jazzmckay

[jazzmckay]

>>I've always thought that myself. People with power never fail to abuse it. Even those with good intentions.

[jazzmckay]

in kirkwall. straight up "blowing it" and by "it", haha, well. let's justr say. The chantrey

[jazzmckay]

Elgar'nan at every turn: You would look so good kneeling before me, Rook. Can you picture it. Are you picturing it.

Ghilan'nain, bonking him with a severed darkspawn limb: FOCUS

[jazzmckay]

Additional official DA media that’s available for free

(In case there’s something here you’re not aware of, and/or want to scratch the ‘itch’ but aren’t able to buy the books and main comics etc)  ◕‿◕

Heroes of Dragon Age - freemium game for Android and iOs devices. Update: No longer available as it was shut down. The game and the characters & items etc which were in it can be read about on the Dragon Age Wiki

Hindsight - motion comic from Penny Arcade, set in the past. Video can be watched at that link

Flemeth - short story-type thing, set in the past (it’s available to read here)

Dragon Age: Origins - comic from Penny Arcade, set around the time of DAO

Morrigan - short story type thing, set before DA:O (can be read here)

Alistair - short story type thing, set before DA:O (can be read here)

Dragon Age: Journeys - singleplayer flash game, tie-in to DAO. Final 2 chapters were never released to the public. Update: No longer available from its original source as Flash died in December 2020 (you may still be able to play it now though if you download the official Newgrounds Player)

Dragon Age: The Revelation - comic jointly created by BioWare community artist Irma Ahmed and David Gaider, set during DAO

Dragon Age: Warden’s Fall - webseries from Machinima, set before Awakening

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening - comic from Penny Arcade, set just before Awakening

Varric - short story by Mary Kirby, set before DA2

Fenris - short story by David Gaider, set before DA2

Merrill - short story by Mary Kirby, set before DA2

Isabela - short story by Sheryl Chee, set before DA2

Anders - short story by Jennifer Hepler, set before DA2

Aveline - short story by Lukas Kristjanson, set before DA2

Sebastian - short story by Jennifer Hepler, set before DA2

Dragon Age: Legends - singleplayer flash game, tie-in to DA2. Check the DA wiki page or try this for download info/instructions

Hindsight Belt - In-world lore video surrounding a belt (Hindsight), promotional tie-in to DA2

Dragon Age: Redemption - webseries with Felicia Day, set before MotA

Dragon Age 2 comic - from PennyArcade. Set during DA2

Paying the Ferryman - short story by Joanna Berry, set before DAI

Paper & Steel - short story by Joanna Berry, set before DAI

The Riddle of Truth - short story by Joanna Berry, set before DAI

The Dragon Age Keep - a free online website/application that allows you to discover, shape, and share your DA experience. It’s designed to allow players to tailor the decisions they made in DA:O, DAII and DA:I. it has a bunch of sections including tapestries of the games’ stories and a ‘world lore’ section

The Last Court - text-based browser game accessed in the Keep, set before DAI. Update: No longer available as it was deactivated on November 17th 2020. A Google Drive with screenshots of 95%+ of the game can be found here [link updated to new location 06/29/22).

The Final Conversation - short story by David Gaider, set after Halward Pavus’ death, so post-DAI but pre-Trespasser. Technically not official or canon since it was written after DG departed BioWare, but definitely worth a read/including

The Next One - short story by Brianne Battye, linked to Tevinter Nights

Ruins of Reality - short story by John Dombrow, linked to Tevinter Nights

The Wake - short story by Mary Kirby, linked to Tevinter Nights

Minrathous Shadows - short story by Sheryl Chee, linked to Tevinter Nights

Won’t Know When - short story by Brian Battye, linked to Tevinter Nights

The Flame Eternal / The Eternal Flame - short story by Sylvia Feketekuty, linked to Tevinter Nights

As We Fly - short story by Lukas Kristjanson

(Also if you have Netflix, there is an animated DA series on there called Dragon Age: Absolution that you can watch. It has 6 episodes and is set mostly after DA:I)

[jazzmckay]

Hey kid, look at me.

I want you to T-pose. Turn your right thumb up and your left thumb doen and look at your right thumb. Move your arms up and down a bit until you feel a nerve running from your armpit to your palm. Now turn your right thumb down and your left thumb up, and look at your left thumb. Keep your chest facing forward and your shoulders back. Move your arms again until you feel that nerve again. Keep alternating between these two for a minute, or look at each thumb thirty times each.

Now sit down. Put your left hand firmly under your left buttock, palm down. Keep your shoulders back and put your right hand over the crown of your head, very gently pulling it to the right. Do this for thirty seconds, then do it again but with your right hand under your right buttock.

These are stretches for the nerves in your arms, and are very good for people who sit behind a computer a lot, or fibre artists, or you name it. Do them daily. They will hurt in the beginning, but keep doing them, even after the pain has gone, or it will return and you'll have to start all over.

