Romance thread - DA4 edition

Morrigan - I just love how she's getting softer and softer.
Cullen - I romanced my femLavellan with him out of not having any other choices and found out really enjoying him. A sweet, but not too sweet, guy. Protective, strong, funny.
Fenris - same like with Morrigan, especially if I play mage Hawke.

Too bad the poll is only for 3 choices because I'd pick Merrill too.

BioWare stays on my shit list lately. 

Jaal for sure, and I'd love to see more male love interests (that are avaiable for male/male) to be as open about his feelings as Jaal is. Plus all the little romantic moments like:

¡Qué sorpresa!

Bring them back! Or like give me something super serious and committed.

The feeling of a Kaidan romance (re: a stabilizing and grounding element to the crazy shit that the protagonist goes through) with the romantic depth of Cullen's (meaning the way that he openly lets in the Inquisitor while he deals with his emotional shit, regardless of romance).

Because too often we're called on to be the catalyst for our romances to "improve themselves" and such, that without the romance, they don't get through the worst of their issues. Kaidan dealt with his baggage before ME1 and Cullen deals with his regardless of romance status, and at most needs a hand in the midst of a depressive bout. Yes, being in a relationship calls for both parties to help one another out during hard times, but not to be their therapist at the expense of your own needs.

Honestly, just give GAY GUYS the Prince Charming romantic archetype that BioWare loves giving to their straight women and never once thinks that the gay guys want - "what, don't you love the bad boys?" Yeah, no. I'm sick of bad boys. Especially because I look at their "bad boys," and I see how these relationships are easily taken as toxic and/or abusive. I don't WANT them to be, mind you, but MAN is there a lot of undercurrents that lead me to those conclusions very easily in most of these pairings that were outright written as being "for" gay guys.

Zevran definitely is a wounded boy who romance cures, but he was probably written as m/f first and m/m incidentally. Hard to know. He is definitely also a “bad boy”.

Anders is a wounded boy. Not sure we help him. Definitely was written as bi/pan. He is like... a bad boy for sure but also the male version of a manic pixie dream girl but less frivolous and more serious. Like a manic spirit cat guy.

Fenris is a wounded boy who we definitely can help. He was probably written with bi/pan content in mind. He is not a bad boy but he is a little gruff.

dorian is pretty much his own person with or with out you, but his romance gets a little into a vague zone of sexual healing cause of the way his personal arc is centered on his orientation and his sexual identity itself is a wound we help heal... so... not fun, but it is in theory similar to a lot or celibate/chaste religious type tropes in pre 2000s fantasy. He is not a bad boy unless you don’t like tevinter but he has the air of a bad boy type.

iron Bull is all over the place but I would say he’s kind of written as a committed relationship gives him an outlet for his protective feelings and the qun is bad for him because it limited the formation of deep committed relationships (friends and lovers) based around true expression or something like that. So we don’t heal him unless you save the chargers. He is like a bad boy / Daddy hybrid. Bad in that he is spying on you but his morality is pretty much goody good guy.

Kaidan is more or or less the most realistic premise for a relationship. He realizes he’s older, the galaxy might end, and that he’s come to like Shepard as more than just friends. The hetero version if started back in ME1 does not explicitly heal kaidan with sex magic but he is written as a more or less troubled man what with the biotic implant problems story line. He is not a bad boy but he is written to have a stormy past. In general kaidan just makes sense as a character. He’s not the most amazing biotic ever/super genius. He is a hard worker and finally starts achieving what he wants well into his life and is not some prodigy.

Steve is.... a sad man who we make not so sad with either our friendly shoulder or a luxury stay in the captain’s chambers. He literally dies if you don’t fix him. He is definitely not a bad guy. He is like one of those people they use(d) in political ads about lgbtq rights where they find the most perfect/amazing/sanitized people in the hopes that guilt will get people to acknowledge their basic human rights. Also How they kind of make you feel like a weak bum unless you’ve also cured cancer while flying fighter jets and rescuing orphans. So it kind of feels like The first gay male crew member in mass effect was a weird impossible character who also felt rather flat. He felt a lot like a political ad about the power of gay marriage especially since that was like... peak marriage equality time. 

Gil is definitely a “seedy” type as he’s not from privilege and has some of that grease monkey engineer flavor but they honestly never developed that very well and he is supposed to have had a semi “wild” life that he now wants to settle down. If you romance him it does seem like you help him discover a purpose especially if you perform The Dark Ritual with Jill and create a vessel to store the soul of the Archon in. He’s just so under written it feels like it gives the writer too much credit to say he was tropey or not. As he was definitely written to be gay, i’d Say he suffers from the Steve/Dorian effect where they are trying to explore deep topics in a much heavier handed way than they tend to do in other romance arcs. 

jaal is a goody good guy. But I’m not gonna get into what orientation he was written to have.

but a clearer picture to me is that bi/pan men have been more or less bad boys (excluding Kaidan/jaal who both were exclusively hetero at one time). Strictly gay characters have thus far had a moral message that weighed down their characters. I’m fine with exploring complicated identity stuff.... but maybe it is time to get that out of the same sex romances. Have some other  characters elsewhere in the games go through that plot line.

So I just saw in tumblr these Anthem characters and I'm about to start a change petition to make them the gay KISAs in DA4




LIKE I CAN NOT EVEN IMAGINE HOW DA4 COMPANIONS ARE GOING TO LOOK LIKE.... I TAKE TWO! AND THREE lol

I saw him yesterday!! HE IS CUTE

He's my fav in Anthem so far.    (not that I think anyone will replace him as my fav really lol)