#dai critical

[v-arbellanaris]

PLEASE share about the Cullen Cult Arc

sighs. this is my second time writing this post ;~; literally why does the autosave option exist if tumblr doesnt actually bother to autosave anything, i dont fucking get it.

this is going to be much briefer than the original post i wrote because im still REELING over how tumblr just ate the entire fucking post. its fucking gone. and idk if i have the energy or mental capacity rn to rewrite the whole thing. basically, this arc - which is the arc i developed for him in vee verse - is the arc i think cullen should've had in dai.

firstly, i'm not retconning anything he said or did in dao or da2. this is because those things serve a narrative purpose. cullen is a good templar - that's the entire crux of the problem. he exists in these two games as a narrative tool; he represents the views of the chantry. as such, anything you do with his character arc cannot be divorced from the reality of the mage/templar conflicts, and the glaring issues of the chantry and must, actually, address and involve those things, because cullen is a product of his surroundings. i'm not saying this to minimise or give him excuses for anything he's said or done, but that is made true for him by his very positioning in the narrative as being the chantry's voice. for most of my playthroughs, which lean pro-mage, cullen is an antagonistic force - he has to say and do horrific things, and it would be stupid for me to retcon the horrible things he did.

secondly, my main issue comes from his writing in dai - probably to no one's surprise. i am not unopposed to having a redemption arc for him in dai - this is villain-fucking the blog, sorry not sorry - but the problem is that he does not have one. to have a redemption arc, the following two things needs to happen:

the realisation/acknowledgement/knowledge/whatever that he caused harm to people with his actions/inactions

addressing the False Belief that he has embraced that has previously justified his harmful actions/inactions in order to accept the Truth (this is just basic character narrative construction).

and dai fails to do both of these because the writing team in inquisition is physically incapable of admitting the chantry is wrong and has done wrong and will continue to do wrong. they are physically incapable of looking at fucked up power dynamics and clear cases of oppression and not going "but what if the oppressed people. wanted to be oppressed. NEEDED to be oppressed, even."

which leaves his character arc - whether you want to consider it redemptive or not - confusing. he's trying to shake a lyrium addiction? sure, okay. but why is he addicted to lyrium? why is being addicted to regular ol' lyrium bad? it's not blue lyrium that killed meredith, it's not blue lyrium that corypheus and samson are using.

you get confusing things like cullen's entire character arc being centered around lyrium addiction... but no one seems to give a shit if the inquisitor takes lyrium and becomes a templar, except cullen. you get confusing things like cullen's entire character arc being centered around recovering from lyrium addiction and the templar route in dai and you get to the scene where all the templars get their lyrium draughts. the ceremony and chanting and celebration around getting the lyrium, when barris takes his draught, which is frankly revolting. but it highlights the inconsistency - lyrium, this scene tells us, is good. because the templars are good, and they use it for good. yet cullen's entire arc is about overcoming his lyrium addiction, but don't worry!!!! templars are still good and lyrium is still good. its fucking INCOHERENT!!!!!!

he is addicted to lyrium because that is how the chantry maintains absolute control over its templars. it is a mind-altering substance that causes paranoia, which the chantry specifically takes advantage of and feeds with their all mages are inherently dangerous rhetoric, which is a false rhetoric, as i've pointed out before. but instead of acknowledging any of that, dai's writing goes "lyrium is Bad because [mumble mumble] and its So Important that he doesn't take it so that [mumble mumble]".

because the story is physically incapable of uttering anything even vaguely critical of the chantry.

so, this covers my main issue with his writing in dai. i would ideally try to fix it - without retconning anything he did in dao or in da2. this is what the cullen cult recovery arc is referring to.

i'm not going to go into it in too much detail but the templar order - inclusive of the seekers - fits a lot of the parameters of a cult. specifically, the BITE model, but also this checklist, and a whole bunch of other parameters i found when researching into cults for this specific reason. (which. makes sense. seeing how the orlesian chantry is was also technically a religious cult that becomes the main religion of the lands by actively slaughtering all the other sects)

but what's particularly interesting about it specifically is that, in-world, no one else seems to think it's a cult. for all of cullen's views, he is not the extreme end in da2 - alrik is. meredith is. what's particularly disturbing to me about cullen's point of view is that because he's a product of his environment, because he's a narrative tool representing the chantry's views, cullen's opinions and actions are actually a normality test. people in thedas don't find cullen's views repulsive because most average joes in thedas agree with him. i think it's easy to forget cullen isn't the outlier in-universe - we are.

