There is a great deal of talk about time in Tyll. Not in the sometimes-contrived way you end up with a cyclical narrative, an “oh, so it has come back to this” moment, oblique and in your face. But more like a startlingly widespread current under everyone’s surface: all the characters in this novel feel reality as organized by chronological time slipping out of its prescribed order. Less On Chesil Beach, more The Waves. Even people who appear to have their shit together, albeit for nefarious reasons, are barely hanging on. At one point it’s implied that this is a product of starvation. But still. Everyone’s a mess. Even people with food are a mess. Reality is barely holding together and yet here people are conducting a multiple-decades-long war inside it. It’s not even ptsd. People just began life as a shit show and it stayed that way.
More recently it has been picking at memory in particular. The exact same conversation, its cadences, the room where it occurs, is remembered very differently and with utter certainty by the characters present.
Also, a guy who appeared to have some form of dementia was killed by inquisitors, clueless and befuddled till the end, and I slid into tears.
I’m also reading this (on the Kindle), because War and Peacewakes the baby up with the turning of its pages, due to its size. And because it’s boring. I know the Constance Garnett translation is old and out of favor but I read a more modernized translation of Anna Kareninaand the language didn’t seem magical there, either. Translation and transnational identities used to be my focus. I know there’s something I’m missing, by neither knowing the original nor being able to compare them.
But Tyll…shit. Its translator won a Fullbright. And a Guggenheim? It’s fucking amazing. What a beginning. I found it because Guy Gavriel Kay recommended it. Via recommending this review of it. I am a hard sell on books naked in their desire to captivate you with a single person. It makes me instantly uneasy. (How did they did teach you the vocabulary word “charisma” in grade school? Mine said to beware of it because Hitler had charisma. Also cult leaders. So I don’t, generally speaking, take too well to charismatic people, in literature or otherwise.)
But I’ll put up with the inevitable whiplash between charm and devastating verbal cruelty, if the rest of this translation is this good. I should hasten to clarify that books that transfix you with characters aware of their lack of centrality to the plot are not intimidating in that way. They don’t feel like listening to your brilliant friend get drunk and violent when getting “real” after some triumph at which you thought they’d be pleased.
But when the characters are written in such a way that they know they are the fulcrum on which the world turns….eeg. It’s different then meeting narcissists in real life. In real life, you can see their narcissism play out against the backdrop of a world that can still, occasionally, forget all about them. You can see it as just vanity. But in books, all that self-absorption is rewarded by the demanded absorption of the readers. It’s a whirlpool. And usually the waters are swirling around a madman.
I am not a fan of that kind of story. I’m alive in 2020, after all. But whipping out the unreliable narrator card at the last moment like that is something I’ll fall for 90% of the time. Especially in a book described as “fierce and even savage.” Because if you’ve now proven your willingness to take good things back, you might yet take the terrible ones back, too. The hope that you will will keep me there the entire length of a book.
I am the absolute worst at getting through Nicole Meline’s podcast, because the minute she introduces a new piece of music (it’s not a music podcast! it’s a wellness podcast!) I drop everything and go listen. Goddamn. I am so easily turned off by people’s singer-songwriter recommendations; if a thing so intimate to the creator and embraced so intimately by the recommender rubs me as empty or hollow or cruel that’s it, I’m done. But so many of these have just been 100% my jam. And here is one:
will you recognize my face when god’s awful grace strips me of my jacket and my vest
and reveals the treasure in my chest
Fuckin shitballs, man. 100% my jam.
Among so many other things in this song, I enjoy, here, the double-readability of “I’ve come,” both forward: this is why I’m here, and past, a report: these things are true because I’ve reached a point where I can see them. I’m not religious, but I am spiritual, and Meline, who left the seminary for a degree in literature at Columbia, is more me than I care to admit?? But in a good way.
I will obviously have to refresh my Dragon Age lore here before DA4, because it has been years. But here’s what I’m pondering while reading the stories in Tevinter Nights…
(Note: I skipped ahead and read the final story, and I read the first one before I started this post, so. That’s why they’re not here.)
The Horror ofHormak
Could the gods’ magic be color-coded? Mythal’s was icy blue and she gave it to Solas when she died. Could she have given Thedas lyrium? The original, good kind I mean? Because the lyrium pulsing in the mountain in this study is sickly green, and the frescoes on the walls imply that ancient elves — twelve of them, the powerful ones whom Solas fought — hauled their prisoners (experiments?) to twelve different places on the earth. Might this be where they were bound? And if so — if the source of the sickly green lyrium is some evanuris buried much deeper than we got in that story, whose color is red? Whose lyrium keeps showing up and driving people batshit?
Also, given the focus on the brine and the stink of the sea in this story, could the source of the green lyrium be the twisted, fury-warped remnant of Ghilan’nain? (An aside: my phone auto filled that name. Jeez, my phone has been taking notes during my previous Dragon Age speculations…) She’s wrapped up with navigation, which is as close as we come to the sea in the elven pantheon. She’s also associated with the halla, depicted in the frescoes, though I don’t know how valuable that information is, since they were carrying prisoners to all the 12 locations, not just one—since they were a preferred mode of transport, as far as we know.
Callback
One page in: ah, this one uses as a canonical premis the same decision I made. I love these look-backs. Let me get wine.
Page 120: oh, this is my favorite flavor of of vignette. This was where I always wanted to take people, when writing as a kid. This was what I thought adulthood would enable me to do.
126: I bet this is how Marvel fans felt during the credits sequence.
127: oh my god it totally is
133: Tune in, folks, for a play-by-play of Solas’s heart of hearts on this page!
