2113 réponses à ce sujet

[Jedi Master of Orion]

I even know how we'll get the surviving Dalish to abandon their pagan gods and become good hard working City Elves!

That would just make them armed wandering Andrastian clans. They would all still be the same unit types.

[Heimdall]

I doubt mass-producing "credits to their race" will really help, especially since humans would simply begin comparing the lowest achieving elves to the highest achieving ones and come to the conclusion that elves have earned their low status, ignoring that they'll never have as much access to resources as humans will.

Peasant in Orlais aren't materially much worse off than the elves, so I rather doubt that would be the case.  If elves want equality, they need to make it clear that they're capable of it and more.  Leave no room for such arguments.  That's where it starts, and it will make employing them more appealing to humans, not mention easier for the likes of Celene to justify lifting restrictions.

[Samahl]

If elves want equality, they need to make it clear that they're capable of it and more.

 

And humans shouldn't be held to the same standard?

[Master Warder Z_]

And humans shouldn't be held to the same standard?

 

Obviously not.

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

That would just make them armed wandering Andrastian clans. They would still be the same units.

 

Right but they'd be on the blue team instead of the green team!

 

We could use them for good-ish!

 

Edit: Besides I'm sure they have a few worker units we could send to the town centers to gather resources!

[Steelcan]

And humans shouldn't be held to the same standard?

what's right is irrelevant, if the elves want a better life they need to show they can earn it

[Pierce Miller]

I wish the elves would rally under one banner and start some guerrilla warfare, would be damn fun to see

[Heimdall]

And humans shouldn't be held to the same standard?

I'm not talking about some fair philosophical court, I'm talking about an underclass ascending to full citizenship.  The humans already have it.  The elves need to convince the humans.  Is that fair?  No, but life rarely is.  it is the reality the elves face.

[General TSAR]

I wish the elves would rally under one banner and start some guerrilla warfare, would be damn fun to see

Not to the people who have to clean up the corpses of the idiot elves. 

 

And humans shouldn't be held to the same standard?

Why? Humans are superior. 

[Dean_the_Young]

I suppose that the Fereldan example is one of the strongest arguments in favor of your resettlement plan's physical feasibility: if stuff like that happens in Thedas, it's open season on modern migratory theory. And I suppose it's certainly possible that the writers could insert the creation of a homeland outside of Andrastian Thedas- or, hell, a homeland in the Dales themselves - that saw a relatively successful effort to "gather in" the elves of the continent. But - apart from my moral-ethical and historical arguments against the idea of an elven homeland anywhere - I do not believe that it is a physically feasible project unless and until Writer Fiat makes it feasible. If it were tried in medieval Europe, it would result in the deaths of an awful lot of elves, the apathy of many more, and straitened conditions for almost all who tried, whether they succeeded or not. And that leaves aside the potential harm to human communities, because as far as I'm aware most of the people arguing for an elven homeland don't really care about that.

 

Let's not forget the trials awaiting them when they do arrive at a region without the infrastructure set up to absorb, shelter, and most importantly, feed them. The Spanish had some advantages in that they conquered and colonized pre-existing civilizations with pre-established infrastructure and agriculture for supplies, but other colonial expeditions weren't so lucky. Some of the early North American colonies were nearly (or simply were) lost from a lack of food in the first years, with death tolls and rates that were barely sustainable even with the ability for intercontinental trade and importing food supplies from the mother country. Canibalism was totally a thing in some circumstances.

 

Mass refugee movements are extremely dangerous and frequently fatal for those involved, and often for reasons of basic food and water. Foraging along the way is less and less viable the more people you have (over-hunting) and the less inclined the locals are to let you go freely. The ability to care for the sick and wounded is extremely limited: depending on the availability of transport, anything that could keep you from keeping up, even a sprained ankle or disease, could be fatal if the group will not or can not move as slow as the slowest person. Food and water are always limiting factors, not always available from the terrain, and one bad accident (or attack) can doom an entire expedition.

 

Just to emphasize again, modern mass migration populations are very much a modern phenomenum. Not only did they simply not happen often in history, but when they did they often came with an extremely high toll in life and limb (and, often, freedom).

[Steelcan]

I wish the elves would rally under one banner and start some guerrilla warfare, would be damn fun to see

 

it would be fun for the Chevaliers for sure

[Steelcan]

even the most famous mass migrations from pre-industrial history, those of the various barbarian tribes at the end of the Roman empire, were not mass migrations at all

[Pierce Miller]

General TSAR, on 31 Jul 2014 - 8:51 PM, said:

 

Not to the people who have to clean up the corpses of the idiot elves. 

