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the-eldritch-it-gay · 1 year

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Hi there, I just read your rewriting the Qunari meta and it reminded me of a question I had in my head about them and I'd love to hear your opinion on it. Do you think calling the Qun, as it exists in canon, a religion is accurate? If not what could it be classified as? A culture? A belief system but not a religion? A governing system? A combination of some of these things? I'm not sure myself. Also thanks for all the stuff you've written about the games, it's really interesting and well thought out!

That's a tough question!

For one, I think there's a huge amount of overlap between religion, culture, belief system, and governing system. I mean, a culture is essentially the beliefs, values, symbols, language, and artifacts of a group of people. So the overlap between culture and beliefs should be apparent, and values and beliefs certainly play a role in how a group governs.

Secondly, something like religion is somewhat ambiguous in definition. While I think lots of people think of religion as simple as "worshiping a god or god or the supernatural" there's a lot more to it than that and tends to include a set of beliefs (not necessarily about, or just about a god/the divine) and practices. I personally like Encylopedia Britannica's definition of "human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence." So I definitely believe that there is an argument to be made for the Qun counting as a religion.

I think commonly I've seen the Qun thought of as a philosophy, which isn't wrong, the Qun certainly is a system of thought, but again philosophy I would argue is similarly connected to culture, religion, and governance.

Personally, I see it as a religion. I think people might not consider it one because its seen as lacking any sort of god or gods, but I don't have the same feeling. The Qun to me seems to have a lot of spiritual involvement. Koslun, the founder of the Qun, is often spoken about in a way that reminds me of how one might write about the word of god or a prophet and feels to be written in much the way one might write religious texts (I mean, the Tome of Koslun is in fact, a sacred text):

The Soul Canto

A traveler asked the Ashkaari: "What was your vision of our purpose?" The Great Ashkaari replied: "I will tell you a story. A vast granite statue stands on an island, holding back the sea. The heavens crown its brow. It sees to the edge of the world. The sea drowns its feet with every tide. The heavens turn overhead, light and dark. The tide rises to devour the earth, and falls back. The sun and the stars fall to the sea one by one in their turn, only to rise again. The tide rises, the tide falls, but the sea is changeless. Struggle is an illusion. There is nothing to struggle against. The deception flows deeper. The statue resists the ebb and flow of the sea, And is whittled away with each wave. It protests the setting sun, and its face is burned looking upon it. It does not know itself. Stubbornly, it resists wisdom and is transformed. If you love purpose, fall into the tide. Let it carry you. Do not fear the dark. The sun and the stars will return to guide you. You have seen the greatest kings build monuments to their glory Only to have them crumble and fade. How much greater is the world than their glory? The purpose of the world renews itself with each season. Each change only marks A part of the greater whole. The sea and the sky themselves: Nothing special. Only pieces.

This feels very much like a religious text, in my opinion.

And also, religion absolutely can influence if not outright be the basis of government and social rules. (Speaking from a personal note, as a Muslim, there's plenty of passages in the Quran talking about how to handle legal/social issues and instructions on how society should function.)

So I suppose, TL:DR, I see the Qun as a religion, which also serves as basis for Qunari culture and governance.

I hade some more rambling paragraphs just more about my feelings about how the Qunari are written, but I feel like I've made that clear already and I don't want to go off on a tangent lmao.

#Eldritch IT Answers #sneakyneighboururchin

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marisol993 · 3 years

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For some time now I've seen, over and over again, that the Qunari in the Dragon Age Universe are apparently some kind of racist caricature of black people, muslims and other types of poc's, bipoc's, minorities, ....

From a personal perspective I never saw them as such, but since a personal view of things isn't very objective and can be skewed by ones life-experiances I was completely willing to admit, that I might have been wrong about that and had an opportunity to learn something new here.

The more I thought about it and critically examined this statement though, the less I agreed with any of it. Especially since a lot of arguments in favor of this view seemed to boil down to "this person of [insert relevant minority here] said so". I.e. another "personal viewpoint".

So let's get into a critical analysis of the Qunari and why I think that they are so very far removed from any kind of "minorty" (from a western point of view) coding that you couldn't even see it with the power of the Hubble and James Webb space-telescopes combined:

First of all, who are the Qunari? The Qunari are tall, medium to heavily built, horned (or unhorned, if you only played Origins) humanoids, that come in varying shades of grey skin, with whiteish hair. They are more intensly sexually dimorphic than the Dwarves, Elves and Humans of Thedas, with the males being sometimes nearly twice as wide (especially in the shoulders) and much more muscled than the females. They call themselves the Qunari as they are followers of the Qun (their guide to life and society), though the word is more of an umbrella-term, since anybody of any race is called a Qunari if they "convert" to the teachings of the Qun.

Here's a picture:

At this point some people might already remark, that the Qunari are very obviously "black-coded" since apparently nowadays any deviation from natural, real-life human skintones automatically has to mean, that the fantasy-race in question is meant to reflect black or brown people (even if they are green or bright purple), unless you literally give them a complete and utterly snow-white skintone. If that is the argument you want to go with, I would like to redirect your eyes to the picture above, as it already disproves this. As it is shown there (and in the DA:I Character-Creator), the Qunari can come in a complete spectrum of skintones (from very light grey to nearly ebony), just like all the different races of Thedas (even the dwarves for some reason, which doesn't make much sense for a race that lived underground for most of their history, but what can you do..). This basically means, that yes there are dark-skinned (or "black") Qunari, but there are also those that could be better described as "light-skinned", so the coding-qualifier goes away.

