823 réponses à ce sujet

[DRTJR]

Velanna is a great character I wish her to return in a way that is both meaniful and respectful way. Because I wish she was in DA:O.

[Oasis_JS]

how the hell did this thread get to 25 pages?

just  back while it less than 10 pages.. we made some comments..now all kind of new people toke over^^  =p   27 pages now haha.

I wanted add things..but  pretty much.. everything I would say has been already said...In most better words than I =(

[Dean_the_Young]

Vindictivness for the Dalish attacking Orlais I'd reckon.

 

remember freedom fries and freedom toast?

 

That, and keeping Shartan around would be a major headache for generations to come.

 

Shartan is/was a symbol of racial rebellion, and Shartan's contribution to Andraste was the rational for the Dales: keeping that symbol alive and prevalent would give those recently conquered Dales-turn-city-elves an obvious rallying figure to nurse, rally around, and (worst of all) try to emulate. For the many kingdoms that were trying to absorb large, likely resentful, and dangerous elven populations, that's not a good thing to hand to dissidents and malefactors. It's an obvious, dangerous, but most of all would be an entirely legal avenue for dissent and resistance: how many Andrastian elves do you think would focus on the Shartan-related verses above everything else if they weren't removed?

 

Considering that the Dalish, who aren't even Andrastians, still use him as a rhetorical stick to cast the Chantry as a betrayer for the Dalish conflict (while never addressing any responsibility they might have had), it's hard to dismiss the idea that keeping the memory of Shartan alive might have been even more divisive for race relations. A lot of players see Shartan as that great figure of human-elven cooperation who should be revived as an inspiration... but in-universe, Shartan is used by anti-human elves as the evidence that Humans are treacherous/backstabbing allies for betraying the elves about the Dales. For the countries that just finished sacking and scattering the Dales, and from their own perspective the fault falling on the elves, that's not a helpful symbol to keep around.

[Dean_the_Young]

Good point. Don't remind me.

 

A more relevant analog might be the Holy Crown of St Stephen. Sort of a reverse of the Shartan example, but a case in which a national icon was spirited out of Hungary and hidden in the US for fear that the Germans or Soviets would destroy it.

[DRTJR]

I guess it doesn't matter. Andraste's dead. It's not like she's going to come down and inflict divine authority on who gets to use her or her friend's names. All that seems to matter is how much ass you kick, and inflicting your own truths through suppression and violence.

now I see Andraste and Shartan coming down Tenatious D style and rocking Thedas to it's core.

[Hydromatic]

This is the first time i'm in this thread, not sure if anyone's mentioned this, or even if there is a thread for it... But...

 

 

 

I WANT SIGRUN BACK! I did like Velanna, but Sigrun is one of my favorite characters throughout all of Dragon Age. Pls BioWare!

[DRTJR]

Velanna is a character I like more. Although Sigrun would be nice I prefer Oghren and Varric. Their my Bros.

[Dean_the_Young]

I guess it doesn't matter. Andraste's dead. It's not like she's going to come down and inflict divine authority on who gets to use her or her friend's names. All that seems to matter is how much ass you kick, and inflicting your own truths through suppression and violence.

 

It'd be nice if she said something, but this is one of the more realistic injustices the world knows. Like Jesus being appropriated by the KKK, while they string up a black man. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!

 

Oh, I don't think you even need her in person. With time, even historical villains can get fresh treatment and new consideration. What might have applied in the past (Shartan as a symbol of revolution and a threat to unity) doesn't need to apply now. Instead of Shartan, the rebel, deserver of a separate homeland, it could become Shartan, follower of Andraste and (by extension) the Chantry.

 

Given how much time has passed and how city elves in in Orlais identify more with Orlais, I suspect a historical resurrection of Shartan would be far less troublesome to the Chantry nations than, say, the Dalish being forced to confront some of the forgotten parts of their past.

[Dean_the_Young]

edit: eh, nevermind. Need to think about this. Plus, I'm bringing in too much real life religion.

 

Needless to say, but I think if you back elves into a corner like this, and create a situation where even the gods and history itself laughs at them, then they have nothing else to do but fight. They have nothing else left except be like Velanna. And worse.

 

Certainly- they could be like Velanna and get themselves and others killed in hopeless and foolish fights.

 

There does need, both morally and practically, a means of integration and acceptance. The Chantry and the Nations would be viable, if either let the elves invest in them.

[Dean_the_Young]

It isn't foolish to them. It's their highest ideal at this point. That's what the Dalish are all about. "Never again shall we submit." It isn't changing unless you kill them off. There will be no integration unless they're allowed to retain what little elven culture they have. They would rather die (foolishly even) than give out free handjobs. Because that's what this deal amounts to, in their eyes.

 

What they feel it is is rather irrelevant to whether it's foolish. Fools tend not to see themselves as such, and sensible people led into foolish actions often feel that had a reasonable reason for doing what is, in the objectivity of retrospect and an outside perspective, foolish.

 

Desperate people making desperate decisions aren't any better for making them if the decisions they make are poor.

