@shiny-theunicorn / shiny-theunicorn.tumblr.com
just saying, they had to nerf blackwall from his concept art to give the other love interests a chance.
🤣 @galadrieljones here’s your baewall, as he should have been. I realize this isnt new to you but….nothing wrong with looking again. ;)
look I don’t want to tell anyone what to do but if you go down that path you will wake up a thousand years later and all your great-grandchildren will be dead
But I get a thousand year nap out of it?
That’s not the intended use Sir
But I get a thousand year nap out of it???
One person’s bug is another person’s feature.
:-D
I am beginning to think boston dynamics is just fucking around at this point.
BioWare: literally releases a one minute long video where that bitch Solas says five words of dialogue
Me:
their relationship is so beautiful and I’m so deeply in love with their love.
thank you for this relationship, bioware.
We were all young once.
Inquisitor’s quarters.
A cup of hot tea really heals ur soul this is true science
Actually, a cup of hot anything in your hands mimics human warmth which is said to have calming properties. So, yes, it’s true. Tea mimics the need for human care, touch, and recognition.
im going to cry im so lonely now and all i have is this fucking cup of leaf water
Imagination is fun!
Looking at this gif I made today of Solas killing Flemeth and it’s so sad.
Look at his eyes right before he kills her. He is SO miserable. Nothing worked out the way it was supposed to, and now he has to resort to killing what is possibly his last friend anywhere ever.
He failed and should pay the price for his mistakes, but Mythal is the one who ultimately pays. I can’t help but feel as if Flemeth – the host – is dead and Mythal is still around somewhere (giving people nightmares).
Like, maybe the spirit Flemeth released into the mirror WAS Mythal. Flemeth was letting the goddess get away and pretending she was still carrying her. So when Solas says “I’m sorry” it’s because he thinks he’s about to kill Mythal (or maybe just absorb her), but he only gets the spark of power instead.
So what we may be looking at here is the Trickster … being tricked.
(and I say all this fully taking into account the data pulled up from the game files. Mythal knew Solas would kill her and let him kill her – as in her body – as in Flemeth)
This isn’t even the first time in this game that he has had to resort to killing what is possibly his last friend anywhere ever.
You know what I’d love for DA4? If the protagonist wakes up several centuries into a dark future where the Trespasser Qunari won in their goal to eliminate all magic by strengthening the Veil, to the point that all future Thedas residents are almost completely Tranquil.
The protagonist wakes up in a future where there are no dreams, no magic, and minimal emotions, creativity, and imagination. No one remembers a time when people had dreams, emotions, magic, creativity, or imagination. They are for all intents and purposes Tranquil.
There is no art, music, beauty, or entertainment. There are only basic huts and farms for basic survival; nutritious but tasteless food, plain clothes just to keep warm; straw beds to sleep on, coarse blankets to keep from getting hypothermia at night, marriages based on convenience and reproduction rather than passion, love, fondness, or companionship. There is no war, no domestic violence, rape, no travel, and not but the most bare minimum of trade because there is no need or desire for it. They all live flat, boring lives of practicality, minimalism, and survival. And they’re satisfied with this because they’ve known nothing else. Only the ruins of “your time” betray any hint of beauty, passion, creativity, art, and living being more than just surviving having ever existed.
And the game depicts this as a horrific nightmare; a dystopia of physical comfort but emotional and artistic genocide. “Your people” are gone. Your way of life is long over.
And the goal of the game becomes searching for a way to loosen or remove the Veil to restore dreams and emotions. To restore “your people.” And you must employ Tranquil people with various practical skills to put their skills to help you in your goal.
And when you try to tell them of a world where beauty, art, passion, emotions, dreams, creativity, and imagination existed, they cannot comprehend it. Worse, they don’t even try. They don’t want to. It has no bearing on their day-to-day lives, so they have no interest in it. They have not seen it, cannot comprehend it, so it holds no meaning for them.
