#sheryl chee

[flowersforthemachines]

Sheryl Chee (Harding's writer) on the state of things

[exhausted-archivist]

Things suck right now but Sheryl has some good words for us all.

ALT So a cool French woman dropped a cool quote from Camus on me today: "In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer." (I mean, who does resistance like the French, right?) We're going through it right now. It's a lot, everywhere... But DA isn't dead. There's fic. There's art. There's the connections we made through the games and because of the games. Technically EA/BioWare owns the IP but you can't own an idea, no matter how much they want to. DA isn't dead because it's yours now.

Seeing Sheryl said it wasn't dead because of us was a bitter pill but I'm glad she said it. Cause she's right, Dragon Age isn't dead. If we still love it, create with it, and put our energy into it, it isn't dead. If EA takes DA off the shelf again it will definitely be different, but what the devs brought us and what we put into it won't change.

[sekaithemystic]

sheryl chee is one insane writer she wrote leliana and isabela and i need to people to understand what they are getting into when they romance harding

"you are the first thing i see in the morning, the last i see at night. i don't want that to change" SHERYL CHEE WHEN I GET TO YOU

[planckstorytime]

Your Journey Ends: A Parting Retrospective on Dragon Age (Part Five)

V. There Can Be No Peace

In keeping with the alliterative naming scheme we devised for Origins with “death vs defiance”, I’d like to propose that Dragon Age II’s core thematic tension is between freedom and futility. Numerous characters and groups strive to secure better futures for themselves, often risking their lives for the promise of freedom. Yet time and again, these efforts are met with failure. Very few of Dragon Age II’s stories have happy endings. Whereas Origins usually gave the player ideal ways to resolve quests (expelling Connor’s demon with the help of the Circle, breaking the werewolf curse, etc.) and gave opportunities for each of its major characters to come out on top in the end, DA2, by contrast, drags its characters further down the more they struggle. Whether undone through their own faults or plagued by misfortune, characters in Dragon Age II, despite their earnest efforts to achieve freedom and sanctuary, often end their journeys worse off than when they started.

Take perhaps the most deeply flawed individual in the game, Anders. He wants nothing more than to ensure the freedom of mages. In the Kirkwall Circle of Magi (charmingly called the “Gallows”), mages are subject to stringent restrictions, coercion, and violence. As alluded to earlier, it’s described more like a concentration camp than a cloistered academy. Anders’s desire to help the spirit of Justice from Origins’s “Awakening” expansion leads him to adopt the spirit as its new host. But his enmity at the injustice suffered by mages warps the spirit into one of Vengeance, recursively fueling Anders’s righteous anger. No matter what he tries, though, the situation in Kirkwall never gets any better – templar abuses run rampant, and mages succumb to despair and possession by demons. In desperation, Anders resorts to terrorism, bombing the city’s Chantry and killing the moderate Grand Cleric Elthina. His expressed goal is one of accelerationism – by removing the centrist negotiators of compromise through such a brazenly violent act, the templars will aim to punish all mages for his crime, thus forcing them to stand up and defend their lives. In his quest to liberate his fellow sufferers, Anders drags them into a revolution that will only condemn them to more fear, suspicion, and scorn. If that doesn’t seem self-sabotaging enough, Anders can strangely be persuaded by a rival Hawke to battle on behalf of the templars and atone by forcefully quelling the rebellion he started. In either case, Anders’s struggle for mage freedom arguably makes things worse.

Merrill similarly wants to restore the elven people to their former glory, freeing them from the indignity they endure as a migratory, stateless society. In trying to repair an Eluvian – a relic from the ancient elven empire – Merrill deals with a powerful demon. In an attempt to protect Merrill from the demon’s trickery and eventual possession, her clan leader allows herself to be possessed, forcing Merrill to kill her. Depending on player choice, she might also be forced to slaughter the rest of her clan, who turn hostile upon discovering what has transpired. Regardless, Merrill loses her status, her mentor, and her home to her well-intentioned ambitions.

