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Since I see this kind of post floating around, I want to clarify a few things as one of the people who’s been publicly critical of Veilguard’s writing and politics:

Harassment, doxxing, and name-calling is not acceptable. I for one won't do so to you guys, even though Veilguard defenders have done so to me in the past, using hateful, misogynist slurs.

Critiquing a game is not critiquing people who enjoy it. You’re allowed to enjoy media that others analyze critically. We are allowed to analyze critically media that you enjoy. Liking Neil Gaiman's stories doesn't mean you're a rape apologist, enjoying Love Island doesn't mean you're an uncultured swine, and I am not making personal judgements on you when I call Veilguard conservative, misogynist, and neoliberalist.

There is no unified “Veilguard critical community.” There are individual people who write posts. If you’re referring to the Veilguard Rants community, doxxing, harassment, and bullying have been explicitly rejected multiple times there. You should be able to go read the community by yourself, it's not hard to find.

There’s no secret mob here. There isn’t some coordinated “side” organizing harassment campaigns. Many of us don’t even know each other, we’re just writing critiques. Same as I can't call upon Veilguard defenders to refrain from using slurs when they refer to me, because you're not a community, you're just individuals writing stuff.

We can (and should) debate media sharply without being cruel.

If you (general you) enjoy Veilguard, great. You are allowed to enjoy neoliberalist, misogynist, racist, and so on, media products with shit writing without being judged as a bad person for it. People are allowed to enjoy bad products and stories with Problematic Content. People are allowed to enjoy products from problematic creators.

Harassment and doxxing is not okay in any case, on either side of the opinion spectrum.

Like. Okay. One more thing.

I found out today that one of the DA blogs i follow straight up deactivated because of harassment. That person has been nothing but thoughtful and mature in their engagement with the fandom, and the amount of vitriol they received for it is, frankly, shameful.

If you continue to participate in the veilguard critical community and do not even attempt to be fair to the game/the people who enjoy it, if you do not do anything to moderate and reign in your community, if you keep vilifying people for DARING to have a different opinion? Then, i'm sorry to say, you are complicit in the harassment. Be critical and complain all you want, but be mature about it. Do not let your feelings drive you into a blind rage.

And if you don't see the problem, then maybe you're part of it.

I'm not bullying anyone off the platform with my actions. Just sayin!

EDIT: post unexpectedly taking off and ive already seen someone putting words into my mouth, so. SIGH. once more i clarify that i do not mean people who dislike the game when i say 'veilguard critical community'. dislike away. im not your dad. im not even your uncle. what i mean when i say it is. people who foster an environment that supports mocking people who enjoy the game, that claims that datv displays irredeemable far-right ideology or whatever the fuck the claim of the week is. those people. the people who take it too far. the people whose actions create an environment in which some consider it normal to send death threats to someone who disagrees with them. If you have been rational and mature, if you have taken the steps to clarify that you do not think that people who disagree with you are stupid, if you have been engaging with the criticism in good faith, THEN THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT YOU. please. please im so tired.

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A Quick One About Dark Romance

Let's make one thing very clear to all aspiring writers.

So you want to write a sexually aggressive, growly pin you to the wall romantic lead like:

Gestures like the one above will never work if the rest of the time your sexually aggressive character is whining at their mom about chores and how you'll never understand me mom and otherwise behaving like a pissy little teenager.

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based shit alreadyjaded.bsky.social.

it's funny how epler calls these comments "unhinged garbage", yet all the post was doing is criticizing his (un)professional behavior and asked questions about the narrative and the story HE created.

That's it!

and the questions are very spot on, actually. because the DA universe is build on coding and real-life parallels. so regardless if epler is just ignorant or actually believes in... all what we see in the VG. it's still his mistake and he should still learn to take accountability as a big boy he is

i chose to spend a decade of my life getting the game out there because it mattered to me that we finished telling the story we started in DAI.

do you??? is this why you abandoned literally EVERY set-up created in previous games? solas's agents, well of sorrows, mage-templar war resolution, divine victoria, fate of inquisition (because veilguard just changes 3 lines of dialogue for it)? and many more??

the idea that i 'hate Solas' and chose to sabotage him is brain rot to a level i cannot imagine.

ah but you can't really disprove of this, can't you? because all the behind the scene info just proves the opposite. you two are the Lead Writer and a Creative Director, who else are fans supposed to held accountable for all the bullshit in the story?

also a 40-something y.o. unironically says brain rot lol

i will be dealing with the burnout i developed for years.

pfft cry me a river you get more money and fame than you deserve

Congrats, dipsticks. (a way to treat your followers btw) You came in with enough spun-up-in-fandom-until-toxic takes to alienate the guy who sacrificed his mental and physical health fighting to have past Dragon Age respected as much as it was and give people who cared about Solas's arc a respectful ending. Great work, no notes.

and the "respectful ending" is basically gaslighting a former slave into believing he needs his master's """forgiveness""" to heal and lock himself into a eternal solitary confinement (unless of course you decide to punch him into solitary confinement first)

also grow some spines, you two. criticizing your behavior and your work (that you're paid for from our purses mind you) is not a personal attack

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I'm gonna have to be the devil lawyer here for just a few points.

"Devs are allowed to have fun"

Yes, but we are allowed to call them out when their fun is misogynistic, racist, homophobic, chauvinist, et cetera.

Shit like breeding kink jokes in 2025, after Roe v. Wade has been canceled and women's body autonomy is increasingly under threat globally? Deserves to be called out, especially when those off-color jokes are made by someone privileged enough to be never personally threatened by the regressive wave.

If you are a creator or have a public role, you also have a degree of accountability regarding what you say in public. Boys' locker room talk needs to stay in boys' locker room (private Discord, anonymous blog, Whatsapp group, whatever) if you don't want it called out.

Note that calling it out or criticising the game authors doesn't mean sending threats.

Veilguard isn't just what you make it.

It's a poorly written mess of misogyny and surface-level liberalism over deeply embedded neoliberalism that undermines its own messages because the devs weren't thinking enough when they wrote it, and therefore wrote in their own incredibly regressive attitudes.

I wanted to enjoy Veilguard, I really did. And it fucking broke my heart. The majority of us in the hashtag veilguard critical is like this, we're not grifter culture war tourists, we're mourning.

