Now Reading: Postcards from Kirkwall and Others

1. Postcards from Kirwall

A detailed analysis of kyriarchy in Dragon Age 2, as examined by two simultaneous play-throughs.  One Hawke experiences the game as a female mage, and the other as a male warrior.  A look at Thedas through the lens of what it is like to experience the events of the game with varying amounts of privilege.  The differences are sometimes subtle, but there nonetheless.  Sadly, there are only a few posts so far, but I think the idea itself is really interesting.

2. Mages and Philosophies of Oppression

I skimmed the more quote-heavy bits, but this raises an interesting point: most of the danger that mages pose to others, and the dangers to mages themselves, could be lessened given support and resources.  Blood magic is a dangerous alternative to lyrium.  When Merrill makes a deal with a demon, it is only because she doesn't have access, as a Dalish elf, to the resources she'd need to power her spell with lyrium.  Similarly, most examples we have of mages turning to demons are due to fear, desperation, anger, despair.  A system that supported mages, a culture of social justice, universal access to lyrium, would likely reduce the danger.

Even in a supportive society with access to resources and no persecution, there would still be mages succumbing to the desire to be even more powerful than they can be with lyrium alone.  And even privileged people can suffer fear and despair.  But the conditions of the circle can be seen to actually make the problem worse.

3.  No blog, just stuff.

In Ferelden, which is ruled entirely by men, with the exception of Anora who wielded her power from the sidelines, as the power behind Cailan's throne, rather than a power in her own right, Jenny was often marked as different for being female.  She was often reminded that "there aren't many women gray wardens," or asked, "as a woman, what do you think?"

In Kirkwall, two of the four positions of power are held by women: Knight-Commander Meredith and Grand Cleric Elthina.  One of those positions is only available to women, as the Chantry only accepts female leaders.  It can be said that the two of them hold much more power than the other two positions, which seem mostly to act as figureheads: the Viscount and the First Enchanter.  If one adds the Captain of the Guard to the list, then women hold three of the five positions, and after Act 2, when the Viscount is removed and Jenny is proclaimed Champion, Kirkwall becomes practically a matriarchy.  And in this environment, in contrast to Ferelden, Jenny is remarked upon for being foreign, but never for being female.

Unreliable Narrator

Almost nothing that Jenny Hawke does during her seven years in Kirkwall makes a difference.  The events that take place are inevitable, her quests result in little meaningful change.  Merrill will reconstruct the Eluvian with or without Jenny's help.  And no amount of logic or love will keep Anders from blowing up the Chantry.  There is no choice she can take that will keep the Qunari from attacking the city and executing the Viscount, and no choice that will save her mother from a serial killer. 

This is a common complaint about the game, and one I agree with.  Or rather, I agree that it's a fair assessment of the game, but I admire rather than object to those elements.  Most people don't play games in order to feel powerless.  They were frustrated and angered by DA2.

I am fascinated.

See, Jenny isn't playing out her story.  She is a character in Varric's story.  The game gives the impression of agency—after all, there are buttons to push and choices to make.  But the game also makes it clear from the beginning that everything that Jenny will do is something that she has done.

Or, more importantly, something that Varric says she's done.  And Varric demonstrates early on that he prefers his stories with more than a dash of embellishment. 

And so, when we see Jenny escape from a Lothering that looks nothing like it did in Origins, we can attribute the discrepancy to the same source as Bethany's bizarrely large bosom.  It's the story that Varric would like to tell.  (More problematic is the discrepancy between the Hawke family's skin color in the intro and a non-white Hawke in the game.)

Some of the lies Varric tells are obvious; Cassandra calls him on them. But Varric is a good storyteller, and there is no one else to call his facts into question.  And Varric has good reason to tell the story he does.

You see, if the events of Kirkwall were all inevitable, if there was nothing that anyone—especially Jenny—could have done, then Varric is off the hook.  If all Jenny really did was be at important places at important times, then what happened can be blamed, as Varric suggests, on the idol. Or Anders.  Anyone but Jenny.

