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

Mhm, except that an overabundance of said speculative fiction and zero historical realism in entertainment inevitably leads to a generation of oversized children who imagine that society can be bloodlessly and perfectly optimized to their own tastes practically overnight, with no insight into what has actually led to significant cultural changes. Or what to look out for to avoid crashing economies and running otherwise promising civilizations right back into the kinds of desperation and turmoil that lead to horrid conditions necessitating harsh and unfair treatments in the first place. But why would that ever be important? 

And I think it's ten times more absurd to claim that creatures that evolved fighting tooth and nail for survival and only then graduated to bitter tribal warfare can be civilized en masse to the point of virtual sainthood by pretty stories they can barely recognize themselves in, based on no evidence whatsoever.

You're also just dead wrong, as a matter of scientific certainty. Chimps are bigoted and hateful. Rats are bigoted and hateful. Aside from having kept us on our toes for potential invaders, those two traits have always been damn useful for allowing us to keep our sanity through bloody conflicts over resources, and when meeting strangers carrying bugs that might otherwise drive our people extinct. Bigotry and hate are beyond innate, they're part of what allowed us to even get this far.

Pretending that they don't have a place in us and that we must be cleansed of them to be virtuous people is ludicrous. It just keeps us from learning to function efficiently and healthily in spite of those instincts when they're not useful. And worse, it trains you to target everyone who doesn't share your naive and arbitrary idea of virtue with your bigotry and hatred and messed-up sense of superiority instead. Which is hardly an improvement. 

But it's cute that you have so much faith in your fellow shoe-clad monkeys based on playing video games rather than watching the news.


Are you serious? You've presumably been a teenager yourself. Imagine what would happen if men and women at that age, or any age, were allowed to indulge themselves however they felt like with no reliable birth control available in an environment of limited resources. No such settlement would survive a single decade, and it's always been easier and more efficient to control women's bodies than men's.

Uh-huh. I'm obviously not a mother myself, but I somewhat doubt that a lot of ancient women were "chill" about watching disapproving elders strangle or cut the throats of their babies after hours of labor. I vaguely imagine that to be a tough emotional place to be in, one that all parties involved would have preferred to avoid. Assuming that the mother was lucky enough to survive childbirth in the first place, of course. But maybe that's just me. 

You're right that there have been periods of promiscuous ancient cultures that didn't put any extreme sexual restrictions on women. Those tended to coincide with the availability of relatively safe and effective methods of contraception, though. Like it does now, with the invention of the pill and cheap rubbber condoms mysteriously coinciding with a surge in women's rights and freedoms.   The Ancient Romans plucking the Silipihum plant to extinction, followed by every country around the Mediterranean adopting fairly conservative stances on the issue for a thousand years after also comes to mind.

I'd call it quite a bit more disingenuous to pretend that imposing discipline on sex is some newfangled political ploy rather than a tool we've been using to survive throughout human history.

See, all those baseless accusations, attacks on one straw man after another, empty but nonetheless impassioned rhetoric, denial of facts and refusal to do anything but stick to your adopted faith while believing the worst of anyone who even politely murmurs that they're interested in seeing another view reflected in a single hypothetical video game that would harm nobody and teach us a lot. All that hatred and bigotry that you're so dead-certain we can get rid of by the snap of a finger. 

Whatever, I've more than said my piece and I wasn't trying to start a lengthy and grandstanding debate with politically correct choir boys looking for pats on the head. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. I'm going to sleeeeeeep. 

It desperately needs to be said that buying women with farm animals might be fun for some people? Cause I already knew that.

And it's not actually a requirement of fantasy that it reflect any aspect of actual human history.

I'd say, have this one as the main romance thread for now until we have substantial news about the romance and/or DA4 (also when that happens, can we update the poll?). The other poll thread can be directed here.

There could be (and has been) space for reproductive issues in DA, especially considering where we're going. Tevinter has its low key eugenics at the mage level, the qunari's pragmatism presumably would lend itself to breed for function since that kinda thing permeates their entire culture and Orzammar's dwarves allow exceptions in their stratified society for the possibility that it'd result in more babies. The workables are there, thematically, if they wanna tackle the topic.

