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[Ieldra]

The Qunari are very fond of categorization, and look upon those categories as absolute and defining -- but they are not without their own degree of fluidity by Qunari standards, which are very different from our own.

 

You say you're female? Then you do not fight -- "fighting" being when someone serves as a warrior. Some folks looked on Tallis as a contradiction to this as well, rather than accepting that someone like Sten would not look upon what she does as fighting. Being able to pick up a weapon and use it, even to use it well, does not make one a warrior if that is not their purpose (which it would not be, for a Ben-Hassrath, but certainly would be for a Grey Warden whose stated purpose is to combat the darkspawn).

 

You say you're male? Then fighting is acceptable. Even if your biology might say otherwise, the Qunari have a term for what this means and clearly the Tamassrans take it into account -- though you might note Iron Bull did not indicate how easily that might occur. We have a term for "transgender" in our real-world society as well -- that does not automatically translate into it being looked upon exactly the same by every person.

 

You can take what Sten said in DAO as the last and final word on every aspect of Qunari society, and thus everything following it as contradictory, or you can take into account these different viewpoints as new information and consider how they fit into the whole. It's really up to you, though that's hardly going to stop us from further developing the Qunari culture...regardless of the reasons one might ascribe to us for doing so.

Fair enough. The problem, however, is the effect this development of qunari culture has. It makes qunari culture feel safe with regard to things related to sex, gender identity etc... This adds to the impression that Thedas as a whole is safe in that regard, and that pattern comes across as completely unreal. The reply that "That we don't show less enlightened attitudes doesn't mean they don't exist" is not valid, because in fiction only the things which are written or shown, or at least talked about in-world, exist.

 

Maybe it is a reflection on our culture that this comes across as unreal, but I'm more inclined to think we're dealing with a human constant here. I think I could make a strong case for the claim a predisposition for judgmental attitudes towards others' sexual behavior is a part of our evolutionary legacy, which means that such attitudes develop unless they're prevented by culture, or unlearned later. That, in turn, means that there will always be people who've never learned, or cultures that don't care.

 

So, that any one culture on Thedas, or any two, or three, have more enlightened attitudes toward things related to sex, that's perfectly fine. That all of them have it, that's unreal. And it shows a particularly weird lack of diversity.

 

Also, with regard to further developing Thedas' cultures, I wish the same would be done with Tevinter. A lot has been done to "soften" qunari culture from the initial impression in DAO, we were even forced into complicity with a plot that benefits the Qunari (DA2 Mark of the Assassin), something that I still can't quite forgive, and people like Iron Bull actually *justify* its evils. This may be nothing more than a personal preference, but I resent that Tevinter is still stuck in Evil Empire mode, while the Qun is increasingly presented as acceptable after having started as pretty much the collectivist counterimage of Tevinter.

[Kantr]

It'd be fun to see Sten as well. Updated 10 years.

Edit: And shale. Definitely shale.
 

Sten is the Arishok

[DanteYoda]

Well...the Bioware developers didn't give a damn about what you want...so there's that to say for balls to do whatever they wanted even though it seems to have offended you...

True enough, i guess we'll see how it goes for them next game wont we..

[papercut_ninja]

Fair enough. The problem, however, is the effect this development of qunari culture has. It makes qunari culture feel safe with regard to things related to sex, gender identity etc... This adds to the impression that Thedas as a whole is safe in that regard, and that pattern comes across as completely unreal. The reply that "That we don't show less enlightened attitudes doesn't mean they don't exist" is not valid, because in fiction only the things which are written or shown, or at least talked about in-world, exist.

 

Maybe it is a reflection on our culture that this comes across as unreal, but I'm more inclined to think we're dealing with a human constant here. I think I could make a strong case for the claim a predisposition for judgmental attitudes towards others' sexual behavior is a part of our evolutionary legacy, which means that such attitudes develop unless they're prevented by culture, or unlearned later. That, in turn, means that there will always be people who've never learned, or cultures that don't care.

 

So, that any one culture on Thedas, or any two, or three, have more enlightened attitudes toward things related to sex, that's perfectly fine. That all of them have it, that's unreal. And it shows a particularly weird lack of diversity.

