isolation makes me hungry

Stop Watching Pirates of the Caribbeans

Next up we have Llomerryn described as an island full of pirates and criminals. If you want to know why it's fucked up & problematic to have that depiction, go read my post about piracy, I am too lazy to explain it again: link.

In short, piracy, which was characterised as one of the "native degeneracies" of SEA, has been used by the colonialists to delegitimise native sovereignty of their waters and legitimise their expansion of the colonial project.

So, no, you cannot use pirates as some cool action figures and sanitise the historical baggage that was filled with sunken ships, drowned corpses and cannon balls.

Moving on I want to touch on another "native degeneracy."

The Racist Origin of Amok

This is a description from a Tevinter travelling to Dairsmuid during the Allsmet festival, which was an annual gathering of economical exchange and political arrangement. They witnessed fistfights happening in public.

To my SEAblings who live close to the Malay cultural context, you're probably familiar with the concept of amok.

Amok, which comes from the Malay word, mengamok, means to make a sudden and furious attack. In Malay folklore, this behaviour was believed to be caused by hantu belian, evil spirit that possessed and compelled individuals to such violence (Saint-Martin, 1999).

The word first emerged in the European consciousness from the observation made by Captain Cook in 1700s in his voyage around the world. Affected individuals, who were without exceptions always Malay men, would behave violently out of nowhere in public, killing people or animals in a frenzy.

Here's an account by Frank Swettenham (1895), a British colonial administrator who was the first Resident general of the Federated Malay States:

Malaya, land of pirates and the amok, your secrets have been well guarded, but the enemy has at last passes your gate, and the irresistible Juggernaut of Progress will have penetrated to your remotest fastness, slain your beasts, cut down your forest, 'civilised' your people, clothed them in strange garments, and stamped them with the seal of a higher morality.

And you see, it wouldn't be out of place to me if you replace "Malaya" with "Rivain" because that was how Bioware described Rivain — a land of pirates and violent criminals.

According to Seng & Chandran (2020), when it comes to psychology, the usage of the phonetic translation, amok instead of terms such as "indiscriminate slaughter" reinforces the idea that this behaviour is a Malay phenomenon. By distinguishing amok as a malady unique to the natives, the hierarchical binary of rational/emotional or sanity/insanity is reinforced, the colonisers positioned themselves as the superior ruler of Malaya.

It is also worth noting that such classification underpinned the "divide-and-conquer" strategy the British had towards Malaya by creating a biased perception of the Malays being more prone to this disorder than the non-Malays like the Chinese or the Indians.

To summarise, by framing amok "not as culturally sanctioned but as an affirmation of the primitive character of the native men," it provided the moral high ground for the colonisers to justify their mission of 'civilising' the natives. Harsh punishments were often inflicted upon the native population to coerce them into complying with the colonial way of thinking (Wu, 2018). At one point, the British even considered burying these the executed bodies of these 'criminals' with pigs, which was not only racist but abhorrent:

With Oriental phases of crime we must apply Oriental remedies. The pig is our ace of trumps in this case. It will deter from amok, if the man who meditates it has to face the certainty that there is no paradise but rather Jehannam for him, and that his grave companion is to be the unclean beast. That would probably smash amok forever […] Let us have ‘the pig, the pig, and nothing but the pig,’ as the real bogey for would-be-amokers. Wu (2018)

So, no, you cannot just use these 'cultural' tropes willy-nilly in your book about a fantasy nation and frame it as some silly moments for comedic effects.

Verbal Jousting: It's only cool when the ancient Greeks do it

Next up we have the Tevinter witnessing a verbal joust during Allsmet, and the winning criterion was based upon how ridiculous a person could lie.

As we know, such display of verbal exchange was called sophistry in ancient Athens with prominent figures such as Protagoras. It developed into a profession whereby these sophists acted as teachers and philosophers, teaching their students about rhetoric and public speaking.

So, it's cool and philosophical and called an intellectual pursuit when the ancient Greeks do it, but ridiculous and over-the-top when non-Europeans do it.

In the Philippines, verbal jousting like duplo was considered a form of art:

A duplo was primarily an improvisation following a well-known structure, forming a rite of passage conducted on the ninth night of a funeral vigil to lighten the mood where “the opponents, the belyako (male) or belyaka (female) performed, with the dead in the background, man’s affirmation of life and ceaseless pursuit of justice and truth.” —Nadera & Mooney-Singh (2019)

During Spanish colonisation, another verbal art form, balagtasan, emerged as "a vehicle for political expression which [was] regarded as 'the product of the Filipino psyche reacting against the actual and perceived obliteration of the self because of Americanization.'"