[jazzmckay]

evanuris imagery masterpost including datamined content, artbook content, and my own theories on what each symbol might be.

[jazzmckay]

Ok Mr. 'Disapproves of using blood magic to find my missing mom', don't pretend I don't hear you cracking jokes with Merrill all the time !!!!!

[jazzmckay]

D/s and Emotional Needs

This post is basically a transcript of a speech I give to newbies to the D/s scene all the time IRL. I figured it might be useful not only to people curious about kink IRL but also to smut writers here on the smut writing website.

For the purposes of this post, I am sending specific physical acts out of the room. Right now they don't matter, because you can meet an emotional need through any number of physical acts. So when I say that there are many ways to dom and many ways to sub, I am not referring to many kinds of physical acts. I mean that there are many emotional needs that doms and subs bring to scenes, and those can change the scene more than the choice of physical acts that will occur in that scene.

I say this to newbies to the scene because they tend to have a narrow view of the motivations and needs that bring people to D/s, biased by both the newbie's own preferences and the depictions of D/s they've seen in media. The same is true of people who write kink fic. Kink fic is very biased to a narrow subset of the wide range of emotional needs that people might bring to this kind of play.

It's really important to understand this in D/s IRL because a mismatch or miscommunication about these needs can lead to a bad scene. For example, let's take the approaches of sub-as-beloved-pet and sub-as-object. If a dom treats a sub as a beloved pet when what they really want is to be treated like an object, then a sub who went into a scene needing to be ignored, or at the very least the illusion of being ignored and disregarded, is suddenly in the spotlight of a lot of intense attention and affection. Again, I will note that both of these scenes could potentially involve the same physical acts, just approached differently. Let's say it's a service submission scene where the sub is naked and cleaning the room for the dom. Sub-as-beloved-pet would get frequent praise and lots of patiently repeated instructions, while sub-as-object would get one detailed instruction at the beginning and no reinforcement except a punishment if they get part of the instruction wrong.

I'm going to go through a bunch of different styles of dom and sub, with the emotional needs that underlie them. This list is not exhaustive. I'm sure there's more I haven't thought of or encountered, so feel free to reblog with additions. It may also be a bit dom-biased because I'm a dom, but I think that might be for the best, because the emotional needs of doms are generally less understood than those of subs.

Various consensual kinks discussed below. Kinkshamers in the notes will be blocked with extreme prejudice.

Dom-as-control: This may seem obvious or even trivial, but it shouldn't be dismissed: many doms are motivated by an emotional need to have some part of their life where they have total control over what is going to happen. Something that I love about this style of domination is that I always know exactly what will happen next (except if there's some emergency, safeword, or other issue to address.) There are no wild cards in a controlled D/s scene except for those I explicitly allow (like if I ask a sub to choose which whip I'll beat them with.) This is also a reason why I personally have a very hard time switching; I have difficulty with the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next. It should be noted that this style of domination is fairly incompatible with the bratty style of submission, as the brat is constantly throwing wild cards into the scene.

Sub-as-blankspace: The other side of this coin is the sub who needs to not have to think anymore. They've spent all day deciding what to wear and what to eat and which toothpaste to buy and they just want to stop. This is a very common motivator. This sub needs specific and clear commands from a dom, without too many steps, or else needs to have a well-established protocol of kneeling and service that they can do by pure muscle memory. This sub does not want the dom to offer them a choice of whips they can be beaten with, because that forces them out of the blissful blankspace of not needing to choose.

Dom- or sub-as-service: The same emotional need can sometimes motivate domination or submission! Many people dom or sub out of a desire to please their partner. It's about taking on a defined role that you know will meet your partner's needs. It feels good to be needed, after all. This motivation for D/s is generally the best understood by the public, especially as a motivation for doms. It's generally more socially acceptable to want to control and torment people if you're doing it selflessly in order to please them. A big part of my motivation for making this speech to people, and for writing this post, is to point out that this is far from the only style of domination, and pleasing their subs is far from the only emotional need that doms might have.

Dom-as-whumper: I'm using this terminology because of the website I'm on. I'm not into whumpfic, but I recognize in people who have a visceral need to see their blorbos whimpering and bleeding the same need I have to tear apart a cute kitten with my bare hands, or to crush a sub beneath my booted foot. It's the cuteness aggression approach to domination: sometimes your sub is so cute your hands itch with the urge to destroy them. This is where domination and sadism bleed into each other; this style of domination does not work well for the sub who wants to submit without being hurt or humiliated.

Sub-as-object: Subs who like to be treated as furniture, robots, or objects are often motivated by a need to enjoy a sexual or kink situation while being free of attention and scrutiny. Obviously, some baseline level of attention is needed for BDSM safety; the dom needs to be able to notice if the sub is injured or upset. But beyond that baseline, it can feel very freeing for a sub to be turned on, blissed out in subspace, crying, drooling, whatever, without anyone closely watching or listening to them, so long as they fulfill whatever their purpose as an object is.

