The Character Romance thread (Official)

Do you mean personal bias as in the following train of thought being "well, I wish to see more gay protagonists in my stories. I just stumbled upon a story about straight characters, but this high fantasy one with a protagonist who so happens to be gay has my full attention way more."

OR, are we talking about personal bias as in gay people being mean to straight people for being straight?

Because I see the former more than the latter. And in either case, does it really matter to you that we give it a label?

Yes, I think the main issue there is that there wasn't communication. Then the posters in the thread went back and forth with the mod until it was explained exactly what was deleted. It all got blown way out of proportion, leading to this discussion, which doesn't have anything at all to do with telling some random bigot to "fuck off" (the offending, deleted post).

And for that we need a lgbtq mod, someone who is in our shoes basically, I dont care if it is intentional or not at this point, there have been several times this has happened and we are the bullies cause we call out those people... Nop. We need a lgbtq mod 

Ps. I know you like this gif 

@berret I really loved my Bull, he's my teddy bear but I totally agree how awful is this promiscuous bi trope and my face is tiiiiiiiiiiiiiired bioware. Also, it irks me the fact that Adoribull ending is happier than my ending, I mean wtf



Nightscrawl I loveeeeeeeeeeeee Fenris, tsundere types are delicious (I'm trying to forget that line "because I'm a man?" tho)

Well that's better, I'm thinking of Dragonspear then. Dorn is still another bad romance, I should start making a list!
Not like I still trust Gaider tbh.

As for Fenris' romance (I have no clue how to multiquote) It's been years since I played DA2 so I can't really comment since my memory is very fuzzy with DA2 in general. I just remember romancing Anders a lot and figuring out ways to friendship romance Fenris since I kept siding with the mages.  I remember finding them both average though?

dragonspear had that gnome if i remember correctly. glint i think. the m/m romances and characters in general that beamdog did are way over the top and stereotypical. dorn has a romance expansion made, it adds a bit of depth to him but yeah, if you're not evil... :/

i hope with gaider their new IP could be a solid entry on the market but it remains to be seen if there will be romances at all.

I doubt there will be much content with Bull either way. He could be dead (or not even recruited into the Inquisition), so that fact alone is limiting. In comparison, Dorian is always a magister, regardless of player choice. The Inquisitor's presence might also be spare, so what little of it there is might not have much time for romance mentions.

As Dorian is expected to be a major player in DA4, I don't even think there will be a great deal of Inquisitor/Dorian content either. While it would be awesome, I don't expect my DA4 PC to walk in on them making out, or anything.

Even so, I don't think it would be fair to players who don't import a Dorian romance. Small comments aside (like with Hawke and their LI), Dorian is actually there, and the Inquisitor might be there as well. The only romance where it wouldn't be unfair is for the Solas-mancers, since they need closure, and PW has said he wants that to happen.

I got called away from my computer for a little bit and the thread has moved on but I just wanted to note here: The last paragraph here in particular is some good feedback and I thank you for that. It's something I can look at and go "Okay, we can try to be more clear about why we're intervening so it doesn't look like we're playing favourites". I don't believe anybody's intentions is to play favourites but I accept that sometimes we do things that can appear as though we are, and it can be hard to feel like it's anything but that when you've had a life of people playing favourites against you.

Other than that I'd just like to clear up a few things for people wanting to discuss this sort of stuff with me specifically.

I'm not going to get into the details of my past but due to past events at some point in my life I became rather unemotional and used logic to fill those gaps(it's not that I don't have emotions, but I don't feel them as strongly as most people). If I sometimes seem kind of detached and talk about things like heterophobia existing it's because I want to note that it does exist and I will do my best to clarify that yes, LGBT people have it infinitely worse than straight people do in this area. I can say with absolute certainty that it is not to diminish the shit that LGBT people have to put up with.

I see the logic in treating everybody equally but in my mind that means it has to be equally. If we're going to say one type of prejudiced statement is unacceptable then we need to say the other one is too.

People can say that I wont ever understand because I haven't been through what LGBT people have and sure that's true, but on the other side you'll never fully understand my point of view because you haven't been through my experiences. The point of the dialogue is to find some middle ground there.