The idol is a funny thing.  In a story about human rivalries and weaknesses, about cultural misunderstandings rather than darkspawn, the idol seems out of place.  When Meredith draws her sword at the end, and we realize that she is no longer in control of herself, that the idol has warped her mind and all the pain and death she caused can be blamed on a mysterious artifact, it takes much of the power out of the story.  It feels like cheating.  If Meredith is under the influence of the idol then she is no longer responsible for her actions.

It also means that Jenny is no longer responsible for her death.  An insane Meredith needs to be fought.  An insane Meredith can't be reasoned with or surrendered to.  An insane Meredith can't even be listened to, because her arguments are all tainted by the idol.  There is no moral choice to be made, there is simply an abomination to defeat.

But isn't that what Varric wants?  To convince the Chantry that killing the Knight Commander was, not only the right thing to do, but the only thing?  If Meredith had been speaking only as herself then the Chantry might see some value in her words.  The Chantry might want to avenge her death.  If Meredith had been taken over by the idol then Jenny must be the good guy in the story.

What if that's a lie?  What if the idol had no power?  What if the idol was Varric's way of protecting himself from the guilt of killing his brother?  And later, his way of protecting Jenny?  What if that one element of the story that doesn't fit is something that never happened?

If Varric wanted to add a lie to the story, he might start by telling an even larger, more obvious lie.  He'd let himself get caught.  And then, having "realized that he can't get away with lies," he would tell the smaller lie, sheepishly, like a man who knows he's been bested.  And that's exactly how tells the story.  When he tells Cassandra about meeting Bartrand again, he begins with a tall tale.  When Cassandra catches him at it, then he tells her about the mysterious power of the idol.

He might have even believed it, at first.  It would be easier to think that killing his brother was a terrible, but necessary, thing.  That his brother didn't mean to betray him, that he couldn't help himself.  He would have told himself that the idol must have taken over his brother.  He would have told other people that a dangerous magic was loose in Kirkwall.  And the story would spread.

And when Varric found himself with a dagger at his throat and an angry Seeker demanding a story, he might have used that story to try to save himself and his friend.

Do I think that's what Bioware intended?  Not really.  But it could be.  The frame story changes everything.

Sort of Like a Birthday Present

It's occurred to me that, with one exception, I have had a romantic interest on my birthday every year since I was 22.  Sometimes it's an actual boyfriend, sometimes it's a Person of Interest, with flirting and kissing that falls off a few days or weeks after.  Sometimes it's an actual boyfriend who I break up with a few weeks after.  I suppose it's sort of like a birthday present from the universe.  Not because I need a man in my life to be happy, or even the non-heteronormative version of same.  But because I do like flirting.  I like having something on that particular shelf of my brain.  It's like a particular kind of problem to solve.

And I had one this year, too, someone to tell me he'd be thinking about me on the beach in my cutoffs, someone to complement me, but not too much, someone to say he really wants to meet me.  It was nice having messages to check when I got back to the hotel.

But it's not my birthday anymore, and he hasn't made the transition from "wanting to meet" to "making plans." 

I suppose I'll write to that guy with the cute photo of him and his dog.  But for now, I'm just disappointed.

HA!

I totally did this first.

http://the-toast.net/2013/09/26/rejected-mcsweeneys-lists/


I didn't do this one.

http://the-toast.net/2013/09/26/unpopular-netflix/

DA2: Being Nice

(I'm making myself play through Awakenings, because I want a world where the Architect gets a chance to make a difference.  But it doesn't really have much appeal to me on a second play.  I want to get back to Zevran's Jenny (I kept trying to name her something else, but this is what stuck in my head), or start on a new Rogue Jenny in DA2.)

I tried to be friends with everyone in DA2, because I always try to be friends with everyone.  Someone once said that it couldn't be done, but fuck that. I win ALL charisma checks. Even when there isn't even a charisma stat. And, because it's a video game, I set about befriending my party members by agreeing with everyone to their face, and occasionally leaving them out of the party when I was going to do something they wouldn't like. There were times when I needed a party member's presence in a battle in order to survive it, but there were lots of decisions made in perfect safety where I could swap out party members to suit. This is how video games have taught me to make friends.