but, canonically speaking, this is what happens: cullen, like most good antagonists getting a redemption set up, misses his chance to Embrace Change at the end of da2. he sides with meredith too late for it to matter or make a difference - mages (who you learn on the templar route, he's not exactly eager to kill) who he's supposed to protect are already dead. but what happens in kirkwall shakes him to his core and he looks to leave the order entirely - a good step.

the problem is that he leaves the order to join the inquisition. the inquisition, which is headed by the left and right hands of the divine. the right hand of the divine is a seeker herself. the inquisition is spearheaded and justified by the divine, who he has been trained for most his adult life to be subservient to. the divine who formed the inquisition to replace the templar order and hired him to essentially train and recreate the order.

worse, still. no one thinks he did anything wrong. kinloch was not his fault, it was the fault of greagoir and the older templars who were simply not vigilant enough, meredith told him. how he acted to keep order in the circle and the city after the viscount was executed is admirable, cassandra tells him. he was only following orders, leliana admits grudgingly, he stood up for what was right when meredith went too far. no one thinks he did anything wrong, because he is a good templar. because all the atrocities he committed were not committed against people - they were committed against mages, who are not people, not like you and me.

cullen hops from one cult to the next. the inquisition is the exact same thing he's always done and known, just repackaged - quite literally, considering the inquisition's symbol. but canonically, he thinks it's something different. he wants it to be different.

it's not, though.

so, the thought process behind my thoughts for him boils down to this: how does he get the language to describe exactly why this is wrong? how does he get the language to describe why it matters, why it's important, that he hurt real people? how does he get past the Lie that he believes - that he has to be a good templar, to stop anything like kinloch from happening again, since kinloch happened because they weren't vigilant enough, because they were too sympathetic to mages?

his arc shouldn't have just been about overcoming lyrium addiction. his arc should have been a story about recovering from being part of a hate group, a story about recovering from part of a cult.

there's several ways to go about it, i think. and if you want to specifically know how i'm going to do it, you guys should encourage me to write vee verse 😌

[anneapocalypse]

Not 100% confident on this take because tbh Cullen isn't a character I've dug deep into and I haven't romanced him yet, but I do wonder if some of the dissatisfaction some people feel about his writing and overall arc comes from a dissonance between the game wanting him to have undergone some real change since DA2 while also needing him to play a certain role as an advisor, e.g. Leliana is the designated pro-mage advisor and somebody has to suggest you go to the templars. (It wouldn't be the only place I feel like that dissonance exists--like it's also a little odd to me that Cullen, a Fereldan with family living not that far from the border, favors Gaspard, the guy who would absolute invade Ferelden again if he thought he could win, but he's the commander and the "blunt instrument" advisor so he has to favor the military guy while Josephine favors the diplomatic empress and Leliana salivates over doing blackmail.) So maybe Cullen ends up being Schrodinger's Templar--he's a templar when the structure of the game requires that somebody be the templar, but then his actual arc is about him not being a templar anymore. Hmm.

[bluerose5]

What was your favourite dragon age game? Are you looking forward to dreadwolf or nah bc of the EA Issues™️?

I'd say DA:Origins and DA2 are probably tied for me. Some days, I like one more than the other, but they're ones I always feel an urge to return to. DA:I holds a special place in my heart because it was the first Dragon Age game I played if I remember right, but the game doesn't hold the same magic for me as the others. After playing them all, I feel like a lot of the mature, complex, and darker elements were watered down. They try to pass a lot of Inquisition's story & lore elements off as "nuance", but most of it just doesn't sit right with me. Ex. Trying to make the mage/templar conflict seem as if it's more than a war between the oppressed and the oppressors just because they showcase some good Templars here and there. The whole reveal about the ancient Elvhen being no better than the current Tevinter Imperium. A lot of elements like that, which just come across as more meh to me than anything. Not the worst route I could see them going, but not the best either.

