The Character Romance thread (Official)

The safe word for Cora romance is "Asari Commando," and that's why her sex scene will last only one second.

I liked her look because yes obviously a lot of gay/bi women would... ^{someone please tell Bioware this.} I also had hoped she would have a nice character arc with the "Illusive Man is my father" involved somewhat. Possibly some betrayal? I got my hopes up from the music they used in her trailer and her last name. But less salt for me I guess.

I have a feeling her Asari leader encouraged her to screw off to Andromeda because of the Illusive Man's influence and fear that the reapers would get to her.  Instead of a Cerberus related arc, we got a weeablue. She is still a nice character to have on missions and I like her personality but her whole story arc revolves around her never fitting in and her admiration for the Asari. Pretty boring when you compare it to other Bioware LI who are showcased as the lead female. 

His favourite patch, huh? Well, you know, not a huge pool to choose from at the moment...

Anyway, not going to put any stock into that. It's his job to get people excited no matter how good the content actually is.

Oh, and because the last time they said they'd "improve" something, we got shiny plastic hair instead of the actual good-looking hair that was better than DA:I's.

*Banshee scream*

See? It was Bioware themselves who inspired this mantra, they can hardly complain

Sounds similar to what I've suggested in the past; writing characters as blank slates before assigning orientation based on variety.

I want the same thing that's been mentioned hundreds of times in this thread: Characters who happen to be gay. That aren't treated differently from straight characters in terms of writing, and therefore get the same levels of plot-relevance, content, and variety of stories told.

This whole "has to Make Sense™" thing is so cringe-worthy, and really implies to me that they write (especially the men) as gay first, rather than as characters first. I really wish they just wrote every character as a blank slate in terms of orientation, and decided who was what based on what kind of stories they've told before and which they haven't. If they did that, we'd get a lot more variety, such as gay KISAs and plot-relevant LGBT characters, and The Gays™ wouldn’t keep getting relegated to crew status in ME.

It would certainly be interesting to see things flipped. Maybe someone can make a reversed graph?

David Gaider made the same argument. I see his point, but it's not as simple as being completely right or wrong.

Straight writers can totally write good LGBT characters. We have Sheryl Chee, for example. But there are many, many more who simply do not do us justice, because they fail to understand the intricacies and subtleties of the situation. Research would definitely help, but only to a point. Why should we always have to rely on people not like us to write about us?

Besides, why not hire more LGBT writers, or at least talk to LGBT people about LGBT characters to make sure You're Doing It Right™? That clearly didn't happen in ME:A, because they just didn't care.

Not really. There was a patch with minor improvements (that also made the hair look worse [yes, I'm on a crusade against the shiny hair]), and another one is in the works and will probably be out next month some time.

But they've given us absolutely no info on what it'll contain, because they mistakenly think silence will help things

Yeesh...

Exactly. I've always put more blame on the higher-ups in the ME:A team. They're idiot dudebros themselves. Sorry, not sorry, they are.

If people like Weekes, Gaider, or Chee were in charge, ME:A's romance situation would have been infinitely better, because all of them actively tried and cared, and didn't just do the bare minimum in an attempt to placate us and earn a shiny Ally pin without actually putting effort into it.


You hit the proverbial nail on the head, and concisely. Well done

This is a main reason we keep having problems. Way too much focus, either internally in the story, or externally in the writing process, on what a character is rather than just writing who they are, and going from there. Like I said before, it would be great if they wrote characters with blank sexualities to begin with.

HIS NAME IS LEVIATHAN?!?! That's awesome! Did he change it? Either way, imagine the interactions. "Hey Leviathan, come over here." "Paging Leviathan."

Yep. The higher-ups are definitely the most responsible. No way around it. Mac Walters was self-incriminating with that particular interview with him. 

Writers are not blameless either. I mean I appreciate certain aspects of Gil and he's my favorite romance in ME:A. But I cannot believe that there is no one in the writing team who realized and called out how stupid and problematic Jill part is. This is why I also advocate for more queer writers who would be more likely to notice that.

But then who knows if it was called out but the higher-ups okay'ed it anyway?

