Why would Sera care? She doesn't like city elves either.
She is an elf, and although she doesn't have an alternative model of elfiness, she doesn't like other people telling her what she as a elf 'should' be.
SpoilerThat 'elfy hangups' bit, though, seems like it should be a really major thing, at least for me. She's all about the little people, the people who are put down. But that amounts, from what I've seen, her essentially believing that elves shouldn't distinguish themselves from humans, give up everything that separates their cultures. It's hypocritical, and I"m certainly not claiming that companions haven't been hypocritical before, but there's no real opportunity for us to call her on it or see her opinions shift and change.
Her ranting about the Temple of Mythal proving the Dalish to be wrong was the first time that it came up in game for me, playing as a male qunari. For me, this felt like something that should kick off character development, a recurring conversational path through the game, placed at the end of a character arc. It just... it feels like if this was going to be such a major thing in her characterization, her dislike of 'elfy' things, there SHOULD have been more development. It just really makes her character feel half-realized and unfinished.
I will second the idea of a DLC expansion that gives her more, because as it is, she comes across as self-loathing for her own race, the kind of person who tells other people in her minority group 'stop being stereotypical' if they do the slightest thing that she considers stereotypical.
Spoiler
I don't think you know what hypocrisy is.
Sera doesn't like the idea of separate elven identity, so she doesn't participate in it and she dislikes people who expect her to do so. There's no hypocritical angle in there.
I also think that your complaint about a "lack of character development" is more of a complaint that she didn't "see the light" and decide to be more elfy based on the events in the Arbor Wilds. Apart from wiping out one of the things that made her character unique, I don't really think that development of that kind is all that important to creating a good character. One could say that Varric, Vivienne, Dorian, Josephine, and Cassandra all lack a fundamental change in their identity like that. Same with Morrigan, the Stenishok, and Wynne in Origins. In Dragon Age II, the entire concept of friendship was based on accepting characters as they were and not trying to change them, and given friendship's high popularity compared to rivalry I'd say that that game's players voted with their clicks.
Which isn't to say that character development is bad, or something. It's just that it's nice to see a good mix, of people who will change for the player and people who expect the player to change for them.
I'm sad for people who play Dalish elves who care deeply about Dalish heritage but want to romance Sera, because that's a hard choice to make. But at the same time I like what it says about the character's strong preferences. Look in the Cass thread and you'll find plenty of people moaning about how Cass could fall for an Inquisitor that outright hated the Chantry, something that supposedly made her less believable of a character. Similar complaints have been bandied about with Leliana in previous games. Yet when the writers do the opposite - make it clear that Sera won't romance somebody who disagrees with one of her core beliefs - they come under fire for that, too.
And yeah, I know it's easy for me to say that because I don't make any secret of my disdain for Dalish culture, and that if it were my own character getting the sharp end of the stick I wouldn't be so sanguine. Of course: that's the whole point. That's why I roleplay a bunch of different characters instead of getting sucked into a single canon before I even touch the game. I changed up my own Dalish playthrough a lot when I learned about Sera's opinions.
Sera doesn't like the idea of separate elven identity, so she doesn't participate in it and she dislikes people who expect her to do so. There's no hypocritical angle in there.
I also think that your complaint about a "lack of character development" is more of a complaint that she didn't "see the light" and decide to be more elfy based on the events in the Arbor Wilds. Apart from wiping out one of the things that made her character unique, I don't really think that development of that kind is all that important to creating a good character. One could say that Varric, Vivienne, Dorian, Josephine, and Cassandra all lack a fundamental change in their identity like that. Same with Morrigan, the Stenishok, and Wynne in Origins. In Dragon Age II, the entire concept of friendship was based on accepting characters as they were and not trying to change them, and given friendship's high popularity compared to rivalry I'd say that that game's players voted with their clicks.
Which isn't to say that character development is bad, or something. It's just that it's nice to see a good mix, of people who will change for the player and people who expect the player to change for them.
I'm sad for people who play Dalish elves who care deeply about Dalish heritage but want to romance Sera, because that's a hard choice to make. But at the same time I like what it says about the character's strong preferences. Look in the Cass thread and you'll find plenty of people moaning about how Cass could fall for an Inquisitor that outright hated the Chantry, something that supposedly made her less believable of a character. Similar complaints have been bandied about with Leliana in previous games. Yet when the writers do the opposite - make it clear that Sera won't romance somebody who disagrees with one of her core beliefs - they come under fire for that, too.
And yeah, I know it's easy for me to say that because I don't make any secret of my disdain for Dalish culture, and that if it were my own character getting the sharp end of the stick I wouldn't be so sanguine. Of course: that's the whole point. That's why I roleplay a bunch of different characters instead of getting sucked into a single canon before I even touch the game. I changed up my own Dalish playthrough a lot when I learned about Sera's opinions.
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