I will have to go with Anders, and I say this as a person who almost can NOT resist clicking that little heart icon every time it pops up. I have completed the Anders romance more times that I have completed the others combined.

My issues with the Anders Romance have almost nothing to do with Anders as a character, his actions, or how I feel about him in-game at all. Once again my criticism comes down to mostly writing and game mechanics.

I love the Anders Romance. I find it beautifully tragic in all the best ways. I love the way that he is overly flowery with his language and feelings towards Hawke. I even enjoy the melowdrama.

What I don’t like is what we don’t get to see, and also some of the tropes that are attached to Anders. This is a lot of area to cover, so I will try to be brief.

Jennifer Brandes Hepler, who wrote Anders for DAII, admits that she was trying to create a real world parallel using magic that demonstrates the dynamics of relationships with a person who struggles with mental illness. I think this was successful and not in his portrayal. You get to see someone who loves a person with mental illness (assuming that we accept this metaphor Hepler was trying to achieve) trying to come to terms with that person’s illness. But isn’t that always the way we see mental illness portrayed? Through the eyes of the Really Great People who deign to love them IN SPITE of their mental illness? Those fantastic and generous people who would tolerate and love a person above all their flaws. I mean look how hard it is to love a person with mental illness!

No.

I would like to see a game portrayal of a person with mental illness who is loved for just being them. I would love to see a pop-culture portrayal, at all, that can show that the mentally ill (or other people with disabilities) as being full people, and have their disabilities not be an issue.

I’ve seen some really great people address the issue of their Hawke loving Anders above everything, but still, it always feels tinged with “I love him even though…”.

Additionally, the Anders romance is designed into the crux of the end-game. A mentally ill person does an incredible act of violence, and as I’ve written before, the conflation of people with mental illness and acts of violence is one of the greatest — pardon the terminology — injustices in pop culture with regards to the mentally ill. The idea that Anders and Justice would merge to have this goal isn’t what bothers me (I quite unpopularly support what he does end-game from a SJ standpoint), it’s the adding of the element that we are meant to read him as mentally ill that does.

BioWare has a deep problem with this issue. They are fond of their characters who do things that are unspeakable because they are “crazy” when there was no reason to ever bring their mental state into question. Often these characters (such as Loghain, Meredith, and Orsino, just to name a few) have enough reason to do what they did without making them “paranoid” or “crazy” or “insane” or any other incredibly ableist term we see thrown at these people. I for one don’t think that what Anders did end-game was the act of a mentally unstable person. I’ve written before that Anders made logical and calculated decision because he was suffering under institutionalized oppression.

I think the greatest thing that bothers me about the Anders romance is everything we don’t get to see. We meet a mage in the beginning of the game who is, yes broken, but who is doing reasonably well with his situation. By Act III he is in a state and a half of depression, anxiety, and is withdrawing from Hawke. If you rivalmance him, he becomes aggressive and easily agitated. What we don’t see, and instead have to read in the codices, is what happens to get him from point A to point B. I am not sure why this angle was glossed over in the game clean up, and it could have been handled better with a few more conversation options. But there are a lot of gaps in Anders’ personality that we have to fill in ourselves, and what this causes is the gut reaction many people have being “Well, clearly he went nuts and blew up a Chantry”.

That’s not what happened, though. Also, a person doesn’t need to be mentally ill to do something shocking and violent and morally upsetting. We see this every day in our modern life.

I think that is what disturbs viscerally about the Anders romance is that we are lead to believe that you either love him in spite of his mental illness (instead of accepting it as a part of the whole person), or he is a dog to be put down because his particular brand of crazy means he’s too dangerous to be allowed to live. Both of these are incredibly damaging to actual people living their lives with mental illness every day. I know the intent behind writing Anders the way he was, but honestly, it comes off slightly as caregiver porn, and frankly, the case that Justice (the element meant to be portrayed as the mental illness) isn’t what ultimately drives Anders to do what he did. This was always inside Anders. Justice just gave him the drive, and possibly the power boost, to do it. This makes this conflation incredibly damaging and dangerous to the mentally ill. It isn’t like the mentally ill aren’t stripped of their autonomy all the time because they are deemed too dangerous to exist with the “normal” people. Oh, wait, that actually happens all the time.

