Big Shell Incident

Which I actually need to adhere to better, as with that particular account people will get hit by stray spoilers by standing too near it. I also tend to stick other media or so in between, that’s completely spontaneous to my mood. 

So, the current plays are:

• Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)
• Braid
• Contact (DS Which I got partly through and gave up on, but it kept on nagging me to get back). 

Because I have four neurons and I can’t overload them, my upper limit is three at a time Right now I feel bad about dropping some but er, let’s just say I need to build myself a rainbow and get the heck over myself. Now, the future queues are:

1. InFamous (Well, this may be pushed back depends on when I get a PS3)
2. Journey (See InFamous)
3. El Shaddai
4. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (No what’s up with all the moons, it’s like my list is calling me butt)
5. Deus Ex: Human Revolution. (I don’t usually pick up sequels of games I can’t stand, but the fact that people are okay with trying this out on my own pace rather than being demanded to worship the ground the case laid on like the first games made me want to try it.)
6. No More Heroes (I played most of it before having to give the Wii back)
7. No More Heroes 2
8. Uncharted
9. Catherine

Then the ones I’m waiting for the price to drop:

1. Mass Effect 3 (NO LIKE PRICE DROP NOW PLEASE and um, if it didn’t end with a dancing potato I will write a letter to Bioware with my own tears and film the whole thing. I promise. Unless that becomes the Arrow in the Knee meme then I will spare you all of that.) 
2. Last Story

Hmm, I think that’s all? Did I miss anything? Probably. 

***

Completed list: 

Games: 

• Final Fantasy XIII-2
• Katawa Shoujo: Shizune
• Dragon Age: Origin (First time playing)
• Analogue: A Hate Story
• To The Moon 

Books:

• Chaos Walking 1: The Knife of Never Letting Go 
• We Always Lived In the Castle
• The Raw Shark Text (Book)

Because of spoilers, obviously. 

Currently livetweeting Dragon Age (as I’m trying to get through all three), and in between that Katawa Shoujo. 

The romances in the game are not for “the straight male gamer”. They’re for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don’t need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant… and that’s ignoring the idea that they don’t have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else. The “rights” of anyone with regards to a game are murky at best, but anyone who takes that stance must apply it equally to both the minority as well as the majority. The majority has no inherent “right” to get more options than anyone else.

More than that, I would question anyone deciding they speak for “the straight male gamer” just as much as someone claiming they speak for “all RPG fans”, “all female fans” or even “all gay fans”. You don’t. If you wish to express your personal desires, then do so. I have no doubt that any opinion expressed on these forums is shared by many others, but since none of them have elected a spokesperson you’re better off not trying to be one. If your attempt is to convince BioWare developers, I can tell you that you do in fact make your opinion less convincing by doing so.

And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as “political correctness” if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They’re so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don’t see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what’s everyone’s fuss all about? That’s the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.

The truth is that making a romance available for both genders is far less costly than creating an entirely new one. Does it create some issues of implementation? Sure— but anything you try on this front is going to have its issues, and inevitably you’ll always leave someone out in the cold. In this case, are all straight males left out in the cold? Not at all. There are romances available for them just the same as anyone else. Not all straight males require that their content be exclusive, after all, and you can see that even on this thread.

Would I do it again? I don’t know. I doubt I would have Anders make the first move again— at the time, I thought that requiring all romances to have Hawke initiate everything was the unrealistic part. Even if someone decides that this makes everyone “unrealistically” bisexual, however, or they can’t handle the idea that the character might be bisexual if they were another PC… I don’t see that as a big concern, to be honest. Romances are never one-size-fits-all, and even for those who don’t mind the sexuality issue there’s no guarantee they’ll find a character they even want to romance. That’s why romances are optional content. It’s such a personal issue that we’ll never be able to please everyone. The very best we can do is give everyone a little bit of choice, and that’s what we tried here.

And the person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least. And that’s my opinion, expressed as politely as possible.

(Now the italics are my take. I have not played Dragon Age 2, partly because I had this misconcept of compulsory romance. Now I know it is false, I am actually intrigued enough to give it a go when convenient even if pure fantasy is not quite my type of game. 

I need to explicitly state that I have not played the game, because I don’t know if the handling of the romance itself may have contributed to resentment. I’m thinking in terms of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, in which both Kaiden and Jacob’s romance were poorly handled. Consider they were both thoughtful, kind gentlemen otherwise, the bizarre sexual aggression they had shown toward my Femshep scared the fuck out of me. Then there’s Kelly Chambers, who despite of being the gender I prefer, the way her character being in my face left me a tad violated. 

Except from what I can read so far, the problem isn’t that the romance was poorly written, but people are upset with having the option of gay romance and God forbid, sometimes the other party would approach to the player character first! The horror!

Here I am, shedding a single little violin shaped tear for the poor oppressed heterosexual males who weren’t deprived of having the choice of romancing a female character. Is it because the poor boy-child is so incapable of making a decision, that his character is obligatorily Teh Ghay the moment some same sex dude took interest?

I don’t know when, or if, I’ll get around to Dragon Age series. What I do know is that right now, I want to let David Gaider know how much I appreciate him and how thankful I am for his push for diversity. If I can send flowers I bloody would.)

EDIT: Look, it now has a part 2.