Trans characters in Mass Effect Andromeda

Edit: my love is for you too Natashina  
Edit 2: and you ProbeAway 

I most say that Solas baldness affected me more. I was forced to spend the beginning of the game with "it"!! I demand compensation! 

Disclaimer: I am not against bald people, I know many bald men. I just don't want them in my game......
Hmm, I feel I have seen this kind of argument before, eh, probably just my imagination.

Is she? Huh. Didn't notice. I don't think we should assume that that means her character will be transgender, though. I mean, that would also be pretty depressing for her, don't you think? To always have to play transwomen, instead of just women?

Yeah, pretty much, especially when you take into account genetic modification. Combine those things, and you have someone who is, under every social and biological definition, their identified gender.

I wrote a few much longer posts about this on the old BSN, but I can't find those posts in my archives. Basically, I said that I hope there won't be any trans people in ME:A, for a few reasons, despite that sounding very out-of-character for me since I'm pro-LGBT rights and representation.

1. It would be such a non-issue, I don't think it would really ever come up, both because of social change as well as super medicine. And with that in mind, what reason would a trans person even have to ever bring it up? Even in a relationship, it wouldn't matter.

2. I actually had some problems with how they handled Krem, despite liking Krem. I like that they tried, but... the execution was lacking. Could they improve? Sure, but I just don't have the confidence in them that they could do it right yet.

3. I don't have confidence in Bioware that they would have a trans character in ME:A where it matches my first point - a complete non-issue that you wouldn't likely even find out. I feel like they'd make a bigger deal out of it than that, and therefore be in conflict with the lore.

I know this is just something you came up with to prove a point, but I'd say doing it that way would be pretty insensitive, in-universe. I think by that point, they'd have advanced enough not to display something like that on someone's profile for no reason. Besides, it's not like they would do that to anyone else who changed their first name for a different reason.

I agree that Bioware could totally come up with a way to explain it that works well... they could. But will they? I'd rather not risk it.

I know I'll regret entering this thread, but to quote the great Commander Shepard: What can I say? I'm a masochist.

What the shit is this thing? That looks like a Warcraft/Diablo 3 character, or some god unholy combination of Widowmaker and Baal. I'm glad they scrapped this thing and went with the current design.

I don't know if the response was to me (oy it is ), but I agree with you. I just wanted to point out that the asari all-inclusive sexuality should make such things very acceptable in the ME universe since they are the culturally dominant species, yet their all-inclusive sexuality is misunderstood after thousands of years of exposure, and they are relegated to the dark corners of gentlemen clubs. Didn't see any asari or other femAliens patrons in the clubs Chora's den or Eternity. Liara even says asari still pair for reasons other than reproduction, and we know they still do so for reproduction as well.


Interspecies relationships and pansexual/bisexual/ asexual/homosexual relationships should not be considered abnormal given the stance the asari take on the issue, and them being the culturally dominate/influential species for thousands of years. People wear their fashions, watch their movies, listen to their music, aspire to their beauty standards, but pansexuality/homosexuality/interspecies realtions ewwwwwww...BioWare did not do nearly enough to portray the asari as culturally dominate. They tend to come off as a large population of desirable eyecandy. 

Mass Effect 1 was the first game I played but I really started playing it because ME2 looked hype and had just released, so I was more adjusted to the "cool" vibe of ME2 and all its shenanigans right away. Maybe that influenced what I accepted in terms of realism or lore right away. But I did play ME1 in full first; it always struck me as kind of charmingly dorky and nerdy in a good way becuase there was a lot of, not bad, but unnatural dialogue in it, the villains were mostly hamfisted until the Virmire and Ilos part where it legitimately got awesome. Strangely I was never quite impressed with the Sovereign speech as everyone else seem to, but I did love Vigil and by ME2 I was deeply invested in the looming threat of the Reapers in my own way. But overall it struck me more as this pulpy, stylized series on the surface but thanks to codexes, specific moments and the galaxy map it had a lot of substance that eventually made me buy into the fact that this was somehow realistic. At the very least I used to think it had internal consistency until ME3 and a few handwaved retcons in ME2.