Sub- or dom-as-flex: Both doms and subs can be motivated by a need to feel competent. I definitely feel awesomely powerful and competent when I do a style of domination that requires specialized skill, such as hypnosis. Submission can also provide a feeling of competence: look how long I was able to stay kneeling on the hard floor! Look how perfectly I cleaned the room, exactly as Mistress told me to do it!

Dom-as-troll (or mad scientist): The sibling to this kind of dom is the writer who thinks "wouldn't it be fucked up if....?" and then writes a freaky nasty little horror story about it. A great thing about D/s is that you can have a thought like "wouldn't it be fucked up if I tied up my sub and then ate their favorite snack right in front of them?" and then you can just do it (provided you know your sub likes to be tied up and tormented.) Then you can find out how your sub would react to your terrible ideas and laugh evilly at the results. The emotional need being served here is the goblin part of your brain that wants to break things just to see how they shatter. All you need to do is find someone who wants to be broken.

Sub-as-brat: Brats are often discussed as a single type of sub, but in my experience, there are two rather different emotional needs that drive brats. Some people are brats because they need the assurance that they can act out all they want, and it won't derail the action; the dom is strong or skilled enough to subdue them no matter what nasty tricks their goblin brain gets up to. Other people are brats out of a need to live in a predictable and fair moral universe. Those brats want a very clear system of rules and punishments for those rules. Then they test the rules, and they get meted out exactly the punishment they were promised. Within the world of this scene, the world is fair, and the same misbehavior will always face the same consequences, something that rarely happens in the real world. These types of brats are rather different, because the first kind of brat doesn't care as much if the consequences of their misbehavior are inconsistent, while the second kind cares a lot.

Sub-as-beloved-pet: Or beloved child, if they're an ageplayer. I find that subs that like to be a beloved puppy are driven by an emotional need to be loved, treasured, and supported unconditionally, even if they make mistakes, even if they behave messily or clumsily, even if they look silly, because that's how a good pet owner should treat a pet. There might be discipline involved, but the discipline is very supportive and patient.

Dom-as-nurturer: Some doms are motivated by a need to be in a nurturing role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a man who wants to express affection and tenderness to his partner but has a hard time doing so because of the way he was raised may be able to unlock that ability if his partner plays a sweet puppy and he's playing the puppy's doting owner. Basically, the D/s scene creates a little world and a set of roles in which it's expected and normal for the dom to be nurturing, even if that's not true for the dom outside of that scene.

Dom-as-enfant-terrible: The other side of the coin is a dom who needs to be in a role where they can be unreasonable, demanding, and selfish, a role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a mother who spends all day thinking about her family's needs may relish the opportunity to center her own desires without worrying if she's being "too much." She can be impatient and fussy and demand the sub do things over and over until she's satisfied, all of which she can't do when she's working as a teacher or other caring role.

Dom-as-artist: I think this is a hugely under-appreciated motivator for doms. Many have a need to be creative and imaginative that they fulfill through domination. I've been to workshops and demos at kink conventions where I've been awed by another dom's fiendish creativity. I once watched a hypno dom with a sub who got off on being afraid, and he hypnotized her and crafted an extremely elaborate horror scene in the room, filling it with menacing shadows and phantasms. This is where I'm contractually obligated to link A Dom DM because this is where domination overlaps a lot with game running and game design.

Sub-as-aesthetic-object: The flip side of this coin is that many subs enjoy being an aesthetic object or canvas for a dom's art. Very often these are subs chasing a need to feel beautiful, or at least enjoyable to look at. Subs who want to be aesthetic objects may enjoy wearing special outfits during scenes, or being posed in sexy or appealing positions. Subs in this kind of scene may enjoy letting go of worrying about whether they look good to the dom, because the dom is shaping them to their own preferred aesthetic, whether that's via poses, makeup, shibari, or something else.

Sub-as-sexual-creature: A lot of subs enjoy being called sluts, offered up for free use, or otherwise being hypersexualized. Why is that? Well, our society has a lot of shame and repression around sex, and it can feel much easier to relax and enjoy sex if it's couched in the fantasy that you have no choice because you've been reduced to a purely sexual creature. The sub has an emotional need to give up responsibility for choosing to have sex and be sexual, because that responsibility is a heavy weight to carry.

Dom- or sub-as-taboo-breaker: This is a huge motivator for both doms and subs. We all live in a society, and sometimes we feel a need to break the rules of that society. Both domination and submission provide opportunities to do so. It's taboo to piss yourself as an adult, but a watersports scene creates a space where it is acceptable or even desirable for a sub to break that taboo. As a dom, I personally get a huge taboo-breaking thrill from slapping a sub across the face. There's something about the sheer disrespect of it, and the memory of being scolded for doing it as a child, that fills me with impish glee.

