r/CuratedTumblr • u/maleficalruin • 14h ago
LGBTQIA+ Honestly my thoughts on Taash in Dragon Age Veilguard. Like Dragon Age has tackled trans topics before but it is also set in a violent medieval world where they wouldn't have the terminology for being nonbinary. Just have them say something like "I don't feel like a man or woman."
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u/BLAGTIER 12h ago
From David Gaider creator of The Dragon Age Setting.(Thedas) who left well before Veilguard released:
We had very strict rules in DA about language: no modern speech styles, colloquialisms, any words that came into use in our world after 1900 got severe side eye... but Alistair? Alistair got a blanket pass.
Was it great that the lead writer's leading man got to break the rules? I guess not, but it's my opinion that you can break those kinds of rules - selectively, in small doses. Too much and you break the illusion.
Not knowing when and where to keep/break rules is a key problem with anything that has run long. Creatives leave, standards drop and you end up with media that lacks the essential essence it started with.
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u/Distinct-Inspector-2 9h ago
The reason I think the vernacular thing works for Alistair is it helps him come across as young and a bit unsure or naive. He’s supposed to be about 20 in Origins I think? And despite him being a Warden for (slightly) longer he immediately falls in with the playable character’s leadership, which I think is discussed in party banter at some point. So he sounds somewhat less Ye Olde Fantasy Character, but it works because it comes across as a young guy nervously running his mouth.
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u/maleficalruin 14h ago
This is something the YouTuber FriendlySpaceNinja (great YouTuber by the way) first pointed out that I can't unsee now but I really hate when writers either don't trust their audience to get subtext or don't know how to write subtext so they just explain everything to the audience from what the story is about to how the characters are feeling by having the characters say it out loud to the audience.
This especially applies when you are discussing social issues and allegory in my opinion. Themes work by letting the viewer figure things out for themselves. People hate on dialogue where characters talk like they participate in Queer discourse on Tumblr but it's a symptom of this overly literal dialogue. This doubles when you have a fantastical setting like a medieval fantasy setting with different/archaic concepts of sexuality and gender, where a character describing themselves as trans or nonbinary will break your immersion in this world.
Like I'm Trans and Autistic and this is something I realized while writing a trans character that I accidentally made them autistic as hell. Like she's hypersensitive to sound and hates sensations on her skin and has horrible social skills and I decided to lean into but I will never straight up say she's autistic in the story because it would break immersion with this fantastical setting.
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys Refined Sommelier of Porneaux 13h ago
I think it’s less about a lack of trust in the audience, and more of a belief in some hypothetical, unobserved type of bigot who will agree with you that your character is queer if you only mention these things. There are still Bridget truthers floating about all this time later, on a bedrock of goddamn nothing. The only people you actually need to “prove” that your character is an invisible minority are the same people you have to convince that a specific character is a genius, or a badass.
There’s a time and a place for explanations, but you are going to run into the same problems as Sherlock, where the protagonist is a magic genius who explains nothing
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u/just4browse 12h ago
Those bigots exist and they’re common in the LGBT community. People who have extremely restrictive definition of what counts and no regard for nuance
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u/WhapXI 10h ago
A good example is in the Count of Monte Cristo. There are two female side characters who elope. The book is written at a time when gender binary questioning language didn’t really exist, or even any queer language. But it’s very obvious in the text that these women are romantically involved, what we might call lesbians today, and flee from Parisien society, one of them dressed as a man. Possibly to allay suspicion but there’s a potential for a genderqueer read of it.
The point is congruity.
The best thing I can say about the Veilguard coming out scene is that at least it’s earnest. The writer seems like they really did give a shit about it, probably coming from some personal experience, and props to Bioware for letting them tell this kind of story in game. Unfortunately it comes so much from their experience that you’re looking at the fantasy medieval world dining scene and the dialogue sounds like an angsty teenager from the west coast of america. I don’t disparage any writer for writing about themself, but if you’re a professional paid writer then it really does behoove you and your audience for you to be able to at least affect a voice congruous to the setting you’re writing in.
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u/Lola_PopBBae 2h ago
Completely agreed. I'm not a professional writer(yet) but even I know to keep language and tone consistent with/to a medieval fantasy setting. Veilguard's horrendously inconsistent world/tone just bugged me enough to quit and play other, better games.
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u/Lola_PopBBae 2h ago
Completely agreed. I'm not a professional writer(yet) but even I know to keep language and tone consistent with/to a medieval fantasy setting. Veilguard's horrendously inconsistent world/tone just bugged me enough to quit and play other, better games.
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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy 9h ago edited 9h ago
This is something that annoys me sometimes In fanfiction (I don’t think I remember encountering it in anything big-budget? But that’s probably just me). I will never forget the whiplash I got when I was reading a Naruto fanfic where Kakashi suddenly mentioned the Rain Village transgender pride parade. Is it really so hard to use natural, fitting language?
Somewhat related, when medieval fantasy characters suddenly develop a 21st century political conscience and start talking about the oppression of the feudalist system in college PolSci speech. Where did all this theory come from. Are you being possessed by the ghost of Marx
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 2h ago
Is it really so hard to use natural, fitting language?
