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Gay Romance

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  • JorkanJorkan Member Posts: 74
    You asked me and I answered.
  • TalvraeTalvrae Member Posts: 315
    edited September 2012
    @Jorkan i ask you again... And why it's different than the civil right mouvement for the women?
  • JorkanJorkan Member Posts: 74
    Hey Jacksbudgie,

    Should I add passive aggressive to the list?
  • AdulAdul Member Posts: 2,002
    You know what, @The_New_Romance, given the recent events in this thread I have been converted to your stance. This community isn't suitable for debating any topic requiring a mature approach. My previous position had been the result of my low exposure to this community.
  • shawneshawne Member Posts: 3,239

    @Adul That is exactly what I believe. That this community, like a lot of videogaming communities, does not have the necessary maturity to civilly debate homosexuality in videogames. Hell, I know Xenonauts (indie X-COM remake) had its share of people opposing the idea of female soldiers in the game, even though X-COM totally had it. With more than half of the world not being able to discuss homosexuality civilly, how would one expect to find such maturity in a forum filled to the brim with people from that world... I don't want to insult anyone, but when I read stuff such as "pro gay people are in reality little girls obsessed with gays", I fear this evening's dinner might say hello to me again. I don't want to make this subject taboo, but I don't want to give homophobia a platform.

    Very few dialogues of worth have ever been cultivated by waiting for people to be "ready", though. Setting aside your assessment of the community's maturity (which I think is a gross underestimation and generalization), the discourse is still necessary - the sooner it runs its course, the sooner we come out the other end.
    TalvraeJalilyCommunardMoomintroll
  • ajwzajwz Member Posts: 4,122
    I think the tone this thread has escalated. Would be nice to see it cool down a bit
    BelgarathMTHJalilyXavioria
  • JorkanJorkan Member Posts: 74
    An apologist is someone that takes up a position, cause or side, not someone that apologizes.
    BelgarathMTH
  • QuartzQuartz Member Posts: 3,853
    edited September 2012
    kamuizin said:

    So... am i entitled to cheer for Neera being the bi romance (i doubt it but who knows)? If i can choose she would be obvious my first choice :)!

    It's not her. On the AMAA, I made a dumb joke about "the 'wild' mage being bisexual," and I was told I was wrong. :P
    kamuizin said:

    @Jaxsbudgie, personal short made phrase as @Grayvie did can't be labeled as agressive or homophobic otherwise any discontent or opposition made to gay romances will be labeled as prejudice ones.

    And here we go back to my counter prejudice theory... and then people will call it hypocrisy... and then existential debates will start... did any of you saw my video above by the way... i'm a seer you know? Anyone wanna bet that soon the flames and bad manners are going to start?

    This...

    @DreamingViks I don't know why you keep advocating that "this thread isn't gonna be aggressive!" it already is. I know you feel some sort of ownership for this thread, but from what I can see, the reasons you want this thread to stay alive is because 1. you want people to come to some form of agreement (which isn't going to happen), and 2. you didn't experience the old threads on this that ended the exact. Same. Way.

    Nothing changes, just rearranges.
  • serialiesserialies Member Posts: 45
    1. If they add a gay option, it should be done well and because it'll add to the story. Not just because or to be all "equality"
    2. To me, adding a gay character to BG would be like adding an asian or hispanic dude to the A team to add "equality" or "appeal to a larger audience". I got nothing against asians or hispanic people, but its clear that'll make shit wierd and ruin the nostalgic experience and otherwise interfere with the mesh already woven. Of course, an extremely skilled writer or a really good deployment of said asian/hispanic guy could probably make it work (hence no.1), but in reality, 9/10 asians added to the A team will make it suck. In the same vein, adding a gay character to an existing game or series will probably make it suck.

