#this was honestly to be expected though would you even recognize a bioware game without some absolutely unhinged

[vaguely-concerned]

I must admit it exhausts me a bit when people compare the interactions between the companions in da2 and veilguard and complain that the veilguard crew don't argue viciously enough or don't have enough fundamental unbridgeable ideological differences. like yeah it's almost like dragon age 2 is a game specifically about implacable human discord in all its forms and that's the theme the companions also build up under and provide a lens to look at. and perhaps. just maybe. veilguard is doing something different and also interesting thematically if you look at it for what it actually is, and its companions are playing into those themes instead (come become beside me my friend none of us have this figured out but at least we have each other along the way. you must struggle with who you are. despite the high high stakes on paper, veilguard (sometimes to its detriment, often to its advantage once you realize this is what it's doing) is really not that interested in outward conflict, between ideas or groups or individuals -- most of the real meat and potatoes is in the internal struggle of the characters with themselves and their identities, the ways they've been changed and also stay the same, it's weirdly deeply trans all the way to the depths of the narrative that way, as well as fundamentally being about trauma recovery. again, what you're ultimately fighting is not actually in the realm of elgar'nan and ghilan'nain at all, it's on the level of solas' despair and his regret over what he's done and who he's become).

tl;dr why are we pitting two bad bitches against each other etc. they're literally both pretty and I love them

[dgcatanisiri]

Gil’s Story Is My Nightmare

You know, it normally takes weeks if not months for my feelings to settle on a subject relating to fiction. Like, my first time through, it’ll wash over me, I’ll consider it a while, and then, eventually, I’ll come to a conclusion.

But Gil’s story rubbed me wrong on first run, and I easily figured out why.

Gil’s story is my nightmare as a gay man.

I know I’m not the first to sum it up, but I am SO frustrated and pissed off by this (and Mass Effect Andromeda’s handling of M/M relationships in general), I need to work it out of my system.

So let’s start with the beginning: Jill. AKA “Fuck This Bitch.”

That’s a pretty extreme reaction coming from me, but… No, you do not get to call yourself a friend to a gay person if you’re going to “tease” them about how they’re ‘making [your] job harder.’ Like… No. This is where real life in 2017 intrudes upon fictional life in 2819. Here and now, gay people face discrimination for this very fact. Our relationships are considered somehow less legitimate because children will never be a biological possibility between the couple. Outside help would always be necessary for that to happen. There’s no room in our world right now for a fictional character to “tease” what real life people suffer.

Which, by the way, as a procreation tech, that would actually mean he makes her job EASIER, because if Gil ever wanted a child, he’d have to go through her. Just because he’s not doing it now doesn’t mean it would never happen. He’s a guaranteed customer at a time when no one is actually really ready to have children the natural way anyway.

And that’s YET. ANOTHER. THING. about this. Jill is talking procreation, talking about her job as a procreation tech, at a time when the Andromeda Initiative has no established colonies and is living almost entirely off of the Nexus. Hell, why is she even out of cryo? This seems like something that should be reserved for second wave, once a foothold has been established, not when the colonies are still in the drawing board phase and resources are questionable at best.

Anyway, far too many real gay people have this as a form of questioning, devaluing, delegitimizing our relationships for this to be something that should ever be teased about. From the Watsonian perspective, maybe (hopefully) that’s less of an issue in the future than it is now, but the Doylist perspective is the one that we have to work with, because this is a real thing that impacts real people.

Indeed, there were homophobic remarks after the title was released that amounted to ‘why would a colonization effort include gay people when they won’t reproduce?’ Now, I don’t know if this had any influence on the story, hopefully meant in a ‘let’s prove them wrong’ kind of way, but… This really just validated them.

Because it’s only the gay guy being questioned here. He is the only one facing the question of reproduction. Not the straight characters. Not the straight relationships. Not the inter-species relationships. The gay guy is being pressured to have a kid RIGHT THIS SECOND.

