The Character Romance thread (Official)

Liam could watch. Lexi too, since that is sort of her thing.

They patched it.  Though I think the new awful sports outfit still goes invisible sometimes.  BansheeOwnage posted the funniest picture of it the other day! 

Wow. BioFan blocked me on Twitter because I was dishing out truth bombs all over his tweets against Jaal.

What did you tweet at him?

(Also wow, like... Biofan's reaction makes me feel a little betrayed. I expect that from people who don't get how it feels to be a gay gamer, but from him, I would have hoped to get a little more understanding).

Just a few running thoughts about this whole " changed sexuality " business.

1. Jaal's sexuality is all meta. At no point does the game tell you anything about his heterosexuality outside of him liking women and him not being available for Scott. None of those are necessarily proof of his heterosexuality. Of course you can say this about male exclusive male options who don't refer to themselves as homosexual, but Dorian and Gil both tell you that they are, infact, homosexual. And even if they didn't... Well, I'll get to that later.

The reason, well one of the reasons, why we don't see a #maleLiamBi tag is because he tells you that he is not into dudes, and most of us respect that. Jaal at no point says that he isn't into dudes, only on meta level and that's not really enough. And furthermore, Jaal's writer, or the devs, haven't come forth and confirmed that Jaal is indeed heterosexual and it is an integral part of his character.

2. Datamines. Yes, while you cannot trust code, Jaal still has code for both Scott and Sara. I recall the code being structured similarly to Vetra's, who is defo bi. Why would it be there if not because he was bi at some point?

2.1 Voicelines. There are recordings for " I love you Jaal ", some romance voiceline during Jaal's quest, and the sex discussion with Lexi post-sexing is fully voiced by Scott. Yes, Cora and iirc, Suvi have voicelines for the sex they aren't interested in, but at no point did the datamine give any hope of anything else than what we got in the final game.

2.2 Jaal has no flirt, or for that matter rejection option for Scott. For a game that let's you flirt and be rejected by all the romance options, it suuuure sounds fishy that Scott can't flirt and be rejected by Jaal. Sounds awfully fishy, doesn't it, hmmmh. Oh, and nobody ever found any rejection voicelines either.

3. Inequality in romance distribution. Gay men have two non-squad romances, both hardly plot relevant, both human, both CC faced, both romances extremely average and Gil's is borderline insulting with the baby drama.

You might say that " they should just fix the existing romances " and maybe I'm biased, but a few emails by Reyes and some fixes on Gil's romance won't fix the issues we are facing. Yes, it certainly fixes the game for Gilmancers and Reyesmancers, but we would still end up with no squadmates, the least amount of options, no aliens, no plot relevant romances.. Scott-accessible Jaal fixes a lot of issues.

You might also say that " it is what it is, too bad so sad, wait for the next game maybe they'll give you something good then? " to which I'd like to say, fuck off.

4. '' Well if they changed Jaal, why couldn't they change Dorian or Suvi as well?!?!?!?!?!?!!??!?! ''

Let's get the representation business point out of the way. Gay characters don't exist in high numbers, and you want to take those few instances of representation (no matter how shitty) away from the LGBT community because you are annoyed that they changed an allegedly straight character (that is only confirmed heterosexual in meta level) to bi so that it would combat a lot of the injustice that the dev team has done? That's super dickish.

In DA:I, straight women had 4 options. FOUR, FUCKING, OPTIONS, and one of them is super lore and story relevant. No, you are well catered by your options already, so to even HINT that Dorian could be made bi is just extremely selfish. You are only, PURELY, following your own selfish interests at that point. There is no injustice done to straight women in DA:I, you don't need more options, and the inequality is basically why we latched on to Jaal, who isn't fully confirmed straight, who was datamined to be bi, who was teased to be bi, who is the best bet for fixing a lot of the issues we faced. If straight women had only like, one option in DA:I, I could've understood the want for more options when others had two or whatever. But, never, at any point, EVER, EEEEEEEEEEEVER, will gay men have more options than any other group. Never ever. Never. 

#MakeJaalBi wasn't started because Jaal is hot, Jaal is cute, Jaal is the best romance. Okay, part of it is I'm sure that. But it was also because gay men had the least amount of options, no squadmate romances, no plot relevant romances, no alien romances, no explicit sex scene (we don't know if Jaal will have one with Scott but... you know) and Jaal was the easiest bet to fix so many of these issues.

If straight women, or straight men, ever will wind up with the least amount of options, with no plot relevant romances, no squadmate romances, no romances of a race that they never got to experience before, no romances who have unique face and hair textures, no explicit sex scenes, and gay men, or lesbian women, had all of that, more options than straights, more than one same sex exclusive option, and ONE OF THEM being datamined to be bi at one point, who has no reference to their sexuality (only at meta level, and a preference to one gender), THEN WE CAN TALK. But that will never, EVER, happen.

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If you can't wrap your head around all this, then you are just plain ignorant.