Fenris, having freed himself from slavery, nevertheless finds himself hounded by the envoys of his former master seeking to reclaim him. He winds up spending over half a decade in Kirkwall, lying in wait inside his master’s former mansion, awaiting the chance to kill him. He feels, perhaps correctly, that he will never be free so long as his master lives, and thereby shackles himself to that man’s fate. Upon finally confronting and dispatching his abuser, Fenris learns from his estranged sister that he had previously bartered for the freedom of her and her mother. That freedom, however, was “no boon.” Despite all that Fenris sacrificed for himself and his family, they’re all left feeling hollow in the end.

Sebastian Vael, an exiled nobleman turned Chantry acolyte, inevitably fails his goal to live a peaceful, pious life. He is unable to convince Grand Cleric Elthina to abandon her post, knowing that seditious mages want her dead. As such, she is killed by Anders, and Sebastian commits himself to avenging her, even if that means reclaiming his old title as the prince of Starkhaven.

Even among the antagonists, trial and suffering do not mete out justice or relief. The theft of the Tome of Koslun forces the Arishok and his qunari army to remain in Kirkwall for years, where they’re subject to discrimination, violence, and an unending showcase of the city’s (perceived) uncivilized depravity. As his patience wears thin, the Arishok becomes further trapped by his situation – unable to leave without the Tome (which had been stolen once more by Isabela), and unable to bear witness to Kirkwall’s systemic injustice any longer, his only recourse is to launch an insurrection to seize control of the city. The occupation hardly lasts long, and depending on player choices, the Arishok either winds up dead or departs with the Tome and captive Isabela… only for her to escape yet again with the artifact. Despite everything the qunari suffered in their confinement to Kirkwall, their efforts are ultimately fruitless.

Yet nobody epitomizes failure quite like the main character, Hawke. They flee with their family to Kirkwall to seek refuge from the Blight and begin a better life, only to lose one of their siblings on the way there. Once they reach the city, they discover that their family estate has been sold off, and they’re forced to sell themselves into indentured servitude to earn passage through the gates. The rest of the first act sees them preparing for an expedition to the Deep Roads to hopefully strike it rich, thereby securing safety and freedom for either themselves or their mage sister, Bethany. The plan goes awry, as their remaining sibling either dies of Blight poisoning in the Deep Roads, is saved but inducted into the Grey Wardens, or is discovered by the templars anyway. While Hawke does earn their fortune, it brings them neither peace nor safety. Their efforts to locate a serial killer end in failure (or possibly executing the wrong man). The killer courts their widowed mother, then butchers her as part of a twisted ritual to recreate his own dead lover. Instead of living in their Hightown mansion with three of their family members, Hawke is now all alone.

Things get worse when Hawke finds themselves as a pawn between parties trying to stoke fear and hatred against the qunari, provoking a crisis. Even if Hawke tries to recover the Tome of Koslun for the Arishok, they lose it Isabela, igniting the insurrection. Nevertheless, Hawke saves the city and is declared its champion. The peace doesn’t last, as Meredith’s tyranny and Anders’s terrorism reignite the flames of conflict three years later. Kirkwall once again erupts into chaos, and Hawke is powerless to stop it, despite their best efforts. They may even be partially responsible, should they unwittingly assist Anders. Meredith’s own paranoia turns out to be magnified by the red lyrium idol that Hawke and company brought back from the earlier Deep Roads expedition, further implicating them in events. War threatens to devour all of Thedas at the end of Dragon Age II, with Hawke powerlessly positioned at the center of events – and according to some, the center of blame.

“You want my advice? Did you hear what happened to Kirkwall? My advice nearly tore that city apart.”

