Mr. Not Allowed To Die

Computer. Iris by the goo goo dolls. Loud enough to kill.

Had some rambling thoughts about Emmrich and his questline,

It's funny, aside from Solas with his exclusive "is he an asshole or is he a victim?" interpretations in the endgame, I think Emmrich is another example of where they jammed two conflicting characterizations of the story into each other and just let one win out depending on which decision the player made so that each option looks Valid and Good and relatively consequence-free.

like, Emmrich becoming a Lich should have just been a bad thing, right?

Not in the sense that I think the game itself should have pointed at the player and gone "you picked the wrong option", but as a logical extension of Emmrich's arc, was it not a bad thing?

I remember at one point writing that Emmrich becoming a lich didn't do anything to conquer his fear of death even though him letting go of Manfred is supposed to be him finally coming to terms with him parting from people, and how that was bad. But I think I missed the point

I think (especially when you look at the concept art around Emmrich,) the original point was supposed to be that becoming a Lich was Emmrich giving in to his fear of death, ironically dooming himself to an immortality where he is surrounded by death, starting with Manfred's death. That losing people to death, like his parents, is the real source of the fear that he was grappling with, but he does not understand this and grasps it only as a fear of his own end. That it is, actually, on the player to understand that and counsel him wisely. It's an ironic tragedy, a very classic story of someone meeting their fate on the road to avoid it. And that's why it makes sense that he's still not over Manfred, why he's afraid of losing a romanced Rook, why he apparently mourns Manfred still (something I missed.)

But the narrative wasn't really built around this? You understand what his fear of death is about immediately and then the choice to be a lich was presented in most of the dialogue as like, "neato! he conquered his fear of death because he won't ever die! yeah Manfred is dead now but at least we honored his sacrifice and let him rest :)" no one has a problem with what he did, no one calls him out on it, no one but Spite even really cares that Manfred is gone even though Emmrich could have saved him, it's just Cool that he's a lich now. The liches are heroic and so Emmrich's desire to join them is heroic, his fear of death is not what motivates him to make some eldritch monstrosity of himself, it is preventing him from achieving this noble goal to help the dead forever, and leaving Manfred behind is a noble sacrifice that will prevent him from becoming a tyrant lich who just resurrects people at will.

I think the idea of "don't resurrect someone who died just because you miss them, you have to let the dead rest" is a completely separate idea that, in this specific situation, doesn't mesh well with "you shouldn't screw over your loved ones just to preserve your own life, and you should treasure your time with people while you have it," but they interjected both morals and just let them respectively theme the lich and human routes, as if I'm not supposed to think about the bittersweet poignancy of the human ending, where Emmrich proudly watches Manfred grow and achieve, while everyone is high-fiving him over being a skelly man in the lich ending. Or for me to look at the human ending as heartwarming after they already said Emmrich was disturbing Manfred's well-deserved rest and giving up an opportunity to do a lot of good by doing this, and that no one really cared that he was "dead".

(Also, like, as a spirit, Manfred's "rest" was him being sent back into the Fade, which we can now understand to be a spirit prison that Manfred specifically possessed that body to escape, so u know.)

I do believe Emmrich becoming a Lich is at its core meant as a selfish/cowardly act to preserve himself at the cost of someone he treated like his own child, because that was the motivation they gave him from conception. Concept Emmrich was turning himself into a lich to become immortal. In the game, he specifically sought out the liches because he was afraid of death. This is the case even if they interject dialogue later making it seem like he's trying to do this for the sake of the "dead" and it's really important and him resurrecting Manfred would be selfish of him. I don't mind Emmrich saying these things, but I feel like they needed to be lies he was telling himself, something that is not backed up by other Mourn Watchers, or by Rook not being given the option to call him on it, or by the liches having a morally stringent screening process that he passes with flying colors and stuff like that, with the entire narrative just taking the things he says for granted. Maybe the liches should just not be heroic at all, actually. And like if we're going to have it be a plot point that there have been powerful, immortal liches. In Thedas. All this time. They needed to not give a shit about Thedas to at least help me with my suspension of disbelief.

Am I making any sense here, like there's two different reasons Emmrich wants to be a lich and how his fear of death is interacting with it and they don't feed into each other very well imo.

