102 réponses à ce sujet

[Sporothrix]

I want to point out that none of the   possible F/F options that are in all Mass Effect games, from 1 to 3, are lesbian romances. Either they don't qualify as lesbian, or as romance.

FemShep has option to pursue Liara, Samantha, Diana and Kelly. Diana and Kelly are ultimately just flings and were always said and treated as such by devs, as they are not very developed and uncomparable to real romance options, so it leaves Liara and Samantha on the field.


Samantha Traynor is lesbian equivalent of Steve Cortez, as she's not squad member, and exclusive same sex option for female characters. Yet her "romance" is not even closely as developed as Steve's one. It contains almost no content. There are barely any personal conversations (which are not solely about mission objectives) before sex scene, basically just her short description of her background and talking about toothbrush (I checked, it takes about 3 minutes 30 seconds to watch everything from both personal conversation scenes, including Shepard responses of course), way worse than in any other romance – and it's not romance specific, just some small talk, identical for male and female characters. The first and only romance conversation option you can choose is joining her in the shower, out of nowhere since you two NEVER before showed any interest in each other. And it actually skips her chess scene, which contains major part of her overall dialogue. By romancing her you get even less interaction with her.

So yes – the first and only romance conversation with Sam before sex scene is actually just choosing to have sex with her. And that gives romance achievement. The easiest way to get it in whole game. Before one click – you're just friends, and even that is not necessary, after one click, few seconds later – you already consumed your great romantic love.

What's more, every other romance option has at least one scene on Citadel, while Traynor not. And it really cheapens her, since those scenes provide insight into characters' personality and make them feel more real.

So that's it, they have sex and Traynor is suddenly in love with you, even though she knows nothing about you because you don't talk with each other. And unlike other romanceable characters, which have additional conversation just before the final battle (on Earth, either in person or by holograms), yet again you can't talk only with her.


There is also Liara. I won't argue that her romance is among the best developed through the series. But devs made it clear it's not lesbian at all. Namely, Casey Hudson himself, lead project director of Mass Effect games, insisted on many occasions that there is no same sex romance in ME1 or 2, pointing out that monogender argument. Even if it was obvious untruth from the beginning, since even in ME1 Codex it was stated that indeed they are monogender – "Asari are all-female race", it forever cheapened F/F aspect of romance with Liara and turned it into mere "Discount lesbian" option.

Liara is even face for that on TV Tropes. It doesn't change much whether their motivation was, as it's described on tv tropes, "to maintain a status quo that lets the (presumed) audience watch two hot chicks making out without having to think about the associated real-world issues or feel threatened by the notion of a genuine relationship between two women with no need for a man", or the other way, when "writer wishes to include a lesbian relationship in the story but is too spineless and terrified of the Moral Guardians". Propably a bit of both, since as they are theoretically gay friendly already in ME3, as it shows in case of Traynor, they didn't bother to put much effort into making dialogues for her (so it still skips "thinking about real world issues" and shows that they don't really care about romance aspect, just about 'girl on girl action') but everyone knows it for its tastelessly done "two hot chicks making out in the shower" scene.



So in the end, when it comes to female same sex options, there are three mere flings, uncomparable in terms of quality of development and quantity of scenes and dialogues to any romance, and one discount lesbian romance, forever cheapened and wallowed in mud by Hudson's attempts to flatter people who can't bear a mere fact of existence of lesbians and gays – and he never revoked any of his words about status of Liara's romance.

Modifié par misoretu9, 12 avril 2012 - 09:49 .

[Aggie Punbot]

I don't know about that, if you choose to stay faithful to Kelly, she's got some pretty touching dialog with you.

Also, you can safely ignore anything Casey Hudson has to say, considering his hand in the terrible endings. Liara and the asari in general are clearly women no matter how BioWare tries to deny it. So you have the option of having a lesbian romance as the best developed romance in the entire series, bar none.

[Jestina]

I would count Liara. Mono-gendered doesn't really fly when she has all the female parts and acts female.

[evisneffo]

Mostly agree with you OP. I do count Liara as a female option, functionally at least; the problem I have with counting her is that as terrible as it might sound I still feel weird romancing aliens.

Diana doesn't count as a romance for anyone, honestly. I would have appreciated more development with Kelly and Sam.

[TJX2045]

I think they may have retconned the Asari. Even if they didn't, it wouldn't have made sense to say it wasn't a F/F romance when it clearly is. The Asari not seeing "male" or "female" as important just means that in their culture it's irrelevant since they're all women who can reproduce with each other, IMO.

I will say however if he said that there was no F/F romance in ME2, he was kind of telling the truth in the sense that Kelly is just a fling who you can snuggle with and get to feed your fish for you.

