490 réponses à ce sujet

[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 .

[Goneaviking]

Xilizhra wrote...

Sylvianus wrote...

In M3, we have a female human who is in love with an Asari and she decides to leave her boyfriend because of her. Or maybe, it wasn't considered happy just because of the man who finally remains alone ?

We also had a female human married to an Asari and who calls her " wife ", and she had children with her, so it means that it wasn't a bad thing or doomed. Ot don't you think it wasn't an happy relationship just because of the context of war in M3 ?

I mentioned those. The first one seems to break up if you finish the conversation, and the second has their daughter likely torpedoed when Thessia is attacked. Now, technically, that's an improvement on the others, so maybe they're getting a little better, but still, it took until ME3 for it to happen, and it's still pretty bad.

It's actually worse than that, with the asari partner in the first relationship actively urging her lover to leave her husband and then backing out of the relationship when she realizes that her human lover was expecting a commitment with her instead of just a torrid affair.

When I realized what was happening in that conversation string it made me genuinely angry, not because of the sexuality of the participants, but because it's just such a cavalier way of treating people - the human woman was an object of desire when she was unavailable and then uninteresting when she became available; her husband was never anything more than an obstruction in the path of lust.

With the human soldier and her MIA asari lover in embassy, we learn that the human soldier was forced to choose between her family and her lover, and that her family will have nothing to do with the couple or their daughter. That's the tragedy of the relationship, with the fall of Thessia and the implied death of the asari partner and the child being extraneous to the relationship.

Of course either of those relationships could have been written with a male instead of a female character, but the trope does apply.

[Goneaviking]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

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.

I agree with this.

There's tragedy in many of the relationships, I don't think that the tragedy is always at the end of the relationship however, and sometimes I think it serves to show the strength and value of the relationship.

In this case for instance, it was the soldier's having to choose between her own family's bigotry and her love for an asari. To me that's tragic, but it's also a positive display of the genuine and serious feelings that the characters felt for each other.

The fall of Thessia is extraneous. It's an ending slide at the conclusion of their romance. Sad, but irrelevant.

[MissOuJ]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

It's one thing to say 'hey, there aren't many successful lesbian relationships between NPCs.' It's another to start searching for a conspiracatorial basis for a pattern when your sample population is both small and selectively biased.

... This is exactly what this thead is about. The (additional) problem is that media in general (as in, not just video games) has a pretty poor track record in portraying SS relationships - as this TVTropes article demonstrates.

People are not accusing BW of some systematic company-wide homophobia, more like "You know, this is a thing that pops up in your games, and seeing that it has unfortunate implications we'd like you to consider this particular issue the next time you portray female SS relationships".

Talking about the whole Morinth issue... I feel like the allusions to vampirism and Dracula in particular are so obvious that was a deliberate homage. The fact that her victim was a woman and that Morinth was a member of an all-female species is what makes her character cross into the Lesbian Vampire trope - which probably wasn't intentional. However, that it wasn't intentional doesn't make it any less prolematic or make criticism of her character any less valid.

[Fast Jimmy]

Sejborg wrote...

RaidenXS wrote...

are asari definitivly female? or just have similer traits that female humans have? Maybe they're all hermaphrodites

Nope. All female according to the lore.

https://encrypted-tb...As68ijNoR3ha8EA
YOU BETRAYED THE LORE!

https://encrypted-tb...DGXnCKTjmxv6ykg
LOOOOORRRRREEEEE!




Also, in relation to the topic at hand, I believe the reference to similarly tragic events in other relationships, such as that of Conrad Verner and his wife (a straight relationship that begins to crumble due to Conrad's tenatitve grip on reality) and that of Eamon and Isolde (where the trophy wife invites an assassin to train her son to control his mage powers which said trophy wife keeps a secret from her husband and ultimately leads to the deaths of many, including possibly the death of the wife or child) are just a handful of examples of straight romances going to bad places, as could others, such as Jowan and Lily.

Point being, there likely is less of an intent to make romances of a certain sexuality as tragic, when in reality, love is such a tenuos thing, in real life and in fiction, that it is an easy target for tragedy. Was Shakespeare being heterophobic by writing Romeo and Juliet? Of course not. Similarly, finding tragedy affecting romances of various sexaulities does not neccessarily represent either an agenda to malign them, nor does it neccessarily represent any intentional act at all. 

