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[Xilizhra]

This is across all Bioware games, but this forum is with the game where it could be prevented. So I'm posting here.

Observing and listing the various lesbian relationships that occur in the background across Bioware's two latest series... I've noticed that every single one seems to be tragic, doomed or otherwise unpleasantly dramatic. And there are actually a fair number of these.

ME1: Benezia/Aethyta. This one at least has a more ordinary reason for falling apart, and isn't as bad as the other ones that occur later... but it could be taken as a warning of things to come, and still ends badly.
DAO: And here's where the trouble begins. Leliana/Marjolaine is bad enough, but Branka/Hespith is nearly gratuitous in its wallowing in drama (in fact, given the ultimate outcome, it may be the most dysfunctional relationship in the franchise). And as sort of a sick little bonus feature, there's Marjolaine's seduction of Dorothea in Leliana's Song.
ME2: Morinth/Nef is the one that most obviously jumps out here (at least it ends less painfully than Branka/Hespith, even if the ultimate outcome is the same), but then there's also the collapse of Samara's relationship, presumably because of AY-related complications... either that or Samara going justicar, but it seems to have ended earlier than that. And then, for no apparent reason, we got a news story about some asari sanitation worker who was murdered by a human because of her relationship with his ex-wife.
DA2: No background lesbian relationships at all, which is... progress? Or not. It's hard to say.
ME3: So here we have some human woman apparently cheating on her husband with an asari, a relationship which eventually breaks up in its own right, apparently. Then there's another human woman trying to get her asari daughter to Thessia... which succeeds, yes, but given Thessia's ultimate fate, this just seems to be ****ed irony. Finally (in the main game, anyway), there's some random fetch quest where you have to convey that some commando on Lessus got killed, to her asari bondmate. Oh, and as if there weren't enough of these already, we get the Aria/Nyreen thing in Omega.

And now, it seems, the Masked Empire book is going to do the same damn thing with Celene and Briala. What is with this pattern, Bioware? It seems to be consistently committed by different people, so I don't know if it's an issue with a single writer... is it some kind of corporate culture issue? An addiction to certain tropes? Because while there are certainly plenty of straight relationships that have the same issues, there are also those that work out basically fine, and even one gay male one that seems to be going well (Wade/Herren). So again, I must ask; what is the reason for this pattern?

[Allan Schumacher]

I'd be very surprised if it wasn't a blatant nod

I'm a white male gamer. I think inclusiveness is a great thing. What your comment does, however, is scare me.

I don't typically play women (or homosexuals) in RPGs where I have that choice, because to myself it always comes across in my head as how a white male gamer thinks is an appropriate action for a female/homosexual. It presents a layer of cognitive dissonance that I struggle to get past, because I feel like I'm just implicitly putting in my own misconceptions into the character. Sort of like those experiments where you have people in a room pretend to be someone else in the room, and everyone just acts like caricatures of individuals.

Now, if you're going to take a character like Morinth and implicitly place some assumptions that she's the Lesbian Vampire, and not only that, but also make assumptions that it's probably done on purpose, it scares me.

Because it comes across as "Well you tried, but you failed and in doing so ended up insulting me more than otherwise." I'm not a writer, but I have experimented with making modules in the past and I typically shy away from things I'm not familiar with because I'm afraid I'll just **** it up.


Inclusivity is great, but keep in mind that the end goal of being all inclusive is that we all won't even notice these things. We are a loooooooooooooooooooooooooong ways away from that level of inclusiveness, but if we go out of our way to avoid tropes, what it means is that the moment we establish something (such as the Asari being all female), we effectively paint ourselves into a corner. It means that with the Ardat-Yashi, we have excluded ourselves from ever having Ardat-Yakshi that prey on women simply because it turns into the Lesbian Vampire trope. In my opinion, this isn't a good thing either.


I'm likely just being overly sensitive (especially since I don't actually make the content being requested here), but effectively seeing "Yeah I'm pretty sure it was just an explicit nod to the trope" and even stuff like " so maybe they're getting a little better, but still, it took until ME3 for it to happen, and it's still pretty bad" (does this mean we shouldn't try for DA3? I mean, wouldn't that just frustrate people that they had to wait as long as DA3 to get something that was more pleasant). I'm certainly getting the impression that if we do try, we better not **** it up or it only comes across much worse and ends up undermining our entire intent of trying to be more inclusive.


