#my rant posts

What does this have anything to do with a video game? Well, the game is written in English and even in a fantastical medieval setting that is supposedly entirely fictional, we still come across the term "gender," which in itself is a relatively new term in the English language, only coined in the 50s.

And throughout Veilguard, we see this Western hegemony on gender/queer identities manifest in Taash's story line.

Let's start with the Neve & Taash conversation in the Lighthouse that sparked this whole story arc. Whereby Taash questioned Neve's clothing choices and asked if Neve wore dresses and make-up to appease her mother. A pretty innocuous conversation albeit a bit cringey and superficial at times, right?

This "dress=woman, pants=man" type of thinking only works if you've never stepped outside of the western context. Especially for someone like Taash (who is arguably coded as non-white) to say that, is very jarring to me when I was playing the game. It reads more like a writer's self-insert rather than something Taash, as a character would say. Even in a western world, both men and women did not wear trousers for most of European history. Bioware often falls into modern revisionist entrapment in their writing, and in the case of gender, it is of no exception.

In SEA, gender is muted, according to Ong (1989), only making a difference when it comes to prestige. Hence gender expression is also muted. In Indonesian and Malay societies even until today, both men and women are still wearing "dresses" or sarung (in Malay). Clothing is historically used to denote status, and often, in SEA, women did occupy positions of prestige, especially pre-colonisation and pre-contact with religions such as Islam and Christianity.

Then, through this conversation, Taash expressed discomfort around their gender and Neve recommended Taash talk to her friends in Tevinter. It is here that we can see Taash going to Tevinter and asking Maevaris and other Shadow Dragons about gender demonstrate Tevinter as the hegemonic voice rather than Taash's own country. What does Tevinter have to offer that Rivain doesn't?

Are Tevinters more inherently enlightened than the Rivainis around this topic? Since when did we decide that Tevinter is the hub of queer liberation movement in Thedas? Oh, my bad, I didn't realise Minrathous, conversion therapy capital had miraculously become a safe haven for gender non-conforming folk. You are telling me, that those Lords of Fortune strutting around in feathers and bright colours back in Rivain have no insights or wisdom to share with Taash? Is Rowan, the qunari seer, a figment of my imagination?

While I could see that this might reflect the real-life experiences of queer folks in SEA having to look at the West for examples or representation because our own queer history is erased by the very same people and nations that are now at the forefront of queer liberation, I just don't think Trick Weekes was thinking about queer youths in the Third-World when writing this logistically, ideologically, logically non-sensical plot line.

Next, I just want to touch on labelling and the emphasis on labels as western, colonial epistemology. Yes, I am talking about that Codex whereby we see modern real-life terminologies — gender-fluid, agender, bigender, demigender, or even trans — being mentioned like some sort of fashion catalogue or menu to be perused.

This is very much in line with the desire of the colonialists to map out every single inch of land that was full of resources waiting to be extracted, leaving no land unexplored, and with no regards to native sovereignty. The famous example being The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) signed by Portugal, Spain and other colonial powers that essentially divided the rest of the world under different 'masters.' This treaty essentially kick-started the colonial project and conquer in the name of exploration around the globe.

Not just geopolitics, we also see colonial epistemology extend its reach in biology. Non-Europeans were categorised into different races, and appraised from intelligence, personalities, temperaments, and how those attributes relate to phenotypes and skull-sizes.

Hence my grievance lies not necessarily in the modern use of terminologies, like "non-binary" or "trans," the problem arises, when we are trying to map these terms onto a non-western context.

The use of terms such as transgender and third gender in Southeast Asian historical contexts is tricky because the category of “gender” limits the cultural fields of power [e.g. spiritual power] within which these individuals operated. —Loos (2020)

While I do not disagree that some people might find the representation in Veilguard neat or even helpful, I do remain skeptical at the totalising, American-centric monopoly, as a form of cultural imperialism, over the narrative when it comes to gender and how it is discussed in the game and in the broader context outside of the game (e.g. fandom).

And to return to the title of this section, I think when consuming media, specifically one that purports to be queer-centric, it's best to keep in mind of the question: who gets to talk about gender?

Colonial Violence and Gender Pluralism

Here comes my gripe with the underdevelopment of lore when it comes to Rivain, a country that is very distinct from other Andrastian countries.

According to WoT, Rivain is a coastal, matriarchal (although I dislike the word) nation with a significant qunari population thus contributing to a diversity of faiths and spiritualities. To some of us, "coastal," "spiritual," "diverse," "matriarchal," might ring something or somewhere familiar. That is basically Southeast Asia, thus my choice to make SEA as comparisons in the first place.

Rivain has deep roots in spirituality, and the ones that are connected to the spiritual realms are the seers, who are primarily women.

In some areas of SEA, women occupied the positions of ritualists and were highly regarded. According to Peletz (2009), in northern Philippines during the 16th-century, Europeans observed that female ritual practitioners outnumbered the males by 50:1 ratio.

Transgendered ritualists — who in almost all cases were male-bodied individuals dressed in feminine attires and adopted feminine manners— were also revered. In some cases, they were regarded as nobles and members of the royal court. However, that was all within a pre-colonial context.

