#but i could never get over the fact he enacted genocide. ON CHILDREN

[ancient-romes]

Since the shisno trilogy has been retconned can i just say i never actually believed in Locus redemption

[yetanotherlesbianonthiswebsite]

Please feel free to not answer this as it deals with a very heavy subject matter, the 60s Scoop.

Do you think the Chantry would do/have done something similar to the Scoop towards the Dalish and other non-Andrastian countries/peoples? We know the Chantry is not above doing the equivalent of the Crusades and other despicable acts that have real-life parallels to medieval Christianity, so I feel this wouldn't be too far-fetched.

I don't see how my opinion on this question holds any meaning, since I am white, but alas.

CN genocide for the following text

Before I can even attempt an answer, I want to make two things clear: The term "Sixties Scoop" describes a structural mechanism of genocide. Despite its name, it is still ongoing.

As for the definition of genocide, I want to point to the Rome Statute:

Article 6 Genocide

For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

[...] (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

I will not get into the details of how the abduction of children from indigenous communities was and is justified in the state of Canada, but there has been an openly communicated intent of cultural destruction and a targeted assimilation of indigenous children into white families under the use of state violence.

As for the name "Sixties Scoop", it was developed by the very institutions that implemented it; institutions by the federal and provincial governments that were the perpetrators of that violence. There is an overarching trend in the entirety of Canadian political rhetorics that frames colonial violence and genocide as a thing of the past, and that very term falls into that rhetorical framework. It's never just the sixties. The genocide in which mass abduction is a core mechanism is ongoing since indigenous groups first encountered white settlers. And the specifics of government agencies implementing legalistic adoption programs have their roots in the fifties and are very much unchanged. Nowadays, these institutions hide behind justifications of "cooperation with indigenous leadership", but we see in unceded Secwepemc lands at the very moment that the government's answer to indigenous leaders not approving of their actions is tanks and machine guns.

.

So, as for your question, do I think that the chantry is capable of something akin to an ongoing, current, real genocide?

I might ask what the chantry exactly is, in return. The chantry is a fictional organization modelled after the catholic church written by some white centrist authors living on indigenous lands. Under that lens, the answer could be yes and no. Dragon Age is full of references to and fictionalizations of actual genocides. So yes, I wouldn't put it past the writers to reference the Sixties Scoop in another act of horrible appropriation of suffering not their own sometime in the future. On the other hand, David "you shouldn't cheer on missionaries dying someone have pity with those poor catholics" Gaider has proven consistent in his excuses for the violence of the catholic church and thinks the state of Canada holds legitimate sovereignty over the lands it occupies. He would never acknowledge the extent of violence that hides behind that unassuming term "Sixties Scoop", the Vatican's involvement, and the fact that the government of Canada runs on blood. So if you are looking for an author-focused answer, there's reasonable arguments in both directions there.

Do I believe that, ignoring authorial positions, the chantry would enact mechanisms of genocide of a similiar structure in-universe? I mean, the entire system of circles is build on the forced mass abductions of children from their families, their placement in an unfamiliar and hateful other group, with the intent of destruction towards a specific and well-defined group of people. The southern chantry as an institution truly came to be in the invasion and colonization of the Dales, it is agent and complicit supporter in several in-universe genocides. So yes, I believe the chantry capable of and interessted in such mechanisms of violence. And we ultimately see that such violence would be highly effective on the personal scale if we consider Sera's character; how growing up adopted by a human woman shattered her relationship to her people, community, culture, belief systems, and feelings of self-value.

However and ultimately, my answer to your question doesn't mean anything. I have never experienced the violence you ask about, and my answer therefore is a matter of speculation and conjecture. The question of "could this real violence see fictional representation in this fantasy world" should never be answered without those who suffer under that violence. That is the original sin of Dragon Age, if you will; the belief of a handful of white people that they could write about racism and translate it into a fantasy setting. Ironically, the good side of Dragon Age, the reason why I remain in this fandom, also emerges from that place: because many who have experience with that violence have reclaimed this botched allegory and grown things of beauty on this tainted soil. It is black artists creating black OCs and telling stories that focus on them, it is indigenous artists talking about reconnection and community via this fictional world, it is Islamic and Jewish creators expressing faith and culture with Dragon Age as a medium. If you truly seek an answer to your question that holds meaning, ask my partner, or perhaps wait and see if they comment on this post.

