#that made them uncomfy but too bad. you started it you coward

[fiishes]

Raised a safety concern about a job at work only for my supervisor to say “just let one of the boys do it.”

Because as we all know, the presence of a penis makes one immune to shoulder injuries.

[dredshirtroberts]

The Elves of Dragon Age

More specifically: their damn faces.

This is gonna probably be long because none of my thoughts are concise. If it is concise it is mostly just screeching, and even then I do go on a bit sometimes.

Also: Trigger warnings are important. I briefly go into some stuff related to in-game lore with regards to the slavery of the elves, as well as some not chill topics i think would be related regarding genetics and reproduction during that time of slavery. These things may trigger or squick and I get that SO MUCH. I think I do a pretty good job of being clear when it’s about to go into way too much detail on these topics so you can literally just stop reading there and pretend it doesn’t go there, I’m not offended.

ANYWAY.

Elves. Dragon Age. I have Thoughts and Feelings about their faces and bone structure.

Even from Dragon Age: Origins, we see that Elves are distinctly Different from the other races. I mean clearly there’s the ears but they’re also smaller than humans, and more...lithe? Lithe. It’s a good word, we’ll keep it. But as far as faces go, not a whole lot different from the humans. 

I’m going to skip Dragon Age II because that’s where my Thoughts and Feelings get a little bit more...uh...more. 

Dragon Age: Inquisition - confession time, Inquisition was my first Dragon Age game and it will always hold a soft spot for me. I looooved the character creation sliders and i liked how different the elves were - not a lot more than Origins I later learned, but enough that even with the most careful manipulations there were still some differences in the facial structures. This is also, I think, where the differences in body-type and bone structure became most apparent and where I think my first inclination to describe elves of the DA universe as being “bird-like”. 

Then there was Dragon Age II. WOW I thought when I played and ran into my first elf character (the one from the Blooming Rose whose name has escaped me as of just now but it’s okay i’ll think of it at 3am and be really annoyed by it, it’s fine). WOW I thought, that is a Different Race in a way that was so much more than the way Dwarves are different from Humans. 

In Inquisition I was taken by the modern elves’ lack of brow ridge definition - or maybe it’s their lack of nose bridge indent. I don’t know anatomical terms for faces and frankly if I go look it up now i’ll lose my train of thought so we’re gonna skip it and maybe one day I’ll care enough to figure it out. - their profiles were so INTERESTING because they were very Grecian - like ancient pottery from Athens or something and I’ve always liked a strong profile. The fact that I’m so jealous of my sister’s facial features is definitely testament to this. I was intrigued by trying to make a super strong nose and keep the lack of brow ridge. 

In DA2 I was absolutely enamoured with elf eyes. They were Big and Alien and coupled with the more pronounced lack of brow ridge definitely became my favorite fantasy-style portrayal of a non-human race. It made them seem more bird like and it almost was...I want to say ugly but in a beautiful way? It made the observations of other characters from Origins and Inquisition more important somehow - that elves were considered beautiful and (ugh I hate this term please forgive me) exotic, that there were many people who prefer the way elves look to the way other humans look. If it were just that they were Pretty, Petit, pointy-eared humans, eh, i guess? but how boring! Now that they are Strange and Alien and have Large Eyes and Different Facial Structure, with practically fragile looking frames? Oh Yes this is Good because they are Weird and we humans do enjoy a good Weird.

And once I thought about how humans (or people) of Thedas in general considered these Weird Elves to be attractive - even more so than conventionally attractive humans, in fact - oh man that started some gears turning. Because then I looked at Inquisition (and okay I’ll drag Origins back into the light a little) and saw how Ancient Elves seemed more human-like, more standard bone structures, taller, less spindly of limb - robust I think is a good word - well. I couldn’t help but think maybe the modern elves of Thedas are a product of their environments - and perhaps of a little selective breeding. 

