The Character Romance thread (Official)

If the characters got implemented as bisexual--genuinely bisexual--I'd be totally down for that too. The problem is that in the past, bisexuality has often been implemented as "playersexual," where the character's sexuality doesn't seem to exist or be referred to outside the PC romance, and the character being bisexual is a convenient narrative tool to improve romance access. I'm...kinda meh on that, personally.

I liked the mix of Bi-sexual/playersexual approach as the best forward in providing options. Unless there's a specific need to reference a previous lover, romances don't really need that gating. Which of MEA's characters even refer to exes other than Peebee?


P.s i'm obvious biased as i adore Peebee and think Cora's very cute but it boggles my mind that someone would find them ugly while finding Suvi not ugly.

Why does a character's sexuality need to be commented on, or even fall under a recognisable label?

Why should non-straight characters need to explain and justify their sexuality when striaght characters never do? Do you hound your real-life partners for their preferred labels and sexual history?

I think there in lies the problem.

Those who really wanted the romance between their male protagonists and an male alien like a Drell, Turian, or Quarian need to wait yet another few years to get the content people of other sexual orientations got to experience in the game completely vanilla. Just like when queer men had to wait years and two games so they could finally get some content for male same sex romance, on par on what everyone else had from the start. And that's what gets to me. Gay men are at the bottom of the ladder, and Mass Effect does the bare minimum even in 2017 for rectifying that instead of actually putting in the effort to put them on par with straight men and women, and to an extent, queer women.

I'm very iffy about a Jaal patch as well, because you're right that it's gonna open the floodgates of straight men and women thinking "oh, so this social minority just made themselves loud enough, might as well do the same for what we want to", and one shitfest will lead to another, and so forth. If Bioware announces another Mass Effect game in the series, I'm eyeing it with a lot of skepticism that it would rectify gay male representation and do anything beyond the mandatory "gay human npc so we don't cop as much flak for NO queer male representation at all".

Sorry for being all rant, but eh. The creative leads of the team behind Mass Effect dug themselves into a hole I can't see them getting out of without some... drama.

I agree that playersexual romances are the best in terms of providing options, and more economical from a developer perspective.  However, I generally don't like design decisions that make characters less immersive, and playersexual romances do exactly that, for me at least.  Real people talk about relationships, past and present.   They flirt.  They have unique, individual preferences when it comes to their partners, and those preferences can clash.

A playersexual romance removes all that.  Suddenly romance for that NPC exists only in the context of the PC, and it's like everyone else in that universe is chopped liver.  That, to me, is rather off-putting because it makes the character feel less like a person, and more like a romance object  Which...I guess is fine, if that's the route BioWare decides to go?  There are definitely worse things than objectifying romance in your story.  But I do think such an approach makes each of the characters--and their romances--less compelling.  I much prefer the DA:I approach, which represents specific sexualities across the spectrum.

Labels are useful, labels are here to help us understand the world and each other. Labels let us have a community that we were otherwise denied, that straight people already had. There's nothing wrong with a good label!

My point is that the people who make those comments are still a minority of gamers who play Andromeda.  Those of us who actively post on forums and make comments and follow the devs on Twitter are a tiny slice of the player base, no matter what we choose to say.  The vast majority of players are happy to simply play the game, and rarely make a peep on the Internet.  

I think you don't understand my stance or why I'm asking what I'm asking. Nowhere in anything I wrote have I said you should not be allowed to refer to yourself in any way you see fit. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

What I want to know is: Why do some gamers require fictional video game characters to fit within a spectrum of labels that MAY NOT EVEN EXIST in the fictional setting of their world?

Why wouldn't they though? I guess I just don't understand why they wouldn't, as lesbians and gay men would still exist in the future and existed in the past, and I hope this isn't getting at otherwise. Would there be a different word for it? I'm glurfburg which means I'm a woman that likes women.

EDIT: I know this isn't literally about my ID but the idea of a future where everyone is sexually fluid is inherently homophobic so I just hope it isn't actually the idea lol

Why wouldn't they though? I guess I just don't understand why they wouldn't, as lesbians and gay men would still exist in the future and existed in the past, and I hope this isn't getting at otherwise. Would there be a different word for it? I'm glurfburg which means I'm a woman that likes women.

Once again, THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT, but since you bring it up, "gay and lesbian" people might NOT exist in the future!

"Lesbian" and "gay" and the entire sexuality spectrum that YOU are familiar with are cultural constructs of Western society. That interpretation of sexuality may be the dominant one, but it is not the ONLY one in our world. Different cultures IN THE REAL WORLD have different perceptions of sexuality and gender, and the terms "gay" and "lesbian" are extremely recent, from a historical perspective.

In fact, plenty of EXISTING SCIENCE FICTION explores the ways our perception of gender and sexuality could radically change in the future, and in Dragon Age, the words "straight", "gay" and "lesbian" are never used.

Instead of asking what word will replace "lesbian", you should be wondering if such a word will even be necessary in the future.

And while you're pondering that, maybe you can finally answer my question:

Why do you need your fictional romance options to identify with a label you recognise and accept?