Dom-as-hunter/sub-as-prey: For the hunter to catch the prey, there must first be a chase, or at the very least an ambush. This need not be a literal chase (we sent physical acts out of the room, remember?) but it is a dynamic to hunter/prey-flavored BDSM: the hunter has to earn it. This fulfills an emotional need for both dom and sub: a dom who struggles with feelings of unworthiness can feel like they've earned their partner's submission, and a sub can feel that the dom cares enough to put in the effort to catch them. Hunter/prey also allows dom and sub to explore some pretty dark emotions within the safety of consensual kink, such as fear, obsession, and consumption.

Dom-as-shadow: I mean shadow here in the sense of shadow work. Many doms take inspiration from people who bullied them in school (and many subs enjoy re-enacting scenes of childhood bullying in a safe and consensual context.) There is a real emotional need served by claiming the power of those bullies for yourself. Those childhood cruelties can be utterly transformed by the change of context. For example, the catty whispers and sneers of straight girls who bullied me for being queer comes out very different when I perform those same catty sneers as a genderfucky adult.

Sub-as-lesser-being: While some subs like to be beloved pets, and others like to be disregarded objects, some like to be pond scum. There can be a real freedom that comes from occupying a role of being disgusting and horrible. Nothing good or useful can be expected of you, and nothing you do will ever earn praise, and so you're free from worrying about or pursuing any of those things. Sub-as-lesser-being is also a space to explore difficult emotions like shame and humiliation in a safe context.

[jazzmckay]

[jazzmckay]

Varric: But being a leader isn't about having all the answers yourself: It's about knowing who does.

See, this is why I really don't understand those posts whining about how Rook isn't the coolest member of the Veilguard and everyone else has much more useful skills and whatnot. Rook may not necessarily be the fastest or strongest or smartest member of the team, but what they do have is the ability to make plans, improvise when those plans go wrong, inspire their allies, earn their trust and love, encourage them to work together and put aside their differences, and use each one of them to the fullest extent of their abilities to further the team's goals. A leader doesn't have to have all the answers or be the best fighter or have the most interesting and detailed backstory (hell, you really don't want that last point for the PC of an RPG), they have to be able to lead. The best fighter or cleverest trickster in the world is useless in a position of authority if they can't use that authority effectively without alienating their allies. And Rook ultimately is able to lead, probably better than anyone else on the team could, because that's where their skillset lies. People really need to get rid of this idea that the role of The Leader automatically goes to whoever's "coolest". It's not a reward, it's an incredibly demanding job that for best results has to go to whoever is best suited to carry it out. Rook doesn't have the flashiest skills, but they do have the skills required to lead well and win loyalty, and for the leader of a team like this that is infinitely more important.

[jazzmckay]

Something I don't see talked about enough is the disabled representation in Veilguard, so I'm going to talk about it.

Specifically Neve Gallus

And how she is just allowed to exist in the game without being pity or inspiration porn

But Red, I hear you cry. What makes you a person to talk about this.

A decent question and one I'm happy to answer. I'm disabled, simple as.

Now I am not an amputee like Neve, but I use a wheelchair and while the disabled experience is not one size fits all there are some things that are universal

So just to reiterate, I am not speaking for all in the disabled community. I am speaking for me and how it makes me feel.

Now to continue

Most games, heck most media, they'd of drawn attention to her prosthetic. Then we'd get the sad music and the tragic story of how she lost her leg, and everyone would talk about how brave she is and how much they admire her.

Which is bullshit and I hate it. I'm not brave or an inspiration. I'm just existing.But not in Veilguard

There's some dialogue between Neve and Taash which is A+ AMAZING AND NO NOTES!!!

I'll include it here

Taash: Hey. Neve. Let me know if you need help on ladders. Neve: Ladders? Taash: Your leg… thing? One of the lords. Benst. He lost a hand. Climbing ladders hurt his shoulder after. Taash: He told us eventually. Then we helped him on the ladders. Taash: Your foot's got a hook shape. It might get caught. Neve: My work leads strange places. If ladders had my number, I'd be out by now. But thanks for asking. Neve: Although, your horns have a hook shape. You worry about them getting caught? Taash: Shit. I do now. ─────── Taash: Hey. Benst can help you if you ever need someone on locks. Taash: I'll ask him if you want. He likes me. Neve: Sure he does. You're not bad to work with. Taash: I'm not? Neve: When you lose a limb, you have a metal leg or a hook for a hand, some things get harder. Neve: But if you ask for help with one thing, and people think you can't do anything. Taash: That's vashedan. No one can go toe-to-toe with you in magic. Neve: Thanks for noticing. Not everyone does. ─────── Taash: Hey. Neve. Benst also had a jeweller add some stones to his lock pick-hand. Pretty gems and stuff. Taash: I can get you a name if you want. Neve: Why would I want gems on my leg? Taash: Cause it's like a boot you wear every day. Might as well look nice. Taash: That's what I did after I broke my horn. And my horn will grow back. Neve: I work Minrathous. Put gems on my legs in the morning and they'd be stolen by lunch. Neve: Besides, I like to keep a low profile when I'm hunting. Taash: Oh. Sneaky. Makes sense. ─────── Neve: Does your jeweller work with inlay, Taash? Taash: Why? You change your mind? Neve: If I save up enough, I might want a new leg — a choice of looks can't hurt. Taash: Ooh. Nice. How about gold with a ruby inlay? Neve: I bang my leg all the time. Gold gets dinged up. Neve: Ruby inlay, though. I can work with that. Taash: Lemme know when you're ready. I'll get you a discount. Neve: Thanks, Taash. Taash: You deserve nice things.

