Hi, sunlight-shunlight! I saw some of the outrageous comments from Trick Weekes on their recent imperialism panel, especially the part that tried to use the US as an analogy of Tevinter. I remember an earlier screenshot from an external social platform showing a dev ( dg? tw?) deflecting criticism from a player who pointed out that elves, who possess distinct indigenous cultural characteristics, were unfairly treated in the game's narrative by saying, "Indigenous peoples aren't descendants of evil mage-kings" (something like that, since I'm not a native English speaker, I automatically translated it in my head, so I don't remember the exact sentence). My memory is fuzzy. Do you happen to recall this happening or have any evidence?
On the one hand, they're trying to "clarify" things and prevent players from making "erroneous projections," yet on the other hand, they're openly basing their creative decisions on their projection of real-world political considerations. I don't know if there's anything more hypocritical than this.
haha yeah, i got the screenshots and links to those posts here:
it's very.... ridiculous. they wrote in sort of obviously negative stereotype about non-christian cultures, that their religion is Evil and they're they're too backwards as a people to manage their own affairs, and their problem is not the repeated attacks from the church - it's that they don't forgive and move on!
and then go "oh, but of course i don't mean it as a reference to those real cultures!!! after all, they don't have immortal mages teehee :)" when all they've done is made the standard irl colonial propaganda "true" and therefore justified in the setting? no need to feel guilty or angry that this group got invaded, forcibly converted to another religion, and pushed into impoverished ghettos - their religion WAS evil all along, just like the propaganda said! phew