#dalish rant

A couple months ago, this white woman read a book of mine and decided she wanted to be my "diversity champion." She started recommending my book and gushing about it, praising it for its non-white, non-straight characters. Horah. She had found some poor black queer author to champion so she could feel good about supposedly not being racist and homophobic. Look, mom, she's  so "woke."

It was pretty infuriating.

I never asked for a white savior. My books are good enough that I don't NEED a white savior. And honestly? I am fucking sick of listening to white people talk about "diversity" -- which is little more than a sugarcoated version of the harsh truth white people can't handle: "straight white discrimination against everyone else"

I am not "diverse." I'm a black muff-diver, bitch.

I am also tired of hearing the phrase "people of color," which I even fell into the habbit of using thanks to the slow indoctrination of the interwebs.

There is no "people of color" solidarity. It's a myth. Like intersectional feminism. I know it's a myth because I live everyday surrounded by racist, anti-black Mexicans who treat me about as badly as white poeple do. Read through some of the posts on this blog where I spoke about racist Latin cops pointing guns in my elderly mother's face and all the shit they do to me.

I don't need or want a white savior. I want readers who buy my books because they genuinely connect to my stories and genuinely love them -- not because they are filling some shitty diversity quota (“I’m reading black authors this year!”) or out on some crusade to prove they aren't racist.

All this diversity crap is pointless anyway. Why are we focused on the Oscars and the Hugos? Why have we fooled ourselves into thinking that attacking racist white celebrities on twitter is going to amount to anything?

The reality is, nothing will ever change so long as white supremacy continues. Until black people are treated like human beings in this country, until discrimination and oppression stops, you can count on seeing a steady steam of Straight White Men dominating every aspect of entertainment, science, medicine, and politics.

That's what white supremacy is. It means that white poeople rule. They stand on our necks -- as they always have -- and soak up all the sunshine while we linger in darkness.

So complaining about "diversity" isn't going to change shit. These white "diversity champions" aren't really out to help non-whites anyway. Their real goal is to not look racist while continuing to be racist on a daily basis.

So they'll get online and champion a black author, then turn around and overlook a black person's job application solely on the basis of them being black.

White racism is covert now. It's hidden behind badges. It's alibis and altered video footage. It's liberals smiling to your face and then calling your kids "super predators" behind your back. It's black teenagers with bloody mouths who somehow deserved twenty bullets even though they were unarmed and the cop outweighed them by sixty pounds.

It's the continuous, unending, irrational hatred of white people for black people, for the crime of existing in all our glory, for the crime of ruling the world as kings and queens.

Jealousy is the most dangerous emotion in the world. It can drive people to kill and steal, beat and dominate, rape and whip. White people saw us on our thrones and tore us down at the first opportunity (”tore us down” is giving them too much credit, though. They didn’t even defeat us. They waited for us to defeat each other and the moved in -- like the elves in Dragon Age!). Now they sit on our thrones, in the very castles we built, sneering down their noses at us as they take credit for our accomplishments.

Remember the palace in Dragon Age: Inquisition? Halamshiral? How it was bulit by elves and how the Orlesians moved in and took the credit? That was based on real history, like so much of white people's fiction. Those castles in Europe were black-built and black-owned. Jane Austen wasn't white -- she was black.

White people didn't build anything, didn't invent anything. They stole all the technology they have right now, all the buildings, all the knowledge of medicine and science. It was already here. Our ancestors had built an entire civilization on it that was thousands of years old when white people came along.

So to have them trying to "save us" and be our "diversity champions" now is truly ironic.

And insulting.

It's time for us to stop buying into this diversity bullshit. Stop joining white people in their mad crusade to prove they aren't racist. They can shout about how good they are now from the rooftops, but so long as we are still socially and economically oppressed, still gunned down, still beaten and humiliated, still treated like inferiors, it will remain painfully obvious that white people are not "good now."

It's time to stop policing white people on twitter. It's time to stop attacking racist white authors. It's time to stop giving a fuck about the Oscars. It's time to stop caring about white acceptance. It's time to stop asking white people to include us, as if the world belonged to them and we were mere guests at the table.

It is time to create our own things and be our own people, apart from all that is white and all that white people would order us to be.

It is time to embrace us and who we are.

Stop fighting these white people. They are never going to stop being racist and they are never going to stop oppressing us.

Stop wasting time and energy trying to educate white people and non-black racists. They do not want to be educated. They just want to not look racist and pretend they're good people.

Let them be ignorant and racist. Ignorance is a choice and they chose it.

Let these white people be.

You don't have to be complacent. But please -- stop bothering. Stop exhausting yourself. Stop teaching. Stop trying to impart lessons in human decency to people who have proven historically that they have none.

The lack of "diversity" is a symptom of white supremacy. It will not end because we add some black lesbians to the background of a few movies. It can only end when white supremacy ends. And white people will never end white supremacy.

I wish we'd stop calling it "white supremacy." How about . . .

White aggression.

White brutality.

White savagery.

White heartlessness.

White cruelty.

White hate.

A couple months ago, my black mother (foolishly) called the police because she believed she was in danger.

When the police arrived, the first thing they did was point a gun at my mother's face and demand to know if she had a weapon.

My mother wasn't wearing "suspicious" clothing. She wasn't doing anything suspicious. None of it was her fault. She was sitting down on her fucking couch, wearing normal clothing, and looking distressed.

See, they assumed this little old black woman was a dangerous monster and the one they had been called to arrest. So they nearly shot her. For NOTHING.

