[ SECRET POST #2909 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2909 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 064 secrets from Secret Submission Post #416.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 (try #2) - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

As someone else who's just joined the Dragon Age fandom, that surprised me, too. I was all 'wow my character can have serious same-sex romances that's so great', and then I started looking around to see what other fans had to say, and a bunch of people are complaining because you can't have same-sex romances with every single character, or because you can't have polyamorous romances, or because they think a larger portion of the bisexual characters are morally grey compared to the straight ones. I'd expected that people would be praising BioWare for being inclusive, not condemning them for not being even more inclusive.

Meanwhile, I'm just pathetically happy that my male Warden can romance Zevran and everybody else in the party is cool with it (well, not everybody, but that's more to do with the whole assassin thing).

[(Anonymous)]

Yup. It's maddening, and no explanation is good enough. Like with poly romances- there are just too many variables for them to keep track of. Romance flags are notoriously tricky, because there are several things kept track of behind the scenes of each character and when you have two NPCs involved, everything has to coordinate just right. I mean, I would love poly romance options (and headcanon more than a few), but I understand why they don't make it a priority.

The funny thing is, a lot of the people who complain the loudest make up shit and "rewrite" canon to their heart's content anyway, and nothing BW would give them would satisfy their need to have their characters reflect themsleves + their wildest fantasies, which seems to be what they really want rather than actual representation.

[(Anonymous)]

To be fair re: the bisexual thing, I sort of see where they're coming from. In the first, Leliana and Zevran were both bi and both awfully shady (like, why couldn't it (also) be the super-holy older woman or the grizzled dwarf fighter) then technically everyone was bi in DA2, but it's also very easy to read as "this character is whatever sexual orientation will have them sleep with my character," because Anders only mentions romantic relations with a man to a male Hawke, and there's some creepy convo with Fenris iirc that a male Hawke gets that again, a female Hawke won't, this sort of implies that both Anders and Fenris are hetero OR homosexual, not bisexual. Which is SILLY if that's how the writers intended it, and I don't think that interpretation is wrong for players to have gotten. The only character who explicitly claims bisexuality is, of course, the provocatively dressed pirate-lady, so again a shady character (plus implied to be oversexed, much like Zevran). So none of those alone are all bad, and the characters are still excellent characters (Isabela 4evr), buuuut the whole "oversexed" thing is definitely a bi stereotype, so I get people feeling uncomfortable with it. I think they did much better in DA:I, though!

[miarrow]

I don't know. I thought Leilanna, Zevran, and Isabela were all really well rounded characters and the DA2 system worked really well in terms of not feeling imbalanced when you romanced them by either gender. I really loved Josephine, but her romance felt so hetronormative that even though I thought her character model was attractive and she was ADORABLE, I didn't feel comfortable pursuing her as a woman. Watching the Cassandra romance on youtube, I don't think I would have felt the same if they'd kept that one exactly the same for females (instead of letting me cry over not being able to romance her).

I really liked the DA2 system. You don't have to label any of the characters if they're romancing a different gender than your Hawke in someone else's game, but the loud complainers got their way.

Perhaps I am merely bitter from YET ANOTHER Bioware game where I cannot hit that.

I think their only bi-representation that REALLY bothered me was Jack in Mass Effect 2, since she says she sleeps with girls but only sleeps with male Shepherds.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

Yeah, I don't feel very strongly about it, since Bioware generally has my good faith, and I adore Leliana and Isabela, soooo. I just meant that I kind of get where some of the critiques are coming from, especially if colored by DA:O originally. It's def a YMMV thing, though, because BW still does it miles better than most games.

Also I'm so with you on Josephine! I went in fully expecting to romance her and then it just didn't feel at ALL organic as a woman. I like that she's a bit clueless, lol, but it basically felt like attempting to hit on a straight woman who's either clueless or flattered enough to humor me, which just... ehhhhh. I'm flirting with her now as a man on my first replay, and it just fits much better with the way her responses are written (though Cassandra and Dorian are too precious and dear lord I sense SO MANY replays in my future).

[miarrow]

Cullen was actually a surprise for me, I HATED HIM, but he was a pretty solid romance (I started to get desperate when I realized Josie wasn't doing it for me and I'd missed my Solas window, cos Blackwall was really boring imo). I started my Dorian "play it super gay or you'll romance Cass" man playthrough and I do like that you can flirt with the characters you can't romance. The way Dorian handled that if you're a woman was pretty awesome.

I'm surprised I haven't heard more re: Josephine. I don't like Sera's immaturity level, especially in terms of romance (worse than Merill in that regard), but I never really got a disillusionment with the idea she liked women.

[(Anonymous)]

Hahaha, I feel like we followed the same trajectory, then. I ended up going for Cullen in the end, too, despite my initial "oh, it's THIS character type" skepticism. It was surprisingly very sweet, and satisfying enough that my SO teased me for getting so invested.

I think maybe Josephine is less of an issue because most who wanted the f/f romance glommed onto Sera immediately, and Sera turned out to be a pretty controversial character (though I agree that they established her orientation very well). Plus it's difficult to complain about the "feel" of Josie's responses when I can't fully quantify them as more than "cut-and-pasted from what was probably originally a m/f romance." I couldn't possibly give the whys or hows, just a vague sense of it, lol.

[miarrow]

I looked up her romance on youtube. Even the way they do her lean on your chest thing and your responses TO HER is very c&p typical male/female romance. I don't think the aspects of it necessarily lean in that direction, but it sort of strayed into a butch/femme dynamic that I wasn't really into with my flouncy little elf. I mean if that's what you're into, it's fine, but it felt very tacked on, like we need to write a bi-female, pick one and don't change dialogue!