#gender in thedas

[hezenkossapologist]

Dragon Age Transgender sidebar, since I’m thinking about Gender and its suffocating presence in Orzammar: I am SO frustrated that we won’t deal with Orzammar from a 2024 lens, as far as I can tell because it’s problematic and they would rather ignore and do away with it.

But it is, to me, more important than ever that we get stories that depict power and violence and how people are organised by power and violence. ESPECIALLY stories about Gender and Bodies. We deserve 2024 sociological storytelling! We should not let it be abandoned to the 90s and the derivatives of the 90s! A transgender woman in Orzammar doesn’t just defy gendered expectations of a person with her body, she defies caste expectations. When caste is afforded according to your same-sex parent, what happens when you are not the sex everyone said you were? Do you become Casteless? You likely can’t then become a Noble hunter, for if you did, which caste would the child be a part of? You or your Deshyr woman? What do you do with a male child when there is no male parent? What happens when you are a woman, a gender that is organised for consumption in a specific and particular reproductive role, and you can’t and don’t fill that role? (Are women who cannot give birth disproportionately joining the Legion of the Dead? What about the Silent Sisters?)

Give me transfemininity in Orzammar. Give me a story that demonstrates what happens when you assume that because there is sex-articulated violence (that is, violence that is enacted against a person using their reproductive and bodily reality) that this is sex-based violence (the idea that violence happens to people because they are born into a sex, namely female). Trouble that TERF-ass stupid dumb dumb narrative about how power and violence and gender and bodies actually work*. Show how transgender woman are actually organised by gender hierarchy, even (or especially) when that hierarchy is fixated on a reproductive capability they do not have.

And this just flat-out does not have to involve lurid depictions of transphobia or violence against trans women- because Orzammar society is built to squeeze out transgender people, even if we say as a writing rule that Orzammar citizens are never personally transphobic people. Just like how in the real world, systems change how transgender people navigate the world, even if you are able to completely avoid interpersonal violence.

For that matter, tell me about a non-binary person from Orzammar! The most aggressively binary gender-enforcing location I can think of in Thedas!

Trans Dwarves should be all over the place on the Surface. What under Stone is there to lose for you when Orzammar has truly nothing for you?

As much as Taash’s story touched me and made me cry and I love them as a character, I am so frustrated by how frictionless their story is against the society and world they live in. Why don’t they know the term non-binary when non-binary people are not only accepted in Rivain, but have even had a place in the Lords of Fortune- their group, that isn't depicted as being particularly large? For that matter what is the Rivani understanding of nonbinary? Has Taash somehow just never met a non-binary person, a person friends with a non-binary person, nor ever heard about their fellow non-binary Lord? If not, how can I believe that Rivaini society is at a base level truly accepting of non-binary identity?

I don't. I think Taash's conflict and struggle is one that is heavily inspired by Trick Weeks' actual experience as a non-binary person in this society. This society within which the dominant cultural logic is "men are people with penises, women are people with vaginas, and we violate and ignore anyone who troubles this in any way". (Something which is not universal and is inextricable from colonial histories). If Rivain is not a society that hides, violates, controls, erases, or dominates transgender and nonbinary people Taash simply should have come across mentions of transgender and nonbinary histories and lives and realities in Rivain.

Non-binary as a term is culturally situated to anglophone, colonised or colonising, societies in the 21st century. That is where it came from. It came out of a reaction to that specific gender binary. I like it being used explicitly in VG- I like transgender people being undeniable and using words that are meaningful to us, this is a game by and largely for people from this social and cultural context- but I want it to be specifically culturally situated to Thedas, too. Who came up with the term non-binary in Thedas? Has there been a LGBTQ rights struggle that mirrors the origins of the term in our world? Did Maevaris coin the word transgender in Tevine and now it’s been adopted for the Trade Tongue?

Fantasy as a genre, to put it very very broadly, asks questions about how things came to be. It pisses me off as a transgender person that there is more detail on how Orzammar came to be a caste-driven patriarchal nightmare than there is on how transgender people in Thedas have conceptualised and dealt with their realities in their different contexts through time. I think we deserve better.

(* To put this bluntly: cis women are not r*ped because they are cis women with Cis Women Bodies, sexual violence is not some biological reality of The Womb that r*pists are responding to, they are r*ped bc r*pists in a r*pe culture have power, and they use it over other people. Notably they use it disproportionately against all women, cis and trans, because women- all women- are disempowered and made vulnerable by patriarchy.)