These were white-latinos, as anyone who's not black tends to see black people as dangerous monsters.

I'll never forget the tears that poured down my naive, simpleton mother's face as she realized for the first time in her life that a black person can not call the police and expect to be treated like the victim and not the threat.

This is my reality, watching as racists point guns at my mother's face and scream at her. This is the racism I live with every single day.

Do you have any idea how close the two of us came to being hashtags? Just because one of us called the police for help?

Until my reality changes, I will criticize racism, white people and non-blacks who willfully carry out its evil, and how that is protrayed in Mass Effect all day every damn day.

See, the difference between Mass Effect and Dragon Age is that Mass Effect criticizes racism and attempts to show how stupid it is, while Dragon Age *embraces* racism as fully acceptable. Which is why I can not play Dragon Age or discuss those games any more. Which is one of many reason why Bioware no longer gets my money.

Mass Effect was purposely written to mock racism, as is evident from the old blog posts of Chris, the lead writer, (I get Chris and Drew confused a lot, sorry) who wrote the space racist Ashley. That's what my posts are about. I'm sorry sensitive white people on tumblr are just too stupid to get it.

One day I'll play Andromeda, I'm sure, but when it's on sale and preferably if I can get someone to gift it to me. Not giving EA and their bitch-slave Bioware a digital dime.

I will talk about racism and white people all I want, and Mass Effect fans who don't like that can stomp their little feet and be mad. I don't care.

Because game developing is a business, most developers, rather than try something new or try to be inclusive, would rather stick to the tried and true formula of Straight White Morally Grey Male Hero who is out to avenge his dead family/ dead wife/ someone's attempted murder on him. Same old pandering to the same old audience.

Bioware was the first game developer to be openly inclusive of minorities. Not only that, but they proved once and for all that minorities really were in the audience and that it was possible to include us and still make a profit.

Once Bioware offered up this evidence, other game developers tentatively fell in line, while at the same time remaining careful to kiss Straight White Male Ass so they wouldn't anger their precious male fans.

I remember the first time I played Origins as the female city elf Kallian. It was amazing to participate in a story with actual content that was FOR ME. Not the straight dude they just assumed was in the audience.  

After fifteen odd years of playing video games that ignored me, suddenly, I was being acknowledged.

It was amazing.

And it's one reason why Dragon Age Origins will always have a special place in my geeky heart.

So to eventually come to the conclusion that the developers at Bioware are just as sexist and racist as every other developer . . . it was pretty crushing.

David Gaider is racist. Yes, he is. The only reason Bioware is inclusive to queer people is because of David Gaider. But the racism is still painfully evident in their games, and the way they treat their female fans and female characters is nothing short of disgusting. (Patrick Weekes' shitty "joke" for Solas fans in Trespasser was the last straw for me.)

I don't care how many people are pissed off by my saying this. I don't care that Gaider is gay -- that doesn't mean he can not possibly be a person who sees other races as inferior. In fact, racism among white gay men is a prevalent problem within the gay community.

Dorian from Dragon Age Inquisition is pretty much David Gaider's self-insert.

Dorian is an innocent bigot.

Yes, he is.

Just because Dorian had elven lovers doesn't make him any less racist. You understand that it's possible to have sex with someone while at the same time not seeing them as an equal, right?

Dorian sees the elves as inferiors. And not out of any hatred or malice, but simply because he's been taught to think that way. He even admits to the Inquisitor that he never bothered to give a shit about racism until he left Tevinter and suddenly had the epiphany that "Slavery bad."

Dorian remains an innocent bigot, a racist who is racist because he doesn't know any better, for the duration of Inquisition. He has a little speech at the Well about cultural appropriation, but the reality is, he still has little empathy toward the elves and their plight.

Dorian is a sheltered child who didn't even notice how fucked up the elves had it until he was forced to leave home. He even assures you that slavery is better than the way Fereldan elves are treated, instead of coming to the realization that both situations are pretty oppressive. The city elves are wage slaves, which are basically slaves without the chains. They are expected to work for next to nothing, and when they wind up stealing to feed their families, they are condemned -- it's slavery, just not chattel slavery.  

Even by Trespasser, Dorian *still* only gives a shit about Tevinter. He never talks about ending the slave trade -- and I know he doesn't because I had a character romance him.

Solas despises Dorian because he's an ignorant bigot who doesn't give a shit about anyone except humans (ironic, I know, coming from someone who doesn't give a shit about anyone but ancient elves).

Solas has several banters where he calls Dorian out on his bigotry, asking him why he doesn't seem to care about freeing the elves. Dorian gets nervous and says something about how it's impossible for him to do that.

Dorian doesn't get it.

The point is not that Dorian isn't able to end slavery. It's that he doesn't even care enough to try.

Solas continues to coldly, tersely force Dorian to realize his own bigotry, each banter more angry than the last. Unfortunately, none of his points ever get through Dorian's brick wall.

Dorian can not be argued with or reasoned with. Just as all racists can not be argued with or reasoned with. I imagine a lot of angry people will respond to this or else complain about it in tumblr groups with their friends, while entirely missing the point . . . which is kinda my point: these people will likely be ignorant racists too.

People who are racist do not live in the same reality as everyone else. And Solas -- who is racist himself and who is just a self-insert of Patrick Weekes and his White Guilt moaning -- can not teach Dorian that he is racist when he himself isn't living in reality (literally if he was actually sleeping during the whole of Inquisition and only just rejoined his body at the end, as I theorized).

In the same way that Dorian is vaguely aware of his own ignorance, David Gaider is vaguely aware of his own ignorance (or else he couldn't have written such a character) and yet he makes no attempt to change.

