I'm into my second playthrough and, even though I told myself I was romancing Sera this time, I can't stop picking every dialogue option for Josephine. She's the cutest, best femInquis romance ever.
also yeah I was just gonna romance cass but let's be honest it's impossible not to like josie I mean DAT VOICE omg. I would love to just listen to her talk for hours. seriously give me an audio book of her VA reading game of thrones and it's like audio porn...sometimes literally
she is also very charming, reasonable, and funny, all qualities I greatly enjoy.
also yeah I was just gonna romance cass but let's be honest it's impossible not to like josie I mean DAT VOICE omg. I would love to just listen to her talk for hours. seriously give me an audio book of her VA reading game of thrones and it's like audio porn...sometimes literally
she is also very charming, reasonable, and funny, all qualities I greatly enjoy.
also yeah I was just gonna romance cass but let's be honest it's impossible not to like josie I mean DAT VOICE omg. I would love to just listen to her talk for hours. seriously give me an audio book of her VA reading game of thrones and it's like audio porn...sometimes literally
she is also very charming, reasonable, and funny, all qualities I greatly enjoy.
Think about it this way, you can romance Cassandra with your dalish male and then do your next playthrough with a female using Alix Wilton Regan's voice. Then do Josephine and you'll have a romance with two of the sexiest voices in the game.
Satsu, BRIAN BLESSED, MIGHTY AND WISE Junpei Iori: Ace Detective, Maccaffrickstonson von Lichtenstafford Frabenschnaben, Polite Krogan, Robert Baratheon
What I mean by that is, you get the opportunity to go through those scenes with Lavellan, having Morrigan enlighten her about Lavellan's own culture, which is particularly bad as you have the option of expressing your Lavellan as proud of being Dalish - then you learn no sorry elves it's your own fault you live as cast offs and slaves, confined to alienages in the cities*, then that witch has the nerve to ask you to drink from that pool - all of this to watch precious powerful Marsh Witch Morrigan be regretful and apologetic - I swear precious I have learned my lesson and I'm like --
-- what other than the purpose of 'catering to the fans of Morrigan' does that storyline serve?
It's as I wrote elsewhere: [2 minutes later] Fuck I can't find that thing I wrote. But it was about how that whole 'Morrian teaches about ancient elven lore' made me feel like large countries and corporation will take your culture and replace it with stereotypes to support their own image of you. That's the feeling I will have, of trying to share a bit of your culture only to have 'Helga with the braids!' slapped back in your face. That feeling of powerlessness by someone in power (yes, Morrigan is IN power) claiming ownership of knowledge of your own culture.
* And the hell kind of message are they trying to send with that storyline? WHAT exactly?
To start with, I think that representation and racial undercurrent is intentional and deliberate.
The Dalish have, in all honesty, had a rather (arguably overtly) romantic view of their history, and as the quest reveals, the truth of the fact is that part of the destruction of the elven culture was of their own doing, as the temple's inhabitants reveal.
In reality, the Dalish really don't know a whole lot, and a lot of their attempts to reclaim their culture is eerily similar to many real-world, displaced indigenous peoples. So much has been destroyed that unfortunately many positions that the Dalish take up are borne from ignorance in the matter. And certainly the perpetrators are to blame, but as like the real-life counterparts the Dalish are acting as a parable for, there was a degree of self-destructive behaviour involved.
Throughout Inquisition the player learns the most about this through Solas, who obviously as "that guy who walks the Fade a lot" and as
Fen'Harel himself
, sees the attempts made by the Dalish as crude and fumbling. The dialogue options allow you to stick it to him by saying "well hey, at least we're trying and that's better than doing fucking nothing". The game at the very least recognises that (as does Solas).
Unfortunately in the context of the main quest, Morrigan was established earlier on as someone who was rather disdainful of the Dalish and their attempts to reclaim their elven heritage.
However, her ability to use the eluvian has given her more insight into how exactly the elves screwed it up so bad. So with the knowledge she gained over the ears, plus her in-grained bigotry, cynicism and self-confidence, the lore and storytelling you hear from her is clearly colored by opinion and bias. But being told from her angle, that's an understandable viewpoint, even if it isn't kosher.
