mage & elf rights forever

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 6 on their scale of the limited tints used in that game. (For comparison, Zevran has the darkest skin tint available.) 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.)

I'm not drawing conclusions from nothing btw. Even Charlotte Reber's book, the behind the scenes look at Dragon Age 2, uses Merrill as an example of when it's a "better outcome" to disagree:

"Merrill is easy to befriend by aiding in her personal quest—but her path is one that leads towards tragedy and self-destruction, and supporting her risky decisions can result in the death of not just her mentor, but her entire clan." —pg. 84 "In fact, Hawke disagreeing with a party member’s actions sometimes arguably leads to the better outcome for everyone involved. In Merrill’s personal quest, for example, helping her repair an ancient elven artifact can result in the deaths of both her mentor and her entire clan." —pg. 109

–"Templars, Qunari, and politics don't meow and attack your feet when you're buying food."

wanted to illustrate one of my favorite banters in da2!! merrill, my beloved<33

We're back for another week of celebrating Rook!

How it works: Post any form of human-created fanwork that features Rook (or any DATV OC) here on tumblr during the event dates. Mention @rookappreciationweek or tag your post with #RookWeek2026 and we'll reblog your work here! About the prompts: Prompts are optional and non-binding! Create for any prompt, and any Rook/OC, on any day. Use/combine/riff on the prompts as you wish or ignore them entirely - as long as your work features Rook, we'll reblog it here. ‼️Use of generative AI in any form is prohibited for this event.

Check out our FAQs or shoot us an ask if you have questions! You can find a text-based list of the prompts below the cut - we look forward to seeing what you create 💜

Rook Appreciation Week: June 21st - 27th | Prompts | FAQs | Ask the Mods

"DA never tries to push an agenda"

This post and this post really annoyed tbh. Especially these tags:

Briala is not a "colonial stooge". Briala is a victim of abuse who upon escaping the abusive relationship, immediately begins seeking reparation not just for herself, but for all her people who have suffered from Orlesian occupation.

from the dalish's (accurately cautious) perspective, if their campsites or common migration routes get discovered, they're doomed, and will immediately get cornered by the chantry or the nearest noble who dislikes elves. so they're incredibly hard to find to begin with, and if they do get found, it's in their best interest to leave zero survivors and then vanish immediately.

plus, they have slightly better night vision on a physical level, as well as being well versed in outdoor stealth from a very young age. plus they have mages. plus they're very frugal and don't have any real material goods. and they would be very averse to anything like a "fair fight" bc it's not like they have... soldiers who are actually expendable. anyone who gets hurt or killed is meant to be doing another job as well to keep the clan running, and is a beloved small community member as well.

so i think a lot of their Terrifying Reputation is bc they do (seemingly) completely unprovoked attacks that can look like this:

some human expedition goes out into the wilderness for logging/hunting/fishing/herb gathering/bald/nuance, sees zero sign of any dalish around

suddenly, they all get completely massacred, at night, with no warning or mercy shown, and with half the dead creepily strangled by tree roots or smth, and their entire campsite picked over for valuables. which looks like theft was the motive, but in an extremely ruthless and unnecessarily cruel way.

when a revenge party is sent out, there's still no sign of the dalish, aside from an abandoned campsite and no clear tracks leading anywhere

Please don't get me wrong! Conceptually JustVelanna is Very neat! My issues stem from the fact that I simply do not believe that it would have been written well. Not only because the writers at Bioware in general have a long history of anti-Indigenous racism- but also because much of the foreshadowing we get for the possibility of JustVelanna is already laying the groundwork for it to be done extremely poorly and insensitively.

For the background context, as a refresher, I'm just going to link this post from @dalishious (I'll probably be linking a few Dalishious posts throughout because the blog is a Treasure Trove for nekmewei thoughts on how things could have been hypothetically written with more thought, care, and respect given to the cultures the fictional peoples in question are being coded as, as opposed to the Dragon age writer's Virulent anti-indigenous racism. You should go buy nekm a coffee b/c he's put so much work into this shit for the past many many years).