The Bullying and Doxxing

This has been edited to clarify my points 6.6.2025

It has taken me longer than I would like to put this into words, due to life giving me all the good things I have been working for at once. I am going to make this abundantly clear for everyone.

What happened to Idontevenlikedragonage should have never happened. Not because we are all rainbows and toxic positivity, but rather we as a community should never allow people to feel comfortable enough that they can dox someone. In my thirty one years of existence there has been one cardinal rule of the internet.

If you dont like something or someone's take ignore it.

At the end of the day we all like engaging with media be it on a hyper critical way or on the barest amount of engagement. However it does not matter if it is a survey, an analysis, or someone's opinion. You do not need to escalate to bullying them off the internet and doxxing.

This is different for real beliefs that translate beyond the videogame space such as Zionism, TERF ideologies, White Supremacy, Racism etc. That being said the more engagement you give a piece the bigger platform they have. The best strategy I have seen across social media platforms is blocking and not engaging period.

DOXXING IS ILLEGAL.

The fact this was done on Anon, very clearly illustrates that they know what they are doing is wrong, and they do not want to face the consequences of their actions. However, I am ultimately not surprised as to date to my knowledge this fandom has done the following;

Bullied Jenifer Hepler off the Internet

My fandom knowledge has said this was due to the alleged character assassination of Anders. However someone did bring up Proto-gamergate and while I am still looking into the events leading to her being doxxed and her family threatened but it is possible for these two things to exist in the same space and time. It is still bullying and harassment.

Disclaimer: Her TERF and Zionism ideologies are not condoned

Bullied David Gaider, Mike Laidlaw, Trick Weekes, and John Epler into Locking their Accounts Multiple Times.

I am specifically referencing a group of Solavellan enjoyers known as Sollavellan Wives due to their alarming similarity to Snape Wives from the Harry Potter Franchise. To MY KNOWLEDGE this does not include anyone with nuanced versions of Lavellan, or Solavellans who are capable of disagreeing with the the creators but remaining rational about it. Additionally this comes to mind about Emmerich sleeping like a giraffe or Solas having a breeding kink, the devs are allowed to have fun, they are allowed to not like a character they write. I will be real as a budding novelist and fanfiction author I legitimately do not like some of my characters. I have a character who I literally mentally shake like a maraca because they keep changing what they want. At the end of the day though this does not change my dedication for my characters or the work I will put in to see that their voice is heard.

Hate mobbed A WOC author for her portrayal of Vivienne, using the fic as an example of systemic violence against WOC characters, and Improper Tagging.

Bullied Voice Actors and Devs for having different opinions on the characters.

Bullied Concept Artists for releasing concept art.

Y'all need to learn to enjoy life and nature more, I am tired of seeing creators and people who simply enjoy the game bullied for daring to have a different opinion. There is a difference between bigotry and use of stereotypes and someone genuinely having an opinion for no reason that the media you consumed is not great. The above actions are not the fault of the victims but rather the so called alleged fans who decided to bully them off the internet. Congratulations you are as bad as the Star Wars Fandom and that is not a compliment.

DA is what you make it, Veilguard is what you make it.

I have been in this franchise since ye-olden days and I have enjoyed every minute of it. I have also actively enjoyed Veilguard to the point it is competing with my UNMODDED Inquisition run on XBOX for playable hours, mind you this was when you had to leave the machine on and the game running for the Wartable to it's thing.

Also if by some miracle I have mutuals or followers/following that are contributing to this bullying and doxxing bullshit in the fandom. Please do reach out and let me know. They do not speak for my beliefs or opinions. Fandom should be our place from the world to take our selves less seriously, and enjoy the media we all love.

Racists, TERFS, Zionists, and those practicing other forms of Bigotry please exit stage left. You are not welcome here.

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I agree with your tags, someoneS at Bioware DO need to apologize to women for Veilguard.

The previous games weren't perfect by a long shot, but like, in-universe misogyny and racism is just in-universe misogyny and racism and actually I think it's quite valuable as gamer bros picking the Sexy Lady Avatar and being subjected to a cavalcade of fuck off, bitch is IMHO quite the learning moment without being a Very Special Episode. Similar to how the closest certain ethnic groups can get to experiencing racism IS through video games.

The issue with the misogyny in Veilguard is that it's not in-universe misogyny as much as it's writer attitudes bleeding through the narrative. That's different, and much worse.

its crazy to me how people think the previous games were progressive when a constant issue in every bioware game in history is the rampant misogyny. it's hard to explain to those who've never played more than one or two of their games but god do i get such whiplash comparing playing as a man in their games to playing as a woman. a mundane conversation as a man would go "hello. good tidings" and as a woman you'd get "hey cunt/bitch". but this isn't to defend veilguard. quite the opposite actually. i think with previous installments they could have gotten away with calling the misogyny world building (despite the character creator saying that men and women are equal in thedas...sigh.) but the veilguard writers actually believe they weren't being offensive. that's probably the worst part. this applies to the racism and other problematic material in the game too btw.

yeah! it was never particularly well done in dragon age, but you could kind of scrape by with "well... maybe this is just how their worldbuilding is..." and to an extent it is justifiable, bc it is a hereditary feudal type of society, so that inherently would create some gender issues. and tbh i'm fine with in-universe misogyny, as long as the characters themselves can be interesting and have agency, and they often did!

but man. i DID really expect that after 10 years, the writers would have... improved... instead it feels like they unironically went "so true, cassandra DID have a Masculine Skull Shape™️ and was too grumpy <3 we'll make every woman have delicate features and long hair and be nice to you from now on <3" oufgdsjhgfdh.

and it is really something that the writers were clearly Very Online (perhaps too online) but seemingly managed to avoid reading any sort of nonfiction in the past decade, and applying it to their understanding of how to write marginalized groups?

like i KNOW they were looking at all those long anti-racist reading lists people were passing around on twitter - did they not even skim any of those? not even a little bit, out of curiosity, even if it wasn't their topic of interest? i would not expect like a radical political shift, but idk, it's just very strange to imagine going through this past decade and not ever thinking "huh. maybe it is a little weird to write the qunari as so obviously evil, i should give them some nuance," or "ohh maybe we SHOULD develop the elves a bit more so that their outlawed religion isn't Literally Evil, and it doesn't come off as justifying them being colonized" or something.