On that note, I'm kind of on the fence about Dreadwolf. Like, with Mass Effect: Andromeda, I was excited. I was there for it. I had it on pre-order, and I enjoyed the hell out of it so much that I can confidently say that I got my money's worth of entertainment from it. With Dreadwolf, the more it drags on and the more bullshit pops up on the business/company/EA side of things (such as the layoffs), the more I'm just not feeling it? I mean, I'm excited to an extent, but more so in a "I'm gonna probably wait on this one til I see some reviews or it goes on sale so that I can see where they take the end of this journey and all the lore" kind of way.

[paarthursass]

love playing dragon age inquisition and hearing an NPC in redcliffe ask his mother (after admitting he’s had dreams that make him think he might be a mage) if she would still love him if he were a mage.  in the game that tries to “both sides” the issue of mages vs templars. 

[justcallmecappy]

It's still weird to me that BioWare tried to frame the mages vs templar narrative as a conflict of two wholly opposing sides, when a more compelling conflict-driven narrative would have been templars and mages joining forces to topple the Chantry. - via my Twitter @ justcallmecappy

I posted this on Twitter and thought I'd follow-up with a longer form "what if?" post here, exploring the mage-templar conflict in DAI and how it could have been approached very differently, but still retaining the game's messages and themes of unification, overcoming differences, and people coming together to accomplish great things, by having mages and templars join forces to dismantle the Chantry.

I thought I would draft up a whole outline on how things could have gone down differently; like instead of Lord Seeker Lambert dissolving the Nevarran Accord and breaking the Templars away from the Chantry to hunt mages, it would have been Ser Barris electing to declare the templars independent from the Chantry and opening Templar Rehab early; etc. Eventually the mages and templars would come to the realization they need to work together to bring down the institution that manipulated and abused them, via the Player Character's efforts in bringing about unification.

Then I realized this could never have happened, with DAI being the way it is. In DAI, the Inquisition is painted as a force of stability and positive change, instead of a means for the Divine to rebuild the Chantry's military after losing the Templars. The idea of exposing the Chantry as a corrupt and power-abusing institution perpetuating structural oppression early on in the story -- giving the protagonist an antagonistic structure to take down -- could never have flown, at least in DAI.

I thought I was changing just a small detail in the story. Then realized by doing so, we'd have a completely different story, haha😂

Anyways I still think BioWare handled the mage-templar conflict poorly by trying to pit an oppressed people against their oppressors like it was an equally justifiable fight both ways, and it should have been resolved differently🙂

[squirrelwithatophat]

I’m finally reading The Masked Empire, and boy... Inquisition really toned down how dumb and repulsive Gaspard is.

It’s only the middle of Chapter 3, and over the course of - what, two days (in-universe)? - he taunts a foreign representative with a sword taken off the corpse of a loved one (in hopes of baiting him into a public fight), boasts openly of conspiring to overthrow the government in order to invade a neighboring country (saying this explicitly to the empress’s face), hires a group of thugs to assault a military officer who embarrassed him at a party, complains about women’s inadequacy in leading battles (again, to the empress’s face), and propositions his own cousin (the same empress he had been repeatedly insulting, in the same conversation) and threatens her with violence when she turns him down.  Classy.

Then in Inquisition, he’s just... Some Guy.  He’s nice to you, even if you’re an elf or some other minority race, while others at the party call you slurs and treat you like a servant or a criminal.  He actively helps out; after all, he’s your only invitation to the masked ball you need to get into to stop the Bad Guys.  EDIT: He does call Briala a “rabbit” and make another racist comment during the final confrontation, as long as Celene is dead (already leaving him the only viable candidate for the throne), though.

You aren’t warned that he’s a warmongering sociopath until after you place him on the throne (if applicable).  You have to read TME to learn about all the depraved shit he’s done.

