#zenatness

0.  An acknowledgement that throughout all of DA’s history -- or any fandom’s history -- if one searches hard enough one can always find singular examples of a ship that provides a completely opposite outlook from what I say in my analysis. The important thing to keep in mind is that those singular examples are outliers and that they do NOT NEGATE the trend that is backed up by sheer numbers. Basically, it’s a call for people to don’t read my analysis and then reply with an endless stream of pedantic sealion noise about that one series of Cullen/Ser Cauthrien stories from 2012. Same goes for the extremely rare pre-DAI Cullen/Leliana stories. Exceptions and outliers do not negate statistically clear trends. 

1.  When DAO was created, bioware’s writers did not see Cullen as a character that would gather a hard core fandom (writer quotes exist strongly supporting this and, in some cases, outright saying it) although the person who wrote Cullen’s lines in DAO was interested in difficult, tragic romance-gone-wrong stories (again, quotes used to exist). Basically, Cullen in DAO was yet another NPC #529 as far as Bioware’s writing pit. The writers were literally surprised when an unexpected dedicated, active fandom arose around this character. 

2.  The DAO fans who made up the initial group of Cullen fans -- mostly Cullen/Surana and Cullen/Amell fans -- were very diverse from an ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious standpoint. Their art work featured far more non-white amells and suranas during the period of 2009-2011 than Alistair/mage!warden fan art (important given that Alistair and Cullen have similar story dynamics with mage!wardens). Their fanfic in 2009-2011 featured a lot of deep, problematized exploration of the Forbidden Relationship trope and of tropes that relevant in mixed White!Boy/Other!Girl relationships. This ranged from candy stories (fancomics and fanfic) about secret lovers to hard hitting and sometimes violent stories about the ways in which, for instance (a) white men fetish non-white women or treat them as things to be used, (b) the difficulties of navigating the relationship space when non-white women end up at greater risk of self hatred, self harm, depression, etc., when in cultures that regard whiteness as the ideal, ... and other stuff (I’d need to go back and look at art, comics, stories, etc from the “good ol’ days” -- heheh ;) 

3.  During the year after DA2′s release (Mar 2011 - Mar 2012), Cullen fandom remained mostly a thing off on its own -- a DAO thing. Although Cullen/Bethany and very early Cullen/mage!Hawke started appearing, the stories continued to explore notions of relationships that cross cultural border lines in ways that are not welcome and not supported by society. Again, some of these stories were extremely hardhitting -- raw and difficult to read.

4.  From mid-2012 to early-2014, Cullen fandom grew as new fans joined. These fans were far more likely to be white women from christian/post-christian culture and far more likely to ship Cullen with rogue!Hawke or warrior!Hawke. Their stories tended to not address the tropes that had been previously common. So, while this expanded Cullen fandom and raises the popularity of this character even more, it diluted  original flavor of it. Bioware takes notice of the long and unexpected history of Cullen fandom. Cullen related posts on my tumblr blog were heavily hit by IP addresses from Edmonton, btw. They appeared to be very interested in creating a Cullen character in DAI that fandom would fan over.

5.  Early-2014 thru mid-2014: During various industry conferences and conventions, a particular bioware staffer squeeeeed loudly on camera about how she filed “bugs” to the art department, asking them to make Cullen’s 3D model hotter. Literally. This was actually captured on video. Later, when Cullen’s 3D model and art were released to the public, it was clear that Bioware’s art department made Cullen whiter -- as in stereotypically germanic-white. So, hotter means whiter???  Perhaps this is unfair except...

6.  Mid-2014 thru mid-2015:  A massive group of brand new DAI Cullen fans appear out of the blue. This group was very young, mostly white, and a number of them were caught on tumblr (and elsewhere) making some very racist statements. A loud segment of them also promoted cishetnormativity and engaged in bigotry against LBGTQ representation. Frankly, it was disgusting and I stepped far away from fandom sometime in Sept 2014 after being done with what it had all become.

7.  Nov 2014 - Mid-2015:  Many female players of color along with other female religious and ethnic others, and other Otherized groups (LGBTQ, disabled) wrote critical meta about how DAI, overall, failed them. Almost all of these lists included the ways in which DAI Cullen’s story completely glosses over the final phase of his transformation across the games -- a transformation  I clearly documented for DAO and DA2 and that meta is still reblogged with surprising frequency -- and how this glossing over is an insult to the intelligence and the sheer existence of the diversity that exists in gaming fandom.