    No one really had a problem with zevran being gay in dragon age, because it fit his character and accentuated the idea that being a broken man, he learned to appreciate love no matter the form. And he was gay/bi from the get go, it was a new series and a fresh plate, making him gay did not warp or shatter pre-existing experiences or conflict with previously established atmosphere.

    on the otherhand, making shepard possibly gay in ME3 caused backlash because 1. it was poorly implemented 2. came out of nowhere 3. was clearly motivated, atleast in part for the whole "equality" notion, rather than motivated at improving the story.

    So if they do add a gay character, they better do it well so it doesnt conflict or ruin what was already built up, or not do it at all. Thats how i see it, hate it if you want.
  • AdulAdul Member Posts: 2,002
    @serialies, I disagree about your assessment of the Mass Effect 3 male gay romance option. It wasn't perfectly written but neither were the other romances, and it was certainly not horrible compared to the rest of the options. It wasn't out of nowhere, at least not for me. Since female Shepard had the opportunity for dating both sexes right from the first game (Liara is a female for all relevant intents and purposes), Shepard (the character, regardless of gender) had a pretty solidly established flexibility in sexual identity.

    As for the commonly used argument that homosexual relations in games should either be avoided or at least carefully implemented because bad writing makes gay romances suck, isn't the same true for hetero romances? Romances suck in a lot of games because studios feel pressured to implement romances in RPGs, and those very same studios often lack the know-how of how to do it correctly. I think the lesson is "do it the right way or don't do it at all", and it applies to all romances regardless of sexual orientation.
    TalvraeEpitomyofShynessMedullaOblongataSyntia13
  • kamuizinkamuizin Member Posts: 3,704
    edited September 2012
    @Adul sorry but my ass that mass effect general romances sucks. I did Liara, Tali and Ashe romance and they were awersome (Liara only in ME1 and was the weaker romance, Tali and Ashe romance are astounting).

    Ps: I did Liara with a female character.

    Steve Cortez in ME3 tried to throw himself onto me no matter how nice i tried to keep him away, in the end i just get plain with him and them boom, no more banters or interaction with that character as if he was only made to provide a gay romance.

    So i say, ME3 gay romance sucks cos besides the homossexual romance the NPC doesn't offer anything else, he's just filling a quota there. From my view this should be a lot more offensive for the ..."gay community" than to me.

    I just saw a extremly poor developed character, any homossexual person with a minimum of QI can see clearly that Steve Cortez was there to fill a quota and should be upsed by that, as if Bioware indirect says "hey, we support sexual freedom!!! Here's a gay pet for you sheppard, he speaks, cry, fix normandy2 vehicle and if you taught him well maybe he can sit, roll and fake death as well!!!"
  • TalvraeTalvrae Member Posts: 315
    @kamuizin
    I don't know about when we play male since i don't but in ME3 Cortez to my femelle Shepard was a nice character. Pretty deep written with some traume due to war that we help overcome, he just happened to be gay, but he fitted perfectelly with the others characters in the game who where all suffering from the war with the Reapers
    AdulEpitomyofShynessMedullaOblongataGrowling_Gut
  • AdulAdul Member Posts: 2,002
    @kamuizin I'm sorry too but I think you're too hard on the Cortez romance. It was alright. And I wasn't trying to pull down the Mass Effect romances, I think they're fine for the most part.
    Talvrae
  • serialiesserialies Member Posts: 45
    @Adul
    Liara is as a species is genderless, i disagree with your assessment she is female. would you consider E-DE female too? its just a hunk of metal with tits and a female voice.
    Also, since when did shepard have a "pretty solidly established flexibility in sexual identity."? News to me.

    Furthmore, I wasnt talking about implementing gay romance or romance in general (my argument wasnt "homo should be avoided in general" it was "dont add/avoid homo to games/series/characters already made", I talked specifically about putting it into a game/series that was already made/established, or adding it to a character that was already established. Dont put words into my mouth yo

    Think of it this way, lets say gay romance was like a blue ribbon and a game is a statue.
    You could make a brand new statue with a blue ribbon on it. Thats fine, most people dont have a problem with that (unless they believe in certain things that say blue ribbons are EVIL, or something).
    Now, the statue can be crappy, or good, the ribbon can be crappy or good, either way thats how it was made. People can say "hey, that blue ribbon doesnt fit the statue" or "the ribbon was good, but the statue was crap", but theres no issue in preserving the statues identity or anything, because the statue was made with the ribbon, it was already a part of it.