[tea42]

Dragon Age Thoughts: Templar Carver instead of Cullen in DAI

I know I've heard the idea for switching Cullen and Samson, but I was drifting off into my 'what if world' dragon age edition and was imagining that if Carver became a Templar in DA2 it could have made sense for him to be in the Cullen role. Even if he was relatively fresh he could have 'proven himself' at DAII endgame. Cullen rose in rank similarly quickly after DAO. It would have felt better to have a Templar who was not on board with the Chantry line and had him be very critical since they went the other way with focusing on loyalist Mages. It would have been more balance if, you know, they were actually not trying to push you towards a specific narrative.

[rivilu]

Watched absolution because I saw a certain spoiler and was intrigued, loooonggg post of spoilers and thoughts under the cut

Are we are really surprised the supercop zealot is bioware's canon divine? lmao.

I generally liked the cast of characters quite a lot, Roland Lacklon and Qwydion most of all, Miriam is cool too, just not top spot for me. she's like. Number 4 on my list. Of surviving characters that is.

Rip Fairbanks. Made the rookie Ser Jory mistake of mentioning his loving wife more than once within the intro of the series. You will be missed.

The writers really said make them think we will finally switch up the Mage Is Always The 'Traitor' reveals (that aren't even true for games 1 and 2 but the joke is marketable so who cares for accuracy right) but then just do the same thing again. I have a feeling they think they are playing 4d chess when really it's just predictable.

The action was well executed and I liked the romance with Roland and Lacklon, it was cute :)

The show handled Tevinter better than I expected but my expectations were subterranean so that doesn't mean much.

Still don't care for the way bioware deals with blood magic. With Dorian we finally had a smart opinion on it [that the writers didn't try to stamp out or treat as stupid, sorry Merrill]- that it's simply a tool as long as there's no victims, but here we backpedal again into the narrative going 'anyone that even THINKS of blood magic is and always will be evil full stop'. Yes we're talking about a Magister here i'm not defending Rezaren in specific I'm just weary of how they'll treat it going forward.

Speaking of the guy, he was fine as a villain. pretty decent portrayal of a guy whose position of power deludes him into thinking his goal is noble and righteous no matter what, even to the detriment of the people he's supposedly trying to help, because well. He never saw them as people in the first place. 'Family' maybe, whatever that's supposed to mean to him, but still property. Things he gets to do whatever he wants to do with.

Miriam using his harrowing as an example of a moment he chose not to defend her or her brother though, is kinda meh. Bc girl, he was actively trying and failing not to get possessed, his mother's the one to blame for that specific instance and you KNOW it, I know we had to see that scene for exposition but i'm peeved jdshfjd I bet there were maaany more backstory examples of him being shit to choose from anyhow.

There was an Attempt at moral grayness at least two times in the show, with Tassia and Hira, and they are both... interesting.

Tassia imo does it better, as as the knight commander she can be safely [and firmly] put in the villain box, but the added levels of grey with her caring for her people's safety, opposing the venatori etc make her interesting to watch in a way where I may not be rooting for her but I don't want her to die either, yanno? She's a bit like if Aveline were an anti-villain, and actually decently well written at that. She gets spot 5 of my list.

Now Hira. Is a prisoner of that good ol Mage Betrayal Russian Roulette. I'd seen a small spoiler about her being up to no good before watching, but even without that, when Fairbanks stabbed her I could just SNIFF that red herring. Again, the writers may think they're playing 4d chess but I know not making a mage (or more) the villain, is to them what apples are to doctors. Then her motivation is just. Not convincing to me. Her family was influential tevinters that wanted to improve conditions for the oppressed, then they were killed and/or ran out the country by the venatori for it. so... she jumps right to ethnic cleansing as the solution?

(And I do mean right to it. She did go to the inquisition first but that's what she wanted to get out of it.)

Collateral damage is a funny way of referring to innocent people's lives queen!