Some scholars believe that "[these transgendered ritualists were] appropriating and performing the potent symbols of locally powerful femininity" to "bolster their ritual prowess and overall spiritual potency." Hence it is safe to conclude that women, in some areas of SEA, were regarded as spiritually potent.

[T]he primary significance of transgender figures [exists] in spiritual domains rather than exclusively or solely within the fields of gender, sex, and sexuality. —Loos (2020)

To summarise using Peletz (2009), "religiously informed cosmologies in the Asian region undergirded prestige hierarchies that valorized different forms and combinations of gender and sexuality and different ways of being human." The fact that this aspect of gender entwined within spirituality was not explored in Rivain was a disappointment, to say the least.

And it also rubs me the wrong way when gender is solely discussed in terms of individual identity. In modern context, gender should never just be discussed in a vacuum. Gender meanings are always changed and experienced through the changing power structures.

Colonialism had rendered these previously venerated groups (e.g. bissu of Bugis Sulawesi, Sadati in Aceh, manang bali in Iban, balian in Ngaju Dayak) irrelevant or in some cases, marginalised (i.e., hijra in India) by subsuming indigenous cultures. This act of ripping the spiritual from gender is in itself an act of colonial violence.

It is of no coincidence, that a fantasy nation named Rivain, which essentially acts as the stand-in representation for any non-western, non-Christian (Andrastian) ideas, is thoroughly neglected by the narrative in favour of the more 'enlightened' Tevinter as the conduit for progressivism.

Oh boy, this thing is long. But I am not done yet.

Gender and Islam | Gender and the Qun

Here we are, my favourite (derogatory) bone to pick with Bioware, the motherfucking Qun (which I did a breakdown of a while ago: link here.)

In this section, I will primarily talk about Islam specifically how it interacts with Malay societies, and just how Islamophobia absolutely clouds Bioware's approach to the Qun and subsequently the audience's perception. The thing that prejudice makes us miss out on compelling narratives in favour of mediocrity is sigh-inducing.

As we all know, the Qun is very rigid on gender, hence we see Taash's frustration when this subject is touched upon by their mother, aka my beloved fictional auntie, Shathann. And the Qun famously has nothing to do with Islam and how it is often perceived as patriarchal and oppressive.

With that in mind, let's take a look at the Minangkabau or West Sumatra society in Negeri Sembilan (now a state of Malaysia). It is important to note that, even though not a one-to-one comparison, much like Rivain, the Minang is primarily a matrilineal society, practicing adat pepatih, which in short, entails a matrilineal line of inheritance.

Adat, in English translates to custom, tradition, or customary law but it doesn't sufficiently cover the "cultural meanings, moral force, or social relevance of this unifying, broadly hegemonic construct" (Peletz, 2023.)

Like the rest of SEA, "Negeri Sembilan's gender ideology tends, overall, to deemphasise gender and sexuality, and to highlight sameness, equality, and complementarity between the sexes."

Women symbolise the moral strength and the source of life itself. Senior women teach adat, they are the preservers of knowledge and wisdom in the community. Hence, women have held onto high status in society despite colonisation, Islamisation (which is not what Westerners think it is), and the subsumption of nation-state.

While adat endures, there are concepts such as akal (reason) and nafsu (desire or passion) — which had its influence from Islam — that differentiates women as possessing more passion than men, hence more emotional. But it is also common belief that women are more responsible and more trustworthy of managing properties and social obligations.

How can Islam, which is often viewed as a patriarchal religion (much like Christianity) coexist with a matriliny? One might ask. This matrilineal adat is in perfect co-existence with Islam as the mutual reinforcing natural law in Minangkabau society.

Islamic manhood is by no means always shaped by rigid, patriarchal discourses, and that Islam has long allowed a kind of flexibility and precariousness in the construction of masculinity. —Peletz (2023)

Minangkabau men have a different kind of understanding of manhood. Men measure their moral worth in terms of their ability to protect matrilineal adat and property. While it is true that men enjoy more prestige, freedom and movement from women, and as a group, have a monopoly of violence and external exchange; but women enjoy more autonomy and social control with respect to marriage and affinal relations; and women do indeed exchange men.

That is why I used the Malay-Muslim community as comparison, because Rivain is just so Malay-coded in my humble opinion, from the blending of earlier Hindu-Buddhism and the later Islamic influences; they are at times contradictory, but people are inherently paradoxical. Like how Rivainis, especially those of qunari-descent blend the local spirituality with the Qun. (Rowan, my shayla...) And of course, that didn't get explored in Veilguard at all. Arrghhhh, so much wasted potential.

On Matriarchy and Rivain

The world is not black and white, not in real life, and not in fictional world. The utter inability to capture this nuance is what ruins the Qun for me. Also, the abject failure to construct a "matriarchal" Rivain is just more disappointing, seeing how Rivaini women like Isabela gets treated and the depiction of Isabela's mother as a ne'er do well delinquent con artist.

Do Bioware writers have no idea how matriarchy entails matriliny which entails that Isabela's mother would have never had to resort to selling her daughter because she would have fucking inherited all the fortune. And even if they didn't have a lot of means, Isabela still wouldn't have to end up in what she ended up in those Gaider comics. And portraying Rivain as a pirate nation just...fuck off. (link to my rant about piracy in Veilguard.)

