How the Tables Turn: A Dalishious Defence of Cullen
This post is not ironic. This post is not a joke. This post is me explaining that Cullen Rutherford does not belong to the tradwife contortionists, incapable of liking a male character until they mold him into fitting their white supremacist mindsets. You are not a bad person if you like Cullen, just because some Snapewife reject has delusions about this character being her perfect fascist husband.
Tumblr user truthfultales is a gaming blog that uses white supremacy talking points to write think pieces about her favourite male characters. She also uses the same tactics as common White Intellectual Dudebros™ to maintain the fabricated air of superiority, by using superfluous essayist language in her arguments, as if that makes her arguments capable of bending reality like she thinks they do. However, this is not intended to be a “callout post”, and I do not at all encourage harassment. This post is simply using this one example to argue against the larger fascism cult mindset this one blogger represents.
I have in the past written extensively about my opinion that Cullen’s writing is some of the worst attempts at a redemption arc I have ever seen. But never in a million years would I say that means this fictional character and fictional romance in a roleplaying game boils down to nothing but a strict “archetype”. Especially when “archetype” how truthfultales uses it, is just an insert for her views against interracial mixing.
Truthfultales claims that “arguing [Cullen] would “naturally” choose an elf is wishful thinking”, then goes onto say that it is “not prejudice” but simply “worldview” that she believes Cullen is too good for an elven apostate. She believes that Cullen needs a human warrior woman because he does not need “exotic” or “ideological tension” in his life – he needs “grounded femininity” to match his “sacred masculinity”, because that is what is “natural”. (Yes, these are all real terms she uses.) This is nothing but using Dragon Age’s fantasy racism as a means of writing thinly veiled white supremacist and misogynistic rhetoric: saying that white women are naturally fit for white men over racialized women, while at the same time treating femininity as something that women must gift to men.
Just because I personally do not find Cullen appealing, does not mean that I am incapable of understanding that the appeal works for others. Truthfultales however, cannot even claim that. Cullen’s writing in Dragon Age: Inquisition attempts to separate him from his character in the past games, and turn him into a knight in shining armour. So, if we were to subscribe to this disjointed new characterization instead of resisting it as I normally do, that means what Cullen represents is a source of safety for the player. This is a roleplaying game where your character reacts to the world and other characters how you, the player, want them to. That means in order for Cullen to successfully meet his role as a source of safety, he must be intentionally written to adapt in different ways to how the player approaches him. Truthfultales only sees Cullen as her tradwife husband because that is the only way she has clearly ever played the game. That is a fault on her part, not the game and definitely not other players. I have romanced Cullen twice; once with an Andrastian human rogue, and once with a Dalish elven mage. While there was much overlap in both these playthroughs from what I can recall, naturally he still reacted differently to each character. It is not “rewriting” his character to approach the roleplaying part of a roleplaying game differently, as truthfultales insists it is. It is within Cullen’s character to interact differently with different Inquisitors.
Players who like Cullen’s romance have typically expressed their appreciation for his interest in becoming a better person, as well as his sincerity and passion for the Inquisitor. Cullen provides this to the player regardless of if you romance him with a human or elven character. It is not “flattening” to say that Cullen is capable of loving someone who isn’t human. The knight in shining armour is supposed to represent the fantasy that anyone could find their dream match. (Cullen doesn’t have the option to be romanced by a qunari or a dwarf Inquisitor as well, only because his entire romance arc was added in the span of the additional year of development tacked on to the game before release. This was shared by Mike Laidlaw on the old BioWare forums.) Beyond that, there is nothing inherently contradictory to being Andrastian and loving a non-human – look at Leliana for example. There is also nothing about Cullen that makes him incapable of changing for the better.
Truthfultales is not just some ignorant Cullenite. She is intentionally using Dragon Age to spread harmful rhetoric part of her white supremacist tradwife cult. She does the same in other fandoms too, it looks like, then claims it is “slander” to point out the bigotry she is damn well aware is just that: bigotry.
But Cullen does not belong to truthfultales, and she does not speak for his fanbase, either.
neve gallus really is the DA romance of all time for me and i understand why the cullen girlies are Like That now. she's a jaded cynic, she's introduced having a smoke in front of a corpse she stabbed in the back, she claims to live off fried fish when it is clearly grilled fish, she hangs out with transgender people wanted for political crimes in a basement, she's afraid of emotional intimacy, she sounds like she's going to both cry and throw up when she says 'i love you', she wears cunty little hats, she's canonically into short kings, she likes cats, and she's even bisexual
The way my Rook's a mage, and I'm in love with Emmrich, who is a mage, and I'm also in love with Neve, who is also a mage, and I put the three of us together in an all mage party