I remember a couple years ago, this fan tried to talk to David Gaider on twitter about his shitty bigotry. The fan was pretty polite, but Gaider completely shut them down. It's what he always does. He is notorious for not being able to take criticism about any of the games he’s worked on and has no problem insulting fans who try to have a conversation with him. It’s partly the reason why he is so unpopular with many fans.

And just like his creator, Dorian can not be reasoned with. You can not convince Dorian that slavery and "endless cycles of poverty" are both things that should end. Dorian will continue to validate slavery to your face, then he will tell you that you can't *possibly* form an opinion about slavery since you've never been a slave! The Inquisitor is set up to be shot down by him, and he stands there, arms folded, triumphant in having proved his ignorance valid.

The racism in Dragon Age hurt me so much for the reason I stated above: Dragon Age Origins was the first game I played where I felt included. It hurt to realize how bigoted the overall narrative actually was and it hurt to have white fans (more ignorant racists) *mocking* me for being hurt by racism.

But white people always mock people of color for being hurt by racism. What the fuck else is new?

Some times I wonder if Gaider and Weekes realize how hurtful they've been and how they've lost several fans because of Dragon Age -- No, I'm not the only one who sees the racism in the games. I'm just the only one who talks about it all the time.

And I feel this way because Dragon Age saved my life. I was going through a tough time when I found it. So to finally see something I loved so much for what it truly is. . . . it's just awful.

And I know there's no reasoning with any of the developers, so I don't bother addressing them. (I haven't used twitter in several years now, so I wouldn't do that anyway.)

Because much like Patrick Weekes, Gaider will carry on under the belief that there is nothing white people can do to end institutional racism, when in fact there is. Bioware made a great first attempt at not being assholes by including queer people and depicting them as human beings. All they have to do now is show women and people of color the same consideration.

All straight cis gendered white people have to do is treat other people like PEOPLE.

That includes not objectifying female characters in video games. (Miranda's Mass Effect ass shots and unncessesary camel toe come to mind.)

That includes not mocking your female fans for loving the character you created. (Solas, Cullen, and Thane fans were either disregarded completely or treated like shit by the developers.)

That includes not presenting every woman of color like a stereotype Jezebel. (Long-time followers know who I mean here.)

That includes not trashing every religion that's not Christian. (Paganism is not demon worship. Come off it.)

On Star Trek, the Prime Directive is about respecting other cultures and not interferring with their development. This included not invading people and forcifully converting them to your culture, obviously.

Manifest Destiny, meanwhile, is about white imperialists believing their cultures and religions were the only ones of worth and that it was their burden and destiny to enlighten "inferior" brown cultures by destroying them and converting them to white culture.

This is what I was talking about the last couple years when I said Dragon Age embraces Manifest Destiny. The elves are an indigenous people who are constantly shit on by the narrative (by the story itself, including characters who are supposd to be "good") for not embracing Andrastianism (which is basically just Christianity). They are depicted as foolish inferiors who can't achieve anything without human or divine (sometimes seen as both) intervention, and the only good elves in Dragon Age are the city elves who have converted to human (white) culture.

Yes. I realize that some things in the games actually criticize Manifest Destiny. That's because Dragon Age has more than one writer. Also, the racist writers are probably somewhat conscious of their own shittiness and backpedal every now and then. But the bigoted message is still more or less there: elves/indigenous people are "inferior."

On Star Trek, Captain Picard goes into a rant every now and then about how Manifest Destiny and imperialism are awful things of the past.

Couple years ago, I said that Mass Effect 3 would have been perfect if not for that shitty ending.

I said that because I would have been willing to overlook the garbage that was in the rest of the game if the ending hadn't been such shit.

But anyone who actually read most of my Mass Effect 3 posts here would know that I complained A LOT about the whole of Mass Effect 3 -- specifically Shep's auto-dialogue, the botched Mass Effect 2 romances, and Kai Fucking Leng.

Mass Effect 3 also had some really gross stuff in it, like FemShep taking advantage of her rank to basically rape Vega (because I guess the writers thought male rape was funny) and all this other shit.

Yeah. Mass Effect 3 had its fair share of problems. The Ending was just the icing on an already sour cake.

Also, I understand what a "protagonist" is, asswipes who love talking shit about this blog.

I didn't mean that Solas was actually the protagonist. I meant that he stole so much of the story, he might as well have been the protagonist.

This was done to the point that Corypheus wasn't our enemy, he was Solas' enemy -- we and Corypheus just didn't fucking know it.

This was done to the point that it was never our Inquisition -- it was Solas' Inquisition. This is something the Inquisitor can even SAY during Tresspasser "Was it ever MY Inquisition?" Of course, Solas denies that he was ever really in charge, but he was in the background pulling a lot of strings, even if he didn't have the final say.

Also, people are saying Solas won't even be important in DA4, so we Solasmancers should stop bitching.

Well, if Solas isn't important, then why weren't we given the option to deal with him in Trespasser and end his story there?

We are given the option to murder knife, join, or spare Morrigan and Anders (the other "evil" apostates) but we are not given the option to deal with Solas in a similar fashion? That's bullshit.

And if Solas isn't that important, it will just be a symptom of yet more sloppiness on Bioware's part.

See, all this happened because

1) Bioware did not have a plan from the beginning. They didn't plan for this series to be more than one game, then couldn't decide whether or not to bring the Warden back -- because some people had a dead Warden (myself included).