Now, when it comes to the matter of "social proactiveness" in more recent games, I'm torn. At first I quickly picked up on the fact that Krem was trans. Female voice, male face... What's this? Okay, trans character, gotcha. But then for the rest of the game all there is to him is bull talking about how the Qunari accept people like him, that we have to call her "him", when you talk to Krem all you get is a bunch of expository dialogue about the chargers, what he thinks of Bull etc. The most prominent feature didn't seem to be off the cuff story about how Krem was basically the reason for bull losing an eye but about Krem being a him, what Qunari thinks of transgenders (which contradicts a DLC in DA:O btw) and that's pretty much it.

I did like the chargers, but ultimately it felt like there wasn't a lot to them except "they're Bull's friends", you get to save them or let them die before you really care for it, and then there's Krem/Bull talking about gender, and it felt like all the dialogue they could've spent on building up the story of people and relationships was wasted on a bunch of expoisition about how they retconned Qunari lore to accept transgenders.

I think there's a way to bring in transgenders in Dragon Age and even in the Qunari. I just think the way it was done there was lame.

As for Dorian, I'm also fairly apathetic but it did fool me at first because the acting is absolutely incredible. On top of that it was pretty genuine too because while Gaider said it wasn't his story, he is a gay man himself and he conceded to me on Twitter that writing Dorian was a bit like exorcising some demons for himself, but because that's almost all it is; I mean, the companion quest is SO brief, while Dorian is really likeable whether you're gay or not and the chemistry between you and him seems good, there's just not much substance to his character, so in the end I could've cared more for it had it been more. In this case I didn't feel the same as Krem that they should've spent more time building a relationship becuase that works somewhat and he's romanceable, making the bond more personal for those that choose it. When he says he considers you a friend at full influence-points I believed it and it felt natural to me, but at the same time it was just too brief and shortlived.

I guess the thing with Krem was also that Weekes went and spoke with transgendered people at a bar to do his research. I don't know what other research he does for his writing - hopefully a lot - but it just struck me as him being this white knight who set himself out on a quest to write an empowering character for transgendered people but all he ended up doing was lip-servicing his target group with exposition dumps and a jarring retcon of DA:O DLC and again, not that I didn't want to like it, but I just didn't care for it when everything was said and done.

While I LOVE transgender in medieval RPGs in Sci-Fi RPGs I think it is poor. Meaning I love Krem or Maevaris but trans space babes/dudes... not interesting.
First things first: Most of the interesting things about transgenderism depend on the way society deals with it, and I doubt we will be dumb-gendered for centuries to come (meaning this current label based gender definitions, or even gender itself will become obsolete), so it doesn't make that much of a sense for the "transgendering" to be relevant in the future. Also, with interspecies sex and all other complications with alien life other psychological diversities could come into play like a male human being a trans-asari, meaning he feels and identifies himself with an Asari or a female human that is a trans-krogan-man.
Then... well... most issues people have with gender, namey their appearance (not only the "visual effects" but because how it impacts on how "the world" deals with us)will probably be a lot easier to modify so binary gender people wouldn't have that much of a proble in the future with amazing genetic therapies, godlike surgeries and whatever else. (Which does not extinguishes transgenderism by itself, but coupled with the social advancements I doubt it would still be an issue).
I understand the importance of dealing with it because the game happens in the future but we are not in the future. But can't think of it (transgenderism issues) as a coherent/probable situation for an advanced human kind with space friends a couple of centuries from now. It is like thinking about 21st century people believing earth is the center of the universe, well there are those people, but they are considered crazy. Old gets old and eventually it becomes a thing "ancient people on earth did", like burning witches, killing each other in coliseums and so on.
I would be much more interested in a VERSION of transexuality/trangenderism that would fit, like Star Trek did with thills (Dax) where a person have multiple lifetimes of experience and memories (including sensorial) and sometimes there are great things like Jadzia saying she's been a husband and a wife, mother and father... Or just make a genderfluid species... I mean, whatever fits. But traditional transgender drama centuries from now? I'm not buying that. I'm a pessimist but I don't think human kind will be that stubborn with gender.
Liara's mother/father was fine, and interesting, for reference. And could have been more explored.
But please, no Krem in space, it is dumb. (Krem in Thedas is amazing, in case I wasn't clear).