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For the record, the labour issues didn't make the game misogynist either. Or EA mandate. We have more respectful portrayals of women (and ethnic, sexual, gender minorities etc) in other EA IP, after all.

i don’t even know if i have the energy to get into it but it truly does fucking grind my gears that criticism over how characters/worldstates were handled gets conflated with criticism of how genuinely fucking atrocious the politics of this game are.

like yeah ok. the dev cycle was a fucking nightmare. no one’s really happy with the game they put out. sure, we can extend empathy to those involved. and yeah, there are labour issues within the gaming industry at play here.

the labour issues are not what made this game deeply fucking racist.

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THERE WILL BE A NEW DLC???? DELUSIONS CAN BE DELUSIONAL AGAIN? WILL THEY FINALLY SAY IT????

[reflectionspace]

Remember kids, it's not the messenger, it's the message. I could be a secret chauvinist ecofascist transhumanist banker evangelical and my materialist analyses of Veilguard ✨️would still stand✨️. Because they're based on what's observable in the game.

For the record I am none of those things I listed. My identity, diagnoses, social class, living situation, sexuality, ethnicity, or political creed are nunyabizniz. I'd vote Dem if I could but I can't because the one thing I'm definitely not? American. 🤫

i won't comment on it further, but i'm watching fandom discourse right now and what's interesting to me is the way rhetorical criticism (in the analytical sense) is met with the weaponization of identity politics. i've called stuff like this "crazy making" in the past, but it's interesting to see how people invent a narrative based on a perceived out group that has characteristics they feel are discordant with them. Solavellans this, Veilguard critical that. I've watched people make up in real time a version of a user that is being propped up to make up the argument they've decided they want to make, bc otherwise it wouldn't hold up if they had taken the time to either a/ discuss with that user in good faith or b/ peruse that user's blog, where they'd know that user is base bare minimum quite critical of previous games for their racist canadian settler colonialism. and in order to prop up this fabricated strawman-esque user, we see these folks busting out all of the -isms they can (racism, ableism, transphobia, etc) to try and assert some kind of moral dichotomy of good vs bad, without even understanding who they are arguing about (not even with! about!) and it's in this 'gotcha' that therein lies the expectation that the user they are attacking will a/ either concede to this framework of morality or b/ out themselves as a person who experiences axes of oppression in order to position themself in a place of moral and intellectual goodness and authority because they have these signifiers. and if you are not playing the same game, the logical it follows is, you must be playing it badly; nevermind that the game being played might actually be myopic.

strange. just so strange.

[reflectionspace]

Let's make it clear

Having critical opinions and disagreeing about a video game: fully OK

Doxxing, harassment, bullying: unacceptable

Posting critical opinions in tags or responding to a post: not harassment (you can just block them)

Spreading rumors, sliding into DMs, name-calling, brigading, dogpiling: bullying

Remember, Regina George may be iconic but in the end, she had to grow up and stop being a bully.

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I would just like to add that it's fully OK to like problematic media. Like a product doesn't have to meet an intellectual purity standard for you to enjoy it, and liking a Problematic piece of media doesn't mean you're a bad person. We're not calling all Neil Gaiman/Good Omens fans names despite what he did, after all. And what he did is a lot worse than what other controversial YA authors have done.

Chuds and shock jocks should be ignored since their critiques are coming from a place of clickbait. But we need to be able to talk critically about media, and not all criticism is clickbait. After all, we consumers deserve quality. We deserve products that are worth our money, that don't talk down to us, that don't insult us like Veilguard does.

casual reminder to the dragon age fandom that criticism of a game isn't an attack on you personally if you are a fan of said game. also, it's very possible to have a nuanced take about these things. e.g. "i liked the queer representation but not some of the politics displayed in the game" etc. if someone says the game's writing displays some questionable neoliberal ideologies, that doesn't mean they're calling YOU a neoliberal for liking it. if someone says they found certain aspects of the game to be islamophobic, they're not calling YOU an islamophobe because you enjoyed the game or didn't see a problem. and so forth.

as has been pointed out, EVERY dragon age game has these problems to varying degrees. there are things they've handled very well in each game (esp for their respective times) and things they fumbled. discussing and critiquing the places where the storytelling fails doesn't invalidate the good things nor does it make you a bad person for liking any of the games. this applies to all media btw, not just dragon age!

and finally, criticism of a piece of media you liked is not inherently bullying nor is it some organized campaign to tear down anyone who enjoyed it and/or the creators of said media. publicly disagreeing with a public opinion posted on a public website where opinions from the opposing side are actively invited isn't bullying. this is the fandom discourse website. if you post fandom discourse and it leads to more fandom discourse, then idk what to tell you!!!! obviously harassment is never okay, but we're talking about a piece of media that none of us had a hand in making. no piece of media is perfect or above reproach nor are criticisms a personal attack on its fans or supporters (or even creators). are some criticisms of the games rooted in bigotry? sure! does that mean all critiques are coming from that place? absolutely not, especially considering a fair amount of the criticism is coming FROM queer POCs.

anyway, this got long and i know the dragon age fandom has quite literally always been Like This and i've been here since origins came out so this ain't my first rodeo. but let's please try not to lump every take we disagree with and paint it all with one extremely bad faith brush!!!!

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I recently got these tags for @sera-wasnever on my Ketheric Thorm post and it got me thinking about the ability to appeal to him vs the ability to appeal to Orin and Gortash.

Because my main qualm in that post about Ketheric was that you don't get to curse out him the way you can literally say "Fuck you, Gortash" or "You're a psycho, Orin" (actual in-game dialogue lines). Obviously, I think Ketheric was treated with more narrative sympathy among the Dead Three.

BUT I disagree that you CAN'T appeal to the other two -- or rather, trigger a crisis of faith by tugging at something personal. Ketheric's is more straightforward and obviously has more content and dialogue surrounding it. You have entire areas and inventory items meant to humanize him. Isobel's old room, his bust, the note he keeps in his corpse, his wife's diary, etc. There are a lot of things programmed into this game to make you feel sorry for this old man.

Compare that to Orin and Gortash. The area that's meant to humanize Orin and equip you with the thing that triggers her crisis of faith is her room with her mother's preserved corpse. You can argue that for Gortash, it's the Flymm house, but I don't think the Flymms are actually the trigger for his crisis of faith because you don't use his parents during his boss fight to make him waver like you do with Orin and Ketheric.

