situation. how the whole system needs to be analyzed, and how unethical it is to analyze the whole system, come to a conclusion, and implement it. the brutal mathematics of it all. the no-good-answer, only degrees of bad

restoration in dragon age means one thing for sure, but has many other possibilities

what it means for sure:

the veil and the 'waking world' will be connected again

what it might mean:

magic restored to the elves

magic restored to the dwarves (possibly?)

the titans could reawaken

spirits/demons are safer and less likely to be altered

what it will damage for sure:

the present world (the how remains unclear)

what it may damage:

mortals - both people and animals

landscapes

built environments and societies

existing cultures

as an example of this on a much smaller scale: a pond.

a pond is a habitat, teeming with life. many things are reliant upon it. but over time, nutrients build up in ponds until they become overwhelming. this leads to algae blooms, yes, but also to lower levels of oxygen in the water, lower levels of light penetrating the pond, and a further process of decomposition/nutrient dumping as the algae decays

on top of making the pond itself uninhabitable for some things, certain types of "algae" blooms - especially "blue green algae," or cyanobacteria - can make the water unsafe for non-aquatic creatures. it can be very dangerous for animals to drink from or go into water that has a cyanobacterial bloom

so sometimes, to preserve a pond as a habitat, one needs to get in there and destroy a lot of it. remove a lot of the algae, for one, but it's difficult to do that without destroying or harming some of the life that exists right then and now

the bugs, the tadpoles, the little near microscopic invertebrates you can't see but are definitely there... and you are of course destroying plant life

so do you let the whole pond die, become uninhabitable to anything and everything, or do you restore it, and know that in doing so, however hard you try to preserve the life currently there, you will inevitably end up destroying some of it?

so, am i comparing people with near-microscopic invertebrates? no. but this is a simple example of what i think solas' whole pov boils down to: does he let the world cycle into a slow death, with significant harm done along the way, or does he - doing his best to limit the damage - change it all at once, believing that it can be stabilized this way, that it is inherently more sustainable?

i don't know which way is more sustainable. none of us do. that's part of the underlying conflict of the game, that uncertainty, but i never got the impression that he's just out there trying to restore the glorious city of arlathan or whatever. he's out there specifically trying to restore the entire world to what it once was, and what he feels strongly that it should be. he is trying to preserve its inherent nature

and of course, this is not my discovery and i don't know who first figured it out or shared the information so i can't credit, but it's worth pointing out:

Solastalgia is a term coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe the emotional or existential distress caused by negatively perceived environmental change.

as a final note: i said i am not comparing people to near-microscopic invertebrates, but i don't think solas is doing the equivalent, either. perhaps at first, but that is dispelled as he spends time in the inquisition, as he gets to know the people of this age

yet the complexity remains. and it isn't clear-cut; there is harm to both sides, and good to both sides. it is painfully, gloriously complex, a narrative that has no single clear answer