The Character Romance thread (Official)

Agreed. I was not reading as it was unfolding so I can't say how it felt for people in the moment. I think it's much easier to examine an emotional situation in hindsight when all parties (except the troll  ) have had a chance to communicate their viewpoint and try to understand where others are coming from.


Every post needs more DT gifs   And yeah, I think this is a good argument for an LGBT mod.

The "because I'm a man" and Anders' "does it bother you that I've been with men" and all of the other hoop jumping any m/m romances need demonstrates that Bioware still approaches game design from a straight male perspective. Whether it's the automatic first thought when designing content or it's changed in the editing process, any m/m content is filtered through the lens of "but will this offend straight males?" At first it was infuriating, especially since Fenris' line is after Hawke has been flirting with him the whole damn time! Now it's just...exhausting.

AFAIK Gaider didn't work on any of the EE content or Dragonspear. I believe his work with Beamdog is still in development phase so we have no idea what he's actually writing. I haven't played through a game with Dorn but he does seem to be a one dimension Teh Evulz character so I'm not interested. His romance is another example of when there are few options for a romance each option is more important because it has to try to appeal to a larger audience. People who wanted to play a m/m romance in the BG:EE games only had Dorn (or Glint just for Dragonspear) as their option. I think it's a major reason why so many people still hate Anomen, he was the only option for female players for so long.

Glint seemed like an okay character, given the short time frame of Dragonspear, but I didn't like that he ninjamanced the PC. His friendship talks with a male PC automatically locked in a romance unless the PC was deliberately rude to him. And none of the friendship talks indicated any sort of romantic interest. I was very surprised when he initiated the dialogue which locks in the romance because it came out of nowhere. I would argue that this is actually a negative depiction of a gay man, as it looks like any gay man who is friendly to another man just wants to sleep with/date him. If there had been a flirting option and a friendly but platonic option in dialogue and I had chosen the flirting option, that would be fine. But I think all of the Dragonspear romances were like that: compatible orientations who were not outright rude to the NPC were automatically assumed to be romantically interested in that NPC.

IB was written by Weekes, so I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted a cameo in DA4 for Bull. I feel like the Chargers actually have a larger fan base than IB or his romance, but that would still be enough of a reason to include an optional side quest with them. I could see IB and the Chargers involved in an inconsequential mission like the DA2 mission with Nathaniel if he was alive after Awakening.

Thank you, yes I wanted to try to point out how some people could have interpreted the involvement of mods. I don't see many threads with mods deleting posts, so I don't know what standard procedure is, but in tense situations I think if a mod is going to completely delete a post it would be helpful to provide a brief explanation. I think that if the mods had said in the original post "I deleted a post which was a personal attack, which is against site rules" that might have helped. And in regards to treating everyone equally, yes that is the ultimate goal. When a poster says "be grateful for what you got because you're a minority" that IMO is an attack on personal dignity. The idea of equality is that everyone is equal, not that people in a majority get more. So it feels odd when a poster can spout what I consider discriminatory speech (the needs of gay people are not as important) but the mods only intervene when they are personally attacked; why is all right to make broad statements on value judgements of groups of people (not as important) but mods step in against one person telling that person to fuck off? The fact that none of the mods even address the original poster's statements also appears to me as silent consent. I know that it most likely isn't, but the mods stepped in to play devil's advocate after someone made broad discriminatory remarks about LGBT people.

And in reference to heterophobia: I know it's a tired topic now but I just can't let it drop. If you are more logical minded than emotional, I think a good example of how "heterophobia" is not a real thing is these forums. When I type in heterophobia I get a spell check error. When I type in homophobia I don't. When I go to dictionary.com and search for heterophobia I get a response "Did you mean heterophoria?" (which is a medical thing?) Even the forums and dictionary don't consider heterophobia a thing. Again, "phobia" in this case no longer only indicates "fear of", it has linguistically changed to reflect discrimination against that specific group.

Straight people can face attacks on their sexuality, though I would be shocked if this actually happened in the real world and not just online. It's still not systematic discrimination because of their sexuality. And by insisting on using heterophobia as an actual thing that straight people face appears to say "yeah yeah gay people have it bad but I've faced discrimination too." No straight person has faced discrimination based on their sexuality, they have never had to come out to their families or worry about being kicked out of their homes. They have never had to worry about staying in the closet or risk being fired from their jobs. They never had to worry about the ability to get married to their desired partner or share economic and social benefits with that partner. They have never had to worry about being assaulted or killed by heterophobes. So by insisting on using heterophobia as a real term continually disregards or trivializes the existing prejudices LGBT people face on a daily basis. 

If you want to continue discussing the topic, I would honestly think it would be more helpful if you stated the position more along the lines of "LGBT people face discrimination but that does not invalidate input from the straight community when discussing romances" or something to that effect. I'm not trying to put words into your mouth but provide an example of how I would approach the issue. 

I never said it was a complex choice, just that I liked the twist and want more quests where the "good" choice isn't actually all that good in the longterm. Besides, if you play Brosca, then it's already foreshadowed from the beginning that this might be the case. It's not as though players unfamiliar with Orzammar are going to catch immediately in their first playthrough the political differences between the two options, so it makes for interesting subsequent playthroughs.

You or Alistair could have done the Dark Ritual . You could even head cannon that they finished early to spite an unsatisfied Morrigan . One of my alt mages who romanced Zevran did just that.

Yeah it's very similar in comparison to MEA compared to the MET. The writing wasn't always solid in the original material but most people are willing to forgive it for the positives that came out of the games. Plus they were first, so there was more innovation, whereas any secondary material based on the source is automatically going to be less about innovation and more about building on the source material. But when later material comes out, I think it's held to higher standards than the original; the new material already has a lot of the world building done for it so it should theoretically have more time to focus on writing and other aspects. And in this case, I think MEA and Dragonspear do fall a bit flat at times.

Well, reading this letter was interesting. Got a good laugh out of it, especially with the "I thought better of this fanbase. You are catered to and spoiled" line :lmfao:

I'm going to hope that "catered and spoiled" refers to the monster they turned Sara into for straight males, and not the legit stuff people asked for within good reason.

Wow, this letter isn't passive aggressive at all.

This is off topic @praiseadraste, but your avatar is the best.

Did they just admit they 'threw shade' but stopped because they fixed the issue? Lmao.

Ahh thanks so much! Here it is a bit bigger, and its companion. Suvi was the highlight of the game for me and a really sweet romance...wish she had way more content!

From this.

This raises questions. Assume that this guy didn't lie: why didn't Bioware move the launch date? A lot of things could have been improved if they delayed in for months. Did they honestly believe that the game as released was good enough?