They got around this by inventing Hawke, who was then supposed to pick up the rest of the series as the main protagonist, leading the Inquisition and so forth.

But things changed AGAIN. Probably because lots of fans didn't like being forced to play a predefined, human character. Dragon Age 2 was nothing like the first game we all loved. Dragon Age 2 was basically Pseudo Final Fantasy, with it's own Cloud (Fenris) and everything.

So Bioware tried to go back to its roots with Inquisition, scrapping Hawke as the protagonist and inventing the Inquisitor, yet ANOTHER human noble character.

People didn't like being forced to play another human noble. Most of us (myself included) got into this series because we loved choosing who we were. I have always identified with oppressed outsiders (because I am an oppressed outsider) so I always play elves. I did not wnat to play a human again.

Bioware listened and added multiple races, but by then it was too late: the series had become a butchered clusterfuck, a thin shadow of what it had been.

2) The second reason all this happened? EA thought it would be great to take an rpg with depth and maturity and water it down into some streamlined mess. Somehow, they equated butchering a story with appealing to a wider audience and gaining more money.

So we have this MESS before us today that is Dragon Age (god, I fucking HATE EA), where every protagonist after the Warden has a clusterfuck story where they never defeat their own arch-nemesis and instead pass them off to some other hero.

I'm sorry, but Solas DOES belong to the Inquisitor as a villian. Just as Corypheus *really* belonged to Hawke (because Inquisition was originally a continuation of Hawke's story).

Just as we would have been pissed had Hawke stepped in at the last minute to kill the archdemon, thus stealing the Warden's enemy (who we worked so HARD to defeat) from them.

The Inquisitor is *not* coming back as a protagonist. Bioware has denied the arm has anything to do with it (they don't want to look ableist but being anti-indigenous is fine and dandy!) but no matter the reason, the Inquisitor's story is over and they are not going to be the protagonist anymore.

This means I don't get to end Solas' story as the Inquisitor.

That SUCKS.

That's like . . . ending Morrigan's story as Hawke, even though I romanced Morrigan in the game before and had history with her (and I did on two playthroughs romance Morrigan, so I waited for Witch Hunt just like everyone else).

That's like . . . ending Anders' story as the Inquisitor, even though Hawke had personal history (including betrayal) with him.

Remember what it was like after DA2 dropped? Remember all the gamers who HATED Anders and were foaming at the mouth about his betrayal? Imagine for one SECOND if they were not given the option to deal with Anders as Hawke and he instead carried over to Inquisition? As will Nerd Rage, the outrage would have been perpetual and unending.

And yet, I, a Solasmancer, am expected to just accept the way the story was handled, without criticizing it or even lamenting it. I, a Solasmacer, am expected to just . . . quietly accept something I don't like.

I suppose Nerd Rage is purely reserved for straight white homophobic dudes who want to kill Anders because he hit on them once.

Why are Solasmancers ridiculed and mocked for wanting to end Solas' story AS Lavellan? Why in FUCK is that such a god-awful thing?

It pisses me off because I already decided -- long before Trespasser was released -- that I would no longer be buying anymore Dragon Age games. Their anti-indigenous hate-screed (on top of the over-all sad dumbing down of the game into an MMORPG) had already convinced me to quit the series. So learning that my character would not get a proper ending to her story until the next game was beyond annoying.

But whatever. Go on mocking me on fextralife and bsn and whatever forum you like.

What I can't understand is why people even pay attention to my blog. I am just one fan ranting bitterly to myself about how a video game disappointed me.

I'm just one fan. I'm not hurting anyone.

And I'm allowed to have whatever fucking reaction I want to these games.

I'm allowed to have an opinion.

Hard to wrap your head around, I know.

EDIT: And to Steel Can.

I have watched for years as you behaved on the forums like a racist asshat about people of color, hiding behind your hatred of the Dalish to justify it. I wish you’d just shut the living fuck UP.

NO. The Dalish don't expect nor force city elves to worship their gods when they join them. Play a Dalish in Origins sometime. You might actually learn something -- not that you care to learn that you’re wrong. 

You're trying so DESPERATELY to justify the religious oppression of the elves. You're trying so DESPERATELY to justify the shitty way Lavellan was treated for her beliefs by everyone in the game -- even her friends -- by building false equivalences (the white man’s favorite passtime) and pretending the elves are just as bad as the humans.

But they're not. This is something Manifest Destiny, racist white men, would have you believe. They need you to believe it in order to justify history’s crimes. They need you to believe that indigenous people were violent savages who warred upon each other, so this made it “okay” and even “good for them” to be invaded, enslaved, and oppressed. 

I mean, it’s not like white people didn’t treat the Irish and the Scottish like garbage or anything. White people were always good to each other. They never tortured each other in dungeons and beheaded each other over loaves of bread . . .

Dalish elves were not forcing anyone to their religion when they joined their camps. Pol never gets vallalsin in the ten years he’s with the Dalish. Because he doesn’t have to. When you meet him in Origins. he is being taught to hunt and survive. The Dalish Warden tells him to just make himself useful, and he is welcome. No religious conversion required. He is not forced into elven religion.

And even if Pol was forced:

Nothing can justify what was done to the elves. 

Nothing can justify imperialism, invasion, genocide, cultural genocide, and slavery.

Just as nothing can justify what was done to real indigenous people. 

I bet you hated the Thalmor in Skyrim and sided with the Stormcloaks to protect their religion even while hating the Dalish -- a people facing religious oppression -- in Dragon Age. Because only white men are allowed to have cultural, religious freedom, and any culture that’s not white isn’t worthy of respect, right?

