Red_Sonja wrote...
Brilliant posts both, but the latter doesn’t really speak as to why having bisexualhomosexualheterosexual Li’s is such a big deal. I mean, was anyone here bothered by the treatment of Zevran, Leliana and Isabella in DA2 and Origins respectively? Was it insulting to anyone in any way to have Alistair be a straight man? I don’t get it, despite the wonderfully eloquent posts of people like whykikyouwhy, I just don’t get it.
Assuming that people’s objections aren’t coming from a place where all they really want is a smorgasbord of romantic options available to them, could someone please explain why having Li’s with their own sexual identity (right across the board) is such a bad thing? And please, no talk of zots!
I don't think it was that people were bothered by the handling of those characters, or that Alistair was portrayed as straight in DA:O. It's that, from what we have seen in Thedas thus far within the two games, sexuality/sexual identity is not a topic of discussion - certainly not in the way that it is IRL. It's not treated as something wrong, evil, immoral, scandalous, abnormal, etc. It's nothing that warrants mention in anything other than an offhand remark of "oh, he's with so and so." Then it's shrug and move on. So who characters may be attracted to, who they choose to sleep with or how they choose to identify themselves are merely small facets of those characters.
When that sexuality is called out, possibly because we feel the need to have classifications that match our own world (if even in the effort to find someone to identify with), it puts the spotlight on something that otherwise would not be mentioned...in Thedas. And so that wonderful aspect of sexuality not being a negative or a source of conflict in Thedas then diminishes slightly.
From a real world concept, yes, all aspects of our identity are important - our sexual selves, our faith (if we practice or subscribe to one), our moral/ethical standing, our concepts of friendship, our sense of family, our ethnic background. But much of those aspects are tangled up with the lack of acceptance, or with struggle. And they shouldn't be. We all share our human state of being - our mortal coil. A time on this planet to learn and to love. And that should transcend labels and the need to defend one's right to simply
be, and to love.
If Thedas can be that little pocket of a fictitious universe where people are allowed to just be - if the conflicts that plague real life are replaced instead by the fantastic (matters of magic and creatures of shadow), then that's maybe why it matters, and why some folks (or at least me) may not want to have the labels and categories stressed as part of gameplay.
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