Do you notice how Taash just offers help if Neve needs it but accepts gracefully when Neve says she's good?

DO YOU SEE IT?

That shit does not happen a lot IRL

This line of Neve's

Neve: But if you ask for help with one thing, and people think you can't do anything.

Is most definitely the experience I've had. I've had people treat me like a child or talk to my partner instead of me, even if I'm the one that has asked the question. Or they have offered to help me and then refused to take no for an answer. I had a woman follow me round the shop, asking if I should be out on my own after I refused her help. The shop staff had to intervene. Like actually get between me and her so she couldn't get close to me.

Anyway, back to Veilguard.

I still don't know how Neve lost her leg. And I don't need to know. The only thing I know is that her prosthesis is dwarven-crafted metal. And that's only cause I looked briefly on the wiki cause I had a brain fart of spelling her surname and wanted to check I hadn't missed a dialogue. But it's not there. At all. And from a quick Google, a lot of people didn't even realise she had a prosthesis until many hours into the game.

This is so rare. I mean getting disabled representation in video games is bloody rare but treating a character with a disability as just a person rather than a stereotype is unheard of. Especially from such a mainstream studio and publisher. Like, I am honestly surprised that EA let Neve exist at all.

I give massive props to Neve's writer Brianne Battye and the rest of the Veilguard team that she saw the light of day. A disabled woman of colour who is an actual character rather than a cardboard cut out stereotype.

Also give a shoutout to the Inquisitor. I know they've lost an arm and how. Anyone who played Trespasser knows how they lost their arm.

But it's barely mentioned in game, except in some text. I haven't had a single character mention it, but I haven't done all the dialogue options as yet, so happy to be corrected if it is mentioned in dialogue rather than in text.

And again, there are people who didn't play Trespasser that didn't realise the Inquisitor had lost an arm until they saw someone talking about it online.

More of this, please. Make disabled characters that are just there and no one makes a big deal out of it.

Disabled people exist, and we need more representation like this.

Oh, and if you don't like the term disabled, then you don't have to use it. But I use it. I am disabled. That is my choice and my term of expression. And if you don't like it, then move along. If you try to make a problem about it, just remember I am older, meaner and have worked retail for over 20 years. I am all out of fucks and last nerves

[jazzmckay]

The Griffons and How Symbolism Ties to Theme in Dragon Age the Veilguard

Alright so, I've seen some claims to the effect of Assan is just a cute mascot character and that the darkspawn are reduced down to mindless monsters in Veilguard. While I kinda see how people got there I think it misses a lot of what's going on both in Veilguard and in the wider lore, and I want to do a deep dive into what the griffons, the Grey Wardens, Isseya and her brother Garahel, and ultimately Davrin and then Assan and his siblings represent to Thedas. This is coming from a long-time fan of the series and I will be relying on knowledge from the books and previous games because the griffons and Davrin as a character are a culmination of lore for Dragon Age and represent powerful themes present since the beginning of the franchise.

I posit often that Veilguard has more going on beneath the surface both in the text and in its broader place in the franchise. I don't blame people for not reading the extraneous material to understand the games, but I would like to give you insight and lore from someone who has! I realize not everyone has been here since 2009 nor wants to read the books. That's okay! Come with me, let's take a walk through one of my favorite parts of Thedas together.

Now, admittedly, I'm biased when it comes to the griffons in Thedas. Since I have been a fan since Origins, knowing the Grey Wardens used to ride griffons into battle always floored my imagination. Their legend and absence have been a fascinating part of the lore for me because it has always represented a degradation in the state of the world. I've worked in environmental restoration and am familiar with ecology and how that ties to land management. We live in a world with a distinct absence of many of its apex predators. Look at the California grizzly bear, a creature that can and should still be around but was driven to extinction by human beings. The valley oak it used to feed on is still around, the hills it used to roam and the prey it used to hunt are still here. But the bear itself is long gone, and its prey have run wild in its absence and grown bold. While there are many causes for Califronia's wildfires, this is one of them. The ecosystem is missing one of its vital components. This is how I've always viewed the griffons.

