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broodwolf221 · 1 year ago

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sera meta!

i love her soooo much - if not for solas, she'd be hands-down my favorite character from inquisition. so it's long past time i did a meta post for her <3

this is gonna be long and i added a lot of her relevant dialogue to it

meta overview: sera is young, traumatized, has deep-seated internalized racism, and has never had an opportunity to be vulnerable or to safely express herself. she's also autistic af imo

part 1: her past

she was presumably born into an alienage, and as @skip-the-clumsy-dragon reminded me recently, city elves are expected to get married and have children. this is a realistic thing for them to prioritize (and dalish likely have the same priority) given the fact that they're an endangered culture. however, sera's a lesbian - to grow up in a society that tells her that she has to marry an elven man and have his children would've been incredibly ostracizing to her. the elves made her feel broken, directly or indirectly, and i think that's something a lot of queer people can relate to.

while only the last part is related, this bit of banter between her and solas is interesting in terms of her being a lesbian:

Sera: (shivers) Weird. Solas: Sera? What are you feeling? Sera: Ugh, here we go. It’s nothing, it just feels like I've seen this. Exactly this. It happens. Solas: Not to everyone. Sera: It’s not an elf thing. You’re not shaking. Sera: I suppose now you’ll switch to how I’m the same but different? Solas: You are different. You are the furthest from what you were meant to be. Sera: Well I’ve definitely heard piss like this before. Hmph!

she was adopted by the lady emmald, which looks fine at first, but as we're shown during the cookie scene, emmald didn't really care about sera. more than likely, she cared about what sera could do for her (a sort of live-in, unpaid servant in a child who she 'saved' from the streets) and the social esteem she'd get for 'rescuing' a 'poor elf' - lady emmald was the racist one, and the user, not the baker she blamed

Sera: I got caught stealing when I was little, yeah? You get alienage or worse for that, but the “Lady Emmald” took me in. She was sick and couldn’t have children. I had no parents. It worked out. Anyway, she gets a year sicker, so I ask about her cookies. Because mums make cookies. I can pass that down, or something. Turns out, she couldn’t cook. She missed that talk with her mum. The ones she “made” she bought and pretended. Aw, right? Well, no, she was a bitch. She hid buying them by keeping me away from the baker. She did that by lying that he didn’t like me, didn’t like elves. She let me hate so she could protect her pride. I hated him so much, and I hated… She looks away again. Sera: Well, she died, and I hate pride. “Pride cookies.”

"I hated him so much, and I hated... [being an elf]" is the obvious conclusion. and again, it makes sense - her people wanted her to play a role she couldn't, and wouldn't, play - and her adoptive mother allowed her to hate and hate so that she could protect her own pride.

Inquisitor: I don’t understand. This Lady Emmald was just trying to be good to you. Sera: She hurt people. Inquisitor: It was just cookies. Sera: It was not just cookies! Lie to herself? Fair play, only hurts her. But she made me think there was something wrong with me! And the baker! I made his life shit. Why not? It seemed like he deserved it. I mean, “if you don’t give a child a cookie because of appearances, you’re a monster.” Stupid, pride-whore noble. She pauses. Sera: I know, I said it was stupid. That’s why I want to get rid of it. I want to make better cookies.

she keeps calling herself stupid. she's angry and hurting and trying to be vulnerable, and when her vulnerability isn't supported she immediately resorts to calling herself stupid, making her feelings smaller, insulting herself before she can be insulted by the inquisitor, someone she's grown close to

Inquisitor: It is stupid. You dragged me here to bad-mouth a sad, dead woman. Sera: It’s not about that. Feelings are hard, all right? Inquisitor: Not for an adult! Sera: Bullshit! And I’m trying to say I like it here! I thought you’d want to know that, and eat my shitty cookies! / Sera: I just thought you’d want to know that I think you’re pretty great! That I made you shitty cookies!

"not for an adult" - sera is by far the youngest companion. and she's never had the opportunity to even begin unpacking her own trauma, until maybe haven/skyhold, depending on how your inquisitor treats her. but she is still an adult, and while this argument shows a lot of her feelings, it was really hard to even read thru 💀

part 2: red jenny

after emmald, she ended up on the streets again. she was taken in by the red jennies. by this point she has personal cause to dislike elves and elven culture, and to dislike nobles - but she doesn't really hate humans, which is understandable considering that she's surrounded by them. she sees that they get treated like shit sometimes, too. her alliances are not and have never been along racial lines, but class divisions: she looks out for the "little people", which in her case means the poor, the unhoused, or those in servitude.

the fact that she doesn't live in the alienage means she's surrounded by human faith. i've discussed this before in prior metas, but in thedas, andrastianism or however it'd be spelled is likely not optional - it's presumed and absolute. christianity was like this too, in medieval times, the church was the core of cities and everyone was expected to be faithful. theres' an immense sociocultural pressure towards religious conformity that everyone is exposed to even if they don't personally go to the church/pray/etc. - it's just baked into the culture. the chant is everywhere. and people internalize stuff they're surrounded by, that's natural

so she's out here angry, bitter, finally able to be 'just' sera with the jennies, not expected to breed for them or to take their shit, allowed to be exactly who she is... and at the same time, she's immersed in chantry culture. she wants a parent, she wants someone who cares for her no matter what. she keeps hearing that it's andraste and the maker who will care for her.