They’re as perplexed as a Tranquil can be to hear of such things. They are vaguely insulted that you think a world like that is better than their world of basic comforts and survival.
When you finally do tell them that you see them as “not people,” as “empty shells,” they’re as vaguely offended as a Tranquil can be. Just like in the canonical games when the protagonists tell a Tranquil that you feel sorry for them or see them as an empty shell (like Owain in DAO), the Tranquil of this future time protest that they are not empty shells. They’re no less a person than you are. After all, they have beating hearts, their lungs breath air, they can think, they can reason, they need food to sustain themselves, they can use their hands to build things. Are those not the signs of a living person? How can they be less of a person than you despite all of these bodily functions, just because they don’t feel or dream as you do?
And all of a sudden, you’re the bad guy. You’re the villain of this new world. You’re an intolerant bigot for not accepting these emotionless people as people like you. You’re not a hero trying to restore emotions and dreams, but a genocidal villain for trying destroy tranquil people.
And you’re faced with a difficult choice:
A) Accept this new world without emotions or dreams and just get used to a future without people who love and dream as you do.
Or go through with it anyway, feeling guilty and hating yourself for the death, destruction, and genocide you are about to bring. Because you still feel the “raw chaos” of letting magic and spirits pour back into the waking world, the destruction and despair of people long accustomed to existence without emotions now feeling passion for the first time, would be WORTH bringing back a world of emotions and dreams.
Unless the game puts players in those shoes, I don’t think anyone can really understand what Solas is feeling, what he is going through. It’s easy to write him off as “an old racist bigot” who’s “trying to force his views on everyone else.” “A genocidal maniac” for “not seeing people as PEOPLE just because they’re different from him.”
But that’s because we are the so-called “Tranquil” of this new Veiled world. We’ve ONLY seen the results of the Veil going up, not the world before the Veil. Since we have NO basis of comparison, it’s easy for us to see all the benefits of this new world and way of life, and write off anyone who doesn’t see it that way (read: ancient elves) as stuffy, haughty, elitist, out-of-touch, “unable to let go of the past,” etc.
Just short of being in Solas’ shoes and having to make a difficult decision like he has to make, I’m really annoyed by how freely people feel judging him for how he feels being the last of his kind in “our” world.
Somewhat sorry for the addition, but I feel the need to point out: If you’re calling someone who can’t access their emotions and dreams an empty shell, you’re not all of a sudden the bad guy. You just are, in the real world as well as in Thedas.
Dwarves canonically have no connection to the Fade, yet they are people. The Tranquil you see in the games are people, and they do more than simply exist. You see Tranquil in Haven forming relationships. The Inquisitor is a person, which is the whole point of Solas’ dilemma. He’s wrong about the state of the world. He misses the old world, and I don’t think the problem is that nobody can understand his motivation. It’s just still wrong.
The concept is an interesting one, regardless of the fact that it couldn’t work in a franchise that tries to appeal to new players as well as those who’ve played the previous games. You’d need an enormous amount of backstory for why the player character has to go around and talk to those they consider the most person-like and try to convince them of the fact that in the old times, there were dreams and rape, so everything was more exciting. I’m pretty sure that’s not an argument I would like to make.
Yes, I agree that Solas is wrong for calling the Tranquil not-people.
I don’t think that he’s wrong for wanting to restore a world where the peoples of Thedas, who are presently essentially Tranquil (compared to his world), would be free of their effective-Tranquility by the removal of the Veil.
Because I’ve seen a misunderstanding that is related to this discussion in a few places in the Dragon Age fandom, I have to add: HCs for the Tranquil can be however you want to make them to be, but when understanding Solas’ comment, I really feel that it’s important, when we are trying to figure out why Solas is so nostalgic for the old world where everyone has the Fade, to recognize the Tranquil for what they are, as-presented in the canon of the games: slaves.