And like, the way he is now this character, who was written to deal with a fear of death, has nothing actually helpful to say about coping with a fear of death, imo. The routes' messaging is either "You don't need to fear death because you can just Not Die" or "You don't need to fear your loved ones dying because you can just Bring Them Back" instead of "Death of some kind is inevitable, so cherish the life you still have instead of spending it in fear."

Idk how psychiatrically sound it would have been. There were apparently people who struggle with Thanatophobia who were helped by Emmrich's character, but like, just talking narratives.

The White Wolf🖤

trashy solas sketch idea: sad solas and the caretaker awkwardly travelling back to the lighthouse in the caretaker’s boat after solas leaves lavellan in trespasser

ooppffaaoofofaf aaahhahhaaahahaaa this one is diabolical xDDDDDD what a pathetic man

I remember seeing somewhere these early sketches from veilguards artbook about the inquisitor`s choice in a story a few month ago ??? and they didnt let me rest in peace. So i had to finish the idea

I'm going to put a video here where a published author and content creator is talking about the way readers frequently interact with the book world, and specifically Sarah J Maas readers and their ilk. The video isn't hating on readers, or Maas or the types of books Maas & clones write. I am not posting it in relation to the topic of plagiarism. The reason I'm posting it is because of the way people have responded to Veilguard. It's not very long, and I'm sharing it because he summarizes and briefly discusses the following points:

anchoring bias

schema theory

cultural myopia/commenting on things when you have limited cultural exposure

other people dealing with the consequences of a critical poster getting 15 minutes of attention

I thought the video was a good poke into problems coinciding with people criticizing (not critiquing, there's a difference) Veilguard, where anything from themes, plot points, characterization or even costume elements in the game are being torn apart...and the people doing the tearing are approaching the topics with often *self-admitted* lack of experience on what they're criticizing, and zero curiosity.

A concrete example: there was a discussion swirling recently in which there was an attempt to criticize Veilguard for the funerary practices Rook and Bellara go through. This in spite of the fact that a Dalish Rook and Bellara can have an in-the-moment discussion about the differences between their clan practices, and in DA:I Solas can mention how clans are different from each other, and there have been many, many posts on this site discussing from a lore perspective how the elves are not a monolith. I don't have to tell you that the posters criticizing the scene were myopic on both a cultural and personal preference level in their criticisms of the scene.

Critical posters have also frequently spoken over users who attempt to explain the diverse cultural, political, or queer experiences and influences which align with Veilguard's portrayals.

I thought it was great that this creator brought up how authors are affected for a considerable amount of time by shitty online takes. Recently there were screenshots where Trick mentioned that making Veilguard was traumatic, and folks passed them around with bioware/EA/Veilguard critical tags, but didn't include that maybe the fans themselves continue to bear some of the blame for this experience.

I don't think Bioware/EA are blameless as companies, or that Veilguard is a perfect game, but there's been a distinct trend where 'fans' claim to be critiquing things and are really only whining (and sometimes harassing creators) that they didn't get what they personally wanted. And if pressed about what they wanted, the examples they give aren't coherent narratives meant for published or produced media - if they were, those fans would already be working in those fields making art. Social media has made it very easy to 1) get access to and attention from creators, and 2) get validation (and very little pushback) from other fans for pithy remarks. In other words, it's easy to feel undeservedly "right" for shitposting.

And how blindingly she shone upon him: a pearly melon-green glare, which swept through the murky space between dreams and lit everything in its wake, so that pale anemones and soft moss and wild blueberries grew in the traces it had warmed, marking a trail for him to follow. She was difficult to miss, and he was loath to deny her even if he could. XVIII. The Moon

I wanted to practice drawing kissing and it kind of got out of hand? I love them too much haha <3

(some day I'll actually write the one-shot of why anemones are important I promise)

commission for @thelilyknight 💙

ellanna & alistair

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loved working on this one :")

i genuinely believe that schools need to immediately expel students for using gen AI & blacklist them from any other program for at least five years, because i don’t want to fucking deal with these useless twerps being credentialed in any field whatsoever. these fucking people are going to be your lawyers. your healthcare professionals. these people who are too fucking dumb to read, who would rather blindly trust a glorified predictive text generator than spend five minutes studying or thinking on their own.

at this point, if you didn’t receive your credentials before 2020, it is infinitely safer for me to assume that your degree is hollow, your work is fake, and your knowledge nonexistent unless & until proven otherwise.