DAO Fandom

[lea_hazel]

I have a question about Dragon Age fandom. I mean, I could wade right in, but I'm at Denerim right now and I already have more of an idea of what to expect in the future than I'd like.


Which of the three is it:

1. Almost everyone loves Leliana and hates Morrigan.
2. Almost everyone loves Morrigan and hates Leliana.
3. Both, depending on which portion of fandom you're in.
4. Option 3, plus both factions insist that the opposite is true (cf. Community fandom and the Jeff/Britta/Annie triangle).

Maybe I come off as needlessly sarcastic/snippy/whatever, but this is feeding off of literally years of experience in widely divergent fandoms, and a wild certainty that if there is more than one female character in a fandom, this will happen. Based on similar experience I assume the non-romancable companions get less attention. Sad because Wynne is pretty much my favorite. She just works so hard to resist being the team mom. ;_;

I'm in Denerim, Brosca's cleaning out thugs and finally getting the respect she deserves. NGL, if there was a way to romance Sgt. Kylon I'd be all over that. Here's a dude who knows what he's talking about. I agreed out loud with everything he said. :D He made a whole speech about his boss's useless bastards, and Alistair was right there and it was so awkward but he didn't say anything, I guess because all the gossips are being nasty about him and he doesn't want to be recognizable. Maybe I'm overthinking this?

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

Afaict the default is to find Leliana inoffensive but boring and hate Morrigan. The female character fans identify with isn't Leliana or Morrigan, it's their female human noble PC Lady Cousland. Who loves Alistair. And Morrigan and Anora and Isolde were MEAN to him OMG so they are EVIL BITCHES. One of the more popular long fics is a f!Cousland/Alistair story which COMPLETELY SIDELINES all the canon female characters, replacing them with FOCs who are more appropriately fawning towards Cousland (oh except Anora who is basically a villain).

These opinions are not universal thank god, but moderately common. Even in the comments to fanworks about Morrigan or Anora grrrrrr. (And then there's the "lol anyone who plays as a f!Cousland or romances Alistair is a pathetic Mary Sue fangirl" backlash, which is also annoying)

[lea_hazel]

This shows how new I am to video game fandom, since it didn't even occur to me that the player character is the obvious proxy. I'm just so used to fandoms universally having two female characters who are each other's opposites in every possible way. I was sure it would be the good girl vs. bad girl thing again, since that seems to be what the people who made the game are aiming at.

When you explain it it makes perfect sense though. Of course Alistair is covered in woobie from head to toe, it's part of what gets on my nerves about his character. A lot of that has to do with context though. Most of the people who are mean to him are pretty much right on most counts, except Isolde who has her own set of problems, and also I think I'm missing some of the context. I can also sort of get where the backlash is coming from, despite being obviously gendered and simplified.

IDK, I still think I wouldn't be able to play a noble in this game. Even though the Couslands are ostensibly not as bad as the dwarf royalty. Who are pretty awful.

Multiple origins are fun, but frustrating.

[alias_sqbr]

I despised Alistair to start with then fell for him despite myself, it was very embarrassing. (The romance is quite sweet!)

I never quite finished my human noble playthrough, but it was cool playing a chivalrous lesbian warrior on a Quest in a relationship with Leliana. My dwarf noble didn't get far past Ostagar though, and she was basically as nasty as I could play her (which was pretty nasty, that origin gives the greatest scope to be a jerk), playing as a Brosca first did kind of sour me on that one. I recommend playing all the origins to Ostagar if you can, it only takes about half an hour each and they're all interesting little stories. Be warned, while good the city elf one would have massive trigger warnings if it was fanfic.

[lea_hazel]

Yeah, I made it through Howe's (?) dungeon and took great comfort in stabbing that one guy after he gave me the key to all his money. I don't think I have it in me to play a city elf. Not these days, anyway.

On a more technical note, what's the advantage of playing a warrior? It seems like warriors have less options that rogues do.

[alias_sqbr]

Warriors are much tougher and do more damage per hit. They're good for hacking away at big scary monsters that are likely to kill rogues and mages with a single attack. This can be very satisfying :) But my approach to "tactics" is to hack fairly indiscriminately and if that fails use cheats, so I'm not the best person to ask.