And, in all frankness, this type of discussion is, in my humblest of opinions, only likely to make writers less likely to try and tackle the idea of content of differing sexualities at all. Bioware may very well make the entire world player sexual, but all NPCs straight with each other, just to avoid falling into perceived pitfalls.

[color=rgb(170, 170, 170)">People are not accusing BW ] we'd like you to consider this particular issue the next time you portray female SS relationships".[/color]

To which the writing staff may, very easily, just say "well, we can't get anything right. So let's not step on any toes at all and just do what we know - all straight NPC relationships." Not to say Bioware would (or even that the writing team would listen), but that it is an outcome on the table that is probably worth taking into consideration.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 29 mars 2013 - 11:08 .

[TheJediSaint]

MissOuJ wrote...

People are not accusing BW of some systematic company-wide homophobia, more like "You know, this is a thing that pops up in your games, and seeing that it has unfortunate implications we'd like you to consider this particular issue the next time you portray female SS relationships".

The probelm is that if you're willing to cherry pick examples without citing the context of those examples,  you can find unfortunate implications in just about anything.  

Modifié par TheJediSaint, 29 mars 2013 - 11:12 .

[wetnasty]

MissOuJ wrote...

Sylvianus wrote...

For the second, I'd say that has nothing to do with the lesbian relationship. M3 is about war and its consequences that happen to everyone. that was the point of the game. I don't remember any couple who ends well, personally.  The fact that the woman is married to an asari, calls her " wife "  as if that was normal, shares children with her love, shows how their life was happy before the reapers, how it was a good relationship between them. But if your point is we need absolutely something good and absolutely happy, why not.

There are still hetero relationships that do not end in tragedy, or if they do, it's not explicitly explained - by which I mean you're not delivering the other woman's dying message to her partner as a sidequest.

For example: Gabby and Kenneth, Jeff and EDI, Garrus and Tali (from ME3), Aveline and Donnic, Fenris and Isabela (from DA2).

Jeff and EDI don't end out well if you choose to destroy all synthetics. There is also the possibility of your squadmates dying in ME3, so any squadmate pairings don't count.

Same with Fenris and Isabela. There is a possibility that Isabela never comes back... There's a possibility that you kill Fenris. 

Gabby and Kenneth are an optional quest, and I NEVER got them together or even knew that it was possible to get them together until someone told me way after 5 or 6 of my playthroughs. 

So that just leaves Aveline and Donnic? And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that an optional side quest? 

[Rixatrix]

It would have been nice to see more healthy lesbian relationships in the games.

However, I never got the impression that the relationship between Samara and her wife was bad. It just seemed as though Samara needed to follow her duty and become a justicar. Does having a child who chooses to become a criminal count as a bad ending to Samara x Wife's relationship? Perhaps Wife died (since we never see/hear from her)? Does that count as "bad ending" or just an ending?

Also, I don't think Morinth killed exclusively female victims. At least not if you play Broshep.

I think if you're going to continue the discussion credibly, you may need to define what "bad ending" and "happy ending" means in the context of a game-portrayed relationship. Everyone dies eventually and sometimes couples have children who make bad decisions, but does mean the relationship ended badly? Perhaps you are just asking to see a lesbian couple that doesn't die as far as we know?

[Sejborg]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Sejborg wrote...

RaidenXS wrote...

are asari definitivly female? or just have similer traits that female humans have? Maybe they're all hermaphrodites

Nope. All female according to the lore.

https://encrypted-tb...As68ijNoR3ha8EA
YOU BETRAYED THE LORE!

https://encrypted-tb...DGXnCKTjmxv6ykg
LOOOOORRRRREEEEE!

Lore? Let me tell you something my friend. Lore is a dangerous thing. Lore can drive a man insane. It's got no place on bsn.

(on my phone so imagine a pic of Morgan Freeman here )


Also the point of this thread is hardly to stop bioware from having lesbians in their games. Rather it seems to me that the point is that the current representation might just not be very flattering. Kinda like when the single black dude always was the first to die in the horror movies.

But what do I know. I'm just the rich straight white dude.

[BlueMagitek]

The only happy family in Dragon Age is the Kent family.

