#i would not read it looking for Trans Woman Representation™

[txttletale]

Does seruis weaknesses feature a trans girl.?

[alexfeelyx]

I may be a little bit more forgiving towards the use of anachronisms or modern terms (Titans come from Greek mythology and champagne comes from France, neither of these words have a place in a fantasy universe if we're being very strict about it), but I also bristle at how the issue of gender and identity is handled in Veilguard. (I haven't finished the game yet, so these are just my impressions so far.)

I'm happy that we have a queer companion character. I myself am a trans man and so is my Rook. I don't particularly relate to Taash or the way they are portrayed, which on the whole feels rather shallow, but 1. I don't have to relate to every fictional character and in my personal opinion that is a GOOD thing (queer people tend to be upset when a queer character doesn't map 1:1 to their experiences. Guys, we keep asking for diversity! This is why!) 2. every companion character feels rather shallow, imo. I don't recognise my own experiences when I look at Taash but I think that I don't have to, and if their story feels shallow, well that's not unique to them.

But I have a big problem with the language it is couched in. It feels jarring! I would be ecstatic to discuss non-binary genders in a fantasy game, but for the love of god, come up with some terms for it! Aqun-Athlok was a great example, in that at least ONE culture in Thedas already has a word for a similar concept, it's a culture that Taash is connected to, they could have brought that up and iterated on it. They could have had a conversation on how in the Qun, gender is tied to function but in Rivaini society, it isn't. How one could be a warrior and still a woman, and how that doesn't have to have anything to do with one's body. Et cetera, et cetera.

There's a lot of... shoehorning in real world, modern day terms that I consider to be... hmm, I wanna call them ‘social media-speak’ similar to therapy-speak? Maevaris telling Taash that they are ‘valid’, or Taash (and rarely others) repeatedly calling artifacts ‘cultural’. How to tell the audience that you've read someone talking about colonialism on Twitter and just unthinkingly migrated that terminology into your fantasy game, lol. I would have been okay with them calling an item ‘culturally important (to the Dalish)’ or something but it's constantly Cultural™, almost as a noun. (Let's not get started on how they basically managed to make every single faction toothless as hell... The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, The Crows becoming Assassin Daycare, etc.) Feels jarring as hell. ‘Gender’ and ‘gender stuff’ also hurts my ears a little bit, especially with the constant repetition. I can barely have a conversation or hear any banter with Taash without it coming up.

And this leads me to another issue, which is that I think they bring up the topic constantly. Not just with Taash! There's one NPC you run into in the Hossberg Wetlands, who gets addressed as they/them from the first moment onward. I really enjoyed how nobody questioned that, there was just a random non-binary NPC in the game. Except later when I returned to talk to them further, the NPC told my Rook how another character was a super close friend to them, helped them figure out the whole non-binary thing and I was like... buddy we've known each other for 5 minutes. I think they knew that a lot of queer people were super fucking tired of characters being touted as queer representation when it's like... if you look at them and squint and tilt your head you can MAYBE tell they are queer, and they wanted to avoid that and overdid it a little.

In a way this game feels a little bit like Uncle Tom's Cabin, it has that ‘he a little confused but he got the spirit’ energy. In my opinion they have made the entire topic and conversation around gender exactly as annoying, inescapable, jarring and cringe as the average gamer dudebro would fear. Ya know? Like, if you put a trans character into a game who mentions being trans ONE time, those people would complain about the Trans Agenda Being Forced Down Their Throats. With Veilguard? Even I'm getting annoyed.

And I'm annoyed especially because they did a good job with these in Inquisition. They wrote a character whose personal quests revolved around being gay in a big way but 1. they didn't need to use any jarring modern day terminology 2. they managed to write it in a way that was emotionally resonant and made sense for both the world and the character; and they wrote a trans character who also didn't need any Gender Studies 101 terminology to explain who he was.

im definitely not a fan of this man on a personal level for several reasons but guys im starting to think da lost a load bearing wall when he left