Here's a table regarding the various verbal art forms found in throughout different period in the Philippines:

Source: The Art of the “Pambara” (Comeback): Witty Retorts in Filipino Conversations (link.)

As we can see, these are not merely "ridiculous boasts" done for superficial reasons. Ong & Peletz (1995) argue that verbal performance, in SEA, has been the calibre for political leadership, especially for high-status men as public speech was the sphere in which they could obtain power. The power of speech also extended to women.

Minangkabau women were seen occupying the public sphere by articulating their rights while simultaneously utilising the "behind-the-scenes" gossip. On the one hand, "Minangkabau women are not supposed to be silent," from recreational poetry, casting spells, to reciting Qur'anic prayers, they fill up the community.

On the other hand, silence could also signify prestige and superior knowledge, knowing how and when to say things such as making ritual speech or casting spells shows that Minangkabau women retain power by being gatekeepers of knowledge.

Compared to ancient Greece where silence was seen as "the passive-aggressive strategies of society's underdogs," in Javanese society, silence is the ultimate expressions of power. In this context, dramatic and forceful "self-aggrandisement" was seen as loss of power (Ong & Peletz, 1995).

Another example could be seen in Aceh, a region in northern Sumatra that has long been influenced by Islam, specifically Sufism. Stylised dancing and chanting of the Qur'anic verses are known as the dikir (or dhikr) genre, serving as a facilitation of the performer's union with God/Allah. Some even involved competitions among men from different villages, who were typically associated with their respective mosque.

Each team would have a young dancing boy, sadati (from Arabic sada, meaning lord or master). These sadati would dress in feminine attire and adopt a feminine manner as the goal was to embody perfect femininity to enhance the linguistic virtuosity of the rest of the team (Peletz, 2009).

People often start and end with ancient Athenians and their supposed 'progressiveness' when it comes to the practice of homosexuality and don't ever think about places like Aceh or look to Islam when talking about queer history.

But Peletz (2009) showed us that the similar practice of same-sex relation, but heterogender dynamics occurred between older Acehnese men and sadati who were often younger since they often referred to each other as abang-adik (older brother-younger sibling in Malay), which could also be used to refer to husband-wife.

So, forget about the ancient Greeks, this shit slaps more when the SEAsians do it.

I am tireddd of this bs

At least they had the decency to not say belly dancers but instead made a piss-poor pun about ass. And, I'm just gonna assume there's no need to explain why this is bad? Or do I?

Just. How many Orientalist tropes can you fit in one section about your fantasy non-European country? Who tf wrote this shit and why did no one think it might be problematic?

Fuck you, Bioware.🖕

What could've been of Rivain

Now, onto the title of this rant-like essay. I don't know about you guys, but I've always headcanoned Rivain as SEA to me, specifically the Nusantara region.

Nusantara, or the Malay Archipelago, encompasses modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Timor-Leste, and the Philippines. Historically, before the colonial period, the region was heavily influenced by Hindu-Buddhism, exemplified by kingdoms such as Srivijaya and Majapahit. Siva and Buddha worship were often found in the same area, on top of that, some areas also incorporated their animist beliefs into Hindu-Buddhism, forming a syncretic religion that varied all throughout the region.

As historians have identified that it was often through trade from India, China, and the Arab region that spread religions into Nusantara.

Next thing I will touch on is the influence of Islam. Around the 13th century, coinciding with the tail-end of Abbasiyah (or Abbasid) empire, permanent Muslim communities could be seen developing in SEA. I won't bore you with the nitty-gritty of how Islam came to such influence, but the most crucial moment was when the ruler of Melaka (circa 1400s), which was a rising maritime power at the time, converted to Islam. Around the same time, we saw the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms gradually transition to Sultanates.

It is also important to note besides Arab merchant's influence, the primary channel of Islamic proselytisation was actually through Indian Muslims, who had a similar syncretism of Hinduism & Islam, and of course Sufism while Chinese Muslim merchants promoted Islam through trading routes all around the Philippines, Borneo and northern Java (Andaya, 2006).