You can't be like "you're a sicko whose parents abused you" (he'd be like "well, yes") or "you can still be good for the sake of your loved ones" (he'd be like "lmao, funny joke"). If you kill his parents, he mentions it with the gravity of experiencing a minor shipping delay and goes on business as usual.

However, there IS something that canonically does spark hesitation. It is extremely brief but it is very much spelled out in the game, and it is very much infamous.

DARK URGE: For what it's worth, I think I always liked you, too. NARRATOR: There is hesitation in his eye for one moment. A passing thought of all the times spent together you’ll never remember.

That hesitation that shows that there's recognition of something human beneath the monster is seen in all of the Dead Three Chosens' confrontations. You pull it out of Ketheric by talking about how he loves his dead wife. You pull it out of Orin by telling her she was a victim of abuse and incest. Obviously, these truths fundamentally challenge how they perceive the world and themselves. How could Ketheric be a warmongerer who destroys families and tortures his daughter when his wife would hate him for it? How could Orin be the ultimate predator she's posturing herself as if you reveal she's been a helpless victim of Bhaal's cult too?

And for Gortash, the thing that challenges him enough to make him hesitate is... the Dark Urge telling him they liked him? Huh? Well... ain't that laden with implications.

There are no cries of despair like Orin or Ketheric, but there is something. Instead of manipulating and feeding you his agenda and his ideology, this is the only time in all your interactions with Gortash that he asks you what YOU think ("Is that what you...") -- but that line is quickly cut off when the current situation you're both in reasserts itself through the Elder Brain making earthquakes.

With Orin and Ketheric, it's Bhaal and Myrkul who interfere and hastily cut off their Chosen's potential redemptive change of heart. With Gortash, however, it's not god but these reminders that he's stuck having to see through his crumbling grand plans that smacks him back into villain mode. It's not Bane that's stopping the player character from bringing out less monstrous, more sympathetic Gortash who even so very briefly questions this path of evil he's found himself in -- it's reality, and that's just tragic.

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Women aren't the nannies of the world.

Women are not responsible for solving men's problems.

If men want women to solve their problems, that requires relinquishing male power and entitlement and doing as told. Without doing that, it's just whinging.

in a society that still tells women that it is their duty to prioritize men, male feelings, male perspective, etc, yes it is in fact still radical to say that it's ok for women to go "no fuck that actually"

[reflectionspace]

i feel like people who act like asserting dragon age should have delivered on a politically coherent story of revolution (as was set up in it's previous entry) is unreasonable from a triple A game studio or in 2025 or whatever other reason why they think its unfair to expect such a story are not watching/reading/playing a lot of media. because this is not a tall ask and its quite literally everywhere and often being put out by massive conglomerations because audiences love them and they make a ton of money.

expecting dragon age 4 to have done the same is not remotely unreasonable. its actually shocking that they did not. all of star wars does this to varying degrees of success, with rogue one and andor doing this to great success. DISNEY OWNS STAR WARS. fullmetal alchemist was written in 2003 and made into a show in 2009 and is consistently in the top rated tv shows of all time and cited as the best anime of all time and is about coming to terms with your complacency in your country's imperialism and then overthrowing the government. cyberpunk 2077 is the most explicitly anti-capitalist piece of media ive ever seen and frequently features violence as a tool for political action and ends with the message that its better to die fighting capitalism than be complacent in its evil. the hunger games is one of the most best selling and beloved books of the 21st century and its about a violent revolution and was explicitly inspired by the iraq war. speaking of the iraq war, miyazaki's adaptation howl's moving castle has no revolution but a similarly blatant anti-war anti-imperialist message inspired by the iraq war. much of studio ghibli does something similar. so does much of classic literature. ever heard of this little book called les miserables? half of sci-fi in general. do we get the point. feel free to leave more examples below.

do i need to keep going? because i could. do we get the point. why would it be a big ask to expect a story about revolution and structural change. this is a fan-favorite money maker. what are you watching on a daily basis that makes you think this is too high of an expectation. if THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY is out-revolutioning your stories you have a problem.

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An excellent read!

blah blah thinking about the popular rebuttal to complaints about veilguard's politics being "bioware was never leftist so you shouldnt have expected veilguard to be" which is... interesting.

true, of course. the expectation part i disagree with but thats not what ive been thinking about. im thinking about what made it feel so different to the very similar centrism of da:i. and maybe someone who didnt black out the entirety of veilguard as a cognitive protective mechanism can speak to the specifics but i think ive settled on it being that da:i is undoubtedly neoliberal and centrist just like da:o and da2 before it but despite their clear framing and limitations there was always the encouragement to think and the freedom to do things that the game might condemn narratively as "too radical" but you could at least do them. or say them.

this erodes by the time you get to da:i but in veilguard its absent completely. like making leliana divine or putting briala on the throne, for example. the game presents these options in a very neoliberal and centrist way. the un-softened leliana divine epilogue slide features much of the "radical violence bad!!!!! bad choice!!!!" connotation that all of veilguard has. but you can still do it. briala has incredibly limited power as gaspard's puppetmaster and her epilogue slide similarly slaps the player on the wrist for behaving so radically by putting *gasp* an elf in power resulting in Bad Disruptive Uprisings throughout orlais. but you can do it. hawke can spare anders and let him go. again, the game slaps you on the wrist via character disapproval and the fact he becomes a wandering hermit or whatever the fuck but. you can still let him go. in origins you can make shianni bann and the consequences are disgusting and horrible and writing it that way is literally sickening, but the game lets you do it. origins lets you do a lot of buck wild shit, some decisions less real-world politically coded than others, but you get to DO IT. even if the game and its writers scold you afterwords for getting too disruptive. YOU CAN STILL DO IT.