 

The problem with your logic in comparing the human evolutionary legacy to that of Thedas is that we have no evidence to suggest that the inhabitants of Thedas are the result of a evolutionary biological process. There are strong beliefs that all beings are created by a maker or powerful gods, and whether or not these are true, there are certainly very powerful beings at play, which have shaped the mentality of the cultures in Thedas according to their will. There is nothing to suggest that their will would have any natural inclination towards enforcing or encouraging sexual prejudice.

[turuzzusapatuttu]

Sten is the Arishok

 

Shouldn't you put it in a spoiler? Maybe he didn't read the comics.

[Ieldra]

@papercut_ninja:

You're basically saying that the inhabitants of Thedas may not be human. That's perfectly fine, maybe they're not, but then many of the themes presented in the stories become much less compelling. As I see it, the themes presented in the DA stories presuppose that "people are people", i.e. the people of Thedas are "human in everything that counts" with only minor variations, regardless of superficialities like race, and regardless of how they came to be that way. That's why we can connect with all the different cultures, even that of the qunari, in some way, positively or negatively.

 

My problem is that the universality of an enlightened attitude towards sex-related stuff comes across as unreal to me because I see a predisposition for a judgmental attitude towards others' sexual behaviour as a human constant, part of that "human in everything that counts" template. Such an attitude, if universally adopted rather than variable by culture and individual, results in a fundamental disconnect with Thedas as a setting. I would love to explore this under the premise that the people of Thedas are exactly *not* "human in everything that counts", but that would call for different stories, and stories where these things become a theme.

 

I have posted my rationale for the position that certain things are a human constant, but it doesn't matter if the same rationale can be applied on Thedas. If the people of Thedas are "human in everything that counts", then they must have those human constants because otherwise the stories won't work and the set of cultures isn't believable.

[ThreeF]

Fair enough. The problem, however, is the effect this development of qunari culture has. It makes qunari culture feel safe with regard to things related to sex, gender identity etc... This adds to the impression that Thedas as a whole is safe in that regard, and that pattern comes across as completely unreal. The reply that "That we don't show less enlightened attitudes doesn't mean they don't exist" is not valid, because in fiction only the things which are written or shown, or at least talked about in-world, exist

Is this really a matter of it being  enlighten?  I don't think so, it's more a matter of perception of things created by culture, you can attach all kind of morality to that.

 

I don't see Qun culture enlightened, I could say that it is quite the opposite, but I will settle for just "different".

[Ieldra]

@ThreeF:

I see an attitude that enables people to live as what they want to be with regard to certain aspects of life, such as sex, as enlightened compared to an attitude that doesn't. That says nothing about the culture as a whole and its attitudes towards other aspects of life (which, in the case of the Qun, are often anything but enlightened). Also, this distinction is not relevant to the point I wanted to make.

[DomeWing333]

The context in which Bull brings up the Aqun-athlok has nothing to do with gender acceptance. He's just talking about what the Qun does with women who are very good at fighting. Qunari society is designed to extract maximum utility from its followers, so it makes sense that they wouldn't simply dispense with a valuable resource like a good fighter for purely cosmetic reasons. That would be inefficient. So they create a loophole that lets them utilize strong female fighters while still keeping to their views of females as innately inferior fighters.

 

This doesn't mean that the Qun is suddenly accepting of all sexual and gender differences. Qunari women who identify as male but don't have a gift for fighting are still screwed and will likely be "re-educated" or killed. And someone like Cassandra who is good at fighting but is still feminine in other ways will get that aspect of themselves stamped out in short order. In fact, since your job is chosen for you by the Qun, a Qunari female who shows an aptitude for fighting would probably be forced to become Aqun-athlok even if she wanted to live as a female. That would be oppression of another sort entirely.

[ThreeF]

@ThreeF:

I see an attitude that enables people to live as what they want to be with regard to certain aspects of life, such as sex, as enlightened compared to an attitude that doesn't.

It is enlighten only when the reasons behind it is enlighten, in Qun it's not.

 

I get what  you are saying about evolutionary legacy, however I  still think it works in Thedas, because everything is conditioned. Homosexuality for instance was accepted fact in ancient Greece and Japan, it was however a conditional acceptance, it was not enlightenment the same way it is not enlightenment in Thedas.