Failure defines Hawke’s journey. In essence, they tread the inverse of the Warden’s hero’s journey. The Warden stops a war, (potentially) kills Flemeth, and puts an end to a Blighted threat. Hawke unintentionally starts a new war, resurrects Flemeth, and unleashes a new Blighted threat in the form of Corypheus – a failure which precipitates the conflict of Inquisition. I dare say there’s few RPG protagonists that fail quite as hard and quite as consistently as Hawke, and I think that’s novel. It’s borderline innovative to take the standard RPG power fantasy and turn it on its head like that, showcasing a story where a supposed grand hero struggles against external forces, only to fail over and over again. Hawke isn’t some Horatio Alger rags-to-riches caricature, whose diligence and virtue are rewarded. Rather, they’re the bitter Nathanael West-style counterpart – a humanized mockery of an RPG hero. I’ve come to appreciate Dragon Age II more when viewing it through this lens. It’s a tragedy – one where the hero puts up a valiant effort against fate, but fate keeps winning.

Augmenting this, Dragon Age II does a pretty excellent job creating an oppressive atmosphere for Kirkwall. The player can feel the weight of its bloody history, and how its past atrocities ripple across time to beget new ones. From the beginning, refugees are funneled into the city through the Gallows prison, which contains massive statues of weeping slaves from the days of the Tevinter Imperium. Impoverished citizens take up residency in former slave mines, now colloquially known as “Darktown.” There’s even a nearby quarry named the “Bone Pit” after all the slaves that perished there. Hidden codex entries even imply that Kirkwall and surrounding regions are designed to fuel a massive blood magic dynamo, self-perpetuating pain and anguish. DA2 makes the player feel small and inconsequential, simply unable to stand against the weight of this history and the mounting agony of today. At best, players score Pyrrhic victories.

Crafting an RPG around the idea of being specifically disempowering is a risky maneuver, and one that Dragon Age II can be applauded for attempting, to an extent. Because of the aforementioned faults with the game, I don’t think the risks necessarily paid off – or at the very least, the bold changes were judged very harshly on account of their imperfections. The game tailors its quest design and narrative structure around this pattern, communicating the hopeless futility to the player in a way beyond words – by taking the player’s choices, efforts, and agency and throwing them in the trash.

Though I can see more in it now, I initially left Dragon Age II frustrated and full of venom. Its attempts to convey these meanings didn’t gel with me, and by the time I rolled credits, I wanted nothing more to do with the series. I was sure that whatever came next, I simply wouldn’t care.

I had no idea how wrong I was.

Full article: https://planckstorytime.wordpress.com/2025/03/29/your-journey-ends-a-parting-retrospective-on-dragon-age/

[erikacousland]

sheryl has left the building (@SherylChee) / X

Cross my fingers. If Sheryl left BioWare too, there's nothing left worth me to expecting for.

She joked years ago that she's writing all the characters in DAD. And I joked back it was like kissed by Leliana and then dumped by her after she says it was a joke. :"(

[blightbright]

Solas fandom and "genAI"

I recently came back to Tumblr 99.9% because life is stressful and I'm autistic and special interesting about Solas, but I never could keep my mouth shut so... re: so-called "genAI" in fandom spaces:

I say so-called because it is neither truly generative nor intelligent, and it is not really artificial: it is created with the real stolen efforts of living people and real environmental exploitation

I have little interest in blaming everyday individuals (except CEOs, political leaders, billionaires, etc) for the harms of the most popular "genAI" tech, because it's a systemic problem

"genAI" is intentionally confusing and it's ok if people are genuinely ignorant, at first, of how it works or the harm

I also have loved ones who disagree with me

THAT SAID, I urge people to learn more about and consider the harms to society, other people, and one's own process of self-expression, learning, and creativity from the use of "genAI"

I can't control your behavior but I can tell you that your messiest, most "OOC," error-ridden rough draft, or your most wonky-proportioned stick figure fan art is infinitely more precious, valuable, and emotionally, culturally, and spiritually significant than an unintelligent plagiarism algorithm doing it for you, even if it gets less hits/kudos at first. don't give up hope: your own art means something. I encourage you to make fandom a heartfelt space of resistance!

