Re: half-Qunari and the like, I'd been having the same thought re: Tieflings whose mortal half is not human! It's just cool in general to see fantasy break the assumption that human = default. There's kind of a bigger discussion around how traditional fantasy settings tend to unfortunately couple a person's race with where they live, but it'd be cool to see how they'd handle e.g. an Elf-Qunari, or at least explain why such a thing isn't possible.
Yeah, I was thinking about the “human = default” thing as I typed that post because when you say something like “half-elf” the automatic assumption is that the other half is human. Anthronormativity FOR THE LOSE! (is that the word? It’s the word I’m going with anyway)
I’m sure someone, somewhere, is like, “Dwarf-Qunari is just a normal human hurr hurr” but that’s really only taking height into account. Dwarves and Qunari both tend towards being bulkier and stronger than human beings, so that’s something likely to be in that hybrid.
You’d almost have to have it be a surface-dwelling dwarf, so that’s already a step removed from one of your “heritages” in that sense; does this hybrid follow the ways of the Qun which is already a somewhat ham-fisted Muslim metaphor? What do other Qunari think of them?
[ahem] I don’t know how I wandered off on that topic, but anyway, I would also love to see a reasonable explanation for why there aren’t actual halflings in Thedas because “half-elves look human” is Iron Bullshit. Like, I get it if you can’t do X in your video game because Time and/or Resources are lacking, but y’all better come up with a better explanation than that because Humans Are Curious Motherfuckers. BY DEFAULT.