There is no reason for this to be a subject in the here and now. Literally, this is a decision that so easily can and probably should wait. Again, the Initiative colonies are literally only established in the course of the game proper. Hell, the “suggestion” that Gil have a kid that he actually considers comes at probably one of the worst times – Gil’s maybe in a relationship that’s, generously, a month or two old, and he’s the chief engineer on a ship that’s at the forefront of Andromeda exploration. He’s in a bad place to become a father here and now. He’s on a life-threatening mission that could easily end with his death. This isn’t when you say ‘hey, how about a sperm sample, old buddy, just in case?’

Hell, what about a relationship that only gets confirmed AS a relationship in that scene where we meet her even says that it’s ready for a child? Like, yeah, sure, they’ll drop the love-bomb in the romance scene but being ready to love someone and being ready to raise a child are two very separate things. Why would you even suggest that into a relationship this young and in a situation this dangerous? The Pathfinder and his chief engineer are not in a position to even have a stable environment to raise a child. It's one thing to ask the question as a hypothetical, but this is going straight to the practical before anything has been floated between them.

And the fact that he’ll end up in a family unit with her if not romanced is… very unpleasant in consideration. A gay man is settling down to raise a child with a woman. Please, read that sentence and tell me that you understand why I find that so troubling. This is no unconventional family thumbing its nose at heteronormativity. This is a gay person settling down with someone of the opposite sex in the name of starting a family. And this is considered a happy ending.

Sure, no one mentions that he’s going to suppress his homosexuality or something in the name of making the family unit ‘proper,’ but that’s not the point. The point is that this is a gay person entering a parental relationship with someone of the opposite sex, with her as mother and him as father. That’s pretty damn heteronormative. Him settling down with a woman is in effect devaluing his identity as a gay man in the name of letting him be a father.

I repeat, this is my nightmare as a gay man.

Jill gets so much prominence in Gil’s character arc, I’ve devoted more than a page to just her alone. And without her? There’s really not much to his arc at all. Seemingly every conversation with him ties back to her in some way. SHE’S the one going through a character development and evolution, going from procreation tech to expectant mother.

If you want to write Jill so much, go write her and let someone else write this character. Because he has no independent arc. He’s a supporting character in her narrative instead of the lead in his own.

There’s a telling and not showing element here. There are indications that we’re supposed to see Gil as maturing – he’ll say ‘you’re making me a better man’ in the romance scene, and (much as I’m loathe to acknowledge her) Jill says that something’s changed about Gil when we meet her. But we see nothing of the sort in game. Gil’s character isn’t shown to change over the course of the game. We just get told this, that hey, your very influence and existence in Gil’s life has somehow matured him, without any evidence of how he’s changed ever being produced.

The worst part about this, though, is that we’re likely going to be stuck with this in the final analysis. That as much as we want an improvement in the form of Gil’s story actually focused on him, that would involve writing whole new scenes, bringing at least three actors back into the studio (if not more to offer him better integration into the main cast of characters), and programing that in. That’s a costly thing, and while I honestly think that BioWare should eat the cost, considering how offensive this whole mess has been to an extremely loyal audience… I’m realistic enough to recognize that it’s not likely to happen. The best we can expect is probably some duct taping patchwork in whatever finale DLC they put out, Andromeda’s answer to Citadel or Trespasser.

This story needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. And it sucks because once I divorce all references to Jill from his story, I find a character who I’d like to know more about, that some part of me does find appealing and interesting and relatable. I find something in him I can identify with. But everything else about his story so completely overwhelms that, because so much of it ignores him in favor of a side character who appears in one scene and has like two lines. If Gil were cut, Jill could still function as an autonomous character. HIS characterization depends on HER.

Seriously, this is a case where it really would be best for BioWare to eat the cost needed to fix this because this is homophobic. I’ll be nice and say it’s not intended that way, that this was a misguided effort at queering a straight story for a gay character, but something doesn’t have to be intended to be homophobic to BE homophobic. And given the rest of BioWare’s missteps with handling M/M relationships in this game, it’d be a really solid show of contriteness on their part, of understanding how they messed up, to go back in and fix this whole mess, drop Jill and focus just on Gil’s development.

But I know that they won’t. And it pisses me off.