Solas wakes up to a world where in Orlais, elves languish under the casual murder-parades of Orlesian nobles out to have a good time. The Dalish hide in the wilderness and bemoan their lost glory (yes, this is how he characterizes them, which yes, this is how the majority of fandom characterizes Solas). He wakes up to a world where the Qun sends dissenters to ‘correctional reprogramming.’ Wardens blindly follow their commanders in summoning demons across the Veil. Tevinter openly practices slavery, and no one south has waged war on them in centuries (Orlais quietly practices slavery, and where are her neighboring countries coming to defend people’s rights?). Ferelden mothers pack their children off into towers if they show a bit of magic, to be raped and beaten by power-mad zealots.
And when the oppressed do rebel, do fight, do mirror the acts of aggression which have been visited on them for centuries, how are they received?
With violent, decisive slaughter, and open condemnation.
Solas awakens to a world of Tranquil.
Yes, the Tranquil can still form connections, they can still develop attachments, and they can logically understand that as people, there is a need for them to remain in contact with other people. They’re not mind-controlled. They just only exist logically, with the black-and-white clarity of mind of emotionless, Vulcan-like calculators, who maintain the status quo and follow orders. (Although, not quite like Vulcans - Vulcans can still feel the emotion of compassion. Vulcan emotions are suppressed, not absent.)
But the Tranquil are not like dwarves, and they are not ciphers for non-neurotypical people. They are neurotypical and neurodivergent people who have been violently lobotomized and who are kept as slave labor chattel by their captors and masters.
The Tranquil are the walking dead. They have been murdered, they are the still-conscious victims of the Templar genocide against mages, a genocide that we still see echoes of in the White Spire “Pit.” They are people - enslaved, tortured people, whose lost connection to the Fade has compromised their ability to make choices, and to choose to fight against their oppressors (an illogical endeavor, because all efforts are certain to fail).
This is exactly how the games present the Tranquil. And in case you’ve somehow gained a different interpretation (the Tranquil we talk to in Origins is supposed to gall us, realizing that there is a person who is valid, and conscious, trapped in this body who has been taught to fear their own abilities so greatly that they welcome their torture), the books spell it out. This excerpt is Cole looking at two mages talking quietly together in a hall, describing them:
Both he recognized, but only by sight. They were older apprentices, the sort who had little talent for magic and who’d already spent too long preparing for their final ordeal, and Cole would never see them again… or he’d see them roaming the halls as emotionless Tranquil, stripped of their abilities and doomed to spend their lives in passive service to their tormentors.
This is in a chapter that shows us one mage who has a bruise that suggests she’s been beaten, and another mage is heavily implied to have been raped. I’m not saying that it’s new or anything that the Templars mistreat the mages, but this section heavily implies that this treatment continues after mages have been lobotomized and cannot summon the will to fight back. A mage’s magic is their will, their willpower. It’s awful, it’s honestly awful, the existence of the Tranquil is horrifying, and saying so does not make you a bad guy in real life. Acting on the desire to create a world without Tranquil doesn’t make Solas (or the hypothetical protagonist of OP’s game), a bad guy.
The Tranquil are obedient, because when you are threatened with violence and you are scared of what you would become without your Tranquility, it is logical to be agreeable and compliant to the people who keep you safe from magic. All those people the Tranquil form connections and attachments to, if the Templars order them to kill their family, they kill them in-game. The Tranquil are not able to act on any loyalties except to the person who is logically ‘in charge.’ The Tranquil who ran and made it to Haven had a moment in which a logical choice opened up for them: stay or flee. Some determined it was logical, now that the chaos gave them opportunity, to flee. Being in Haven, for the first time they are told: determine your own path, do what you like. And some of them begin a slow, painful recovery of some sort of semblance of freedom, it’s true.
