#transition extension

[amaryllis-sagitta]

I've always disliked the spirit origin theory and I finally know why

To put it briefly: it's the cornerstone of the Thedosian brand of gnostic pessimism ingrained in the worldbuilding around both Fade spirits and elves, that subtly condemns their existence among the living no matter how hard the writing tries to compensate in the other direction (and to be fair, it hardly ever does).

I have already mentioned in several analyses that the worldbuilding in Dragon Age is trying to impose some objective moral order through the system of virtues embodied by Fade spirits and the speculated position of the Maker, illustrated through the visual allegory of The Gaze. Every place where the Gaze does not fall is identified as the Void - the realm of the Blight, demonic whisperings, evil in mortals' souls, oblivion and erasure.

This moral compass ingrained in Thedosian worldbuilding is outlined in the Canticle of Threnodies. I have always posited that we can read the Canticle's "Maker" as a purely formal locus meant to hook up some form of prisca theologia that would be partially true regardless of whom we put in the Maker's seat.

For example: the Canticle claims that when "The Maker" created the physical world from a portion of the Fade itself, then Their firstborn, Fade spirits, turned away from their perfect resonance with the Maker. They envied what they were not, and for this poisoning of the heavenly "song" with discordant (so, evil) intentions, the Maker castigated them, declared them the first demons, and made humans Their "chosen" race -- presumably, this time building them of both Earth and Spirit so that they would not envy partaking in either.

After multiple hints left in DAI Trespasser, that sparked speculation about the spirit origin theory as the dominating fan theory years ago, DATV confirmed that the "firstborn elvhen" were Fade spirits that manifested physically. They used lyrium, the blood of the Earth's Titans, to build themselves physical bodies. The Stone retaliated, and the first elvhen waged a war with it, eventually devising a way to sunder the spirit essence/ dreams from all Titans. It is heavily implied that this choice to carry out their existence on Earth as war and conquest has twisted whatever the "virtuous" spiritual nature was left in the Evanuris, and that after the end of that war, Elgar'nan simply could not stop.

Why would they do it though? While some concept art from the artbook shows spirits observing primordial dwarves dwarfing, in the end, the Regret mural that shows Mythal inviting Solas into the world explicitly tells us he had no desire to live "as HUMANS" (and the story fails to bridge that lore drop with the known lore about humans allegedly arriving to Thedas from across the seas, and only being able to thrive after the Veil).

So, despite disproving the story about the Chantry's Maker creating the Veil, the writing confirms the Chant's initial overtly anthropocentric orientation. Humans were always special and spirits were always meant to backup and store their ethically charged concepts. But the important accomplishment here is that spirits/ elvhen are doomed with an inherent moral error that snowballs into inevitable strife, destruction and error!

But wait, there's more! Because now that we have the anthropocentrism as our implied position towards the Thedosian races, the history of the elvhen race looks even more like some bizzare form of "karmic" reckoning that completely misses the point of a reckoning, to replace it with unwarranted generational punishment. First, as a result of the Great Betrayal, the elvhen are sundered from their connection to the spirit essence, and thus subjected to the Quickening, which I guess is supposed to be a way of the world giving the elvhen a taste of their own medicine and saying "Be careful what you wish for". Then, once they are finally effectively like humans in every metaphysical respect (unbeknownst to everyone except the remaining ancient elvhen), the moral corruption of the Evanuris gets passed on as the Tevinters learn to glorify blood sacrifice at the behest of their Old Gods (who are really Evanuris speaking through their Archdemons, at any capacity they still have left). This gets used to further humiliate the remainders of ancient Arlathan. What happened to the elvhen now gives Solas reason to hate the mortal physical existence of elves twofold.

The fact that elves keep being punished by the narrative is a direct result of BioWare implementing the spirit origin theory the way they did, because it was devised as a scenario of original sin that necessitates conflict and moral downfall, and ends up snowballing into dooming elves through and through.

But more than that, as I have mentioned in another post, on the metaphysical level, "pure" spirits should be occupied solely with their respective defining abstracts. Spirits should know no desire. Desire is the "unquenchable flame" that defines humans. As far as DAO, we would read that the more benevolent spirits prefer to sit back in the Fade and not interfere with the mortals, and the ones with the greatest drive to join the living are predatory demons.

And the reason for all of this is "the Maker" being bored of perfection in the Golden City, and wanting some change. That the world requires change and opposition to let its best aspects shine is not an controversial idea. However, in the Dragon Age worldbuilding, this necessity for change is not introduced under a milder Hermetic assumption that, even after being cast down into a darker realm of the incarnate, one can successfully control their mundane passions and heal their soul from corrupting influences whilst existing physically... Not on the grand scale, at least.

Once spirits decided to enter the physical world, they started acting like they were trapped and forced to fight for their lives (despite them being the trespassers). The vast majority of them got spiritually corrupted (if they didn't represent vices like Tyranny from the get-go), they dragged their hesitant kin down with them through manipulation. The elvhen race fell into tyranny as their "First" were actually the worst, yet people looked up to them for survival. One particularly inventive specimen devised two catastrophic tools -- one, to deflect onto the Titans whatever should have happened to the first elvhen in order to sunder what has been wrongly joined; the other, to sunder the tyrannical Evanuris from the rest of the elvhen and spirits and stop their corrupting influence. Yet, because the world changes, the collateral of one such tool introduced a wholly new type of rampant evil, and the collateral of the other made the whole elvhen race spiral down... even further into their entrapment in physicality!