Then we have this series of banters which sets up the main foreshadowing which lays the groundwork for the possibility of JustVelanna in the next game:

So what we're treated to is a series of banters where A Spirit of Justice, who obviously has No Context Whatsoever for what it's talking about is lecturing an Indigenous Woman about being more sympathetic to the people who have for nearly all of known history been Actively Genociding her people- and then ending with suggesting that she should be the one here to take the initiative to teach her oppressors to??? Play nicies??? Show them- Hand hold them like they're toddlers- through learning that it's not okay to hurt other people. And also that they're needlessly destroying the forest in the process. And that??? That is its idea of Justice in this situation???

Like- ok that was my very quick sum up. But I do want to break down the implications of everything being said here a bit further because the more I look at it and think about it the worse it gets- Like it's. So So much worse than I remembered.

Justice: This thing you did, the murders of those men in the forest... Velanna: What of it? Justice: What you did was wrong. You must make amends. Velanna: And to whom should I make these amends? Those humans are dead, if you'll recall. Justice: You must make amends to humans. It was your condemnation of their race that led to your folly.

"What you did was wrong" -ok so, please explain to me, how? With the background context we got from the post I linked above we know that the nearby humans were actively violently attempting to drive Velanna's clan out of the area:

Velanna: “The humans near where you met me were trying to drive my clan away. For a while, we resisted.” Velanna: “Then they tried to burn is out. They would have destroyed the entire forest just to keep us from their farms.” Velanna: “The others were afraid. Keeper Ilshae said that if I wanted to fight the shemlen, I would fight them alone.”

Velanna left to defend her clan from active Violence. Like okay yeah, sure, whatever, you can argue that it was motivated by vengeance or whatever, but the point still stands that the humans attacked first. And the dialog here is slightly misleading with the 'They would have destroyed the entire forest just to keep us from their farms' which could be read in bad faith to assume that the Dalish were raiding the human farms, but the WoT:v2 entry says otherwise:

"One day, the clan found themselves camping too close to a human village. The villagers, made anxious by news of roving bands of darkspawn, turned violent in their attempt to defend their territory from what they saw as a threat. They set fire to the woods where the clan had settled, determined to drive the Dalish away from their farms. The clan escaped, but lost aravels and several halla to the forest fire."

And the note you find in the Wending Wood makes it So abundantly clear that they didn't set fire to the woods because they thought Darkspawn were in there, they knew the Dalish were there, they were actively trying to drive them away.

"Kendall The caravans can't get through the woods and the village is running low on supplies. It's that Dalish clan causing trouble again, I know it. I had my man speak to their "keeper" several months back and she (I think it was a she, you can't tell with these elves) said they'd leave for more remote parts. It looks as though they're back, likely their stupid landships blocking the roads. They're a stubborn race and more than a little dense!

I must trouble you for a favour. Go to the Wending Wood and order them to leave.

--Mayor Grisby"

Okay so onto the 2nd banter:

Justice: Why do you believe that atonement is unnecessary? Velanna: By the Creators! This again? Justice: You murdered humans because you believed they had wronged you, yet they had not. Velanna: Humans have wronged my kind plenty. Justice: Yet they were innocent of this. Velanna: Don't speak of what you do not understand, spirit!

"You murdered humans because you believed they had wronged you, yet they had not." and "Yet they were innocent of this." Okay so as established above- Justice is just, actively, factually incorrect here. It hasn't even attempted to get all of the facts of the situation, it has no understanding of the centuries of actively ongoing genocide the elves have faced at the hands of the humans. As if what Velanna was doing was not an attempt at defending her people from yet another act of genocide against them!

And like okay yeah- sure- I'm frustrated with Justice as a character here for thinking in such black and white terms and only considering the present moment and not the centuries of history or even the very immediate recent past that led to Velanna's actions- but things could have been salvageable if they didn't start taking a sharp turn for the worse here. Because so far Velanna has stood her ground and admitted no guilt. But then-

Justice: You are correct that I do not understand, Velanna. Help me to understand. Velanna: (Sigh) There is... so much history between my kind and humans, Justice. Where would I begin? Justice: You can only be responsible for your actions, your judgment. Does the same not apply to them? Velanna: You may be right. I don't know. Justice: And the atonement? Velanna: I will atone when they do.

 "You can only be responsible for your actions, your judgment. Does the same not apply to them?" ← Like yeah, on its own, this is fine. Within the context of the surrounding conversation though? No!!!! Please point me to where she actually judged them wrong!!! She didn't!!! You can’t!!!