and this goes the other way too. there is a reason people like greg ellis had a home with dragon age for so many years and his beliefs were able to go under the radar for so long. there is a reason transphobic gamerbros love origins. there is a reason there was backlash to da2's rampant bisexuality. because dragon age let you be leftist about as much as it let you be a racist misogynistic asshole. you can do horrible things in these games. you can quite literally sell people into slavery. templar aligned hawke lets the kirkwall circle get annulled and becomes viscount as a reward for their loyalty. the inquisitor can just execute literally everyone they judge. now, i'll be the first to say that a lot of those options are not nearly narratively condemned enough. bioware has fumbled many a topic in their misunderstood pursuit of "grey morality" that leads them to feel the need to morally equalize situations of clear, unambiguous injustice (cough mage templar war cough). in fact, decisions like sparing anders are often far more clearly narratively punished than things like giving fenris back to danarius, (which kind of just blows over after some approval loss???) and in my opinion that is a writing flaw. i do think RPG games should have choice, and allow players to be evil, but i also think that writers have a responsibility for the message their writing sends to the world. some decisions in dragon age are well-handled. many others recreate and reflect real life racism or misogyny or islamophobia, and reveal the writer's bias against real-life groups of people or political movements. this is the risk of writing stories like these.

but veilguard does not let you do anything. in either direction. ive been calling it a "thought-terminating fantasy cliche" because... it really is thought-terminating. you are not supposed to think about alternatives that may be too radical in the writer's eyes (what if i let anders go instead of face the justice [haha] the game clearly thinks he deserves? what if i install an elvhen puppetmaster on the orlesian throne despite all of my advisors recommendations? what if i support the murder-pope in reforming the chantry through violence and bloodshed?). veilguard has..... what if i save this city over that one? the only one i can think of is saving isseya. are there any others? genuine question. theres nothing to decide and therefore there is nothing to think about. you dont get to think of possibilities past the narrow centrist path presented to you. you dont get to think about an end for solas that doesnt end in jail. you dont get to think about who becomes tevinter's archon and what policies you might like to see them have. you dont make choices between major factions based on ideological and/or practical differences like recruiting mages vs templars. you barely even get to decide anything for the characters, half of the choices are purely cosmetic.

like i feel like theres something to be said for having the choice even if the overall narrative still condemns it. the writer's bias leaks in to the world's reactions to your decisions but you are still allowed to make them. i always intentionally leave leliana hardened because i think radical insane murder-pope who diversifies the church through ASSASSINATION is based. i dont give a fuck if david g/aider thinks its too crazy and tells me so in a thinly veiled epilogue slide reprimand about "the consequences of my actions". idgaf! 1. its a video game and 2. idc what he thinks.

and yes, nothing ever actually changes. dragon age has never allowed you to make radical change within its world even with the decisions that brush up on the possibility. but you can still be someone who believes in the possibility. you can play a mahariel who hates humans and poisons the ashes of their prophet because why should they care when they stole everything from the elves first? you can play a blood-mage circle-abolitionist anders-apologist hawke doing their best to survive in a city where survival and self-preservation sometimes forces them to act against their values. you can play a lavellan inquisitor who refuses to believe in andraste or the maker, advocates for elvhen liberation, and installs an elf on the orlesian thrown despite being forced into the role of figurehead for a religious empire. sure, you cant really actually do anything for the elves, but you can be someone who believes that change should happen. its not perfect. its certainly not some radical revolutionary fantasy nor does literally anyone expect it to be and when people say that its always in bad faith.

bioware has always been canadian liberal centrists and so have their games. but they used to let you get a little fun and crazy and then just reprimand you via epilogue slides or retcons in later games that we all just got to complain about online. but veilguard forces you to roleplay someone else's ideology; a boring centrist status quo loving fantasy with no opportunity to do something different. elven rooks cannot question dorian on tevinter slavery like elven inquisitors could. rook cannot ask lucanis about the child recruitment practices of the crows the way the warden could to zevran. rook cannot ask davrin about the warden's pressure into conscription, joinging and eventual calling the way the warden could alistair or hawke can to anders in legacy. you cannot ask about alternatives or question a single authority or character of any kind. you cannot voice dissent. the dialogue option does not exist. what was once a slap on the wrist in previous titles has become reactionary and preemptive. you wont get slapped on the wrist in the first place because you're stuck in a boring, empty room for after-school detention, railroaded into "good" behavior and confined to one path so you cant get into any trouble on your own. thought-terminating fantasy cliche. it didnt need to be some insane groundbreaking revolutionary work of marxism or whatever the fuck hyperbolic nonsense people are trying to straw-man the criticism into to disprove it as unreasonable. it needed to not advertise itself as an RPG and then force me to roleplay white canadian millenial neoliberal afraid of getting canceled on twitter simulator 4.0 because if i knew thats what i was signing up for i would have respectfully declined and saved my $70 on something that doesnt condescend to me for enjoying bald war criminals and stories about revolution

[reflectionspace]

Nothing wrong with liking bad media.

That being said,

DATV is misogynistic slop that presents trans narratives really poorly. Gay is hidden in favor of pansexuality.

Here are better games:

Cyberpunk 2077: even the world itself is inclusive. Although, the world is a corporate hellscape so every sexuality and gender is represented in variously but equally horrific sexualized advertisements. The romances aren't the main point but they're pretty nicely written.

BG3: Be gay, be trans, be a sexy lizard man with a trash raccoon ex. The world is inclusive, and being gay/trans is no biggie but it's present and integrated. Some characters are gay, some are bi, some are pan. The WHOLE main cast is heavily gay coded but pansexual.

Divinity 2 Original Sin: The Better Skeleton Romance Experience. Nuff said.

Dishonored: If you play through the series, you get to finish as a bisexual middle-age woman who's cool as hell and who definitely hasn't featured in any of my daydreams over the years. Dishonored 2 features a sympathetic trans character you get to help if you want to.

Everyone can use their money as they please but like, people in certain regions ended up paying like 20-30% of their monthly salary if they bought it on release at 70 USD.

Would you call Veilguard a "20% of my monthly income can be spent on this" level of quality? For the record, Taylor Swift's Eras Tour tickets were in that sort of price range.

1. There is nothing wrong with liking bad media

2. DATV isn't "slop" anyway

3. It's a game where I can be trans and gay

4. Who cares I pay taxes

[reflectionspace]

This was fantastic!

hi so very random but I've just been mulling over how for me Veilguard kind of encapsulates a lot of the failings of modern liberalism in a fascinating way.

