#dorian being a man involves the groundbreaking idea that men can think about their appearances and become intoxicated with

[marzipanandminutiae]

Good news! There's a chance that in the upcoming Dorian Grey adaptation they might actually not be brothers!

Because there's a chance they might be making Dorian a woman. The deadline article reported him being named "Doran" and refers to them as "siblings".

So. You know. That's... there.

Is...Doran a woman's name? Is Dorian not? Oscar Wilde made it up; it's associated with the character, but technically it has no gender.

So it's hetero incest, then, is what I'm hearing.

(Also, I like more female characters in things generally, but the fact that I've heard the new adaptation centers around the modern beauty industry leaves a bad taste in my mouth.)

(Like. Oh. Wow. A woman corrupted by youth and beauty. A young beautiful woman who is Evil because she's young and beautiful and that makes her self-centered in the extreme. Groundbreaking)

(You Wanted To Look At A Naked Woman So You Put A Mirror In Her Hand And Called It Vanity etc. a story about youth and beauty that revolves around a MAN is so much a departure from the norm that switching the subject to a woman feels dull at best and at risk of falling into old misogynistic tropes at worst)

(the idea that women, and only women, will do anything to stay young and beautiful- an idea that is usually framed as personal failing rather than a struggle to stay relevant to a society that judges us solely by our appearances and tries to shuffle us out of the spotlight the second we age -is such a worn-out storyline at this point. it's used to trivialize our battles in life and make us monsters in the least interesting way possible)

(Also like. a painting done by someone who is so in love with the subject that they capture that person's very soul in it- literally -is pretty different from the artist representing some kind of Larger Social Ill. That changes the whole story, one feels)

EDIT: someone has pointed out that "Doran" might just be a typo, and I do heartily agree that it's entirely possible. "siblings" worries me a bit more here though

[dgcatanisiri]

I jump at the chance to rewrite Cullen as a mlm because his story is one that speaks to and empowers me. It’s the story I needed to experience in this game, the story that would have made me feel a little less alone in the world. So I say fuck you to BioWare and hammer that story into place anyway.

As time goes on, I really wish that I could feel the same for Blackwall and even Solas, because I do feel like I’d be more forgiving of them (and, as a result, more interested in the characters) if they too were mlm. 

I mean, I do have righteous anger about the fact that Solas was cast with a voice actor who is known specifically in many similar circles to Dragon Age as a franchise as a character who was involved in a relationship with another man, let me be clear. And I would 100% be willing to fight about the idea of Solas as a “depraved bisexual” (which, if any character in Inquisition fits that description, it’s Iron Bull, the guy who can explicitly turn on his lover and must be slain as a result, particularly considering that the narrative clearly wants us to be sympathetic to Solas - tropes are not bad, it’s the use of them that makes them such, and the way to dull the impact of a bad trope is to have counterexamples in your narrative). 

But that hasn’t translated into an interest in really digging into the character and dragging him into my own personal representation, mostly because I think he makes a more convenient target for anger - like, dude, I may acknowledge that Cullen’s redemption arc wasn’t all it could have or should have been, but at least he does acknowledge that he’s made mistakes, that he doesn’t like who he’s been and wants to improve things going forward. Solas just wants to go back and try again. “This time it’ll be different!” he effectively says, without any acknowledgement that he is the source of his own problems. Without taking responsibility for being that source.

Meanwhile with Blackwall... I don’t think it’s anything inherently about his story that stops me. I really just never felt comfortable with him from day one, from his character reveal. He just... always has tripped this feeling of discomfort for me, some feeling of “I do not feel comfortable around you.” That the physical appearance chosen for him reminds me too much of actual people who have left me with this sense of discomfort and unease for me to accept.

And the thing is, I do feel like these issues with these characters might at least be somewhat surmountable for me had they been M/M options.

It’s like how I felt with Josephine’s romance, years ago when I did that the one time. I didn’t particularly get much out of it, all things considered. I mean, it was nice that the romance culmination was not about sex for once, a nice change for this asexual, but... I mean, I’ve seen it before. Man makes a sweeping romantic gesture for a woman, woman swoons, they declare devotions of love... I’m ace, but I’m also a grumpy gay, I don’t need another M/F love story, I am, at mumblety-two years of age, overdosed on them. It didn’t get to me. But if I’d been, say, a lesbian, or a bi woman, getting to play that story with two women, it would have meant a lot to me.

It’s the same thing I come to with Cullen - that story, and that romance particularly, mean something to me, in seeing them portrayed between two men. And, when I look between the game’s male romance options, if I had to take one out of all five of them, it is, hands down, Cullen, no question. That is the character and romance arc that, as the game portrays, I needed to experience the most in a M/M fashion.

So I find myself discarding the rest, because... Well, yeah, I’m being selfish. I mean, how can I not be in this scenario, when we’re talking about the portrayal that was needed in the game?

But I would argue that there was value in Solas and Blackwall as M/M romance options as well (and Cassandra as a F/F option), because, as I have said more than once, and you can crawl through the tag for a myriad of quotes on the subject, THESE STORIES NEED TO HAVE QUEER PORTRAYALS TOO. 

Like, however you feel about Dorian and Bull, as characters and romances, please, at least acknowledge that they still represent stories, concepts, and ideas that already litter mainstream queer portrayals. We have queer angst and pain with Dorian, and we have sexual deviance with Bull. Nothing groundbreaking or innovative happened here in terms of the content proper. And maybe you want to argue that there isn’t that much innovation in the other characters as queer characters, or even take the same “playing into negative stereotypes” concept that held Patrick Weekes back from making Solas a bisexual romance and apply it to any or all of the others, but... I would still argue for the innovative value of any or all of them as queer romances, and at least it would feel like TRYING to break new ground, rather than spin the wheels and call it innovative.