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Veilguard vaguing:

It's not automatically a good thing, actually, that the game de-emphasizes or even outright removes racism against elves, and bigotry against other groups, from the story

[kirkwallguy]

im very glad taash is nb since a trans companion is something i've been wanting in a game like this for a LONG time. please don't put in the papers that i'm not happy about taash being nb. but it does feel kind of funny that they're straight up saying the word nonbinary in a universe that has never previously had words for sexuality or gender. which i know may be a product of it being from the early 2010s but imo it feels appropriate for the kind of society thedas is and it's sooo much more fun to have everyone identify themselves seperately or imagine there are region-specific communities that use their own language.

[laurelsofhighever]

So who else noticed that rug in the Shadow Dragon headquarters?

TO BE CLEAR because this is the piss on the poor website: transphobia is bad. This is a critique of Veilguard's bizarre approach to in-world politics

[zoya-nazyalenskys]

this might sound insensitive but taash is currently my biggest disappointment of the companions because there is literally nothing to their story other than the gender identity

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Girl help why is a fantasy setting using modern American gender terminology

They could've already bounced off of the existing term aqun-athlok and show the gender culture of the North largely adopting Qunari concepts as part of cultural exchange resulting from the literal hundreds of years of war with the Qun. The only openly transgender characters we know of are from Tevinter anyway! They already wanted to show the Qun in a more positive light in Veilguard, having Thedosian queer culture be primarily influenced by the Qun would be a great way to do exactly that

[asharaks]

hope you guys are excited for the next seven weeks of posting😁

[kuraiummei]

Play Veilguard.

Give it a chance. I swear to fuck and back there's some incredibly innovative RPG design elements in it that will impress you, and ALSO the way they handled gender issues was so great. I cannot understate how good they did with these issues, which everyone else is afraid to even address. You can be joyfully trans, skittishly nb, various combinations, or you can even express discomfort with the subject and avoid it. The overall interpersonal writing with companions really has its moments.

There are parts of the story that are seriously good! Mostly, they dropped the ball on the faction quests. Bland or heavy handed writing that stands out next to the moments of spice. They shyed away from some of the most awful parts of Thedas, and that was a mistake too. They toned the racism down too far, and hid from the Templar-Mage issues entirely. These things should have been there, to stand as fictional examples of real world issues gone to their extremes. However, all in all, it's a visually beautiful game, with a massive skill tree and combat flexibility, excellent gear system and items. Good puzzles, good voice acting, and fun exploration content.

It's worth your time.

[dragon-age-here]

The MGiT would actually be great for Veilguard because you can just explain Rook’s incredibly sensitivity and awareness of mental health and identity stuff as someone who did go to therapy for years and has the skill set but like, isn’t using it for themself.

Like yes, I have seen 13 papers/wiki articles/youtube discussions on gender identity, do not ask me what that means I cannot tell you, btw have you heard of the wide spectrum of sexuality and gender-

[himbopunk]

do you think surgery recovery times are like, faster in fantasy worlds with healers and stuff. cuz you can kinda get it halfway there w magic probably at least if not fully heal it on the spot???

[axiomsend]

Fic writers, tell me about your Modern Girl in Thedas!

[kirkwallguy]

I was surprised they didnt touch on anything transition/hrt related with veilguard either tbh even in like a throwaway codex entry. Considering we got ones about like Taash talking to the shadow dragons/other canonically trans characters about stuff youd think maybe this would be the perfect game to consider addressing it but they never do. Very sad about that

honestly this is one of the reasons i really hate how transness is done in the game and why it feels so hollow. there's no attempt to actually engage with what being queer in thedas would actually look like beyond "i came out, some people were nice and some people weren't but that's life i guess" which is an oversimplified narrative for OUR world let alone a semi-medieval fantasy setting. even a little "i'm lucky i learned creation magic / was good at alchemy / live somewhere where blood magic is legal so i could control my transition" from mae or "i saved up every coin i earned until i could see some backalley healer for surgery" from tarquin would make it feel more like transness actually exists in thedas. i'm very interested in the current trend in mainstream media that sanitises queer experiences to the point that it strips them of anything meaningful, i guess it's a semi-appropriate reaction to the years of exploiting trauma narratives but i selfishly preferred those because it at least felt like there was some form of emotional connection going on there.

[antiivarook]

kiran making small grabby hands at other trans and non binary muses.

[dearansur]

finally got that taash gender dialogue and then the note and yeah.

[fenrisisms]

genuinely i think broncarm is the funniest worldstate. first you have the hero of ferelden, that guy who killed the archdemon and lived to tell about it. his twin brother is the king of ferelden who fucks so hard that he began to cast doubt on the divine right of kings shit ferelden has going on. their mutual close personal friend is the viscountess of kirkwall who for the first time in as long as anyone can remember has the templar order by the dick and not the other way around. and all three of them are buddies of the inquisitor who has recognised titles in at least 3 separate societies. if i was a hater of any one of them i'd just walk into the ocean and call it a day

[baphometsss]

Solas repeatedly explains that things are not so black and white and the fandom's response to the nature of his relationships with Mythal and Felassan etc are weirdly reminiscent of what he finds frustrating about modern Thedas.

