#as is all of alistair's stuff + slim couldry lore

[evilvarric666-archive]

i can not read the books, but are you telling me they are backfilling the CANON games canon character designs in order to match something the SUPPLIMENTARY books said, probably by a pov character that wasnt a genetic expert? the whole 'babies born to elven mothers look 100% human' thing is bullshit and every fan knows it. hell, i thought the entire reason for that was specifically to backfill for alistair? just say it DEPENDS! case to case! its not like they held a clinical trial!

Just to get it out of the way real quick, because it’s a common (but fully understandable!) misconception, half-elven children always looking and functionally being human has been canon since day one, and was not specifically introduced to cover for Alistair’s backstory. All the prequel lore was written at the same time as Origins was, and The Stolen Throne & The Calling were actually released before the actual game, as like a marketing thing.

So yeah, technically, Feynriel being identifiably elven in DA2 was a retcon/lore inaccuracy... but Weekes and the other writer’s response to being questioned about it was still bullshit lmao. Like you’re saying, it's ridiculous to retcon in-game information to fit supplementary material (instead of the other way around like every other series in the gd world) but it’s especially dumb for them to double down on this inconsistency, when the rest of the time they’re playing it so fast and loose with the book lore that it makes my head spin. Like you’ll abandon huge chunks of darkspawn/blight lore and (from what I can tell from what I’ve seen of Inq) Fiona’s characterization, but pointed ears on half-elven children is where you draw the line? Seriously?

Also it’s just bad lore! Point blank. It’s nonsensical bc that’s not how genetics work, saying it’s influenced by magic is dumb and I think everyone in the audience knows it, it would be easier to ignore than to continue to retroactively justify, and also the way they’re going about it is...really offensive to real-life mixed-race people. This post by tumblr user dalishious [Link] goes into Dragon Age’s handling of mixed elven characters in a very comprehensive way, and I highly recommend it. It goes over all the things I almost complained about here but in a better way with gooder words.