Idk something about that feels familiar. Betrayal, a mage that jumps to genocide, yet said mage is somehow granted more lenience by the narrative than that stance should EVER allow? Because here's the thing. no matter HOW fucked a country is, how terrible the politics and power structures are, 'wiping the country out' IS NEVER A MORALLY GREY THING. IT'S AS BLACK AS IT GETS. it is the power structure itself that must be targeted. (you know, the thing Anders tried to do and gets eternally condemned for?) Wanting to massacre an entire population is not an opinion that's up for discussion, it is not worthy of redemption, and it should not be written as if it is. This pattern of character writing is just. Concerning to me. Some of the characters with the most morally bankrupt stances being passed off as grey. And I could get far deeper into it here, nearly did in fact, but It's a tad too late in the night for a 5 page essay on fantasy and real world politics intersection. I'll just leave it at ''bioware's centrism is doing what centrism does best and blinding them to their world's actual political power dynamics and I think it's going to bite them in the ass sooner or later''

But enough of that, let's try to get back to something funny shall we?

The cheese jokes. Bioware please, the horse, stop, stop it's already dead!

(i dont actually mind but that was my original reaction so here you go sdfhjs)

Dragon cool. Like that it stays alive.

ok, sorry that's all I got. We have to tackle the elephant in the room now folks and i'm afraid I am not optimistic.

So. Meredith motherfucking Stannard is still alive and kicking. And while I can completely understand why people are excited, AN ACTUALLY GOOD VILLAIN IS BACK, WOOHOO! -i just can't help but think. When? When will this plot thread be handled? Because as much as I wish the titular character of dreadwolf would drop dead by act one, I highly, highly doubt it hjsdfjf. And if she can't be the main villain, or at least what Howe was to Loghain, then I don't want her to be in da4. Because that game has SO MUCH SHIT to tackle, with Elven Gods and Titans, the egg and also Antiva and the Qunari now for some fucking reason? Frankly I don't think they can even do THIS sum of things justice in a single game, unless things with the gods take a different turn and they aren't what solas said/villains for us to fight (please I hate the slavery thing so fucking much just for once retcon something to the benefit of religious minorities bioware i'm fucking BEGGING) so adding Meredith to the mix is not something I can picture working out. I don't want to get excited for her to be back (She was the spoiler that got me to watch the series) only to have it be a repeat of the templar/mage war in inq where she's lukewarmly taken out by act 1.

Also before I do an all in all, we all got that Hira is getting Played right. Like I dont like her much(at all), as stated previously, but she's still a mage. working for Meredith motherfucking Stannard. Is it too early to call her eventually dying from that dumbass decision orrr..? Because yes girly, she also wants to genocide your home country, but she has VERY different reasons from you and you're almost guaranteed to be first on the chopping block the moment the red lyrium cracks. (i dont find this bullet point bad writing btw this is just razzing the characters for fun jhsdj)

ok so all in all. the show's alright. I highlighted more of the bad than the good here because anything past da2 has that effect on me sadly, but the characters do Carry as per usual. And i'd say it's worth a watch for the action shots alone. Some of my fears of Bioware's direction were confirmed, and i am still not at all enthused about da4, but if a season two comes out I'll probably watch it. unnecessarily long post over, adiós.

[transchrisredfield]

Now that I’m replaying Dragon Age Origins, I can see just how bad Inquisition really is. It’s missing so many gameplay mechanics that made origins and 2 so good. The tactics system was really fun and allowed you to fine tune how each character would react to certain criteria. It was an easy way to make sure certain characters would react how you’d want them too. In Inquisition they completely removed it. There’s maybe two variations you can change, but that’s it. You can have certain abilities be favored or not used, but its just not the same. The main thing that makes no sense to me though, is not being able to access all your abilities/spells in the radial menu. In origins and 2, you have your hotbar to access your most used abilities but you always have the options to use any of your other abilities. In Inquisition all you have is your hotbar and that’s it. Sure it adds 2 more abilities but when i play as a mage I want to be able to use everything I got. It makes no sense to not have all abilities be usable. And the attributes. Why did they take away the ability to assign the attributes yourself? If I want to have a mage that has a bunch of constitution I should be able to do that. Inquisition just feels like it takes away a lot of options.

[solavelyan]

Choose violence: 9 + 22!