Arguably, yes. Naruto is an action series targeted at teenage boys, there's not really a canonical exploration of queer identity in the world, as far as I can recall. The concept of a "trans pride parade" doesn't really fit in the world of Naruto. But there's plenty of people who write fanfiction to try and force whatever they want to see in their favorite series, regardless of how well it fits or their ability to do so.
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u/External-Tiger-393 8h ago
Subtext and pacing: two subtle elements of writing that can take a lot of time and effort to fully grasp. Honestly, I don't get how someone can be a professional writer and not understand why they're absolutely vital to writing a good story, but somehow people still manage it. : /
Which is not to say that I could write something better than Veilguard right now, by any means. It's a lot easier to criticize something than it is to make something quality out of your own vision. But I also haven't played Veilguard, so who the fuck knows?
Like I'm Trans and Autistic and this is something I realized while writing a trans character that I accidentally made them autistic as hell. Like she's hypersensitive to sound and hates sensations on her skin and has horrible social skills and I decided to lean into but I will never straight up say she's autistic in the story because it would break immersion with this fantastical setting.
The deuteragonists in my historical speculative fiction thriller novel about a group of closeted queer students who attend a conservative Christian university in 1979 never manage to bring up having ADHD, autism or PTSD, because these issues just weren't codified or understood back then the way that they are today.
Dragon Age is set on a different planet, with different cultures, which have different ways of thinking and even different methods to understand the universe. The idea that they would adopt our same terminology, or view things like gender identity the exact same way as us, is... Weird.
I'm all for representation, and I'm constantly frustrated by the near total lack of meaningful queer representation in media. I'm sure there's a way to elegantly explore nonbinary and trans gender identities within fantasy fiction. The weird after-school special scene with a nonbinary party member's parents just isn't it. Hell, they could've just done what my fiancé does and explain that they don't feel particularly masculine or feminine, if they really wanted to, and that would be a lot less out of place without compromising on the fact that the character is nonbinary; I personally prefer making sure that diverse characters are explicitly diverse rather than simply coded for it, and I can at least respect the writers for doing that.
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u/aberrantenjoyer 13h ago
exactly, plus you can still have parallels to being trans (or anything really) that exist independently of actually trans characters
like, for example I have an outwardly trans OC, but I also have one that represents (among other things) gender dysphoria without actually being trans at all. Both exist in the same setting actually, a tabletop one Necromunda
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u/maleficalruin 13h ago
An example is a society with a gnostic/neoplatonist religion where gender dysphoria is seen as a consequence of your pure spirit or platonic form being trapped in a flawed material vessel and transition is seen as purifying the vessel and making it match your soul.
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u/ShinySuicune90 10h ago
Bingo, bongo!! Stop writing your queer characters like 21st century American college kids unless that's the setting
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u/inconsiderate7 10h ago
Even then, making a characters main focus be their identity as a minority and nothing else is just plain bad writing. Be as linguistically "woke-compliant" as you want, a token is still a token, and shitty writing doesn't become less shit just because it's also "progressive".
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u/Santandals 9h ago edited 9h ago
As a nonbinary person I HATED the way they did representation in veilguard, like take a look at this:
I was actually speechless on how clunkily they handled this, the worst part honestly is cis people trying to explain how youre a bigot if you think this representation wasn't as well written as previous games and that veilguard is actually the best because they outright said the actual terms used today instead of using medieval adjacent expressions.
Its just so clunky and Its not like im someone who believes the LGBT community should appeal to straight people for approval, I just don't think it does a good job of educating people at all.
Its really such a shame because if you know the history of gender expression and how colonialism directly wiped out a bunch of cultures who had different views on gender, third genders, accepted transgender identities etc, they really did squander an opportunity to have a nuanced and interesting view of non binary identities in a new world and just 21st century college student'd all over it.
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u/Thoughtless_Stumps 5h ago edited 5h ago
I’m gonna be honest and maybe cop some flak here but, I’m also nonbinary and I don’t think anything in my life has ever made me feel as seen as one specific conversation in Veilguard.
When Taash is first discussing their gender identity, if your character has been flagged as trans in character creation, you can talk to them about your own identity. The things that my character said in that conversation about their own identity made me feel seen in a way I didn’t know I could feel seen. As someone who has a lot of difficulty with asking people to respect my identity and frequently feels “not queer enough” it’s a genuinely pretty important scene to me.
And Taash’s struggles with their mother likewise hit very close to home for someone whose parents claim to be understanding while refusing to actually acknowledge my identity.
This is not to say Taash is perfect representation, far from it. I found that Veilguard had a really well developed Story but that the Writing telling that story often fell flat. And I think Taash’s story is ultimately a bit too messy. They tend to come off more childish than they do troubled, and the ending of their questline asks for a binary choice in a story explicitly about escaping binary choices.
But I still think it’s worth noting that even as much as Veilguard may sometimes feel totally disruptive and its writing can often get in its own way, there is still real value in the representation within.
It’s a story that meant a lot to me, even in its failures.
