You confuse me with someone else. Someone with competence. Someone I've never met.

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spicyshimmy:

show a bard a hero and they’ll write you a tragedy: archdemons, landsmeets, dark rituals and sacrifice. show a bard a champion… well, they just might write you a hero, sewn together by patchwork, stained with blood and burning bright, eyes you can’t trust and lips you want to kiss, and an empty hand with armored fingers, talons sharpened like a dragon in flight. 

Dragon Age II companions

NEVER ENDING LIST OF FAVOURITE CHARACTERS: Isabela

You’ll get us through this. You always do.

beermuda:

reasonruleshere:

unremarkable remarks: beermuda: let’s just go over this one more time for the hell of…

beermuda:

let’s just go over this one more time for the hell of it

removing a gender flag/gender restrictions on romance in bioware games does not:

• take away the choice for a player to romance characters of their pc’s opposite gender
• somehow invalidate or weaken character development—if…

This is nonsense. People can be and are frequently attracted to only one gender. Indeed, this is a defining characteristic of most people’s sexuality. It is a part of their character. Just as much as homosexuality played a role in defining Traynor or Cortez, heterosexuality defined Tali, Ashley, and Garrus. Sexual preferences played a role in defining the characters of Leliana, Zevran, Morrigan, and Alistair. A defined sexuality is a trait that is a component of who people are, in reality and in fiction. It frequently allows for more gender specific dialogue, and the variation of sexual preference conforms to experiences in real life, allowing for more believability in the character’s development, the romance in the particular case, and the romance options more generally in the game. Precisely the believability that was missing in the amorphous arena of DA2’s romance options. To pretend this is not a component of people, to “take the gender flag off” is doing a disservice to the integrity of those fictional characters and to the very notions of sexuality identity.

As much as I respect your opinion (which in your particular case I do not, because you expressed it like a total tool), I disagree completely. And look at that. A coherent argument that never resorted to blanket curses at or absurd generalizations about those who disagree.

SLOW APPLAUSE

We are not talking about people.  We are talking about fictional characters in games where romance is not the focal point.   But since we’re treating the characters like they’re people, I do certainly hope that you’re aware that you implied that people who are not exclusively attracted to one gender are lacking in personality.

Considering that most of these aforementioned characters do not actually discuss their sexuality with the PC, and some of these are cross species romances where the physical attraction is absent, your argument about “gender specific dialogue” falls even shorter than it would normally.   Matter of fact, characters who are attracted to the PC regardless of gender do, in fact, have gender specific dialogue that changes depending on the gender of the PC.   Including in Dragon Age II, which was a fantastic example of how game romances where there is player input should be done. 

This is a work of fiction, and escapist fiction at that—this is not real life, and many people who play video games do so in order to, you know, immerse themselves in a fictional world.  You know what else you can’t do in real life?  Fuck aliens.  Meet aliens.  Most if not all Mass Effect fans will probably never be in space.   None of us are going to be slaying any Archdemons, either.  People don’t explode when you hit them.   There are no dragons, there’s no magic, no elves.  No Knight-Commanders.  No aliens that mysteriously appear as attractive women of every single race and have the superpower of being able to reproduce with anyone they want to. 

Real life is also extraordinarily heteronormative, which I understand logically because hey, there are more straight people than there are people who aren’t straight.  But just because there are statistically less of one group of people (and face it, we’re never going to get an accurate estimate of GSM people due to prejudice and homophobia) I appreciated being able to pursue a homosexual relationship in a game I purchased with my male PC.  I’m gay.  I’d never even experienced that before. 

In DAII I had the exact options that someone playing a female Hawke did, and that was excellent.  In Mass Effect, I have the choice between a character I don’t like at all and one that I haven’t spent three games getting attached to.   Granted, f!Shep players got pretty shafted re: relationships in Mass Effect 3 considering two broke off with no player input and a third had to be carried over from ME2 while m!Shep could salvage the counterparts.  All this says is that the ME team really didn’t give too much of a fuck about the people who didn’t play m!Shep in a heterosexual relationship.  They just assumed that most f!Shep players either romanced Garrus or Liara because they’re fan favorites and didn’t put nearly as much thought into f!Shep’s options.

So yeah, I don’t give two fucks about a “creative integrity” that pigeonholes minority players or anyone who doesn’t play the game in a specific way.  Outside of time constraint issues—and there were several—Dragon Age II got the romance system right.   It really pisses me off that thanks to, “boo hoo it’s not realistic for four bisexual people to know each other and now they aren’t real characters because they are attracted to more than one gender,” people complaining endlessly and needlessly, that’s probably never going to happen again.

tool, out

toudou:

queenofantiva:

AHHHH! This is TOTALLY how it would go.
Freaking fantastic.

A good talking to by ~evilsherbear

I laugh every time I see this.

HAHAHA I love this, but you might be surprised, Garrus. Aveline doesn’t exactly live up to her father’s ideals either, or hold to the law when it doesn’t suit her morals. And hey, at the end, she DOES give up her post to help Hawke, so.

flutiebear:

Behold: the face that launched a thousand ships… in the opposite direction.

(wait)

(i mean because they were running away from her)

(because they were Qunari)

(and she killed their boss)

(with her sparky-sparky-boom stick)

(cause she’s a scary mage)

(shut up it sounded awesome in my head)