Except, in DA2, Jenny can be friends with her rivals.  The game phrases it as friendship v. rivalry, but from what I'm reading—I still need to try it—it's really two different kinds of friendship. One can be friends with someone with whom one has strong disagreements with. One can even, sometimes, pursuade such a friend to reconsider their beliefs.  And that's what those red rivalry points mean: Jenny has said something that her friend doesn't want to hear. 

Everyone told me, I just didn't quite believe it. Or maybe I believed but couldn't make myself play any other way. The "get people to like me" instinct is too strong.

I joke that making someone like me in a video game involves agreeing all the time, and how that's a terrible lesson for real life. But I kind of do that in real life. I have a tendency to give people what I think they want, especially people I don't know well, and especially people who I want to like me. I'm planning on developing some rivalries in my next DA2 play, but it's so hard to make myself say antagonizing lines. When I see those red points flash on the screen, even though they don't mean "likes you less," I still feel bad for disagreeing. Because I'm really bad at disagreeing.

It's not strange that I have a hard time being direct, confrontational, contradictory.  I've mentioned before how women are taught to smooth things over.  I'm very good at it.  But it galls me to see that, not only does this mean I have difficulty negotiating, assuming authority, or standing up for myself and my beliefs in the world around me, I can't even pick the red dialog option in a damn video game.  It's just not nice.  And it kills me to not be nice.

DA+A=4EVA

Has it only been four months? I went back and counted, so it must be. I feel like I've been talking about this forever. And, given the amount of words I've directed at the subject, I suppose it probably feels like forever to anyone reading this blog or living in my house (hi!).

Among all the other feels I've expressed already, I've realized that Dragon Age has also introduced me—for the first time really—to Fandom.

I mean, I'd heard of fandom. I know some of the language, some of the social mores. But I've never really been a part of fandom. I've never cared about a piece of media¹ enough, or when I did I had people around me who cared as much as I did so when I watched Buffy for the first time I could go into knitters breakfast and say HOLY SHIT THAT HAPPENED and everyone would nod knowingly and say, BUFFY IS GREAT. And that was that.

But as I've been traisping further and further down the path towards Dragon Age: TOTAL OBSESSION, I've become more and more immersed in Dragon Age fandom. It was like the way Elodie Under Glass described flirting as "a sassy walk up to somebody and going “PANTSFEELINGS?” and having them sassily respond “PANTSFEELINGS!” Discovering fandom was walking up to someone and saying "ALISTAIRFEELINGS?" and having them respond, "ALISTAIRFEELINGS!"

I found other people who, not only appreciated and enjoyed the game, but actually blushed, sometimes, when thinking about Alistair, people who would stop playing when their significant other was in the room, because their feelings for this other, virtual, person were too real to exist in the same space with their "real" person. People who tried to create characters that played other romance options, but couldn't get over the feeling that they were cheating on Alistair. (The occupants of our living room may have heard me repeat, as a mantra, not flirting with Alistair, I am not flirting with Alistair. It's hard.) Even though these posts are years old, and I usually shy away from commenting anyway, I still get that joy of shared experience. We are strangers, these fans and I, but I'm so glad to know them. 

FEELINGS?

FEELINGS!


Dragon age origin - A and M by ~june-B on deviantART<sup>2

1</sup> Does the definition of "media" include written stories? It seems like, taken literally, it should, but it gets used as the thing that is opposed to printed books. Anyway, I really mean "creation," because I suppose I could be a fan of a work of art as well as a book or TV show.

² I initially had a different piece of fan art here, with Isabela sitting cheekily on the shoulders of the Arishok. And then I saw people pointing out that the artist had significantly whitewashed Isabela, and seriously?  Fuck that shit. 

What I Did On My Vacation