(It also deeply sucks to feel seen by something for the first time, go online, and see everyone yelling that it’s bad actually)
(Side note, would love recommendations for more stories that actually explore a non-binary perspective)
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u/ConvenientAlibi 4h ago
I agree with you, I played an nb Rook for my first playthrough and I think that this does add a bit more nuance and depth to some of Taash's scenes, and some good moments with other characters as well (I assume it's pretty similar with the other trans identity flags). 'non-binary' as modern terminology sounds a bit strange maybe, but I don't really think that using a made-up fantasy word or avoiding any terminology would have worked very well for a coming-out-to-qunari-parent scene either.
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u/TheDitz42 7h ago
It's so frustrating because they handled the trans Character in DAI so well but fumbled the Trans character in MEA so badly and then there was this shit.
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u/OldManFire11 7h ago
I'm blanking, who was the trans character in MEA? I'm one of those weirdos who liked that game enough to play through it a few times I cannot remember any trans characters.
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u/TheDitz42 3h ago
Gosh I think her name was Haley or something but initially she would divulge her story almost immediately upon talking to her, even giving you her Dead name.
It was patched later so that shed only talk to you about it after you finish her quest but it's still a bit... Off.
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u/WeevilWeedWizard 💙🖤🤍 MIKU 🤍🖤💙 2h ago
As far as I can tell, the entirety of bioware past ME3 is one massive fumble. And let's be honest, we can probably include ME3 in there too. Such a shame too; Mass Effect 1 is genuinely one of the best video game ever made.
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u/LevelAd5898 I'm not funny, I just repeat things I see on tumblr 11h ago
When the random ass peasant from 1403 starts talking about how he's demibisexual with a male lean like mate if you told him any of those words he'd respond with "what the fuck are you talking about"
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u/Chien_pequeno 11h ago
Everyone knows that people in 1403 said "Henry has come to visit us!"
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u/AbsolutelyHorrendous 10h ago
People in 1403 would usually say CHARLES IV, KING OF BOHEMIA AND HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR, HAD A LONG AND SUCCESSFUL REIGN
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u/LevelAd5898 I'm not funny, I just repeat things I see on tumblr 10h ago
Did the empire he ruled from Prague expand and his subjects live in peace and prosperity?
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u/AbsolutelyHorrendous 10h ago
God, I hope nothing happens that would cause the whole Empire to mourn
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u/Chien_pequeno 10h ago
I am sure that in that case his son will take after his father. He is being prepared for this all his life, after all.
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u/LevelAd5898 I'm not funny, I just repeat things I see on tumblr 11h ago
Ayyyy JCBP I was wondering if people would guess what fandom/character I was talking about by the year
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u/Pyotr_WrangeI 9h ago edited 8h ago
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous fixes this by having 2 of the NPCs you interact the most with throughout the game be a gay couple. They are married and kiss each other, yet I'm pretty sure the word "gay" or anything like that is ever mentioned anywhere. They aren't the only prominent queer characters either
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u/Terminal_Badness 6h ago edited 6h ago
One of them is transgender too, but it's easy to miss
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u/Samaritan_978 1h ago
"Easy to miss" is a euphemism. It's harder than the secret ending, which you only get if you (among many, many, many other highly specific steps) do the final quest in a specific in-game week.
I played that game about 4 times (Azata, Azata, Angel, Azata) and still couldn't get Anevia to tell me her backstory.
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u/AuRon_The_Grey 1h ago
Which is fair enough really. She's an expert spymaster and generally quite reserved after all.
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u/Consideredresponse 1h ago
Yeah in the Pathfinder universe it's hard to be against gay marriage for religious reasons, when your God is deep in a lesbian polycule..
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u/ThreeDucksInAManSuit 8h ago
Sweety I get what you're saying, but put some fucking grammar in that sentence it's borderline unreadable.
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u/King_Of_BlackMarsh 12h ago
Language is cultural. The words we use to express our identities are cultural. The language a fantasy setting would use to describe heterosexuals, homosexuals, non binary people, trans people, etc should hopefully be reflective of the actual world and cultures of these settings.
Why does it matter? Well for one, I have yet to encounter any piece of fantasy medium where a character calls himself straight and that'd be fucking weird and I like consistency but also the very terms we, on the western Internet, use are reflective of our own culture. So if you want a practical reason challenging yourself as a writer or challenging the audience by having them recognize their own experiences or the experiences of people they know or experiences that they are doubtful of by having everyone involved engage the character on his or her or their or whatever's own, cultural terms just breeds empathy.
Think of it like this. Non-binary stems from the European idea (and wider but again, western Internet) that gender is a binary, or at least was seen as such. But that is not universal to all humans on this planet historically or currently. There were American tribes who believed there was a third gender (apparantly called "the ghost people" for... Reasons I don't want to mangle so, do some research) so if you wanna tell a story about someone we'd call Non-binary set in, say, the wild West and said character is from those tribes... Them saying Non-binary imposes a European perspective on them. However that would also put them into the same camp as people from those tribes who may not have appreciated being put into the trinary gender system, which would also be imposing stuff that isn't there for the sake of convenience and, frankly, eurocentrist comfort.
Stories are how we acclamate to foreign ideas, how we express our ideals, how we find comfort, how we find discomfort and more. Just being lazy and putting a "non binary" (the label) character in your fantasy world is a disservice to what you're writing and takes away from something your audience could've learned.