Here's the end, finally...

Before I end this, I want to clarify that some of the languages used to describe individuals are maybe not the most ideal, but such is the curse of using English as the medium.

Any questions about the examples I've mentioned is welcome, as long as it is respectful.

In conclusion, everything this white-ass game 'borrowed' from SEA is just aesthetics wrapped in a shell of progressivism while not actually doing the work of investigating the very cultures you just ripped off of. Typical mat salleh behaviour.

Here are the references used for this rant-like essay:

Butler, J. (2019). Gender in Translation: Beyond Monolingualism.  philoSOPHIA 9(1), 1-25.

Loos, T. (2020). Reading Gender Trouble in Southeast Asia. The Journal of Asian Studies, 79(4), 927–946.

Ong, A. (1989). Center, periphery, and hierarchy: gender in Southeast Asia. Gender and anthropology: critical reviews for research and teaching, 294-303.

Peletz, M. G. (2009). Gender pluralism: Southeast Asia since early modern times. Routledge.

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" unlike 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. These 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.]

Another thing that stands out to me is the functionalist view of gender of the qunari. From DAO, if playing a female PC, we have Sten tell us that "Women are priests, artisans, shopkeepers, or farmers. They don’t fight." And the Arigena is always a woman. Woman or man is associated with their occupation. Not dissimilar to how ancient Chinese view gender as gender roles. Etymologically speaking, the word 男 (man) = 田 (field) +力 (labour) denotes a man's function as labourer; 妇 (woman) = 女 (woman) + 帚 (sweep) denotes a woman's function as a housekeeper, both in the context of family.

The biggest difference is that Confucianism and other "Eastern" philosophies have a monistic view of the world, yet the Qun is not because it is written by white Canadians whose view is entrenched in Cartesianism, hence the distinction of mind (Arishok), body (Ariqun) and soul (Arigena).

Confucianism and the Qun — especially the concept of social harmony and functionalist view of gender — though don't always have a one-to-one sameness, have an overarching overlap, in my opinion. However, the concept of family is basically non-existent in qunari society, a very crucial puzzle piece that doesn't quite fit the "Confucian" picture. Hence the label "pseudo-Confucian" by me.

With that missing piece at the back of my mind, I explored the game further. As I got deeper into the series, the brick that is Plato's Republic metaphorically slapped me across the face (though the copy I owned isn't technically a brick). More specifically, it is Book 3 where Plato discusses the Noble Lie.

The first part of the Noble Lie is autochthony which is about humans are born under the earth, and the earth is their mother. Here, Plato is not talking about literal birth. A person is born into citizenhood when they complete their education. Plato believes that in order to be a proper citizen of the city, one must go through a state education system to be equipped and trained. Once a person is educated, he is said to be born out of ignorance which has kept him under the ground. (I'm using "he" because only "he" was considered a person/citizen.)

The second part of the Noble Lie is the Myth of the Metals. God has deposited different kinds of metals into people’s souls and causing people to have different qualities. There are four types of metals— gold, silver, iron, and bronze. Each metal corresponds to different qualities: Gold = rulers; silver = the guardians of the city; iron = the farmers and other occupations which are considered necessary; bronze = the non-necessary occupations that involve luxury.

(Screenshot of a paper I wrote in uni.)

It is safe to say that the Triumvirate is mostly based on Platonism. The Ariqun (priesthood) while not quite rulers, corresponds to wisdom, the Arishok corresponds to the auxiliaries/guardians, while the Arigena corresponds to artisans/farmers. It also doesn't help my spiral into this rabbit hole, when visually, the qunari are depicted to have metallic skin tones.

And that is also where I found the missing puzzle piece — the absence of family. In Plato's ideal city-state, he advocates for a sort of public ownership of women as opposed to in IRL ancient Greek society, "woman" is subsumed into the family (with the man as the head) along with slaves (whereby the woman is essentially the head of the slaves). Children born with "gold" quality are to be raised and educated by the "gold" class; everyone has their own functions determined since birth (correct me if I'm wrong, bc I haven't read the Republic in ages). Similar to how the Tamassrans are in charge of child-rearing, education, and the categorisation of each qunari into their respective function.

Hence that is why I stated the qunari society as "mostly Platonic." Really, Bioware? Plato, that is the best you can do? At least add your own twist and flavour to it like al-Farabi in al-Madinah al-Fadhilah.

Then there is the "kinda Communist" part. To be honest, I don't really see it except maybe the fact there is no currency in qunari society. Merchants' job is strictly the distribution of goods, not trade. So basically, a post-market society? But none of the communist societies IRL moved past market.

Unless there is a dividend/stipend system during land reforms in China and many other socialist nations, but I couldn't find anything like this regarding the qunari. And I don't think Thedas as a whole had even moved past feudalism, let alone capitalism—which precedes socialism/communism if you actually read Marx, even though he was wrong on a lot of things (especially about the third world), but I digress.

(Average Theodosian when reading Marx: What tf is primitive accumulation?)