What I mean is that advocating for things like the use of people's correct pronouns and diverse representation is of course very important. However, for an economically privileged liberal that kind of advocacy costs them nothing: they can advocate for all this without giving up any of their economic privilege or power. They don't have to consider whether the structure of their society as a whole is deeply unjust and should be radically changed; they don't have to consider whether the global world order is deeply unjust and should be radically changed. This kind of advocacy becomes a way of telling themselves that they are doing good things and making positive change, thus salving their conscience about their privilege without ever having to face the possibility of significant societal and economic changes that might make them less privileged.

And Veilguard feels so very much the essence of that. It refuses to so much as look at any politics that is about structural inequality or oppression; it puts all its politics into 'representation' in ways that don't challenge anything or demand change. Indeed, its narrative is built around an explicit and foundational opposition to change! In Tevinter we just need to put someone nice in power and solve all the problems within the existing system; no one is ever even allowed to contemplate any genuine systemic change. There is diversity but the diversity is largely aesthetic; the characters are of a variety of races but race (either in a real-world sense or in the human/dwarf/elf/qunari sense) is almost never dealt with explicitly in the plot. In just the same way as modern liberalism more generally, Veilguard really wants to claim that it is doing good things and making positive change by presenting a superficial kind of diversity while trying extremely hard to stay away from any suggestion that the world might need more radical change.

I love that it's queer; I enjoyed Taash's story, and the explicit pansexuality of the other characters. But its queerness ultimately feels quite hollow to me because genuine queer rights movements are radical; they are about demanding real transformative change, they are about overthrowing systems of oppression. Veilguard does not want to touch any of that, and instead focuses entirely on individual personal issues, in just the same way that modern liberalism has been trying to do for a long time. So it bothers me to see it being held up as a triumph of queer media, because it seems very much in the tradition of liberals using queer people as essentially political stage-dressing as a way of not having to confront the issues they don't want to face.

one of the best and most concise analyses of the game's politics i have ever seen wrapped up in a lovely bow and put in my inbox <3 thanks for sharing!

[reflectionspace]

I know you said you don't want this to be popular but this was a fantastic read.

I want to talk about that article that wrote about Dragon Age: The Veilguard and used the title, "This Game Kills Facists." If you've seen it, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't. Well.

I think before I dig into this, I want to put forth a few caveats. This won't be a formal essay, but I'll do my best to cite my sources and previous argumentation. I also don't have any real animosity toward the author of this article, I'd never actually even heard of her until someone directed me to this article, and I don't think the problems with this article are unique to the author. But. As I said in a different post late last night, I think the article itself such a textbook example of this kind of left-liberal politics that doesn't actually understand the terms they're mobilizing about, stakes their identity on their consumerism habits, and seems to think that vibes-based opinions are in any way, shape, or form equivalent to critical analysis that interrogates the text and the meta of the media they're engaging with.

The analysis in this article is bad, I'm sorry to say. Just from a structural standpoint, it fails to understand how the structure of rhetorical argumentation functions, and doesn't bother to provide any concrete support for its claims. It highlights an inability to formulate an argument that I think is rampant among fandom discourse and I would perhaps argue is a common issue with liberal political argumentation in general, although that's another essay and isn't central to what I want to dig at today. I also fundamentally do not think this author understands what fascism is, which is frustrating at best, and I find it irresponsible although I don't think the intent is malicious. I'm also not convinced that the author really has a good grasp of media analysis or how to interrogate the thema of the stories she's talking about, but I'll leave that for you to determine.

So. What is the thesis of this article, which purports that this game "kills fascists"? I had to chew on it for a hot minute while reading, and as best as I can tell, the thesis is "Wokeness is the point of Dragon Age."

It takes the author three paragraphs to read this point:

"But I do want to call out the choo-choo hate train triggered by Veilguard’s [weary sigh] “wokeness,” because, of course, the wokeness is the point of Dragon Age. It always has been."

"And yes, Veilguard is the wokest, queerest Dragon Age yet."

And it is reiterated again in the concluding paragraph:

"So we’re back to the wokeness. I told you it was the point. Empathy and community building, kids. It’s not only the point of Veilguard, but the prevailing lesson of the Dragon Age series, where, again, stunning, ideologically-driven betrayals drive each narrative and make the unintended and the least of us suffer, only for a hero to pick themselves up and start figuring out how to go on and who can help."

"This game kills fascists. Literally, in the course of the game, yes–I will leave it up to you and your ending what that means for Solas****–but more importantly, its soul is pure fascist bane, centering empathy, intimacy, heroism, community. Multiple overarching storylines intersect to highlight the ways history and faith can be twisted to alienate and control people, as well as how the best way to fight fascism is always with each other."

Okay, great, that's at least a decent starting point.

Except we have a real problem. If we are making an argument that a game like, say, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is woke, and therefore its very character of wokeness is "fascist bane," base bare minimum, we have to define what makes something 'woke' and what makes something 'fascist.' Words mean things, and especially words like these, which have specific political definitions that are frequently pulled out of the hat and used colloquially as short-hand for... whatever it is that someone wants it to mean, and for what it is meant to mean within a community.

She kind, sort of, gives us an idea of what she means when she says the game, and indeed the storyworld of the Dragon Age series, is woke. Wokeness, which she equivocates as anti-fascism, carries the character of being compassionate. Wokeness is when you center collaboration. If we are are woke, if we are combating fascism, we are empathetic and vulnerable and intimate and we interested in building communities and we are trying to help each other. Apparently, being anti-fascist is when your story is queer, or at the very least, allowing space for queer identities. And apparently, being "a hero" requires that you be woke / anti-fascist

There are two problems with this:

The first is that, unfortunately, examples aren't definitions. Examples are meant to exist as part of the supporting body of your arguments; they're the rhetorical illustration in the encyclopedia on the page next to the definition.

The second is that while we're receiving an attempt to qualify what fascism is indirectly by qualifying what stands in opposition to it - in this case, 'wokeness,' which is itself never clearly defined and instead relies on a definition of woke that literally just relies on the negation of whatever being not-woke, or 'anti-woke', means.

This is bad logic, regardless of your opinions of the writing of The Veilguard. If you cannot tell me what fascism is, then you cannot tell me what it is not, and you certainly cannot tell me how something like being 'woke' is in opposition to fascism. The fact that the author fails to do this, that they assume you will understand exactly what they mean because it is somehow inherently self-evident, brings into question what exactly they mean.