[Wulfram]

Not every bit of new Qunari lore makes sense to me as an elaboration of their culture - I do think the writers try to humanise them at the expense of them being coherent - but the aqun-athlock thing does.

[TurretSyndrome]

The Qunari are very fond of categorization, and look upon those categories as absolute and defining -- but they are not without their own degree of fluidity by Qunari standards, which are very different from our own.

 

1)You say you're female? Then you do not fight -- "fighting" being when someone serves as a warrior. Some folks looked on Tallis as a contradiction to this as well, rather than accepting that someone like Sten would not look upon what she does as fighting. 

 

2)Being able to pick up a weapon and use it, even to use it well, does not make one a warrior if that is not their purpose (which it would not be, for a Ben-Hassrath, but certainly would be for a Grey Warden whose stated purpose is to combat the darkspawn).

 

3)You say you're male? Then fighting is acceptable. Even if your biology might say otherwise, the Qunari have a term for what this means and clearly the Tamassrans take it into account -- though you might note Iron Bull did not indicate how easily that might occur. We have a term for "transgender" in our real-world society as well -- that does not automatically translate into it being looked upon exactly the same by every person.

 

You can take what Sten said in DAO as the last and final word on every aspect of Qunari society, and thus everything following it as contradictory, or you can take into account these different viewpoints as new information and consider how they fit into the whole. It's really up to you, though that's hardly going to stop us from further developing the Qunari culture...regardless of the reasons one might ascribe to us for doing so.

 

1) And this is where I see the contradiction in the pre-DA:I Qun beliefs to post-DA:I ones. "You say you're a female" Sorry, in the Qun, you don't get to say crap, now get back to work before I lobotomize you to stop your whining- is the kind of response I'd expect from the Tamassrans. The first lesson I learned about the Qun is that there is no ""you". What the person says, thinks, wants or needs is absolutely irrelevant. You're standing in line waiting for the Tamassrans to decide your role. Your gender is theirs to decide and by what they perceive.  They're like the nurses holding the baby and yelling "it's a boy!", not "hey baby, what gender do you reckon you are?".

 

2) No, it doesn't make you a Warrior and you don't have to be in the Qun for people to say that to you. What it means is that you can fight. Now we go back to what Sten said in DA:O "you can't be a woman and fight". Until Mark of the Assassin, this was all it was. Then the rule-breaker Tallis changes the strict gender roles(urgh). Now women do fight, but as Ben-Hassrath, but the words "fighter" and "warrior" have now become interchangeable in the Qun. What...? So what exactly was Tallis doing during her time with Hawke? Dancing? Water-dancing? No, she was still fighting and she didn't need to be a warrior.

 

3) Why? Why do the Tamassrans now take into account what you say? Your biology is clear to them. And if you have combat prowess, they make you a Ben-Hassrath and let you... uh... water-dance, not fight cause that's what only warriors do. Right? It's like a Mage saying "No wait you guys, how do you know I'm a Saarebas? I'm good with a sword see and I say that I'm a Warrior so remove the cuffs please?" 

 

Arvaraad: You're a Saarebas because you have magical abilities.

Qunari: That doesn't make me a Saarebas because I say I'm not. I deny you calling me that. Just like that guy that says he's a he but he's got "her" organs. You let him be a Warrior.

Arvaraad: That man is Aqun-athlok, his case is not like yours.

Qunari: Of course it is, I say I'm not a Mage. I'm Aqun-Athlok too. 

Arvaraad: That doesn't... you don't... Urgh... it's spewing poison into my mind, kill it!

Qunari: No! Stop! For f*ck's sake!

 

What has been added to DA, to the Qun since Tallis, doesn't feel like new information fitting into the whole. It feels like modification of what was already established for whatever reasons you have. A readjustment of lore for the sake of certain peers perhaps. You're right about any of this hardly stopping you from "developing" the Qunari though. Just know that it put a huge dent to the gravity and depth of what you started with. 

