The Character Romance thread (Official)

Ugh. No disrespect to those that like the thrope (at least in fanfiction) but that always made me uncomfortable. (I'm fine with surrogate mothers, or other ways to have the gay paring became parents, but that... is a no for me.) And not only for the way is written (just gender bend one of the characters, at this point, if it have to go just as with the usual pregnancy thrope? After all, what is important is the characters, right? -this is for the fanfiction writers- if is there is some kind of explanation a la star trek enterprise, where the male is a hoste and the female basically give him the the little ones to develop, like a sea horse, I can even accept it) but because most of the time is basically just a misoginistic way to delet any kind of female character.
Is a thrope I've seen a lot in fanfiction: kill off or make horrible persons the female characters just to have the two guys together. And even without playng it, I can see it in Gil's romance (I don't know if is conscious or not) at least from what I've read on this tread.
Is a thope that have always prevented me from most of m/m pairings in any fandom. I can even like two guys together (even if those guys are always depicted as stright) but I can't forgive the mistreatment of the female characters of any show, expecially since is so rare to have decent female characters in general.

That's about Jill, I assume. The thing is, nobody likes her. I'm usually one to say, "Oh, well I'm sure there are some people that like her," because that's how I am, but not this time, with this character. Nobody likes her. Whether a given gay player, or Gil-mancer likes the idea of having a baby with Gil is entirely separate from the issue of Jill herself.

It's not just about the romance and wanting our m/m pairing to be left in peace. Even people who have no interest in the romance hate the way that plays out in the game. It is about Jill enforcing heteronormative values onto her supposed best friend and making homophobic remarks. The whole thing is extremely tone deaf when you consider this is a thing gay people have to deal with in real life. She actually comes across even worse in a non-romance play, bullying Gil into making this choice when he is not ready for it, for reasons that even he isn't entirely sure on. That part of it should NOT be in the game at all.

It's all made even worse because this character, and this same-sex pairing, is the only one subject to this. Is Jill saying to Suvi-mancers, "Hey, you'd better get some dick, or at least hand over some eggs, so I can do my job?" No. Is she saying to the alien-mancers, "Hey, you'd better get some hooman lovin', or donate some samples, so I can do my job?" No. For some reason, the Bioware writers decided to inflict this on the only gay male, and gay LI, in the game.


As a Gil-mancer, I'd also say that, yeah, it does suck when her name is mentioned in half the scenes my Scott has with his boyfriend. She is a third wheel. Nobody likes a third wheel. I can actually say something similar when it comes to Vetra regarding Sid, but having to care for Sid for so many years is a part of Vetra's character, forming who she is as a person and shaping her values, so I understand that is more difficult to separate out (and Sid is likable, so there's that).

Can some of the anti-Jill remarks get a little salty? Yeah, but it's not without reason. And they're not directed at all women. Jill isn't a stand-in for all women. There have been several people who have suggested that, if the baby thing was Gil's idea, and HE approached Jill to be the surrogate, (and assuming she was just a nicer person), it wouldn't be nearly as bad.



Aside from all that, I don't deny that some straight women have really fucked up ideas when it comes to m/m pairings. It makes me embarrassed to be one.

(Just fyi, the word is "trope." )

Thanks for the correction   English is not my first language, so sometimes I can make some grammar horror  :gasp:

By the way, yep, that's actually my gripe: Jill's character have been made (I guess on purpouse) to be unlikeable. Is a thing I've seen in many fanfiction, where female characters have been trasformed in arpies with no connection whatsoever to their real character in the show just to have the guys together. (I've been completely taken out from anything Johnlock from the Sherlock fandom thanks to those trope: I now only ships Sherlolly, Sheriarty, Molliarty, Adlock, Marylock and Warstan when I search for fanfictions of that show.)

Frankly, is a little a feeling I'm getting from some of the romances in MEA (without playng it, at least): that many romances are no treally written with a professional hand, but taking inspiration from old tired tropes from only-half-if-not-less serious romantic fanfiction: the over-sugary Jaal, and the "angry vagina" with Gil.

I'm going to play MEA, I swear it, but I'd like to wait before to see how and if the CC is going to be expanded. Creating my own character is way too important for my enjoiment of the game.

I think Chee (who's orientation I don't know) writes better LGBT characters then Gaider does. She always writes her romance storylines directed towards women. I don't think writers have to be LGBT to write good LGBT characters/romance but they should stay away from (or get a lot of help with) topics they don't understand or think they understand like the pressure to have children, people being put off by their marriages, family falling out because of it. Those things bring up a lot of conflicting feelings that are hard to understand unless you have experienced them.

Honestly I would prefer if they just didn't do those story lines with gay characters because they are usually poorly done and don't fit into the overall story well. Characters who act differently towards different genders is fine with me but you don't to have to have a story arc that revolves around why a character is gay. Their attraction to my same sex character or a few lines of dialogue is enough to "explain" that.