He explains repeatedly that the distinction between spirit and demon is not that black and white, that there's always an element of choice involved. Likewise, he cannot be so easily defined as wisdom or pride. He is a mix of both and will lean into one or the other depending on how he is perceived. Over and over again he tries to make people see that it's our expectations that create the dynamics of our relationships and therefore how we perceive others. If we respect others in the way they would like to be respected, you can come closer to an authentic and equal partnership.

Likewise, he says that he is not defined by his body, a point Trick said came from their own thoughts around their gender and figuring out that they were nonbinary. Solas chose a male body, seemingly because he had to choose one, not necessarily because he felt like a man. In fact he repeatedly explains that he sees himself as a spirit i.e. genderless

The romance or friendship with the Inquisitor is special because it is the first time that he's branching out of his comfort zone of bonding like a spirit bonds (reflecting) and trying to bond like a person does instead (meeting them on their level, sharing his heart with them and being vulnerable). This is why one of my favourite lines from him is 'You are unique. In all Thedas I never expected to find someone who could draw my attention from the Fade. You have become important to me.' This is the first time he has fallen in love, the first time he has actually relished being a person and not a spirit, because he's able to be with Lavellan this way. He can't fall in love as a spirit as spirits don't bond that way, as is repeatedly stated throughout his story. I personally think the relationships he forged before Inquisition were all done using the attachment style of spirits, which is apparently quite abstract, and not as a man, which is more understandable to mortals and us, the player.

What's especially pertinent about this is that says this line right before he's about to abandon his plan to tear down the Veil by telling the Inquisitor the truth, a plan that symbolises his attachment to his spirit-self and the world he inadvertently destroyed. Once he does that, there's no coming back; likewise, once you take a body, you cannot go back. When you fall in love in a way that makes all the parts of you line up perfectly for the first time, you can't go back.

What is so beautiful to me about Solas's love story with Lavellan is that we witness Solas in a chrysalis state between spirithood and personhood, past and present (and future), on the precipice of metamorphosis. At the very moment he's about to take that final leap like The Fool his romance card is based on, he backs out, because of guilt, trauma, grief, duty and the rest.

Even with a befriended Inquisitor, he bonds with them on their level. He doesn't try to elevate them to his level; he comes to theirs. He is the opposite of Pride in their friendship, which is why he respects them. They allow him to be himself.

It's because of this change in nature that I think Solas and Lavellan's love story is so compelling--Solas's world quite literally changes when he falls in love, as he states multiple times, in various ways. I mean, look at the way he needs time to think about a potential relationship with Lavellan. He probably knows that it's a bad idea, but at this point he has no idea how much of a bad idea it is with respect to his plans because he has no idea that it will make him want to give it up. If he had, he never would've entertained the idea of a relationship. His romance card in Veilguard explains that he didn't know what it would mean to fall in love, because he's never actually been in love. He has loved countless friends and companions, like Mythal and Felassan, but he has not fallen for someone like he falls for a romanced Lavellan; Lavellan, who is deified like he was deified, who sees him for who he is (as much as they can) and doesn't shun him or punish him for not doing as he was told like a good lapdog.

Once again there's more of the irony that pervades Solas's story at every turn. It's in falling for a mortal that Solas becomes a more complete person, more of the man he says he is and not the god others have revered him as. That is the deepest change of all and the one that reflects his earlier statements on the delineation between spirit and demon not being so black and white, and involving a level of choice. Solas chooses to be more of a man in a similar way to how Cole chooses to become more human. He knows deep down that he's already in too deep to stop, and this is why, despite knowing he has a job to do and a duty to fulfil, he leaves clues for the Inquisition to follow him. Because he's already gone too far, and now he can't go back, and deep down he wants to be stopped, like Varric said. Solas, as a former spirit, doesn't simply feel love, he embodies it, and so he is helpless to that emotion. Of course he left clues.

Because that is what falling in love meant for Solas. It meant going into that chrysalis state and emerging as a totally new being with an experience that is quite far removed from his spirit self and all the limitations that come with that. Mythal and Felassan etc predate this experience, they're intrinsically tied to his nature as a spirit and then as a manifested spirit. While he loved them, that love was tangled up with a simpler nature, and the love he shares with Lavellan is coming from a totally new place. For that reason, the two can't really be compared.