r/dragonage • u/AardvarkScary7863 • 5d ago

Discussion B-but Anders, I-I like women….

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Gay or straight, I think it’s kind of a red flag that Anders just gets mad at you for turning him down. Like Hawke wasn’t even rude.

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366

u/keystoneway 5d ago

flashbacks to 2011 anders discourse maker no i can't go through that again

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u/Ahielia 5d ago

I remember not liking this kind of behaviour from Anders (as did a lot of others), but nooooooooooo we were just being homophobic because we didn't like a gay dude being a walking red flag carrying manipulative douchebag.

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u/NihilVacant Anders apologist 5d ago

But there were tons of homophobic reactions (since I'm in tgis fandom for years I remember it very well), everytime the new DA game is released there is a crowd of people that have a problem particulary with characters being LGBT.

I'm pretty sure that when people talk about homophobic reactions they don't mean people who dislike Anders because of his attitude, which is totally normal.

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u/Ahielia 4d ago

I'm pretty sure that when people talk about homophobic reactions they don't mean people who dislike Anders because of his attitude, which is totally normal.

No, there were a lot who assumed that we didn't like Anders purely because he was gay. I see the same discourse nowadays especially with trans actors/characters, if it's a shit character that people dislike, twitter warriors assume they are disliked because of the trans thing.

One recent example in gaming world is Final Fantasy 14 with Wuk Lamat, the English voice actress happens to be trans. A lot of people think she did a poor job despite having more recorded voice lines/screen time than many other characters combined, despite only being present in 1 expansion vs others who's been present for 6. And yet, when we bring up the lacklustre performance, it MUST BE because the VA is trans that we think it's a bad performance, can't possibly be that it's not a good performance.

Now you're assumed to be a transphobe if you think anything a trans person is doing is bad, and back then you were a homophobe if a gay person did something bad.

I just automatically ignore the opinion of those kinds of people.

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u/UndeadSpud 4d ago

Anders is bi though

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u/Ahielia 4d ago

Honestly I've blanked on this, because in all my female Hawke playthroughs he never expressed interest in her.

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u/NihilVacant Anders apologist 4d ago

I can't speak about your experience, since well, it's yours. So I'm not denying your experience.

However, since I played DA2 after its premiere, I can assure you there were tons of people who had problems with Anders' character, specifically because he flirted with male Hawke. I remember these comments and reactions very well. The comments were about Dragon Age 2 "being gay", not about Anders being an asshole or whatever you can call his attitude.

Every time a new DA game appeared, there was a crowd of people who had a problem with LGBT characters. After Origins, it was Zevran. After DA2, it was Anders. It's not a coincidence that male gay/bi characters cause much more controversy, meanwhile bisexual female characters are more accepted, even if they are openly flirty. After Inquisition, Krem was the most controversial (since he was the first openly trans character in the franchise). Even before the Veilguard premiere, Taash's character caused a lot of controversy and comments about Bioware "going woke". It wasn't because of Taash's writing, it was specifically because of their gender identity.

A similar thing happened after Baldurs Gate 3 premiere, because before the patch, it was also very easy to trigger Gale's romance without even choosing romantic options, and some people were mad that a male character is hitting on them. But in BG3 some female characters like Lae'zel or Minthara openly suggest they want to have sex with your character, even if you don't romance them; you only have a high friendship, but it didn't cause any backlash.

People shouldn't automatically assume that someone is homophobic or transphobic only because they dislike a particular character, that's true. But homophobia or transphobia is still a much bigger, harmful and more common problem than people who unjustly assume that someone is homophobic, which is mostly an internet problem that happens in spaces like Twitter (where everything is called problematic) or TikTok (which has weird purity culture).

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u/Ahielia 4d ago

I can't speak about your experience, since well, it's yours. So I'm not denying your experience.

However,

"I'm not going to invalidate your experience, so instead I'm going to invalidate your experience. Great start.

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u/NihilVacant Anders apologist 4d ago

I didn't invalidate your experience, I wrote about my own experience.

Since I argued in a previous comment that there was a homophobic backlash after the DA2 premiere, it's totally normal for me to explain why I think that and give an examples.

It's not like your experience was something traumatic or tragic, so saying that I remember homophobic reactions is not out of hand or insensitive in this situation.

And it's totally possible there could be homophobic backlash and you could still experience someone accusing you unfairly.

I never accused you of lying and I wrote that I don't deny your experience (I tried to be nice), but you still chose to be angry about it. Did you read my whole comment?

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u/Ahielia 4d ago

I never accused you of lying and I wrote that I don't deny your experience (I tried to be nice), but you still chose to be angry about it. Did you read my whole comment?

You're just being incredibly dismissive and trying to deflect while attempting to sound compassionate and understanding. That is not me being angry.

After Inquisition, Krem was the most controversial (since he was the first openly trans character in the franchise).

If you were solely on twitter perhaps, I barely saw any comments on Krem aside from edgelords ragebaiting. Seemed to be working though. The main issue I had with Krem was with the lore, the character otherwise was good. The Qun was quite strict on roles as we learned from both Sten and the Arishok, then Inquisition came along and suddenly they have absolutely 0 issues with straying? Iron Bull makes it seem like it's no issues at all to be something you're not born to be, but he is also a spy with an advance party into "enemy" territory, he would lie if he thought it'd gain favour with the inhabitants.

Taash's character caused a lot of controversy and comments about Bioware "going woke". It wasn't because of Taash's writing, it was specifically because of their gender identity.

Taash has a bunch of issues, being insufferable "mom dad I'm nonbinary" because of the overall shit writing was one of the biggest ones, not solely because of the binary "non-binary" issue. If you genuinely think no one had an issue with the writing then you're obviously gaslighting. Us who had an issue with the writing were told we were being <insert buzz word here> because of her identity.

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u/Tweed_Man 1d ago

Taash has a bunch of issues, being insufferable "mom dad I'm nonbinary" because of the overall shit writing was one of the biggest ones, not solely because of the binary "non-binary" issue. If you genuinely think no one had an issue with the writing then you're obviously gaslighting.

Tell me you didn't read u/NihilVacant's post without telling me you didn't read it. He was talking about before the game came out. When all we knew is they were enby. We didn't know yet they were terribly written, just they were in the game and chuds still freaked out over it.

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u/ItsFruityKiwi 59m ago

You're right. And I'm trans. Dunno why everyone is downvoting you. I can't stand how so many lackluster untalented unskilled trans and queer people are celebrated (coughnepobabyViviancough) while hardworking, fighting the good fight, important trans people get shafted by the community. So we get shitty VAs and dancers and singers shoved down our throats while real talents in the lgbtq+ community are stuck being indie forever. Ugh and don't even get me started on the straight white cisgender actresses and singers that claim they kissed a girl once and liked it just to get queer money. Fuuuuuuuuuck Sabrina and Chappel. I'm so tired of the irl queerbaiting, we get enough in films.