The Character Romance thread (Official)

I'd be fine with this. I just have the terrible feeling they will have him be martyred for his country. We have 2+ years before we find out, and it sucks.

Yeah, I'm not eager for more Bury Your Gays shit, tbh.

It's quite the tightrope we walk. We want important gay characters but we don't want them to get killed off.

Yay!  That sounds like an awesome dog!

Ah, well maybe not so awesome if he attacks everyone.  I thought maybe he just sense the evil and went to town.  lmao! 

haha he's one of those mixed breed that's designed for guarding properties, so yeah he's aggressive toward anyone he didn't know well. 

I would love to think that he has no tolerance toward homophobes but he's not that smart lol

I wish I could like that post at least five more times!  I agree with what you are saying for sure.  Dorian's romance path is a whole lot of hypocracy masking itself to try to look deep and meaningful.  I find it completely exhausting.  

I mean, legit, if I hadn't known that David Gaider was not-straight ahead of time, I would have thought that Dorian's story was written by a straight guy. That's the part about his arc that has always been a frustration. It brought absolutely nothing new to the table, it was a story that I literally could have, barring the references to blood magic, copied and pasted from almost literally any other source. In universe, it might have been meant to showcase the betrayal of trust on Dorian's father's part, but in practice? All it did was insert this story into the Dragon Age setting, and very hamfistedly, I might add. I mean, we had the Cousland family in hour one not saying a word of protest, Fergus even openly acknowledging that he knew his younger sibling was attracted to the same gender, in Dragon Age Origins. For a lot of us, that was our first hour in the game, and it said openly we were accepted.

Then Dorian's story pulls the rug out from under us. Sure, Tevinter versus Ferelden, but what we were presented with, what we were introduced to this universe with, was that it was a difference that didn't make any difference here - the most homophobic content came from Gamlen remarking on things, with remarks like 'I guess we know who's the girl' or something when male Hawke was with a same gender romance. Which was less homophobic and more just generally Gamlen being an ass. Hell, Leandra might remark about marrying Hawke off to someone at the start of Act II, but she'll later acknowledge how the character Hawke has been flirting with looks at them, not having a word of protest about it. The Couslands and Hawke as of Act II are nobility, continuing family lines would be important, but the characters we actually interact with have no problem with our noble characters being attracted to the same sex. Queerness was normalized in the first two games! (Still could have been better, of course, but it wasn't something that differentiated us.)

THAT'S what I want from my games. Treat it as normal in society, as something that doesn't need to mark you as 'the other.' Yes, I want to be unrepentantly queer, I want to be able to only flirt with men and not auto-flirtatious with women, I want to be unapologetic about being gay, but I also don't want the characters to treat me as being different for being that way. That's how I escape the world I live in. And it's something that straight writers just can't understand, because they don't see all the little things that they're able to do that queer people can't - queer people have to play the pronoun game, they have to check and double check and check again to make sure that they're safe, everywhere we go, we have to make active and constant judgments to police our behavior so that we don't run the risk of being made unsafe.

BioWare DESPERATELY needs to diversify its staff, not just the writers, but probably everywhere else, make sure that they're getting these voices who can explain their position and perspectives. Because as it stands, they are, regardless of any promise of diversity and inclusivity (which Andromeda really shot holes in that idea anyway), a very homogeneous group who can't represent every point of view out there, but they certainly can do better. It's just a question of expending that effort.

Reading some of the posts here is eye opening for me, but it's forcing me to accept some things about BioWare that shock me a little. There I was thinking they were more open and forward thinking yet if I actually consider it they're really not.

I've always believed that their representation of gay or bisexual characters was misguided.  As I played thru DA and ME I got tired of those characters being portrayed as promiscuous and using sex to get what they want. It seemed to happen again and again, Zevran, Leliana, Bull, Dorian, Isabella.  Admittedly there were a few that weren't like that, the rest of DA2 comes to mind, but I felt like the writers had a basic equation in their heads. Gay/Bisexual = casually has sex with lots of ppl and often using it as a way of manipulating them. Zevran and Leliana are the most obvious in that regard.
It wasn't until I saw the Gay Knight in Shining Armour thread on the old BSN that it struck me, why on earth isn't there a gay guy like Alistair or Cullen? It just seems so stupid to me that they won't consider that.   Or bisexual, that'll do as long as there are defined differences in the two romance paths with different dialogue and perhaps even different scenes.  Now that would interest me a lot, for a LI to have 2 separate paths depending on the protagonist's gender.
I recently romanced Dorian and loved it, but let's be honest he's another walking stereotype. Yet again he'll sleep with you in a heartbeat but then struggle with the emotional stuff later on down the line.  

