CONFESSION:

Ok this is going to sound petty but as someone who played the least popular races, I am glad Dreadwolf has had a massively long development time because I got sick of the brigade of Solavellan fans saying they needed special content in the next game. And when you asked them about Adaar and Cadash, most would say those inquisitors did not matter. I do not support any sort of blatant/in your face fan service for any of the races and I take solace in knowing its never going to happen.

(dragon age fandom centric) I'm gonna be so honest right now in the year 2024 I am just going to unfollow you if you're putting pro-chantry bombing posts on my timeline - I have seen enough Palestinian churches and mosques blown up these past couple of months and I don't care if it's a video game I'm just kinda over it

why are so many da fans supposedly against Islamophobia but the second Muslim fans and other fans of colour say that Chantry bombing jokes make them uncomfortable or aren't okay they're 'overreacting' and 'it's only a joke' and 'Anders was right stfu' like please I am begging for you to have some fucking decency and braincells.

Anders blew up a religious building, killing hundreds of people (not only from the explosion but the subsequent debris raining down on the city). It's not fucking funny?? What is wrong with you 😭😭

How about you actually listen to Muslim fans for once, shut your damned mouth and stop making shitty chantry bombing jokes

Saw a recent DA confession about Rivain (not gonna touch the post with a 10 foot pole though because the notes are "meh" and I'm pretty careful about my fandom exposure), but I just love seeing people bring it up because it's one of those instances where Bioware tries to make instances like the mage-templar conflict a grey issue instead of black and white, then they drop some horrific lore in passing through a codex or a war table mission and expect people to continue going "b-b-but both sides..."

Yeah, we literally have a matriarchal society outside of Chantry influence (except in their capital). The Circle they have is basically a front. Mages are free to come and go as they please. Elves and Qunari are welcome among them, have settlements there. From the codex and wiki, the Templars honestly don't give a damn about the mages training their women as seers, so long as the seers help them out here and there. In my eyes, it's about as much of a utopia as we can get in the Dragon Age setting.

Then, the Chantry comes in and pulls the Right of Annulment out of their ass because we can't have anything outside of the status quo threatening their influence, right?

Anyways, I'm just amazed how many people seem to miss that and then how many people just blatantly disregard the knowledge when presented with it, and try to make it seem like "The Exception" to the rule, even though the Avaar and the Dalish are other clear examples of mages existing peacefully enough outside of the Chantry’s influence. (Don't get me started on that "3 Dalish Mages" rule which clearly contradicts the lore up until that point.)

1, 7 and 18 for the choosing violence asks!

I will be answering for the Dragon Age fandom

the character everyone gets wrong

MERRILL GUIDE DANGIT! I recently recieved a comment on how she's an idiot 'playing with dangerous magic she doesn't know'. She knows how dangerous it is, and she has managed to communicate with a demon without being possessed (And then Marethari showed up and fucked things over)

Merrill is one of the most intelligent characters in the whole game. Solas gets praised for being insightful for doing the same thing!

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

I don't think there's a fandom experience that ruined a character for me specifically, but if I had to pick some Solas fans (not all) have kind of soured him for me.

18. it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

I've said this once and I'll say it again, non-mage Hawke is criminally underrated. (Not to bash anyone out there who enjoys mage Hawke, but the roleplaying opportunities!)

Thank you so much for the ask ^^^

🔥hehehehehe

okay idk how unpopular this is BUT

i like the rivalries (and rivalmances) and think a lot of criticism of them comes from people who havent ever done them or have only watched videos of people spamming the worst possible option lmao

i disagree that they’re hawke bullying their friends because you can have full rivalry without ever saying a rude thing to them. what they DO show is hawke having an opposing opinion to their companion.

which like happens and also it’s fine to play a hawke who isn’t right all the time (but also isn’t necessarily EVIL).

now they ARE broken (hello anders preaching about being anticircle to a blood mage hawke) and I’m not trying to say the rivalmances are all perfectly healthy lol. but having done a h/anders rivalmance even that doesn’t have to be whumpy like it might appear if you watch a video where hawke just yells at a/nders for 40 minutes until they kiss lmao

I Know that I am certainly not the only one made uncomfy by all this 'elf Inquisitor can't read cos they've spent all their life in the woods' shit. In world, the Dalish are very committed to learning about their history and educating their people, and documenting and remembering what was lost and taken is super important to them. Nomadic/wilderness clan lifestyle does not mean 'uneducated', you guys are just racist.

Worst takes of the day courtesy of the Dragon Age fandom. In response to me sharing how being an atheist jew it made me very uncomfortable to see people stating that all real world religions are stupid after talking about a fictional religion. As well as me stating "criticizing the harms done in the name of religion is not the same as stating that all religions are nonsense" and that "generalizing things like Yoruba, Voudou, and the traditional beliefs of indigenous peoples with statements like 'all religions are harmful' also perpetuates colonialism". Don't think I need to mention the obvious islamophobia, anti-indigenous racism, and historical revisionism here, nor the major false equivalency presented.

One can be discriminatory towards other minority religious groups despite belonging to a minority religion/praxis system themselves. And one can also perpetuate harmful colonialist justifications and stereotypes despite not actively benefiting themselves from colonialism. Being jewish in a hegemonically xtian society also doesn't erase the enculturation that can happen, and how that affects internalized concepts of what religion and religious practice is.

Coming from an atheist jew, if you're an atheist/agnostic/etc and you default to being anti-religion in general, take some time to deconstruct why that is. Is it because you've taken the time to inform yourself on the religious systems you're criticising and are coming to an informed opinion? Or is it because you associate all religions with the ones you're most familiar with? And if you're exposed to some religious beliefs or practices more than others, what is the context behind that?