Christianity, however, did not obtain such prominence in SEA until the advance of colonial powers, with the Philippines being the most influenced by Christianity due to the more belligerent colonial policies of Spain around proselytisation and conversion compared to other colonial powers. Otherwise, the rest of the Nusantara region remained under Islamic influence. In Malaya, for example, we can also talk about how the British actually inadvertently reinforced Islam by stripping away political power of the Sultans and relegating them strictly to religious affairs. But that's another story.

There's so much potential for them to develop Rivain as you can see the inspirations are just lying there in the history books. But they'd rather read about the Roman empires than SEA.

See how there're many ways Islam gained prominence in SEA, I wonder how many ways in which the Qun got spread to Rivain, and I don't believe for a moment that the Qun has no sects & it's just one coherent system of beliefs. Perhaps a different sect of the Qun was spread in Rivain like how SEA has Arab, Indian, & Chinese Muslim influence.

And I would love to see someone write a meta about that because I simply don't have enough knowledge to begin approaching this topic.

Matriarchy - Gender Complementarity - Women

This section could be read with another post I made about gender in Veilguard (link) in which I mentioned about gender pluralism in SEA. But now I'd like to focus on gender dynamics. Again, there're so many inspirations to make a more interesting Rivain, but Bioware loves to settle for mediocrity.

Source: WoT Vol. 1.

SEA, in general, emphasises a gender ethos of complementarity and relative equality between men and women. From the idea that objects and properties are all composed of both male and female elements, just like people. Peletz (2009) put it like this:

[B]eing born into and raised in dual-gendered and androgynous houses, and being brought up in social and cultural milieus in which one important (gendered) Other was always already present within oneself, provided important templates for the development of a habitus conducive to the florescence of pluralistic sentiments and dispositions bearing on gender, sexuality and the body.

With that in mind, now we will see how this dynamic manifest in different communities.

Islam, Sufism, & Women

Islam's presence in SEA can be characterised as "a narrative of amicable localisation rather than abrupt change and dislocation" like the way Europeans like to imagine history to be.

Unlike the way Europeans like to imagine Islam as oppressive towards women, Andaya (2006) further argued that Sufism was particularly significant, because of its sympathy towards spiritual ambitions of women. Female poets like Rabi'a al-Basra (circa 717 CE) were praised by the mystic Ibn Arabi (1165-1240). In 15th century Cairo, there even existed a biographical dictionary of learned women compiled by al-Sakhawi.

Sufi poetry was sung by women during their household chores, which used imagery such as griding stone and spinning wheel to describe their special relationship with God/Allah. Another example could be from Java whereby the acquisition of mystical knowledge was compared to the weaving process, and Allah was compared to a woman waxing and making batik:

At the full moon, the beauty takes up the making of batik. Her frame is the wide world; her pot means 'the Lamp'; ... the wax pen is God's pen and the material which is batiked is the Table of the Word; the patterns are the fixed essences...If you are stiffened with rice water when being dyed blue and when the soga is added thereto, you must not be afraid. It is the will of God that you are made red and blue.

See we have so much potential for the Qun, for it to be written as some wishy-washy western Buddhist self-help poetry is just disappointing to say the least. Give me something like this, Bioware you cowards.

Even after the advance of Islam in SEA, adat still played a cornerstone role in redefining and reaffirming women's social contributions despite men receiving new privileges. For example, a royal adat treatise (circa 1779) compiled by a Melaka mosque official which detailed the role of Islamic officials during life-death ceremonies but also highlighted the role of female specialists in rituals such as betrothal and marriage.

Why did I choose to use this example? Well, we could've seen how qunari seers incorporate the Qun in local customs. The fact that they have a character like Rowan in Veilguard and completely fumbled that triggered this whole ranting train for me.

Minangkabau women & Adat

Another example I offer is the Minangkabau society (read my other post where I also touched on Minangkabau women as gatekeepers of adat and what is adat.)

Krier (1995) stressed that the matrilineal descent dictates an egalitarian allocation of resources to men and women, that women are the guardians and possess inalienable rights and use-rights over kaum (community) property (harta pusaka) like houses, fishponds, plantations, ritual regalia. Men do not have a central role in the matrilineal household economy; hence they move away from home to marry and pursue wealth. While it is true that men acquire judicial authority (as penghulu), this doesn't grant them autocratic political control. The relationship between kaum women and penghulu is mediated through democratic measures such as adat council (muafakat).