I can not accept a spirit of Justice/Vengeance as a neat stand-in for mental illness just as I can’t stand the dichotomous way that we are meat to view St. Hawke for loving him or murderknifing him in the back (or abandoning him, which I think is the most cruel option of all, but that is my opinion). It’s the same way that I can not possibly excuse Loghain’s actions as a war criminal, and refuse to exonerate Meredith just because they threw in that ridiculous idol as a plot device. People don’t need mental illness to do unspeakable and shocking, often violent things. All of these characters had legitimate reasons for the choices they made. Some of them were horrendous reasons, but none of that needed to be connected with mental illness.

Least of all Anders’ grab for freedom and release from oppression and abuse for all marginalized people like him.

So, I guess in conclusion, I love Anders, I love romancing him, but I hate the way the romance plays out. The parallel fell flat and in many ways, incredibly offensive to me.

I am expecting some real laughs for this one, but this thought is completely based on a random in-game bug that happened to me, where the game put me into a friendmance with Sebastian even though my Hawke was already in a friendmance with Anders.

My favorite love interest at the time of this writing is Sebastian.

It’s pretty basic, really, my reasoning.

As much as I complained about it while playing the game, I like the idea of a nearly unattainable LI. It amused me.

There are many, many things that I dislike about The Prince of Starkhaven. Most of those things are because of the brilliant writing that took place with Sebastian in the very limited scope that we get to see him. He privilege just rolls off of him, and it’s a fantastic way to look at the ways that privilege denying affects us.

There are so many things about Sebastian that I just vehemently object to, and so many times my Hawke wanted to chuck him off the Wounded Coast for being such a privileged douche. Even the privilege she could deal with, but his glaring reluctance to recognize it was just infuriating beyond belief.

That being said, the romance option with him, while woefully underwritten and not fleshed out well at all, has got to be my favorite at this writing. Of all the other companions over the games who are options, Sebastian is nearly unobtainable. Sebastian has a seedy past, and he’s doing to repenting thing. He has a conviction about relationships and sex that he is sticking to, and he’s not going to sway on it. The same steadfastness that aggravates me to no end on him as a party companion, makes me respect him tremendously as a love interest in-game.

Something I applaud BioWare for is their attempts at diversity. While I do not personally believe in waiting until marriage to consummate a relationship, I have a lot of respect for people who do. Something that is a goal of mine is supporting people in their sexual choices so long as everyone involved is consenting and no one is being harmed. While some of your companions in both DA games will bed your PC easily, and others willingly with time, Sebastian is unwavering in his oath of celibacy. I find that slightly beautiful.

I realize that a lot of it is probably due to Sebastian being a DLC character and not a full party member, and that is something else that irritates me about him, because he adds a lot to the party dynamic, IMO. In my case, the romance with Sebastian glitched, as in I didn’t initiate it, and my Hawke was living with Anders at the time, but when it did, I had to explore it more.

I find Sebastian’s sexual choices to be admirable, even if he is a raging jerk most of the time. In fact, I think part of the appeal is because of his overall personality and waffling (sorry, couldn’t help it) nature. This is one thing he is resolute about. I like the awkward flirting, and the gentle reminders that he has vows to keep. Even if it is religiously driven (and there is nothing wrong with this, apart from my hatred of the Andrastian chantry situation in Thedas), it is his commitment to keep. It is HIS choice to make, and he makes it and stands by it. It allows you to pursue him and get to know him while leaving sex completely out of the question, which for some people, is a refreshing place to be in a relationship.

Consensual sexual choices are valid. I fully support the choice to sleep with as many willing partner who are able to consent to it as a person wants, as well as the choice to abstain (so long as one isn’t lorded as being superior). We all have our reasons for making the choices that we do, and I certainly do not have many parallels with Sebastian’s, but I have a respect for the fact that a non-sexual romance was offered in DA2. It made the game a touch more realistic to me. We have a beautiful diversity of romance choices, and each character brings a little something to that aspect of the game. I feel that a non-sexually based romance rounds that out just a little more.

Now then, moving forward. My least favorite character is Zevran.