it is important for communities to define boundaries of unacceptable behavior (i.e. use of non-gen AI spellcheck, Google Translate, "genAI" rewrite functions, character "chats," plot/outline "generation," full-blown "generated" pieces... IMO, I'm fine with the first, uneasy but ok with the second, and the rest I actively oppose)

in the absence of clear boundaries, transparency is key! please publicly and clearly disclose ANY use of "genAI" at ANY stage of the process for fan works, because concealment of this is disrespectful and hurtful. if you didn't know before, such is life. now you know.

avoid all bad faith arguments about shipping wars and witch hunts. you have nothing to fear from posts uncovering AI if you do not use undisclosed "genAI": the two works in question did. you have many things to fear from unchecked "genAI" use if you are a writer, artist, or someone who needs our planet to stay alive

the work @durgeapologist, @fangbanger3000, and others have done to raise awareness about "genAI" use in popular fan works is extremely valuable, difficult work, and does not need to be perfectly worded to be earnest, meaningful, and ultimately beneficial for fan communities

bonus point, sponsored by autism: Solas as a character draws on figures from Norse lore including Loki, god of many things including callouts and criticism of powerful systems; Odin, god of words, wisdom, poets, and uncontrollable creative inspiration; and Fenrir, wolfpup god of surviving trauma, seeking praise and social approval from the powerful only for it to result in pain, raging against the system, and freedom. IMO, if I want any character to rally people together for the sake of resisting billionaire tech companies when possible and celebrating old-fashioned creativity, it's Solas. it's in his story's DNA. whoever we want him to smooch.

[hightowerqueen]

polyamorous demisexual non-binary lucanis dellamorte you are real to ME

[lelianasbong]

leliana once spent several days eating cotton candy out of her hair.... she thinks you have proportional features and wants to keep your eyelashes in a jar. she woke up one day and decided to run for pope. she's chaotic she's sapphic she's spiritual she's ICONIC

[invinciblerodent]

That "least favorite companion" post I referenced earlier today keeps haunting me.

Because... well, it was obvious that many would say Oghren. I expected many to have said Oghren.

But it still makes me a little bit sad just how much of Oghren's depth and potential was lost by him being written as a "comic relief" character that both fell flat, and aged poorly.

I remember, the first time I played Origins when I was like 17-18, I was a bit put off by him immediately: he reminded me of people I knew in real life, and were not people I liked, or was proud to know. I was a little disappointed that I'd have to have him in my party for the last part of "Paragon of Her Kind". But that short little scene, where he first steps out under the open sky...

That scene, I still think about regularly.

The moment he casts off his caste, the last thing he still genuinely had. When he first looks up at the sky, and realizes just how vast and open it is. When he takes that step he knows would mean that he can never go back.

That tiny little scene, less than a minute long, made not just him, but my own Aeducan click for me immediately.

Because Oghren is a clear failure of the caste system. Or better said, a failure of dwarven society, really.

He's a castoff, a reject, a lost cause: a once respected warrior, a famed dwarven berserker and husband to a Paragon, who fell through the cracks because he fell out of his house's favor.

Because he got hit hard by his wife and his whole family leaving him behind. Because he got too hard to deal with, too embarrassing.

So under the carpet he went, in both his own mind and everyone else's.

Oghren's, is... an ordinary tragedy. A story of an everyday struggle for men like him (lonely, middle aged, depressed), with feelings that are quietly shoved to the side, joked about, tamped down by both him, and the people around him- and him not being “likeable”, well... isn't that just the way it usually is? People who are suffering are sometimes genuinely not good people.

And despite his best efforts, I can't bring myself to dislike him. I don't like having him in my party because I don't find him funny like he was clearly intended to be, and a lot of his dialogue, I find deeply frustrating and off-putting (in Origins and Awakening alike), but... I can't bring myself to dislike him.