The griffons, from what we can tell, have something akin to a mongoose to cobra relationship with the dragons. This bears out in their utility in fighting archdemons during a blight. Full grown griffons are massive, intelligent, temperamental, and fearless. They're wildly capable in combat and can easily take on full grown dragons. I used the term apex predator before but dragons represent what is sometimes called a super-apex predator. They need an absurd amount of food and left unchecked on an ecosystem they would devastate it. Now that the dragons are back and we are in the Dragon Age, we have a world that desperately needs balance, and it's one more way that the blight has devastated the land. Blights represent a corruption, a disease, and you can see its effect everywhere you turn, even in the very ecology of Thedas. Think of it as pollution, an oil spill, an algae bloom, something that chokes out everything around it and keeps it from thriving. Put a pin in the idea of apex predators and their importance to the ecology we'll get back to it.

Now, we need to talk about the legend of Crookytail the bold. ……Kidding but we do need to talk about Isseya and Revas, and Garahel and Crookytail before we get back to Davrin and Assan. Keep in mind, it is wildly important that Isseya, Garahel, and Davrin are elves and put another pin that.

First of all, we can't separate the Wardens and the Griffons. They go hand in claw together. After the First Blight the Wardens are to the griffons as the mabari and cheese are to Ferelden. The Grey Wardens are the griffons and the griffons are the Grey Wardens. The Wardens revered the griffons. They honored them. They cared for them from life to death and held them up as heroes alongside their riders and the fallen. Never did a griffon's sacrifice go ignored by the Order. None were forgotten. This relationship, on a personal level, is one of my favorite parts of the lore by far. It's a such a pure, honorable, and noble camaraderie. We fight and die to protect this world and despite the corruption within the love is there.

Until the Fourth Blight. As the blight corrupts the Wardens, so too it inevitably corrupted the griffons. The Grey Wardens will always have that darkness within them. The poison that taints everything, including that which makes them mortal. They are not fully of Thedas, they have one foot in the waking world and one in the land of nightmares. The constant battle with the darkness inevitably breaks the warriors fighting the good fight. It warps and changes you. After centuries, what you were can no longer be reconciled with what you've become. You see it time and time again in Thedas and nowhere does it play out so viscerally as it does with the struggle of the Grey Wardens. Because a Grey Warden will do anything and everything to end a Blight, because nothing else, nothing, matters as much as the survival of Thedas and her peoples. Not even their most cherished allies.

Isseya's story is terribly sad because of this. My friend @himluv did a breakdown of this idea here. We've had intelligent darkspawn in Thedas before, since Awakening, and Isseya is a special case because of what she did. If the blight is the result of the tortured dreams of the Titans, the very scourge of the soul brought to life, so Isseya is the result of what happens when love and duty are corrupted into hatred and retribution. This is something that is visible in the Last Flight, when long before she takes the taint within herself to save Assan and his siblings, she becomes visibly sick and resembles a ghoul more than a woman. What Isseya did to the griffons saved the world. Make no mistake, she is a hero. She saved the last clutch of griffons and nothing can take that from her, not even her actions in Veilguard. She is a tragic figure not just because of what she did, but what doing so did to her. That is what it means to be a Warden, sacrificing not just your life but your very soul. This is why Isseya is Davrin’s antagonist in this game, she’s a mirror of what he could very easily become.

Which brings us to her brother Garahel, his griffon Crookytail and their legacy. As with all great Grey Wardens of the past, Garahel and Crookytail are remembered in Thedas for their great sacrifice in defeating the archdemon Andoral during the Fourth Blight, the most desperate Blight we know of in the annals of Grey Warden history. Entire cities were swallowed whole, the death toll was incalculable, and it forever altered the fabric of Thedas. Where Isseya's contribution to the world and her very name are largely forgotten, as is the case with most Grey Wardens, Garahel's isn't. He is revered, a legend, and just about every elf in Thedas knows his name with good reason. A city elf given the highest honors for his sacrifice and forever after lauded.

The thing is...he was kind of a dick. At other times he was a political pawn, literally getting in bed with the Queen Regent Mariwen (albeit at the orders of his lover Amadis and with support of Isseya). He was also conventionally attractive, charismatic and a good leader, and able to rally mass support from all corners of Thedas, not unlike his successor the Hero of Ferelden. He was also the one who convinced Isseya to carry out the First Wardens orders and blight the griffons, dooming them to extinction. Had he not, who knows what would have happened. The truth is, he was more complicated than just a dead hero, and the tragedy is he will always be remembered for his death more than the facts of his life. He and Isseya are mirrors of each other, one died young and the other lived too long. Even humans will venerate an elf, as long as he died like he was supposed to.

Oh hey look a conventionally attractive Grey Warden elf who is far more than what he appears and who only considers himself a weapon has entered the scene. Now we get to talk about possibly my favorite companion of any DA game. If you want an excellent write-up focused entirely on Davrin I'd like to direct you here. @ryoskuna did a great job analyzing Davrin as a character and it's one of the best meta essays I've read in a long long time.