I've tried to interrogate what she means by fascism, and the closest we really get is:

"And again, these stories are no fantasies and there are still no easy questions, no right answers. Except fighting the fascists. This game kills fascists. That one is a gimme."

"...accidentally releasing the two other remaining elven gods onto the world. Unlike Solas, who rationalizes a greater good, these gods are purely malevolent enslavers. They, too, want to turn the clock back, but to the days of their unlimited rule before Solas overthrew them. Not much ambiguity there, but good contrast. Solas is sidelined by events, relegated to advising Rook as they seek to defeat two sadistic gods and their Super PAC of bad guys rising across the nations of northern Thedas. But you’re not only fighting the gods and their allies, all of whom are explicitly fascist."

"You can also see how those thorny Dragon Age companion relationships are the They Live glasses all of us need at one time or another, teaching us how to empathize with someone you never even wanted to know, or maybe to forgive someone you thought beyond redemption. Or how beliefs are often flawed, but no one’s rights are negotiable. Or how no one is free until everyone is free. This game kills fascists. Literally, in the course of the game, yes–I will leave it up to you and your ending what that means for Solas****–but more importantly, its soul is pure fascist bane, centering empathy, intimacy, heroism, community. Multiple overarching storylines intersect to highlight the ways history and faith can be twisted to alienate and control people, as well as how the best way to fight fascism is always with each other."

Fascists are when you are sadistic. When you are malevolent. When you are enslavers. When you seek to regress society. When you lack empathy, when you destroy communities, when you hold things against people, when you believe [human] rights are negotiable (depending on who you cosnider [human], perhaps?) when you weaponize history and faith "to alienate and control people." Fascists do genocides.

These are, again, examples. Not definitions. And I think beneath that the author is using what they believe is a "true" or "commonly accepted" meaning of fascism that falls under what we might consider a persuasive definition logical fallacy; except the definitions are not even definitions, but vibes, and they aren't even vibes that correspond with any of the most commonly accepted frameworks of how to identify fascism.

To some extent, I might be willing to cut the author some slack because fascism is pretty infamously a loaded term that gets thrown around with a colloquial usage that absolutely does not adhere to the generally accepted parameters of fascism - and even within academic discussion circles, there's debate on what exactly does and does not constitute a definition of fascism, made in part difficult because one of the key characters of fascists seems to be their mutability, their willingness to adapt to populist beliefs and weaponize said populist sentiment toward their own goals, as a way to muddy the water on who they actually are and what they actually stand for.

In this vein, I think I'll recommend a couple of books here.

THE ANATOMY OF FASCISM by Robert Paxton is always a good starting point. [link to online Internet Archive copy].

Stanley Payne's A HISTORY OF FASCISM 1914-1945 is also a good baseline. [link to online Internet Archive copy].

SPAIN AT WAR: THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR IN CONTEXT 1931-1939 by Shubert and Esenwein [link to online Internet Archive copy].

EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS: A POLITICAL HISTORY by Martin Kitchner [link to online Internet Archive copy].

FASCISM by Roger Griffin.

Umberto Eco and UR-FASCISM.

I actually very specifically think the issue we all tend run into is that fascism is less a coherent ideology than it is extremely opportunistic and has a myriad of commonalities but very few exclusive traits, which is exacerbated by the inherent limitations and rigid nature of definitions. I tend to stick with a blend of Griffin and Paxton's definitions that I added a few things to but always have to put up a disclaimer that it's a bare bones definition that doesn't encompass the ideology but rather points out the few core ideals and its general manifestation, and even then, I think fascism pre- and post- neoliberalism are also incredibly distinct even if you put all fascism under one umbrella and separate them just by those two eras. Griffin I think is mostly useful for a layman's overview of fascism, and I also think that Alexander Reid Ross has a fairly functional definition, although I don't wholly agree with it, either:

"Fascism relies on the perception of a constituency producing, and produced by, an inherently natural process of hierarchy manifested by warrior elites embedded in the spiritual myths of the nation. In short, fascism is a syncretic form of ultranationalist ideology developed through patriarchal mythopoesis, which seeks the destruction of the modern world and the spiritual palingenesis ("rebirth") of an organic community led by natural elites through the fusion of technological advancement and natural tradition."

These are all good starting points, but I think the major takeaway is that fascism is not ideologically coherent. It is somewhat of a non-ideology, and furthermore I think any decent fascist scholar will point out its opportunism and lack of actual ideological foundation, which is why it's so difficult to really define it coherently beyond "here's some general traits, here's how they manifest in this situation." To this point, I would probably direct you to Eco's 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism", where he lists fourteen general properties of fascist ideology and further argues that it is not possible to organize these into a coherent system, but that "it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it". But with the caveat that it's easy to fall into the trap of "commonalities" while still serving as a useful checklist for identifying red flags.

I think it's also important to keep in mind that part of the reason that fascism is not a coherent ideology is because fascism has historically and continues to contemporaneously adopt a lot different types of tactics to gain popular support. They frequently employ socialist rhetoric, engage in aesthetic appeal, turn minor things regarding a specific group into major ploys against the dominant structure, etc. They're so successful that to this day I am arguing with people who say "socialism is bad because the Nazis were Socialists because they were called National Socialists" which is just. A stunningly bad grasp of the politics of fascism and socialism and the history of the Nazi party while also being an incredibly pervasive issue in the discourse of this subject. Fascist rhetoric lies on appealing to nationalism that most people will have ingrained throughout their childhood (regardless of political system) and claiming the woes and struggles people face are due to a cultural backsliding brought about by some group or groups, and they use a variety of tactics to make that more digestible and appealing until it becomes more mainstream and they can actually say what they mean -- to become mask off once. We're watching it happen in real time in the United States. The shit being said about LGBTQ+ people rightly could not be openly said even 5 years ago, let alone 10 years ago. They had to lace it in all sorts of rhetoric and dog whistles whereas now they can be blatant about it, and now we're watching the United States erode into a fascist state.

