On an unrelated note, I think it's complete BS that Edér, Aloth and Pallegina are in the game, but not Durance. Hiravias had other things going for him, Grieving Mother is literally just a midwife, and Sagani had a family to go home to. But Durance is a solid-ass character that would have had a personal interest in the Eothas affair, and Edér doubly so. But Pallegina? She's a Paladin of the Frermàs mes Canc Suolias, she should have other obligations, and Aloth is.. what? He was just hanging out at Caed Nua?
Durance would've been a far more appropriate character than either of them, and so would Kana Rua (who I always hated, I can't even explain why, I think it's the voice). Frankly, I would've preferred even Zahua or Maneha, one of which is an aumaua and the other is an adventurer, so both of them would fit right in, even though I'm not a huge fan of either.
And yes, I realize that Durance might've thrown himself on the pyre, if you didn't finish the nonsense part of his quest, but given that he's a Priest of Magran, I think it would've been an interesting twist to reveal that he didn't actually die, and that his staff didn't actually burn, even though Magran does not speak to him - and similar arguments could be raised with Aloth, who you can actually end up casting out (if I remember correctly, you can even kill him..?).
Also, I realize that Durance was written by Avellone, who isn't involved, but Edér was written by Fenstermaker, who also isn't involved, so while there'd be issues doing them justice, it's not that strong of an argument. If you're ghostwriting one character, you might as well ghostwrite two.
Make a racist villain -> rage.
Make a sympathetic guy casually racist -> rage.
Make nobody racist at all with all races living happily together in harmony -> rage.
Can't win with you guys.
How about making everyone believably racist without focusing on it or obsessively pegging a villain as racist? Making a sympathetic guy "casually racist" isn't the issue here, it's that he wasn't racist at all, and now it's being called out as having racism as a defining character trait. I think everyone was perfectly fine with Edér being a believable, full character. That's exactly the kind of writing "us guys" want.
"You guys", though, can't help but to detect "racism" in everything, and inject moral stories about it everywhere you go, apparently. Having any kind of focus on this in a game and world like Pillars of Eternity is ridiculous.
Edit: I think that Pallegina had more "raicist" remarks about the north than Edér had about anyone non-human. Hell, Hiravias came off a hell of a lot more "raicist" - towards humans/non-glanfathans - than any other companion I can think of.
/Edit
There is so much mere assumption here... White cis shitlord?
Luckmann calm down!
You missed the point, that this is somehow a defining trait of Edér's, that will likely be worked in in an awful and awkward story on how you shouldn't be prejudiced, and how Edér is representative of the tumblrite imagery of the white cis shitlord that needs to be taught a moral lesson by being ridiculed in one way or another, being put into the position of "target" for the purpose of "irony". I'm not saying that it's going to be this way, I'm saying that that fear is the context of my statement, which flew over your head in your attempt to quickly feebly defend this galloping retardation.
I think that a lot of people confuse the term racism with advocating hatecrime or being a racial theorist.
Racism just means having prejudice against people of different (ethnical) background. That can be positive as well, as let's say in the case of the "noble barbarian" who lives in harmony with nature and whatnot. Basically Indians or germanic tribes in literature, who got exploited by whatever evil empire.
Eder's racism is just that. Kind of an everyday thing, basically everybody does/has it. It's not malicious intent.
It's still racism.
It's just not that kind of racism most people think about, because it's not the stuff for TV news or big headliners.
By this logic, everyone, everywhere, forever, should have the racist tag, in practically every setting, real or imagined. This is a perfect example of how cultural marxists have abused the term to be unrecognizable and unusable as anything other than a baseless and largely unfounded pejorative. It's funny how the very same marxists that espouse this utter nonsense are always the same ones that are so very quick to redefine the same concept of racism as constituting "prejudice + power" when faced with the issue of racial prejudices and discrimination for the purpose of marginalizing Europeans.
There's exactly two viable factual definitions of racism that can be consistently applied. One is the scientific usage for the purpose of dividing evolutionary subgroups, commonly referred in a contemporary scientific context as population sub-groups or sub-species, and sometimes also referred to as racialism. The other is the common-tongue definition of the idea of malicious practices of discrimination based on racial categorization, whether personal or societal, whether real or imagined. Everything else is just wily wishy-washy fucking nonsense that can be bent and re-interpreted to fit the flavour of the day in order to target whomever the fuck anyone wants.
And Edér fits neither of those, because he never expresses any actual disdain. Want to call him prejudiced? Want to call him ill-versed in worldly affairs, ethnocentric or casually ignorant? Fine. Want to call him racist?
Fuck the right off.