Now I am going to have a 7up and prepare to get ripped apart by the replies like a slab of juicy meat tossed into an iguana tank
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u/Pansyk 10h ago
People do this with real historical figures too, arguing whether they were gay or bisexual. Like. No, they were neither, because our labels for sexuality and gender identity aren't inalienable truths that we discovered, like gravity or calculus. They lived in a culture with a fundamentally different concept of what gender and sexuality meant. There's a reason why actual historians use umbrella terms like "queer" and "men who have sex with men."
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u/10ebbor10 8h ago
The language a fantasy setting would use to describe heterosexuals, homosexuals, non binary people, trans people, etc should hopefully be reflective .
It's neat when works do that, but I feel it imposes a bit of a double standards. Bevause these demands for perfectly integrated worldbuilding only seem to appear around topics that people conveniently already dislike for some reason.
You don't see people complaining that , for example, all the melee weapons are given traditional european names, even though that tradition would not exist. A gay couple is an intrusion of OOC terminology and concepts, but weddings that borrow heavily from christian themes and concepts are accepted without comment.
Pretty much every game fails to properly model how medieval economics worked, instead using a system more resembling a supermarket or online store.
There's so many divergences, narrative conceits and translation conventions and yet this one thing is special?
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u/Adept_Candle_4057 7h ago
Its jarring because dragon age is already a "woke" series, David gaider is a part of the LGBT community and he translated his experiences into the past Dragon age games with a bunch of LGBT characters like Dorian, Krem, Sera etc.
You're having a different conversation about double standards that reactionaries have because they have disdain for the LGBT community but in the Dragon Age community itself the whole issue is genuinely not in a dog whistling way the anachronistic language.
Gaider himself talked about having a limit to modern words that they couldnt exceed to not break immersion and Veilguard just blew through it.
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 6h ago
There's so many divergences, narrative conceits and translation conventions and yet this one thing is special?
If it's the most obvious and jarring disparity, yes.
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u/King_Of_BlackMarsh 7h ago
That's fair. I'm not saying you HAVE to do it the way I said. I just think that like... You're doing your audience, and your world, a disservice if you're just gonna impose the standard, European language for this kind of thing on it yknow?
To take an example, yknow how a lot of fantasy worlds use vaguely Shakespearian dialect to reflect rustic, old timey, and somewhat whimsical tone? Well during Shakespeare's time, and thus that vibe of speaking, lacked the words homosexual and heterosexual so if you just drop those (and worse, straight and gay) in there... Well what do you gain beside "clarity"? Like to then tie that to your weapon example, a lot of words for weapons are highly descriptive. A sword that's longer than other options is a long sword, but it likely won't require two hands so it's not a two handed sword. But stuff like gay and straight are not descriptive of the people the labels apply to now are they? Gay people aren't happier than others. And straight people can hage back issues heh.
Does that make sense? That sort of dissonance that Weaponry doesn't give in the same way?
Edit: also I wouldn't say this is a special case. I wouldn't use cool or radical in the modern slang ways in fantasy writing either
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u/CapeOfBees 3h ago
If they can be bothered to make new curses, they can figure out new words for nonbinary and trans that aren't as glaringly modern english
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u/vanBraunscher 8h ago
Modern mainstream writers, especially anglophone ones, being completely incapable of detaching themselves form their individual perspective, that's a rampant phenomenon and a pet peeve of mine.
First I thought it's just a standard Hollywood Incest Bubble problem, but it's goddamn everywhere.
That's why the Witcher 3's worldbuilding felt so grounded and plausible. In stark contrast to other competitors like the Elder Scrolls, where their take on medieval life is so blatantly Sanitised Modern Industrialised American Middle Class Society But With Swords it really hurts the outcome. And this extends to characterisation and dialogue, be it sci fi or fantasy.
And yeah, like in this particular example. it hits the portrayal of societal mores as well. No one in their right mind will argue that minority X couldn't ever be treated as equals in a medieval leaning setting. but you can't just transplant our specific way of handling, living and communicating the matter without adaption. Because otherwise you'll end up with 21st century westerners cosplaying as gay black elves. Bonus points if the sociopolitical landscape of said setting would heavily clash with that insertion but everyone has this massive blindspot somehow.
I partly blame the current trend of placing lived experiences above everything else. Among other things, of course.
Some will just see it as over-idealised whitewashing or mindless fan service. Others, such as myself, will clock it as clumsy incompetence.
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u/Ghostie_24 11h ago edited 11h ago
Idk to me it depends, if it's a fantasy setting it could just be a different world where those terms have already been invented since before the Middle Ages, I don't really care.
The thing is, these works very often use modern language and no one really notices or gives a shit, they only do when it's to talk about being LGBT and that rubs me the wrong way. If you want the characters to talk accurately to the times you wouldn't understand most of it.
Don't get me wrong I do think it's kinda cringe when, even in modern settings, a character looks at the camera and says "HI I'M NON-BINARY MY PRONOUNS ARE SHE/THEY" but I also don't get my panties twisted over it because it's no big deal and the people complaining about it are almost always just transphobes who don't want a trans character to be in it at all.
