DA 4 Romances! New info for real this time!!! Zom-bangin'?

But that's exactly my point. "Love" isn't any one thing, but a social convention whose meaning varies from culture to culture and person to person. There's a reason I chose to call it passionate love (or eros, if you'd rather): it's a helpful umbrella term that covers socratic love (Ancient Greece), platonic love (Renaissance Italy), courtly love (Medieval France), and romantic love (named after 18th-19th century Romanticism) proper. Marriage/partnership had historically little to do with any of these conceptions and our modern ideal of companionate marriage developed separately out of the theology of the Protestant Reformation and only later coalesced into the big genealogical tree of love ("Methought I saw my late espoused saint [...]"). I find an amusing instance of historical serendipity in the recent push to classify limerence as a mental disease, a notion that was already cliche among medieval poets.

So that's my drearily postmodern take on the concept of passionate love. I'm sure a biochemist would have gone for something about hormones and procreation, but we all do what we can. When it comes to fiction, which concerns us at the moment, there is a further removal from current normative narratives about pairing up as fiction is not real. This rather tautological assertion is often neglected in contemporary discourse because of the influence of the foul Realists (cursed be their name even unto the tenth generation). Fiction operates out of its own internal sense imposed by thematic considerations rather than any resemblance to reality i.e. "fairy tale logic." Take early confessional poetry, where mere lust was a convenient metaphor for anything from the appreciation of divine beauty as reflected on material creation to anxious desire for poetic achievement.

/essay voice

Err, sorry for that. Kind of my thing. Point is, viewing fictional relationships strictly through the standards of real ones strikes me as a losing proposition. I see Solas' romance as very much in the... tradition, of paranormal romances. As a "realistic" relationship, it is utterly nonsensical (Panda has done a pretty good job of illustrating that already) but within its genre it is very by-the-numbers.

I agree that fictional romances shouldn’t have to abide by what would actually be enjoyable in real life. But I personally don’t enjoy roleplaying those ones, because I can’t shut off the part of my brain that’s screaming “this is terrible and stressful and why aren’t they getting out?”

I think why I’d appreciate more casual depictions of love, is because at this point that’s almost more “out there” in the context of fiction. There should be a place for relationships that would be obnoxious in real life... but right now it feels like that place is almost everywhere in fiction.

I do get the frustration with people who police fictional relationships in an infantilizing way (as if fans of romance have less discernment about what’s “unhealthy” than fans of violence do), and I hope I’m not coming across like that. But on the other hand, I do feel like that The One-focused, high-drama side of romance is extremely overrepresented in fiction, and would enjoy seeing more chill romances alongside it.

 I remember back when I first played DA:O my Warden romanced Morrigan, and I got to that point in the story where she is all "Don't you dare tell me that you love me!" "I love you" "You SOB!" I recall rolling my eyes and thinking "weren't you the one who said not to make a fuss about semantics when we were discussing blood magic?" My opinion of her has never recovered.

That was over eight years ago. God, does time fly. Moral of the story is, I'm not a fan of drama either. Out of curiosity, which romances do you like? I'm sure you've said it before, but I'd appreciate a summary.

What an excellent reason to have more m/m and f/f romances (and maybe some nb ones... I can only dream). Then we can have low-drama ones, and high-drama ones, and no LI is forced to be the perfect, flawless representation of a whole group.

It’s true they haven’t really gone for a higher-drama f/f romance, but they did try to do that with Anders and Fenris. The problem being, of course, that they were both in the same game, which I think led to some backlash when people interested in men had no other options. That’s probably the reason why both Dorian and Iron Bull have fairly low-drama romances. I mean, yeah, Bull can try to kill the Inquisitor, but that’s just business.

I rarely count the DA2 LIs in these sorts of things because they weren't written as a particular sexuality (despite being bi; they were simply written as characters and then made available to either Hawke). 

I think Dorian and Bull were written purposefully as a gay man and as a bisexual man, which is why their storylines and/or personalities are a bit trope-y, what with Dorian's story basically being all ABOUT him being gay and Bull being saddled with the ever present "promiscuous bisexual" trope. (And the light-hearted nature of the romance kind of goes hand in hand with the promiscuity aspect imo).