I do respect Gaider a lot for demanding LGBT people have a choice in an RPG and I love a lot of his work but I do think Chee writes better LGBT characters.

Definitely. I said it pages ago, his writing really only seems to work best with a few characters in a narrow band - Aveline and Carver worked really well for me, and apparently he was Kaidan's writer in ME1, and beyond that... Like he's done well with these characters who are obviously meant to be a steady influence in the game - Aveline has probably the least growth in her character quests in DA2, she's the steadiest character and effectively the closest to being DA2 party's moral center, and Carver explicitly is meant to undergo offscreen character development, which works because... his characters really DON'T grow and develop when under his care, and ME1, Kaidan was the proverbial angel on Shepard's shoulder, offering the Paragon viewpoint of things.

But once he starts getting characters who should be more dynamic, you see the wheels start to come off. Especially with minority characters who are at the least coded as neurodivergent, characters who have non-standard thought processes. Like Sera and Liam, I deeply get the impression that their writing expects us not to understand them, and so the PC responses slant towards reinforcing that attitude. I mean, I often feel that the Inquisitor is more the disapproving schoolmarm rapping Sera's knuckles in class or something rather than trying to understand how she things and why she does what she does. You know it was my SEVENTH Inquisitor who was the first to get the cookies scene on the roof with her? Better part of two years, and I'd never unlocked that, that's how convoluted her characterization paths are and how delicate you have to be with her. And it's the same with Liam, there are dialogue points where Ryder's options are to either be confused what he's doing or angry about it, not actually understanding and giving him the slack he needs.

Not to mention, the impression I've gotten of him from interviews... Yeah, I think it was back in January, I read an interview where he said something like he'd 'always thought of Kaidan as bisexual,' which just felt disingenuous, considering that no one fought for bi!Kaidan in ME1, Kaidan got handed off to another writer for ME3 and he ended up being bi, the first we're hearing of it is years after the fact, and if he felt that way, why is it that the only other queer character he's written is Sera, a lesbian who was harshly criticized as sounding like a straight man wrote her (which, true), that her dialogue sounded more like a frat boy than an actual lesbian? It just makes me feel very much like he's got that 'I can't be homophobic, I have gay friends' attitude.

That's one of the things about writers who choose to write outside of their experiences, they HAVE to take the criticisms and complaints from the people they're claiming to represent, preferably having several people who do have that experience look over it first. If they aren't doing that, they're just going to make it worse, because they THINK they're offering representation, but it's representation from the perspective of the majority, not the minority it supposedly represents, which means it's utterly blind and tonedeaf, since the writer does not understand the experience of that minority.

I think this part is SO important. Everyone has different tastes and every character is not going to be everything to every player, nor should they be expected to. I definitely think this is where talking with gay people for an arc like Gil's would be important, especially if the writer is willing to share what he is trying to show, and whether or not that method (using Jill, baby, etc) actually does show that to the intended audience.

No of course they can't make every change or should.  In this case I just hate how some of us felt strung along though.  It wasn't right. Then to lie about being able to be turned down early on was just wrong.

That's a difficult subject, but that's very uncomfortable.  I don't think some double standard of prejudice in hiring being okay sometimes and not others would be a good thing, at all.

Eh I wouldn't say that. Her female character romances are much better than her male one. If anything I'd say she's really skilled at writing female romance characters if anything.

I'm not entirely convinced that all of the ideas explored in Gil's character arc stem from the writer. I kind of feel like Gil is a good example of where someone higher up had a Vision, and that plan was too rigid for the the writer to salvage much, and that said higher ups did not allot proper resources (screen time, word count) for their vision to even be possible leaving the writer a daunting task. Add to that an editing cycle that constantly shrunk content even more, possibly getting rid of good bits in favor of shit, and you're probably left with what Gil had to go through in development/execution.

As much as I want to blame the writer or say hiring better writers for LGBTQ+ content would help, ME:A definitely reeks of poor leadership.

We also know leadership gets involved in characters sometimes, as they kept giving us that song and dance about Steve back in ME3 days that he was not an LI until one of the leads read his content and was like "okay. this makes sense to my reptile brain, I finally get it, gays in space yes!" (paraphrasing). Which ended up giving us a pretty contrived and "meh" romance/character in Steve.

It's not my double standard, I never said other employers had to stop being prejudiced.

And the sort of thing I'm describing ALREADY HAPPENS, so.

So if a talented straight writer applied to your team, showing a genuine desire to learn how to write LBGTQ characters and themes better and use their works to increase LBGTQ visibility and respect, you would still say no? The prospect of true progress is worth less to you than being able to "See how it feels? IT'S OUR TURN NOW!!!"