[Apathy1989]

Eh. Discounting Liara does give lesbians a short stick. Traynors romance comes out of nowhere and feels like a fling. Diana and kelly are fake romances as you said.

That said, both the gay romances feel bad aswell. Screw a guy who is mourning his dead husband, or Kaiden who is really desperate for anything.


I prefer the dragon age 2 system where everyone is hawk-sexual.

[Sporothrix]

TS2Aggie wrote...

I don't know about that, if you choose to stay faithful to Kelly, she's got some pretty touching dialog with you.

The only difference is that she says she loves you, and then you go for some love session in front of all those refugees, so propably it's for the best that scene is not showed (which means, she doesn't have romance scene at all).

And a fact that devs didn't even notice that they forgot to make her name appear on memory wall if she dies speaks for itself.

Jestina wrote...
I would count Liara. Mono-gendered doesn't really fly when she has all the female parts and acts female.

Yes, I mentioned that when it comes only to game informations, that certainly is lesbian romance. Not only from Shepard's human perspective, but also objectively - as asari are all female species as it was stated since the first game.

But devs lesbian-denial stance made it feel cheap and awful, as it's obvious that they just wanted to provide turn on for guys and also please homophobes by insisting that's nothing serious, certainly not gay, so they have nothing to fear about.
It's hard for me to enjoy it knowing they made everything to appeal to groups which hate people like me.

Because of that romance with Liara doesn't count as proper lesbian romance, especially since they did nothing to fix what they've done with it. All what was needed was some short, female specific conversation which emphasize nature of Shepard's feelings, just like they did for gay maleShep. But they didn't care about that, as also case of Samantha's fling further confirms. Apparently for ME devs, the only real and worth the attention same sex romances are gay male ones (as you remember proud announcement that at last ME3 will have same sex romances, which suggests that they still didn't count Liara or Kelly, and indeed they provided very developed same sex romances - for men).

Modifié par misoretu9, 13 avril 2012 - 04:21 .

[draken-heart]

miso, did you think that the reason that Samantha's romance feels like a an "emotional" fling (read, it is a bit fast but you never know since Shepard's records are open, so she may have taken a look at them), look at ME1 Liara, the romance started out as scientific curiosity then it became romantic after Liara snooped through Shepard's history; anyways, getting off-track, reason for fling feel on Samantha's romance is probably because THERE IS A WAR GOING ON AND THEY DO NOT HAVE TIME TO GET ALL LOVEY-DOVEY WITH EACH OTHER! besides with the endings until the summer it is most likely that they had no need for Shepard who got with Samantha to get all emotional as she will never see Traynor again.

truth is the other romances madeno sense. i mean "Kaidan/Cortez, there is a war going on, and you want to go on a date with me?"

Modifié par draken-heart, 13 avril 2012 - 04:31 .

[Apathy1989]

hm. There was plenty of opportunity for samantha to flirt with shepard, and vice versa.

In the context of "the world is going to end", its fair enough that new romances should feel cheap and quick, but that doesn't excuse lack of dialogue or development. ME3, like the previous two, is supposed to take place over months of time. Most of it travelling between star systems.

[draken-heart]

the lack of dialogue was a development choice, likely forced on BioWare by EA. the same with Character development.

[ladyshara]

I agree that it makes sense for the new romances to be brief or whatever given the urgency of the war or whatever, but I do wish Traynor had been given the same consideration as Cortez. She has a lot of dialogue but it would have been nice to get a citadel moment with her. Also, maybe just me, but it felt like they rushed into it a little TOO much. Maybe if they had played chess and THEN had the shower scene or something. The chess match was a great friendship moment and I wish the romance could have had it as well.

EDIT: Personally, consider Liara a lesbian romance. She refers to her mother as a woman and when talkin to her father Shep says humans would consider them both the mother. To me that says they're female. I do wish that Shep would have then had the option to say to, Vega for instance, "Dude cut it out I'm gay." or something. 

Modifié par ladyshara, 13 avril 2012 - 08:16 .

[AtlasMickey]

Very good points, OP. Excellent.

I romanced Liara through all three games and, if that's the best developed romance out of the trilogy, I'd hate to see the others, because Liara's romance was ultimately depressing. She became very conflicted and unsure of her commitment when she became the shadow broker and then in ME3 she maintained an uncomfortable distance. She even reminded Shepard that, after Shepard dies, she will go on living for another 900 years. I recall how the relationship started in ME1, with the possibility of Liara just seeing Shepard as an archaeological curiosity, interested in her only for her connection to the Protheans. All told, combined with her retreat from my party at the end of the game, made it seem like part of her was waiting for me to die so she could get on with the rest of her very long life.

