they should just cordone off kirkwall like a nuclear bomb site honestly

given the end of Absolution, revisiting this seems in order 👁️

Okay WHAT THE FUCK is Varric doing in Kirkwall like. Mr Viscount, sir, are you aware there’s a red lyrium infestation in your city? Have you not seen the templars with glowing eyes hanging around? have you just been embezzling the treasury for the last few years?

the line “are you really the last one to figure out that you’re the villian?” hits really in a special way, expecially considering it comes from hira

hawke after meredith's statue goes missing and red templars start hanging out at the hanged man:

I binged through all of Dragon Age: Absolution today and honestly I really really liked it! I was allowing myself only some very cautious optimism after watching the twitch premiere of the first episode, but freed from the need for infodumps and setting up the characters the rest of the show actually rapidly gets better from there (some pacing issues here and there excepted but hey they were given 6 episodes, I think they did pretty well considering those constraints)! If like me you HUNGER for, you YEARN for, you CRAVE more Dragon Age right the fuck now, this is not at all a bad thing to help keep some of that hunger down while we wait for the next game, and has a few loveable new characters to get into and some great action animation to boot.

More idle thoughts/reactions under the cut!

first and foremost I love Roland and Lacklon so much haha, a surprisingly well paced romance considering it mainly happens in quick background-ish moments! I'm especially interested in Roland's backstory, since he's very chill and openminded for what seems to be a decently well-trained/educated Orlesian? Lacklon being like 'I want to hold his hand and suck his dick 😔 fml' every time Roland did something cool in battle was just *chef's kiss* too, it was kind of smart to have their fight scenes double as foreplay as well on a writing level since they're arguably the least plot-important characters overall (though they and Qwydion are definitely the heart of the story as far as I'm concerned)

I understand why Miriam clung to Hira so much since she just lost literally everything in her life, good or bad, moments before and that relationship was the only time she had tasted anything like real love since her brother died, but girl... girl when people show you who they are, believe them. marry Qwydion instead you deserve so much better (Hira gave me the Bad Vibes right away from how she didn't respect anything Miriam said or expressed and kept pushing in ways that made me really uncomfortable, so I won't say I was shocked or anything lol.) There is the (??deliberate??) mirror of Hira hugging Miriam from behind in the blood magic dream and Qwydion coming up behind her in very much the same way to rest her hand on her shoulder in the real world afterwards, so I have hope maybe?

can you imagine Dorian watching shitshows like this go down every other week all around Tevinter and tearing at his perfectly sculpted hair because Andraste's tits if you motherfuckers would stop acting stereotypically for FIVE MINUTES! could any of you go take a PISS without resorting to blood magic! Dorian's job is a shit job and he's probably been doing it for a while by the time of Dreadwolf so y'know. get my son a drink

speaking of Qwydion, I am so glad for further support for my theory that vashoth born away from the Qun are actually some of the most well-adjusted people in all of Thedas. they've dodged the Qun from birth by definition, they don't seem terribly interested in the Chantry or grand politics of any kind, they don't have a caste system hanging over them, they can step on anyone who tries to mess with them even if they don't have magic... truly the only sane people running around out here

so you're telling me the Inquisition screws Fairbanks over no matter what you do, b/c either he dies or he's forced into Orlesian politics. Oh buddy I'm sorry we should've just let you frolic around in the Emerald Graves on your own you didn't deserve this

Poor Tessa. she is probably better off without him in the long run but that's a rough week

I was so excited to see Kirkwall again, I saw the horrific chain statues and went 'OH HELLHOLE MORE LIKE HELLHOME'. it's so grim and awful I miss it so much lol

meredith, huh. so uh. hawke really has failed at everything, pretty much, then. even the few people they did manage to kill to protect everyone didn't stay dead. I'm just waiting for the dragon they killed in the Bone Pit to come back and ravage the city as well now, just to top it off. celestial punching bag of thedas hawke. babyyyyyyyyy if it helps I still love you the most and so does your collection of bi weirdos found family

rezaren wasn't even that good a mage, as far as we can tell, so you have to wonder what the FUCK dorian's ancestor was pulling to have created this thing that he could barely control with half a dragon's worth of blood (and what someone like Dorian, who helped crack time like an egg in his student days sort of just to see if he could, it seems, could do with it if they didn't have like scruples or other pesky things like that. everything we see about tevinter magisters makes me more impressed with how comparatively not fundamentally shitty Dorian has managed to turn out (no wonder Bull is kind of impressed with him for having actual integrity, if this is the competition he's up against). can you tell I miss him lol)

I found it genuniely interesting how much rezaren and hira are thematic mirrors to each other and mutually cannot see it, right down to treating miriam ultimately as an object. same self-centered idiot, different hairstyles. what a scathing indictment of Tevinter high society that even Hira, who's family was notoriously progressive and trying to enact change, still treats people exactly the same way as the other magisters when push comes to shove.

thank u to Lacklon for pessimistic cynical bastard representation, he is right that that dragon is going to ravage the countryside and someone on the crew has to keep clear eyes for that sort of thing even when it's a downer

i’m not well

I watched Dragon Age: Absolution

Sapphira is an ally that hijacks the social justice causes to serve her own ends because she was victimized for being *associated* with activism, rather than *being* the original target of oppression, and I think that’s such an interesting character makeup.

