Races and romance poll

It's not just genitals. Women have boobs, narrower shoulders, wider hips... not to mention the voice.

Biology... which reacts very quickly to hormone changes. The skeletal differences are not that pronounced, there’s a lot of overlap between female skeletons and male ones. It’s mostly just fat. Even cis women who go on birth control can experience all manner of masculine or feminine changes — growing chin hair, getting larger/smaller hips or breasts, even changes to their vocal register. Mae probably could adjust her hormone levels if the writers wanted (it would be totally in line with what’s possible for other magical healing in Thedas). I’m guessing they just didn’t do that in the comic to avoid the need for a “hello I am trans” dialogue.

But anyway, to avoid straying too far into “real world stuff”, I want to romance Mae. I would enjoy having her as an LI. If she did become an LI, I’m positive there would be other LI options, so this whole discussion feels kind of moot.

I think these are two different things.

You'd have to provide some examples of this huge gap you've observed where the character or person has made a deliberate choice (that is, not constrained by financial or other means) to not fully transition. The only one I can think of is Liz from AHS: Hotel. From my observation, stories about trans characters seem to be about their transition, as do stories about real-life trans people that transition, because media thinks presenting the details around the physical transformation is titillating for the audience. On Transparent, I believe the surgery issue was discussed, but due to age, it was deemed risky (and of course now Tambor is gone from the show, so...). Real-world trans people, like Kaitlyn Jenner, get asked (inappropriately) about surgery. The TLC show I Am Jazz is going to have a series of eps where she is going to "finally get the surgery." People are fixated on it. And finally, the majority of media coverage of trans people is devoted to ultra-femme transwomen -- while we can't know their full physical status, it's obvious they've undergone quite a bit of the transition process. I'm not seeing how there's a dearth of coverage there. In fact, I remember being surprised that Liz (from AHS: Hotel) was shown being comfortable with how she is.


As for the second part, from my observation, the majority of the trans narratives that Hollywood likes to make are ones involving adults who decide to transition, and part of that typically involves showing the person in their cis appearance while they are working through the emotional issues and coming to terms with being trans. And yes, people realize this at all stages of life; not every trans person has "always known."

For Hollywood portrayals, this is similar to a story about a disabled person that shows their injury or decline (as from illness) where the person is shown pre-disability. They would not have been able to make The Theory of Everything, showing Stephen Hawking's decline, with a disabled actor. The key takeaway here is that Hollywood likes showing the transformation. It's a warped version of the training montage. Think too, how popular "makeover" stories are: Miss Congeniality, The Princess Diaries.

Now, trans people certainly aren't disabled, and there is makeup and things. However -- and I've often wondered about this -- as Hollywood likes to have the transition story, I can see trans actors having their dysphoria triggered by being asked to re-transform into looking cis again for a role. It's not simply Christian Bale transforming to play Cheney; gender dysphoria is a real physiological condition. I've read that Orange is the New Black had a flashback scene with Laverne Cox's character, showing her pre-transition. One of the reasons they were able to do that is because she has a twin brother.

As far as Hollywood is concerned, this issue is more to do with their limited thinking than anything else. The first thing to recognize is that transition narratives are exploitative. Trans actors need to be given more opportunities to play characters that exist outside of that space of being trans, just as POC actors shouldn't be limited to playing race-centric roles and gay actors shouldn't be limited to gay roles.

I don't understand the notion that one must be personally attracted to a game character in order to want to do their romance.  The player isn't the PC so....??? I don't get it.

To be fair, and while I've engaged in romances with characters outside my orientation or that I just didn't find that appealing, I find I'm much more invested in the proceedings if I'm playing a male character and consider the love interest at least somewhat attractive. I kind of feel the same about non-interactive fiction even: if I can't relate to what character A sees in character B or vice versa then I don't care about what happens to their relationship. Other people's love lives are dreadfully dull, so absent a personal hook I just lose interest.

Is that mostly down to physical attractiveness or personality? If I were asking myself “what do they see in them?” it would 100% be about personality.

More of a holistic aggregate of both, but personality has a significant effect on perceived physical beauty e.g. someone's looks might go from "kinda pretty" to "hot enough to melt lead" in my estimation if I'm attracted to them as a person. And it takes more than just making a character a knockout for me to be interested. My first impression of Cassandra was that she was easy on the eyes and had a sexy accent, but I ended up being meh about her romance because I just didn't find her that compelling.
Honestly, whom a person finds attractive is so unpredictable and seemingly arbitrary that roleplaying it strikes me as a quixotic attempt to rationalize the inherently irrational. Might as well just go with what feels better for you.

*prays for Ace/Demi Vaea*

I see it more as roleplaying that your character has a "type." For example, a friend's PC likes intelligent, clever, amusing people, which puts quick-witted characters like Sera and Dorian right in his wheelhouse. But he's a gay man, so Dorian fits perfectly. The character, in writing*, even remarks on one occasion, concerning women like Sera, that he would go for that type if he were interested in women.

Just because you are different doesn't make it objectively irrational. LOTS of people can state their preferred physical type. They might not end up with a person like that for a variety of reasons, but that doesn't mean those interests cease to exist for that person.


As I mentioned, I romance Fenris despite not finding him all that attractive, but I still have my preferred type.

Well the dick is still a deal-breaker. Whether it's still* or was there (magic, surgery, whatever). The latter should be addressed at some point in the romance to avoid the dreaded 'tricking'. Which is fair argument, after all a relationship - real or fictional - should be honest (ha!, awkward silence form the Anders, Blackwall, Morrigan, Solas, etc corner ). A "sorry, nope" rejection at this point wouldn't be any more sad or 'offensive' than the regular breakups in existing romances.

So I don't think Mae should be a LI. Let's just stick to the vanilla options, mf/fm, mm, ff, worked so far.

*(Obviously the ingame models won't show/have genitals and they shouldn't.)