Bioware: “Actually these Jewish / Roma / Native – coded elf characters who are dedicated to preserving their culture in spite of centuries of persecution have been accidentally worshiping slavers and those are actually slave markings on their faces.”
Me:
It’s almost like cultures and ethnicities aren’t immune to criticism.
It’s almost as though Bioware provides a vast array of elven characters to show how culture changes, and how something isn’t always right just because it’s traditional.
@crookedcollections and co:
Hey buddy, hey friend, guess who is Jewish? Me.
Tell me, how am I missing the point? The fact of the matter is, the Dragon Age universe is fictional. Elves share characteristics with some real-life cultural groups only in that they are nomadic, marginalized, and if you really want to stretch it, in that the more “traditional” of the elves gate-keep elven identity from those they deem too acclimated into non-elven lifestyles (aka Solas’ dislike of Sera) (which, actually, is very historically accurate to ancient Judaism). But no one real-world culture owns those identifiers.
The point of the overarching elven plot throughout the Dragon Age series is that traditional/old =/= good or right. It’s a story about marginalized people who struggle between disappearing customs and knowledge and adapting to the outside cultures, and how that struggle can cause massive stratification across the people. From the Dalish, who overwhelming hate all outside cultures and refuse to intermingle, even when it’s safe for them to do so, and the city elves, who are so apart from tradition that they don’t even like associating with them, because why would they associate with a people that cling to ideas of elven superiority but in the same breath shove the city elves away because they’re ~not elven enough~? Yes, in many areas of Thedas elves are still marginalized and even enslaved, but that just adds another layer to the complex idea of identity that shows up across the canon. There’s no doubt that the Dalish elves would get righteously angry at the idea of Tevinter slave elves, but also still look down upon city elves. It’s complex. It’s not black and white.
And, what, you think it’s “bad writing” to make it that the Dalish have been accidentally worshipping slavers instead of gods? Why? The slavers were other elves, who were so powerful that their slaves viewed them close to deities. It’s not surprising that a dying culture’s mythology would change and twist over centuries of playing telephone, especially considering how the elves were dispersed across Thedas. Solas’ goal was to free the slave elves from the aristocracy that marginalized him, and thought the best way to do this was plunge half the world into revolution. These are the long-lasting ramifications of that revolution. He disappeared, remember, and presumably most of his soldiers died. How in the world is it “bad writing” to assume that people brought up to think a certain way keep thinking that way centuries later?
And, also, it’s not like the writers of the fucking game were like “oh haha look at these dumb elves.” The matter is talked about seriously across all of the games! And when you do finally get the last pieces of the puzzle in Tresspasser, not only does the game allow you as an elven inquisitor decide how you want to feel about it, every single one of your companions is concerned about your test of faith! Even Sera! Who hates the Dalish! She is the most concerned, because she understands that the elven inquisitor is having their entire identity being turned upside down!
The elven plot through the games is an extremely complex issue that is treated with a greatdeal of respect, especially at the very end, and it’s genuinely mind-boggling to me how anyone could call it “bad writing” just because it could loosely be interpreted as being in reference to some real-world marginalized groups. As if someone’s going to show up and be like “haha, wow Jews, did you know that you wear tallit because your SLAVERS once wore tallit?” As if wearing tallit would become any less a tradition even if someone did. Old/traditional does not always equal ‘good’. Sometimes traditions come from fucked up sources.
If anything, the only time the writing gets truly bad is when the elven inquisitor is going through the temple with their party and Morrigan has to explain what everything is. Not because it’s insulting that Morrigan would know more–to be perfectly frank, there are many non-Jews who know more about Judaism than I do, because I am not a biblical scholar or cultural anthropologist–but because I feel like the inquisitor would know the names of at least some of the gods. But even this can be blamed on the limitations of video games as a story telling medium, and not the storytellers themselves.
We Are What We Feel 