English Heritage had the best response when they were asked why it took them so long to include women: “In everything we do we strive to be historically accurate and of course women wouldn’t have participated in jousts in the past. However, the jousts were for the best of the best, and now the best includes women.”
(note that other places have apparently had coed jousting for a bit, but it’s new for the UK)
Hayley came all the way down from Sydney just to party with us at AvCon this year and she brought her original design Valkyrie costume! Charlie promptly organized a duo shoot and we were on our way :3
im bi but I tend to get crushes on fictional male characters more that real men and real women more than fictional female characters
so I guess I like to concept of men
i think this is a common feeling because men are written with such depth and complexity, whereas fictional women are not only few and far between, but are written half-assedly and from a place of little understanding of a woman’s standpoint.
meanwhile, real women are lovely and complex people, and real men are mostly just potatoes.
I’m on mobile and just about to go to sleep so I can’t tippy type a big ol’ explanation as big ol’ as I’d like but I’ll chock it up to a few of my annoyances and you can make your own decision
(I try to avoid explicit spoilers but honestly theres nothing to spoil here)
1. Dull main characters.
Marius is a slave-gone-MAGEKILLER that has absolutely no personality or anything that makes him likeable. Want to see a character that’s likeable? Read Calpernia’s short story, because THAT Marius appeared for a few paragraphs and was still much more likeable. And if that truly is the same guy, WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM THAT MADE HIM SO EMPTY?? We never find out! Marius even says ‘I don’t hate mages’ to Dorian; THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE? I WANT TO KNOW!
The other main character, arguably the true main as she is the one with first-person narration bubbles but she doesn’t DO anything unless Marius does, is Tessa. She’s formerly a noble of Navarra, or maybe she still is? She had a falling out? Maybe?? Never explored or delved into. She has the potential to be so much more because her dialogue is charming and she’s GAY! WITH! CHARTER! But in the end she’s just Marius’ partner in… Fuck, mercenary work? they aren’t even magekillers for most of this series, they don’t ever call themselves anything else.
2. No driving plot, no anticipation.
Let me summarize for you; Two magekillers killing a mage. Forcibly contracted to kill a BUNCH of mages. Can’t continue contract because Marius says so. Convenient, no-effort escape to the south handed to them. Besides The Inquisitor, Only These Two Can Kill Demons I Guess? Conveniently recruited as agents to Inquisition. Conveniently rise ranks quickly I guess? The best part of the series, involved Chargers and Dorian, all you need to know is they were all draw kinda shitty except every single close-up of Dorian was lovingly crafted and Krem was a far-off potato. More on that later. THEY SUCCEED THEIR MISSION, NO CASUALTIES MARIUS IS A HERO BUT ONLY HIM. Conveniently presented another opportunity to become heroes. Almost effortlessly succeed except Tessa is a damsel with a crisis for half a second but Marius saves her because of course he does. Non-ending because yea, we already know how it ends we played it.
Which brings me to
3. Why was this series made?
It didn’t add anything to the lore, nor to the characters; both those that were new and those that were already beloved. They had no development!!! The story changed nothing!!! This comic has absolutely no purpose and it isn’t even flashy enough to be for fun!!!
4. The art…
Look, okay, I know the amount of time the team had to work on each issue was probably short, and I understand the team was very small in the first place. But more than, oh, 75% of the books are anatomically questionable potato people with either no facial detail or barely there. The other 10% is Dorian. The last 5% is sometimes close-ups of the other characters? The scenery isn’t nice to look at, the architecture has very shoddily rulered perspective… Dubious even…
Graphic novels and comic books are VISUAL MEDIUMS. They have to keep the viewer’s eyes fed with quality lines and colours; this just… Fell flat on every level.
Except the cover art. Oh my lord, the cover art was so splendid, thats what convinced me into starting this series in the first place (little did i know what lie in wake)
5. Sometimes the writing made no sense, or clashed with what was being presented on the page. In a way that could’ve been fixed if an editor looked at it like once or twice. For instance; one time Tessa says “Good to see you Charter.”
Charter is not in the scene. Tessa is not obviously hallucinating or mistaking anything.
Another point, someone explains that the Inquisitor is on their way somewhere. Another character goes, ‘Elu-va-whatnow?’ followed by Tessa explaining what they are.
Eluvians were not mentioned once in that conversation.
And how did Tess know what they are??? Do Magekillers get extensive magical training, even as mundane people? Why didn’t we get to learn about THAT instead, I want to know what goes into the training! The contracting! The consequences of killing mages in a mage-ruled Imperium!
6. WHY IS IT CALLED MAGEKILLER IF ITS ABOUT SOME BORING AGENTS I WAS NEVER MADE TO CARE ABOUT
7. I can’t tell if it’s just bad planning or intentional racism but Tessa is Nevarrin and whitewashed in nearly every scene except rare sunlit occasions. Krem is whitewashed, or the same excuse as Tess and the colourist doesnt know how skin shades in firelight. He also gets no close-up whatsoever, despite co-leading a whole mission with Coverboy Pavus and Mraauuugghhhgghius (and Tess probably???). You know who gets a close-up in that sequence? Rocky. I hope its not for the reason I think.
8. Seriously my suggestion; if you want to support anything coming out of this, support the cover artist. That work is phenom. Also, create your own DA original work. That goes for everyone! I want them on my desk by monday!
I’m glad other people thought the same about Magekiller, hello confirmation bias.
The thing that gets me though is that it had so much potential. We’ve never seen a Magekiller that’s not a templar – it’s a new concept. We’ve never seen much of Tevinter, although the previous comics also built on that. The last two chapters were also interesting in that they showed what the Inquisition was like for the majority of its members – the cannon fodder, the lower downs who aren’t privileged enough to be in the Inquisitor’s Inner Circle, the ones who are there because they believe in the cause.
They had CALPERNIA, geez, one of the most interesting characters in Inquisition, but she essentially ended up being a useless cameo. It was exciting for fans like me, maybe, but when they were fighting the Venatori was it not an important fact that Marius’s former lover was their leader?? I would have thought that if they’d introduced her as a character at all they might have actually used her in the further plot, but that would probably require the comics having a coherent plot.
I’m not sure if they just didn’t have enough time to do what they wanted, it seemed like a really short run to tell any sort of story. (Though with only 5 issues they probably should have focused only on Tevinter or only on the Inquisition). It was in the LAST issue that I actually started to like Tessa, though Marius is a bit of a lost cause. It’s baffling how they could take his character from the short story but change it completely.
I don’t hate it but it could have been so much more. BIOWARE WHY