I've talked about why it's important that Davrin is a Dalish Elf here. Today, we're focusing on why it's important Davrin is an elf, a scholar, an artist, and a father to the griffons. To reduce Davrin down to his relationship to Assan alone is a massive disservice to his writing as a character not only because there is much more to him, but because he also represents a culmination of what both elves and Grey Wardens mean for Thedas.

Davrin as a man is complicated. He has a tense relationship with not only his own history but with elves in Thedas. Despite being the embodiment of the Way of the Three Trees and donning vallaslin, he left his clan not just because he wanted to explore, but he wanted to be a hero. It is vitally important to understanding him as a character to understand that he is a man seeking common purpose like he had as a child in his clan. It's why he joined the Grey Wardens.

Davrin: I missed the sense of a common purpose. A clan acting as one. Everywhere else, people were in it for themselves.

Davrin: There's a reason I joined the Grey Wardens. Guess I needed that purpose again. The shared fight.

Another, incredibly important theme in Veilguard specifically, is hope. Some people tend to perceive hope has something infantile, childish, or immature. But Veilguard doesn't. Veilguard asks you to engage with hope, even when things seem at their darkest. The game walks you through processing regret and grief over and over and how to let it go to move on. How to live beyond your worst traumas. How to face the darkness within yourself and then live with it. It gives us these very positive changes to the world-state in landback for the Dalish, an abolitionist archon in Tevinter for the first time, a possible cure for the blight and the end of Blights altogether as we know them, and the return of the griffons. It's the only time since their inception that the Grey Wardens can be more than just the bulwark against annihilation, weapons whose only purpose is to fight and die, the first and last line of defense.

They can be more.

Had Davrin died at Weisshaupt like he was "supposed" to, the world would never have gotten to know the former halla herder who'd sing to settle them, the man who chose to have purpose over money, the man who carves figures of the world around him to understand it better, the man writing a monster hunting manual to save lives, and the man who ultimately saved the griffons from the old corruption. Davrin is important because he represents that hope. He represents, for the first time, a Grey Warden that can be more than corruption or sacrifice. Davrin gets to be what Garahel and Isseya could never be, an elf who gets to be more to Thedas than a sacrifice. The world will remember his name for more than just his death. He can live and live well, and that's a victory for all elves in Thedas.

(Look at him. He's a nerd. It's AMAZING!)

Let's talk about "turlum." About purpose. About the unique bond and griffon and rider. Because by the end of his personal questline, Davrin has the option of returning Revas' feather to Isseya. Of seeing the humanity in another Grey Warden who once had what Davrin has, who was an elf like Davrin is an elf, who loved the griffons like their mother but loved Thedas more. Davrin knows Revas was more than an animal to Isseya, because he knows Assan is more than an animal to him. He found purpose not only in being a Grey Warden, but in returning something precious to the world, one that was once thought lost forever. Isseya and Garahel are what the Grey Wardens used to be. Everything they have been to Thedas. But Davrin is the embodiment of what the Grey Wardens, and Thedas, have in their future.

At the end of Davrin's questline the player gets a choice on whether or not to return the griffons to Arlathan Forest or the Grey Wardens. I love both choices largely because of what I've laid out here, and it's what I appreciate about Veilguard's approach to player choice in general. The game won't tell which one is the right answer, it won't scold you or lecture you, it just offers you the choice and you live with the consequences. The player gets to interpret what that choice means to them. I'll end this by going over both choices. We're also going to talk ecology again. One of my favorite conservation success stories, and one of the most famous, is the return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. The return of an apex predator to Yellowstone caused what's known as a biological cascade, helping bring a damaged ecosystem back into good order.

First things first, thank you @wardensantoineandevka for helping me develop my understanding of Antoine for this part!

So, If you return the griffons to the Grey Wardens, they're given into the care of Antoine. You see, no matter what you choose, the griffons wind up under the care of an elf. This is not an accident. Antoine is a clever and inquisitive man with a kind heart, who has not let the fact he was blighted and turned Grey Warden change him. His life in Orlais was more than likely a difficult one, and he is horribly blighted and forced to become a Grey Warden to survive. Yet, he is inherently a man interested in investigating the world around him and is functionally a Grey Warden ecologist and inventor in his own right, hence why it's him and Evka that are investigating the blight. Both of them are interested in speaking to locals and understanding their oral traditions, as well as taking care of the lands they find themselves in. Under their stewardship and with the player's help, the Hossberg Wetlands are restored. Returning the griffons to the Grey Wardens both heals an old wound in the Order, but also gives them to the care of people who take the time to learn about the land they've come to care for.