But why am I wasting my time, Steel Can? Your sorry racist ass will never understand. You enjoy shitting on real indigenous people and using Dragon Age to justify it. Because Bioware's racism gave you the tools to do so.

That does not make you or Bioware right.

So I was playing Skyrim (Vilkas is a crappy follower -- Farkas is better) and for some reason, I started thinking about how I made that Loghain post about two (?) years ago and how Dragon Age fans misunderstood it.

I remember having some fans attack me, astonished and self-righteously outraged that I was "defending" a racist slaver. Meanwhile, other fans approached me in a friendly manner, shocked that I had apparently killed Loghain in the game even though I pitied him. These two groups were both under the impression that I liked Loghain, which was . . . utterly baffling to me.

It occurred to me that these fans must've been very young, because they were still thinking with a very black and white mentality. To them, pitying Loghain was equal to liking him (except it's not) and explaining why he did what he did in Origins was somehow the same as condoning his actions (again, it's not).

If I recall correctly, the purpose of my post was to recount Loghain's sins in a list where I explained why he committed each one through codexes, letters, and info I'd gathered in the game (working with Howe, Anora's schemes, etc).

Also, keep in mind that I always tended to write such posts after having taken my meds and right before going to bed, so they were often incoherent, drowsily written nonsense.

So ironic that I was accused of ableism while too out of my mind to write a decent post due to a medication for my MENTAL ILLNESS.

So ironic that I was accused of racism and condoning slavery, only to have my accuser turn around and make racist insults at me.

But whatever. Back to Loghain.

I think Alistair summed it up best when he said that people like Loghain and Anora think they're the only ones who can get anything done. Loghain thinking he was the only competent and trustworthy person in all of Feralden is half the reason Feralden nearly burned to the ground.

Yes, I pity Loghain. But, no, I don't like him. He's an asshole and I've never had a playthrough where I spared him (especially since I played elves so much).

I pity Loghain because he has PTSD and his wild paranoia was sad to watch. He truly believed Cailan was going to marry Celene when he clearly wasn't (something Inquisition and The Masked Empire only further proves -- Celene is queer, power-hungry, and in no way willing to marry a man) and if you take Loghain back to Ostagar, he rants and raves about Cailan's "betrayal" wildly. It reminds me of mentally ill people I knew personally.

So, yes. I pity Loghain because he is a broken soldier. And how could anyone have helped him? Thedas doesn't "do" mental illness well. As I mentioned on another post, Cullen is probably the first templar in (recent) history to open a rest home for broken soldiers.

What was more, Loghain had too much power. There was no one to stop him in the heights of his paranoia. Even Cailan couldn't do anything because he needed Loghain's help against the darkspawn.

Also, Anora would probably never speak to Cailan again if he sent her father away. I believe Cailan really loved Anora and was never going to marry Celene. Eamon (so high on having the king's ear) kept telling Cailan to find a new wife, and Cailan kept telling Eamon to mind his own business. So Eamon's letters, combined with the complete businesslike letters from Celene about an "alliance" both led Loghain -- in his feverish brain -- into believing his son-in-law was casting Anora aside, when nothing was farthest from the truth.

If you pay attention at Ostagar, Cailan is clearly annoyed by Loghain but can't be rid of him. I wouldn't be surprised if he suggested having Loghain retire to a chantry somewhere, only for Anora to become upset with him until he called it off. Remember, Anora practically worshiped her father.

Also, yes, I enjoy understanding the reasons why Loghain did what he did. That's because I'm a writer and I enjoy knowing the entire story. That does not mean I condone Loghain's actions.

I recall fans sneering on me for talking about gray morality and how the Gray Wardens were called GRAY WARDENS because gray morality is the entire theme of Dragon Age.

The fans were sneering on me because they thought I was using "gray morality" to excuse the elven slave trade. Only I wasn't. I never said it was right or necessary to sell the elves off to Teviner. In fact, it was completely unnecessary (when is slavery ever necessary?). And given the fact that my favorite Gray Warden was Kalian (and my second favorite was Mahariel) it was downright infuriating. (Kalian's father almost gets sold.)

Also, it wasn't Loghain that sold the elves. It was Howe, as theorized in another post of mine. Howe led a massacre against the elves after Tabris killed Vaughn, and when that wasn't enough to cow them, he used bio warfare and slavery to be rid of them. In fact, he did just about everything that has been done historically to people of color in real life -- why in FUCK would I excuse or condone this???

David Gaider stated on BSN (I believe the thread is gone now with the rest of the forums) that Loghain didn't even know what was happening in the alienage until you wave the slaver documents in his face during the landsmeet.

Loghain wasn't given a short stick by the plot. He was written wonderfully. He was written just well enough that you could pity him and hate him at the same time. And he felt very human. And very real. More real than Coryphshit, anyway.

Loghain had a full story arc with multiple outcomes. It's pretty much everything a fictional character in a video game could ask for. He wasn't given the short end of anything, in my humble opinion.

Even though Loghain wasn't directly (but was indirectly) responsible for the slave trade, he was still responsible for a lot of seedy shit. He was responsible for Uldred. He promised a man -- a slave -- his freedom, only to go back on that promise, which led to Uldred committing suicide by giving his body to a demon and wreaking havoc on the tower: the real Uldred was dead by the time the Warden arrived.

Loghain was also responsible for Redcliffe but couldn't be bothered to manipulate the Dalish into his control. No, they were already destroying themselves in a neat little plot about how the writers think white people aren't responsible for modern day oppression or whatever.