DA fandom is so exhausting, sometimes it's so bad for my mental health. I love dragon age but... Sometimes I feel like i don't want to do anything with the fandom and just want to randomly throwing out art or shit post but not really interact.

It's feels like there's a lot of tiny tribes within the fandoms that warring against each other and a lot of landmines

I'm not even ready for da4 because you know the drama and problem will be crank up to 11

It's remind me of old fandoms that i no longer interact because everything blew up and it's just too much.

If i had a nickel for every time there was a sad bisexual lowkey (or highkey) explosive whiteboy human wizard etc etc

The similarities are v superficial but it's still funny to me xdd

CONFESSION:

Its really annoying and ridiculous to see people still crapping on Dragon Age 2 after eleven years. I religiously played Origins back then and kept up to date with everything that was said publicly about Dragon Age 2. The developers stated not to expect a sequel to Origins and they stated they would never do full on sequels. And I was fine with that. I loved playing Hawke and I loved the companions and their dynamic with each other. Now it was not a flawless game but it still thoroughly entertained me and I got my money's worth. But then again I have zero issues playing human protagonists. I will never understand why people can't let it go and move on and let the rest of us enjoy these games. As great as the warden was they did not have the same depth like Shepard from the Mass Effect Trilogy to be the protagonist in all three games.

And I will always believe they should have gotten rid of the 2 and called it Dragon Age Exodus.

I’m glad I’m not super involved in fandom anymore because if I still had to talk to dragon age fans about how supporting the person that made the DAO&DA2 soundtrack who served in the IDF is bad or that sharing things that compared BDS to neo nazis is also bad I think I’d go insane

Unpopular Dragon Age opinion

Just let people play how they want to play.

I said this in the tags of a reblog but I thought I'd also make a post.

Some people really do seem to claim 'moral high ground' over the choices that they make. And you need to understand that if the devs didn't want us to make certain choices they wouldn't have presented the opportunity for them.

I side with mages, I'm trying to make Leliana Divine, I try to do good things even with my 'asshole characters', but I also do bad things even with my 'nice and good' characters, I like characters and ships other people don't like or don't think work, I disagree with some of the popular opinions. But I'm scared to talk about them in some spaces because of potential backlash if I do voice them.

The way we play video games do not always reflect the kind of people we are in real life. Just because someone may decide their canon involves having circles reinstated does not automatically make them supporters oppression. The only exception would be any form of pro-shipping, pro-shippers can take their ships and shove it.

The point of playing Dragon Age is to have fun and immerse yourself into your own story, why can't we also let pro Templar, anti Chantry explosion and 'Circles are needed' people do the same?

mage rights are not a 1:1 comparison for any real world issue and commenting on someones actual real life morals bc of video game politics makes you look like... an actual clown.

People when game characters have their own goals and motivations, aren't yes men to whatever the player says and don't change their views and opinions just cause the player wants them to

One of the criticisms I've seen DA players have in response to Anders' actions at the Kirkwall Chantry is some degree of, 'his actions forced innocent mages into a war they had no choice whether or not they wanted to be involved in'.

What a lot of these players seem to miss is this: The mages were already involved. They have been involved since childhood, when their magic manifested.

If you are born a mage in Southern Thedas, you are marked. The Templars will find you, or your neighbors who were conditioned by the Chantry to fear magic will turn you in, and you are brought to the Circle where you are at risk of Tranquility, or Annulment, and subjected to a Harrowing. Your children born to you in the Circle will be taken from you to be raised in a Chantry orphanage (like Wynne's child was). You are not allowed to get married, or start a family, or own land. You are not allowed to leave your Circle ever, unless conscripted to fight in the army (like in the Fifth Blight) or fulfilling some whim or need of those in power (like Malcolm Hawke being made to entertain nobles at a party). You might be thrown into the dungeon and left to starve to death, like the mage child Cole (and other mage apprentices of the White Spire) did. You are at risk of physical and sexual abuse, like the mages of the Gallows were.

Innocent mages were already involved. They were already being killed, they were already fighting for their lives for centuries since the inception of Circles, long before Anders' actions.

Also, in the case of the Gallows specifically, Knight-Commander Meredith had already called for the Annulment as early as the beginning/mid of Act 3. The mages' lives were already in danger, even before the Chantry was destroyed.

Anders tried for six years to make people listen and show how magic is not meant to be feared and can be used for good -- by publishing a manifesto, by providing free magical healthcare in Darktown -- to bring people's attention to the plight of mages and change things for the better. It took the imminent threat of his people being slaughtered wholesale for him to resort to what is aptly titled 'The Last Straw'.

If players want to blame anyone for subjecting mages to a conflict they did not want, look no further than the Chantry and their system of exploitation and oppression over the mages. Put blame on the Chantry for forcing mages into lives they did not choose, and asserting methods of culling and control over them, simply for how they were born. It was the Chantry that gave them no choice whether or not they had a say in staying alive or dying.

And if DA players would still say that the mages could have tried for a more "peaceful route" to alleviate their circumstances (despite seeing how Anders' manifesto, his Darktown clinic, and years of trying to negotiate with Elthina failed and Meredith was calling for Annulment anyway): very rarely do the oppressed win change by pandering to the morals of their oppressors.

Innocent mages were already suffering and being murdered in droves, for centuries. Innocent mages were already involved in this struggle, whether they wanted to be or not. And Anders' actions at the Chantry was like a rallying cry: If we're going to die anyway, then I'd rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want.

(Also, I have not yet gone into detail on what actually started the mage-templar war, which was the Seekers hiding the cure for Tranquility, and Lord Seeker Lambert's decision to dissolve the Nevarran accord and take the Templars hunting for the free mages across the countryside because he decided dead mages were better than free mages -- because that's a whole separate post.)