..::VERSIPELLIS :: JOURNAL::..

yeah i have to Post about this discourse but i don't want to put it on tumblr because nobody there knows how to read. it's a hot topic right now because of BG3 and now the new Dragon Age game. this post will not be coherent and i will not be engaging in debate i just need to VENT

anyway. the concept of "playersexual" romances in games will always prioritize straight players first and you can't convince me otherwise. if bisexuality, or queerness in general, only exists in the game if the player opts in to seeing it (by choosing to play a queer romance) that's not bisexual representation, it's table scraps! it is not queer representation if a bigoted player can go through the entire game with minimal, or zero, exposure to The Queers!!!

it's also not some kind of diversity win to just like....erase gay identities in the game's universe lmao. where are the lesbians. where are the gay men. like holy shit can we get a game with an extremely butch dyke companion Please. the fact that karlach is playersexual makes me insane, the ONLY way that woman is taking interest in a man is if she's at the club and has a very funny misunderstanding with a twink. astarion talks about nothing but men, he literally can't shut up about boys (wyll in particular) just...let him be gay??? it would be so raw and real for him to realize he's allowed to just be gay after having no control over his sexuality for 200 years, like, that's something gay men go through in real life Very Often. the realizing you can be gay part, not the 200 years.

at least BG3 has a canon lesbian couple with quite a bit of screen time but otherwise it's like....what, that dwarf chef NPC who talks about his husband for 2 seconds? amazing. that's the thing for me, right, is that if the game world at large has other visible, unavoidable gay relationships with more than 2 seconds of screen time, i'd be much cooler with playersexuality. like, show me that you haven't just slapped bisexuality onto this whole world like a bandaid.

what's funny is Dragon Age has had incredible queer representation already, so this feels like a step backward. dorian is a great fucking queer character. the way his experience with his father isn't an exact 1:1 mirror of real-life homophobia, because it has to fit within the context of the fantasy setting, but it's still an extremely relatable gay story that so many people will be able to see themselves in. AND you can't avoid his queerness! if you don't romance him yourself, he starts a fling with iron bull, which also makes bull's bisexuality unavoidable. THAT is how you do queer representation. it needs to happen onscreen outside of me, the player, pressing the Queer Button.

at the end of the day, whenever a game employs playersexuality, i'm just kind of like.....ugh okay i guess? because okay, cool that i can romance whoever, but...by making everyone "playersexual" you're sending the message to me that you think it would just be more convenient for everyone if all of us were just bisexual. bisexuality is just a solution for you. the bi characters' identities are also cheapened, in my opinion, because the distinction between bisexuality and homosexuality is like....a pretty huge part of being bi, you know? tell me a story about a character figuring that distinction out for themself and then we can talk. but i don't think the people writing this playersexual shit are even interested in telling relatable bi stories; they just don't want straights to be mad they can't fuck a gay character. remember when DA:I came out and people immediately started making straight dorian and sera mods? it's giving that.