Sera

A treatise on Sera.

Sera is abrasive and rude. She's also stupid. She doesn't fit in at all in the world the Inquisitor finds themselves in. She has her own interests, that do not always align with the Inquisitor's. She even speaks in an annoying manner.

But this is all intentional. The writers made a realistic character. Characters in videogames all too often bend themselves to appeal to the player. If the player doesn't like something, they change the character. Blackwall wanted to die, until the player says "no, don't", and suddenly he's on board again. We're so used to speech checks getting our way. We're so used to characters being our team, being our friends. Sera contradicts this convention. She doesn't apologize for who she is, and she also doesn't change who she is. It's quite refreshing conceptually, even though it's done in a way that makes an annoying character. But the concept is refreshing nonetheless.

There's also the issue of her being gay. To the author's credit, you don't learn this until you specifically ask her out. It's never mentioned at any point ever that she's gay, until the point at which it is immediately relevant to a question the player asks. This is a well-written gay character. Sera is liked or disliked because of her strong personality long before the character even learns if she's gay or not. This is exactly what gay characters should be like.

This strong personality is also interesting. Looking past her being annoying, we find some interesting stuff. The "what is an elf" conversation was great.

Fourth, she represents an average person in the world. This is also a refreshing concept for an RPG. Even the classic greats in the rpg genre do this. Characters that just join up and fall in line with the protagonist. If you think about it, sometimes they "should" reflect on the fact that they're in way over their head. Mission Vao, basically a child, suddenly runs off on an adventure and shoots Darth Malak with a gun? Doens't quite play out the way it would in real life, or at least she would express some trepidation. Sera represents this pretty well. Sera is a stupid commoner who is in over her head. Remember, to the average citizen, dragons, magic, the fade, darkspawn, and time travel are all terrifying unknown things that scare the shit out of the random citizen in the Dragon Age universe. We don't think about these things when we play the game, but darkspawn and dragons are literally scary monsters that kids have nightmares about in that world. So her freaking out and acting dumb may be cringe to us, but she's representing this idea that in-universe, the average person really would freak out if they found themselves inside the fade, or facing a darkspawn.

Overall, Sera is actually quite well-written conceptually, and features many refreshing ideas for the RPG genre. Despite being annoying. I'm not saying you should like her, because she is intentionally abrasive, but I am saying to think a bit more about the character and these concepts she represents.


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Bioware characters follow archetypes. Jack is a rebel, Miranda is a prep, Tali is a nerd, Ash is a jock, etc. You could walk down a highschool in america in the 90's and 2000's and see all the archetypes represented in the high school students.

Sera is a punk. She is anti-establishment and she knows that much, but she can't actually hone her discontent into a precise issue, she's just wildly anti-establishment and what that means exactly changes depending on the situation. She rages against a lot of different things, many of them are things that deserve raging against, but she's still that stereotypical punk from the 80's and 90's that only knows enough to tell you that there is indeed injustice and it is indeed perpetrated by elites/rich people, but they aren't aware enough to actually give you details and specifics, they just rage "at the system". They're right, but they couldn't tell you why they're right.

I like her because I have a soft spot for this type of person. I like punks (though I am not really one myself) and I get what they were going for with the character, even right down to the veiled criticism of the punk culture that many of them don't really know what they're angry about, they're just angry at the general idea of injustice. It's actually quite well done and her character is well written.

That's not saying that you should like her though. She's still abrasive, rude, kind of dumb, a criminal, and many other negative traits of varying significance. But that's part of the point. She's a normal random person from Thedas, who is ignorant of many things and has various beliefs and she freaks out about things a normal person should freak out about. We forget this because it's a videogame, but going into the fade, fighting darkspawn, magic, dragons, etc *should* freak you out. Our companions are weird people, Sera represents a random person seeing these things. We laugh at her freakouts but they're a purposeful juxtaposition of the rest of the party.