[ghostmartyr]

(1/3)Hi, Immi! I’m sorry it will be a long-read, but I can’t keep it bottled anymore. When you say you feel tired about Historia’s situation I can easily relate because I feel the same, exhausted and irritated. It’s just exhausting to keep looking for some positive signs when it becomes more and more obvious that Isayama just made her irrelevant because she’d turn into an obstacle to his plot as an active character. I believe the main reason for him to not explain her situation is that he wasn't

(2/3)able to come up with logical reasons for Historia to follow Eren’s plan and to have a child so he just forced that into the plot. The same way Survey Corps guys just miraculously met Annie eating the pie. We don’t see Historia, her words and her thoughts because it’d destroy the flimsy screen Isayama have draped over her. ... The other Historia-related thing which bothers me a lot is that quite a lot of people argue – in relation to the pregnancy – that she isn’t exactly a lesbian.

(3/3)Like it’d somehow make everything better! They completely miss the point. Even if we’d replace Historia with a random 101% hetero girl she’d still have a kid with a person she doesn’t love, with a person who abused her during her childhood, and this child would be created ONLY to allow Eren to enact global genocide. Wow, what a great improvement! … I’m really sorry for being such an aggressive pessimist but I’m just tired of being optimistic for 25 months straight to no avail. I guess.

Yo.

Put politely, some of the things this particular plot point inspired people to say is why I do my level best to avoid the fandom outside of close friends. It was... not good.

For a quick note, since everything you said has been on my mind for over two years, and ah yes, how it festers:

Coercive sex has nothing to do with preference.

I’m bolding that because hell, did it need to be said when 107 dropped, and as far as I’m aware, it still needs to be said. Instead of people being upset and hurt, the conversation turned into how much of a right people even had to those feelings, because why ever would lack of consent bother someone unless they had a stake in an interpretation of canon.

But in any case, yeah. The fact that Historia’s sexuality became the debate topic it did after 107 is -- hell. I know why it came about, and I could draw a very neat logic tree, and honestly, some of it did come from legitimate places of grievance.

Watching fandom feed like locusts on the discussion of what type of queer had been trapped in a dubiously consensual sexual relationship was still painful. Watching her entire relationship with Ymir be invalidated every other post, when that had limited relevance, was a twist to the knife.

We have a character whose arc revolves around finding herself and reclaiming her agency. The very next arc she is a participant in cheats her out of that agency. She’s nineteen, and everyone around her might not actively pressure her to breed children, but the situation is outlined so that she knows if she doesn’t, everyone will suffer.

This character has routinely protected children, and knows the suffering of being born unwanted.

It’s a disgusting story, and it doesn’t even get to be her story. It exists to make Eren upset. As if he really needs help with that. And after two years, the only addition we have to her role is that she might have gone along with it to help global genocide happen.

I have been waiting for this story to explain itself for a while. Each month, it doesn’t. Each month, I very carefully do not shout to the rafters exactly what I feel about this, because I’ve chosen to wait and trust that the story is not actually being this stupid. Each month, it seems less and less likely that this is ever getting fixed, and I feel like an idiot for going along with it.

However much I think there’s room for a reveal, each month, we’re a tick closer to the end, and nothing crops up. My argument has always been that for something kept off the stage for so long, it’s going to stay off the stage until it’s ready to blow us away. Great, awesome, but in the meantime, by all appearances, one of our main characters agreed to get knocked up by a guy she doesn’t like with a child she doesn’t want for the sake of a global genocide she doesn’t support.

When our actual main character is murdering literally everyone on the planet over how intolerable he finds that practice.

This does not make sense. This does not work on a thematic level, it doesn’t work on a logical level, it doesn’t work on a character level, and yet I’m here, stuck putting up with it for those exact reasons. This is the exact type of thing that got Sherlock fans so much mockery. “No guys, it’s bad on purpose for the secret extra season!”

I’m tired of being optimistic, too. Being optimistic often feels like letting it go unsaid how fucked every part of this is. Loads of characters die, or don’t show up for months at a time, but having a character’s emotional consistency actively dismantled to serve another character’s arc is something that basically never happens in this series. Unless you’re Ymir or Historia. Nice.

Because of how good the character work has been, I am optimistic. Still.

At the same time, the things I love most about the series have been fucked over worse and more completely than anything else going on in the story, and sometimes, I would like a little room to be pissed.

Where is my fucking wall scene, WIT?