Anyway.

It's supposed to be ironic that Loghain depises the Gray Wardens and yet acts just like them, committing atrocities to do what is necessary (or what he THINKS is necessary) but not what is right. It's almost like the game was building up specifically for him to become a Gray Warden. Especially if you read the books, you can see what I mean. (The same kinda goes for Solas, though he's just a Loghain-expy anyway.)

My point is, fans of the game are too young to grasp its more mature themes, which reach beyond simple black and white ethics. Dragon Age: Origins is a world were nothing is black and white and nothing is supposed to be simple (again, not "condoning" slavery. Slavery is pretty simple: it's wrong). It's a world full of anti-heroes who do bad things to save the day.

Again, Howe wasn't doing something "necessary" in selling off elves, so I'm NOT talking about him when I speak about gray morality. I'm talking about Loghain, who firmly believed he was doing the right thing at Ostagar, even though he really wasn't. Loghain firmly believed that saving his troops and pulling them out would protect Ferelden, even if it meant sacrificing thousands of lives -- just as Solas believed sacrificing all those people on the mountain by tricking Corypheus into opening his foci was necessary to save his own people.

As a side note, it kind of pisses me off that Patrick Weekes wrote that segment for Solas where Solas talks about the battle at Ostagar being not so black and white. He tries to make it seem as if Loghain's actions could have actually been right in some way, but anyone who's paid close nerdy attention knows that Loghain was clearly WRONG. I believe this was done mostly to honor the player's interpretation but . . .

If Loghain hadn't barred the Orlesians from entering Ferelden, then pulled out his own troops, Ostagar would not have happened. Period.

During the first act of Inquisition, you can actually get in a fight with the quartermaster at Haven about Ostagar. It's another example of Patrick's Weeke's shitty writing, where he tries to get an emotional reaction from the audience by appealing to the player instead of the Inquisitor. He basically has no idea how to write for a video game and instead writes like this is a novel. 

The Inquisitor has no reason to care so passionately about Loghain and Ostagar, while those of us who played Origins do. Yet the Inquisitor is so angry, they act as if they were there (because we were there) when they really shouldn't give a fuck. This is immersion breaking, also stupid, and Weekes uses this method to pull us into the story emotionally multiple times throughout the game: Morrigan's introduction where the Inquisitor is smiling at a dangerous stranger as if they know her, the popular and much loved Teagan being a jerk in order to play on our feelings (and again not the Inquisitor’s feelings), etc.

Loghain wanted desperately to keep the Orlesians out because the war against Orlais had left him paranoid and suffering PTSD. Orlesians raped his mother and killed his father. Orlesians mounted the heads of his family and friends on pikes. Orlesians made his life a living hell.

And it was so, so easy to blame everything on Cailan once he was dead, wasn't it? But I don't think Loghain was really even blaming Cailan out of power-hungry maliciousness: he actually believed Cailan was a stupid child (Calian's name even means child) and would forever see Cailan through the "father filter."

Loghain has a Fade nightmare that was cut from the game and buried in the game files. In it, he is trapped with child!Cailan in the Fade and is bogged down by guilt and anger. He will always see Cailan as a child and will hate himself for killing him, even while still hating Cailan.

Yes, Loghain hated Cailan, possibly because he was the child of Maric and Rowan, Rowan being the woman he loved. He believed Cailan was a little boy who wanted war and had miscalculated the battle, when in fact Cailan was pretending to want war to keep his troops in good spirits (Wynne confirms this). Cailan knew they were going to die at Ostagar thanks to Loghain -- this is why he sends you and Alistair to the tower. I think he might have even known Loghain was sabotaging the tower.

Again, all of this is mentioned in Return to Ostagar. Nothing about Ostagar was "morally gray" as Solas (and Patrick Weekes, who apparently doesn’t know the story) would have you believe.

And yet, while Loghain's actions were very wrong, he was also not the mad, evil, cartoony villain Alistair saw him as.

Loghain was a sick man who believed he was doing what was right: THAT is what makes this situation morally gray.

Also, Loghain's an asshole because he's racist. I recall one playthrough he called my Mahariel a wild elf, insinuating that she was worthless because she was Dalish. And even though he worked with the Dalish in the books, he and Maric never really treated them like people. The elves fought in the war to liberate Ferelden and then got all of nothing for it and went right back to being socially, religiously, economically oppressed (correct me if I'm wrong). Sounds a bit like the Revolutionary War, huh?

All those nobles at the landsmeet screaming about how Fereldens don't believe in slavery, as if oppression ends at whips and chains.That entire scene at the landsmeet was very realistic, actually. How many white people today think people of color aren't socially, economically oppressed and that oppression ended with slavery? They'v got freedom and don't even know what it is. But if it was suddenly taken away, they would know. Oh, they would know. 

This grimdark crap is why I enjoy breaking the theme by playing a Warden who is not an anti-hero but a hero. Which means that Loghain always dies in my games because a hero would kill him, while a pragmatic anti-hero would make use of him.

The fact that Dragon Age: Origins is grimdark is what makes playing a shining hero so great. Dagna's line about the Gray Warden "It was a time of darkness, she was the only light" was perfect because of this.

I loved playing a hero who saved the day without resorting to pragmatism. I loved it simply because the real world doesn't work that way, and I wish desperately that it did; I wish that people could just be good for once.

I loved playing a hero and having Loghain realize my character was everything he should have been and everything he could not be. (Again, it's the same with Solas and a good, morally upstanding Inquisitor.)

