The Character Romance thread (Official)

Oh, go clutch your pearls and tell us again how Jaal being bi affects you personally. It doesn't.

When did I say it affects me personally? I just strongly disagree with the decision on principle.

It's a subject that means a lot to me, but that's probably true of everybody here. 

Thank you so much for great support! I was really depressed back in March and April, not only because of Andromeda romance situation (or overall Andromeda's situation), but RL stuff was also ''bitter''. Still for some reason I'm ''afraid'' to go to Jaal's thread, I don't want any fights with some straight people, I just want to enjoy this moment

I understand to some extent how you feel, but I don't think the ethnicity argument really works. Mostly because people can be more than one ethnicity; they can't be more than one sexual orientation. There's people who initially think they're bi or straight or gay and then realize they're something else, but that's not the same as being multiple orientations at the same time.

I admit my losing it here was not because of Jaal, but just the in-fighting with friends, but I always had your backs, I just needed to cool down and focus. Romancing Jaal was painful because I missed you guys too, but the thread is safe and fun, so don't worry!

It's fine, it was difficult time for most of us, and attacking each other was just pouring oil to the fire, some did even attack some developers on Twitter, I'm always against such behaviour, even when I was sad and angry myself I never thought about doing such things.
After all they did listen

Yeah that upset me too. I know faith was lacking, but my gut kept saying we'd all get Jaal if we just hang in there! It took a lot of people to show them this mattered, but now that they've made an effort to go as far as to animate new stuff, write new things and had the actors come in to do new lines all based on learning from actual bi/gay people, I'm praying future games will avoid this by them remembering the backlash of 2017.

I think to some extent the line between creator and fandom is much thinner than it used to be, for better or worse. And, well, there's always been the practice of listening to consumer response. Fans really want A, so creator gives them A. I understand why it might seem cold and insensitive, but I'm just happy to get that A.

The situation around this was pretty specific, though, and the situation of m/m in ME:A is something I doubt would ever happen to m/f or f/m options in future Bioware games. In any game with gay romance options (not just bi or het romance options), the options for straight pairings with the protag outnumbered the possible gay pairings with the protag. Yes, f/m had more options in DA:I than any other kind of pairing, but m/f had an equal amount of options to f/f and m/m (or just f/f if we're also counting Harding). Basically, hetero pairings are oftentimes given first thought, so the context around m/m in ME:A is unlikely to occur for m/f or f/m. I definitely understand your worry for the precedent it sets, but, hopefully, Bioware understands the difference between making one of multiple straight characters bi and making the single lesbian bi, in a game where gay stuff was overall shafted.

In general, I also think it's a sign of how far we've come. Think about it: could we ever have imagined 10 years ago gay fans arguing for a popular video game character to be bi would actually have successful results? I don't even like Jaal that much, but I'm amazed that something like this could even occur. And, well, lately the world has been a little disappointing (but I won't get into politics or personal life here), so this news lifted my spirits. Hell, it gave me hope. Maybe that's stupid. Maybe that's shallow. But that's just how I see it.

What I find interesting is that they didn't at all mention in the patch notes that Jaal was supposed to be bi all along. I mean, the code is still there. There are no gender checks. But I feel like they would've used that as an excuse to decrease the backlash (oh Jaal is bi now because he was actually supposed to be bi all along! it was cut because we didn't have enough time, so we're not actually "changing" the character) from offended dudebros, yet they still didn't. Maybe we were interpreting that code wrong all along? in which case, we can't use the "Jaal was supposed to be bi" argument either... idk

My guess is that it was handled differently from the other romances for some reason, perhaps because his content was made before or after all the other ones.  We know that lines get recorded and into the game's files that are never meant to see the light of day but its hard to say for sure what happened there.

No bi romance should be a copy and paste. If this is different, I hope future bi romances get that too. That PeeBee/Sara scene is just so wrong.