magic was made to serve cunt

the sun also rises, the story’s begun.

I was wondering about a character I’ve seen you and a couple others describe as a non-white character: Alistair Theirin from dragon age origins. Personally I’ve always thought he seemed pretty obviously white (There’s a scene where he describes the food he makes as ‘textureless grey mush” ….nobody is doing that like white ppl), so I was wondering what flagged him as non-white for you? I was also wondering if you’d be able to run a poll for me since this is a new blog (old blog got nuked :/) and you have a large fan base of people who this would be relevant to, maybe something like this?:

Do you consider Alistair (DAO) to be White?

Yes because of his in game context

Yes because of his character design

No because of his in game context

No because of his character design

All good if not, have a great day and know that I love your blog :D

I will not be running a poll for that, as the last time the words poll and Dragon Age were together on this page, I had to deal with the most overtly stupid level of gaslighting and racism I have ever experienced.

When Dragon Age: Origins (the first game) came out in 2009, Alistair was designed with light brown skin - specifically 4 out of 7 on their scale of the limited tints used in that game. When Dragon Age II came out in 2011, Alistair was designed with tanned skin - specifically 6 out of 12. When Dragon Age: Inquisition came out in 2014, Alistair was designed with the palest skin you can imagine, and blonde hair - specifically 0 out of 11. ZERO! He was so unrecognizable that fans at the time speculated who the hell he even was when BioWare promoted the game with screenshots and video clips including him. Because they did not clock him as Alistair.

This is all Alistair throughout the game series (I use this image a lot because the progressive change is so clear):

(His nose shape changes too, though it's not as noticeable from the front view.)

There are canonically confirmed characters of colour with about the same skin tone as Alistair in DAO. Why is that good enough for them, but not for him? Oops, those characters get whitewashed too. Because the DA fandom is racist as hell.

Some fans are so desperate to argue that the above change isn't that bad by doing things like showing edited screenshots of DAO, or claiming it's all just DAO's poor lighting, (note that the above image is of his head model outside of the game's lighting,) or claiming that he's just really tan. And it pisses me off, because what exactly do they get out of that argument? Why are they so desperate to cling to the idea that Alistair, their prince charming, cannot possibly be a brown man?

Meanwhile, the Dragon Age franchise as a whole is incredibly white. And even the characters that are unmistakably people of colour get ignored and/or whitewashed to death and back. So yes, I am passionate about defending Alistair as being brown. Especially because Alistair is specifically mixed, like me.

Now, I myself am whitepassing because I take after my white mother, but I have many family members who are sure as hell not. And I know exactly what it's like to have other kids ask questions like "is that your real dad" when getting picked up from school. Or learning that it's safe to get stopped by the RCMP with my mother driving the car but not my father. Or being ridiculed by white family members for never being white enough for their standards. So, when I read in the Dragon Age novel, The Calling, how Alistair's mother chose to give him up instead of raising him herself because she was terrified of how he would be treated as a mixed-race prince born out of wedlock, yeah, I got it. It was incredibly sad, but I got where she was coming from, as a character. What makes it even more sad is that Alistair was subsequently placed in the care of a white man who neglected him - specifically, the brother of King Maric's dead wife. This is again, something that a lot of mixed people can relate to. I think that kind of context is more important than him joking about how he's a shitty cook. (Again, he was raised by a negligent white man in Ferelden, of course he's never gotten to experience culinary delights.)

Dragon Age 2: The Fall of House Tethras

The first pride was a riot, more specifically a riot against police violence. Trans women of colour like Marsha P. Johnson paved the way for the celebration of pride today. You cannot celebrate your pride this month, or any month if you aren’t also supporting Black Lives Matter and the riots going on against police violence right now. Us white LGBTQ+ need to stand up for our black siblings and their rights, their struggles. We need to amplify their voices and show any support we can.Hey! Better yet, reblog this version:

Extensive BLM Google doc including places to donate to, education resources, etc

List of 75 things white people can do right now

varric's opinion should depend on whether hawke was pro-mage or pro-templar. pro-mage hawke's varric should also refuse to say anything negative about cullen until you have high approval, because he is also a prisoner here and what is he, an idiot?

cole should say, out loud, with his mouth, that he has compassion for cullen and understands his fears and etc. but any time theyre in a room together cole should immediately get, like, Spirit Freakout Weird, and then they need to be separated. because cole can't cope with the impressions hes getting of mages being kidnapped and harrowed and made tranquil and killed.