It’s difficult for me to bring these things up because in our world these are Super Bad Things that definitely should not happen. And I am Very against eugenics and talking about people like they’re animals and the whole big Slavery thing that is a HUGE bad. I acknowledge these points and I want to make sure I am very clear that I do not support them. I am fascinated by the implication that the obvious differences between two distinct time periods of elves brings about with regards to these specific topics, at least one of which is openly admitted to in the universe.

That being said, allow me to move forward. 

It is stated multiple times throughout the series (mind, I’ve only ever played the games and perused the wiki so my knowledge is limited to these sources) that the elves of Arlathan (and prior) were, essentially, immortal. Unaging, never dying. Only to sleep for thousands of years when they were tired of continuing on (#mood, tho). At some point, when humans came about, their lives started to become shorter - especially the more time they spent near humans. But I imagine they kept the same features as the ancient elves had. #everythingchangedwhenthetevinterimeriumattacked

But really though, after becoming, uh, mortal for lack of a better term, it was not long before the Tevinter Imperium enslaved the elves (the timeline on this for me is a little unclear so I’m not sure how long between the two things it was - afaik Arlathan properly fell to the Imperium, but idk when elves started losing their long-lives in relation to that).

Slavery is a fucking nightmare. I know I don’t need to harp on about that, but the reality is that people who own slaves do some really fucked up things. Potentially things like selective breeding to create the prettiest or hardiest or most unique looking of their slaves. Considering the “modern” attitude towards elves in Thedas, I don’t imagine that the slaves of the Tevinter Imperium were looked at as more than livestock, to be perfected for the purposes they were forced to serve. Over time, selected features that were good for x purpose might have also led to recessive traits being favored - like piebalding in domesticated animals (ugh this is so uncomfy i’m so sorry). Or say, they really liked that a major feature of elves were their relatively smooth profiles, so let’s try for the smoothest profile until you get the bull terrier face of modern elves. Elves have excellent eyesight (i read somewhere that they have really great night vision and their eyes reflect lights back like cats or something? idk if that was a real thing or a headcanon thing but i’m down with it) - let’s make their eyes bigger for night watches, or just because big eyes are cool idk. It’s the Tevinter Imperium they’re pretty fucked up people who knows why they chose which things they did.

I’d say even the relative frailty of the elves’ bodies might be a part of this. They can do labor in and around the property, but they won’t be able to run far or for long, and if they’re so light-boned they are more at risk of injury that would hobble them and keep them from running away. Coupled with several thousand years of slave-diets and/or being on the move (just not seeing the Dalish having time for 3 squares, you know?) and you get the bird-like figures we see in the games. Thin, spindly, looks like a stiff breeze’d blow ‘em into the next town. 

They were attractive because they were pretty, but now they’re attractive because they are other. They were lithe because they were active, now they are thin because they are malnourished and bred to be breakable. They were fine-featured and now they have too-large eyes and too-smooth profiles and they are strange and how odd and it’s easier to hate someone who looks different from you, especially when it is so different. 

And maybe that was a motivation of the slave owners of the imperium and beyond, too. Make them strange, make them other, and then it will not be like we are treating people as chattel but now they will be animals because we make them so. They are birds, rabbits, and we can treat them as lower than us because birds and rabbits are not people. 

And if recessive traits are all that are bred into a people, when those people reproduce with, say, I don’t know, humans, those recessive traits will hide behind the dominant ones. Maybe the facial structure will be strange - that depends on how strong genes the human parent has for brow ridge and body type. Perhaps their eyes will be slightly too large. Perhaps this is why elf-blood children resemble their human parent, because humans haven’t had their dominant traits erased from their blood. Perhaps some human and elf couples have a higher chance of having a more elf-y looking kid. Maybe that chance is because the human side of the couple has elf-genes in them already, or maybe that human just has a lot of their own recessive traits that are dominated by the recessives of the elven parents. Genetics are weird. 

So - Elves looking strangely - was it a late stage decision on the developers’ part? Yeah almost certainly. Did it accidentally create some cool possibilities about the world building? I think so. Do I think they’re cowards for making the elves look more “normal” in Inquisition? FUCK YES I do. 

That being said, what the FUCK did they do to Zevran’s face???? You RUINED his handsome face!!!!