So the entire idea of "lets have some happier lesbian relationships" is a simple enough request, as the thread has gone on it's become increasingly critical as BioWare is now displaying some level of incompetence (sure, I'm sure my impressions of a gay character would not be that well done - if that's how one defines incompetence then sure it's incompetence) or even possibly implicit acknowledgment of various tropes.


EDIT: Added an important "if"

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 29 mars 2013 - 10:22 .

[Allan Schumacher]

It's not hard to not screw it up, that's the thing. Just include relationships that don't end with them dying/breaking up/what have you.

Evidently it is. It exists in ME3, but it's not good enough because something bad might happen to them on Thessia. That they may (or may not) have died due to reasons not at all related to the relationship is thrown completely out the window by you. So I actually disagree that it's not hard to not screw it up, if people are going to manufacture additional reasons for why this particular example doesn't work. Because what I am seeing here is that these relationships are looked at under an even more intense microscope. It means more than "just include relationships that don't end with them dying/breaking up/what have you" as there's also "and be damned sure I can't scrutinize it to the point where someone can make an assumption that it's not just fitting some trope or stereotype.

This is in part what I feel Gaider refers to when discussing privilege in his GDC talk and recent interviews.

For instance:

Also, she travels aboard the starship Demeter, a name originally used for the ship that brought Dracula to England

The name Demeter is an ancient Greek name used for the goddess of harvest, who expresses great sorrow when her daughter goes missing, stopping the seasons and causing living things to cease growing, and eventually die. It seemed to fit Morinth's story pretty well (as well as giving me an implication that it may resonate with Samara more strongly than Samara lets on) when I played it, and it was the initial impression that I had. Sometimes coincidence happens. Again, this seems to reinforce the idea that it doesn't seem as simple to not screw it up, if things can get scrutinized and coincidences are assumed to be deliberate call outs to particular tropes.


What my example about me as a white gamer was intended to illustrate was "We are trying, but we might bugger it up from time to time." It's fine to say "I'd like to see more NPC lesbian relationships that end up better than they typically have been because I feel it's important."

This claim is perfectly fine and completely valid, and doesn't even need any sort of mental gymnastics to justify an absolute perspective that it never happens (since that just opens you up to scrutiny and obfuscates the thread). Whether it never happens or just rarely happens, ask for it because you want it and feel it's important. Going onto tangents such as how you're frustrated because you had to wait as long as ME3 for it to happen at all, and how it was still pretty crappy, turns the topic into something more adversarial than it needs to be, and argument sides start to become competing teams and nobody wants to lose.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 29 mars 2013 - 10:52 .

[Allan Schumacher]

I just noticed something. Schumacher says "keep in mind that the end goal of being all inclusive is that we all won't even notice these things." But he also agrees with Gaider that privilage means not considering something a problem because it doesn't affect you.

Isn't that incredibly contradictory? We're supposed to simultaneously not care about gender, race, sexuality, etc., but at the same time we're 'privilaged' for not considering those things a problem?

They represent two different states, coupled with you not understanding what privilege is. Privilege is not recognizing that something is a problem for someone else, because it's not a problem for you. My (admittedly idealized) end state is that it gets to a point where it's not a problem for anyone, so it isn't a position of privilege. (All people being equally privileged is equivalent to no one being privileged at all).

[Allan Schumacher]

sandalisthemaker wrote...

Something doesn't have to be intentional in order to send a message.

Well, at least we're all getting insulted now (including me).

I'm rather proud of attempting to be more inclusive in our stories and characters, and at this point I think it's best for me to just take a break rather than have people tell me that our attempts have only made things worse because we're sending hidden messages.  Doubly so for actually suggesting in a different post that it's like we're suggesting that if they were in heterosexual relationships things would have been fine.

At this point, I hope the writers just do what they want to do.  If it's not good enough for some, so be it.

[David Gaider]

Xilizhra wrote...
What is with this pattern, Bioware? It seems to be consistently committed by different people, so I don't know if it's an issue with a single writer... is it some kind of corporate culture issue? An addiction to certain tropes? Because while there are certainly plenty of straight relationships that have the same issues, there are also those that work out basically fine, and even one gay male one that seems to be going well (Wade/Herren). So again, I must ask; what is the reason for this pattern?

Thank you for pointing out this issue. I wasn't aware there was that many relationships in the Dragon Age which could be perceived as happy and working out well. Clearly the writers slipped a few by me. I'll need to work on that, clearly.