It doesn't matter. Part of the writing process is researching the topic you're writing about. If a writer never been to New York, but wants their story or character from New York, they have to be willing to research things about New York.

The thing is being gay is not like a city. You can't actually research it in the same way. You can't possibly understand what it's like to be in the situation.

The best they can do is write a character without focusing on the sexuality at all since they will not be able to do it justice-and frankly most of us are tired of having the characters written as story of the week melodramas about how hard it is to be gay. We live that every day, we already know! So whoever it's written for; it's beginning to be pretty clear it wasn't for us.

I think that there is even some life experience that writers would not understand with just simply researching. Also time needed for researching and understanding certain topics is just too impractical for game development. 

Having queer writers is simply more efficient than asking cis-straight writers to do extensive research, gather inputs from queer people, and incorporate those inputs in a sensible and tasteful way, when it comes to writing excellent queer characters and stories. Some queer writers have lived their lives dealing with their queer identity for so long. Their queerness has become an inseparable part of them. The need for research in this case should be minimal.

It's pretty clear the research they did for ME:A was non-existent.  No way they wouldn't have come across the fact that the story is offensive to pretty much any one who ever has been pressured about not wanting to have kids.  (that's not even an issue exclusive to gay men...)

I think the key for this to work is to write characters as people first and not the embodiment of gayness and all those fucking boring tropes and real life issues. I'm not saying that straight people shouldn't write lgbtq characters, three of my favorite fictional pairings are written by three cishet white men, but it's a fact that this team can't put their shit together when it comes to gay characters, maybe they didn't try enough, or they are awful writers or maybe they were busy discussing how hot are the asari, I dont care... and this extend to DA team as well and their awful only-women-promiscuous bi men trope, but in ME it's just awful and eye-rolling worthy, that team needs diversity.

From a pragmatic point of view, there are lgbt+ game developers and game writing has only really taken off within the past two decades. AND we are looking for jobs as well. If a company can allow it and afford it, why NOT get an lgbt+ game writer? Because in my area alone, I can name drop a few from the Brisbane indie game dev scene, so surely in a more populated area like Silicon Valley or Edmonton or Montreal, you'll find at least a few gunning for a game writing job. We are not unicorns.

Then there's that favourite saying straight people generally like to counter with whenever we would like to see more and or better representation: "Uh, why not create your own games/write it yourselves?".

Fair point. Sure. Because that's exactly what indie game developers are doing. But only on an indie level because it's so fucking difficult to break into a AAA gaming studio. So why not?

I'm not saying it HAS to be one or the other, because I believe any writer worth their value can write almost any character- gay, straight, black, white, female, male, trans, disabled, young, and old. But I give anyone a MAD SIDE EYE if they're wanting better queer representation in games, but are unwilling to support queer writers wanting to get their foot in the damn door.

Emphasis on should, as PessimistPanda pointed out. In practice, it does not always work that way.

Think of it this way: You know the situation here, where we'd like another LGBT mod (especially since the only one we have is out of commission)? Well, we aren't asking out of entitlement, otherwise we'd have demanded it since day one. No, we only started asking after it became clear that the active mods just don't understand the nuances about LGBT issues that we do. We didn't go into this situation biased, thinking they'd never get it. Hell, our first collective response was to try to help them understand our PoV. But it just didn't work.

We don't think straight people can never understand us enough to moderate homophobia properly. We don't think that they can't write LGBT characters, inherently. It's just that they've failed at it too often, and we're sick of it, so we want to be Thanos.

Or, well, we'd like to. But it's hard to get the right positions to be able to influence anything

As Lee said, it's not the same thing as researching a city, but I understand what you're trying to say. Again, your idealism is... admirable. But writers don't even research cities correctly a lot of the time, nevermind other people's experiences.

Even if the patch did miraculously fix everything, it wouldn't absolve them of releasing the base game in the state they did. It showed very clearly who was more important than whom.

Exactly. Even if you think any writer can write anyone well, why are you so adamant that they shouldn't hire more LGBT writers? What are you worried about? What would you have to lose?

(General "you").