Proselytisation

Here we are in the section that sparked this whole rant-like essay. And let's get the double-standard of the writings between the Qun and the Chant out of the way. I don't even have to look meta-textually to see the difference. Content-wise, the Chant had infinitely more passages than the Qun, and everywhere, at least in the first three games, we hear the Chant spoken throughout.

In-game wise, we see the preaching of the Chant by clergy members, be they Mother Giselle or Leliana, and it is treated as it is in text (meaning no condemnation from the writers' self-insert). See how we can be objective and Andrastianism is treated as the objectively established religion in the world, but not when it comes to the Qun.

We never discuss about the Qun itself (i.e. the religious text), save maybe Sten's first encounter and Taash's motto (Shokra to ebra) as opposed to how the Chant is constantly uttered by the clergy. Instead, we have people's view on the Qun, on qunari, on their society, on their politics, every single motherfucker has something to say about the way in which the qunari organise their society. Sounds familiar? That is basically how Islam is treated in western discourse. Nobody knows shit about the Quran, yet everyone acts like an expert on the politics of West Asia. Is that the writers' unconscious biases or something more insidious? 🤷‍♀️

We constantly hear about how the qunari want to convert everyone into the Qun, how harshly they treat dissenters, and once again every single mofo has something to say about it. Let's just call a spade a spade at this point: the depiction concerning the qunari's proselytisation of their faith is Islamophobic in nature. From how the game depicts how the qunari see the Qun as the righteous and only path to how the issue of apostacy is handled.

And guess what, we don't see characters in game calling the Chantry's proclamation of the Maker as the true god and their condemnation of "false gods" tyrannical or dictatorial. Their treatment of mages, yes, the Chantry as an institution, occasionally; but the religion itself, almost never, save maybe that few banters between Morrigan and Leliana that is reminiscent of r/atheism.

This issue is compounded by yet another aspect that is "re-education" as we learn from Bull regarding the Ben-Hassrath. Which is basically a secret agency like the KGB of the Soviet. And the re-education camp whereby the members undergo physical labour is basically gulag. Something straight out of a Red Terror McCarthyite-style commentary. At this point, just add every stereotype into the mix and call it the Qun.

The Qun itself

Let's go through what little excerpts we have regarding the actual Qun itself.

Existence is a choice. There is no chaos in the world, only complexity. Knowledge of the complex is wisdom. From wisdom of the world comes wisdom of the self. Mastery of the self is mastery of the world. Loss of the self is the source of suffering. Suffering is a choice, and we can refuse it. It is in our own power to create the world, or destroy it. Canto 1 When the Ashkaari looked upon the destruction wrought by locusts, He saw at last the order in the world. A plague must cause suffering for as long as it endures, Earthquakes must shatter the land. They are bound by their being. Asit tal-eb. It is to be. For the world and the self are one. Existence is a choice. A self of suffering, brings only suffering to the world. It is a choice, and we can refuse it. Canto 4

First of all, I will temporarily disregard the socio-political context and just focus on the text.

"Existence is a choice." In Mahayana Buddhism (as far as I know), highly enlightened individuals (i.e. boddhisatva), who are out of karmic compulsion (or the cycle of birth and death), choose their continued existence voluntarily as their vow to enlighten others.

"There is no chaos in the world, only complexity. Knowledge of the complex is wisdom." Buddhism also does not view the world as inherently chaotic; impermanent, but not chaotic. Knowledge is seen as important to end suffering, to put it very crudely. There are different kinds of knowledge, but I can't tell which one this passage is implying because it's written in English. Knowledge, even in a western context, doesn't always denote wisdom either. Buddha possesses the wisdom to see through all; hence Buddhahood (enlightenment) is to strive for.

Then we have "Mastery of the self is mastery of the world." I don't personally interpret it in a Buddhist way since the self is treated as illusory. Maybe overcoming the illusion of a permanent self (ego)? Also, Confucianism also applies in the context of self-cultivation — 仁义礼智信 (ren, yi, li, zhi, xin) — to be one with heaven, 天人合一 (tian ren he yi) for "the world and the self are one," but not mastery, which implies a certain ownership. "Westerners stop the colonialist epistemology" challenge failed.

In my delulu mind, even the concept of "Insan Kamil" by Muhammad Iqbal, who was quite influenced by Sufism (correct me if I'm wrong) can apply to the interpretation of this sentence. But then that would be me putting too much faith in Bioware writers, to believe that they had somehow read Iqbal or any Muslim philosophers at all, ancient or contemporary.

"Suffering is a choice, and we can refuse it." Here's where the wishy washiness comes in. Buddhism, at least in my understanding does not see suffering as a choice. Suffering is caused by ignorance, to put it very crudely again, and one does not choose to be ignorant. One can only reduce suffering, not refuse. Because it is not something one chooses.

Also, I would just like to point out the verbiage used is reminiscent of western Buddhism turned self-help. Not actually Buddhism practiced in other parts of the world.

Overall, I think the content of the Qun itself is weirdly Buddhist. Weird in the sense that another concept of Buddhism is not adapted. And I am talking about equality/egalitarianism, a quality the qunari society doesn't possess despite in-game insistence from various qunari characters, neither does Andrastian society.