[papercut_ninja]

@papercut_ninja:

You're basically saying that the inhabitants of Thedas may not be human. That's perfectly fine, maybe they're not, but then many of the themes presented in the stories become much less compelling. As I see it, the themes presented in the DA stories presuppose that "people are people", i.e. the people of Thedas are "human in everything that counts" with only minor variations, regardless of superficialities like race, and regardless of how they came to be that way. That's why we can connect with all the different cultures, even that of the qunari, in some way, positively or negatively.

 

My problem is that the universality of an enlightened attitude towards sex-related stuff comes across as unreal to me because I see a predisposition for a judgmental attitude towards others' sexual behaviour as a human constant, part of that "human in everything that counts" template. Such an attitude, if universally adopted rather than variable by culture and individual, results in a fundamental disconnect with Thedas as a setting. I would love to explore this under the premise that the people of Thedas are exactly *not* "human in everything that counts", but that would call for different stories, and stories where these things become a theme.

 

I have posted my rationale for the position that certain things are a human constant, but it doesn't matter if the same rationale can be applied on Thedas. If the people of Thedas are "human in everything that counts", then they must have those human constants because otherwise the stories won't work and the set of cultures isn't believable.

 

...or they are very much human in nature, just under the influence of powers such as magic, gods and demons which will fundamentally re-shape their experience as humans. Sexual prejudice towards polygamy, promiscuity, interracial relations, infidelity are still portrayed and exist in the storytelling, so it is basically only the prejudice towards same sex relations that have been altered.

[Asdrubael Vect]

I will also point out, since Dorian was mentioned, that Dorian's father did not have a problem with his homosexuality in and of itself.

 

His problem was that Dorian refused to do his duty as the heir of a proud Tevinter family. If Dorian had agreed to marry as intended, and kept his homosexuality as a private conceit, there would have been no conflict. The issue insofar as Tevinter society goes is not with homosexuality in and of itself, but with their insistence on a public standard for any and all members of the upper class -- no one does blood magic, no one is anything other than their perfect ideal, and the polite fiction must always be maintained. Appearances are everything, even if every single person understands that the truth behind closed doors is completely different.

 

tl;dr: It's not about Tevinter "suddenly being homophobic when the rest of Thedas isn't", it's about Tevinter society's preoccupation with appearances.

 

Take that as you will.

Ok, so there is no homonegativity views and discrimination in any Thedas cultures-nations?

 

Not Tevinters?, not Elves?, not Dwarfs?, not Qunari? or some like Nevarrans, Hasinds or Avvars, not have any homonegative views and discrimination? Not by their culture, beliefs/faith and moral standards?

 

I personally not understand something... If the whole Thedas accept and approve(like Orlais and Antiva) or accept and not care(all others) about non-straight relationships and not have any homonegativity views and discrimination, so...

 

Why Thedas, who by my opinion not so realistic and believable on this matter, but still...

 

If Thedas not have any prejudice, discrimination by any moral, culture and beliefs/faith standards and who accept them and not considerate them as something unusual and never find them as something wrong, unnatural, unacceptable, disgusting by their opinions and moral, culture and beliefs/faith standards...

 

...why Thedas does not have something like same-sex family's, same-sex marriage's and others, and why and for what reason some of them need to hide who they are, pretend who they are not  in some places like Tevinter, Elf and Dwarf society "who not care about them being non-straight". and why and how it is exist some form of "public standards" and what is the source of them if they does not have any homonegativity views and of course any laws as with discrimination about this matter?

 

I personally not see reasons and sense for many things related for this themes and how they are showed in Thedas life and society, they are not a realistic despite that they are pretend to be, and many things about racism, sexism related content with this themes what was touched in last DA games and books are create "utopian magical world where everyone accepts and loves everyone else".

 

The DA universe mature and serious themed content have left with only Qunari and Hypocritically N*zi Orlais Chantry Templars/Seekers who for their own holy beliefs and power hunger lie, brainwash peoples and do crusades, put mages in concentration camps and threat them(beat, torture, kill, rape, lobotomy them and do other n*zi stuff) like animals and lesser beings. 

 

Compare with "mages vs templars/qunari" themes, others like racism and especially sexism are almost not exist in Thedas world, at least we never really see them yet.

 

 

This is was my imho but i am not consider it as not so objective and completely wrong.