[David Gaider]

Atalanta wrote...
Aveline and Donnic finding each other was also fantastic, and I don't think that it's unreasonable to ask that gays and lesbians also have a positive example or two to take away with them after they finish a game. I think it's difficult for non-LGBTs to wrap their minds around just how little there is written with us in mind in media, and how big of a difference positive protrayals in fiction can make. The desire to not be excluded is the major reason these kinds of threads are common - not to attack the developers or to make people feel uncomfortable.

It's not unreasonable to ask, but I think it's also not unreasonable for us to say "no" in this case. I believe my obligation extends to making these characters human, not to making them happy or even making them positive examples of anything.

Considering the original point had to be stretched pretty thinly in order to connect the dots as she wished, the ultimate point that ends up being made is a rather thin one. I'm not really convinced there's a pattern of targeting lesbian relationships as unhappy over the course of Dragon Age-- one would probably get better mileage saying "I'd like to see more happy relationships at all", which I would still glance sideways at because I think happy is boring but I at least could understand where someone was coming from on that front.

[Allan Schumacher]

They need to happen...really? Why is that? To balance out some imaginary
scale of justice? Will the social progressives with their agendas and
quotas arrest Bioware for not being inclusive enough?

Presumably because he feels its important and something worthwhile for the industry (at least in the short term), as opposed to any inclusive-boogey men chasing us down.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 31 mars 2013 - 06:19 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Thread cleaned up. Do not respond to troll attempts.

[Allan Schumacher]

I can't say that I'm not disappointed at how dismissive the developers have been towards OP's point.
When you take the sum of both Dragon and Mass Effect, there's definitely a trend. Not so much with Dragon Age alone, but it's concerning there too.

Dismissive? It has to do more with presentation of said point.

I actually told the OP to just state she'd like to see more varied representation of lesbian couples for no other reason than because she wants to see it and it is important to her.

Things get bumpier when stuff like this comes up:

And now, it seems, the Masked Empire book is going to do the same damn thing with Celene and Briala. What is with this pattern, Bioware? It seems to be consistently committed by different people, so I don't know if it's an issue with a single writer... is it some kind of corporate culture issue? An addiction to certain tropes? Because while there are certainly plenty of straight relationships that have the same issues, there are also those that work out basically fine, and even one gay male one that seems to be going well (Wade/Herren). So again, I must ask; what is the reason for this pattern?

Instead of it simply being "This is something new we're trying, and even in the words of Gaider we're occasionally going to screw it up sometimes" it becomes an issue with our corporate culture, trope addiction, and is essentially an adversarial approach. It couldn't be issues with the subject matter being new, the idea that we don't isolate NPC romances from PC romances when we examine some of this stuff, or just a plain ol' simple oversight.

It ends up undermining the actual point, which is a request to see more positive lesbian romances among NPC characters, by shifting the focus to what sort of motivations and systemic/institutional issues we must have that have prevented us from doing this. It ends up coming across as an attempt to shame us into changing our behaviour ("look how bad you've been. Stop it now."), which paradoxically often results in an innate resistance to "being told what to do" that human beings are so good at displaying. Myself included.

I made a link to a post earlier in this thread about the idea that human beings don't like to admit defeat, so the tone and adversarial nature of this thread now must overcome that additional hurdle before it can be included in the game as well. Fortunately David seems like a pretty reasonable fellow but in the end BioWare is made up of human beings that are going to behave in irrational ways that human beings do.

[Allan Schumacher]

Fuggyt wrote...

Xilizhra wrote...

And yes, if you can include more positive lesbian relationship examples, that'll be enough.

How many examples will be enough?  One?  That's a token.  Two?  That's pandering.  Three?  That's an agenda. 

I see your point, Xil, I assume you see mine.

This isn't Xilizhra's problem, it's ours.  If we're going to include something that is against the status quo and potentially controversial, we need to accept the responsibility of any potential reactions to our portrayals and decisions.

It might not be good enough for her, or maybe it  will.  That bridge will get crossed when people play DA3.  The request itself is fine as is, and extrapolating ulterior motives and/or expected reactions isn't very useful either.

The request is in and it's perfectly fair and valid, if for no other reason than it is important for her.

[Allan Schumacher]

The semantics argument is going in circles at this point...

[Allan Schumacher]

This thread has about run its course I think.