Also, surprise surprise, Isabela and Fenris are my favorite of the available m/m and f/f romances in Dragon Age. Yeah, Isabela's got the whole "I'll sleep with anyone" thing going on, but her romance is super dramatic and romantic, too. I bet if she were "the bi option" or the lesbian in a game like DAI the promiscuity bits would stay but the drama would have been written for the straight LI.

I'm just glad Dorian and Gil are all done with. The subject of '' gay guys needing to reproduced '' has been exhausted in Bioware games, the next gay male character has to have something else going for him, outside of '' real world gay issue no. 1245643524 '' ... please ...

The thing is about the Dorian personal quest is that actually it could have still happened if he had been straight. Among the nobility of Thedas it is meant to be important for there to be offspring to keep the family going and arranged marriages are common because of the wealth/power/connections they bring. So he could simply have said that he didn't want an arranged marriage and his father still tried to use blood magic on him to force him into compliance. Then it wasn't about his sexual orientation at all but about the social conventions of Thedas.

However, as DG explains the development of Dorian's character, it seemed they wanted to make the fact that he was gay the big issue. As some of the other writers on the team pointed out, people don't have an issue with being gay in Thedas, even in Tevinter, provided you are discrete about it, so DG alleged the thinking was that it was the fact that Dorian wanted to be out in the open about it that was the problem. Still why did that make it a gay issue? Sebastian's family were said to have been embarrassed by his sexual antics as a young man, which is why they sent him to the Chantry cloister (the southern equivalent of using blood magic on your offspring). Strangely enough, in Dorian's back story his parents sent him for a time to a school run by a strict sect of the Imperial Chanatry to try and sort him out. Apparently it was run with "strict Andrastrian discipline" even though we had never really been given any idea of what that might be even in the context of the southern Chantry let alone up in Tevinter.

As you say, though, I would hope that in future they can write a character so that the personal story could be relevant no matter what your gender or sexual orientation and then they just happen to be gay/straight/bi or whatever.

I don't agree that Dorian's story would have worked 'just as well' if he were straight. The plot is very obviously drawing on the 'conversion therapy' that many gay people have inflicted on them all over the world. It simply would not have had any of the same meaning if Dorian was just a straight man fleeing an arranged marriage. That plot is already thoroughly explored in fantasy and historical fiction, and the majority of people playing a Dragon Age game are already extremely likely to agree that it is wrong to force straight people to marry against their will.

Well, Assassin's Creed have always had the story of a character being the descendant of some 'once upon a time' assassin.

The character you played had to have a child at some point, regardless of your choice.

Ubisoft still handled it poorly though, by supposedly suggesting the arrangement was actually romantically chosen rather than necessity.

I am assuming the latter because I have not bought either the main game thus not the DLC either.

I think the majority would also agree it is wrong to force gay people to marry against their will. However, we are viewing it from our own modern perspective, whereas the people in Thedas would be viewing from their own cultural norms. It would seem in the majority of Thedas societies marriage, at least among the nobility, is about alliances not romantic love. However, it would also appear to be accepted convention that a person might take and maintain a lover after their marriage (although I do wonder if women are given the same freedom as men in this respect bearing in mind the complications regarding any offspring produced).

Using the plot to highlight an issue in our world will work provided it fits with the game world. In Dorian's case, the fact that we had previously been told how blood magic can be used to manipulate minds did allow a parallel to be draw with "conversion therapy". However, I still maintain that blood magic mind manipulation could equally have been used on a straight character by their family if they were refusing to comply with their marriage arrangements and would have been no less horrific. There are many young people throughout our world who are still being forced into marriage against their will as part of their cultural norms. I don't see why the fact that other games have explored this, make it any less valid to make it a plotline in Thedas.

I am aware that it was dealt with both as part of War Table missions and Josephine's romance but on the whole it was resolved without the emotional impact of Dorian's quest.