I just... feel sad for him, more than anything else. Because in a few rare moments, there is loyalty. There's honor. Care. Sadness. Even humor when it's allowed to be there, beneath the very 2009 "sexual harassment is totally funny you guys".

There is a lot to talk about regarding Oghren, starting with mental health, and ending with the typical dwarven mentality being to cut ties with what they perceive to be lost causes (which also goes for Kal-Sharok, really), but... I can't shake this feeling that had he been written a few years later, with a touch slightly more careful than the ones with which he was originally handled, he could have been so much more.

..... Though I suppose there's some poetic irony in how the character who was let down by his people would also be one that was let down by his time.

[deadrocks]

Torn because I want to commiserate a bit about the end of Dragon Age as a series, but I don't want to hit any "if you criticized Veilguard or didn't buy it, this is *your* fault" -style posts. Maybe there aren't any, but I'm not feeling inclined to go find out.

[exhausted-archivist]

DATV Writer Confirmation

There are spoilers in this. Characters that have been shown/mentioned in marketing. I will be updating this as we go.

Brianne Battye - Neve

Sheryl Chee - Lace Harding

John Dombrow - Davrin

John Epler - Bellara

Sylvia Feketekuty - Emmrich

Mary Kirby - Varric, Lucanis, Illario, co-wrote Viago and Teia

Luke Kristjanson - co-wrote Viago and Teia, Crow faction quests

Trick Weekes - Taash

[mourn-and-watch]

if you're wondering who wrote davrin, neve and harding: john dombrow, sheryl chee and lukas kristjanson are three senior writers on datv and we still don't know which characters they worked on. so yeah. that's probably the case

[planckstorytime]

Your Journey Ends: A Parting Retrospective on Dragon Age (Part One)

*The following contains spoilers*

“One day, someone will summarize the terrible events of your life so quickly.”

– Flemeth, Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)

I. The Calling

At the end of my previous essay on Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), I alluded to the fact that I wished to return to the first threegames in the franchise to see if they still occupied the same spaces of import for me as before. In that time, BioWare’s workforce experienced even more cuts. Many of the creative leads of the Dragon Age team, including lead writer Trick Weekes, were laid off after The Veilguard failed to meet EA’s (frankly unreasonable) estimations. Former writer Sheryl Chee insisted that “DA isn’t dead because it’s yours now.” Which radiates that “farm upstate” euphemistic aura that confirms it is, in fact, dead. At the very least, I wouldn’t expect to see the franchise again in the next decade, and perhaps that’s for the best.

For all of its faults, The Veilguard wrapped up most of the major story threads. Artificially extending the series’s life might be crueler than mercifully euthanizing it. But where does that leave us? More importantly, where does that leave me? These developments definitely complicate the already difficult emotions embroiling my proposed retrospective. I’m not sure what answers I expect to find on artistic epitaphs, but there is a comfort in knowing the absolute extent of an experience – that, barring supplementary materials, these four installments represent the totality of Dragon Age’s lifespan. The absence of an unknown component makes the text feel familiar, friendly, even among parts I previously found distasteful. Death has a wondrous effect on perspective, turning the sweetness bitter and bitterness sweet. That somberness lingers, but along with it comes a previously unknown appreciation.

Having already thoroughly covered my feelings on The Veilguard, I intend to revisit each of the first three games, one at a time, and provide both an analysis of their major themes as well as a reflection of my own relationship to the works in question. The latter point is especially relevant. Dragon Age has stuck with me through the best and worst parts of my life, and my perspective on it has shifted and flipped multiple times. In order to understand its personal significance, we will need to catalog this changing relationship sequentially – and then, maybe we can determine why, after all of its faux pas and disappointments, it still matters.