That's how BioWare represents the way history is always told, through the lens of some biased motherfucker (which is also a recurring concept that shows up in the whole "was Andraste really holy" thing as well as a whole bunch of other paradigms presented in the game).
Morrigan's shitheel tone throughout the quest (and this is speculation here) is probably due to Flemeth's influence, and if the ending for Inquisition doesn't make it obvious, Flemeth's authority on what the elves do and do not know are pretty clear, and from the representation in Dragon Age II it's pretty clear that she also believes the Dalish are fumbling along and constructing a history of the elven people that is fairly distorted and inaccurate.
Additionally, if you take Solas with you on the quest, he does point out that Morrigan's representation of elven history and deities is clearly skewed. That there wasn't more of a chance for the player to protest for him/herself could probably have been improved, but overall I think the game struck a really interesting theme of misrepresentation and the complexities of a repressed culture attempting to recover its identity, something which many I think can empathise with.
I think the common theme of that story arc was really about all different kinds of pride. The verses of the Chant of Light that the quest name comes from iirc refers to this:
And as the black clouds came upon them,
They looked on what pride had wrought,
And despaired. — Threnodies 7:10
This part of the Chant of Light seems to refer to the magisters of Tevinter realising that in their self-confidence and pride, fucked up to the point that they corrupted the Golden City and created the first darkspawn.
However, in the context of the quest, it refers to all the mistakes that are made due to hubris: the hubris of the elven people in the past that partly led to the downfall of their civilisation, the hubris of the Dalish in their representation of their own people in their bid to restore their culture, and on a more personal level, the hubris of Morrigan in her bid for more power and
the hubris of Solas/Fen'Harel in being responsible for giving Corypheus the power to bring the world into chaos, too confident in his ability to fix the mistakes he made in the past - his sealing away of the elven gods
.
I would be one of the first to say that the overarching plot of Inquisition was veneer-thin and dry as a stale biscuit, but the smaller stories that BioWare writes, not to mention their world-building, is incredibly topical and on-point.
Yes, Morrigan's attitudes towards the Dalish are shitty, but it's from a perfectly natural position of self-belief that probably wouldn't be all that uncommon of someone of that position of power - and soon afterwards in a twist of irony she eats the humble pie when she makes similar mistakes out of the same pride that drove the people she ridiculed in the first place.
Satsuuuuuuuu that post was amazing. I struggle so hard to put all of that into words and you just swooped right in and did it for me in a great balanced way. You rock :3
Satsu, I agree to some of your post, but I can't defend how they wrote that story.
This summarizes where I come from:
David Gaider has said himself that the Dalish are directly inspired from the Jewish people. Which is where it starts getting interesting slash very uncomfortable.* DA:I claims to address oppression, yet do it from a higher class POV.
So while I agree that this
overall I think the game struck a really interesting theme of misrepresentation and the complexities of a repressed culture attempting to recover its identity, something which many I think can empathise with.
might be relevant for Merrill's story, it's the reveals in DA:I that rubs me the wrong way. I agree that the world is never as black and white as it might seem, but I still can't shake the fact that the message of DA:I is basically 'the elves living in alienages is kiiind of their own fault because they fucked it up for themselves' while in games like Valkyria Chronicles
you learn that the whole story about Darcsens scorching the land thus deserving all the shitty work and being second class citizens was all a giant lie told by the land's conquerors, thus history's victors
.
DA:I is comfort to a lot of you guys. That is wonderful. But I've read too much (different than Satsu's kind of) meta to find the same comfort in it. It's all a very interesting large tl;dr on what kind of games and stories appeal to a higher class/ privileged audience as I myself am part of, and why.
Some of you guys press stories of LGBT representation to your heart. I myself press stories of female empowerment to my heart. I understand why people of certain heritages press stories like Valkyria Chronicles to their heart. Stories that manages to strike a nerve are important. Stories that end up (unknowingly) erasing them, are problematic, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy them for what they do well.
* "The Jews deserved the concentration camps because they were rich and opportunistic and greedy".
