[ SECRET POST #5213 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5213 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 15 secrets from Secret Submission Post #746.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. https://i.imgur.com/ieiLNqu.png

[feotakahari]

Well, there’s always Tokyo Ghoul for “both sides of this race war are kinda right and also super wrong.” And there was some stuff like that in Dan and Mab, which I think is still a thing? I haven’t checked it in forever.

[hey_hey_hey]

But Cullen does drugs. Sooo sad.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, well, given the shit he did / allowed others to do in DA2, I have a hard time feeling sorry for the guy.

I have hated him ever since DA1 and I felt so angry that you couldn't rival!romance him in DAI. I had to pass because I couldn't stand the idea of having to pretend to feel the slighest amount of sympathy for him in order to get in his pants.

And I say that as a Fenris lover.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

I do get that you were being tongue in cheek btw. Just in case it wasn't clear.

[(Anonymous)]

You know, you just made me realize that the reason I don't have sympathy for Cullen is *because* Anders and Fenris are there. They are *such* better examples of people being mean or making bad decisions because of trauma than Cullen is. Because you can see them trying their asses off to do the right thing, even though it's hard and very painful. To my memory, Cullen doesn't do any of that.

[(Anonymous)]

Hah. They all do drugs and they do it by choice. Maybe not as individuals, but definitely as an organization.

I don't hate Cullen, but I have very few sad or affectionate feelings for him. He just seems like a bad person who has the capacity to love, which isn't even a little the same as being a good person. And, you know, I've loved bad people on a redemption path before. That's very intriguing. But he never *does* feel like he's on a redemption path. He just feels like he likes someone and is willing to be nice to specifically them and... that's it. That's not the same as redemption.

I dunno, though. He's never my pick for romances, so maybe I'm missing some growth.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it's really possible to have a "both sides are valid" version of oppressors and oppressed

Just based on the definition of what oppression is

[(Anonymous)]

To be honest I would find an attempt to validate oppression to be really gross and offensive. It's oppression. Oppression shouldn't be validated.

nayrt

[(Anonymous)]

You're absolutely right. Any quality "both sides" setting needs both sides to have enough agency so that it's not about oppression of one side by the other. Both can be shitty, or both can have excellent points, either way, but a good story doesn't automatically have one side in complete control over the other. They both need to have a more or less equal chance at succeeding in the overall setting, regardless of player choices or storyline beats or whatever is driving the narrative.

[(Anonymous)]

There are so many different dimensions and complexities that fit into the obvious real-world parallels like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine (yes, I said it) that really can't be addressed within the space of a CRPG built around killing almost everyone who gets in your way.

[(Anonymous)]

Disagree. Obviously things went pear-shaped for the sake of story development, but the Templars' existence and even (some) methods were very valid. This wasn't like with the humans being racist against the elves for funsies. The mages' shaky natural tie to The Veil made them dangerous to both themselves and society. At best they were more susceptible than average to demon possession, and at worst capable of nuking a city if they lost control of their powers through emotion or simple inexperience. Of course the mundanes would want to develop some kind of force to monitor, warn, combat or contain that shit. If you're a regular townsfolk, after the 18th time one of your neighbors' kids turns the drinking water into acid or unleashes a gargoyle rampage on the market, you're going to want them to gtfo. Forcibly, if necessary. Maybe go live in a nice tower upstate where they can relax and read all day...

[(Anonymous)]

Just like mutants in X-men, right? Well, I still think Magneto was right, so...

[(Anonymous)]

Senator Kelly said mutants were dangerous and they turned him into a fucking jellyfish, so he may have had... something of point as well. :D

[(Anonymous)]

another random DA fan here, and this is the side that I'm on, most games-- the institution of the Templars itself is ripe for awful, terrible abuses that absolutely do happen, but that doesn't negate the fact that when it comes to mage training some kind of institution is necessary?

and we have canonical examples of places that have happy, functioning mages without the militant asshole Templars you get in Fereldan and Orlais-- like the Avaar, the Dalish, Rivain... (not bringing up Tevinter because of the uhhhhhh slavery and the fact that we haven't seen it as a location in a game yet so we can't know first-hand how it functions with neutered templars)

I feel like the games go out of their way to paint siding with Templars as Always The Bad Choice and mages as Always The Good Choice but they also have a lot of garden-variety abominations and power-hungry mages who are really evil villains?? It feels like a lot of mixed signals in a "not all of the people writing this game were on the same pages" way, and I wish it were more coherent.

I'd love to be able to side with templars in any way that matters without the game painting it as the Worst Possible Timeline.

[(Anonymous)]

They’ve got to stop using people with extreme powers who can summon demons and level cities as the oppressed class. It doesn’t work. If you can set someone on fire from across the room with your mind or imbed lyrium into a persons skin to use them as a personal energy source, I think its natural that folks are gonna want some kind of protection against you. Obviously the Templar’s are fucked up, but I also do not trust mages as a class in that series to ever do the right thing.

[(Anonymous)]

This.

Trying to shove a power fantasy and an oppression allegory into the same narrative space is always going to be sort of incoherent and uncomfortable.

A Mythcreants post on this topic exactly

[(Anonymous)]

Just dropping this link here...
https://mythcreants.com/blog/the-problem-with-oppressed-mages/

I think Oren manages to lay out some of the big issues pretty clearly and intelligently.

[feotakahari]

N.K. Jemisin wrote something the other day about how actual racism can work like that. E.g. the idea that the cops just had to shoot that fleeing black man seventeen times, because black men are just so strong and powerful and frightening. Can’t find the post now, for some reason.

[(Anonymous)]

But those are different things? Black men aren't inherently more powerful than white men for real, that's a myth that's just part of the racism. The fictional races this secret and thread are talking about really do have inherent dangerous advantages over their oppressors.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, mages were turning to dark magic and demons long before the Circles and the Templars even existed, so... Hell, the Chantry and the Templars grew out of a slave revolt against the previous magocracy. Which still exists as a slave owning society that promotes the use of human sacrifice and demon bullshit in the current timeline.

It's not an even "both sides" narrative, but it's not a simple "Templars bad, mages innocent woobies who only do bad things because Templars" either.

[meadowphoenix]

All these descriptions of this sound like my problem with Zootopia, lmao.

Which is to say, a set up in which people who have abilities that give them heightened power over others CAN be treated as if they have heightened responsibility and therefore heightened regulation, that's not oppression (as long as you are doing so according to the ability, i.e. boxers hands being treated as weapons in a fight, but not their feet).

Do I think it gets iffy when you treat all signs of power as precursors to danger, yeah, if you've also done no research to connect it! But if they ARE connected? People don't have to put themselves in danger for you.

[feotakahari]

Eh, Zootopia wasn’t really about innate powers. The “feral” creatures don’t use things like instinctive ambush hunting tactics. They just lash out mindlessly, in the same way a drugged-up human can.

[(Anonymous)]

My response to DA2 was that the writers managed to create a metaphor for social oppression and terrorism that was oversimplified to the point of stupidity. Ultimately, their ability to tackle big political issues is spoiled by the fact that the fundamental game mechanics involve mass murder and arbitrary choices between superficially different flavors of puppy kicking.

Given real-world parallels, the end result of Bioware's pretensions is pretty infuriating to me. It's a textbook example of how not to write sff about important issues.

[(Anonymous)]

Only tangentially related, but I hated how Tru Blood likened Vampires (murderous predators who leech off of the living, mind control people for sex and power, and view humans as cattle) to lgbt+ people and racial minorities.
If it was just the characters I could accept that (stay in your lane Vampire Bill) but the show seemed to think it was being clever and deep.