sera should hate him outright. are you kidding. her whole bit is she's anti-authoritarian and sets herself Against people who wield institutional power & who have the power and inclination to commit to actions with disproportionate effects on the marginalised and the vulnerable. and cullen's career trajectory has been templar -> knight captain in city where templars more or less run the show -> (acting) knight commander, same city -> commander of religious army. she should be Loud and Insensitive about it

vivienne should not be able to forget that he was knight captain in kirkwall during the escalation of violence against mages culminating in the chantry explosion and (botched?) annulment. she's a mage who created for herself through luck and skill and daring an incredibly precarious position of influence, she knows the templars probably resent her enormously; she's the leader of the loyalist mages; and how can she look at him without thinking of what he's been part of, and wondering what it will take for him to turn on her? and conversely, cullen might not be part of the templar order anymore, but he absolutely believes that the templars should, in some form, exist— he's spent two games as a Zealot. he should have feelings about basically the most politically prominent mage in the south making moves towards becoming divine. feelings about mages in "real" politics, not just circle politics. can anybody hear me. also vivienne should not ever say this out loud u should only be able to tell by comparing how she speaks to him with how she speaks to characters she feels actively warm to but in a vacuum it's not obvious and she should only be willing to tell You w/ high approval

dorian is a tevinter altus. he is a necromancer. per the orlesian chantry hes basically already a blood mage even though by his definition he is Not. cullen should hate him on principle — a product of a nation in which mages aren't just free but (supposedly universally) revered, in which mages keep slaves and practice blood magic, The Big Scary That The Orlesian Circles Rely On As Evidence Of What Happens When You Let Mages Be People. and conversely— dorian comes from tevinter! to him, a templar is the dog of the wealthy ruling class! and to be honest southern templars are not better, they just serve different masters... and he of all people should feel that a templar's ~power over mages~ is basically just a cultural construct. like. we have seen that when mages Genuinely fight back, templars start dropping immediately. nobody is more well-positioned to know this and disdain southern templars' skills and power than dorian, who did not grow up with the culturally ingrained fear and awe of them that southern circle mages did. THEY SHOULD GET INTO IT. and he should take many opportunities to say it also

me: sweet hit me with the good stuff

media: so there's this marginalized underclass of people, right?

me: okay

media: and they're like, stigmatized for something that's mostly an aspect of how they are born, or where they're from, or they're badly misunderstood, right?

me: yup, got it, I'm with ya

media: so these people are rebelling against the current social order, because it's the instrument of their suffering

me: oh good great sure

media: but also they're violent and deranged and need to be stopped

me: ...what

media: yeah they're going too far, they're trying to overthrow the system and assassinate the nice cop trying to help them and also they burned down an orphanage

me: ...why? would they burn down an orphanage??

media: extremism is bad

me: still not seeing what this has to do with their fight though???

media: also now they've shot a dog. oops they shot another dog

me: what?! why? I though their motive was to overthrow oppression??

media: yes but their suffering has also made them evil

me: ...???

media: don't worry though, the good guys will defeat them and restore the status quo

me: the status quo that's been killing people?

media: well it turns out it was only killing the kinds of awful people who burn down orphanages and shoot dogs :)

me: oh. this is actually a pro-authoritarian story, isn't it?

What can I say… I like my blades as I like my babes. Sharp and deadly. Amazing characters, who’ve struggled a lot, went through abuse and came out of it still smiling and slaying, trully they are daily inspirations for me.  

They just deserve a lot more attention from this fandom. A lot more. A lot.

In Orzammar women are always already broodmothers.

Broodmother is a narrative reflection of that use and that reality, a use of women which is justified in Orzammar as having to replenish the Warrior and upper castes due to the constant pressure of Darkspawn, but in the deep roads is stripped away of all its social pretence.

Orzammar’s narratives are entirely about people being used, abused and consumed in the service of caste and necessity, and how this particularly effects people who are assumed to be able to give birth, how it creates not just sex work but pregnancy work, and the coercive ways necessity operates on people.

It’s not at all a subtle parallel. The darkspawn do not defeat House Branka; Branka- Paragon, Noble, highest caste and most powerful woman in Orzammar- feeds her lessers to the darkspawn.

She has all her story reasons for doing it, but at the base and inescapable level, she (like all the other Dwarves of Orzammar) use and discard lower Castes because they can, because they have the power to, because the caste system organises them to be able to.

I honestly absolutely hate with a spitting seething passion the kind of analysis that sees horror, especially horror against women, being committed in a narrative and immediately becomes incapable of saying anything about media other than “it’s just edgy/gritty/grimdark” and dismissing it.

Life is edgy gritty and grimdark for a lot of us. I was a teenage sex worker. My life was edgy gritty and grimdark. I experienced some of the most vulgar expressions of how gender works in my society, and I experienced them bluntly.

And to dismiss depictions of sexual, gendered violence as “purely for shock” when they are not, when they have something to say about gender and power and violence in a setting, is to assign stories like my real life as “shock value”.

There is more feminist shit to say about Orzammar alone than anything in Veilguard, because Orzammar is actually interested in gender and in the social roles and violences that create, reinforce and are a consequence of gender systems*.

And personally, I will pick a story that clumsily tries to say something about power and violence and society over a smooth story that says nothing about those things every single time; but that doesn’t mean Broodmother isn’t worthy and deserving of criticism (it is!) but can we please at least start from a place of criticising it for what it actually is and what it is actually doing in the game? The work and text that is the game?