The way they built up the spirit origin theory, it draws a full circle: first, the Southern Chantry and the Dalish demonize Fade spirits - one for dogmatic reasons, because it sees the marriage of spirit and flesh as something that is evil even in humans, the other because they can't be denied that healthy cackle of metaphysical irony even if they try their hardest. Then, with DAI Solas and Cole, we're acquainted with a more sympathetic understanding of Fade spirits as being that are fundamentally different but operate on a logic that doesn't automatically lead to a shitshow of a moral downfall. But then, we learn that a group of spirits doomed the entire world to millennia of strife because they felt curiosity for the Other and because the choice to cross the great threshold almost automatically made them forget the virtues they supposedly embodied and spiral down into the "lower" survival instincts.

Personally, I believe that spirits & elvhen could be built on a fundamental existential difference in a way that would have made their excursions into each other's realm temporary. I believe that the spirit origin theory, even if upheld, could have been taken in a direction that didn't imply instant rampant and thoughtless colonialism on the elvhen part. I believe that such choices would have enforced worldbuilding that didn't need to condemn the spirits/ elvhen with that weird version the original sin that receives completely unsympathetic treatment as the time goes by.

[marsdemo]

the thing abt amtrak is that they literally are busting down historic buildings in black and brown neighborhoods to build new tracks under joe's guidance and working to install vent systems right next to elementary schools in areas that already have extraordinarily high asthma rates but at least every bitch on here still has wet dreams about their expensive tickets and inflexible schedules

[denimsnake]

possibly the most damning thing about the podcast is that it's marketed as comedy but the "jokes" aren't funny at all. anyway if you want an actually funny holmes u should be watching ronald howard.

[wonder-worker]

“…The Anglo-Saxon era is often thought of as having been a golden age for women. Since the late eighteenth century, it has been a commonplace that women in England had better rights before the Norman Conquest than they did afterwards, and were held in higher esteem by society. Before 1066, said one eminent historian in the mid-twentieth century, men and women enjoyed ‘a rough and ready partnership’. As so often with golden ages, however, this picture rests on a selective reading of very limited and debatable evidence. One of its principal props is an account of German women written by the Roman historian Tacitus towards the end of the first century AD. These women, claimed Tacitus, were virtuous, frugal and chaste, and supported their sons and husbands by encouraging them to acts of valour. But this was simply a Roman praising ‘barbarian’ society in order to criticize his own. German women were portrayed as laudable because, unlike their Roman counterparts, they did not conduct adulterous affairs or waste their time at baths and theatres. The reality, unfortunately, seems to be that the status of women in first-century Germany and Anglo-Saxon England was no better than it was in later centuries.”

— Marc Morris, "Anglo-Saxons: The History of the Beginnings of England, 400-1066” / Pauline Stafford, "Women and the Norman Conquest"

"Anglo-Saxon England has thus been a Golden Age variously of women's domestication, women's legal emancipation, women's education and women's sexual liberation. The length of a tradition which has changed so fundamentally over time is no guarantee of its veracity. A cursory view of a range of evidence from either side of the 1066 divide casts immediate doubt on the idea of a brutal Norman ending of the Golden Age. The raw statistics of Domesday, for example, suggest a different picture of England on the eve of the Norman arrival. No more than five per cent of the total hidage of land recorded was in the hands of women in 1066. Of that five per cent, 80-85% was in the hands of only eight women, almost all of them members of the families of the great earls, particularly of earl Godwine, or of the royal family. By the tenth and eleventh centuries women other than the queen are virtually absent from the witness lists of the royal charters, and thus apparently from the political significance such witness lists record.”

[take-ya-to-the-ghey-bar]

big time eepy--

[normiewizard]

The Idea of You (2024) is like I Saw the TV Glow (2023)for straight women. <3

[aeide-thea]

combined these two pasta recipes for dinner tonight—

—bc we were a little short on all the add-ins, quantity-wise, but figured if i used what we had of all three we'd end up in more or less the right place; am here to report: yes good, you should do it too.

used trumpets bc it was the only shape we had on hand; kept the red pepper flakes from the second recipe and added a little parsley, which i was glad of; sprinkled with extra zest/red pepper flakes/sea salt at the end: very thumbs up. (could for my taste have been even more lemony, tbh, but ymmv depending on how briny yr olives are!)

[bytesie]

this is so completely offtopic but genuinely such a well thought out video ive always hated 'social media detox' but the way qrbits talks about really needing to find what u want and gain and removing the things that do not help with that forward momentum . like just watch

[cloudstrifing]

if i had the sheer fucking focus for Anything as i do for making playlists bro. id be unstoppable

[magnoliamyrrh]

i do like having short hair but im abt 10 min away from buying synthetic hair for braids fhdj i think thats what im doing the moment im done w school shit

[julietjacques]

Precision Valley Baptist Church

[thelovebudllc]

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[prince--kiriona]

my best guess for the no votes on that poll is that they simply wouldn't want to be trans, regardless of how they'd feel in the sex they end up as

yeah i think that's a solid reading of it tbh. reading through the notes on that poll, it seems like most of the people voting no have a similar reasoning of: "i'm currently cisgender not because i feel a particular attachment to my current gender, but because i simply don't care about the subject enough to try and change people's perception of me; ergo, i would feel the same even if my current gender was different". which is fascinating to me as someone who cares a Lot about being a woman

[haircarecetres-blog]

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[govtshutdown]

Here's the deal

H.R. 9747: Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025

[thats-cantorintuitive]

i should be doing taylor's series. but my brain simply needs to read about linux and distros obsessively like there's going to be a my-life-is-on-the-line-test on it tomorrow otherwise she'll go berserk and make me eat my computer.

do i have undiagnosed adhd? i should look it up rightaway. my 196884 tabs on operating systems can wait. or am i just a pathological procrastinator?