134: the “just like you”s are I think supposed to speak to those who were most moved by the chance to project themselves onto heroes. That is never what moves me most in this game or any other. I’m never here for the mechanics, the strategy, the pretending it’s my hand on the sword or my butt on the throne. I’m here for watching people be better to each other then they ever will be where I can see them in real life. The “just like you”s aren’t for me. And that’s ok.
Luck in the Gardens
I love love love how much face time Dorian is getting in these interstitial narratives, but I feel like that may be indicative that he won’t be too prominent in DA4. And that’s fair — one has to forge on and write new characters, I know. But for his one cameo, man, the hearts will beat.
Also I love how so far all our narrators have been queer. Yay.
Hunger
I wonder if the majority of the audience for these games has seen actual poverty. Villages pockmarked with burned-down buildings, decades in decay. Most of my familiarity comes from Appalachia, but there’s also the ruins of Ringling, MT. You know it’s not just a backdrop for stories. People live and die in such places.
Also, I know the jaded fuckwits out there will disagree with me vociferously on this, but one of the reasons Dragon Age and I suppose more broadly Bioware games (and stories) in general satisfy is because they ask us to place value in things that haven’t yet been poisoned. Namely, esteem and love for other people. Nationalism? Dead. Justice? Not bloody likely. But ride-or-die companions? Sign me up.
And the occasional grittiness that has evolved from DA:O’s original “dark fantasy” premise makes these relationships much more attractive and believable than, say, the empty, sterile friendship-is-magic style relationships of JRPGs. (I’m looking at you, Square.)
Of course, continuing to tell these stories as games is complicated by the fact that a large portion of your buying public doesn’t give a rat’s rosy red behind about people or relationships and just want to natter on about mechanics and strategy. But hopefully those people become fewer and fewer on this bandwagon. And those who care grow in numbers enough to replace them.
The Streets ofMinrathous
Theses reminds me of the Inspector Vale quest (and books) in ESO. And I know it’s following the same pre-established pattern. Some coronavirus culture article noted that sales of mysteries are skyrocketing because they’re predictable format gives people comfort. At that point though isn’t it not really technically a mystery anymore? If it’s so predictable?
I never loved mystery stories. Or even liked them. Spy stories? Sure. The connection to a larger world, things always beyond knowing. But the gumshoe stories just…meh. So often the conclusions are so banal. “People are awful” or “sometimes, people are good.” Snore. You can make the same point in so much more impactful ways than via…puzzles.
There’s a lot of “make Minrathous great again” sentiment that is going to ring very much on the nose now, no matter when it was penned down. Hopefully internet MAGA slag lords don’t ruin it for everyone else.
“Minrathous buried people every day. It closed its eyes and pretended they didn’t exist, that the power grabs and politics weren’t tearing it down — and it was about to be torn down for it.” Yepppppppp see above.
The Wigmaker Job
“There was patriotism and there was obsession. Neither was with it.” Ding ding ding ding!
Kind of expected Effe to get a jab in there. I assume she’s being set up to be seen again, empowered and (righteously) vengeful. Like Briala.
Genitivi Dies Inthe End
Very cool to bring these three in for all of us who read all the books and codex entries (which surely is the vast majority of people reading a Dragon Age book??) but too fourth wall-y gets kind of gimmicky if one isn’t careful…
…Aw man, I don’t actually know a single person who’s going to love this as much as I did.
****
I’m going to go ahead and post this though because I have to slow down; I don’t want to run out of this before I’m at least 1/2 way through War and Peace. Which is made more difficult by the fact that that book’s weight means I need two hands to turn a page, and the tensing of the muscles in my arm under the baby’s head keeps waking him up…
***This should be obvious but please expect spoilers for Dragon Age : Deception. Also, to a lesser extent, Tevinter Nights.***
Aggggggh I did not expect to be so affected by that. I picked it up in a whim, having already jumped to the final story in Tevinter Nights for Reasons, and that plus this made me realize that Deception decidedly comes before the Tevinter Nights stories. So I went on and finished the comic.
Agh.
All of these stories and comics are starting to put together a template for how we are supposed to…care…about Tevinter. It’s kind of a tall order. Not that we were ever going to be asked to take part in a fictional nationalism ala Tigana or Final Fantasy 12, but even making room for concern when a city of slave owners is being sacked is difficult. So far no one has asked us to care about anyone in power, but I assume it’s going to be unavoidable eventually, at which point you immediately have to ask what this person has done with their power to help those under them. Those like Fenris.
There also seems to be a lot of focus on Nevarra. I dimly recall some interview implying that the command table with the Orlais/Ferelden division was a product of the cascading restraints of story and resources after the aborted DA2 DLC, but given its success it’s not inconceivable that we could be gearing up for a similar setup between Nevarra and Tevinter. “Sacrificing” Tevinter to the Qunari sounds like a thing we could be asked to do…having to choose either Arlathan Forest or the Grand Necropolis to go up in magical smoke, to harness that energy for a confrontation with Solas. But as with Tevinter you’ve got a long narrative road to go to make the Mortalitasi necromancers endearing enough to cause their loss to be a potential stab in the gut.
But, well, I’ve got the rest of Tevinter Nights to go for that…and the second story already is a step in that direction.
…and no, before you want to give me crap about it, I haven’t abandoned War and Peace. I’ve reached the battle of Austerlitz. But god, that gooey 19th-century nationalism feels so naive. So childish.
I had tried this before with drip coffee instead of instant (because who has that on hand this side of the ocean?) but while I achieved good taste (with 2 tbsp extra sugar), it didn’t froth. This, obviously, frothed.
Drinking it requires stirring. The foam is so thick you barely get a trickle of milk out from under it. But that’s ok. It’s not like we don’t have the time.
metaphlame 