As a romantic side story to the main narrative, I am satisfied with its apparent complexity, even if that feeling of distance results largely from a lack of content. I have to assume much else happened off screen that wasn't told for the relationship to have really been considered a relationship and not a fling, because if all that happened was what we were given on screen, well that's not satisfying at all.

Still, I come away from the whole thing believing that Mass Effect is not a dating sim and that there actually are games like that out there, should I ever choose that's something I'm looking for.

I don't know what the other romances in the game are like, so I can't comment further. I am a very loyal sort of person and don't quite find it easy to start a new relationship with others. Nonetheless, very good points, OP.

[AtlasMickey]

ladyshara wrote...
I do wish that Shep would have then had the option to say to, Vega for instance, "Dude cut it out I'm gay." or something. 

Hehe, I would have liked that.

[ladyshara]

Darn that autoflirt. *shudder*

[Sporothrix]

franciscoamell wrote...

In Mass Effect 3, gay girls have way more romance content (4, only 1 can be dead and need to be continued from ME2) than straight girls (2, both can be dead and 1 needs to be continued).

Only if you count it as romance content, which can hardly be done considering arguments I showed above.

franciscoamell wrote...

And Liara is deffinetelly a woman, otherwise people wouldn't refer to her as she, it's that simple. Biologically she's not a woman, but to like her you gotta like girls.

I see you haven't read anything in that thread before posting. It's completely the other way around. Asari are biologically females (which means organism which produce egg cells), as it was stated since ME1 Codex, but lesbian aspect is forever degraded into mere 'discount lesbian' option because of how devs portrayed it in public, basically denying it to please gay haters.

Also, Kelly's romance was treated as an actual romance in the third game, unlike Jacob and Thane, 2 of the of the 4 guys female Shepard can hook up with.

And what makes you think Kelly's fling is treated as an actual romance? Because you get achievement? Certainly not thanks to amount of her "romance" dialogues (which basically is just "I love you", but after not showed sex Shepard seems to quickly forget about that "great, romantic love") and lack of romance scene.

And when it comes to Jacob and Thane, it's awful how straight femSheps were treated compared to straight men, but they always have 2 other full fledged, well developed romances. That's more than short flings gay women got. So, in the end, it looks like devs were focused on the first place on men, straight and gay, while gay women were on the absolute end.

Modifié par misoretu9, 14 avril 2012 - 10:26 .

[Yuqi]

We know that Casey said 'not lesbian cause monogendered' for the pourpose of damage control. Because Liara is not 'human' she technically is not a 'lesbian', so by all acounts Caesy is 'technically' right.

At least you have Liara as an option, the straight females get screwed over pretty bad. It's almost like there intent was to make femshep canonically gay.

Modifié par Yuqi, 14 avril 2012 - 10:56 .

[Reorte]

evisneffo wrote...

Mostly agree with you OP. I do count Liara as a female option, functionally at least; the problem I have with counting her is that as terrible as it might sound I still feel weird romancing aliens.

I don't. After trying to immerse myself into the ME universe every time that I have to return back to reality it takes me a while to shake off finding the idea of a normal human relationship as being very boring and mundane (as long as the aliens aren't all that alien, i.e. like most of the ME ones. Romancing a hanar or elcor would feel weird).

[Artisall]

Yuqi wrote...

At least you have Liara as an option, the straight females get screwed over pretty bad. It's almost like there intent was to make femshep canonically gay.

Not going to lie, I did feel like Femshep was sort of gay. Her walk, her talk (no offense to Jennifer Hale), and a lot about her felt very masculine. I know that doesn't mean she's gay, but if you were going to have her fit into one stereotype vs. another she does fit the gay lady tomboy aspect pretty well. That's not because you have to be sort of masculine to be a good soldier or anything either. Ashley was pretty feminine but she still kicked ass. 


Whenever I played Femshep, I always felt like it was more natural to romance Liara or another female option. (and yes, I consider Liara pretty much a lady). 

Modifié par Artisall, 14 avril 2012 - 01:52 .

[dreman9999]

But a femshep/liara romance is a lesbian romance. It's not based on liara, it's based in Shepard. Monogender or not, Liara is female to Shep perspective. Shepard is attractive to someone that looks similar to a human female, hence Femshep is attractive to anything that looks like a human female. It the same concept of Guys being attracted to transsexual or cross dresser who really looks like a female being that that guy doesn't know who he is looking at. He's attracted to the person because they look female.

Modifié par dreman9999, 14 avril 2012 - 02:14 .

[Lucky Thirteen]

Artisall wrote...
That's not because you have to be sort of masculine feminine to be a good soldier straight woman or anything either.

Sorry, just had to fix your sentence there. Men and women can behave however they want and be people with various personalities and interests that don't make them fall under what is socially acceptable for their gender.