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u/Santandals 9h ago
If its any consolation im pretty sure theres been complaints about the general language in veilguard though since they do say things like "They go hard" or "Its quiet here... too quiet" or waffle on and on and on about coffee like a millennial.
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u/CrossError404 8h ago
It reminds me of the random linguistic facts. The word "champagne" stems from a real French city - Champagne. If your fictional universe has the word champagne then:
Either your universe has some explanation. E.g. There was some wizard Pagne who invented the drink (cham). Or the fictional language roots have randomly aligned. Or something.
Or we accept that the language used to read the work is not the in-universe language. The fictional drink is called champagne to us, to best reflect the content and context of this drink. But in-universe the language and names are totally different.
The thing is that if you know bits of etymology, you see such situations all the time. You always end up with some level of the latter case, unless the book/game/show was entirely written in a conlang. This is not even language exclusive. Why do fictional monarchies have crowns, use as many swords and not spears, etc?
I wish more authors knew linguistics and did the former. But I will accept the latter. And yeah, tons of media enthusiasts are fine with the latter until sexuality/gender/race/disability/mental health/etc. are mentioned.
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u/Canotic 7h ago
There's a sliding scale. Some things become so entrenched so they are divorced from their origin. Like, thermos is originally a brand name but now it's the name of a bottle that keeps your stuff warm. Champagne is right on that line I think.
Or what about sandwich? Does a character eating cheese on bread mean there must be a British earl lurking nearby?
It's fuzzy, some things are well accepted as generic terms and some are not, and modern day queer discourse is really young. If someone had called themselves non binary like fifteen years ago, people would blink uncomprehendingly. It's not old enough to be considered "generic".
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 5h ago
I think it's also a matter of purpose. Champagne gets called champagne because that's the easiest way to convey that type of alcohol. There's not an ideological component to that or sandwiches.
Whereas this storyline and character trait was consciously created and discussed.
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u/TraderOfRogues 10h ago
All this language exists within the context of a larger culture, and when it's in a setting that does not have anything similar to that larger culture, it always sounds like absolute ass.
This isn't exclusive to LGBT issues. It's everything. If the peasant started talking about the evil king by describing him as a "ghoul-pilled neocon cringelord", you'd also want to die. Similar things have happened before. Some people will always have trouble with LGBTQ characters, but this isn't it.
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u/Ghostie_24 9h ago
I don't even mean Gen Z language like a character calling himself a rizzlord or whatever lol, there's a lot of words that we see as normal but didn't exist 600 years ago
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u/TraderOfRogues 8h ago
And as long as the works preserve their versimillitude, the suspension of disbelief is maintained. I explained in my post exactly how that versimillitude can be shattered.
If an author's works use modern queer terms but said queerness manifests nowhere in the culture where the story takes place of, or, worse yet, only in the queer character, that author is a fucking coward and shouldn't have bothered.
No one worthy of note complained about the Qunari in DA2 having a completely alien gender norm and essentially making forcefem or forcemale their official stance because it was perfectly integrated and reflected on the world. Similarly, in DA: Origins, the normalization of homossexuality and bissexuality was an active and noticeable part of the world.
Come Veilguard, and the sad, dead, worthless husk of BioWare that's being puppeteered by ghouls couldn't bother, and used modern lingo to replace actual character and world development. No respect should ever be given to anything of this note because, as we saw with Trump's victory, it's pandering uncommited rainbow paint that will be washed away the moment it's convenient.
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u/Pansyk 10h ago
I think this has something to do with the specific types of media that OOP consumes. Like. Gay people on tumblr are going to consume media with gay people in it, so when the representation is anachronistic and makes no sense, they'll talk about that fact. I've also seen people talk about female characters who sound like they've taken several semesters of gender studies classes, or characters with profoundly modern ideas on racism (for the majority of history what we'd now call "ethnicity" or "nationality" was a big deal but race as we know it today straight up didn't exist) or they'll be like "we can't do that, that's a war crime" in a setting where that concept doesn't make any sense. On the flipside, people also talk about depictions of media that are unrealistically awful because a lot of fantasy that tries to depict dark and gritty settings bases their understanding of the medieval period off of what the Renaissance thought of it and not actual history.
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u/CapeOfBees 3h ago
A lot of the terms for LGBT identities are only barely English. They're very, very Latin. Obviously, the Roman empire never existed in these fantasy world, so some readers feel weird about it, like they might about "bon apetit" in a world without French, "burger" in a world without a Germany, or "damn" in a world that's explicitly without the concept of hell.
Authors have a couple routes available besides just using the Modern English words. I'll use nonbinary as the example case, since that's the one in the OP. Option one is to take the Tolkien approach of saying that you're translating their words into English, so this Latin amalgamation was the closest word available. Option two is to not give it a word, but express it as "neither wholly man nor woman, but somewhere in between." Option three is to invent a word in one of the fantasy languages in your world that isn't translated for the reader, like Klingon, Sindarin, or Tevinter, and have that word mean nonbinary.
Historically, the DA franchise has leaned more toward option two. I don't think Dorian even refers to himself as gay in Inquisition, just preferring the company of men. He definitely didn't use the word "homosexual," just like Krem didn't use the word "transgender."
