The toxicity comes, really, in the careless way her writing treats her - I recognize that we’re talking about a young woman, barely out of her teens, if not still in them (meaning like nineteen or so), and who lived in the margins of the society she lived in, which is inherently damaging to ones options and abilities to interact with others.
But I watch things about her romance - that she will lash out and blame the Inquisitor for things that she dreamed, the ultimatum, even something as little as her refusing to call the Inquisitor what they prefer (”go on, whisper your secret name to me. Nah, that’s stupid, I’m sticking with Inky.”)... I’ve been fortunate enough to not personally experience an abusive relationship, but I’ve been on the sidelines as friends have been, made the effort to be supportive of those friends while they’re in them so that they know to have a safe space
And I see the parallels to those relationships with Sera, to the point that I refuse to recruit her because of them. Because I see the same signs as those abusive people, the people who hurt my friends, and yet weren’t actually laying a hand on them. The narcissism, the focus on her wants and needs to the exclusion of her partner, the lashing out for perceived slights, the demand that the Inquisitor give up something about herself to make her feel better about what she thinks will happen... I’ve seen that erode the self-esteem and self-confidence of people I care about. It’s not as visible as bruises and broken bones, but it’s no less destructive.
So yeah, based on my experiences, I can’t view her as anything BUT toxic. I don’t begrudge anyone out there who doesn’t, but... I see that pattern of behavior repeated in her, and I want nothing to do with it, so I don’t recruit her.
And what’s worse is that I wouldn’t even say that this was intentional - but that’s because I’m sure that her writer viewed her as no more than comic relief. Like, I look at things surrounding Sera on paper, and I find a deeply sympathetic character. Loaded up with internalized hatred, and everyone in the Inquisition basically seems to look down on her and particularly the relationship with her and the Inquisitor, she is clearly alone and isolated, wanting desperately to connect in some way to the people she cares about.
But, because her writer wrote her as a frat boy’s idea of a lesbian, as a girl who acts like “one of the guys,” just with boobs, he (and we could talk about how a straight guy writing a lesbian is another Issue™ here, but I’m going on enough as it is) just skipped past how BAD all this behavior is.
Actually I do need to address that Issue™ a moment - this is a pattern of behavior in her writer’s handling of lesbians, since he was involved in both the Branka-Hespith AND Leliana-Marjolaine writing, so he’s written three lesbian relationships and all of them feature abusive behavior. That’s a concerning pattern, even if he’s not been the sole writer responsible for the decisions going in to them - that the F/F relationships that happen under his pen are abusive?
And it bothers me that when it was spoken about to Gaider, back when he was on Tumblr, he waved it off.
You know, I really do hope that, with DA4 taking the better part of a decade in development, BioWare has been given the chance to look over their patterns in writings and learn from them, learn how to be better. I want to believe they want to be better. It’s just... Well, it’s a pattern of behavior, and, that this is something that keeps happening with him speaks to a blindness on BioWare’s part. A blindness that, based on how David Gaider responded to people when he was on Tumblr telling him about their issues with Sera, BioWare doesn’t even realize, even when people are pointing it out to them.