This is a hell of a way to jump to conclusions. Taking inspiration from a real-world phenomenon can take many forms when it comes to the fictional. There's a huge difference between inspiration and copy-pasting history while changing the names. If you're letting that kind of exagerative assumption of the writer's thoughts colour your opinion then you're already viewing it through mud-stained glasses.
Also, regarding the aspect of oppression in media, 9 times out of 10 the reason for oppression is a means by which they find resolution. Most fictional stories that feature an oppressed group also have a narrative that resolves it, whether it's the focus of the narrative to do so or a consequence of the path the story takes. This by far not typical of real-world oppressions, the resolutions of which usually take centuries or more to come to fruition. By having a reason for a group's oppression the writer is afforded the opportunity to tell of the group's journey from one point to another, whether into oppression or out if it.
Real-world oppression doesn't work like this. It doesnt resolve itself due to the actions of an individual person or event. A fictional story employs different tools than the real world would have.
If the game were more akin to real-life, the story of hardship suffered by the elves might be something like this:
'Thedas treated the elves harshly. Then slowly, over time, people treated them with more respect.'
I am N O T saying there's a direct link between that quote and the writers of DA:I's intentions.
I'm merely trying to discuss unintentionally problematic narratives.
If the game were more akin to real-life, the story of hardship suffered by the elves might be something like this:
'Thedas treated the elves harshly. Then slowly, over time, people treated them with more respect.'
Also, regarding the aspect of oppression in media, 9 times out of 10 the reason for oppression is a means by which they find resolution. Most fictional stories that feature an oppressed group also have a narrative that resolves it, whether it's the focus of the narrative to do so or a consequence of the path the story takes. This by far not typical of real-world oppressions, the resolutions of which usually take centuries or more to come to fruition. By having a reason for a group's oppression the writer is afforded the opportunity to tell of the group's journey from one point to another, whether into oppression or out if it.
Real-world oppression doesn't work like this. It doesnt resolve itself due to the actions of an individual person or event. A fictional story employs different tools than the real world would have.
While I don't initially disagree with this, I don't agree with how these 9 out of 10 stories have a resolution - because of how they erase the problematics. I'd rather have works that doesn't necessarily resolves hard, real life problems to please non-oppressed demographics. The thing is, people under oppression won't necessarily find comfort in works where their oppression is 'resolved' when in real life, they rarely experience this kind of resolve. They'd rather have stories where their issues are addressed in a realistic manner.
Does that make sense?
I don't want stories where it all ends in complete gender equality and gender stereotypics are no longer the norm. I want stories that address the issues properly. I don't care whether or not the ending is happy. It's almost as if I want it to be bad ('realistic') because that speaks more to my sense of lived life, and thus comfort.
Escape stories are also good, but I'm at a point where I'm no longer interested in works of complete comfort. I want works that mirrors the problematics in life, and says something intelligent, directly or indirectly, about them.
Also sorry for the cunty reply, it's just that when I know I'll be OLOL'd by everyone I tend to put up a shield.
I actually agree on the stance of preferring more realistic outcomes. In most stories I don't want everything to be neatly tied up in a bow by the end, unless it makes perfect sense.
My point is that most stories lean towards creating these hardships with knowledge of a resolution in mind.
Another big factor at play here is the nature of a Bioware game. Bioware wants to give players a choice, and they don't want it to be an easy one. In DA2, siding with the mages would be an easy choice if it weren't for Blood Mages. In this sense the oppressed party requires a real reason to be oppressed in order to the player a real sense in choosing.
Same applies with the elves. It's rather easy to say 'Stop being dicks to the elves' when not taking into account the arrogant Dalish or and they made their own bed to go along with this. In essence the game utilises these elements in order to place YOU, the player, in the position of the average Thedas citizen. Somebody with both reasons to help and reasons to be wary.
The exception, of course, is the Lavellan Inquisitor. I personally think the Lavellan has the best story but obviously there's those that disagree. I'm still of the opinion that
Morrigan's role
massively devalued and took away from what could have been an amazing final act to that game.