Just like other major religions in the world, egalitarianism is central philosophically, but politically not always. The historical context in which Buddhism sprung up was in opposition with the major religion — Hinduism which was entrenched in the caste system of India at the time. Even though later the Buddhist clergy was also consisted of mostly Brahmin scholars, but I digress.

What I wanted to say was:

When you disregard the socio-politico-historical context of each philosophy/religion and stitch them together forcefully, and voilà, we have a Frankensteined creature that is the Qun.

In conclusion, out of all the philosophies/religions I have recognised as potential inspirations of the Qun, it is safe to say that Plato's Republic got the most accurate depiction since they literally just copy-pasted it. And why am I not surprised? White people do be white peopling. :)

I would like to open with this statement: "[t]he ‘post’ in postcolonial theory does not signify the period or era ‘after’ colonialism came to an end, but rather signifies the entire historical period after the beginnings of colonialism” (Mishra, 2015). And it "[signifies] not so much subjectivity 'after' the colonial experience as a subjectivity of oppositionality to imperializing/colonizing (read: subordinating/subjectivizing) discourses and practices" (Loomba, 2002).

Here's a quote from Spivak (Ahmad, 1995),

Postcoloniality - the heritage of imperialism in the rest of the globe - is a deconstructive case. As follows: Those of us from formerly colonised countries are able to communicate with each other and with the metropolis, to exchange and to establish sociality and transnationality, because we have had access to the culture of imperialism. Shall we then assign to that culture, in the words of the ethical philosopher Bernard Williams, a measure of 'moral luck'? I think there can be no question that the answer is 'no'. This impossible 'no' to a structure which one critiques, yet inhabits intimately, is the deconstructive philosophical position, and the everyday here and now of 'postcoloniality' is a case of it. Further, the political claims that are most urgent in decolonised space are tacitly recognised as coded within the legacy of imperialism: nationhood, constitutionality, citizenship, democracy, socialism, even culturalism … They are thus being reclaimed, indeed claimed as concept metaphors for which no historically adequate referent may be advanced from postcolonial space.

Even though I'm not particularly a fan of how Merrill's story was written in DA2, I think the canon text still offers some insights.

It was during one of the earlier dialogues that we know not only was Merrill "secluded" from the rest of the clan due to being the First since she studied magic while the other learnt the Vir Tanadhal, but she also had a different opinion from her clan when it comes restoring ancient elven history.

Merrill: Perhaps if the clan was more accepting of the ancient ways and not so mired in fear —

As we know, the Dalish are often depicted as distrustful and sceptical because their survival depends on it, especially when it comes to foreign interaction. In this case, Merrill was referring to the eluvian. Since the discovery of that eluvian led to Tamlen's death and the threat of the Blight, the clan had moved away, to Sundermount. And the same attitude remained.

During the Act 2 Feynriel's quest, Night Terrors:

Pride demon: How about it? Would you take what I offered the boy? Scion of the Dalish, saviour of elvenkind? Merrill: Can you do that?

We know from this interaction with the demon that Merrill wanted to save her people and in the same scene conveyed to Hawke that she could not put them above "the fate of her people."

This is where I went "wait a minute" about the writing. Save the Dalish from what? We've heard enough about this narrative that colonised people, Third World Women, marginalised groups need 'saving', and that usually leads to good things (sarcasm) being done to their countries by the West. To make Merrill of all people as a mouthpiece that purports this line of thinking is just iffy to me.

Wrt to the eluvian, there reached a scene where Hawke discovered the mirror in Merrill's home.

Merill: But it's the Keeper's place to remember! Even the dangerous things. We argued...I left. ... Merrill: She's wrong. The mirror could teach us so much about what we once were! ... Merrill: But still, I know it can help my people. I can at least recover this one small part of our heritage. ... Merrill: My people have lost so much. We know almost nothing of the days before Arlathan. This is a piece of our history.

Merrill: Not just our land and freedom, but history, stories, language, music, rituals. Even our gods are gone! ... Merrill: It is a sacrifice, but if the mirror restores even one fragment of the past, it's worth it.

Throughout her personal quest, this sentiment was reiterated again and again. Remembrance and sacrifice. And at the end of it, no matter if Hawke gave her the arulin'holm, the key to the eluvian, or not, the Keeper would die because she had made herself a prison of the demon that was trying to use Merrill and the eluvian as a means to escape.

Merrill: I thought the arulin'holm would fix everything. The mirror would work, and everything would be right again ...

I think this is the part where Merrill realised fixing the eluvian wouldn't fix anything. Her story arc is mixed with personal grief of her friend and collective grief of her people. It's hard to differentiate them from one another, but that is kind of the crux of it, isn't it? Her people had lost so much that when Tamlen and Mahariel (if you play a Dalish origin) saw the blighted eluvian, they did not even recognise it, let alone to be able to discern any danger from the eluvian.

Merrill's story arc in DA2 consisted of 1) remembrance and restoration, and 2) the price of that restoration. On the surface, it seems as if Merrill and Solas have the same goal. But they do not.

One had only been out of uthenera for two decades and missed the entire downfall of the elven people while the other was the descendant of the direct results of the Veil, the weakening of the empire, and centuries upon centuries of oppression by humans.