So anyway, with the 'trans representation' stuff and the SJW leanings BioWare seems to have in a greater abundance than other developers, I really thought the gay romances in ME:A would be stellar. I romanced Vetra with my femRyder but it was really lame, but I assumed that was because she was a bisexual romance option tbh.  They must've put more work into the exclusively gay romances right???  But now reading what you're saying about Gil and Suvi it looks like they dropped the ball on them too.
I'm kinda flabbergasted that they fucked it up so bad tbh.  In 2017.  Seriously wtf?

Personally I'm happy romancing anyone.  Male, female, weird-ass odd looking species, I'm up for it all and enjoy it all.  When I wanted a lesbian romance with Tali that I totally thought would happen (could've sworn she was flirting with me ) it turned out she was straight.  Okay.  Fine.  I made a dude and romanced her, and enjoyed the experience.  Still would've been better with femShep tho. 
But no one should be forced to play the opposite gender just to get a well written romance experience.  It's easy to say 'well just be a chick if you want to romance Alistair' but when that consistently happens throughout a series of games it becomes alienating.

Someone said above that straight people can't write gay.  Obviously they've got a point, but I've sometimes wondered, why not do the opposite?  Why not tell them to write Cullen's romance and once it's all done, suddenly say 'actually he's gay, flip the pronouns'.  Then they wouldn't have written with the bias they seem to have, and would've just created a regular, shy, slow burning romance.

Just my two cents anyway.  I admit, when I met Gil I rolled my eyes.  He was still too much of a stereotype and I just want a gay guy to be approached in the same way they made Sera.  She never mentions her preferences, you wouldn't know unless you googled it, she's just Sera.  She even manages to walk around Skyhold without wearing plaid or have a badly cut short hairdo....oh wait omg fuck she totally does.
How did I not see that??? 

If the character was designed as straight and then had pronouns flipped it would probably have more content, more plot importance, and have a character arc that would deal heavily with themes from the plot instead of personal struggles that focus on their sexual identity at the expense of developing their beliefs and/or motivations. Especially if it was a male character.

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Honestly, that is my biggest let down with Dorian, that because of his identity he has to have a very identity focused personal scene. They set him up to really have an idealistic streak (and he definitely does) and some plot importance (Tevinter stuff features heavily in DA:I) but his personal quest kinds of feels like you walk through a twilight zone door into a moment when the barriers that separate Thedas from Planet Earth no longer exist. I like Dorian a whole lot, but even I have a hard time not acknowledging that that scene does rely too much on our world and less on Thedas. Gay male LIs (Dorian, Steve, Gil) have now all struggled with this, where their character arc is kind of contrived and seems to be written to make a point to a real world audience about a real world issue, at least subconsciously. Conversion therapy, gay marriage, surrogacy. Like after school specials.

But there is a very revolutionary part of Dorian that tends to get overlooked and I think is attributable to DG understanding issues a little better than some people... because with Steve and Gil it is hard to tell exactly what their motivation is outside of their sexual identity. Steve is mostly motivated to get over his husband to get in your bed. Gil is mostly motivated to get over being an aimless, young, non-procreating man and reproduce because that's how you find meaning and value in life, apparently.

Dorian is at least motivated to want to change Tevinter and his character growth expands beyond his sexuality where as unfortunately Steve and Gil's character arcs are incapable of going beyond their romantic life.

But Trespasser is extra annoying especially for Dorian/Bull romancers, and honestly I attribute that to the focus of Trespasser really being on developing what the game considers the main romance(s) and not really knowing/caring what to do with the others. Kind of like how Witch Hunt worked.

Actually, I meant more the motivation for his function as a character than his personal motivations (we learn about character motivations in something like a video game usually vicariously, outside exposition dumps). Sorry for the weird wording, I'm a certified space case.

With Steve it's hard to tell what the use of the Carth Syndrome trope is for, from a writing perspective, because all that happens if you help him get over it is he either lives and/or gets in your bed or dies. It's just there for drama and not really to make Steve a complete/interesting character. It's lazy use of Carth Syndrome shorthand. Is what I meant.

Has there been any Andromeda news lately? My apologies for the inconvenience. I kept this thread open in a tab but I haven't been here in like a month. Horizon Zero Dawn, Prey, and my unfortunate descent back into fanfiction have been distracting me.

Read A Land Fit for Heroes recently, he wrote gay pretty well for a straight man. A LOT of gay romance novels are also written by straight women, they're not all terrible.