I just like to picture my main femShep masculine as hell to the point people can perceive her as a lesbian, but in reality she has never had sexual interest in women. My other femShep though, I consider her a lipstick lesbian, feminine and pretty, and I'm kinda disappointed Miranda wasn't an option.

Now, to go back on topic.

I don't think there is a lack of Lesbian romances, but I do agree they are lacking in quality. The purpose for these Lesbian romances is to cater to a stereotypical male fan base, not really to cater to anyone interested in a legit romantic story. There is this perceived notion that the femShep players are just a bunch of males, wanting to stare at a hot ass for 40+ hours and see hot chicks make out. While that may be true for a lot of the male femShep players, it isn't really for all of the male femShep players.

The other half of this perception is that they think there is a small, unimportant portion of females playing. Considered so small, resources were limited so much that even the straight romances suffered badly.

So the only true, actual romantic romance for a lesbian/Bi femshep is Liara while the other women are just sexual flings. On the straight half there is Kaidan and a pity bone in the form of Garrus if you were lucky enough to want him as a romance and imported him from ME2.

It's like they went back a whole decade in thinking when it comes to gamers in general.

[ladyshara]

See, I don't see why they think the female player base is so small on a game that is (or at least used to be) marketed as an RPG. Most of the chicks I know love RPGs, even if they aren't "hardcore" gamers or whatever. I though that was common. Guess not? Of course most of the chicks I know are lesbians so maybe that's why lol.

I will agree that straight femsheps got it worse than we did. Got curious and watched Thane/Jacob on youtube and that was just... tragic. And I love Garrus but he's an incredibly alien alien. If that makes sense. I hope Kaidan's is good at least? Maybe?

I guess it's a silly thing to get worked up over but it does add to the narrative/character developement which has always been my interest Mass Effect.

Modifié par ladyshara, 14 avril 2012 - 03:13 .

[BrianWilly]

Liara is a lesbian romance. Casey Hudson can call it whatever he likes, doesn't make it any more accurate. Just because BioWare fails basic ethnography doesn't mean that the rest of us have to.

[Lucky Thirteen]

I think the whole thing about saying Liara isn't a lesbian romance started when Singapore tried to ban ME1 over the Liara/FemShep sex scene about a week before the game's release. The ban was stopped because Bioware came out and said Liara isn't a woman but an mono-gendered alien, so it's not a lesbian relationship.

Doesn't mean it's right, but Singapore went with it.

Modifié par Lucky Thirteen, 14 avril 2012 - 04:03 .

[wickedgoodreed]

misoretu9 wrote...

So that's it, they have sex and Traynor is suddenly in love with you, even though she knows nothing about you because you don't talk with each other. And unlike other romanceable characters, which have additional conversation just before the final battle (on Earth, either in person or by holograms), yet again you can't talk only with her.

To be honest, I'd actually argue that Traynor was a better romance than Liara if we're going on solely what's available in 3. Once you get past the rocky (eye-roll-inducing) start, Samantha and Shepard have romance-specific banter after almost every mission that acknowledges there's a relationship between the two of them.  For me at least, it made it easier to imagine that there's more going on behind the scenes. Granted, it's automated and brief, but at least it's recognition, which is more than you get with Liara. 

For my previously single Shep who pursued a relationship with Liara, the only romance-specific content was an awkward Citadel scene where they both admit they "really like" each other, followed by...welp, pretty much nothing until the end-game scenes.

As for Samantha's lack of a hologram talk, while disappointing, it didn't really bother me so much because there was the equivalent of a final goodbye scene with her in-person on the Normandy. Same with Joker. Samantha does need a Citadel scene though, no argument there.

So in the end, when it comes to female same sex options, there are three mere flings, uncomparable in terms of quality of development and quantity of scenes and dialogues to any romance, and one discount lesbian romance, forever cheapened and wallowed in mud by Hudson's attempts to flatter people who can't bear a mere fact of existence of lesbians and gays – and he never revoked any of his words about status of Liara's romance.

Hudson can say that FemShep/Liara isn't a lesbian romance until he's blue in the face. I don't really see why I should take his obviously absurd claims seriously nor let them have any bearing on how I percieve the Liara romance in the game. Giving Hudson's comments about it as much worth as they're due (i.e. nothing), the bottom line is that lesbians have access to one of the most satisfying romance arcs in the series. 

While Samantha and Kelly may start out as flings, there is content written into the game to encourage the interpretation that they grow into something heartfelt. I agree that the depth of the romances in ME3 left a lot to be desired, but from what I gather it's a universal problem not unique to the lesbian romances. I wouldn't be so quick to discount them completely, and I'm grateful that they're weren't tossed aside the way that Thane and Jacob were for straight FemSheps.

Modifié par wickedgoodreed, 14 avril 2012 - 05:18 .