From a point of characterisation, I'd assume Merrill wouldn't think that bringing down the Veil would fix everything, as she'd learnt from the broken eluvian. When it comes to the postcoloniality of it all, Solas had so such baggage. He was, arguably, one of the ancient elven gods that made the elven empire. And even when he woke, he didn't identify with the Dalish because he wasn't the one who had to be born with a loss. He wasn't the one who had to deal with the longue durée of colonisation by humans.

He needn't reclaim or remember anything. Apart from the orb — the repository of his power, which was destroyed in the last battle with Corypheus, so he took Flemeth/Mythal's power at the end instead. Bro had an orb lying around this entire time, while Briala had to girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep her way to the key of the eluvian network in TME, then it was taken away by him just like that in Trespasser.

With that in mind, let's move on to Briala — another woman the fandom pretends to care about only in so far as making her a prop to justify their misogyny disguised as genuine criticism towards Celene.

From DAI transcript:

Briala: Celene is the voice of reason in the empire. But reason is cautious. Reason looks for compromise. Reason doesn’t choose radical change. However sorely it may be needed.

PC: What are you hoping to gain from tonight’s negotiations? Briala: A voice. Simple enough, isn’t it? My people have none. We’ve lived two centuries amid the lowest ranks of society. No one hears us. No one sees us. If the elves of Halamshiral were elevated… if we have an elven noble at court? We’d have recognition, a voice.

PC: How much can a single member of the court do? Briala: It won’t remake the world overnight, if that’s what your asking. Our problem is invisibility. The people in power ignoring us. We’re not actors, we’re scenery.

PC: You won’t change anything. The empress has all the power. You’ll just be a target for bigots. Briala: Even if it ends in my assassination, it will be something no one, human or elven, can ignore.

The fandom constantly loves to conveniently ignore these words that came straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, to justify the choice of killing Celene, and keeping Gaspard, while making Briala work with Gaspard. To each their own, since this is just a game and we can make whatever decisions we want. But don't pretend there's some sort of moral failing from people who don't make the same choices and have no desires to make those choices in their own game.

With that rant out of my system, let's look at one of the aspects of postcoloniality that shows up in Briala's characterisation. We're shown through our dialogue with the elven ambassador in the Winter Palace during Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts that she wants a voice, a representation for the elven people, and she thinks the way to obtain it is through the empress who'd already promised a noble title in TME. She plays the Game with expertise because, to invoke Spivak's words again, it is "a structure which [she] critiques, yet inhabits intimately."

[Postcoloniality], like the proletariat among social classes, its paradoxical mission is to annul its being, the crux of becoming, in the very instant of its attainment. The aim of postcolonial politics is not the production of postcoloniality as being, as a global condition, but its ultimate sublation (a stark contrast to Western ontology), as a sign that the colonizer/colonized binary has itself been overreached. Hitchcock (2003)

In other words, transcendence is immanent, as Kant would say (Kerslake, 2009). In order to transcend, or go beyond the binary oppressive system, one is immersed then emerged from it.

In this aspect, Briala does have some similarities with Solas who was literally made into this world by Mythal while Briala was made by Orlais, the Game, and Celene. I do not doubt that there're parallels between Celene/Briala and Mythal/Solas, but not everyone is the Special Boy with a special toy.

And Felassan, our beloved tree bark-eating ragebaiter had something to say about that:

“[The eluvians] can work, I think.” Briala held her arms around her. “Halamshiral rioted because of a single nobleman. I can find elves who will help me with my work in every city in Orlais, and more who are too afraid to fight, but will serve as eyes and ears if I can help their children survive the winter.” “That is,” Felassan said, and after a pause, finished, “a unique use of the ancient relics of our people, da’len.” “I think Fen’Harel would have approved,” Briala said, and saw Felassan give a startled laugh. “He might have,” her teacher said, “though I very much doubt it.” The Masked Empire, p. 366-367.

Now, what does all this have anything to do with sublation (aufhebung)? Using the words from Engels (2017),

[n]egation in dialectics does not mean simply saying no, or declaring that something does not exist, or destroying it in any way one likes. Long ago Spinoza said: Omnis determinatio est negatio — every limitation or determination is at the same time a negation. And further: the kind of negation is here determined, firstly, by the general and, secondly, by the particular nature of the process. I must not only negate, but also sublate the negation. I must therefore so arrange the first negation that the second remains or becomes possible. How? This depends on the particular nature of each individual case. If I grind a grain of barley, or crush an insect, I have carried out the first part of the action, but have made the second part impossible. Every kind of thing therefore has a peculiar way of being negated in such manner that it gives rise to a development, and it is just the same with every kind of conception or idea.

What is the next thing after destroying the Veil? As Engels put it, "[i]f I grind a grain of barley, or crush an insect, I have carried out the first part of the action, but have made the second part impossible."

To put it plainly, this is just me using fancy words to say that Briala wouldn't be that stupid. How was she going to change the fate of the elves when there is possibly no place for the modern elves, who had long lost their immortality and magic, in a world without the Veil? Let's just say nothing bad would happen if the Veil went down, the elves still wouldn't be the same as they were before.

I know this is a magical world, but at the end of the day, you can't magic away the collective loss and grief, whether historical, material, socio-cultural, physical, psychological experienced by generations after generations. Just like you can't reverse the harms of colonialism in real life.