You will see why I brought this point up in later section about Isabela.

Now, we've looked at Islam aka definitely not the inspiration for the Qun, let's see how Christianity aka definitely not the inspiration for Andrastianism interacts with SEA.

Babaylan & Resistance against Colonialism

With that we move on to the Philippines. In pre-colonial period, Filipino society was divided into three domains (Tapia, 2024): 1. the political by the datu (chieftain), 2. the technological by the panday (blacksmith), and 3. the cultural by the babaylan (priest).

The term for priest varies, e.g., bailan in Agusan, mabalian in Bagobo, baylan in Bukidnon, while babaylan was more common in central & western parts of the Visayas. There terms may be derived from the Malay word, belian, meaning shaman or sorcerer. It is interesting to note that there was some Malay influence in the Philippines.

Another comparison could be from the Semang people in Malaysia who believed spirits could inhabit objects such as trees and springs, thus making them sacred sites; and these spirits could also be malignant, and their wrath caused illnesses which could be healed by magic or food offerings to the spirit.

The same belief could be seen in the people of Mindanao (or Bukidnon). The baylan, in this case, would act as a healer because they possess the ability to discern causes of these illnesses. The southern part of the same region saw elderly women called the maibalian/mabalian of Bagobo, possessing similar knowledge of communing with spirits.

Not only did the babaylans act as healers and mediums, but they also acted as warriors defending their community. The babaylans were mainly women until colonial invasion, and men known as asogs took over the role by assuming a feminine lifestyle. But this practice was met with backlash from the Spanish colonisers who introduced the European gender norms in Filipino society.

The Catholic clergy carried out their mission insidiously through "syncretism", with the goal of replacing native practices with Christian ritualistic symbols. Thus, babaylans were either stigmatised as witches or mentally unstable and their practices eroded by Christianity. But some adapted and became miracle workers within the Christian context.

In addition, due to the withering away of the datu, babaylans took up arms to resist against Spanish colonisation on top of their original responsibilities such as healing, granting protection, using black magic to instill fear (Bonifacio & Ferrer, 2023).

According to Tapia (2024), "[t]he babaylan can be female or an asog when male; they fulfill diverse roles and functions as a mother, wife, grandmother, or a priestess and/or a warrior who ritualises life and death, planting and harvesting, peace and war. She eludes the construct of femininity by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with men as leaders, going to war and signing peace pacts, and determining the direction of their communities."

Again, I will belabour on the wasted potentials of not exploring Taash's identities through a truly multicultural lense. In this case, maybe to resist the Chantry's influence, Rivaini seers become warriors and men become seers to protect their communities. And maybe tying it back to the qunari civil war, with the defaction of the antaam, there emerges a shift of the other classes, like the ariqun filling up the vacuum for instance. And how do the affected qunaris like that weather guy, Karash start to assume different roles. And how does Taash respond to that?

Now compound that with gender, you will have a much fleshed out version of Taash's character arc. And don't forget Shathann, I believe we'd see a different relationship between them if she actually got to witness all the different ways of lives, how does she respond to the qunari civil war, how Rivain-born qunaris negotiate with their faiths and gender during all her years in Rivain, and if she got to interact with Rowan.

You don't need to kill off a character to have story beat, a multifaceted worldbuilding will do half the job for you.

Alas, we have an empty Rivain hence empty characters.

What could've been of Isabela & Madam Hari

From WoT Vol. 2, we learn that Isabela's mother, Madam Hari pretended to be a seer. Once in a while she would go out of town with Isabela to pickpocket people. When Madam Hari became disillusioned about her life as a con artist, she converted to the Qun and found another purpose. This was when the relationship between Isabela & Madam Hari sour, because of the latter's insistence of converting Isabela to the Qun. Just when Isabela thought her mother gave up on the conversion plan, she was married off to an Antivan man, Luis, on the promise that she would be looked after.

Tying everything I've mentioned back to this, Madam Hari, as a character, is essentially the precipitation of all the problems I've mentioned before: 1. the criminality of native people that was presumed and imposed by the colonisers, 2. placing Abrahamic religion as more 'enlightening' or providing purpose while disregarding the local spirituality, 3. the conversion arc that is rooted in Islamophobic perception of Islam (hence the Qun), 4. the act of marrying off a daughter is patriarchal practice, not a matrilineal one (Get Levi Strauss out of your mind please).