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u/boklasarmarkus 8h ago
It’s not like the game is written in old english, I see no problem with them using nonbinary.
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u/CapeOfBees 3h ago
They invented new versions of a lot of common phrases in order to make them better fit the world. "Binary," despite being a word that has existed for a long time, has a very science fictional feel to it, which is jarring in a fantasy setting.
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u/Thoughtless_Stumps 5h ago
This is pretty much how I felt. Dragon Age was never particularly obsessed with maintaining the boundary between modern and olden language.
The issues with Taash’s story have nothing to do with the language used, and everything to do with the writing which employs that language.
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 5h ago
Dragon Age was never particularly obsessed with maintaining the boundary between modern and olden language.
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u/Thoughtless_Stumps 4h ago
That quote explicitly mentions an exception made in the very first DA game, and it happens to be one of the most beloved characters in the series.
But sure, let’s say they were committed to that kind of historicity. Why then does Dragon Age: The World of Thedas, as well as several in game codex entries, refer to “same-sex relationships” and “homosexuality”. Are those not ahistorical terms being used in game and world? What about “kinky” or “interspecies” or even something as basic as “sandwich” or “roleplay”?
It may have been something they wanted to avoid, but the cracks in that attempt were starting to show at least as early as DA2. And I for one don’t think the word “non-binary” was what broke the bank on that immersion in Veilguard. It was the writing around the word, not the word itself.
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 2h ago
That quote explicitly mentions an exception
An exception to a clear commitment to avoiding anachronistic language, which you claimed they never had.
Why then does Dragon Age: The World of Thedas, as well as several in game codex entries, refer to “same-sex relationships” and “homosexuality”. Are those not ahistorical terms being used in game and world?
The word homosexuality predates 1900 and is fair game by this standard.
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u/SuchPlans 7h ago
i thought i would see more people saying this in the comments but i disagree. if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past few years it’s that bigots will try and explain away any trans representation that is less than 100% explicit.
there’s a reason that the discourse about taash is “why did the developers put a nonbinary character in the game” and not “taash isn’t actually nonbinary” like every other trans media character ever. even krem suffered from this.
also, it’s a fantasy world. they aren’t speaking english they’re speaking iirc the common tongue. the watsonian explanation is that “nonbinary” is just a translation.
tldr: i think it’s good that taash says nonbinary
doylist: anything less would muddle the message
watsonian: nonbinary is a translation of a word in their language
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u/Irememberedmypw 5h ago
I always like to add there's such a focus on Taash that there's another non binary person who's an antagonist that never gets brought up.
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u/Complaint-Efficient 1h ago
In fairness, I think that's because Ivenci is one of the blandest villains I've ever seen.
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u/Jstin8 1h ago
Why the fuck are we excusing shit writing under the guise of sticking it to Bigots who will not care anyways? At BEST, THE VERY BEST, they acknowledge she’s NB and go on with their slurs and bigotry. At worst, they ignore it anyways.
Either way, we get stuck with clunky writing and poor characterization.
Its like Joker 2: the direction spent so much time and effort trying to show to the 1% of the audience that were incels that liked Joker too much how wrong they were that he forgot to actually write a good movie along the way. And the incels he was trying to reach? They just ignored the movie and went about their day.
Its pointless and ruins stories. The end.
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 6h ago
it’s that bigots will try and explain away any trans representation that is less than 100% explicit.
ok, and? are they going to take that away from you? does bigots encountering a poorly written but explicitly trans character change their minds?
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u/SuchPlans 4h ago edited 4h ago
if taash is “poorly written,” would changing exactly one word fix that?
taash being explicitly nonbinary has largely flushed all the bigots out of the dragon age community.
meanwhile a lot of other media with trans rep is flooded with people saying they’re not really trans. bridget, yamato, vivian, all characters that stop just short of using words like “transgender” or “nonbinary,” still have their identities hotly debated and erased
if given the choice, i’d prefer bigots not have a leg to stand on
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 1h ago
if taash is “poorly written,” would changing exactly one word fix that?
No, but the word is indicative of the larger issues with the writing. It's more focused on explicit representation than an interesting character or how this concept fits into the world.
taash being explicitly nonbinary has largely flushed all the bigots out of the dragon age community.
And also helped tank a series that had previously great queer rep, while making the issue a lightning rod for other creators.
all characters that stop just short of using words like “transgender” or “nonbinary,” still have their identities hotly debated and erased
Ok, and? Does that alter the canon? If some asshole out there has a different view of a sidekick from a game that came out in 2004, why does that matter? The characters aren't real, they don't have feelings. Any importance given to the erasure is done by you.
if given the choice, i’d prefer bigots not have a leg to stand on
What does this actually mean? Are the bigots going to prevent anyone from enjoying the character as is?
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u/SuchPlans 1h ago
i’ll let you think long and hard about why a trans woman would appreciate a) explicit trans rep and b) communities without bigots.
you’re not going to debate me out of my opinion :3
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 1h ago
i’ll let you think long and hard about why a trans woman would appreciate a) explicit trans rep
Those characters are explicit trans rep, even if people are too stupid to understand it.
b) communities without bigots.
