#and she fundamentally cuts against the grain of previous depictions of Dalish

[hezenkossapologist]

The second you find yourself going “no-one from [cultural group] would ever [take a specific action]” you’ve already lost the “not being a racial essentialist” game and original OP needs to put down the essentialism juice.

Even if I agreed with screenshotted person about the positions of the Dalish towards Valaslin, Arlathan Forest or shoes- that there are deep and strict cultural norms that are upheld around each and it’d be a taboo to violate those norms worthy of excommunication in Dalish eyes- there are people and groups changing and complicating the most deeply held cultural norms of their people in every single culture. Because people are not empty vessels into which culture is poured, and culture is not a dead unchanging thing, it is the sum of the people who are part of it and people react to the world they find themselves in.

The Ngalum people of West Papua are not any less Indigenous nor any less of their own culture now that they wear camouflage suits as they fight back their colonisers with guns.

Bellara is an engineer who adopts technology that she finds useful. She and her brother also share Vallaslin that are not the same Vallaslin of the gods that we are used to from previous games- whilst still being designs linked to the Evenuris. It’s almost like the design of these characters is communicating that there has been a massive break with norms for Dalish specifically and for people living in the North around Arlathan more widely since Inquisition, and that Bellara and her brother have a unique relationship to that break, to Dalishness and non-Dalish peoples, and to their gods.

Even if we accept “no Dalish would go near Arlathan Forest” as being a real cultural taboo shared equally and without question by every single Dalish clan, the game still very much does tell us that Arlathan Forest fundamentally started changing following Tresspasser, and guess what. People- even the simplistic, exoticisised, monolith people that the poster seems to view the Dalish as- do in fact start changing their relationship to the world when the world itself starts changing.

They might even adopt a habit of wearing shoes.

I should just block this poster bc everytime I see xyr post I get psychic damage

But on the other hand, how could I let myself miss out on “Bellara isn’t Dalish bc she wears shoes”