    But if you then aquired the rights to say, the statue David and felt that the blue ribbon would "appeal to a larger audience" or whatever then you'd be messing around with a work that was already finished, many people might be against the addition of a blue ribbon and they'd be justified in being so, doesn't make them blue-ribbon-phobic. The difference here? David was finished, it had an image, it had its own dignity and identity. People looked at david and saw beauty in what was already there.

    Now, lets say it was the greatest blue ribbon in the world, so great that it could bring a tear to your eye with its beauty and elegance. I think that such a blue ribbon would sway many people who were against blue-ribbon-adding, or they'd otherwise tolerate it better. You'd always get some people against it no matter what though, but the point is it'd be compelling and it might work well with david enough to drown most criticism.
    Now, lets say it was a really dirty shoddy ribbon, it would merely tarnish the glory that is david, even if you argued that "hey, we'll just move it to his arse cheek, so you can just look at it from the other side and not see it" (which is like saying, "hey, dont play gay romance if you dont like it"). but for many, they will want access to all the content (so some will want to see his ass cheek/ribbon, but then find its a crappy ribbon), others might get angry just at the knowledge that a dirty crappy ribbon was attached somewhere to david and this is both reasonable and understandable. Hell, if on the news right now they said they were attaching a blue ribbon to david but putting it on his arse so if you didnt want to see it you couldn't, i'd definitely feel a twinge of anger.

    and finally, to the core of your argument, if they started adding NPCs and romance to say, the IWD remake, I would still feel some distain, admittedtly less so than if they added gay-rom to BG, simply because i feel that hetero romances would be easier to implement than gay romances (ergo it might mesh better) so i'd be slightly more optimistic. But if the end result was a shoddy romance, i'd feel equally as pissed, regardless of gay or hetero. Likewise, if they added gay romance to IWD, id feel distain, moreso because i dont think they'd be able to put it off. but if the end result was flavourful and had depth, i'd be somewhere in between indifferent and happy/satisfied.

    So your argument that all romance should be implemented well i agree with, but an important aspect of this is that hetero romances have had much more exposure, writers will have much more reference material and they already have an idea of consumer expectations from a hetero romance. Conversely, a writer might be comfortable writing hetero and therefore do a good job, but be unconfortable or unfamiliar with homo and do a poor job (and while they could change writers for the homo romance, the difference in tone and quality might at best be uncomfortable/strange at worst be offensive). Theres more arguments i can put forward, but essentially in reality, hetero has more things helping it being implemented well, while homo has lots of things which can throw a spanner in the works. End results? hetero romance implemented will probably tend to work out better than homo, IMO.

  • serialiesserialies Member Posts: 45
    shawne said:

    @serialies: It's very easy for people not to see the need for equality when they're not the ones being excluded.

    So my opinion is invalid or im just ignorant because im not gay? you really gonna use that argument?
    If I now demanded that people include an asian character in every game, ever, for "equality" would you support me?

    and if you had arguments against adding an asian character to every game, if i just responded with "its easy for you to say, you're not asian/the racial group being excluded (or something)" would you find that a reasonable counter argument?
  • kamuizinkamuizin Member Posts: 3,704
    edited September 2012
    @shawne you're not interested in equality cos if found you can't create the pandemonium you so much love, we're talking about between straight and homssexual interest here, not about of your right to bring chaos and conflict. Each post that you did from the very first time that i saw your name had "conflict" fixed in it's front.

    Anything that departs from your concepts become a target but i will buy the bait this time, so with a phrase as "they're not the ones being excluded" you ask to be treated as weak, you play the poor figure and yet want the same treatment. This behavior by itself is a stupid form of prejudice. Prejudice exist, but self pity doesn't help any cause.