Zevran is an assassin, he is witty, he is even charming. I have had playthroughs where my Warden really did not like him and was very uncomfortable around him (Kahrin), and I have had playthroughs where my character adored him to bits (my Tabris and my Aeducan, actually, really liked him).

The things I dislike about Zevran are the tropes that seem to swim around his character.

First of all, and most grating to me, is that Zevran was portrayed to us as the only homosexual option for a male warden in DAO. Ever hear the so-called ‘joke’ that ‘it’s not gay if it’s an elf’? This is representative with what we are given here. Whether intentionally or not, because I often will give BioWare writers some benefit of the doubt, they gave us a rather harmful dichotomy when presenting the two male LIs for the game.

You have Alistair, who is a conventionally idealized man. He’s tall, and brawny, and you are meant to find him attractive according to traditional ideas of what a man should look like. As the heterosexual LI for female Wardens, he is read as the very epitome of manliness. He’s a warrior! He hits things with a shield! Rawr! He’s tough! He’s also as white as the day is long and we all know that White is Right.

Zevran is lithe and lean and has long hair. He dances around and stabs things with daggers and darts behind his enemies. He wears a skirt! These are not criticisms, but if we examine what these things seem to emphasize in his character it borders on a disturbing message about the portrayal of performing masculine.

The other thing that bothers me about Zevran is that he falls directly into the exotified Other category of race. He’s got that dreamy accent, ambiguously Latin, and it could be Spanish or Italian, it’s fairly open to interpretation. He calls you tesoro, and amore. We all know that Latin Men are the Sexiest ever! I feel like Zevran is hypersexualized — he routinely makes commentary in the vein of his ‘anything goes’ sentiment — and that his accent and foreignness is added in an attempt to be more racially diverse. What ends up happening is that Zevran begins to read like a stereotype that is harmful. What they have effectively done is to make him the Exotic Other.

Zevran is also the son of a sex worker, and has admitted to doing work that is equated with sex work. So, essentially, the only non-hetero choice for a male warden is a Latin, former sex working elf. Please tell me that I don’t have to tell you why I find this portrayal problematic.

As a character I find Zevran fantastic. I like him. He’s funny, and the way he is introduced to the game is nothing if not amusing. His open brashness is endearing (Shut up, Kahrin, he’s cool and we do like him), and he is incredibly devoted, not just as a LI, but if you friend path him. Again, like I said, it is the way that Zevran is presented to us, and not the character himself, that I object to. In an effort to present us with a variation on race, class, and sexuality, BioWare kinda mangled it and shoved all of these things into one near-caricature.

(Cross-Posted)

Thank you to Whuffie for the screencap.

This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one.

The best and most lovably grumptastic little brother anywhere.

As an older sister of a young man who was an absolute PAIN IN MY ARSE until we were adults, I have to go with that lovable younger brother and all-around adorable grump, Carver Hawke.

I have absolutely adored many characters from the DA universe, and had my fair share of fangirl squee moments over snarky blonds and disgraced nobles, and even cheered at the appearance of broken templars and fawned over heavy brogues. Hands down, though, I find Carver to be the most well-developed character we see, which is pretty impressive for how much we don’t get to see of this woefully under-used companion. Let’s face it, Carvers have a more than 66% death rate, and that is if you are not a monster* who lets him die in the Deep Roads.

Very rarely, if ever, do we start out with a companion who is not only not neutral to you as the PC, but who hates your stinking guts when we first meet him. At the game’s inception, Carver does not like you. Not one lick. He rarely misses a chance to grouse at you. He hardly ever has anything nice to say about you, and he certainly isn’t going to hold back his deeper thoughts to spare your feelings. Yet, during all of this, we get to see light touches and moments of steadfast loyalty to you, the PC sibling. He might hate you, and he might sometimes wish horrible things upon you, but no one is entitled to inflict those horrible things on you other than him.

BioWare nailed the sibling dynamic right there, and IMO, portrayed that better than any other relationship I have seen come to light over three games and multiple DLCs.

