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[Nejeli]

Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut wrote...

Nejeli wrote...

Male Hawke is likely to get the same social backlash if he gets with Merrill as he would with Fenris, because they're both elves and very much beneath him in status. Fenris being male too is almost unimportant, because people are going to be focusing on the fact that he's an elf.

Head canon =/= a game actually establishing something.

But that headcanon isn't based on nothing. A male human noble Warden can sleep with Dairren. No one bats an eye if you go into a brothel and ask for someone of the same sex. Wade and Herren weren't ostracized. Taking this into account, one can reasonably assume that same sex couples are worth little more notice than a 'shrug, and move on.' However, we know that human/elf pairings are a scandal. The game makes no secret that most humans consider elves to be the lowest of the low. It's not a huge leap of logic to think that people would have more of a problem with Fenris being an elf than they would about him being male. Seriously, just because these things aren't spelled out doesn't mean they aren't touched on at all. The fact that there's no big deal made about same sex couples supports the idea that it's just not an issue in Thedas. I can see it being an issue in certain circumstances - the expectation of nobles to have heirs, elves thinking it's every elf's duty to increase their population, etc - but otherwise no one really seems to care.

I'm not sure what you want. Focusing on the same sex aspect of the relationships and the ~trials and tribulations they would face in society~ wouldn't have been progressive. That's been the default handling of gay and lesbian characters in media for years, and there's rarely anything to the characters beyond that.

[Masako52]

Lord Aesir wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...
Of the top of my head, ancient Athens and pre-modern Japan both had societies where male same-sex romance was accepted and even romanticized, but men were still expected to take wives and have children.

Didn't ancient Athens tend to view homosexuality as a phase in the lives of young men before they got married and had children?

Not exactly. (PREPARE FOR HISTORY LESSON, PREMODERN GAYNESS 101)

They practiced "pederasty", sort of teacher/mentor relationships. The older man, called erastês, could well have been married. Taking a teenage male lover was hardly a threat to that marriage, so in that sense it was a nonissue. Erômenos was the younger one (NOT prepubescent though, we're talking teens). The practice at the time was held in extremely high regard - if you've ever read Plato's Symposium, I recall he goes on a lot about how love between men is more pure than heterosexual love, because there are no ulterior motives (having children?) or something like that. Once the younger man grew to adulthood though, I'm pretty sure the relationship would traditionally stop, that being said, there are records of the two men remaining "good friends" wink wink, nudge nudge.

However, I haven't heard much about, shall we say, "real gay" relationships between two same-aged men who want to live their lives together. I'm sure there were such cases but I'm not sure it was so accepted - the pederasty system was a way of "honoring" the "idealized youth" -poetry, art, beauty, blahblahblah. Well, maybe not in the Spartan barracks, lol. Greek mythos is full of gay, too, hello Zeus (also married) and Ganymedes! Of course, in no society do we have much record of gay women (men wrote history, after all), but the Greek Isle of Lesbos supposedly featured them, and that's where we get the name Lesbian.

Japan was very similar. It had a system called nanshoku or shudo which again derived from some kind of poetic worship of youth. You saw a lot of these pederasty relationships in the samurai and kabuki worlds (even Heian period playboy Prince Genji from the classic Tale of Genji was getting it on with dudes). Hell, Japan tried to make sodomy illegal in 1873. But people got mad, and it was repealed only seven years later... pretty damn gay early modern society!

To be honest, pederasty is not good, even if it is distinct from pedophilia - one party still hasn't reached "adulthood" yet. Nonetheless, Japan and Greece provide good historical examples of perhaps gay-friendly societies, and it's a nice change from being burned at the stake. If we relate these societies to Dragon Age in the fact that they regard gay relationships with a wink and some poetry, it does set the frame for understanding that love was deemed separate from marital duties. That a lord could take a mistress, or a male equivalent as the one he loves, but as far as his legal marriage went he would be expected to bear children.

I therefore expect that in DA, some people are expected to marry and bear children - including the Dalish elves (a dying race) with noble humans (bloodlines). But we repeatedly see that gayness is a little to nonissue. DA is still distinct from any historical society, though. Discrimination and religious persecution are big deals in Thedas. But targeted at fantasy elements, like elves and mages, not gay people and women.

[Masako52]

Nejeli wrote...

Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut wrote...

Nejeli wrote...

Male Hawke is likely to get the same social backlash if he gets with Merrill as he would with Fenris, because they're both elves and very much beneath him in status. Fenris being male too is almost unimportant, because people are going to be focusing on the fact that he's an elf.

Head canon =/= a game actually establishing something.

But that headcanon isn't based on nothing. ... I can see it being an issue in certain circumstances - the expectation of nobles to have heirs, elves thinking it's every elf's duty to increase their population, etc - but otherwise no one really seems to care.

I agree. Though now that Hawke is a noble by Act 2, he might well be reasonably expected to have children. But to be honest, a half-elven child might well be a scandal itself, even if he's with Merrill that might not work. Society might pressure Hawke to marry a human woman, particularly one who is also blueblood (might even cut out Isabela, tbh). If Merrill and Fenris are to be treated like "lovers" but not marriage material, they might be treated with the same scorn anyway. They're elves! And Merrill is a Dalish besides that. Male Hawke being with Anders, who is at least a Gray Warden at a time when wardens are super cool, might actually be the most socially acceptable, providing he doesn't wave that staff around too much. Just my own thoughts, though.

[Plaintiff]

Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut wrote...

Lord Aesir wrote...

Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut wrote...

esper wrote...
Thedas is not earth in any way. It's dorminant religions is very different from our own at the Medivial time, men and womens roles are different, society's structure are different as well and also different in each society. They have both darkspawn and demons which are very real threaths, and most important of all very different areas in where people care about who you sleep with. Man/women largely irrelevant, mage, elf, dwarf very relevant. You demand that bioware make the society react on a parring like Wade and Herren, but Thedas's society is likely not a society that cares about such a relationship.  

Yes, which is why the fact that they didn't pay attention to the worldbuilding and the relationship between their characters and their environment - instead opting to haphazardly lift tropes from the modern world and the Standard Fantasy Setting - unfortunate.

Not to intrude on you're debate, but it sounds like you want bioware to make their characters react to something as noteworthy that is not noteworthy in Thedas.  I fail to see how that is bad.

Yes and no - I don't, for example, care if individuals in TheDAS care about sexual orientation or even have a concept of sexual orientation (many non-homophobic pre-industrial societies didn't.) I do care if they've created a believable world, which would (if they want to make romantic relationships a major part of their storytelling) require them to spend at least five seconds thinking of the ways that someone living in a pre-industiral society might have slightly different concepts re: sex/romantic love/marriage/etc. than a modern real-world individual.

I'm at a loss as to why an individual should have different concepts of sex, love or marriage based purely on the technological level of their society.

Medieval living does not necessitate medieval thinking.

[Wulfram]

Plaintiff wrote...

I'm at a loss as to why an individual should have different concepts of sex, love or marriage based purely on the technological level of their society.

Medieval living does not necessitate medieval thinking.

Well, the presence or absence of effective contraception is going to be important to that sort of thing.  As I guess might issues like the rate of child mortality.

And since Thedas shares the medieval emphasis on bloodline, that's going to be a factor too.

[Plaintiff]

Wulfram wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

I'm at a loss as to why an individual should have different concepts of sex, love or marriage based purely on the technological level of their society.

Medieval living does not necessitate medieval thinking.

Well, the presence or absence of effective contraception is going to be important to that sort of thing.  As I guess might issues like the rate of child mortality.

And since Thedas shares the medieval emphasis on bloodline, that's going to be a factor too.

Yes, but contraception and child mortality are only relevant to individuals who are likely to have children. I think we can safely say that most homosexuals in Thedas do not fall into this category. And alternative sexuality is what we're discussing here.

The bloodline issue is the only thing that really comes close, and even then, that's less a matter of practicality and more the typical silliness of arrogant nobles insisting for no logical reason that their name has to "carry on", and that attitude is prevalent everywhere. It would not be a stretch to say that marrying and starting a family is still considered something of a societal obligation today, the idea is reinforced in much of our media. But it's not actually compulsory by any means, and it never really has been.

Even in medieval times, there was no law that required men to marry or produce heirs. Women, being basically cattle that could sew, had to do what they were told, but men had much fewer limitations. Producing heirs to carry the name and take care of the land and whatnot was considered the right and responsible thing to do, but if a man was determined to die childless for whatever reason, there wasn't much anyone else could do about it. And in any case, inheritance law is and was full of all sorts of contingencies to account for the event of a nobleman dying without an heir.