    @Talvrae i cut the flirt with Cortez in my first play after the 2° or 3° time i spoke with him and therefore i didn't get any of Cortez events (as the drink on citadel bar for example or banter with him outside the normandy in the citatel), in a following game i let the flirt evolve with him and only stopped it at the citadel drink, as past this is a check point of the romance that would cut my romance with Tali.

    That's my reason to not like this NPC. Zevran from Dragon Ages is surely better as someone pointed first and my previous post was just to reinforce the @serialies and defend the general romances of Mass Effect (that despites the crap original end in ME3 is an awersome title).

    Ps: The post of @serialies that i support is the 3° one of him up, as i get a bit confuse with so much ribbons in his last post.
  • AdulAdul Member Posts: 2,002
    edited September 2012
    @serialies I've read your post multiple times, and I must say that the depths you ventured to are farther than I'd go when talking about this issue. Overhaul isn't adding "gay romances" to BG1, they are adding "romances" to BG1. That one of them happens to be bisexual I hardly think is an issue worth mentioning (or even an issue at all), and I sincerely doubt they are doing it to appeal to anyone. It seems to me that you are giving homosexual romances in games special status, claiming they need special care to write/implement (if I understood you correctly), with which I disagree completely. And I don't think we'll be coming to terms on this, so it's best if I just leave it at that.

    Edit: Oh right, I forgot the involvement of Liara in our little debate there. As I said, for all *relevant* intents and purposes, she's female. Which is true. She has a female personality (we refer to her by "she", for example), a body that greatly resembles human female bodies, female face and bone structure, female voice, etc. etc. As we're talking about sexual orientations here, she definitely qualifies as a female sexual partner. But! Even if you disagree with all of that and she's completely androgynous, Femshep can have sexual relations with (human) females in the second game. If you take advantage of all her options, she's bisexual just like her male counterpart.

    Also, I read on the wiki that homosexual relations were actually present in the ME1 as evidenced by voice files but the developers have removed those romance options before shipping the game. I wouldn't go into guessing as to why that might have happened.
    Talvrae
  • serialiesserialies Member Posts: 45
    edited September 2012
    @Adul

    1. Went into depth so my viewpoint of the whole issue (beyond just this game) would be totally transparent.
    2. The title of the topic is gay romance, i gave my opinion, if you're gonna criticize me for being detailed and actually caring about the issue rather than deal with the arguments i put forward, then whatever, looks like i wasted my time.
    3. They wouldn't add it if no one wanted it, so they are adding it to appeal to people, you dont add chilli to a dish if no one likes spicy food. Likewise, they add gay romance for people who are interested in having a gay romance, this in itself is fine, if they can pull it off.
    4. I already explained why i dont think they will be implemented well. not because gay romance is some fragile flower that will wither if not watered properly, but because theres more reference material and marketing research built around hetero that "products" developed at homo markets simply do not have. if you want to just oversimply what im saying to "you think its special and i disagree" then, again, whatever, im just wasting my time
    5. Im more than happy to agree to disagree, just dont try to bastardize my argument in the process.


    EDIT: right, all those arguments can be equally applied to ED-E being female. We also refer to ED-E being "she". Does this qualify her for being female? if you say yes or no it merely identifies your standards.
    I dont think ED-E is female (in the conceptual use of the word) ergo Liara is not female either.
    If you think both ED-E and Liara are female, then fine, more power to you and all that, but i would disagree and that would be that.
  • shawneshawne Member Posts: 3,239
    edited September 2012
    serialies said:

    So my opinion is invalid or im just ignorant because im not gay? you really gonna use that argument?

    That's not the argument I was using, so no.
    serialies said:

    If I now demanded that people include an asian character in every game, ever, for "equality" would you support me?