Okay, I usually leave a thread when I say I'm done, but I'd like to respond to this.

Link"Guess"ski

First, I'd like to say it's good to see you. I remember us debating in the past on the old forums and we enjoyed it. So much time spent in the Mage v Templar threads. Good times.

With Krem, you find about more than just the Chargers. He's great for some expostion on Tevinter. He talks about what happened to his own father. Basically, his dad was a tailor. Made simple stuff, like work shirts. One day a magister got into his head to make shirts for the poor. The same kind of clothes as Krem's dad made. The magister used slave labor to do it and sold it for next to nothing. No working man could compete with that. Krem had to go into the military in order to keep his family from slavery. He does mention that women could only go so far in the miltiary. It provided a real contrast to the more matriarch based South.

More than, "Omg, Krem's a transman and that's all he is," I got the impression that life kinda sucked for a non-mage in Tevinter. Between him and Dorian, it's obvious that the writers were trying to educate them about Tevinter. That's what I thought made Krem memorable for me, not the fact he rocks with his sock.


The comment from Bull insistsing on using a male pronoun for Krem. are actually optional. I did the quest a few days ago. He introduces Krem and you have the option of asking about Krem's gender. You can also ignore it completely and ask to be introduced to the rest of the Chargers. My only issue with the way they handled Krem was the auto-tone of the Inquistor combined with the very defensive Bull. I flinched when I heard the way the IQ asks those questions during the Chargers conversation. I didn't pick it again. Krem is much more level headed and matter-of-fact about the issue.

I think the conversation would have gone smoother had Bull not been so defensive and if the tone of the questions were nicer.   Like I said, if it's a well-written and compelling squadmate, I'm a happy gamer.

Edit: Isn't a tad early to complain about Maevaris as a trans character?  She only in the comics and while she might be in the next DA game, DA4 hasn't even been announced yet.  I've read the comics and there is only one (kinda rough) scene where her gender was even brought up.   

I could not care any less about what a character has in their pants, as long as they don't exist to be a mouthpiece for the writer's opinions about social issues or kowtow to a specific demographic.

See, this is one of the things I found annoying, indirectly, about Krem in DA:I. It felt like (in my opinion), they basically created lore just for him, and that lore (when combined with Dorian's story) basically amounted to "How can we make Tevinter even more of a mustache-twirling evil nation? Oh! Let's make them sexist (Krem's military comment), transphobic (Krem's story), and sort of homophobic (Dorian's story)!



It just bugs me, since none of those things were really touched on before and it seems cheap to make Tevinter so lame in a black and white manner.

Bull's conversation also bugged me, not because of Bull defending his buddy, but because of the stupidly insensitive way the Inquisitor had to ask about Krem if you wanted to ask about Krem. "And him being a woman isn't a problem?" Really Bioware? This is why I like my RPG questions to be asked neutrally.

Well, to be fair I don't know if Jien is rich because of her hard work or if she inherited a fortune from her parents/grandparents/whoever.

She probably is rich (if she started this all Andromeda Iniciative thing) but nothing it's written on twitter stone.

I get your point. However, I don't totally see why in the future being born as a transgender would be a thing. Sometimes the great part of problems transgender people have to face are more related to other people's (sometimes agressive) reactions than being born in the sex you don't belong. And seriously, in a future with enough technology to go from one galaxy to another and interespecies relationships, same-sex couples and transgender people cannot still be a thing  (at least for the big majority of the Galaxy).

Anyway, I am not transgender so I probably should shut it a little and stop cisplaining