half agony, half hope

Autumnyte’s Box o’ Comfort & Cheer Follower Appreciation Giveaway

I’ve noticed that the weeks following the holiday season tend to be rough on a lot of people. In my part of the world, there are still months of winter left to go, only without the excitement of the holidays to punctuate them. For a lot of us, this means short days, long nights, icy roads, chapped lips and trying to stay cozy while waiting for the spring to arrive. 

Even for those who live in warmer climates, or who enjoy the cold, I still think it’s an excellent time of year to indulge in comfort. To that end, I’ve put together three identical boxes to give away, each filled with BioWare-related goodies and some of my favorite winter treats. 

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

RULES - PLEASE READ

Thank you for following me and good luck! 

I’m not reblogging the current Merrill discussion going around, even though it’s interesting and I have some strong opinions about it, because I’m feeling too fuzzy to respond to it properly right now and I don’t want to clutter up the post with my rambling. 

But I will say this and hope it makes some sort of sense: Merrill, to me, is a character who was never completely done justice by the game itself. Not by the limited narrative glimpses presented, nor by the small range of choices Hawke had in interacting with her. I find both her friendship and rivalry frustrating and unsatisfying in their own ways. I absolutely adore Merrill, and there were some amazing aspects to her writing and story arc, but in the end, it felt to me like TPTB wanted desperately to shove her in a box into which she wouldn’t quite fit.

Which is not to say that Merrill’s perfect or even necessarily right. I’m not implying she didn’t make mistakes and bad decisions. She can be prideful and even cocky. But I think the player was deprived of having the full context of her choices. Everything in the game says that blood magic is bad and that demons are never helpful, and the only counterpoint we have to this is Merrill’s own assertions about Dalish history, which are questionable given that she is biased and that Marethari disagrees. (But what if Marethari was the wrong one, and had simply been sipping the broader human culture’s kool-aid? That possibility is not even given.) Based on the information presented, there’s no scenario under which Merrill’s using blood magic and attempting to restore the mirror can be 100% supported by Hawke as a wise and proper thing to do. I’m not talking about player headcanon, I’m talking about the dialogue options given when discussing these things with Merrill.

I realize Merrill’s story is supposed to be a tragedy. And knowing now that the writers supported the rivalmance, it’s also clear that they ultimately believed Merrill’s actions were wrong. But IMHO, they never effectively showed us why. From what we saw of Morrigan and Eluvians in DAO, and from what we know of blood magic elsewhere, it shouldn’t necessarily have been a given that Merrill was doomed to fail. 

I just wish there had been a bit more nuance presented, similar to the way Anders was handled. I wish we’d been given any evidence that Merrill might not have been wrong, because other lore bears this out. I wish Hawke had an option that was a middle ground between head-patting or scolding Merrill. Questioning her choices or supporting her while also treating her like a capable, intelligent adult would have been nice.

<3

I have to admit, sometimes when I come across a really shallow joke/interpretation about Merrill's intelligence, I am forced to acknowledge that the game itself is consistently condescending in its treatment of her, so why should I be surprised that people accepted that as how she should be treated in fandom as well?

There are flashes of brilliance and nuance, but there is, as you say, no way to address them in game, no way to respect Merrill's ability to make a choice while disagreeing with some of those choices, or to accept that it is important enough to be worth the risk to herself, but still ask her if it's worth the damage it might cause her clan, no way to discuss this different perspective on blood magic, no way to encourage the shades of grey that exist elsewhere in the lore.