All of what I've argued above is why I am hesitant or even apprehensive of people interpreting Briala and Merrill as wanting the same as Solas that is, to return to the past, because reclaiming the past is not the same as returning to the past. Because the past "is not a dead past, but a past which in some sense is still living in the present" (Oko-Otu & Chidume, 2021). Postcoloniality "does not represent either the transcendence or the reversal of colonialism, and it sidesteps the language of beginnings and ends" (Prakash, 1996).

Now this is the part where the Bioware bashing session resumes.

I'm not going over the whole Bellara with White Guilt™️ dialogue because I don't want to have those words appear on my screen again, but I'll focus on her thing with the archive spirit.

Nadas Dirthalen is "[a] creature of the Fade, bound to a crystal. Ancient elves used them to store knowledge—and to help them dream" (DATV transcript).

During the conversation at the end of Bellara's personal quest, the players have to make two choices: destroy or keep the archive spirit, and the reasonings behind the choices are very baffling to me:

Bellara: Our people shaped the world. We don't even know a quarter of what they could do. Or did. Bellara: With the Archive, we could be that again. Rook: So you think we should keep it? Bellara: But what about the bad side? The other things we did? Bellara: We stole the dwarves' dreams. Put their gods to sleep. Bellara: And much, much worse. Rook: Good point. Bellara: There's no easy answer. Bellara: Everything they could be again. Our people's future. On my shoulders.

Bro, not the "Good point" lol. Also "our people's future on my shoulder", Great Man Theory blah blah blah.

Seriously, what is this argument that one must not learn about one's ancestors because they've done something bad. I guess the words of Santayana did not reach Thedas or even Texas possibly: "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Okay, that's enough shitposting from me.

If you decide to keep the Archive, then the archive spirit would be posited as the repository of all knowledge that is to know about the elven people, hence establishing an official narrative over elven history.

It prompts the question: who had access to the archive spirit? Certainly not the people "who scrubbed the floors" (The Masked Empire, p. 280) since we were told it was the Archive of Anaris, one of the Forgotten Ones. And the choice of the word — Archive. What gets to go into the archive and what is to be lost in time? These are the questions that arise from the words left unsaid in this dialogue.

It is also a favouring of written history over oral history that rubs me the wrong way. I'd argue that Origins does a better job at depicting knowledge production of The People™️. It is through songs, stories, rituals. Like the lyrics from In Uthenera,

we sing, rejoice we tell the tales we laugh and cry we love one more day

I don't recall us getting any of that in Veilguard, instead Bellara's entire story arc is all about the Archive and Anaris. And don't even get me started on Anaris 🙄.

It runs on a parallel with Merrill's storyline wrt the eluvian and demon. Bioware seems unable to write a story about reclamation without putting a "price" or "sacrifice" as a prerequisite, and that learning about the past is somehow always "dangerous":

Keeper Marethari: The eluvian is a trap. It cost us Tamlen. It led you to blood magic. Will you let it twist you away from who you really are?

Bellara: [Cyrian and I wanted to] get back what made us who we were. What was stolen from us. But now? Cyrian's gone. Because of what that thing knew. What it told him. And maybe it should be gone too.

Even Briala exhibits similar sentiment regarding the "cost" of it all:

Briala: I’m an elf, Inquisitor. That should tell you everything you need to know about my life. I’m good at what I do. That’s all that matters. I will help my people no matter the cost.

On the surface it feels like both Keeper Marethari and Bellara were responding out of trauma, which is more than fair that Bioware explored that. But why put it as though a collective gain (i.e., knowledge of the past) has to come with a personal loss (i.e., their loved ones)?

Dalish girl wants to know about her ancestors? Well, the people in your current life must die first and you wouldn't even learn anything about the historical artifact you had obtained through strenuous process, worst of all, getting or not getting the key to said historical artifact does nothing narrative wise about the fate of your Keeper, and you are traumatised regardless.

Another Dalish girl wants to know about her ancestors? Well, your brother must die, not once, but twice, for a cheap twist at the end of your quest to the lair of the evil god that was trying to make a comeback, and you wouldn't even get to decide to destroy or keep the historical artifact you had obtained through strenuous process, instead someone called a chess piece would do that for you.

The conclusion: Dalish girls can't have nice things. Actually, the elf girlies just can't have nice things (see: Briala and the eluvians).

The fact is that Bioware has always felt the need to "balance" the narrative (e.g., templar/mage), this constant need to have this bifurcation, binary, dichotomy permeates the entire school of Western philosophy and society at large. And binaries are rarely just two sides of the same coins.

As Derrida argued, binary such as male/female, civilised/uncivilised, light/dark "reflects a hierarchical logic, where the first term is typically seen as superior, pure, or original, while the second is derivative, impure, or marginal" (Chaudhary, 2025). Time and time again, in real life, we are shown "how these binaries support systems of exclusion and oppression."

Bioware claims to champion players' agency, yet every step of the way it tries to run interference with the narrative by "tipping the scale" so to speak. Wrt Merrill or Bellara, Bioware were not actually trying to tell a story of reclamation despite them using the language of it. Much like most of Veilguard, it uses the semantics and the aesthetics of progressivism, but nothing beyond that.