So even then, dislike of homosexuality was actually tied to religious dogma and bias, and had little to do with practical concerns regarding marriage and procreation.

Since Thedas has no such dogma or bias, at least, none that we've seen, there's no reason to assume that homosexuality would be an issue, even among the upper classes.

[Wulfram]

Your statement was more broad than just homosexuality, or at least so I interpreted it.

In any case, I would say the liberalising effect of easier and effective contraception on attitudes to heterosexual sex is likely to have a knock on effect on attitudes to homosexuality.

I would also argue that religious dogma and bias doesn't appear in a vaccuum - that Thedas' religions don't appear to get involved in matters of sexuality could itself be considered interesting. Though I don't know, perhaps the Chantry is just too busy oppressing Mages to bother with other stuff.

[Maria Caliban]

Effective contraceptives predate the 1960s. They weren't wide spread due to cultural and economic issues, but they've existed for thousands of years.

I notice that Thedas has a number of sexually active women with no kids in tow.

[Nejeli]

Masako52 wrote...

I agree. Though now that Hawke is a noble by Act 2, he might well be reasonably expected to have children. But to be honest, a half-elven child might well be a scandal itself, even if he's with Merrill that might not work. Society might pressure Hawke to marry a human woman, particularly one who is also blueblood (might even cut out Isabela, tbh). If Merrill and Fenris are to be treated like "lovers" but not marriage material, they might be treated with the same scorn anyway. They're elves! And Merrill is a Dalish besides that. Male Hawke being with Anders, who is at least a Gray Warden at a time when wardens are super cool, might actually be the most socially acceptable, providing he doesn't wave that staff around too much. Just my own thoughts, though.

I agree with these thoughts. Hawke using Merrill or Fenris for sex would be "acceptable", but treating either of them like a lover? Having a kid with Merrill (or Fenris, for a female Hawke) and not denying it? Definitely scandal material. Anders probably would be the most socially acceptable out of the four love interests, as long as no one found out about him being a mage or slumming in Dark Town. As for being pressured into taking a blueblood wife/husband, I think there definitely would be some for a warrior or rogue Hawke, maybe not so much for a mage Hawke, since Leandra said the noble houses wanted less mage blood, not more. Of course, being Kirkwall's Champion might make some of the nobles overlook that, simply for the status they could gain.

Maria Caliban wrote...

Effective contraceptives predate
the 1960s. They weren't wide spread due to cultural and economic issues,
but they've existed for thousands of years.

I notice that Thedas has a number of sexually active women with no kids in tow.

Not to mention Thedas has magic, which is something we don't. When you have spells and potions for just about everything, couldn't you take it as a given that contraceptives exist in some form?

[Kidd]

As for the whole "They haven't shown the stance on homosexuality in Thedas in the game" line of thinking, I disagree. Not showing is a kind of showing.

Imagine if BioWare went ahead and made a game hundred years in the future or so, set in the early 21st century. In this game, you had a blonde and a brown-haired LI. There was nothing in the dialogue which showed it was considered "wrong" in society to be with one compared to the others. Does this mean BioWare will not have shown us how hair colour relates to sexual norms in the early 21st century?

[Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut]

Plaintiff wrote...

Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut wrote...

Lord Aesir wrote...

Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut wrote...

esper wrote...
Thedas is not earth in any way. It's dorminant religions is very different from our own at the Medivial time, men and womens roles are different, society's structure are different as well and also different in each society. They have both darkspawn and demons which are very real threaths, and most important of all very different areas in where people care about who you sleep with. Man/women largely irrelevant, mage, elf, dwarf very relevant. You demand that bioware make the society react on a parring like Wade and Herren, but Thedas's society is likely not a society that cares about such a relationship.  

Yes, which is why the fact that they didn't pay attention to the worldbuilding and the relationship between their characters and their environment - instead opting to haphazardly lift tropes from the modern world and the Standard Fantasy Setting - unfortunate.

Not to intrude on you're debate, but it sounds like you want bioware to make their characters react to something as noteworthy that is not noteworthy in Thedas.  I fail to see how that is bad.