"You may be right. I don't know." ← Velanna, babe, beloved, light of my goddamn life, no don't let Justice get to youuuuuuu, get your fucking fire back! I miss your stubborn indignation from the previous banters!

And then the final one- This one- This is where it just. God I want to strangle whoever wrote this and anyone else who laid eyes on it and allowed it to make its way into the final draft-

Velanna: What sort of atonement would be appropriate? Justice: You have reconsidered, then? Velanna: I am simply curious to hear what you think would be suitable. Justice: Teach them. Show these humans what they are so carelessly destroying. Velanna: And if they do not listen? Justice: Then you have done what you could. Velanna: It's... worth thinking about.

Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me. "Teach them. Show these humans what they are so carelessly destroying." Go take a short walk off a long cliff or however that saying goes. Do not. Do NOT tell the racialized woman- the woman who's people who have been victims of an ongoing genocide for centuries that it's Her Fucking Responsibility to teach her oppressors how to be nice and stop being racist or whatever the goddamn fuck. It should Never be expected to be the responsibility of minorities to educate the people oppressing them about why that's bad to do!

Except oh wait- ohhh wait- let's take a slightly closer look at the specific words that were chosen shall we: "Show these humans what they are so carelessly destroying." Now… Do you remember what that was from Velanna's earlier dialog with the Warden Commander? "They would have destroyed the entire forest just to keep us from their farms."

So not only is Justice telling Velanna to hand hold her oppressors into being better people to ATONE for DEFENDING her own people against said oppressors!!!!! It's not even saying that she should teach them to be… kinder to elves… to not be racist or bigoted or something. No. "Show these humans what they are so carelessly destroying."

Just go show the humans the fucking trees. Teach them the value of the goddamn forest. Once they understand that the fucking plant life matters that'll show them!!! Like. Come on man. Racist Noble S*v*ge trope much??? And even if you're putting aside the racist Noble S*v*ge trope implications of that dialog- there's still the other incredibly racist implications that the destruction of the forest matters more than the lives of the people who are at risk. Don't get me wrong- the careless disregard of nature is absolutely fucked up but why is Justice(as mouthpiece of the writers/devs) prioritizing that over the lives of the elves? (Because it's made very obvious throughout the rest of these games that they don't hold to any sort of belief system that recognizes personhood in inhuman things around them. So hey- hey man- hey- what's up with these fucking priorities?????)

It gets even worse when you start comparing it to Anders banter with Justice-

Why is it that the racialized woman is told that she needs to calm down and play nicies and atone for fighting back against her oppressors but the white guy is being lectured about he should "strike a blow against [his] oppressors" and "Ensure they can do this to no one else" AS IF THAT ISN'T EXACTLY WHAT VELANNA WAS TRYING TO FUCKING DO??

The double standards in how they are treated by Justice in Awakening are so fucking appalling to me(Though- side note- I'm not taking this as a reflection on the character of Justice so much as it is a reflection on the views of the writers, and how the writers are using Justice as a character as a mouthpiece for their very racist views).

The way the foreshadowing in Awakening sets up a potential narrative follow through for Anders and Velanna in Dragon Age II is so starkly different, and heavily informed by anti-Indigenous racism(and also misogyny TBH, yeah of course let's tell the woman to be nicer and that she needs to just calmly teach people and show them the way while you encourage the (white)man to take up arms and strike back at his oppressors! Why don't you tell her to smile more too while you're at it. Fuck Off). Like, not only would Dragon Age II have been just- an ENTIRELY different game plot-wise, given the Mage-Templar conflict was central to the game- it also would have been, inevitably, somehow, filled with even more virulent racism than it already was. And the shit they pulled with the Qunari in that game was bad enough.

Solas. The guy who has the least fleshed out romance because it was tacked on last minute in the added year of development. The guy who can only be romanced by a fem Lavellan. And I know this is tumblr and here on tumblr people like fem Lavellans, but please remember that the most common player character choice in DAI is actually human rogue, followed by human warrior, followed by human mage.

Even without knowing the admitted fact of late development additions, the game was very clearly not written with him being originally a romance, let alone the "canon" romance. Just like the game was very clearly not written with any non-human as the forefront of mind.

Oh, Dawn of the Seeker...

Velanna