For a story that centres around themes such as the People™️rebelling against evil empire and don't you forget "people living in an empire despite that empire" (Weekes, 2025), Veilguard is awful at showcasing their side of the story. Instead, they focus on Solas, and on the flip side, Elgar'nan. It is this individualisation, this "Great Man Theory" that can be condensed in this particular dialogue between Elgar'nan and Solas while Rook and co. were helping the kidnapped Dalish escape during the Blood of Arlathan quest:

Elgar'nan: Your whining comes from envy, Fen Harel, but it does not have to be so. Elgar'nan: There is a place for you at my side in a new, glorious empire. Solas: But it will not have eluvians, will it? June built them, and now he is dead. Solas: Our great cities came from Sylaise. Our deepest mysteries from Dirthamen. Elgar'nan: I will restore it all. Their achievements will not be lost. Solas: You were a bully who ruled over what others had built, and now the others are gone. Solas: Who do you have left? Ghilan'nain? You cannot rebuild a world by stitching together monsters.

No, June did not build the eluvians, Sylaise did not build the cities, Dirthamen was not the keeper of all the secret history of the elvhen. The elvhen people built it. To reiterate, who scrubbed the fucking floors?

This dialogue shows that either: 1) the writers don't understand Solas as a character fundamentally, or 2) that Solas is never one of the people, he's always on the other side despite his opposition to them.

Also, this entire quest positing the Dalish as some collective "damsel in distress" waiting to be rescued is just ... idk, distasteful to me. Again, for a story that centres around The People™️, Bioware sure loves giving spotlights to something else that is somehow always antithetical to The People™️.

Another thing that grinds my gear is the flattening of Dalish and City Elves in Veilguard.

Rook: The vallaslin are sacred for the elves. I didn’t grow up Dalish, but they’re not the only ones who have a claim on being elven. My tattoos represent who I am, and I’ll wear that for all the world to see.

Aside from the game making up elf!Rook's background on behalf of the player, this is one of the few instances where the existence of City Elf is acknowledged, only for it to not come up in the rest of the game. There's also absolutely no interaction between elf!Rook and Bellara and Davrin regarding their lived experiences and how different or similar that might be since we don't even know anything about Bellara and Davrin's clan.

Another instance might be Lorelei, the shopkeeper of the Shadow Dragons, whereby she acknowledged being from Ferelden during the interaction with Harding. The common ground here was nationality, not necessarily centring around ethnicity, but the player could infer, especially if they'd played Origins, that Lorelei was one of the City Elves that was kidnapped to Tevinter during the Blight.

Then there was nothing. We're constantly hopping around Antiva, Nevarra, Rivain, and Tevinter, absolutely no mention of how each elven community might differ from one another and what is their respective experience under the human-dominated nations. The general "race-blind" approach ultimately leads to a flattening of diversity. I dgaf if you have all dwarves, elves, humans, and qunaris or even spirits in the same faction, when you can't be bothered to show me beyond just the appearance of diversity. By the way, this is a burgeoning problem since Inquisition as in the narratives treating non-human players like an after-thought, but Veilguard was particularly egregious when it comes to this "race blindness."

Borrowing from Radhakrishnan (2003), "a) heterogeneity or even hybridity is written into the postcolonial experience, and b) that there is a relationship of historical continuity, however problematic, between colonialism and nationalism, and nationalism and its significant Other, the diaspora."

In conclusion, to hearken back to the beginning of this post in a concise way, postcoloniality is deconstructive, not destructive. Bioware's own writing does in some ways contribute to the baffling takes I see in the fandom. I do acknowledge that people can interpret characters however they want, and at the same time, I am aware that not everyone has the same experience in life and that might make us see things differently. Last note before I end, when it comes to interpreting texts, the things unsaid are just as important as the things said in a piece of art.

Thanks for reading until the end 🤍

P.S. Please refrain from tagging The Egghead when reblogging even though he's featured in this post. He's special enough already, he doesn't need the spotlight on his already shiny head.

References

Ahmad, A. (1995). The politics of literary postcoloniality. Race & class, 36(3), 1-20. [link]

Chaudhary, V. K. (2025). Deconstruction of Binary Oppositions in Derrida’s Literary Philosophy. ldealistic Journal of Advanced Research in Progressive Spectrums (IJARPS) eISSN–2583-6986, 4(02), 159-169. [link]

Engels, F. (2017). Anti-dühring. Boitempo Editorial. [link]

Hitchcock, P. (2003). The genre of postcoloniality. New Literary History, 34(2), 299-330. [link]

Kerslake, C. (2009, January). Deleuze and the Meanings of Immanence. In After 68’Conference. [link]

Loomba, A. (2002). Colonialism/postcolonialism. Routledge. [link]

Mishra, V. (2015). Postcolonialism 2010–2014. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 50(3), 369-390. [link]

Oko-Otu, C. N., & Chidume, C. G. (2021). Objectivity and the great man theory in historiography. Cogito, 13(3), 124-138. [link]

Prakash, G. (1996). Who's afraid of postcoloniality?. Social text, (49), 187-203. [link]