[earymir]

1) And this is where I see the contradiction in the pre-DA:I Qun beliefs to post-DA:I ones. "You say you're a female" Sorry, in the Qun, you don't get to say crap, now get back to work before I lobotomize you to stop your whining- is the kind of response I'd expect from the Tamassrans. The first lesson I learned about the Qun is that there is no ""you". What the person says, thinks, wants or needs is absolutely irrelevant. You're standing in line waiting for the Tamassrans to decide your role. Your gender is theirs to decide and by what they perceive.  They're like the nurses holding the baby and yelling "it's a boy!", not "hey baby, what gender do you reckon you are?".

 

2) No, it doesn't make you a Warrior and you don't have to be in the Qun for people to say that to you. What it means is that you can fight. Now we go back to what Sten said in DA:O "you can't be a woman and fight". Until Mark of the Assassin, this was all it was. Then the rule-breaker Tallis changes the strict gender roles(urgh). Now women do fight, but as Ben-Hassrath, but the words "fighter" and "warrior" have now become interchangeable in the Qun. What...? So what exactly was Tallis doing during her time with Hawke? Dancing? Water-dancing? No, she was still fighting and she didn't need to be a warrior.

 

3) Why? Why do the Tamassrans now take into account what you say? Your biology is clear to them. And if you have combat prowess, they make you a Ben-Hassrath and let you... uh... water-dance, not fight cause that's what only warriors do. Right? It's like a Mage saying "No wait you guys, how do you know I'm a Saarebas? I'm good with a sword see and I say that I'm a Warrior so remove the cuffs please?" 

 

Arvaraad: You're a Saarebas because you have magical abilities.

Qunari: That doesn't make me a Saarebas because I say I'm not. I deny you calling me that. Just like that guy that says he's a he but he's got "her" organs. You let him be a Warrior.

Arvaraad: That man is Aqun-athlok, his case is not like yours.

Qunari: Of course it is, I say I'm not a Mage. I'm Aqun-Athlok too. 

Arvaraad: That doesn't... you don't... Urgh... it's spewing poison into my mind, kill it!

Qunari: No! Stop! For f*ck's sake!

 

What has been added to DA, to the Qun since Tallis, doesn't feel like new information fitting into the whole. It feels like modification of what was already established for whatever reasons you have. A readjustment of lore for the sake of certain peers perhaps. You're right about any of this hardly stopping you from "developing" the Qunari though. Just know that it put a huge dent to the gravity and depth of what you started with. 

 

I think you're very much misunderstanding the things we have learned about the Qun.  It's collectivist but that doesn't mean no individual anything.  And anyway, it's pretty clear from previous posts and Gaider that it's quite possible for a collectivist culture to be smart about things that maximizes their output.  They clearly want people to accept their roles whole-heartedly and have many ways of trying to make that happen if they can't.  It's not remotely contradictory to have a transgender person as a warrior if it maximizes their ability to do the will of the Qun.   The Qun is a whole culture - not just a few lines of dialogue from Sten and the Arishok and Tallis from DA2.  Nuance CLEARLY has to exist.  

[Ieldra]

I get what  you are saying about evolutionary legacy, however I  still think it works in Thedas, because everything is conditioned. Homosexuality for instance was accepted fact in ancient Greece and Japan, it was however a conditional acceptance, it was not enlightenment the same way it is not enlightenment in Thedas.

Quite true. However, these cultures were far from being non-judgmental about others' behaviour related to sex. The permitted and the frowned upon were just distinguished by different categories. For instance, in ancient Greece it was considered demeaning for an adult male to take the "submissive" role. Also, that's two cultures of many. As I said, having one culture like that, or two, is fine. The universality is the problem. 

[Kantr]

Shouldn't you put it in a spoiler? Maybe he didn't read the comics.

Not really. Iron bull talks about it in the game.

[ThreeF]

Quite true. However, these cultures were far from being non-judgmental about others' behaviour related to sex. The permitted and the frowned upon were just distinguished by different categories. Also, that's two cultures of many. As I said, having one culture like that, or two, is fine. The universality is the problem. 