 

Why? Humans are superior. 

 

Are you saying you don't want to see the elves be slaughtered?

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

Are you saying you don't want to see the elves be slaughtered?

 

Just the Dalish. The City Elves are good people in a bad situation.

[Pierce Miller]

Grand Admiral Cheesecake, on 31 Jul 2014 - 8:58 PM, said:

Just the Dalish. The City Elves are good people in a bad situation.

Fair enough but god I hate the dalish

[Jedi Master of Orion]

If you guys are going to racistly call for mass murder of elves, don't wimp out on the city elves just because they somewhat more persecuted. They're not that different, be consistent.

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

If you guys are going to racistly call for mass murder of elves, don't wimp out on the city elves just because they somewhat more persecuted. They're not that different, be consistent.

 

Don't want to kill elves, want to kill the Dalish.

 

Big difference.

[Pierce Miller]

Jedi Master of Orion, on 31 Jul 2014 - 9:05 PM, said:

If you guys are going to racistly call for mass murder of elves, don't wimp out on the city elves just because they somewhat more persecuted. They're not that different, be consistent.

I don't like the Dalish because ultimately I find them disinteresting and extremely arrogant.

[Dean_the_Young]

Fair enough but god I hate the dalish

Hate's a strong emotion. Tiring, too. I'll save it for what's worth hating.

 

I don't respect the Dalish culture, and I think some of their cultural foundations and identity-myths are misaimed, self-destructive, and have a high risk of harming others in the process. None of that prevents there from being good and sensible Dalish, any more than nothing about racist Andrastian nations prevents the generation of non-racist Andrastians.

 

Watching the Dalish is more akin to watching an extremely opinionated underdog fixated on a rematch against a former opponent who once trounced the underdog and then went on to the Championship leagues where the foes are another weightclass entirely. There's the appeal of rooting for the underdog rival, but when the rival has so moved on that the underdog isn't even considered the Top 3 concerns and is barely an afterthought, the one-sided rivalry between impassioned emotions and barely aware apathy comes across as more pitiful than appealing.

[Heimdall]

I don't like the Dalish because ultimately I find them disinteresting and extremely arrogant.

I feel the same, and my "canon" Warden is Dalish  (One  curious about human culture and lacking a certain chip on his shoulder)

[Pierce Miller]

Heimdall, on 31 Jul 2014 - 9:13 PM, said:

I feel the same, and my "canon" Warden is Dalish  (One  curious about human culture and lacking a certain chip on his shoulder)

Not a fan of andrastians either, my main love in the series is anything to do with magic or the fade. So you can see why I'm not a fan of them either

[LobselVith8]

I think it's obvious that the Dalish should have been regularly sending out explorers decades ago...  there are too many parts of the map that have question marks on them.  It's worth finding out of there's any unclaimed land out there...

 

I agree. I'd say that the Dalish were mistaken in sticking around when there might be a place that could serve as a haven for the elves. It's been close to a thousand years, and human society has remained relatively unchanged in their racism towards elves; finding a relatively safe location far from the Andrastian humans would have made more sense.

 

 

Given that the Qunari (and perhaps the humans who didn't land on Par Vollen) may have come from across the Amaranthine Ocean, I think their best bet would be to try to find a location on the opposite end of the map, perhaps land near the Sundered Sea or the Volca Sea.

[Aimi]

Okay, so what's the alternative?  Wait for humans to recognize them as equals?  I'm not seeing any options beyond war, flight, and stagnation.

 
It's, obviously, a very difficult and intractable question. Answers would depend heavily on context for specific times and places. And there's an awful lot that is out of elves' hands. But that would be true anyway, and beliefs that elves can solve their own problems without reference to humans or human opinion are simply twaddle.

Generally, though, in order for non-elves to see elves as part of the same community, elves need to inject themselves into that community. Cutting themselves off from the rest of the world might be one route to protection, but it also makes it far easier to be painted as 'the other' and marginalized.

Emphasizing areas of common ground can go a long way. For example, military service has historically helped to integrate disparate communities united in the same state. Combat is an incredibly trying, transformative event, and people who fight together generally find respect for each other through that experience that transcends race, class, and so on. Now, obviously, sometimes that doesn't happen, especially in times of defeat, when people are under immense pressure. They'll scapegoat, and you'll be back where you started. That's happened plenty of times in the past, too. But even sharing the hardship of defeat can build bridges.

