#Harding particularly is interesting because the Taash romance is also very physical and it’s an interesting balance

[bharv]

A convo with pals had me thinking about the strange disconnect in the Harding romance between the pace of the game and the pace of what we learn about the romance.

The romance steps of the explicitly romantic coded scenes are an intimate chat about feelings (which is lovely by the way) a kiss where you find out her lyrium powers are hurting you, a cute scene with Emmrich where you learn it flares in extreme emotions, and the final romance scene is a kiss (with her little kicky leg) and a talk afterwards.

So you’d be forgiven for thinking that the romance was paced to that. However Harding also mentions to Emmrich that you have both been experimenting with ways to fuck without direct touch lmao. And there is a Taash and Harding scene where Taash implicitly (edit note thanks for pointing this out in comments, I originally used the wrong word here) says hey, if you don’t sexually satisfy this woman I’m waiting 😂

It’s nice to leave some space around romances for HC for sure but I think here there is a bit of an interesting gap between the mechanic and the character.

It made me wonder about some other characters and the pace. Some of them it suits (Bellara, Neve and Lucanis I think are take it slow people for different reasons) but others maybe not so much (Taash heavily implies it’s more physical earlier, and I don’t imagine Emmrich is waiting. Davrin I can imagine might not either) but I would be interested in people’s thoughts!