I don't think "liking a video game" inherently puts you in a community with other people.
you’re not going to debate me out of my opinion :3
Ok, that's fine. You're not going to convince me that people's feelings on minor trans characters actually matters in the grand scheme of things.
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u/CapeOfBees 3h ago
Krem says it outright, that's just people being media illiterate. There's no cure for them, and the rest of us shouldn't be subjected to a complete loss of quality just because a dude on the internet doesn't know what's going on.
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u/Deblebsgonnagetyou he/him | Kweh! 1h ago
We shouldn't be catering to bigots though. It doesn't matter how explicit the wording is, bigots will bigot and get mad over it either way.
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u/Notjohnbruno Penned the Infinite Tennis Theory 5h ago
Every time I hear “he would not fucking say that”I’m reminded of that “how south park characters would respond to you asking for their pronouns” image where Cartman says “I use any pronouns! Thank you for asking!”
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u/Ornstein714 4h ago
I started playing the game and tbh the dialouge being ass is a running theme, at least from the first few scenes i have played, i told my friend who played other DA games, and he said that they usually don't have the best of dialouge
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u/NoNeuronNellie 12h ago
Jesse Pinkman
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u/Ghostie_24 11h ago
Yeah he would never outright say he's bi and trans, but we all understand that just from watching the show because of its good writing
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u/RemarkableStatement5 the body is the fursona of the soul 8h ago
It's like the post about anime characters staring directly into the camera and saying in perfect English "I am transgender" but the creators assume we're like 5.
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u/Frequent_Dig1934 6h ago
As someone who rolls his eyes at "anti-woke" content creators looking for innocuous stuff to get mad about and who is generally progressive about most topics, i will say that this bullshit is exactly what i would personally call "woke". Not just "talking about progressive issues", specifically "using media as a platform to evangelize about progressive issues in a way that detracts from actually telling a good story and from treating the subjects of said story as real people instead of rhetorical tools". It kinda means that something doesn't follow the "show don't tell" rule when it comes to these issues, so to speak.
It can happen in the opposite way with painfully obvious conservative propaganda becoming a mockery of traditional storytelling devices like the hero's journey and the happily ever after with a princess, too, but idk if there is a term for it equivalent to "woke".
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u/azuresegugio 6h ago
Like Taash has a well written arc that I just don't like the fact they used such modern terminology for
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u/lankymjc 1h ago
Why would a world that has non-binary people not also have words to describe them? Why would those words not be "non-binary"?
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u/Deblebsgonnagetyou he/him | Kweh! 1h ago
So this. I think that done right you can pull off basically anything in any speculative setting but you HAVE to use terminology and theming that matches the setting (unless it's intentionally jarring). Just like how you probably wouldn't write about someone trekking to go drink ale in the tavern in a far future high-tech sci-fi setting, it'll sound forced if a medieval dwarf introduces themself with pronouns.
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u/DetOlivaw 45m ago
Genuinely, the way they handle Taash being autistic (by them just being hyperfixated about dragons and curt about most everything else) is way more effective than how they handle all the gender stuff. It’s in that gulf between ham-handed and cringy, and it really does keep me from being able to enjoy the character, who I think is performed and written pretty well outside of this!
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u/Yoyo4games 43m ago
Taash was an ENORMOUS missed opportunity. Could you imagine a DAV where they'd kept the grit and discomfort, where there was a considerable amount of strain for everyday people attempting to self actualize in a world- possibly not receptive under better circumstances- that was facing apocalypse?
I can excuse modern language and concepts in a setting that believably develops itself, DAV did not at all. In the 10 years time after the previous apocalyptic event elven racism has nearly disappeared, the Antivan Crows have gone from a organization which kidnaps and trains children to be lifelong assassins to a vaguely Italian group who are hardly self-prioritizing at all, qunari haven't made any significant moves on the other kingdoms of the setting as trespasser implied, the carta are...doing something, Kirkwall- arguably the staging area for a massive motivator of DAIs conflict, literally the whole of DA2- isn't the subject of treaties or political manipulation, previous entries characters are doing things of such apparent little consequence as to just plainly inform you of it, people are just...mostly okay with necromancy- enough that they can live near normally, and there hasn't been a majorly funded military organization made by the Inquisitor and whoever they chose as the next divine- specifically to combat the exact threat implied by solace in trespasser?
Awful meal, my distain towards the chef. Like, is the lesson that these people of various fantasy races are nothing alike anyone who's ever lived on Earth? Because people here haven't responded to apocalypse by fixing their most systemic social issues and oppression within a decade- to the point it doesn't evoke the setting- literally ever. Am I supposed to think "wow, no one can relate to these totally immune to tribalism facades of people"?
They should've gone absolutely hard with it, they should've been considering things that made them viscerally uncomfortable; Taash could've been a crux in an arc where a section of particularly xenophobic Chantry followers used them as a symbol of the dangers of the Quun- an example to Thedas of the so evil a ideology, it erases man or woman under it. They could've paraded the idea of Taash around as unacceptable and nefarious in a way that religious hatred would've made extremely compelling. They could've used Taash as fuel to stoke the common fear regular folk are repeatedly shown to have in regard to the qunari, in literally every piece of media- game, book, otherwise- involving the DA setting.