There is a real-world cipher for the Tranquil, and it is people who were subjected to full-on icepick lobotomies (not the derivative techniques still used today, I can’t speak at all to the humanity of those methods, although I’ve read that they’re more elegant and are sometimes used to treat epilepsy). The Tranquil are ciphers for still-living people reduced to a vegetative, computer-like state, not neurodivergent people who experience emotions in different ways from what is usually expected of the emotional landscape.
Absolutely HC what you like about the Tranquil, of course! For fic, for lore, for representation, for whatever makes the Tranquil important to you. YKINMK and whatnot. But not for interpreting the canon feelings of an in-game character towards the practice of the Rite of Tranquility and the existence of the Tranquil themselves. Solas, and players, are not bad guys for believing that the world should be remade so that the Tranquil do not exist.
Is Solas wrong in initially identifying all peoples of Thedas as Tranquil and therefore not people? Yes, you’re right about that. Absolutely. This is what the Inquisitor teaches him: we may be Tranquil, but we’re people, and that is the crux of his dilemma.
I wonder, for him, if that makes it even more horrifying. The Tranquil aren’t just choosing of their own inclination to live “peaceful boring lives” (off another reblog of this post). Solas sees how the Veil has blocked most people’s conscious connection to the Fade, but he still has to go through with his plans because he can see no way to help the elves (or the mages), oppressed as they are now: compliant, living in sub-human conditions, agreeable and scared, and serving their masters. Tranquil. He is also wrong in believing all emotion is born from the Fade; while he may start to learn differently in Inquisition, in the end he still believes that he must pull down the Veil to restore the world of his time, the world of the elves, where he sought to set his people free but accidentally (from all evidence present in modern Thedas) sundered their ability to choose freedom from their oppressors, their masters, all the false, crowned gods.
I don’t know how the Inquisitor can redeem Solas, or gather enough power to kill him, but I do hope he gets a chance to rip down the Veil first.
A skull set upon a staff, these macabre artifacts cause magical shards in the area to glow with magical radiance when a viewer looks through the eyes of the skull.
Alexius was quite clear in his orders. We must scour the countryside to find more of the shards. Without them, the Venatori cannot claim the treasure our master seeks. For that, we need the oculara. Without them, the shards are nearly impossible to find, even if they are no longer cloaked by whatever magic hid them for all these centuries.
There must be more Tranquil in the area — the rebels abandoned most of them when they fled their Circles. Remember, the skull will only attune properly if the Tranquil is in close proximity to one of the shards when the demon is forced to possess him. Even then, the blow must be delivered immediately. The oculara produced from Tranquil killed even minutes later failed to illuminate the shards when used.
I trust you to continue your efforts in this matter. Our master expects success.
— A letter found in an abandoned house in Redcliffe Village (x)
My God, no.
Decided to try Inktober this year though I forget if there’s a theme for each day or not..?
An old man saw me drawing this and asked if it was Satan
The devastation of the Temple of Sacred Ashes writ large. I had some fun with the flycam and took Martin back to the Temple following the introduction. He’s there in every single picture so you can see the scale. (He’s teeny tiny, but he’s standing on top of the arch above the Temple’s entrance.) These pictures were meant to show the scope of the damage done to the Temple from an aerial view.
The lower half of the first picture is when you first meet Cullen if you take Cassandra’s advice in the Prologue, and the upper half is where you fight the Pride Demon before closing the large rift.
The last picture is my favorite, so you can see the Breach above the Temple, and how small the Inquisitor is compared to them. Martin is a tiny figure in the very middle of the bottom of the pic.
“Ma harel lasa! Ma lasa banal’ghilana!”
I love that for a whole entire second he has the audacity to be defensive, looking down at her all stiff and prideful like, “I was being completely reasonable! I wasn’t wrong!”
and then his face almost immediately collapses into, “I fucked up, I fucked up.”
Just one more thing to regret, like… he was fooling himself with the thought that she would never have been able to see past it anyway, it was too much to ask of her. but she would have. she always would have! it would have been beautiful! he was 100% wrong about it.
so now we get THE PAIN