Then there are the people, who might want to say, that because they are tall and "burly", together with the unnatural skintone makes them "black-coded" which is something I never really understood, since the tallest people in the world by ethnicity are the Dutch and if you look at heights in correlation with body-weight the Russians take first place. Both countries not really know for their large populations of darkskinned-humanoids. Another coding-qualifier that goes away.

And then there are the people (who I would seriously suggest should maybe review their own "racial" views, if "black and brown people" is the first thing they think about when it comes to this), who say, that they are a stereotype of the "savages and natives", which is something that is actively contradicted in canon. One of the most prominent traits of the Qunari is that they are efficiant to a T, use every resorce at the disposal to it's maximum (including their people) and that they are more technically and scientifically advanced than many other race in Thedas (except maybe the dwarves) . This is shown through their mastery of gunpowder (which they call gaatlok) and the fact that they can use chemicals and drugs to literally warp the mind of people without needing magic. They are in no way presented as "savage" and if they are named such, it's usually by people who they are actively at war with, who want to insult them. They are also not "natives" of Thedas. Even their so called "homeland" in Thedas, which is called Par Vollen, was colonised by them, when they landed at it's shores in 6:30 Steel-Age and started converting the original population of Tevinter humans and elves, with whom they have been at war with ever since. Let me say that again: The Qunari are active colonisers and at war with the Tevinter-Imperium, who's people are the original population of the land. Not exactly a typical "native or black" stereotype in western media.

So who do I think the Qunari are actually modeled after?

Well let's summarise:

The Qunari came from across the ocean in their ships filled with cannons and guns, to colonise the land and convert the native population towards their beliefs. They are currently fighting a war against the Tevinter-Imperium, an old and powerful empire, that engages in widespread slavery and practices blood-magic by sacrificing said slaves, sometimes also to one of their many gods.

(If you can't guess who I think they are supposed to be modeled after by now, I would recommend to maybe picking up a 7th-grade history textbook again)

Yes, you can make a very strong case for the Qunari actually being these guys:

The Conquistadors (heck, if you cross out a few letters you can even anagram the word "Qunari" out of the word Conquistador). Who also came from across the sea with ships, cannons and guns to colonise the land (south- and middle-america) and convert the native population (to christianity) and fought an ancient and powerful empire with slaves and blood-sacrifices (the Aztec-Kingdoms).

So after pissing of one half of tumblr with that, let's start with the other half by talking about the apparent "muslim-coding" and how I disagree with that too.

Let's start with a rough definition of what a muslim is and how I think that that alone shows how the Qunari are in no way coded to be them:

I would define a muslim as somebody who is an active member of the religion of Islam. Islam is defined by it's holybook (the Qur'An), which was revealed to the prophet Muhammad by an all-knowing and omnipresent abrahamic god.

This in and of itself basically already disqualifies the Qunari from being "muslim-coded" since first and foremost the Qunari are not a religion. They do not have a god and they don't pray to any, the Qun is not a "holy-book" and Ashkaari Koslun (the guy who wrote it) was not a prophet, who wrote down the word of god, but a philosopher who basically crafted a "guide to life and society" with his works.

If you really wanted to find something that is slightly "muslim-coded" in the world of Thedas, you might actually have more luck with the chantry-stuff, since they do have a prophet (Andraste) who could talk to god (the Maker), they have a holy book based of her teachings (the Chant of Light) and they believe that the whole world should follow those teachings, so god will return to them (singing the Chant from all four corners of the world). They even have their own flavour of jihadist religious warfare with the Exhalted Marches (though all in all I do think that the Chantry can be better viewed as a take on christian religions since the split between the Imperial Chantry and the original one is similar to the split of the (western) christian church into catholics and protestants).

So what do I think is a better representation for the Qun in the real world?

Well lets look at it in the simplest way possible that the canon gives us:

The Qun is a guide for the life of the Qunari (the people of the Qun) that ecompasses everything from laws, legislative guides, too how society should be struktured and how everyone has to fit into and function in that society, from the most mundane and simplest tasks and jobs to it's highest administrative bodies. Everyone in this society is evaluated, so that they can be put into a position that is best suited to them and their skill-sets. There they will then each work according to their abilities and each be provided for according to their needs (see what I did there). Yes, the Qun can in my opinion be best described as a take on an authoritarian-socialist guide to life, written by somebody with a similar philosophie as Karl Marx.

So all in all, I don't think that the Qunari are in any way black-, brown-, bipoc- or muslim-coded, but a fantasy take on the Conquistadors, if instead of a bible they had all carried around "A Guide to Life, Luck and Community, written by Karl Marx (during one of his more productive weekends)", visually represented by giant Minotaur-People of many colours.

Also I find this obsession with finding every and any kind of reflexion of our real world in some random fantasy setting, by people who are most of the time actively looking to get offended by at least something and mostly every- and anything, quite contrived most of the time and that the day people on tumblr learned the word "codeing" a significant part of the internets critical-thinking skills and will just shrivelled up and died.

Thank you for coming to my TED-talk.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age 2 #dragon age inquisition #qunari #the qun #thedas #tevinter imperium

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