All other relationships are in ruin, regardless of sexuality.

[Commander Kurt]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

There's also an element of trope adversion in what he's writing about: the idea that there's some obligation, moral or otherwise, to avoid repeating a trope that could possibly be interpreted in a certain way.

That's simply double-guessing yourself, and it's beyond silly to downright counter-productive. Tropes can't be avoided: there hasn't been new literary devices in aeons, only remixes of less remembered ones. People can, and will, take offense to just about anything your do or say, and will take efforts to present things in such a way to justify their offense. Trying to avoid giving any offense is futile, and is just as likely to be offensive in itself.

Take, to point on topic, the idea of happily successful lesbian romances. We can give the player access to lesbian romances. We can treat the player character and the significant other as happy, content, emotionally balanced, and going in a positive direction. We can assure that audience both parties live (the Warden, Hawke, Destroy!Shepard, and heavily imply that they remain together or will get back together as the credits roll and the hero metaphorically is left to go off into the sunset. We can throw in all the 'I love you' assurances, emotional support between the characters, and even the prospect of little blue babies that's what you want.

Someone is still going to wave that all aside and say it doesn't count, to take issue with how something else presents the issue, and claim that it's an issue of incompetence or failure.

This is very true, and I have basically the same qualms about the presentation of this thread as you do. Still, I feel that any uncertainty regarding the presentation of minorities in gaming is best met with a curiosity and a willingness to learn and my hope was that Allan hadn't lost any of his.

[Dean_the_Young]

MissOuJ wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

It's one thing to say 'hey, there aren't many successful lesbian relationships between NPCs.' It's another to start searching for a conspiracatorial basis for a pattern when your sample population is both small and selectively biased.

... This is exactly what this thead is about. The (additional) problem is that media in general (as in, not just video games) has a pretty poor track record in portraying SS relationships - as this TVTropes article demonstrates.

People are not accusing BW of some systematic company-wide homophobia, more like "You know, this is a thing that pops up in your games, and seeing that it has unfortunate implications we'd like you to consider this particular issue the next time you portray female SS relationships".

If what I wrote were all of what this thread was, I wouldn't bother writing it. Xil has taken it a step further than that, and not in the best faith.

Talking about the whole Morinth issue... I feel like the allusions to vampirism and Dracula in particular are so obvious that was a deliberate homage. The fact that her victim was a woman and that Morinth was a member of an all-female species is what makes her character cross into the Lesbian Vampire trope - which probably wasn't intentional. However, that it wasn't intentional doesn't make it any less prolematic or make criticism of her character any less valid.

To vampires? Yes. To Lesbian Vampires, The Trope? Not so much. For one thing, Morinth is never lesbian as much as she is bi, which is contrary to the trope. After all, the thing that makes a Lesbian Vampire trope the trope is that she isn't interested in hot male blood. Here it is an innacurate representation of the character involved.

As for calling it problematic or a criticism to identify somebody by a trope... all characters can be identified with a trope. Associating it was a criticism is like trying to condemn somebody with red hair by calling them a ginger. It doesn't really mean anything.

[Fast Jimmy]

^

How DARE you insult the proud gingers of the world?!

[Dean_the_Young]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

^

How DARE you insult the proud gingers of the world?!

You're just being quick again, Jimmy.

[David7204]

I'm somewhat doubtful that trying to move issues such as race and gender and sexuality into being unnoticable is the right decision. Even if it was doable.

Modifié par David7204, 30 mars 2013 - 12:30 .

[Direwolf0294]

General rule when it comes to inclusiveness and equality: no matter what you do, you'll get on someone's bad side for doing it.

Have a female protagonist that's tough as nails and kicks ass, and for as many people that praise her there will be those who accuse the character of just being a male character that's switched genders. So you "girl" her up a bit; have her go shoe shopping or something (I don't know, I'm using stereotypical examples here) and suddenly you've got people hating you for weakening the character and not being able to write strong women.

You include some black guys on the team, they're great characters, but that's not going to stop people calling them token characters. You include a gay relationship; straight away you're getting hate from the homophobes, but you're also getting some praise from the LGBT community. But wait! There's a group that thinks the relationship is unrealistic, or that it's pandering to a male audience (if it's a lesbian relationship), so you add some more drama, some more heartache and suddenly people are yelling at you for not giving the gay couple a happy ending.