Other common institutions under the aegis of temporal rulers can play a similar role. Like any other political group, elves have something they want and something they can offer. Take the military service angle mentioned before: elven community leaders could not only rely on common bonds created with human soldiers through combat, but they could also horse-trade their willingness to fight in the first place for some sort of concrete political gain - the revocation of an anti-elven law, for example, or participation in government at some level. The City Elven Boon from Origins, the alienage bann, is the sort of step that inserts elves into the everyday political life of the community and makes it clear that they can govern themselves like anyone else therefore they can do all sorts of other things like anyone else. That can potentially expose them to more violence, as the epilogue indicated, but it's not clear to me that the human-"protected" alienages prevent all that much racist violence anyway.

For Andrastian elves, shared religion can also be a strong tie. The Chantry has an interest in protecting and helping souls, and it has considerable influence. It's important not to overstate the value of this tie, and obviously most of the hardcore Dalish supporters on this site think that the Chantry's influence is a Bad Thing regardless and that it is largely unavailable to elves anyway. But it does exist, and it can be used. Many nonviolent historical reform efforts have succeeded through chiefly religious avenues, such as the abolition of slavery in Europe, the campaign for black legal equality in the United States, and the so-called medieval "peace of God". The Chantry is the only organization that embraces all of Thedas, and it possesses a structure and organization that allows for a more-coordinated policy than anybody outside Par Vollen.
 
None of these avenues for change will fix all the problems in one swift, fell swoop. None is immune to sabotage by any number of things. But they avoid sterile, violent, divisive solutions that are, in my opinion, the political equivalent of snake oil. Even if elves somehow manage to build a homeland and cut themselves off from human society, underlying areas of conflict won't be solved until both sides view each other more as "us" and less as "them". It's far easier to build ties in areas that are already partially integrated than it is to build ties between different countries.

---

Also, I know you've suggested that elves send out explorers. Good luck financing that. Elven community resources are already scarce, and devoting very large chunks of them to something with insanely low RoI is kind of a silly idea. Exploration is the kind of vanity project that kings throw money at, not poor elves. That's even before getting into whether it's navigationally and technologically possible to explore areas unknown to Thedosian society.
 

even the most famous mass migrations from pre-industrial history, those of the various barbarian tribes at the end of the Roman empire, were not mass migrations at all

Correct. They were, in fact, movements by elements of the Roman regular army in almost every single case. The "barbarian tribes" of myth were field armies and their camp followers; their ethnicities as "barbarian" were largely invented (though no less sincere for the invention); many of the soldiers and followers, if not most, were born inside the Roman Empire and had lived there for their entire lives, and considered themselves "Roman" in a way that emphasized layered identity, not exclusivity. While people from outside the Empire's borders did move inside its borders, those migrations were chiefly short-distance and relatively well-organized.

And, most importantly, the numbers involved were tiny. The largest modern 'migrationist' estimates, those of Peter Heather, claim only a few hundred thousand migrants over the course of a century and change; other estimates, like Walter Goffart's, are much smaller. These people were, moreover, moving into a country inhabited by millions.

[zenrockoutkast]

I don't know where you got that from. There's nothing about kidnappings in Dalish or Chantry accounts of the event to my knowledge. But there was no invasion of the Dales until the Dalish thought it was a bright idea to attack the most powerful nation in Thedas and assault the capital of its largest religion. And it was only after all this that much of the ill feeling towards elves developed in the Chantry.

I know, I've studied medieval history, that same status as money-lenders sometimes also motivated officials in power to protect them. I'm just saying it was complicated and not to blame it purely on the institutions. People are perfectly capable of being bigoted and vicious without them.

From the wikia: "The cause of the conflict that resulting in the destruction of the Dales is disputed. The Dalish claim it was simple racial and religious persecution, saying templars invaded their kingdom when they kicked out Chantry missionaries. Chantry sources describe tensions building over the years as the elves became increasingly isolationist: The Dales barred all trade or discourse beyond their borders and only attracted greater ire when they refused to aid the human kingdoms during the Second Blight. There were rumors in the bordering Orlesian lands of the elves kidnapping humans to sacrifice to their gods and tensions reached a head with an elven attack on the village of Red Crossing" Which they cite as being from the codex.

 

I'm not saying that discrimination doesn't happen without institutional support or that there can't be examples of individuals in power being decent to embattled minorities despite dsicrimination being institutionalized, but discrimination against the Jewish population was institutionalized.

[General TSAR]

If you guys are going to racistly call for mass murder of elves, don't wimp out on the city elves just because they somewhat more persecuted. They're not that different, be consistent.

City Elves have potential, Dalish Elves do not as they have their heads up their collective buttpuckers.