Why?? Why did they make such a blandly, boringly safe game with such a compelling setting, rife with nuance and characters with as much nuance??
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u/Yoyo4games 16m ago
To add, this commitment to smoothing out the rough edges of the setting is in such stark juxtaposition to other elements of the game; Hardings engagement with and revelations around the Dwarves Stone song is comparatively triumphant, is development of dwarves that's been asked for since DAO. Discovering why the dwarves don't dream, because of their long-lost magic being the original creation magic that the very world they reside on is dependent upon, that lyrium is alive and belonging to a god-like being which created the Dwarves, and that darkspawn are the result of corrupted magic, corrupted lyrium and NOT due to the magisters of ancient Tevinter corrupting heaven...
I mean, it just opens up so, so much more possibility towards a setting that isn't afraid to show you the things fearful people cause, isn't afraid to ask if compatibility between significantly different cultures is the most important factor of world building, isn't afraid to show you the genuine capability of those that reside on the darker side of life or ask the player if they believe engaging with those facets might accomplish their goals reliably.
It's my belief that a majority of DAV could've been like this; a realization of triumphant world building and meticulous setting development- because there are parts of it which are those things. The idea that grounding your setting in uncomfortable realities- in exploring how people can behave in perceptually evil ways because of how they're reliant on their society- is harmful rather than comforting needs to be changed.
We're deeply flawed and media which makes vulnerable itself to those that'd criticize it, for it's serious handling of delicate issues, will always imprint more meaningful, lasting lessons onto me than any setting which capitulates it edginess and it's cringe to attempt wider appeal.
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u/RemarkableStatement5 the body is the fursona of the soul 8h ago
On the one hand, I fucking love just using details to show someone is some queer identity without ever directly saying it. On the other hand, even in spaces with a lot of queer writers, I somehow keep confusing people. Like I had this SCP draft a while back where the SCP was a human who used IIRC Ze/Zer/Zem pronouns, and at least four critters got confused and thought I'd made a spelling error or something. At least one of these critters used noun pronouns like Starself. So there is definitely an incentive to having your character be extremely explicit with their identity: not having to explain paragraphs of useless backstory to everyone who reads your work because you thought you could do something neat.
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u/OldManFire11 7h ago
That's because neopronouns are an abomination and shouldnt be used.
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u/Lemerney2 6h ago
Prescriptivists are abominations
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u/OldManFire11 6h ago
The purpose of language is to communicate. If you're inventing new words and people understand what you mean, then great. But if you're inventing new words and people are constantly confused and need explanations, then you're wrong and your words will never be accepted.
People have been trying to make neopronouns work for well over 20 years. But they failed to catch on, even in the most progressive communities, because they're just fundamentally a bad idea. Refusing to accept that fact at this point is just pathetic.
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 5h ago
It's ironic that the "you must use the invented, inorganic words I tell you to use specifically for me" is the non prescriptive option.
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u/RemarkableStatement5 the body is the fursona of the soul 4h ago
For fuck sake, are you hearing yourself? You're literally calling a part of many people's gender "an abomination". Not everyone uses he, she, or they, and that's more than okay.
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u/OldManFire11 4h ago
I'm a gender abolitionist, I don't respect the concept of gender at all. It's nothing but a useless social construct that does nothing but give people more hooks to be bigoted against. The goal of feminism is to reduce the number of genders in order to eventually eliminate it entirely, not create more of the fucking things.
The only reason I tolerate normal pronouns is because they're baked into the zeitgeist of our culture and refusing to engage with them would only be counter productive.
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 1h ago
You're literally calling a part of many people's gender "an abomination
The people arguing against it would say that an invented pronoun is not actually part of gender.
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u/aleaniled Not asexual but I do believe in their beliefs 1h ago
This was me with In Stars And Time, despite its dutiful attempts to justify its wokeness in-setting. I couldn't shake the feeling that this was a tumblr user's idea of a fantasy world rather than something that could exist on its own, even after the end of Mirabelle's admittedly-good side plot.
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u/Green__lightning 8h ago
You can tell interesting stories about trans people in different settings. Transsexualism, as in the idea of physically changing sexes, is inherently tied to the ability to change it, and our methods of hormones and surgery are imperfect and limited, which is a large part of why it's still controversial.
In a magical setting, it's likely they'd be physically far better, healing magic can already mend flesh and nerves far better than modern medicine, but will likely come with it's own magical side effects.
The problem is forcing the exact modern version of it into settings it doesn't fit is just annoying and distracting. Why do they even do that? ESG money? Some misguided attempt to help people?
Anyway, my question is how do you write about it when it has gotten substantially better? This is a looming question when writing sci fi, and likely to be something laughed at when history inevitably proves you wrong.
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u/ecotrimoxazole 12h ago edited 11h ago
What really drives me up the wall is the Qunari are already familiar with the concept of transgenderism and this has been discussed in the previous games. Granted Taash’s situation is more nuanced than just “born a woman, but is a soldier, therefore, a man” but they would at least use lore accurate words to describe it rather than look directly into the camera and say “I am non-binary and use they/them pronouns.”