Full article: https://planckstorytime.wordpress.com/2025/03/29/your-journey-ends-a-parting-retrospective-on-dragon-age/

[kirkwallguy]

i mean even you love bellara. i love how loveable she is wlhekehdk all of these characters deserved so much better, you can really tell their writers cared for them, and their writing could only be as good as possible given the situation that is... veilguard. lol. i think the only way i can put it down is that they did write their characters as much as they could given such a narrowed down, sanitized environment. let's not forget these are people written the characters from the past games after all. because where you get the most "???" reactions you can also see that they cared, it shines sometimes, but the game itself cast shadows.

(this doesn't mean we shouldn't criticise the writers though, i'm very much against this thought)

capitalism kills art, corporation needs to get done with a game to focus another game that sells more. there are higher authorities than the writers for a big studio that makes AAA games. which is kind of why i think veilguard criticism doesn't mean anything for dragon age itself because, well, it just doesn't, to put it in the most plain way, unfortunately. they're good for aspiring writers or media readers, though.

hmm honestly and i think past a certain point it's impossible to know what happened since we'll never know exactly how much ea meddled and what the climate was like at bioware. i think it was a series of choices that were made by lots of different people, including the writers, that just happened to come together to make a bad game.

i agree that without crunch and ea fucking bioware about the game would have been better and i don't begrudge any writers who were kind of over it by the time they got down to writing. but i don't see care for the world or characters shining through the cracks like i do in the other three games and i think a lot of people involved just didn't do a good job.

[dancing--lights]

Some screenshots and unhinged rambling about Harding's romance under the cut because I've been messing around with flycam and also I can't stop thinking about it.

I'm sorry but I cannot get over how sensual this whole scene is. Harding's hand on Rook's face, so cautious at first- the gentle brush of fingers- and then, more confident, so tender, and more importantly, deliberate. Its the complete trust. Rook accepting the touch, almost passively at first, giving Harding the time she needs to feel safe and ready, but still unflinching, and eventually leaning into it. It's saying "I believe in you and I'm here. I don't care if there's a chance you might hurt me. You're worth it. You're worth all the pain and hurt it took to get here. And all the pain and hurt there will be in the future. We can take anything that comes our way. Together." And Harding, accepting the weight of an unassuagable injustice and pain so deep-rooted and terrible, it manifested physically, as trauma so often does. She's learning to live with it, to carry it, but not let it define her. It's a part of her, it always will be. She cant go back, and she will never be the same. But she has a life to live, and she isn't alone. Its about their unshakeable faith in each other. Its also about the longing. I chose the "It doesn't matter to me" option when discussing the implications of Harding's abilities and how her feelings about Rook exacerbate them. Its implied, mostly through banter with Emmrich ("our relationship is more than just physical," "the heart speaks across all things," etc.) and I took it to mean that they've mostly set aside the aspect of touch in their relationship, for now. So if this is the first time they've really touched, or been physical, besides Rook stepping in when helping Harding confront the Titan's shade, since the whole mild lyrium poisoning incident... Its about everything that touch represents in Harding's romance, and the layers of meaning packed into this specific, singular moment of touch, and its making me insane.

I don't know how the Harding romance managed to settle itself so deeply into my brain this last playthrough. Maybe it's the quiet intimacy. Maybe it's the fact that you can see it and just think "awww that's cute," and move on without giving it much thought, much like Harding herself, I suppose, but dig a little deeper, and there's a lot to uncover. I like the subtlety. I like the contrast of it. You get lines like "you make the world spin, Lace Harding," "you boob!" and "I knew you couldn't resist my moves," alongside lines like "I won't leave her. I can't," "I will always be a safe place for you to rest your head," and "The journey's been hard, still I don't regret any of it, because I get to have you in my life, and you make it beautiful." I don't even know where this is going, really, but I needed to get my scattered thoughts down.

[commanderofthegrey]

CUT FIONA & ALISTAIR REUNION SCENE :((