#why are you calling the people pointing out the racism... racist? and purposefully misconstruing the discussion?

[barufisher]

i dont know how you could play veilguard and genuinely think the dalish elves are represented well in that game. you can't even play a dalish rook (except somehow they kinda are dalish, but also you can make them andrastian too, because actually you're not dalish but you do know elven and call them "our gods" repeatedly for some reason but your faith is completely unshaken by all of this regardless), there are no dalish clans in the entire game, the only one we do interact with is massacred off-screen but it's fine this time i guess because at least it's not our fault, and the two dalish companions are treated like shit by the writers and the narrative and the playerbase. the veil jumpers are not the dalish, these are separate groups, there are humans and qunari and dwarves all within the veil jumpers. the dalish are separate, irelin and strife and bellara all left their clans to join the veil jumpers. the actual dalish clan in arlathan is killed after the gods escape, there's literally a whole quest where you have to run around and find their dead bodies.

bellara is punished not once but twice with her brother's death for daring to pursue elven history, just like merrill is punished for restoring the eluvian before her. and then rook is the one that gets to choose whether or not to destroy the archive, despite not even being dalish. yes, bellara is smart and strong and brave but she also is belittled for her beliefs; her struggle at the start is played as a joke, her comments are all punchlines, and when you do get to talk to her she blames herself and feels guilty, and the game gives you no real option to comfort her. it takes the game killing her brother a second time for us to finally get to see her practice her culture without feeling guilty and without being mocked for it at his funeral, because now she's learned her lesson (but also they make sure to throw in a comment about how Weird it is, and also that all the other dalish clans have been doing the Wrong funeral rites, just to make sure we know how silly they are)

outside of davrin and bellara, the dalish are absent. strife and irelin both immediately accept the sudden revelation that their gods are evil with no pushback (and i don't care if this is because they know harding and varric, this is not communicated in the game). and apparently every other dalish elf just accepts it, too. how is this not depicting them as a monolith? did we play different games? dalish clans have their own traditions and cultures and would absolutely have different opinions about their own gods; the only way you get to see something even remotely close to this is if you take bellara and davrin out together and listen for their banters-- which are never mentioned or relevant anywhere else in game.

and no, i don't want the dalish to blindly follow the gods in veilguard, i want the entire narrative to just not be so fucking racist. the oppressed people's gods being revealed to be evil all along is just racist. nothing else can be "fixed" while this is the core plot, and we knew this since trespasser came out, since it was first revealed over 10 years ago. people have been criticizing this choice and the depiction of the dalish for over a decade. and they still continued with this storyline, despite the various other lore bits they did end up changing for better or worse... instead they just wrote out the dalish completely while still managing to perpetuate harmful anti-indigenous tropes that they've been criticized for repeatedly in the past-- that are made even worse with the total absence of any other dalish characters to counteract them.