You should add religion to the mix of all the complex things that create a culture, close proximity and expansionism (if that exist). Evolutionary legacy is not the only driving force here, especially when it comes to sexual acceptance and patterns of behavior in humans.

 

I do agree however that things need to be mixed up to become more realisitc, but  the thing is so far we are dealing with nations that are close together, have similar religion, had several wars and diplomatic relationships with each other, things rub off.

 

Qun can be viewed as an odd ball in this, however  while Qunari structure does not allow any external influence it is very much consistent to itself, so it might look oddly similar but is essentially different. 

[Rpgfantasyplayer]

I was confused by all the contradiction for the Qunari, so thank you Mr. Gaider for clearing that up!

 

As to Dorian I was always under the impression that his father was not against him being attracted to men it was that he would not marry and do his duty and keep his preferences behind closed doors.  In a cut scene after his quest Dorian says that he could not live a life where he was someone different to the outside world but  screaming on the inside, which tells me that he would still have those preferences but he would not be "Dorian" but something that everyone else thought he should be. He also states (if you romance him) that he doesn't know where it will go since in Trevinter it is okay to enjoy the same sex sexually but it never becomes something serious.

 

By the way Mr. Gaider, thank you for writing such a great character.  I usually never play a male when I can choose a gender and I did this game just so that I could play through Dorian's romance.

[Qunquistador]

If Thedas not have any prejudice, discrimination by any moral, culture and beliefs/faith standards and who accept them and not considerate them as something unusual and never find them as something wrong, unnatural, unacceptable, disgusting by their opinions and moral, culture and beliefs/faith standards...

 

...why Thedas does not have something like same-sex family's, same-sex marriage's, 

 

Iirc the answer Gaider gave before was that same-sex marriage would seem "anachronistic"/wouldn't occur to most Theodosians, which honestly makes very little sense to me and seems incongruous to what we hear in the game.  So much so that I pretty much made a thread about it here: 

 

http://forum.bioware...-with-marriage/

[Ieldra]

Iirc the answer Gaider gave before was that same-sex marriage would seem "anachronistic"/wouldn't occur to most Theodosians, which honestly makes very little sense to me and seems incongruous to what we hear in the game.  So much so that I pretty much made a thread about it here: 

 

http://forum.bioware...-with-marriage/

I agree with David Gaider here. It is indeed so that one does not necessarily imply the other. For most of human history, family and marriage has been something else than an extension of romance, more ruled by economic concerns. It's perfectly understandable for me if a culture says it doesn't care who has sex with whom, but doesn't even consider a family without one parent of either sex as a possibility because it can't produce children. You can see a similar distinction if you look for the function of marriage in modern society. The sentimental/symbolic aspect of marriage is pretty much a private affair, and were it only about that, we wouldn't need laws regulating it, it wouldn't even need to be public knowledge. Public recognition is only needed inasfar we want it to be regulated by the community, in matters of legal and economic benefit and obligation, or for the protection of children, for instance, and the former might as well be regulated by contract law.

 

As I see it, same-sex "marriage" only becomes a serious consideration if (1) the technology exists to create children independently from the parents' sex, or if (2) a prevailing cultural attitude exists that the biological sex of a parent is largely irrelevant for their role as a parent.

[Nefla]

Sten was comically and ridiculously hypocritical in DAO. The Arishok took hypocrys to new and almost comical heights in DA2. He says he lost no "Qunari" to the Tal-Vasoth. That's idiotic nonsense. It only works if you use a No True Scotsman fallacy. And that's the very essence of the Qun: troll logic when it comes to categories. 

 

The most quintessential feature of the Qun is this sort of wordplay based on categories that requires effectively absurd distinctions between categories that, while sharing a label that we use IRL or that in-setting is used in the same way as IRL, the Qun uses in a totally different way.

 

Sten explains at comical length how someone is defined by their role for all time and without exception. Which is true... until someone gets promoted, in which case they are and always were meant to be a role that they never had until that moment in time. 

 

Sten doesn't comprehend that someone identifies as "female" and "warrior", because that's nonsense in the view of the Qun. To understand the Qun, you can't use coherent IRL terms. As DG explains, the logical operation is IF "Warrior" THEN NOT "Female" or, alternatively, IF "Female", THEN NOT "Warrior". It's all labels and wordplay. 

