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I've been watching the reactions to DA:V in some fascination as someone who has never played any Dragon Age and only understands them in the vaguest way possible. I know the usual Bioware fandom warfare is particularly vicious there (I heard people referring to more batshit BG3 wank as blatantly imported from DA wank rather than usual D&D or Larian discourse, which seemed very credible). I know it's fantasy, with some Mass Effect-y elements mechanically, and... elves are oppressed I think maybe and there is slavery? possibly?? I heard Veilguard is unusually conflict averse for DA and that it traditionally leaned into the main characters being difficulty, messy people with genuine clashes (I don't know if this is true). I also know that qunari are the horned people that produced nonbinary icon Taash and I know some of the character names/designs from earlier games, but without knowing which particular game they come from or what any of their backstories are.
(I am not asserting any of this with confidence, just to be clear. It's what I've osmosed without researching anything at all.)
ANYWAY while seeing the DA:V discourses flying around, I'm busy on Tumblr having my own wanky Bioware opinions, but for ME1 (which came out nearly 20 years ago and which I've seen all the way through nearly three times) despite typically having a strong preference for fantasy over sci-fi. And I do love ME (the trilogy) a ton, so I'm just more into it fannishly than a lot of games, despite my many points of criticism (let's just say that my bff J and I once had a very fun two hour-long car ride in which we spent the whole time discussing how we'd fix the trilogy). So my Bioware fandom friends are having wildly varying strong opinions about DA that I barely understand, and I'm banging my drums in 2025 about how, uh, the Thorian did nothing wrong. Also, the volus are unfortunately an antisemitic stereotype, even though I like them as characters a lot and feel their complaints are justified (J succinctly summed up our mutual position: "could be worse, could be Watto, but they are very obviously stereotypes about Jews in space"). And I'm Team Vorcha (vs Literally Everyone).
It takes all kinds is all I'm saying. And I'm one of those kinds!
(I am not asserting any of this with confidence, just to be clear. It's what I've osmosed without researching anything at all.)
ANYWAY while seeing the DA:V discourses flying around, I'm busy on Tumblr having my own wanky Bioware opinions, but for ME1 (which came out nearly 20 years ago and which I've seen all the way through nearly three times) despite typically having a strong preference for fantasy over sci-fi. And I do love ME (the trilogy) a ton, so I'm just more into it fannishly than a lot of games, despite my many points of criticism (let's just say that my bff J and I once had a very fun two hour-long car ride in which we spent the whole time discussing how we'd fix the trilogy). So my Bioware fandom friends are having wildly varying strong opinions about DA that I barely understand, and I'm banging my drums in 2025 about how, uh, the Thorian did nothing wrong. Also, the volus are unfortunately an antisemitic stereotype, even though I like them as characters a lot and feel their complaints are justified (J succinctly summed up our mutual position: "could be worse, could be Watto, but they are very obviously stereotypes about Jews in space"). And I'm Team Vorcha (vs Literally Everyone).
It takes all kinds is all I'm saying. And I'm one of those kinds!
