Okay stop me if I’m wrong but wasn’t Merrill actually right about the Eluvian?
She wanted to restore it because she belonged it was an important part of their culture and thought it could help her clan
But they thought it was evil and the keeper let her leave because of it.
But if she had been able to restore it, it would have led her to the Eluvian crossroads.
The place created by the ancients. The place to travel everywhere.
And Merrill was right about it.
saaaame. like, I liked her character development in terms of like…her truly loving and caring for her son, and stuff like that. but everything about the eluvians and the Temple of Mythal just had me gnashing my teeth.
[DA:I spoilers]
I mean…shit. I just can’t get over the fact that Morrigan—a human—is keeping an eluvian and all the lost knowledge it offers all to herself. And then—and then—she has the gall to act like an expert on elven religion and culture, and to claim that she deserves to drink from the Well of Sorrows even more than a Lavellan Inquisitor does. (I played a Lavellan my first playthrough, and i had them drink from the Well—not because they thought it was a good idea, but because they thought that if that knowledge was going to go to anyone, it should be someone with elven heritage.)
idk, the whole time Morrigan basically flaunts her knowledge, saying she knows more than Lavellan—meanwhile, whose fucking fault is it that modern elves are so thoroughly severed from their history and past civilization and culture, whose fault is it that they continue to be a brutally oppressed group? Humans. And here’s Morrigan, a human, just…bragging about how she knows things that Lavellan doesn’t know, and practically rubbing Lavellan’s nose in it. She tries to school Lavellan on Mythal as though Lavellan isn’t a fucking Dalish elf who grew up with those stories and actually worships Mythal (and in terms of gameplay mechanics, how fucked up is it that there was no option for Lavellan to basically be like, “Morrigan, I know who the fuck Mythal is”???). And then the whole time Morrigan is also basically berating Lavellan for daring to believe in the elven gods, acting like it’s superstitious nonsense—like, what the fuck. I mean, Morrigan even goes so far as to talk over Solas about elven stuff (and I’m glad I had him with me, bc his snarky comments here and there gave me life).
Ugh. I’m just. So frustrated. Especially when i start thinking back to Merrill. she just tried so hard to fix that eluvian, she risked everything and sacrificed so much, cared for her people so much it hurts, truly believed it was all worth it even if it only restored a tiny fragment of the past. and when Merrill was doing everythnig she could to restore the eluvian, it was framed by the narrative and almost every character as something foolish, selfish, not worth it, irresponsible, dangerous—even the fandom calls her stupid for it, and it really felt like that’s how the narrative wanted the player to feel about her focus on the eluvian. but then it’s fine when Morrigan, a human, does it? Morrigan gets to play that hugely important role? ugh. it’s an elvhen artifact, it’s elvhen history and elvhen technology—it belongs to the elves.
and it’s not even just Morrigan I’m frustrated with, but also how the writers/devs chose to frame the elves (and especially the Dalish) in DA:I, and how they chose to give Morrigan that role rather than, say, Merrill, or like you suggested, an elven expert of some kind, or…really just anyone with some elven heritage. I mean—Feynriel! It could’ve been Feynriel, trying to reconnect with his Dalish heritage, trying to recover that lost knowledge. (I like Feynriel and I want him to cmoe back, lol. I mean, it’d be interseting if he could be a vessel for an elvhen god, since he is a somniari…but that’s another topic.) Or even a new character. Just…anyone except a human, especially a human who acts so pretentious about it. There are things I like about Morrigan, but I was so angry with her all throughout that quest and when it came to anything related to the eluvian.
As with every group of whispers, they often are thrown in as background noise and reversed. So I took the liberty to reverse the Well of Sorrows whispers and clean up the audio. A mantra of whispers going in circles, sung by a Well.
Some of the Whispers Heard:
Go to the Dirth
Mythal speaks for the elves
Travel Far
She speaks for the elves
She’s abelas
Mythal
She speaks for them both
Also, as a pleasant add on to this oh, so not creepy audio. The Dirth is another name for The Exalted Plains, as a Dalish elf there will tell you. The Exalted Plains/The Dirthavaren (The Promise) was were the last of elven nation fell.
Solas: WHY DID YOU DRINK FROM THE WELL!? OMFG I BEGGED YOU NOT TO!! Me: ...... No you didn't. You said SOMEONE has to use the well and that it shouldn't be Morrigan and I shouldn't ask you, so by the power of deduction, that left me...... You need to be clearer dude.
The following post is pro-Sera, so if you don’t want to read then skip. If you don’t want to see any interpretation of Sera as anything other than a self-hating racist abuser I also suggest you skip.
So I’ve been compiling a long ass rant about Sera, using facts you learn from various ingame sources. I’ve pretty much started dragging her along to places I normally don’t - I even replayed the first part of the City Elf warden origin and watched gameplay videos of the alienage quests.
Honestly, I didn’t like Sera at first - I tend to play diplomatic, conciliatory characters which don’t mesh well with her personality . But as I’ve dug more and more into her past and the environment that shaped her I truly feel I’ve gotten a better taste of the real meat and complexity of her character. (And for an idea of what I mean, I’m nearly 8 pages into my writeup with her and I’m maybe ~50% through of what I want to cover; possibly a little bit less).
But even with what I had my understanding of Sera always felt a little patchwork, like I had the pieces but not the core of what put it together. So I rushed a female Dalish inquisitor through the game up to Skyhold to play with Sera’s flirts to see if I could glean anything from that. And just like how Sera’s surprised comment over my human Inquisitor treating her with acceptance despite their disagreement over Verchiel sparked my interest in her as something other than a bratty character, her reaction to my Inquisitor’s interest in her suddenly snapped the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is Sera into place.
the good part about who you choose to leave behind in the fade is that the dialogue choice says that person will “likely" die, so i mean
Inquisitor: Well, Leliana, there are some pretty noteworthy candidates for Divine, you are REALLY going to have to do your best to get me to support you. Leliana: No more Circles. Inquisitor: Where do I sign?
I really don’t like the way most straight girls in the fandom treat Dorian.
They fetishize him, they label him with the ‘gay best friend’ trope, they use him as a matchmaker for Cullen and their Inquizzi ALTHOUGH HE HAS NEVER BEEN IN A RELATIONSHIP AND HAS NO IDEA HOW RELATIONSHIPS EVEN WORK.
They completely ignore everything that’s been done to him.
They don’t see how lonely he is. Open your fucking eyes. He’s trying to find common ground with everyone. Why? Because he doesn’t have friends.
When the Inquisitor tells him he actually likes him, and that he wants more that just sex, Dorian is speechless, because he wasn’t expecting that. Because he thought he didn’t deserve to be loved, because he thought sex was all he was ever gonna get.
Everyone who’s played his personal quest knows about his father… but do they realize there’s so much more than just that? Think about all the guys he had a crush on, who rejected him, because they wanted nothing but sex. Think about young Dorian, who was trying his best to impress his father, and who, upon discovering his sexuality, became utterly terrified of being rejected. And then he, not only got rejected, but was also labeled as a deviant, somebody whose obscene activities had to be hidden at all costs.
Think about Dorian discovering that his father, who had taught him to HATE blood magic, was ready to perform a blood ritual to make him ‘acceptable’. He didn’t care about Dorian. He cared about his legacy.
Dorian is more than “that sassy gay mage”.
I get it. Straight people are sometimes obsessed with queer culture and like to objectify queer characters.
But it’s hurtful. Ignorant, and hurtful. To queer people. To us.