Satsu, BRIAN BLESSED, MIGHTY AND WISE Junpei Iori: Ace Detective, Maccaffrickstonson von Lichtenstafford Frabenschnaben, Polite Krogan, Robert Baratheon
David Gaider has said himself that the Dalish are directly inspired from the Jewish people. Which is where it starts getting interesting slash very uncomfortable.* DA:I claims to address oppression, yet do it from a higher class POV.
So while I agree that this might be relevant for Merrill's story, it's the reveals in DA:I that rubs me the wrong way. I agree that the world is never as black and white as it might seem, but I still can't shake the fact that the message of DA:I is basically 'the elves living in alienages is kiiind of their own fault because they fucked it up for themselves' while in games like Valkyria Chronicles
you learn that the whole story about Darcsens scorching the land thus deserving all the shitty work and being second class citizens was all a giant lie told by the land's conquerors, thus history's victors
.
DA:I is comfort to a lot of you guys. That is wonderful. But I've read too much (different than Satsu's kind of) meta to find the same comfort in it. It's all a very interesting large tl;dr on what kind of games and stories appeal to a higher class/ privileged audience as I myself am part of, and why.
Some of you guys press stories of LGBT representation to your heart. I myself press stories of female empowerment to my heart. I understand why people of certain heritages press stories like Valkyria Chronicles to their heart. Stories that manages to strike a nerve are important. Stories that end up (unknowingly) erasing them, are problematic, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy them for what they do well.
* "The Jews deserved the concentration camps because they were rich and opportunistic and greedy".
I do agree that the storytelling angle is a little odd for its intention, but I think the overall paradigm it emulates is complex and instead of wholly supporting a single angle of the elven narrative (as honestly we've been presented with since Dragon Age: Origins), we're treated to differing views of history from those who are still quite learned about the matter - but express alternative bias.
To elaborate, the story of the destruction of elven culture and their attempts to rehabilitate it reminds me a little of Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islanders and Native Americans, of which both peoples were subject to terrible oppression and displacement by colonists.
While it's undeniable which party was responsible for the destruction of indigenous culture in both cases, there's a certain degree of self-destructive behaviour that has made the reclaiming of history difficult. Things like rampant alcohol and drug abuse (not to mention other problematic issues such as the use of casinos to support Native American economy and a disturbing incidence of child sexual abuse amongst some Aboriginal communities) complicate the road to rehabilitation.
This isn't to say that these peoples are responsible for their oppression or the loss of their history, but in the case of the city elves and the Dalish, their approaches to recovering their history are very much imperfect and colored by pride. I don't believe What Pride Has Wrought necessarily advocates one position over another in the context of the world of Thedas, particularly when the previous games have already explored the clearer side of elven oppression. Every bit of exposition that occurs during the quest has some degree of bias, and I really enjoyed how grey and unclear the truth of the contributing factors leading to the subjugation of the 'elvhen' were.
To elaborate, the story of the destruction of elven culture and their attempts to rehabilitate it reminds me a little of Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islanders and Native Americans, of which both peoples were subject to terrible oppression and displacement by colonists.
While it's undeniable which party was responsible for the destruction of indigenous culture in both cases, there's a certain degree of self-destructive behaviour that has made the reclaiming of history difficult. Things like rampant alcohol and drug abuse (not to mention other problematic issues such as the use of casinos to support Native American economy and a disturbing incidence of child sexual abuse amongst some Aboriginal communities) complicate the road to rehabilitation.
This isn't to say that these peoples are responsible for their oppression or the loss of their history, but in the case of the city elves and the Dalish, their approaches to recovering their history are very much imperfect and colored by pride.
As someone who's 50% indigenous, not having lived with the stigma (except for everyone knowing I was half and therefore being bullied for it when I was a kid) but still feel a closeness to the ethnicity, statements like this makes me grind my teeth.
This is _exactly_ what I'm talking about.
It's easy enough to say "oh shit, white guys took your land and all your resources and made you second rank citizens with the stigma of being uneducated and uncultured (who doesn't live in proper houses? with electricity? *whispers* savages *whispers*) and oh -- let's force you to use _the country's appropriate language_ in schools, even if we've admitted you have the right to live on the land --
-- even to this day addressing you with nicknames and applying stereotypes to everyone in the indigenous group because of course they're all the same" --
-- but you're not seeing it. You're not seeing how damaging what happened to those peoples are, how it actually frees them from a lot of "their internal social problems".