 

Now, we could make an argument about the value of what little elven culture they have. Personally, I don't think it's worth it: the old elven are more myth than reality to those who aspire to them, and in so much that it has been an obstacle to integration it can be more counterproductive than helpful. If the Dalish really wanted the old culture, after all, they'd be slaving and acting like Orlesians. I don't see that as an improvement. I'm fine with city elves fleeing to the Dalish if they want, but those who stay can be expected to integrate with a system that allows it.

 

We could, but that'd be a bit besides the point. The much more relevant is the idea that their situation amounts to free handjobs. Elves who believe that really are being foolish, and elves who propagate that and try to convince other elves of it are worse than fools.

[Dean_the_Young]

What's your end goal for arguing for this? Let me just ask that. Do you really expect the Dalish to stop being a faction and integrating/disappearing into the customs and nations ruled by the Chantry?

 

 

Goal? For what? Where are you reading advocacy?

 

If you're asking what I expect to happen from the Dalish, I expect they'll end up breaking apart as a culture. Some will integrate, some will self-destruct or pick foolish fights, and some will evolve into something that can coexist with other societies beyond waiting for them to die or clinging to a mythical past.

 

But the ones picking foolish fights, however sincerely the feel about them, will be fools.

 

 

Of course, the Dalish are an entirely different culture from the city elves.

 

 

Because it's not going to happen. This is the lore for now. That is their identity in this world - to "not submit". I'm just pointing it out. The "oath of the dales" is part of their very being at this point.

 

 

Oh, I agree- part of why I find many of the Dalish cultural practices ruinous. They're so set on self-defining themselves in opposition to the humans that they'll consider basic coexistence and compromise a form of submission. That's pretty stupid, and much of it is self-inflicted stupidity.
 

 

If these problems are going to be fixed, it'll be because of something clever from the writers. Not because the Chantry is necessarily right, or justified to just steamroll over the game world and create a blanket of sameness everywhere. No one would even play if everything was the same and factions started getting swallowed up. What's next after that? The dwarves?

 

 

Well, if things are going to be fixed it probably would involve the city elves, not the Dalish. Since the city elves are where things are broken on an institutional level and of integration.

 

Of course, the Chantry has never been an uber-assimilationist plot whose goal was to steamroll over the game world and create a blanket of sameness everywhere. So if problems are going to be fixed, basic misconceptions like that seem like a good place to start.

[In Exile]

It isn't foolish to them. It's their highest ideal at this point. That's what the Dalish are all about. "Never again shall we submit." It isn't changing unless you kill them off. There will be no integration unless they're allowed to retain what little elven culture they have. They would rather die (foolishly even) than give out free handjobs. Because that's what this deal amounts to, in their eyes.

 

But the Dalish do submit. Their way of life is quintessential submission. They live in exile, they mostly run from organized human miltary might and keep to harassing humans only when they're mostly powerless to fight back, and they've not only abandoned the CEs, but they've built a narrative that the CEs are somehow lesser than they are which justifies leaving them alone to their fate.

 

Their elven culture is a fantasy that they've built up. Their language is invented, and their lore is the best they could piece toghether from what they found.

 

It would be one thing if, like in the Witcher, the Dalish were engaged in a hopeless and eventually suicidal war against humanity like the Sco'iatel. Those are the "foolish" elves, whose day has passsed but whose pride refuses to let them just lie down and die.

[Dean_the_Young]

I see advocacy just because you seem to be more at peace with uniformity and conquest. If I'm wrong, my bad.

 

You are wrong. Nothing about assimilation requires uniformity, and if it seems like I'm at peace with conquest it's because we are talking about a long-since conquered people. The City Elves aren't Dalish who define themselves by definace- they're second-class citizens who identify themselves by the country they are a part of. Accepting the later is simply being at peace with the past and trying to improve the future.

[In Exile]

Not submitting doesn't mean constant strife. It's the equivalent of the isolationist fraternity for mages. "Just leave us alone. We're not doing what you tell us."

 

Submission, to me, means total capitulation to the whims and desires of another. How are the Dalish a thorn in the side of humanity, or of Orlais specifically? After Orlais obliterated their country, they ran away into the forests to live as hermits. They don't harass Orlais militarily - many of them aren't even in Orlais anymore. They don't harass humans, or otherwise oppose them. They don't take actions to hurt them. They hold on to racist beliefs, but those don't go out in the world and hurt humans. At worst, they prey on vulnerable humans for the sake of more personal revenge (Zathrian being the best example).

 

I just don't see how any part of their lifestyle is anything other than submission. They even leave when humans come for them.

 

This may be YMMV, but when I'm in a conflict with another person, and they give me literally everything I want and barely put a fight when I take the scraps they have left, but they totally talk about me behind my back, that's submission.

[In Exile]

If these people can still feed themselves and craft their own tools and homes, they're not conquered. Not everything is about having political significance or building an empire. Simply "being what you want" is good enough to count for something.

It doesn't sound like the Dalish want their own lifestyle. Their end-goal isn't to be nomadic Dalish forever, but rather to reconstruct their people and their homeland.