The job of the writer is just to do the best they can and tell the story they want to tell without letting the knowledge that they'll ****** at least one person off with it bother them.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

Xilizhra wrote...


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.

A Bioware relationship with a happy ending?

[addiction21]

Dean_the_Young wrote...


That's simply double-guessing yourself, and it's beyond silly to downright counter-productive. Tropes can't be avoided: there hasn't been new literary devices in aeons, only remixes of less remembered ones. People can, and will, take offense to just about anything your do or say, and will take efforts to present things in such a way to justify their offense. Trying to avoid giving any offense is futile, and is just as likely to be offensive in itself.

Second best post on the BSN ever and something many should think over.

[PrinceLionheart]

Xilizhra wrote...

andy69156915 wrote...

Lesbian relationships with your own character go well.

Actually, they don't either. The Warden disappears without Leliana, Shepard gets stomped, and Hawke... well, there's still a sliver of hope there, but I'm not counting on much, given all the disappearing heroes.

That's not exclusive to a Lesbian PC though. You're reaching.

[sandalisthemaker]

I agree with you OP, and Lol at everyone trying to refute your observations and/or saying that *some* straight relationships go bad as well. OP is saying that *ALL* lesbian npc relationships end tragically, which they do.

Modifié par sandalisthemaker, 30 mars 2013 - 11:51 .

[PrinceLionheart]

sandalisthemaker wrote...

I agree with you OP, and Lol at everyone trying to refute your observations and/or saying that *some* straight relationships go bad as well. OP is saying that *ALL* lesbian npc relationships end tragically, which they do.
IMO, its a sort of subtle aesop... that perhaps if they would have been with a man they would have lived happily ever after...*wink wink*

Yep, that's totally what they're doing. 

The only thing this thread is proving is that Bioware has a fetish for the "turned evil via plot device" trope.

Modifié par PrinceLionheart, 30 mars 2013 - 01:31 .

[TheBlackBaron]

PrinceLionheart wrote...

sandalisthemaker wrote...

I agree with you OP, and Lol at everyone trying to refute your observations and/or saying that *some* straight relationships go bad as well. OP is saying that *ALL* lesbian npc relationships end tragically, which they do.
IMO, its a sort of subtle aesop... that perhaps if they would have been with a man they would have lived happily ever after...*wink wink*

Yep, that's totally what they're doing. 

The only thing this thread is proving is that Bioware has a fetish for the "turned evil via plot device" trope.

Well, that, and that nobody reads romance novels where everything goes off without a hitch, because without conflict there is no story. 

[TheJediSaint]

sandalisthemaker wrote...

I agree with you OP, and Lol at everyone trying to refute your observations and/or saying that *some* straight relationships go bad as well. OP is saying that *ALL* lesbian npc relationships end tragically, which they do.
IMO, its a sort of subtle aesop... that perhaps if they would have been with a man they would have lived happily ever after...*wink wink*

The flaw in that logic is none of the lesiban relationships failed because the characters were lesbians.  They failed for reasons independent of their sexuality.

[Goneaviking]

sandalisthemaker wrote...

I agree with you OP, and Lol at everyone trying to refute your observations and/or saying that *some* straight relationships go bad as well. OP is saying that *ALL* lesbian npc relationships end tragically, which they do.
IMO, its a sort of subtle aesop... that perhaps if they would have been with a man they would have lived happily ever after...*wink wink*

It'd be a more convincing argument if some of the tragic endings weren't caused by events that had nothing to do with the relationships themselves.

The asari girl didn't (probably) die because she had two mothers, she (probably) died because she was sent to Thessia right before it was invaded by the Reapers.

That's very different from the relationship between Marjolaine and Leliana ending tragically because Marjolaine was a manipulative, paranoid wretch of a human being perfectly willing to betray those closest to her as soon as it were convenient.

The boundaries of the argument are being stretched to the point where the argument is becoming disingenous. 

[David7204]

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?

Even if his point was that we're supposed to not care at some unspecified point in the future when society is perfect or something, that just leads to infinite regression. We aren't 'allowed' to 'not care' until things are perfect, and things won't be perfect until we don't care.

Modifié par David7204, 30 mars 2013 - 01:47 .