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[Dean_the_Young]

The only other option may be Solas if he is like Aang, since those two at one point were supposed to be love interests(hence her being his vision in the swamp) but then they decided to stick with Aang/Katara. 

 

Mighty thick ship-tease goggles you got there, don't you think?

 

Ah, the Avatar fandom. Turning the most platonic of interactions into UST normally reserved for yaoi fangirls.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

Mighty thick ship-tease goggles you got there, don't you think?

 

Ah, the Avatar fandom. Turning the most platonic of interactions into UST normally reserved for yaoi fangirls.

Not really. I never said they should have done it, just that it was a plan at one point in development of the show. 

[Eveangaline]

Not really. I never said they should have done it, just that it was a plan at one point in development of the show. 

Toph was also supposed to be a dude at one point in the development of the show. I'm pretty sure they had their ideas on what she'd be like and if she'd be shipped with aang sorted out before they decided to have him see her in the swamp.

[Aimi]

I think you missed the historical irony with your statement. The Russian Revolution was a revolution against extreme authoritarianism. It created, if anything, an even more extreme and oppressive authoritarianism that constantly validated itself and villified the enemies in the revolutionary context. What you revolt against is not necessarily what will be your antithesis.
 
I wasn't saying the Dales were like the USSR. I was laughing and crying at your reasoning, which has too many counter-examples to count.

I, for one, favor the Thomas Jefferson counterexample: the same person who wrote "all men are created equal" also enslaved and raped other human beings. He rebelled against a system of government because it was supposedly oppressive, and did so in large part to protect his personal ability to repress others. And, of course, he was not a particularly unique or unusual example: he was just the most blatantly hypocritical.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

Toph was also supposed to be a dude at one point in the development of the show.

I know. She went through a lot of redesigns. 

[Dean_the_Young]

I, for one, favor the Thomas Jefferson counterexample: the same person who wrote "all men are created equal" also enslaved and raped other human beings. He rebelled against a system of government because it was supposedly oppressive, and did so in large part to protect his personal ability to repress others. And, of course, he was not a particularly unique or unusual example: he was just the most blatantly hypocritical.

 

I seem to recall the Louisiana Purchase was considered a political hypocrisy on his part, albeit I can't remember exactly why. Something about the President not having the power to make that sort of foreign deal without Congress, except that it was a really really really good one?

 

 

Of course, I didn't think the American Revolution is a good example of a revolution because not that much actually changed. Salutatory neglect became independence, but the general social order remained quite similar.

[Silfren]

This reminds me of the DA:O conversation options for Dalish characters that involved the words "Maker" and "Andraste". 

 

It made sense for a roleplaying design perspective, but I would have preferred they changed them to "Creators" and such.

 

I never thought it made sense because there was no background to the Dalish origin that allowed for a plausible explanation for an Elf who was born and raised within Dalish society to become Andrastian in their beliefs.  That said, that origin did actually have Dalish-specific religious dialogue that pertained to the Creators.

[Jedi Master of Orion]

The dalish Warden even has the opportunity to offer up a prayer to the Creators for the souls of those humans who died in the Battle of Redcliffe.

[Silfren]

The City Elf storyline in Origins, and the City Elves in DA2 if you remember looked at the Dalish with reverence and awe.  The life was what the city elves wanted but since the dalish are nomadic and far from the cities, those elves in the cities can only dream.

 

In Dragon Age Origins, or after, there was a MAJOR change in Ferelden rule.  You either had Alistair on the throne or your Warden ruled with Anara. The Alienage was destroyed, and the Dalish played a major part in pushing back the darkspawn.  

 

My point is that after the 5th Blight, NOTHING was the same for the elves, at least it shouldn't be within Ferelden.  Sure the elves are 2nd class citizens but it makes far more sense to me that those elves within the Alienage's left when the Dalish marched out of Ferelden, and relations improved to the point where they are treated with enough respect that more elves wanting to leave the city would go be with the Dalish.

 

After 10 years, I would expect that the City Elves we saw in Origins to be a bad memory.

 

Not quite.  The Dalish lifestyle isn't what the average alienage elf wants at all.  Most alienage elves have internalized fear and distrust of their Dalish cousins, and were raised within Andrastian religious structure. There's a reason why the Dalish refer to them as flat-eared: culturally speaking, alienage elves are humanized elves.  Aside from the odd individual who dreams of joining the alienage--a dream which is largely driven by their ghettoization within human society--alienage elves don't want to become Dalish elves at all; they want to gain truly egalitarian status among humans.  

 

I'm not sure where you're getting that nothing remained the same for the elves of Ferelden after the end of the Fifth Blight.  It's not true necessarily that monarchical rule was changed drastically: you have the option, after all, of leaving Anora's rule unchanged, and there is little reason to believe that marrying either a hardened or unhardened Alistair to her results in significantly different rule.  Either way, life for the alienage elves most likely does NOT actually change all that drastically, or if so, certainly not for a very long period of time.  Human attitudes, after all, don't change overnight, irrespective of whatever role the alienage elves played in defeating the Blight, and we DO have evidence that even the best intentions of the monarch of Ferelden don't mean much against the necessity of navigating political waters held by bigoted human nobles.

[Dean_the_Young]

Plus, if an elf saving the world would change everyone's views on elves, the last Blight would have fixed the problem already.