    That's a false equivalency, because "every game, ever" is not something that's even remotely close to happening. But if, in the recent history of your favorite game genre, there were less than a dozen games with Asian characters and you asked for one more, I'd be in favor of it. I don't need to be Asian in order to understand that there are Asian players who want to be as capable of projecting themselves into the game world as anyone else. And while that experience wouldn't be of particular benefit to me, why should I protest others having it?
    JalilyJaxsbudgie
  • AdulAdul Member Posts: 2,002
    edited September 2012
    Argh. Participating in this argument fills me with a feeling comparable to swallowing razorblades. I'm done for today, everyone believe what they will.
  • shawneshawne Member Posts: 3,239
    kamuizin said:

    @shawne you're not interested in equality cos if found you can't create the pandemonium you so much love, we're talking about between straight and homssexual interest here, not about of your right to bring chaos and conflict. Each post that you did from the very first time that i saw your name had "conflict" fixed in it's front.

    Seeing as how you've interrupted a conversation I'm having with someone else in order to cast aspersions on me, I hardly see how I'm the one looking for conflict.
    kamuizin said:

    Anything that departs from your concepts become a target but i will buy the bait this time, so with a phrase as "they're not the ones being excluded" you ask to be treated as weak, you play the poor figure and yet want the same treatment. This behavior by itself is a stupid form of prejudice. Prejudice exist, but self pity doesn't help any cause.

    I'm going to try and parse this despite having written you off as a lost cause:

    You don't need to be gay to have some basic empathy for people who are. Just because I'm not part of a group that's being excluded doesn't mean I can't want that exclusion to stop, or get angry at entitled whiners like you who try to couch their prejudice in terms like "counter-discrimination" or "self-pity".

    And yes, it is prejudice - why else does the simplest act of inclusion threaten you so much, to the point where you make these long-winded and practically-unintelligible posts about how utterly bothered you are by the idea of a same-sex romance in a video game?
    Jalily
  • serialiesserialies Member Posts: 45
    @Shawne

    So what was the point of saying that?

    also, why dont you support it for every game ever? is there something wrong with that? you spoke of equality (which extends beyond just this game) so why shouldn't every game have an asian character for the purposes of equality? mind you, i think its a silly idea to have asians everywhere, but its equally silly to use the word equality as a free pass.
    furthermore Im arguing on concept, not on magnitude. If the nature of an standard/argument is fundamentally flawed, be it 1 game or 1 million games, wouldnt make it any more or less justifiable.

    secondly, im not saying "durr huur fegets ruinin mah game" im saying that 1. when people put it in for "equality" it tends to ends up crap or just ruin what was there (my asians in the A team example, or ribbons on davids ass)
    2. even though im straight, i played the homo zev romance in DA and thought it was well done, no problems there. If i then play this and the g-romance was really mundane and shallow i'd feel pissed.

    The whole is as important as its parts and the parts make up the whole, in my world view atleast. If one part was inferior to the rest it would tarnish the whole. As I said in my first post, do it well and because it'll add depth, not for some notion of equality. Otherwise you just end up with the token black guy (or token gay guy in this case) which definitely is a shallow aspect of any work.
    Im not against "gay romance", if i were i'd be a hypocrite in real life (for personal reasons I shan't go into). But I am against doing things for the wrong reasons and doing things poorly, which is why i posted the first post above. Equality is a fine sentiment, but it shouldn't motivate the development of a game (within reason).
    Kharas
  • State_LemmingState_Lemming Member Posts: 375
    Hope it's Dorn. That way he can seduce anyone to join the Dark Side.
  • the9shadowsthe9shadows Member Posts: 18
    I love that people are up in arms specifically about a gay male romance. If it was a lesbian one, nobody would care. Gotta love that double standard.

    MachineOfLightMokonaronaldoSyntia13
  • JorkanJorkan Member Posts: 74
    I care about lesbian romances
    kamuizinrexreg
  • JorkanJorkan Member Posts: 74
    Fuck ya Roller12, let's make a baby
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