Gay Gamer Calls for BioWare Writer to be Fired

As a gay gamer (well, lesbian actually), I'm disappointed in this player blowing this out of proportion.  I saw no problem with this particular scene, and it fits the character.

SPOILERS

Anders has a huge secret, one that makes him mentally unbalanced, and he's just revieled it for the first time ever, to you.  If you choose the "Nice" response and tell him you understand, he says something about how awesome you are, and handsome too, and then gets all shy about blurting that out and asks, "Is this making you uncomfortable?"  If you choose the "Yes." option, this ends the romance immediately and he'll never hit on you again.  Of course, the guy just opened up to you and made himself vulnerable, and you very bluntly tell him to back off.  He gets briefly huffy, which makes sense considering his secret, and you earn 5 Rivalry.  And to make sense of that, you get Rivalry/Friendship points all the time, and 5 is the lowest ammount.  It's easy to earn Friendship to counter that 5 points.  And Anders doesn't continue to act like a jilted lover, instead the incident is forgotten.

END SPOILERS

And hey, I've put myself out there with some women, thought we were on the same wavelength, and after they turn down the advances, there's that initial feeling of hurt.  But you get over it.  It's no different than when a man thinks he and a girl are connecting, and then she tells him "no way."  Many men think that the girl was kinda leading him on by being nice and friendly, at least in the brief moment after rejection where feelings are raw.

Basically, this was not an issue.  This is one of those hypersensitive people who sees insults and slights everywhere.  I hope David can realize this and not let it get him down.  Sadly, most of the people who end up signing the petition will be the ones who are either uncomfortable with gayness, or outright bigots who don't want it seen in any form.

1. Rivalry points aren't necessarily bad.

2. Anders isn't gay, he is bisexual, like three other characters.

3. This may even be a glitch, since you get rivalry points sometimes for no apparent reason.

4. Can I call for the gamer to be fired? You know, for poorly portraying gay people?

5. Likely can be fixed with a simple mod.

I'm fairly sick of people who say "You can't insult me or say or do anything I find offensive, because that is a hate crime!" Yes, Anders has some issues. Most of your characters do, and if they don't start with them, they have issues by the end.

Um, straight men and women are perfectly capable of being jerks to you when you spurn their advances, too. In fact, as a female character I remember losing points with Zevran in Dragon Age: Origins for turning him down, and other characters I think who somehow got the idea I was interested.

People don't like being rejected. This is a human (elf? lol) thing, not a gay thing.

*Potential Spoiler*

Anders is mentally unbalanced. Being angry about how the character handles personal interactions with either rivalry or romance is in line with his unbalanced personality. He's two personas in one. Bipolar in a literal sense. 

- When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

This is just a retake on the classic short story "The Boy who Cried Wolf". The real travisty here is that someone without objective reasoning has decided to pull the prejudice card out where it doesn't belong. This belittles minorties everywhere, and makes it much more difficult to hear them when the issue truely is important. 

I understand this guy's frustration. Gaming still lacks much in the way of diverse, quality writing, and it's especially complicated given the relationship between player and game. Other forms of media are a transient experience without consequence; gaming persists, even if only in the game, and it does tend to make it more personal.

However, his petition is silly, and makes for a terrible precident. If we start firing writers for not making all gay characters acceptable people, we'll be forced eventually to make all characters in to mary-sue's. If this was the only gay character in the game, then I'd understand, but it sounds like they're making an attempt to portray gay characters as... you know, real. Having depth. Being individuals. Being gay doesn't exclude you from being a bad person. 

The manual cautions that rejecting advances made by other characters can earn rivalry points. Depending on the situation, it can, potentially, happen with almost any of the characters, not just the gay ones. As GayGamer points out, it's not even universal among the gay characters.

The fact is that some people take rejection personally. Happens in real life all the time. Being gay or not being gay isn't the issue.
---
I'm not under the affluence of incohol as some thinkle peep I am. I'm not half as thunk as you might drink. I fool so feelish I don't know who is me, and the drunker I stand here, the longer I get.