Yes and no - I don't, for example, care if individuals in TheDAS care about sexual orientation or even have a concept of sexual orientation (many non-homophobic pre-industrial societies didn't.) I do care if they've created a believable world, which would (if they want to make romantic relationships a major part of their storytelling) require them to spend at least five seconds thinking of the ways that someone living in a pre-industiral society might have slightly different concepts re: sex/romantic love/marriage/etc. than a modern real-world individual.

I'm at a loss as to why an individual should have different concepts of sex, love or marriage based purely on the technological level of their society.

Medieval living does not necessitate medieval thinking.

Here's a good one, applying to heterosexual couples: you, in a modern day society, have access to contraception that works 98%-99.99% of the time with perfect use. If you're not living in an industrial society, you don't have manufactured disposable products and are basically down to incredibly ineffective diaphragms and the pull-out method. Therefore the circumstances under which you would have sex tend to be quite different, because the consequences are quite different.

Oh, and here's one for gay couples: no kids. This means nobody to take care of you in your old age in the days before a social safety net. Non-homophobic pre-industrial societies usually set things up in a way that would allow gay people to have kids. (Men, at least - patriarchy, etc. In TheDAS there's considerably less sexism coming from the humans, so we'd likely expect gender equality to apply here too.)

Modifié par Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut, 06 février 2012 - 11:31 .

[Huntress]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Effective contraceptives predate the 1960s. They weren't wide spread due to cultural and economic issues, but they've existed for thousands of years.

I notice that Thedas has a number of sexually active women with no kids in tow.

Correct:
Birth control and infanticide are well documented in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. One of the earliest documents explicitly referring to birth control methods is the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus from about 1850 BC. It describes various contraceptive pessaries, including acacia gum, which recent research has confirmed to have spermatocidal
qualities and is still used in contraceptive jellies. Other birth
control methods mentioned in the papyrus include the application of
gummy substances to cover the "mouth of the womb", a mixture of honey and sodium carbonate applied to the inside of the vagina, and a pessary made from crocodile dung. Lactation of up to three years was also used for birth control purposes in ancient Egypt.

Plants with contraceptive properties were used in Ancient Greece from the seventh century BC onwards and documented by numerous ancient writers on gynaecology, such as Hippocrates.

http://en.wikipedia....eptives#History

And just because you were a noble or even a Cesar didn't mean you were forced to have a child, it was spected but not one preasure the ruler.. that would have been a death sentence and if noble you could duel this person to the death. thats why in the old times many people really didn't dig on anyone also kaka, their very lives were hanging at  the end of their very own ropes/chains.

I'll give you an exemple: Claudius (Latin: Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus;[1] 1 August 10 BC – 13 October AD 54), was Roman Emperor from 41 to 54.

Claudius' love life was unusual for an upper-class Roman of his day,
being that he was the only one out of the first 15 emperors not to take men or boys,
but only women as lovers. Suetonius and the other ancient authors used
this against Claudius. They accused him of being dominated by these same
women and wives, of being uxorious, and of being a womanizer.

After his death in 54, his grand-nephew and adopted son Nero succeeded him as Emperor.

In the old days people married but Love wasn't the most important part on this union, power was important, Money was important, friends in the rigth places was important, the rest wasn't important at all if you liked men's in ancient roman it was bad, if you liked only women it was wrong... rofl.. if you had man's plus womans plus power in the senate?
Well that was alright and everyone who spoke of you would have said : you were blessed by the gods themselves.

Modifié par Huntress, 08 février 2012 - 12:34 .

[Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut]

Huntress wrote...

Birth control and infanticide are well documented in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. One of the earliest documents explicitly referring to birth control methods is the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus from about 1850 BC. It describes various contraceptive pessaries, including acacia gum, which recent research has confirmed to have spermatocidal
qualities and is still used in contraceptive jellies. Other birth
control methods mentioned in the papyrus include the application of
gummy substances to cover the "mouth of the womb", a mixture of honey and sodium carbonate applied to the inside of the vagina, and a pessary made from crocodile dung. Lactation of up to three years was also used for birth control purposes in ancient Egypt.

Although they also used "magic" amulets for the same purpose. The fact that they didn't immediately discover the actual contraceptives worked better than the amulets tells you volumes about the effectiveness of their contraception.

[Stanley Woo]

Not really about Dragon Age 2 any longer.

End of line.