Carver doesn’t instantly like you when you give him things, either. No, sirree. You have to work your poverty-stricken arse off to get him to thank you for the letters from his namesake, and even then, it’s an awkward moment of begrudging acceptance of feelings. But if you work at it, you eventually see him warm to you, ever-so-subtly in his own way. Still? He can’t seem to manage to tell you he loves you out loud. It’s incredibly powerful to me, as an older sister with a brother who still has trouble not deflecting emotions with snark (and also me as a sister who has trouble not criticizing every thing about him).

I also love the way that it isn’t easy to get Carver’s approval one way or another. He has hidden amounts of approval or disapproval for every action you take, and it really takes some intense meta to lock it one way or the other. Just when you think that grumpy brother of yours is going to back you up, he suddenly muses over how stupid you’re being — and doesn’t hold back in telling you so, even if it is unpopular. Then, in the middle of trying to talk to him, he throws his grief of his missing twin at you in a rare moment of obvious vulnerability. Carver’s blunt honesty is one of my favorite things about him.That, and the way he calls you out for showboating or needlessly drawing attention to yourself when his life experience thus far has taught him that these are not good for self-preservation. It is such a younger brother thing to do.

Carver starts out insecure, resentful of you and your clout as you play Hawke, and endlessly searching for a way to make himself stand out apart from Hawke. The fulcrum of your relationship with him is the moment you decide whether or not to take him to the Deep Roads on your expedition. He wants to go. He’s vocal about his desire to be useful and to help the family — because above all else, Carver values his family even if he rarely manages to say it. Choosing to take him with you validates him as a person, but refusing to seems to do the opposite. It shows, at least to him, that Hawke has no regard for Carver’s wants, that they are not important enough to honor.

This is where I think the breaking point happens for him, in that it is the only way I can see Carver crushed enough to resort to the one place that, to me, seems so wildly out of character for him thus far considering the Hawke family’s background. Turning to the templars. Becoming the very thing he was trying to protect his family from all these years. Seeing Carver as a templar breaks my heart, because it feels like he has found a place of forced power and can now hold it over Hawke’s head. Hawke wouldn’t validate his worth, so he found a way to get a subtle jab back and prove just how much worth he has. “Look what I did without you, and now you have to respect me, because I have this power over you, a mage.”

Take him with you, and go through what is, for me, one of the most heart-wrenching moments of the entire game, where you have to make the choice to hand him over to the Grey Wardens, and we see a completely different Carver. He also grows, he also comes into his own, but he goes there with the validation that his sibling respected him enough to include him in the expedition, but you also have that moment where Carver realizes that you care if he lives or dies. Seeing his face if you choose that dialogue option just before Stroud takes him away almost seems to be the first moment that Carver realizes your Hawke had actual affection for him.

We don’t get to see what happens to Carver in Act II. This is tragic to me, because this is where he does all of his growth and dynamic changing. Sure, he sides with you no matter what in the end of the game, giving a nod to his deeply-held value that family matters above all else, but how did he get there?. I love that even if you chose the rival path with him, that he still stands by you (because the rival path is far easier to achieve, and still not easy to max out). As a Grey Warden, Carver comes to a feeling of belonging to something greater, and it seems to make him happier as a whole person. I cringe to realize that he’s come to the place by the end of the game where his life as a Warden is the most important thing to him (apart from you, his only remaining immediate family), and I hope that Carver eventually finds something in the Wardens to give him something personal to hold onto as a human being.

Lukas Kristjanson gives us, with very little on-screen time, a character who grows, sometimes begrudgingly, through a gamut of characterization. I am still in the stages of writing a ridiculously fangirlish fan letter thanking him for this. Carver fascinates me as an older sibling who went through a tumultuous relationship with her own younger brother which didn’t come to a place of love and open respect until we lost our father. Carver is written with buckets of potential, and I can see so many opportunities for him to reappear with import flags at the very least in future games. A pipedream of mine would be to see him as a full companion in future games, because every time he appears in a DLC I cheer. His snarkiness and grumpy scowling, combined with a healthy amount of showing off with an obvious need for praise, has endeared him to me endlessly.

Carver Hawke, you are forever my bro. Keep being you, little brother.

*Used in jest, though, I am of the opinion that no one with a heart would do this after they find out it is avoidable! I’m a Carver fangirl. I regret nothing.