You can't see it on my face that I'm 50% unless you look closely. And since people can't see it, I've sat through a lot of half-racist comments, among others from my partner's family way up north. Degrading, "them over there" talk. "The Sami have the government on their side, while we who have lived and worked this land for over 150 years have about zero rights left" (yeah right) "why should they be allowed to have their reindeer running over our property"...
How do you keep a society healthy and alive when you're constantly treated like second rank? Westerners like to think it's the indigenous people reconfirming their own stereotypes, but it's not. It's the people who put them where they are today. Poor bastards are just trying to save what is left of their language, their culture, their art, their knowledge. Everything that made them what they once where, before it was taken from them.
My point is that it's easy to say 'okay so we put the Native Americans in a shitty position but now they're ruining themselves with alcohol problems' but it's underestimating the power of completely stripping a people of their resources, and yes, pride. It's not just about taking the materialistic, you take away people's identity. You steal so much more than land and live stock. You steal their language, their gods, their purpose. But worst of all, you stigmatize all of them in one go, labeling them as 'them over there', they without education, without money, without jobs, without any proper form of social structure. (Because you took it from them!!)
So -- I do believe what you write to be naive, but I don't blame you. Coming from you, a reflected and intelligent individual, it makes me understand why a lot of players are missing (or overlooking) what I find to be so screamingly obviously flawed (and ignorant) about that storyline.
I'm not sure I'll be debating this much because it's too personal and you will never in a million years convince me that the continuation of European-introduced social problems within indigenous groups are _their own fault_. You (general you) can say they were weaker, that they were conquered, etc, but if that is the case, at least own up to it. Own up to the fact that you think Imperialism is okay, and that taking away land from people because you have better guns and technology is fair. That creating class diversity to aid just one side is fine. That not all men are born equal, that it's the survival of the fittest. But at least own up to it.
(This post turned out really messy but I'm kind of shaking a little right now. As you can see Sats I agree with a lot of your points - I think the story about Merrill and the Eluvian isn't completely far off but everything else about the Dalish, in DA2 plus the whole reveal crap in DA:I - it's putting a giant Imperialistic palm stamp on a story that could have meant something. That's what angers me.)
Satsu, BRIAN BLESSED, MIGHTY AND WISE Junpei Iori: Ace Detective, Maccaffrickstonson von Lichtenstafford Frabenschnaben, Polite Krogan, Robert Baratheon
As someone who's 50% indigenous, not having lived with the stigma (except for everyone knowing I was half and therefore being bullied for it when I was a kid) but still feel a closeness to the ethnicity, statements like this makes me grind my teeth.
This is _exactly_ what I'm talking about.
It's easy enough to say "oh shit, white guys took your land and all your resources and made you second rank citizens with the stigma of being uneducated and uncultured (who doesn't live in proper houses? with electricity? *whispers* savages *whispers*) and oh -- let's force you to use _the country's appropriate language_ in schools, even if we've admitted you have the right to live on the land --
-- even to this day addressing you with nicknames and applying stereotypes to everyone in the indigenous group because of course they're all the same" --
-- but you're not seeing it. You're not seeing how damaging what happened to those peoples are, how it actually frees them from a lot of "their internal social problems".
You can't see it on my face that I'm 50% unless you look closely. And since people can't see it, I've sat through a lot of half-racist comments, among others from my partner's family way up north. Degrading, "them over there" talk. "The Sami have the government on their side, while we who have lived and worked this land for over 150 years have about zero rights left" (yeah right) "why should they be allowed to have their reindeer running over our property"...
How do you keep a society healthy and alive when you're constantly treated like second rank? Westerners like to think it's the indigenous people reconfirming their own stereotypes, but it's not. It's the people who put them where they are today. Poor bastards are just trying to save what is left of their language, their culture, their art, their knowledge. Everything that made them what they once where, before it was taken from them.
