#DORIAN

[elvhenfaer]

“Listen, as much as I hated your father… I think he’d be very proud. When you were a child he always believed, perhaps a bit overzealously, that one day you could be the Archon of Tevinter. And, well, now you are.”

These were words Dorian had known he needed to hear. Until he heard them.

[pickled0ctopus]

my dear comfort zone

[tarydarrington]

💚💙

[mazojo]

I heart them

A commission for Maura! 🌟

I had a lot of fun with this piece (and it was hooky related), so I thought I'd post this one on here <33

[maestache]

Give em' Nein Hells! Print Available

[des-vanecido]

Mi Instagram

[briccko]

Everyone is here!!!

[bingsoo-jung]

I’m going to be adding on two unconnected topics:

1) reading the dellemortes as asian when they were not cast as such is weird

2) the simplification of dorian’s identity down to solely south asian was brought about by a poor understanding of complicated ethnicities formed in former british colonies

One

While the dellemortes were originally intended to be korean-italian or korean-spanish (in my head this means they were supposed to be korean-argentinian LMAO) they clearly didn’t actually end up casting that way. And that’s fine! I don’t mind that. But people going ‘but they WERE that in the game’ are ridiculous. Like… no clearly they weren’t. They didn’t cast a korean actor, let alone a korean spanish, italian, or latine actor for that role. And to be honest with you, they were trying to find someone who matched a nearly non-existent ethnicity. There are only around 70k people worldwide who match what they were looking for, finding 2 actors and an older actress with the correct accents and ethnicity would’ve been impossibly hard. I don’t blame them fo not going that route.

But it does mean that in a cast of very purposefully cast actors that acting like the guy played by a clearly not asian guy, is playing an asian guy, is just a weird form of modern yellowface. Like no, he’s not korean. Stop being weird and fetishizing koreans. Like yes i would like every piece of media to have koreans, but not every piece of media does, and pretending like your local white fave looks korean is fucking weird. Calm the fuck down. Be normal.

Two

So here’s the thing, dorian’s character, and thus tevinter retroactively, have been made south asian coded because of dorian’s actor. However dorian’s actor isn’t solely south asian. Specifically ramon tikaram is indo-fijian and sarawak malay. For a bit of history, indo-fijians are people of indian descent in fiji, whose ancestors brought to fiji by the british to be indentured servants under horrible conditions. Whereas sarawak malays are ethnically malay people from sarawak. Malaysia was the oldest british colony in asia, in fact the east india company wasn’t named for india, it was named for malaysia, the east indies are the south pacific. Furthermore, tikaram was born in singapore, when britain still had military there, his father was in the military, there is a lot to be said about brown soldiers of the british empire being used to police their other colonies, and that weird and specific reality.

Now, if you know anything about these groups, and how people in the south pacific tend to identity, most of our families identify with the country we’re from. You can look up indo-fijians talking about how they often dislike being put being into solely one category of pasifika OR indian, and in my experience as southeast asian, we also dislike being told we’re just one thing. Identities formed in the context of colonialism, especially by diasporic populations are complex things, and to simplify them down to the easiest component to understand, is very much a view of ethnicity and identity that is reductionist. Just going ‘well they’re this thing because their ancestors were’ is weird and distills ethnicity and culture down to some psuedo-scientific concept with numbers and percentages centered in an understanding of ethnicity that was created when britain set down its colonies and started involuntarily moving people around so they could get all their tea and sugar for cheap.

Now I don’t know how tikaram identifies, not in the least, but I do think it says a lot when a bunch of white canadians with no connection to the region, decide to just pick the easiest route of identification for a character they partially based off of an actor, and basically go ‘he’s south asian now!’ Like yes, they don’t need to model the character off of tikaram’s specific heritage, but there is something to be said about creating a fantasy world and actually creating interesting new cultures from combining and exploring how different cultures IRL could interact and produce something new. It also in many ways shows a lack of thought about the ramifications. Because it’s bad enough with the context of tikaram being of indian descent. I would say it’s worse with the context of tikaram being indo-fijian which is a group of people who we know were traded, sold, and passed around by the british. It adds a specific weird extra layer to everything, and it makes all of that history just a bit more… yikes.

… so yeah! I don’t have a way to end this. But yeah

to the people who tagged that asian dellamortes post with “i thought lucanis was asian because of his eyes” firstly me too and before i even read the art book LOL because if i reach then he kind of looks like he has double eyelids but secondly i believe that was copium. if the designers ever come out and say “the dellamortes were always meant to be partially/half asian” then we should kill them because there is nothing that implies any kind of korean or asian coding. i think there is a clear and total failure in character design and writing if you present a character who is white passing and fail to address the fact that their quote unquote culture means something to them and the writing treats them like they’re (only) italian or spanish. like i think if he actually was supposed to be asian he would have mentioned literally any korean dish. while we’re here i kind of would have liked more references to worldbuilding for bellara (and cyrian) who has a hairpin (a cultural thing not seen before in thedas! but from where?) or irelin who has an accent which literally implies she is not from thedas or that she at least speaks another language. same goes for neve and dorian but i also would have had mixed feelings about south asian aesthetics pinned onto thedas’ proxy for the roman empire that is also filled with slavery. like i don’t think it’s gotta be one-to-one with coding especially with a world that is as broad as thedas but it is kind of crazy that a previous head writer said “idk. i guess there are just no asians on the continent. don’t ask me again” and then it was like hmmm actually the pavus family seem to be the only asians on the continent and then suddenly veilguard goes “HEY WE’VE HAD ASIAN PEOPLE THE WHOLE TIME!”

[elvhenguard]

Dorian was about to risk it all to punch Magister Bataris

[annemarieyeretzian]

new favorite thing: liam showing off the nat 20 he rolled on his dorian die

and then robbie just

(obvious bonus: travis saying “barf.” 😂)

[eethok]

dreadwolf this, elven gods that NOTHING is ruining the tabris family vacation this year!

[bread-wizards]

Ok, but from Braius' perspective: 2 days ago he told Dorian he wanted to fuck Orym. Dorian yesterday helped Braius with his painting of Orym that he had said was going to be used to woo him. And then when he finally goes to give it to Orym, he gets there to see Orym and Dorian already making out.

Every day Braius Doomseed wakes up.

[elvhenfaer]

I’ve been wanting to draw baby Dorian. I find it hilarious that he was canonically bullying older kids when he was NINE and started manifesting magic ‘very young’ which makes me picture a like four year old walking around zapping shit in the house

— From World of Thedas: Volume 2

“Hope you’re prepared to be pummeled, Loser”

[percexe]

my favorite da:i party comp is what i like to call "mage gang" aka sitting back and letting these three argue over magic while i look for a tome or something

[jaypopinho]

[FAN ANIMATION] Baseball

[theartofknightjj]

Who’d have thought that a soft shy and protective green coded guy, who puts everyone else’s needs above his and a blue, rich and clumsily charismatic guy would have such a hold on me? Not me. 🫣

I just really need them to kiss soon please and thank youuu 💚💙