There exists another problem with defining fascism -- which I think is an issue even with the identifying frameworks I like to work with -- and that is that the framing of specifically the role of capitalism tends to be either overemphasized or not emphasized enough (or at all). This is problematic because fascism is specifically a capitalist development, but the commonalities trap of Eco leads to, for example, Marxist arguments that "fascism is the immune system of capitalism" or is a "last ditch effort by the bourgeoise" -- arguments that are both ahistoric to the early 20th century era of fascism (as a glittering generality, the main rich conservative element that disliked the Nazis were the prussian nationalists, conservatives and military leaders, who ended up trying to appropriate the Nazis. And well, we know how that turned out) as well as the era of neoliberalism, wherein the latter there are still 'roots' present but the fascistic relationship with capitalism is foundationally different than it was in the early 20th century. And this is how we end up with analyses that attempt to position concepts like racism and transphobia to capitalism rather than understanding how they are adopted by and employed by capitalism, and therefore failing to contextualize their roles within fascism.

People often equate concepts/phenomena like genocide, authoritarianism, militarism, fetishism of aesthetics, etc. exclusively with fascism but the reality is that liberals and state socialists routinely have committed (for example) genocide and they're not fascists. They are liberals. And it is also true that fascism is a descendant of that liberal genocidal violence. United States and European white supremacy, for instance, were not developed under a fascist regime and in fact existed long before fascism reared its ugly head. A preoccupation with population control will likely be present in any regime, and historically concepts like population reduction or eugenicist spins on natalism are a common appearance in the nation myths they nations make for themselves. I would argue that population control specifically predates not only fascism but also capitalism and has been the backbone of liberal democracies, but that's another thing altogether for a different essay. The point is, an ideology does not need to be fascist to do heinous things, and further, fascism isn't definable as "any evil act." Using fascism as a shorthand for evil is both incorrect and also helps obscure how other forms of evil work.

The problem I have, therefore, with the author of this essay "This Game Kills Fascists" is that she doesn't even seek to employ a working framework of fascism. The enemies are "explicitly fascist" but she doesn't really tell us how, she just provides examples that might conceivably fit into a framework, were she to utilize one.

Sadism is not inherent to fascism. Slavery is not inherent to fascism. Social regression is not inherent to fascism. Social regression, or a return to tradition, certainly can be a red flag to watch for, but isn't exclusive to fascism and isn't enough to stand on its own. The author argues that community and disparate peoples coming together is a feature of the game and the series, and this is ultimately antithetical to fascist movements, so I could certainly grant her this.

On the other hand, the linkage of heroism as anti-fascist is an interesting choice because, if we refer to Eco's 14 Points:

"In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."

We would of course never argue that Rook is intended to be fascistic as a hero. Nor would we argue this for our companion Davrin, who as a Grey Warden is essentially in a death cult and who does manifest through the game a desire to die heroically because that is what he is supposed to do (Grey Wardens are meant to die slaying the archdemon and stopping the blight!) But: this is an adequate illustration of the type of commonalities that we must watch for.

Or if we borrow tumblr user Mythalism's point about the types of literature that were permitted by the Nazi state under its fascist regime, it's generally understood that there were four categories of topics in literature (we'll apply this more broadly to media) that met the Nazi criterion.

The first was ‘Front Experience’. This was to promote the camaraderie and good times that would be found in time of war on the front line. The most famous author in this category was Werner Bumelburg. The second category was ‘World View’. Books on this promoted the views of Hitler and Rosenberg. Hans Grimm wrote ‘People Without Space’ in 1926 and it was heavily publicised once the Nazis gained power. The book gave the Nazis one of their most famous slogans: “The Germans: the cleanest, most honest people, most efficient and most industrious.” The third category was ‘Regional Novels’. These books emphasised the excellence of the various regions of Germany. The most famous authors in this category were Agnes Miegel, Rudolf Binding and Börries von Münchhausen. The final category was ‘Racial Doctrine’. Books in this category emphasised the greatness of the Aryan race when compared to Jews, Slavs and anyone labelled ‘untermenschen’. The most famous author in this category was Gottfried Benn who based his work on the “ancestral vitality” of the German people.

Literally nobody who is reasonable is going to argue that The Veilguard is a fascistic piece of media, but if you were to stretch the framework to make an argument for something like that, Mythalism points out that it wouldn't be too difficult to find commonalities between elements of the game and the criterion outlined immediately above:

camaraderie and good times found in war

simplistic world view with good vs. bad people

emphasized excellence of the countries represented and erasure of their flaws

we could probably swing the last one with how it frames elves as the source of literally all evil in the world

Voila, fascist game! (This is not serious.)

What we seem to have here is a simplistic view of "fascists = bad" and therefore the elements that are woke (aka good) are inherently the opposite of facist, therefore, anti-fascist. Here we must return to the fact that woke / wokeness were never clearly defined, and to the history of woke as a concept in Black communities in the United States. While I am not a scholar of the phenomona of how woke as a concept got mainstreamed into US politics, I'm generally given to understand that it came about in the Black Lives Matter movement and specifically with the sensationalization of the slaying of Michael Brown, which has since been appropriated into the Culture War as a shorthand for supposed political progressiveness by the left and as a denigration of so-called leftist culture by the right. (If this needs to be corrected or clarified, please feel free to let me know, but it appears to be the general gist of it as applies to how the author of the inciting article mobilizes the term.)

At the end of the day, you can't say 'this game kills fascists' and then not only fail to define what fascism is or what makes someone fascist but then also fail to illustrate why this game is anti-fascist and directly combats fascism. The definition of woke in this article simply hinges on just negating what being anti-woke means, and it's a manifestation of how the right co-opted woke to mean "anything that deviates in any way, perceived or actual, from established hierarchies" and then liberals and left-liberals responded to this with "let's go with that definition and be anti-anti-woke!" It's not a coherent interrogation of the politics of these terms, nor is the article able to coherently grapple with its core thesis.

I might write more about this at a later date and return more to some of the specifics of what she says about hope and the framing of the story (which is... inconsistent at best and deliberately disingenuous at worst), particularly because the essay is, in my opinion, extremely liberal in its construction, and in response to a game that was developed within a white, centrist, neoliberal political framework. The essay is attempting to moralize the game with pot shots in the dark and political buzzwords that ultimately mean nothing because she does not put in the introspection or effort to ensure that they mean something. And I think we need to move beyond the simplistic "i only like things that are not problematic and therefore if i like this thing it is not problematic and therefore if you are criticizing this thing you are problematic and also making a personal attack against me." I also think we need to return to the very basic rhetorical construction of "claim -> supporting evidence -> conclusion" until people learn how to actually structure an argument.