[Aimi]

I seem to recall the Louisiana Purchase was considered a political hypocrisy on his part, albeit I can't remember exactly why. Something about the President not having the power to make that sort of foreign deal without Congress, except that it was a really really really good one?
 
 
Of course, I didn't think the American Revolution is a good example of a revolution because not that much actually changed. Salutatory neglect became independence, but the general social order remained quite similar.

 
Well, the Louisiana Purchase was awful because Jefferson supplied Napoleon Bonaparte with a sizable cash reserve just as Bonaparte was preparing for another assault on European civilization. That's where he came in for criticism with the Federalists. His own Republican allies, especially the Old Republicans, complained that, yes, he lacked the constitutional authority to either add land or spend money without Congressional approval. Before he became President, Jefferson had argued against Washington's and Adams' policies from precisely the same standpoint, so he came in for criticism on his hypocrisy there.

There were other areas of high politics and policy in which Jefferson was a raging hypocrite. In 1800, France and the US had ended their Quasi-War (a real shooting war) with the Convention of Mortefontaine, which placed restrictions on French maritime trade policy with respect to neutral powers. When Napoleon created his Continental System of tariffs and embargos in 1806-07, he directly violated Mortefontaine; Jefferson shrugged it off. Britain responded to the Continental System with a series of Orders in Council that further raised the stakes of the trade war and further harmed American interests. This was accompanied by a series of naval incidents between Britain and America (especially the clash between USS Chesapeake and HMS Leopard in 1807) that embarrassed both countries and appeared to severely violate American maritime rights.

In a spirit of 'a plague on both your houses', Jefferson shepherded through an Embargo Act in 1807 that placed extremely heavy restrictions on all American trade. Virtually all naval trade - intracoastal or transatlantic - was forbidden. A new federal bureaucracy was developed to patrol land trade routes out of major cities to enforce the law, with suitably bizarre consequences like wagon-searches in violation of the Bill of Rights.

The end result was that Jefferson's Republicans created their very own miniature Continental System in emulation of their idol, Bonaparte. It was supposedly aimed at both Britain and France, but realistically the target in economic terms was mostly Britain, such that America effectively supported France while ostensibly remaining neutral. Ironically, the economic effect of the embargo served chiefly to cripple American trade, which forced an end to the policy after just over a year. And most hypocritically of all, the embargo was created and sustained by shattering personal liberties and trampling over the Constitution with legislation that a supposedly-"strict constructionist" Jefferson would never have countenanced.

But arguably that's all window dressing when compared to the central hypocrisy of Jefferson's life: the man who owned human beings and refused to free them ended up composing one of the most powerful slogans of freedom in world history.

Whether America after the rebellion was more or less free than it had been before is kinda...ehhh. There's a lot of historical debate about that, and one's position on the issue honestly says more about that person's ideological leanings than it does about the American revolution. What's more important is the slogan. The Declaration of Independence has essentially no legal standing anywhere in the world; the majority of it is a boring, tendentious polemic composed as an airing of grievances. But that sentence, "we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", that's incredibly important as an idea. The words have world-historical relevance. That those words, and that idea, were expressed by somebody who spent his life keeping many people unequal and denying them access to those "inalienable" rights, is outrageously hypocritical.

And it's that hypocrisy that I'm more than capable of seeing in any liberation movement, either in Thedas or anywhere else.
 

Plus, if an elf saving the world would change everyone's views on elves, the last Blight would have fixed the problem already.

One would think that if the Chantry had the sort of dastardly human-centric control over history that some people here think that they did, they would have written Garahel out of the Fourth Blight.

[Kimarous]

Toph was also supposed to be a dude at one point in the development of the show.

 

If memory serves correctly, the earthbender in the opening was initially intended to be Toph, but they instead used that design for The Boulder. They also poke fun at the notion during the pre-finale recap play.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

If memory serves correctly, the earthbender in the opening was initially intended to be Toph, but they instead used that design for The Boulder. They also poke fun at the notion during the pre-finale recap play.

That is correct. 

[Mistic]

One would think that if the Chantry had the sort of dastardly human-centric control over history that some people here think that they did, they would have written Garahel out of the Fourth Blight.

 

History is written by the winners, but it was the Grey Wardens who won, not the Chantry. An international organization with presence in every country except Par Vollen that not only predates the Chantry, but it's outside their jurisdiction. Hard for them to change what they can't touch.

 

By the way, your history posts are as amazing as usual

 

Mighty thick ship-tease goggles you got there, don't you think?

 

Ah, the Avatar fandom. Turning the most platonic of interactions into UST normally reserved for yaoi fangirls.

 

Don't underestimate the power of shipping!    And talking about that, what would be the Inquisition's equivalent to the launcher of a thousand ships, Prince Honor Zuko? As far as I recall, that guy was paired with everyone. No exceptions.

[Mistic]

The Chantry just controls the South. That's kind of always implied. Areas around Free Marches somewhat, but it's kind of a hodgepodge of ideas. That's still a lot of power, but certainly not enough to brainwash everyone about the fourth blight.

That is one way of looking at it. You could also say that the Chantry is present in every country except two (Tevinter, that has their own version of it, and Par Vollen)    The thing is, by the time the Fourth Blight happened, the Chantry wasn't hell bent on wiping elven history and culture anymore ("That is so last age"). What is left is a layer of racism that perpetuates itself without any more input needed.