I also tried to get the dialogue going with talk of other things. I wanted the bit about "heterophobia" to just be a sort of minor note of "Yeah it's sort of a thing I should point out. Not a huge deal but it's kind of there" that people then picked apart while ignoring most of the rest of my posts until it just spiraled into one big debate about heterophobia vs homophobia. Maybe that's just the sort of thing I should just leave be until it actually comes up.

If people do want to get dialogue going then with me specifically the best way to go about things is using logical arguments. I'm not the sort to deny when objective fact is staring me in the face, nor am I too prideful to admit I had some facts wrong. I don't think that people want the mods to just walk away from this thread and only ever look at it when somebody reports something in it.

and if I'm making a note of something as part of a greater post I'm probably just making a small note of it and don't think it's actually a big deal. I wouldn't read too much into my intentions about it(though I'm always happy to clear up what I meant by it if asked).

Nobody needs to respond. Just figured I'd throw it out there for future reference. Likewise if somebody wants to help me to better establish the dialogue with the LGBT people in a constructive way I'm happy to listen.

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.

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.

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

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 feel like EA wanted the ME franchise to continue since it carries brand recognition but they are more interested in this new online-only IP. So they provided half hearted support in making most of Bioware Montreal new staff and separating veterans from new people who could use some guidance. The entire game suggests poor project oversight rather than staff incompetence.

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:

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.

The poster has stated the entire letter is about facial animations and bugs, not about gay romances, which surely do need improvements. She isn't even a straight girl, so I wish people would just listen.

Just once, at least for variety's sake, I'd like to see an arc mission where taking your time is the wrong choice. You want to slowly build your forces and resources to max efficiency? Then the antagonist has just as much time to do the same! Oh, and before anyone brings up the Collectors snatching your crew, that scenario had clear in-story urgency. I'm talking about plots where there the player could potentially be fooled into thinking they had a reasonable time table.

To be honest it suggests staff incompetence unmitigated by project oversight. Montreal got many, many things wrong and if Bioware provided half-hearted support then they were probably also half-hearted about wanting the ME Franchise to continue. 

i could not agree more! it's baffling to see how mea has turned out. i was expecting tight, cohesive story and mature handling of IP. instead, the whole "younger crew feel" approach also reflected to the themes and into the production it seems. the way the whole thing was handled, like a young team without clear vision stumbling about, sometimes managing to make something good because of the enthusiasm but the whole product falls short.
as a personal note, i kind of hope bioware returns to more science fiction themes in the future games. i vastly prefer "star trek" approach to "star wars" and me franchise is now a long time in the latter category.

The poster has stated the entire letter is about facial animations and bugs, not about gay romances, which surely do need improvements. She isn't even a straight girl, so I wish people would just listen.

Well I'm sorry if her open letter has been misconstrued, but I feel that's on her if she's going to publicly post a very broad generalization on customers and not explain herself until questioned further. Reading her letter I had no context of what types of complaints she was referring to, so it appeared as though she was telling anyone who criticized the game that they were being entitled and spoiled and telling people to fuck off. If she's going to characterize people that way she can't just generalize and expect people not to take offense. Well, really her entire post was fairly hostile in a backhanded compliment way to Bioware, so people were going to take offense regardless.

I think after the heat of the moment everyone needs to take a step back and act respectful to each other to try to make any progress in understanding. That sounds really condescending but it's true, if different sides just keep shouting at each other no one is going to try to listen or engage, just keep on the offensive. And I shouldn't try to make this sound like a posters versus moderators issue, it's just people with very different life experiences and perspectives who have at least one common interest in Bioware that allows us to share this community.

So...hippy power deactivate.

I... don't have much sympathy for the Bioware devs. You want to be a game dev? Get a thick skin, or you're gonna have a bad time. Not saying they don't deserve praise for whatever they did right, just that I think it's funny they're crying about some people's criticism being "rude!"

ME:A is meme of the year and deserves nearly all the criticism it has gotten. lol

The poster has stated the entire letter is about facial animations and bugs, not about gay romances, which surely do need improvements. She isn't even a straight girl, so I wish people would just listen.

Thank goodness. I'm glad she's at least not among those calling LGBT fans entitled.

That aside, I do think it's a little unreasonable of her to be mad at fans for being mad about ME:A being buggy. I'm not saying that justifies harassment (it doesn't), just that you can be the most loyal fan possible and still be mad when you're let down about the release build. They had years to make sure there's not too many bugs.