My issue with 'dark' themes, especially in games like DA that are rooouuughly historically analogous, is the assumption that there should be a 1-to-1 replicability. ie IRL medieval women were pretty constrained in their roles and definitely weren't as sexually liberal as Thedas women, thus Thedas' women are wrong and ~agenda'd~, this despite the setting not necessitating that same chastity or constraint. The assumption of agenda isn't what's wrong though, it's the implicit assumption that you can create any fictional setting without agenda (emphasis on fictional, if you're setting out to replicate a historical setting [like KCD say] then presumably/hopefully you'd at least strive to be without agenda), choosing to create a fantastical context where women are more or less equal to men has the agenda of equality, choosing to create a fantastical context that seamlessly imports IRL historical injustices has the agenda of maintaining or replicating the traditional status quo, verisimilitude, or an appreciation for the kind of stories that can be told in specifically that kind of setting depending on how generously you want to interpret the motivations. A bonus with the latter set is that the agenda gets to be largely invisible but this is very common (ie: I just like my games without politics, yah know like when the protagonist was a white man, women were hot and/or servile, black people were gangsters and gays weren't there), politics of the status quo is still politics fam. You can want dark themes but not every context allows (specific setting verisimilitude-wise) for replicability of particular examples and that isn't a flaw.

But anyway. There's probably also a discussion to be had about what exactly escapism does or maybe should entail but meh. Is the goal of escapism to be a literal escape from RL problems or to be compelling distractions from them, even if it repackages RL with a fictional bow? Games like Sims 4 and Stardew Valley exist (both of which I enjoy) but I can't imagine anyone here would want DA to turn into something that anodyne. So some confrontational content is good, makes stuff more compelling. Is there a hard limit? Probably not. One person's compelling narrative arc is going to be another person's too IRL for me IRL.

Can I spot any objective grounding for why one is better than the other in terms of escapism not really a) because my idea of escapism could use some clarity and but also I imagine it's a moving target for most people. Sometimes I'm in the mood for some fluffy, meaningless romance novels and sometimes I'm in the mood for The Heart's Invisible Furies. I will say that the latter means a lot more to me but that doesn't mean I want every bit of escapism I consume from now on to put me through a never ending emotional wringer, that just sounds exhausting.

Can I see an objective grounding for which the devs/creators should prefer? I think I can see more of one. They should create the narratives that align and contributes best to the setting they've created but even that's going to be a moving target, partly because Bioware is a business and they're going to adapt tone to what they think the consumers want the most and partly because the writers are a group of people prone to the same preferences and biases about what escapism should entail as producers of content as we are as the consumers of that content. 

This wasn't about romance at all but heeeeeey. 

I would request from the mods that we cease discussing women's/female bodies as if they are the property of male bodies. It is not relevant to this thread topic and it is also highly offensive. I would really hope that the latter point would be glaringly evident, but apparently not.

If you want to talk about "escapism in video games" - which, apparently, according to some definitions here, essentially means that characters somewhat similar to me are not treated like pieces of absolute shit - then please make another thread.

So i don't have to read it.

Poll is updated!

TBH, I just I felt it was funnier to have a same-sex option and no hetero option. All the responses are meant to be tongue in cheek.

And your parents will appear in the room when the sex scene starts. Where they live is irrelevant. 

My answer to the poll: Tasteful.

About the "dark middle ages reality" and the "escapism":

The fantasies and the utopian novels don't necessarily copy the IRL society of that era what they want to use in their story for some morals or just for entertainment (It exists, and not bad!). They rather use today's problems and the old/utopistic world's moods, environment to show the today problems or/and "universal" moral issues: safety or freedom for example, and how far we can go to protect one or the other principle. Or just want to entertain, what is also not bad, because people have needs to escape from their daily problems. 

People also need positive confirmation. Where the heroes can win over the darkness. This is important.

I reject, that the "deep" necessarily means "depressive". But perhaps it just me.