That being said, I also believe a "good" Inquisitor would let Blackwall live. I believe the difference between Loghain and Blackwall is that  while one has a chance to overcome his own darkness, the other does not. Loghain never goes on a killing spree again should you let him live, but he also has to live in misery the rest of his life. Frankly, I always viewed his execution as a mercy kill. And if you defeat him in combat, he pretty much asks you -- with a content smile -- to kill him.

The point I'm trying to make, what I'm getting at is this:

I suddenly understand why series with more "mature," thought-provoking themes like Dragon Age and Mass Effect have been dumbed down and watered down into childish, cartoony, bullcrap.

The fans are too young to get it.

That's not an insult. It's just the truth. We're all naive and inexperienced at least once in our lives. That's the very definition of youth.

Look at Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World. The first game -- while still a bit ridiculous, adolescent, and cliched -- at least has more mature, thought-provoking themes, situations that leave you questioning if you did the right thing. The second game is a bunch of adolescent whining, cringey cliches, and utter nonsense.

Dragon Age: Origins went from characters with depth, meaningful choices, and interesting npcs to Inquisition, the light-hearted, bubbly, bland, cliched, MMORPG/Skyrim wannabe, where your choices don’t matter and your own followers treat you like shit long after you’ve befriended them -- but only if you’re Dalish.

Mass Effect went from the same deal (mature themes, blah, blah, blah) to watered down . .  . everything. Tactics, choices, any seriousness or depth was all replaced with button-mashing combat and campy comic book drivel (yeah, I went there). Though don't get me wrong: at least the combat for Mass Effect was fun across all three games.

It's like the writers went, "Fuck it. The audience wouldn't appreciate or grasp mature themes anyway!" and gave us a bunch of cartoonish, ridiculous shit.

First off . . . fuck you, DreamM, for talking down to Solasmancers like we're a bunch of morons just for wanting some closure. Fuck you.

My first Inquisitor was a Lavellan who romanced Solas, and I did not go into that romance expecting a happy ending.

But I did expect AN ENDING.

Silly me. I'm so stupid for expecting that my character would get some fucking closure.

Instead, my character is defeated by Solas, utterly, in every conceivable way -- sort of in the same way she defeated Corypheus, ironically enough -- and there's nothing she can do.

That sucks.

People play video games because they want a power fantasty. This includes the power to WIN in the end, not lose horribly and be sidelined for a new protagonist.

The Inquisitor is the only DA protagonist who loses their final fight. They are also the only DA protagonist whose ending we don't get to play out. Trespasser made it painfully obvious that she/Quizzy will be hiring the DA4 protagonist to fight Solas in her place, while probably showing up as a crappy NPC every now and then.

Imagine for a second if people who romanced Morrigan never got that Witch Hunt dlc?

Or imagine for a second if Hawke was never allowed to confront Anders for his betrayal?

People would be just as mad. But Solasmancers have the gall to want closure, power over our situtation, and some kind of actual ending for our character, so we're just silly morons, right?

Fuck you. Fuck you and every Dragon Age fan who thinks like you.

As someone whose canon warden was a Dalish who sacrificed herself to the Archdemon (after romancing Alistair) I am not afraid of sad endings. I also didn't go into the Solas romance foolishly thinking the ending would be happy.

I can handle tragic endings just fine. What I CAN'T handle is having no ending at all.

My Warden got her ending. My Hawke got her ending. My Inquisitor gets no ending. Instead, she sits on the sidelines while someone else finishes her story.

Granted, I could be reacting prematurely. For all we know, the Inquisitor might get closure with Solas in DA4, and instead of her being some poorly done NPC, maybe we'll actually be able to control her.

This is how I imagine (and hope) DA4 will play out.

Solas succeeds in taking down the Veil. Story opens with New Protagnoist seeing this happen and it probably kills thier family or something, so a personal motive for the NP is established in regards to Solas.

I mean, who in their right mind would go up against an elven god who can turn people to stone otherwise? This is why I've often said in the past the new protagonist will need a motive as personal as the Inquisitor's. Otherwise, throwing yourself at a god makes zero sense.

If someone in ancient armor descended from the sky right now and blow a hole in the middle of Missouri, how many of us would leap forward to kick his ass?

Heroes in fiction are often driven by personal vendettas (even the Inquisitor might be sealing the Breach just to save their own ass), and the ones who are duty and honor driven usually have the power to back up being recklessly stupid. I imagine the NP won't be initially so powerful that they will try fighting Solas off the bat (no, not even a mage). I imagine they will become powerful, though.

After the Veil is destroyed, the Elven Gods rise, and the Inquisitor mentors the new protagonist in thier work against Solas and the Elven Gods.

New Protagonist cleverly leads Solas into a trap, where the Inquisitor ambushes him and captures or kills him with some kind of powerful artifact (I mean, if this happens in Tevinter, there's bound to be something there that can stop Solas).

If Bioware isn't cruel, they will allow us to control the Inquisitor as she is facing down Solas (mine would be killing him, not capturing him, even though -- yes -- she romanced him).

With Solas dead, locked behind a mirror (again), or otherwise incapacitated, the Inquisitor gets to have her closure and her ending. Yay.

New Protagonist, after growing into a powerful hero under Quizzy's mentorship, then goes on to fight the Elven Gods. Wins. Then end.

I could live with this.

But even if everything played out just like I wanted, I'm still not buying DA4.

Why?

Because Bioware has already proven that they don't care about consistency. They don't care about honoring their own lore. They still don't care about their female audience: the majority of our romances are always tradgic and fucked up -- plus, they take way too much pleasure in mocking Cullenites and Solasmancers in the game itself. And finally, they are anti-indigenous, anti-pagan bigots.

