#idk whenever i post the meme i’ve made. the john mulaney raising his hand i think emily dickinson was a lesbian

[mabaris]

When I say that I wish Morrigan was a lesbian, I don’t just mean that I wish she was romanceable by a female warden (GOD. I absolutely do tho). That's half, but the other half of that is that she feels like the perfect opportunity for a story about compulsory heterosexuality, and that's just as important to it.

She talks a lot about how she was sheltered and has little to no firsthand experience of the world. She knows only what she’s seen and what Flemeth has told her, but part of her journey centers around realizing that Flemeth is not always right, and that there's more to life that her mother could never have told her about. (The grimoire, sure, Flemeth would never have shared with her. But what really stands out to me is that when you gain her friendship, it's something she never anticipated. Because Flemeth taught her there was no point in that kind of relationship, and she believed it unquestioningly.)

Morrigan is no stranger to sexuality (because, well, she says that she's seen her mother bring men home), but it stands to reason that she has very little idea of how it relates to herself. If she has any experience at all up to this point, it's in a similar fashion: seducing people for her own benefit, ie intentionally manipulating them, generally so she can save her own skin (and thanks to the fact that the devs forgot to put female templars in the first game :) it’s implied that these have to have been men)

(And with a male warden who tries to romance her, she says that initially she was planning on doing the same to him: she strung him along because it served her goals, and she wasn’t expecting to actually develop feelings for him in return. She wants to create an old god baby, and she needs him to be the sperm donor. That's it.)

She knows only what she's seen from her mother (or what she can reasonably deduce by herself. She knows how babies are made). She thinks things like love and romance are foolish, and Not For People Like Her, so it makes perfect sense that, in her mind, having sex with men would be one of those things that you're just supposed to do. Even if you get no pleasure from it. Even if it disgusts you. Because you should feel nothing for the other person—otherwise, you're weak and naive.

But I'm enamored with the idea of Morrigan who still doesn’t have experience with friendship or love, who plans on seducing the male warden (which, in this situation, would be Alistair, until she realizes he’s too infuriating lol) because she has the same endgoal. But in the meantime, she makes her first real friend in a female warden, and doesn’t know how to explain things because she doesn’t have any frame of reference for what platonic friendship is supposed to feel like, but surely this can’t be right.

Just like in her romance as it’s currently written, she doesn’t know how to handle serious feelings, and she definitely wouldn’t know how to handle romantic or sexual feelings for someone who isn’t a man. That isn’t one of the things she knew could happen. It's unique because in this case, it's not comp het from society, because she doesn't participate in one. It doesn't stem from any kind of malice or ingrained bias.

It's the blind spot you don't even realize you have, in the same way that she has no reason to know what a flamingo is because she grew up in a bog. It's just the result of being sheltered.