Then I think we need a lot more exposure to Qunari culture so that we can understand. A settlement maybe, but a lot of different NPCs. That way we have more to go on besides the word of Sten and the word of Iron Bull that seem to completely contradict each other.

[In Exile]

Fair enough. The problem, however, is the effect this development of qunari culture has. It makes qunari culture feel safe with regard to things related to sex, gender identity etc... This adds to the impression that Thedas as a whole is safe in that regard, and that pattern comes across as completely unreal. The reply that "That we don't show less enlightened attitudes doesn't mean they don't exist" is not valid, because in fiction only the things which are written or shown, or at least talked about in-world, exist.

Maybe it is a reflection on our culture that this comes across as unreal, but I'm more inclined to think we're dealing with a human constant here. I think I could make a strong case for the claim a predisposition for judgmental attitudes towards others' sexual behavior is a part of our evolutionary legacy, which means that such attitudes develop unless they're prevented by culture, or unlearned later. That, in turn, means that there will always be people who've never learned, or cultures that don't care.

So, that any one culture on Thedas, or any two, or three, have more enlightened attitudes toward things related to sex, that's perfectly fine. That all of them have it, that's unreal. And it shows a particularly weird lack of diversity.

Also, with regard to further developing Thedas' cultures, I wish the same would be done with Tevinter. A lot has been done to "soften" qunari culture from the initial impression in DAO, we were even forced into complicity with a plot that benefits the Qunari (DA2 Mark of the Assassin), something that I still can't quite forgive, and people like Iron Bull actually *justify* its evils. This may be nothing more than a personal preference, but I resent that Tevinter is still stuck in Evil Empire mode, while the Qun is increasingly presented as acceptable after having started as pretty much the collectivist counterimage of Tevinter.

I'm going to point out that any explanation that starts with evolutionary psychology is basically worthless. That's one of the most intellectually defunct fields of human study. There's just nothing to it.

As to the Qunari, the only thing that's happened is that their adherents are way better than Tevinter at good PR. The IB is open and terrified about the Qunari destroying everything he loves about Thedas. Tallis has to contort in almost ridiculous ways to make it seem like it isn't massively horrid. Same with the IB.

Let's talk about reeducation. The IB is clear that this is just torture applied until an individual is broken enough psychologically to go along with anything. His Dorian like defence that poverty exists and is bad in southern Thedas too isn't a defence at all. That he's not twirling his mustache about it doesn't hide the evil of the Qun - it makes it more realistic by not having its adherents effectively cackle evil-y.

[In Exile]

Then I think we need a lot more exposure to Qunari culture so that we can understand. A settlement maybe, but a lot of different NPCs. That way we have more to go on besides the word of Sten and the word of Iron Bull that seem to completely contradict each other.

Oh, I agree with you there. But when discussing the lore I think it's really important not to try to define categories as we understand them.

Gender to the Qunari is a consequence of your role* which is just resource allocation bound up with a metaphysical philosophy. The Qunari see that someone is good at X and have a built-in mysticism about the moral worth in someone being X. Everything surrounding it is then a complete fiction.

This is why for example the Qunari military hasn't collapsed while purporting to execute soldiers for losing their weapons.

[Ieldra]

As to the Qunari, the only thing that's happened is that their adherents are way better than Tevinter at good PR. The IB is open and terrified about the Qunari destroying everything he loves about Thedas. Tallis has to contort in almost ridiculous ways to make it seem like it isn't massively horrid. Same with the IB.

Let's talk about reeducation. The IB is clear that this is just torture applied until an individual is broken enough psychologically to go along with anything. His Dorian like defence that poverty exists and is bad in southern Thedas too isn't a defence at all. That he's not twirling his mustache about it doesn't hide the evil of the Qun - it makes it more realistic by not having its adherents effectively cackle evil-y.

I concede the point, but maintain that it looks like Bioware is interested in making the Qun look good and interested in keeping Tevinter reduced to its role as the Evil Empire. I do not like that.

 

Besides, if there's one thing I never want to experience again in a DA game, it's being made complicit in a plot that benefits the Qun, and being forced to endure those tortured justifications without being able to act against them.