9. worst part of canon

inquisition's timeline being A YEAR. one year. 12 months. 12 months for inquisition. motherfucker 12 months is barely enough to cover the travel time for all the war table shit askljasdfkljafs

i'll fight inquisition's 12-month timeline with my bare hands in a denny's parking lot. i'm timeblind and even i know that's stupid. even origins was canonically two whole years, how is inquisition a year ffffffffff

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

i answered this question already, but it was asked twice so it gets TWO answers.

alistair is a little asshole. he's defensive, some of his jokes are mean, he's just as nasty to morrigan as she is to him. if he doesn't actively like someone, he kind of defaults to this sort of dismissive sarcasm or even suspicion. he's flawed! he's 20 and traumatized and it shows. i don't recognize the uwu himbo sweetheart jokester alistair that fandom seems to agree is how he should be portrayed. the alistair i remember my cousland romancing was prickly and evasive and did a lot of growing up through the course of the story, and i love him. i just wish i could find him in fandom more often.

[ from the choose violence ask meme ]

[blightedhamster]

the dawn will come scene in dai is still the most uncomfortable a game has ever made me, its so bad i have to get up and leave the room cuz i just cant stand it, like its not even that its cringe (it is tho) but its literally triggering (love to have religious trauma) i hate it so so so much

[v-arbellanaris]

i think the thing i struggle most with trying to rewrite inquisition plotpoints is that, i still try to stay somewhat true to canon. my usual fic style is a cross between 'for want of a nail' style fics and 'fanon becomes canon', where i change very small things which have cascading effects on how we understand and parse existing story elements. so the main problem with this method in dai is that i really can't stomach most of the story elements. like dai is a story about hope, and yet most of the story elements make me feel increasingly less hopeful about the world, and really only serve to emphasise that no matter how much you try to affect change, things will return to The Status Quo no matter what. and i know not everyone agrees with that, which is fine, but it's how i felt when i was playing it, and even when i try to break the story elements down to be able to rework it into something more palatable, it's almost impossible because all the story elements add up to such an unpalatable overall plot that i can't stomach writing.

[anneapocalypse]

It's very funny to me that Briala, whose appearance in Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts feels like such an afterthought, is also the one who gets put in some appropriate roguish attire if she shows up in the Arbor Wilds for What Pride Had Wrought. Meanwhile Celene is there in her peace talks gown. Not just like, another gown. I would still find that odd, because we know from The Masked Empire that Celene goes on hunts and has things like fancy riding habits to wear for such occasions. She has armor, even! I really would have loved to see her dressed up in some really sharp-looking and expensive outdoor wear. But no. She's wearing the same blue gown from the peace talks. Like she didn't have time to change. What's going on, Celene. Your girlfriend is dressed for the occasion and you look like you're here in last night's dress with a hangover.

[baejax-the-great]

Bioware should have never released Trepasser.

1. A lot can happen between games—shake ups, writers leaving, devs leaving, entire projects being scrapped—repeatedly—and to leave a series of stand-alone games on a cliffhanger was a bad idea if they didn’t plan on following it up. It’s been seven years. I can say with confidence they had no actionable plans for following it up.

2. Optional DLC, particularly the last in a series of optional DLC, particularly a DLC that was not even available to all players (if you played on PS3, you were out of luck), should not contain deep plot-related elements. Inquisition was already a contained game that ended on a bit of mystery. The Inquisitor succeeded in their goal. Everything that Solas revealed could have (and should have) been revealed in a new game.

3. Because, given that the devs have already promised that newbies to the game will be able to understand what’s going on, everything that Solas said in Trespasser will have to be delivered somehow to new players in Dreadwolf. Most people are not huge fans of getting the same information repeatedly, or paying for the same information in two separate games, but return players are going to have to deal with it this time. It’s bad writing. Maybe they’ll do it in a clever way. I guess after seven years many of us will need a refresher.

[nightwardenminthara]

can’t wait to make chubby ophelia and buff lavellan

dai, my enemy: the best i can do is noodle arms

[squirrelwithatophat]

It’s too bad that there isn’t a non-flirt dialogue option to go “Hey, I’m queer too!” during Dorian’s confrontation with his abusive homophobic father. Shouldn’t lesbian Inquisitors and those of us who prefer to exclusively romance a bi-modded Blackwall be given a chance to express solidarity?

What even is the Inquisition if not a front for the gay wizard agenda? Did you really think a Dalish elven mage would have any interest in actually rebuilding the Chantry AHAHAHA