My point is that it's easy to say 'okay so we put the Native Americans in a shitty position but now they're ruining themselves with alcohol problems' but it's underestimating the power of completely stripping a people of their resources, and yes, pride. It's not just about taking the materialistic, you take away people's identity. You steal so much more than land and live stock. You steal their language, their gods, their purpose. But worst of all, you stigmatize all of them in one go, labeling them as 'them over there', they without education, without money, without jobs, without any proper form of social structure. (Because you took it from them!!)
So -- I do believe what you write to be naive, but I don't blame you. Coming from you, a reflected and intelligent individual, it makes me understand why a lot of players are missing (or overlooking) what I find to be so screamingly obviously flawed (and ignorant) about that storyline.
I'm not sure I'll be debating this much because it's too personal and you will never in a million years convince me that the continuation of European-introduced social problems within indigenous groups are _their own fault_. You (general you) can say they were weaker, that they were conquered, etc, but if that is the case, at least own up to it. Own up to the fact that you think Imperialism is okay, and that taking away land from people because you have better guns and technology is fair. That creating class diversity to aid just one side is fine. That not all men are born equal, that it's the survival of the fittest. But at least own up to it.
(This post turned out really messy but I'm kind of shaking a little right now. As you can see Sats I agree with a lot of your points - I think the story about Merrill and the Eluvian isn't completely far off but everything else about the Dalish, in DA2 plus the whole reveal crap in DA:I - it's putting a giant Imperialistic palm stamp on a story that could have meant something. That's what angers me.)
I'm sorry you interpreted my thoughts as being so facetious and "naïve", but I think you do the argument injustice when you simplify it into qualifying statements that make it seem like there's some sort of assignment of blame.
Stating that self-destructive behaviour occurs within a group of people or that their methods of recovery are imperfect is not saying that they are at fault for the loss of their history. It's saying that there is no single factor that contributes to that loss, and healing is the responsibility of all parties involved.
To go on a tangent, I studied about a semesters worth of indigenous health during my time at the University of Sydney, but I'm not going to claim that I fully understand the nuances of indigenous health issues.
But I do get that the destruction of culture is something way, way past the material, there's no need to lecture me on that. Governments are still struggling to even recognise different tribes and sub-tribes down here, and racial and sexual abuse perpetrated upon them is still problematic and perpetuates/exacerbates social/health problems.
The only way in the past that social outcomes have succeeded is though co-operation between government agencies and tribe elders in order to improve communication, but the impetus is on both parties to do it - and issues like the ones mentioned above complicate matters because it's a two-way street.
It's also been the clearest central theme of the elves since Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening. They're a people who are clearly, constantly trod upon in the alienages, treated as second-class citizens and established as generally a population of oppressed individuals. It is absolutely clear as to who was responsible for the destruction of the elven civilisation (twice!). But then as the series continued to build its world, it suggested that there was still conflict on a different, tribal scale, and that the elves weren't as perfect or peaceful as the Dalish claimed.
To reiterate, my interpretation of the paradigm in Inquisition is that the factors leading to the destruction of elven culture and its recovery are complex. The game's lore does not claim that the elves are "at fault" (Morrigan might, which is probably the crux of the problem - though there are opportunities to have her called out on her bullshit anyway) for the loss of their civilisation. To me, it simply goes, "hey, let's step back and consider the things that lead up to that point, because the issue concerns both sides, and the approach to this that we have right now might not be the whole picture."
It's a little off-color when you summate those points into some extreme support of Imperialism.
The only way in the past that social outcomes have succeeded is though co-operation between government agencies and tribe elders in order to improve communication, but the impetus is on both parties to do it - and issues like the ones mentioned above complicate matters because it's a two-way street.
Let's just say that you and I disagree on this on a fundamental level and if this is what they taught you at school, well -- victors wrote the books (here: curriculum). Just saying.
But then as the series continued to build its world, it suggested that there was still conflict on a different, tribal scale, and that the elves weren't as perfect or peaceful as the Dalish claimed.
Can't you see how this is written to provide comfort for a Western audience? It kind of feels like they're saying 'the elves were powerful once but effed up and so it's not that bad they're kept in alienages because they used to be just like us and they can rise again. Like us. Through collaboration, if they live like us and don't do anything we don't want them to.'