Miriam was an actual slave that endured years of abuse along with her brother, never having a choice in her life until she ran away. All her life she lived with the pain and regret and hatred of the woman who raised her and the “!brother” that did nothing to stop the abuse, and yet the only people she holds that explicit hatred for are slave masters, especially hers. She doesn’t seem to hold any great outward animosity for Tevinters whether they’re magical or not, nor mages in general like Fenris did when you first meet him in DA2. She has had years and years of trauma on her shoulders by virtue of being born, but she learned to focus her hatred on only a few targets instead of letting it consume her.

Sapphira witnessed her parents’ deaths firsthand by Venatori in a public lynching by fire because they were vocal in their dissent of Venatori and (I’m assuming) for being abolitionists. They were not the original intended victims of Venatori for who they were (Miriam and Neb for being elves) but by their actions, and these are two vastly different reasons.

It cannot be said that the end result for Sapphira and Miriam —death of loved ones and trauma at the hands of Tevinter—are equal, because the reason for why they were respectively targeted matters very much in this context. Being targeted as an abolitionist when you are part of a privileged group (human mage) is not the same as being born an elf in slavery in Tevinter. One allows you freedoms so long as you toe the line, the other has a your freedoms snatched away the moment you’re born.

Sapphira wants the Circulum because she wants revenge. A part of her may think she cares about slavery in Tevinter, but that’s a lie she tells herself in order to keep going. What she really wants is vengeance for her parents being murdered, and she was willing to sell Miriam back into slavery, even “temporarily”, just to get one step closer to achieving her dream of seeing Tevinter burn.

Miriam is never consulted on this dream of Sapphira’s, of marching an army on Tevinter and burning it all to the ground. She doesn’t want justice, she wants her nation turned to ash for it. Sapphira has a right to feel lost and angry, but why is her grief worth sacrificing the life and love of Miriam for?

Sapphira said to Miriam that people don’t change the world because people like Miriam don’t try, but if “trying” means selling a slave back into slavery without their consent, i.e. not being in on the plan to do a fake exchange and them get them out of their bonds right away, or so Sapphira claimed..

I’m sorry, but that is too big a sacrifice for me to ignore, especially since Miriam has the greatest cause for grievance between the two of them, but even she doesn’t want all of Tevinter burned to the ground. Sapphira is just hella selfish and has lost sight of what really matters, which are the actual elves.

If a full scale invasion did occur, I can’t imagine the magisters wouldn’t have a slave army, so then you’re just killing those you’re trying to liberate, and that doesn’t feel good..

I’m not saying Sapphira should do nothing, but formal military invasion is not the answer. Change from within OR sabotage from within is the only way to stop it and to make sure it stays stopped. I would even go so far as to say that civil war or harsher enforcement of anti-Venatori legislation is the only remedy for it, not full-scale foreign invasion.

I am 100% for slave revolt, for guerrilla war, for political maneuvering, even for secret foreign support of those trying to change Tevinter, but I don’t support Sapphira’s “Burn it all down” mentality, because she means EVERYONE, even those who condemn the Venatori, even those who might be fighting to oust them from the inner rings of the political sphere into the shadows of obscurity. She doesn’t care.

It’s just silly that she thought the Inquisition would think of challenging Tevinter after the Breach. She was stupid to think so, I’ll just say it. That was never in the Inquisition’s plans, nor was it ever written anywhere that they would ever upscale to outright challenging an empire as large as Tevinter after sealing the Breach. Girl, what planet are you living on?

If there’s a season 2, Fairbanks’s wife should show up, voiced by Marisha Ray.

Thedas Mayhem Squad

hot take but i hope miriam doesn't forgive hiri, the fact that she even WANTED to was silly and goofy of her

there's still a very cute single quinari right there please get better you stupid lesbian

The Inquisition: desperately trying to stop Solas from literally ending the world and trying to survive being crushed under the thumb of the chantry, barely holding onto their resources

Hira: guys. you aren’t doing enough about the Venatori >:/

miriam really just went through some of the worst days of her life and she came out on top and ready to keep fighting

she deserves the world