I think there are a lot of underlying reasons why there is so much elf hate among players but being able to play out real life hatred for certain people in society with impunity because the game lore allows it is probably one of them. It works the opposite way with me; since I invariably relate to the maligned, marginalised people in society, I can identify with and role play an elf character for more happily than a human one, since the latter PCs have consistently been part of the nobility and therefore the ones responsible for the injustice. Having been picked on and bullied at school for my slim (elf-like) body I don't have a problem with the elf model, provided it at least has muscles where there should be muscles. Essentially it should be like the difference between a sprinter (human) and a long distance runner (elf). Both are athletes but they have a different basic body form. In fact I was a very good long distance runner but no good at the disciplines that involved raw power, like sprinting. I was also rather good at fast, agile sword play (fencing) and archery, so really very much an elf.
You will never change Medhia-Nox's mind about DA elves; the prejudice is deeply rooted and blind to any other point of view. However, I do wonder where the idea of brutish poachers comes from or that they are consistently throwing rocks at their oppressors. Actually, most of the ones in game are shown as just wanting to be left alone to live their lives as they wish. You can play your Dalish elf as aggressive if you wish but it would be wrong to call that the norm. The only real criticism that is valid is that they are stuck in the past and their lives will never change because there is no impetus to do so and so their culture has become stagnant. However, that is a criticism that could also be levelled at every other society in Thedas. The reason some of the changes that can be made in DAI seem so jarring (like the clerics suddenly voting in a mage as Divine) is that they come totally out of the blue after hundreds of years of exactly the same. Take the Grand Game in Orlais; Drakon tried to get rid of it 800 years before, but it is still going strong. It would seem the last big shake up of society in Thedas was Andraste's Exalted March, with a slightly lesser one when the Qunari popped up.
Elves have been slaves of Tevinter for thousands of years and their second grade status in the rest of Thedas is really only an extension of this. When a noble in Orlais (Celene) can sacrifice an entire household of servants (human probably as well as elves) in order to advance her position in society and no one calls her to account for it (she was clearly not the only one who has ever done this), then really it is no different to a Tevinter mage advancing themselves through blood magic. That is why I want a big shake up with the elves because I want to get rid of the hypocrisy that is endemic in their society that claims to believe in the Maker but ignores every aspect of the social teaching in the Chant. Since the mages have their freedom in southern Orlais regardless of the choices made by the PC, it is about time that the elves got their freedom. What they do with it after that is entirely up to them.
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. Here's how I see it: as once S. King said, story-telling is basically about seducing someone, and I believe this applies to games as well. But you need to be good at this, right?
