@owlbear-enthusiast hi I'm just reblogging to respond to your reply:
b/c I realized that the ask/response doesn't actually specify which post this is all referring too.
I am going to copy over a bit of what I've said in other replies as well just for ease but-
With my list up there, specifically, and especially in regards to Mother Giselle, Leliana, Harding, Divine Justinia, & Josie - The real enemy is Bioware's neverending centrism when it comes to condemning the church(the Chantry as a rather overt allegory for The Church) as an institution that is founded on centuries of cultural genocide and thrives due to the way it is set up to hide and cover for abuse. Which they touched on slightly(but not enough imo) in the first couple games and then backpedaled on hard in Inquisition and it's infuriating to me. So Mother Giselle, is, in my personal opinion, inherently a terrible person, simply because well. She's just that! She's Mother Giselle! She's a Chantry Mother! Throughout the game she's constantly downplaying or justifying or both-sides-ing the atrocities the Chantry has been actively committing and participating in since it's inception.
And I'm not trying to say that that can't be really narratively interesting- because It Absolutely Can Be!!!! And I do think that the way that many fans dig deeper into it IS, that's literally why I'm active at all in this fandom in the first place. But the way that it was originally written? Not so much.
I'd love to be able to explore the way that churches are institutionally rife with abuse(of all kinds, physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, sexual, you name it! The church has got it!!!), and how they're structured in ways to not only consistently cover for people who perpetuate abuse, downplay abuse when it happens, encourage victims not to speak up, gaslight victims and convince them that what they're going through isn't actually abuse, but also often reward the worst people with positions of power.
And Dragon Age touches on some of that, in places. But is also goes Out Of Its Way to "Both Sides" things- especially when the Chantry is the active oppressive force. Things like the Exalted March on the Dales, The Circles, and just the continued oppression of the elves throughout Thedas, in general, among other things. I have so many thoughts(negative) about Bioware's handling of all of this shit but it's all been said better by other people before so I do usually just reblog shit I agree with because I don't often feel I actually have much, if anything, to add to these conversations.
Though maybe one of these days my wife and I will get back to that like... fucking essay... we were writing on mages within the circle towers and the like parallels to growing up in fundamentalist christian spaces and being gendered 'girl'(or generally perceived as Other TBH). Because god does that make me fucking nuts.
OH okay but actually SPEAKING OF the way that many fans dig deeper into it that I mentioned earlier @atiya-nagrano has some posts that I just fucking Adore. Like Specifically digging into the women of Dragon Age and how growing up under the shadow of the Chantry has shaped them and the cycles of abuse and trauma. It could have been so good if it was good!!!! It could have been done so well and written with care! And done in a way that's like acknowledging how fucked up this all is and how it also negatively affects the people in it, without also absolving them of blame for participating in the abusive systems(or y'know like just kind of backtracking and pretending that the system is at all salvageable and not inherently set up to enable abuse, which imo DA does hard in Inquisition).