I think I've explained enough about point 1 to 3, either in this post or other ones I wrote before. Now I'd like to focus on the 4th point which tells me that Bioware doesn't know what a matriarchy is or how it functions.

If they knew, Madam Hari wouldn't be the same character. She would've owned land, as women are in control of property rights, and are active producers in their communities. Especially as an older woman, she would have respect from the community, being the gatekeeper of local customs. She would look for a man from another Rivaini community, maybe Afsaana or Ayesleigh, to be married in to the family, NOT marrying her daughter out because Isabela, as the only daughter, would inherit the family property eventually.

This is the most ideal scenario. But what if Madam Hari didn't have a lot of means because she was born into a lower kaum, or related to a foreign kaum (orang datang) because classism did exist in matrilineal society like Minangkabau.

Let's say their family had a misfortune, where is their community? There are concepts such as anak angkat (adopted child) whereby a person is treated as one of the family that welcome you in. And so many other ways in which the community would chip in, especially if Madam Hari's husband died.

In short, Bioware stop projecting liberal individualism onto your fantasy non-European land.

Another possible explanation would be their family did something that would warrant them being ostracised and excommunicated by their community. But that's just me doing the work for Bioware to explain away the misogyny.

Finally, the end ...

This is not me saying that SEA is better or more superior or perfect. As Andaya (2007) stated that there's not a definitive answer to whether or not SEA women have historically had "higher status" compared to other regions. Also, research has usually been centred in Indonesia, like Balinese or Minangkabau societies. Countries like Myanmar or once known as Burma is still understudied, while research in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam are slowly catching up.

It is also worth noting that historically anthropological research in SEA has always been done by Europeans; it is not until post-Independence when there's the emergence of local researchers.

Just like there's no single way to look at SEA due to our sheer diversity, there's no single way to worldbuilding in fiction. In short, and I am talking to you, white people who occupy the majority of this fandom: don't be an Orientalist piece of shit like Bioware when you're trying to incorporate anything non-European into whatever creative endeavour you're doing.

90 percent of these bs can be prevented if Bioware did their research before they publish anything. If you can read through the entire history of Roman aqueduct system just for funsies in your project, you can read through a 30-page paper on Champa or Srivijaya.

Once again, shoutout to my SEAblings, I'm aware of not including the Indochina region, maybe that'd be something I'll explore later, but this post will be extra bloated if I don't somehow limit the scope to just Nusantara.

Also, my ask is open to anyone who'd want to nerd out on SEA DA meta 🥰 or just any questions in general about my metas.

And of course, as always, references are below:

Andaya, B. W. (2006). The flaming womb: Repositioning women in early modern Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press. [link.]

____________ (2007). Studying women and gender in Southeast Asia. International Journal of Asian Studies, 4(1), 113-136. [link.]

Bonifacio, S. L. L., Casia, J. D., & Ferrer, J. L. E. (2023). Babaylans as Catalysts for Resistance: The Role of Indigenous Spiritual Beliefs in Philippine Peasant Ideology against Spanish and American Colonialism. [link.]

Wu, J.C. (2018). Disciplining Native Masculinities: Colonial Violence in Malaya, ‘Land of the Pirate and the Amok’. Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World. Palgrave Macmillan. [link.]

Krier, J. (1995). Narrating Herself: Power and Gender in a Minangkabau. Bewitching women, pious men: Gender and body politics in Southeast Asia, 51. [link.]

Nadera Jr, V. E. C. D., & Mooney-Singh, C. (2019). Balagtasan Beyond Balagtas: Debate Poetry, a Filipino Tradition. SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English, 56(1), 26-44. [link.]

Ong, A., & Peletz, M. G. (Eds.). (1995). Bewitching women, pious men: Gender and body politics in Southeast Asia. Univ of California Press. [link.]

Peletz, M.G. (2009). Gender Pluralism: Southeast Asia Since Early Modern Times (1st ed.). Routledge.

Saint Martin M. L. (1999). Running Amok: A Modern Perspective on a Culture-Bound Syndrome. Primary care companion to the Journal of clinical psychiatry, 1(3), 66–70. [link.]

Seng, F. S., & Chandran, G. (2020). Madness of the East: Demystifying the Colonialist Perspective on Frank Swettenham and Hugh Clifford's Amok 1. New Literaria, 1(2), 110-118. [link.]