Various Attempts at Romance in Dragon Age: the Fanvid

[alias_sqbr]

I'm not going to make this but it has been in my head since DA2. I think I may have described it then but I have even more fodder now because Bioware. If anyone sees this and is inspired to make a similar vid please go ahead, and let me know :)

So! The song is Videogames by Lana del Ray. The subject is the UTTER MISERY we players put up with for our pixelated love interests.

Some themes:

Killing for them:
Marjolaine for Leliana
The noble for Sera
Loghain for Alistair
Dragons for Bull and Morrigan
Arishok for Isabela

Having to kill them:
Iron Bull, Fenris, Merrill, Zevran (can that happen on his romance?)

Other unpleasant things:
Having sex with that noble for Josephine
Digging through sewerage and then planting a BOMB IN THE CHANTRY for Anders
Getting punched in the face by a pride demon for Solas
Doing awful things to get Morrigan's approval up
Getting Alistair to have sex with Morrigan

Being dumped:
Morrigan and Solas SEVERAL TIMES including eluvians for both
Being abandoned naked just after sex by Blackwall
Being abandoned clothed just after sex by Fenris and Isabela
EDIT: All the other times Isabela abandons you, which I seemed to have blocked out
Alistair when he's an unhardened king or you don't spare Loghain
Sera if you're too into the elf gods

Being otherwise STABBED IN THE HEART:
Blackwall in the cell
The truth about Solas
The chantry exploding
Shouty rivalry romance scenes
Cullen KILLING YOUR WHOLE CLAN

Being rejected:
Wrong type: Cassandra, Cullen (noone else's rejections made me feel bad haha)
Everyone: Varric, Aveline (the useless little heart dialogues)

Meta pain:
Terrible things going wrong with mods: the sexy Cailan corpse, clipping errors when Cullen makes out with a qunari dude, Morrigan calling f!warden a man etc(*).
Bugs: Alistair talking about dumping you, Zevran not remembering he's dating the warden (not sure how you'd show that)
Plus just the effort of using cheats at all.
The regular DAO sex scenes, esp the f/f
The mounting costs of games and DLCs

Dying for them:
Warden's final sacrifice, Alistair reading at her grave

Interspersed, of course, with all the happy smoochy romantic moments that keep us coming back. PLus all the game-y signs a romance is working: approvals, quests showing up etc.

(*)I've never actually used mods but have heard tales :)

Comments

[lea_hazel]

I've been collecting the Inquisition spoilers piecemeal so I still haven't totally figured out how to romances go, but wow! It seems like the trend of escalation continues. I wonder what DA4 will be like.

[alias_sqbr]

Part of it is simply that there are more love interests in DAI, and most of them are about average for Bioware weirdness. But with Solas they have really outdone themselves. I'm a little sad my f!elf!Inquisitor didn't like him enough to experience the full effect. At least I got to experience the Blackwall romance unspoiled.

There need to be more heartbreaking f/f options. Though, actually, now I remember you can get dumped by Sera edits

[lea_hazel]

I don't know, Isabela's arc is pretty bad. But yeah, that seems to be another of the ways in which f/f gets written as ~softer or milder or more understated than other types of romance. Clearly there needs to be more eye-gouging, also dragons.

[alias_sqbr]

That is very very true. I guess Isabela is the wrong kind of heartbreak for me, I get super put off by any romance where I have to do the chasing against what seems like genuine lack of interest (as opposed to "I love you but...we musn't!!"). It hurts my feelings, and when I "succeed" I feel like I pressured them into it which feels gross. On the plus side this saved me from heartbreak with Jacob in ME3.

[lea_hazel]

Yeah, I'm with you on that, the whole "true love" conversation after having had sex once is kind of grating. Then again it sort of fits in with the rest of DA2, e.g. Merrill moving in immediately after, too. Just... no pacing at all in the romance arcs. You'd think it would be easier with a 3-arc structure.

On the other hand, there's no stealth romance that way. Of course, the heart icons were supposed to take care of that.

[alias_sqbr]

I managed to fall into a rivalry spiral with Merrill without even meaning to, with her getting more and more angry at me every time we spoke, and so since I'd flirted with her a few times in Act 1 and my Fenris romance was in the "technically not dating because he abandoned you after sex" phase she turned up at my house crying and the only non douchey dialogue option was a "flirty" option that led straight to hate sex and her moving in, with my Hawke going "Oh god Fenris is not going to be happy about this D:". People like me are why they added explicit "THIS WILL INITIATE A ROMANCE" text in DAI, and I was very glad of it.

So, yes. A bit abrupt!

[lea_hazel]

Yes! This is why one of my favorite things about 7KPP is the way you can transition seamlessly from flirting to platonic friendship.