So people complain about Bioware and their video games? So fucking what?

Spoiler Alert: nerds complain about video games.

It's our favorite pastime.

After coming to tumblr almost three years ago and seeing just how shitty and toxic the fandom was, I learned it was pretty easy to avoid that shit once you got the lay of the land (i.e. which crappy blogs to avoid). Your tumblr experience depends mostly on who you follow.

And if you can't handle shitty messages in anon, just do what I did and turn them off. It's just too bad you can't turn off tumblr's stupid private chat feature, because I get way too many people being rude to me there. To the point that I just don't read messages anymore.

But yeah. People are allowed to have negative opinions about the shit you love. Welcome to life.

Also, it's not the elves that Bioware hates. It the indigenous people they represent.

Dragon Age does nothing but demonize and crap on the Dalish. Over and over. Because they think indigenous people in real life are scum.

Maybe you're too young to understand that. Maybe you just don't have a real grasp on racism. But for everyone who's seen this shit before, we can recognize it.

Believe me, I didn't believe it either until I really started paying attention to how the Dalish are depicted in each game. Inquisition brings that underlining theme of Manifest Destiny to the forefront, but it's a racist theme that was always there.

The hatred was more subtle in Origins yet became shitfuck obvious in Inquisition. So it makes me very tired every time someone makes a post going on about how much Bioware must "love" the elves just because they've made their lore the main focus.

You understand it's possible to fetish a people's culture and want it for yourself even while hating the people who belong to it, right?

Hence the way only white humans in Dragon Age (the Avvar) are allowed to be tribal, worship spirits, practice magic, and at the same time are depicted as nuanced people, while the elves are almost exclusively depicted as cruel savages, snobs, blood mages, demon worshipers, and have been so stripped of all humanity by the last game that it's impossible to sympathize with them any longer.

The elves are depicted as inferior fuckups and humans are always presented as better. Morrigan is "better" than Merrill with eluvians, Morrigan knows more about the Dalish than an actual Dalish Inquisitor, Mythal would rather entrust her spirit to a human, the Dalish in The Masked Empire are too stupid to unlock the eluvian (to let Solas out) and yet, Briala the City Elf and Michel the Human can open it just like that, because humans and elves who have assimilated into human culture are superior to those dumb pagans!!!

The elven Grey Warden Iselya made the griffons go extinct. But her brother ended the Blight, so I guess even an elf can't fuck up simply DYING.

Elves are always dying in droves because they are presented as irrational and stupid by throwing themselves against the player for seemingly no reason, all so that white people -- sorry, I mean the player -- can absolve themselves of any wrongdoing when they commit genocide OVER and OVER in each game.

The elves asked for it! Why can’t they just surrender!

Slaughtering entire groups of indigenous people and then going, "Well, it was irrational of them to fight me. Why be angry that I invaded their land, raped their wives, outlawed their religion, and stole their children!" is the entire essence of Manifest Destiny.

Manifest Destiny: indigenous people are violent, irrational, inferior, can't achieve a damn thing without fucking up, and thus must be put out of their misery. Manifest Destiny. It's the belief that indigenous people are inferior and that killing them is so sad and beautiful because it's "for their own good."

Dragon Age is FULL of poems that romanticize the deaths of elves (mainly the original Dalish) who refused to surrender to human invasion and were "regretfully" slain by humans who begged them to stop fighting.

Yeah. The Dalish should have just surrendered. They should have just not been so proud! Why not just give in and become wage slaves in alienages who aren't allowed to worship their own gods? Their gods are demons anyway!!!

Solas, an elven god, is the embodiment of indigenous foolishness and pride. Because naturally, the elves were foolish for not simply submitting to human rule! Solas, a god, is so inferior that he can't even open his own fucking foci and needs the originally-human-Inquisitor to do it for him.

Only humans can do anything right in Dragon Age.

The Inquisitor was originally going to be a HUMAN who wielded the anchor better than Solas. The only reason they added races in at the last minute? A bunch of fans said they would not buy Inquisition if they were forced to play human -- AGAIN.

So while Bioware has an obvious fetish for indigenous culture, they could give less than a shit about indigenous people, and are perfectly willing to strip them of all humanity game after game, to the point that even ex-Dalish elves (Sera (arguably), Minaeve, and Dalish of the Chargers) hate and despise the Dalish as well.

We are not meant to sympathize with the elves. They are supposed to be buffoonish "inferiors" whose foolishness destroyed themselves and the old world -- true to Manifest Destiny and delusions of white superiority.

Canadians are super racist against their indigenous people, and this translated into Dragon Age. Unfortunately.

It took me a long time to make sense of this, as I didn't know much about First Nations people or Canadians (we didn’t really study them much in my anthropology classes). But now, after doing some reading, it all makes perfect sense.

Canadians only value First Nations people who have assimilated into white culture, thus the city elves in Dragon Age are treated ten times better by the narrative than the Dalish. Thus, we have Varric in Trespasser giving Clan Lavellan the opportunity to forget their own shitty pagan culture and assimilate into human culture. This is seen as a good thing that "helps" the Dalish: erasing their culture like it's inferior and being human is preferable.

So yeah, Patrick Weekes. Your wife being First Nations doesn't make you any less racist for everything that was done and said about indigenous elves in Inquisition by your hand.

And of course, David Gaider is racist too: he created the original lore that made the Dalish out to be inferior in the first place.