Satsu, BRIAN BLESSED, MIGHTY AND WISE Junpei Iori: Ace Detective, Maccaffrickstonson von Lichtenstafford Frabenschnaben, Polite Krogan, Robert Baratheon
Let's just say that you and I disagree on this on a fundamental level and if this is what they taught you at school, well -- victors wrote the books (here: curriculum). Just saying.
In context, this was really referring to 20th/21st century cases where health reform and improvements to social health succeeded (not the horrifically clumsy attempts at cultural assimilation), so if by "victors" you mean "indigenous people and social workers", yes
Absolutely no way were government agencies capable of handling issues that are so deeply cultural by themselves, due to barriers not in the least which included language and communication ones (and comprehension of cultural nuances and custom). Social workers had to reach out to respected figures in indigenous society in order to reach out to their peers, and this has had documented (relative, of course!) success. Success through positively enabling indigenous peoples to enact change on a community level themselves.
Can't you see how this is written to provide comfort for a Western audience? It kind of feels like they're saying 'the elves were powerful once but effed up and so it's not that bad they're kept in alienages because they used to be just like us and they can rise again. Like us. Through collaboration, if they live like us and don't do anything we don't want them to.'
Except again, this is simplifying the message to insinuate that the elves were wholly responsible for their fate, which was never indicated. The game's tone about this is similar to the rationale behind the Exalted Marches, which could be, amongst other things, an allegory for the Crusades that resulted in the massacre of Muslims. It's not an endorsement of a single perspective on the matter, and besides the obviously-skewed perspective of Morrigan, nowhere is this message as positive as you're making it out to be.
In context, this was really referring to 20th/21st century cases where health reform and improvements to social health succeeded (not the horrifically clumsy attempts at cultural assimilation), so if by "victors" you mean "indigenous people and social workers", yes
When social workers, aka citizens of belonging to the culture of the victorious people, work with leaders of the indigenous people, it is not a two-way exchange, because the terms on which the bargaining/ discussion is being done, is, and can never be, level.
Take for instance the Sami people's council, which is a council established from European 'academical' culture: The Sami are nomads with no concept of owned land, nor originally any concepts of academics and documentation and formal laws. But, to defend their rights in the 'land' in which they now live, they need to gather knowledge, to pretty much learn the ways of their stronger counterpart, to be able to defend their rights.
What I'm trying to say is, there's an unevenness there in which the stronger part will always hold more power.
(Is teaching them to read and write doing them a favour, enriching them, or is it fulfilling a need they didn't really have before we showed up?)
Anyway, my point in all of this is that no story is every truly objective, because no writer is ever truly objective. There's a certain biased angle to it when Western storytellers tells the story of a bigger, conquering part vs a indigenous group. We have ways of doing stuff. We believe in laws, documentation, academia, freedom of speech/ the right to critisize power and religion, etc, a lot of elements grown over time in European culture. We have values we believe to be good and true.
You believe your angle of the truth to be right, because you have grown up in the culture that you did. That I did.
It's just that as long as you and I sit on the other end of the table, we can never truly trust our observations to be true regarding the people we are discussing.
And so the observations of an educated Canadian 'white' writer can never be completely true.
DA:I tells oppression from that particular angle.
If Dragon Age was to tell the story of an indigenous group of people, of an oppressed group of people - to tell it from their angle - it is safe to assume it would look differently. It would perhaps be a story of stereotypes, of differences in culture, and in 'the way things are done' - it would tell of everyday discrimination in a far more subtle and matter of factly way.
It would not be the same story, is all I am saying.
And so when people who have identified with the Dalish react negatively when their race is provided with a new, hidden power element, I trust their reaction. Because they are the ones that would know.
As for the rest, you clearly know more about DA than I do, I must admit to that.
Satsu, BRIAN BLESSED, MIGHTY AND WISE Junpei Iori: Ace Detective, Maccaffrickstonson von Lichtenstafford Frabenschnaben, Polite Krogan, Robert Baratheon