If you give the griffons into the care of Uncle Eldrin, they're returned to the care of the Dalish. I mentioned the Dalish retaking command of Arlathan Forest, now with an abolitionist archon as their next-door neighbor. Returning the griffons to the Dalish is a powerful symbol of letting a people who have long lived on the fringes take over the land stewardship. Returning the griffons to Arlathan will inevitably lead to the sort of biological cascade the wolves of Yellowstone caused. You see this during the course of the game, with Assan knowing how to take care of a halla, brought on by his close relationship with Davrin and his own nature. The griffons are meant to be guardians, wherever they wind up in Thedas. The Dalish have their homeland back, and they have the griffons to help them take care of it.

I brought up the California grizzly bear in the beginning of this because while we may never see the return of grizzly bears to California, we are taking steps to ensure the stewardship of the land goes back into the hands it has always belonged in. One of the reasons Veilguard means so much to me as a game is my own ties to the land I live in. I see in the griffons a beautiful story of restoration. A lot of the way Veilguard depicts hope is something you have to work for. You have to dig your hands in the dirt and plant the seeds for the future. You may never see that tomorrow but you put in the work anyways. That is what the Grey Wardens have always been for Thedas, their sacrifice allowing for the rest of the people to live on. And now? They get to build that future themselves.

That is what the return of the griffons represents in Veilguard.

[jazzmckay]

I needed this drag. Let’s change guys and not look back

[jazzmckay]

i'm thinking about cullen and meredith's relationship bc like. Out of all the templars who support Meredith, Cullen's not only the more outspoken that we see, but he's also defensive of Meredith. Like he's always trying to explain and justify her actions, even in act 3 when their relationship is more strained (with cullen even wondering if he's serving the order or just her) and to some degree, Cullen does seem to care about meredith beyong just being his boss, like in act 2, he does express concern about the fact that she's become more reclusive and he wonders if smthg has happened.

and i think it ties back to how cullen got into kirkwall. and credit where credit is due, im stealing @vigilskept's words from the convo we had about why would gregoir send cullen to freaking kirkwall of all places, and it plays into those retconned epilogue slides where cullen kills some mages. the point is that, Cullen is obviously not doing well and with how shaky things are in kinloch hold, he has to go somewhere else, and so he gets shipped to kirkwall because despite everything, he might be useful there.

And like, Cullen, despite being a somewhat young member of the order, very quickly becomes knight captain and so, meredith's second in command and i do think that like. yes, there's the whole thing with cullen being in a state of mind reagarding mages similar to meredith's so she can capitalize on that, but i also wouldn't be surprised if meredith also kinda saw. some of herself in cullen? Because Meredith's backstory is basically her family tried to protect her mage sister and then boom, abominations everywhere, and now meredith Knows Better TM. And Cullen, by his own admission, was more "lenient" with mages pre-uldred, abominations happened, and now he Knows Better TM, so i think Meredith would sympathize with that and, in a way, lowkey take him under her wing by making him knight captain.

And it makes sense with that in mind why Cullen is defensive of Meredith and her actions throughout most of DA2, because its like oh yeah she gave me a chance when i was doing very poorly. I would not be surprised that given that he is her second in command, if he somewhat also saw her as a mentor figure? And like, if things went normal in kirkwall, the expectation was that one day he'd probably take over the role of knight commander once meredith retired/died, so it makes sense that they'd have a somewhat closer relationship than meredith did with the other templars.

And to circle back to DAI, it would have been more interesting to me if instead of Cullen just brushing it off as my evil ex boss was evil whatever, if he had many conflicting feelings. On one hand, he knows in the end, it was the right thing to do to turn on Meredith bc she had gone too far, but on the other, he had worked for her for 6 years, maybe it wasn't so easy for him to just turn over like that. He knows it was the right decision, but what if it was smthg that he did think of like waht if there was another way? should i have done smthg sooner? and that can even get into conflict with Cullen's relationship with the inquisitor, with him trying to prevent all that happening again.

I just think that Cullen and Meredith's relationship is something that can be very interesting. I really like the idea of them having somewhat of a mentor/mentee thing going on because i think it adds a lot of layers to cullen's character in DAI, and his final decision in da2

[jazzmckay]

on twitter in 2022 i said “fandom likes to baby white villains and excuse their behavior, like with kylo ren and snape and izzy hands” and i got torn to absolute shreds even though i wasnt saying anything new and now people are coming out of a black-ass vampire movie doting on the white villain

[jazzmckay]

As much as I love the idea of girl dad lucanis……

The idea of him having a son reach the same age he was when his parents were murdered and he was sent off to be trained by Caterina……. Realising just how small and innocent he and Illario were…………… how he could never imagine beating his son with a cane or starving him as punishment……………. How much happiness as a boy he was truly denied………

Ooohhhhhhhhhh it’s good stuff

[jazzmckay]

By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.

Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.

This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):

Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):

Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.

But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:

Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.

Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation

Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.

Meditation

Martial arts

Sports in general

Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)

Woodworking

Cooking

If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers

Things can be easier. You might always have a disability around this (I certainly always will), but it can be easier. You do not have to be this stuck forever.