Inquisitor: Odd that you’d ask Andraste over your own gods. Sera: “My” gods? Whatever. They don’t talk any more than she does. Not like she’s supposed to. I know what happened to you, or what everyone here thinks happened. It seems… I don’t know what it seems.

part 3: her behavior

she's outwardly callous and irreverent a lot of the time, but that stems from a mix of things, primarily: humor as a coping mechanism and having seen so much shit in her life. she talks about food a lot, but this bit of banter with blackwall explains why really clearly:

Sera: Hey, do you think they'll have pie when we get back? I could use a pie. Or three. Blackwall: That's... a lot of pie for one person. Sera: You'd understand if you've ever been hungry. In your bones hungry.

she also has a really grounded view of mages. it's not perfect, she's very afraid of magic - as she's been taught to be. i think people get caught up in the mage freedom angles the games have been showing us and forget that within the games context, mages are fucking scary and people are scared of them. i'm staunchly pro-mage, but it's useless to ignore the context they exist within

Sera: I knew a funny boy in Denerim. Started fires with his eyes. Templars nabbed him right quick, so he's better now, I guess? Dorian: Better? Do you know what your southern Circles are like? Sera: Meals and training? So he wouldn't starve or get stomped by a mob? I've seen both. Dorian: (Sighs.) You're sadly right.

circles are bad but also? she's right. training, room and board... when it's living in a circle vs. being killed on the street, i think most people would choose the former, even with all the inherent difficulties and the oppression of it, the abuses by the templars, all of it. because at least you're alive. and the training is important. it's all kinds of wrong the way it's structured, but mages do need training, there's no denying that - even in cultures that don't lock up their mages, they still need to test them, to train them

and she has a very practical, very grounded perspective on nobles and who would suffer in a massive revolution. when solas starts recommending guerilla warfare tactics to her, she shuts him down - not because his ideas are wrong, but because she can see ahead to all the harm it'd cause the exact people she's trying to protect

Solas: Once you have the aristocracy weakened, Sera, you will have to redirect your lieutenants. Sera: Oh, this again. All right, what am I doing? Solas: Some of your forces, valuable until now, have no interests beyond creating disruption. Chaos for its own sake. They must be repositioned where they can do no harm, or removed if necessary. You replace them with organizers willing to build a new system and carry out the ugly work that must be done. Sera: What? Why? What ugly work? Solas: That is up to you. Do you wish to disrupt the nobility, secure a title? Or change the political structure entirely? Sera: None of it! I don't want any of that!

Solas: I do not understand you, Sera. You have no end goal for your organization. Sera: Nobles get rattled, and people get payback. I play in the middle. Solas: Why not go all the way? You see injustice, and you have organized a group to fight it. Don't you want to replace it with something better? Sera: What, just lop off the top? What's that do, except make a new top to frig it all up? Solas: I…forgive me. You are right. You are fine as you are. Sera: You hurt my head sometimes, Solas. Solas: Yes, I have been known to do that.

conclusion:

sera is one of the most important characters in dai specifically because of the perspective she brings to the table. she's the average person. she's scared of mages and magic. she's scared of templars. she's scared of the grey wardens. she's young and tries so hard. she lived through the blight. she's traumatized af. she feels like she has no culture that will accept her as she is. the first people to accept her, to just see sera, are the red jennies, and she happily joins them. she offers herself to the inquisition despite being scared of it because a part of her wants to help and another part wants answers - but is scared of getting them at the same time.

Herald: But where do you stand on the war? Sera: In the frigging middle, with everyone else. Sera: You know what I hear about mages? Nothing until one goes all demony. Know what I hear about templars? Nothing, until they take “maybe-mages.”

she's a queer city elf who's expected to marry another elf and have his children. she's a poor elven child who's supposed to be grateful that she was offered a good life by a noble. she's never had a space where she was able to work through all her issues, or even begin looking at them for real - but when she does have that space, she is surprisingly vulnerable with people. the cookies are important because it's her biggest show of vulnerability - she's revealing her past and one of the things that haunts her most, and she's actively trying to change the context, to disrupt a childhood trauma with new, better memories

#broodmeta #sera dai #okay i could honestly keep talking about her but this is enough. this is more than enough. this is long af.#i want to talk abt her fear being nothing and how that ties so deeply into her character #i want to talk abt the low approval fight she has with the inky #but aaa.... this is good. this covers most of it.#minor edits

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