What Your Video Game Boyfriend Says About You, Part I
The Bioware Edition
I am once again hitting the listicle well, and this time we clamber over an even lower bar.
Have you ever wondered why the hot guys of video games, especially the ones that are narratively sexually available to the player, make so many straight male gamers piss themselves with impotent fury simply by existing? Much ink has been spilled trying to discern what’s wrong with straight guys and what’s wrong with gamers, “gamers” here being a euphemism that almost always means “straight white guy”. I’m not that interested in “gamers”, but I’m interested in us, “us” here being a euphemism for gamers who think it’s funny or hot to ensnare a little imaginary pixel man in our ludosexual designs.
I’m also interested in writing the occasional article that’s more accessible to internet audiences.
Thus, for those who like the hot guys of games, allow me to diagnose you with neuroses much more romantic than those I’ll diagnose in the straight guys who hate you and your imaginary boyfriend.
As always in my RPG coverage, this two-part article will cover only Western RPGs because I’m not very familiar with JRPGs and their characters. It will also only cover games I personally have played, as I can only defend dunking with an equal opportunity to dunk upon myself.
We begin with the 30,000lb elephant in the room: Bioware. Read on to discover what dating the hot guys of Bioware says about you, and what it is about them that makes online guys with Tali profile pics rage-post so pointlessly!
Carth Onasi, Knight of the Old Republic
What He Says About You: You are so old!
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: He made the irreparable mistake of having feelings and then talking about them. Carth, you fool! You undermined the entire gender!
Kaidan Alenko, Mass Effect
What He Says About You: Every other Mass Effect fan hates you, rightfully, for being insufficiently kinky. Your fondest romantic wish is to meet your life partner at work, and for you both to have the exact same job, but you’re ever so slightly better at it than he is. Thanks to weird casting overlap with ABC’s Once Upon A Time, you have troubled feelings about Jiminy Cricket.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: Lots of people hate Kaidan for being boring. Straight guys have a particular vitriol for his fans, though. I think it’s because they don’t like being reminded that if they were buff, polite, clean, intelligent, and competent, they wouldn’t need to be so try-hard quirky. Fellas, nobody’s that impressed you’ve been to Japan. Kaidan’s probably never been anywhere but Canada and space, but I’m confident he regularly cleans the bathroom in his apartment by himself.
Jacob Taylor, Mass Effect 2
What He Says About You: Don’t lie to me. You’re not a straight woman or a gay man. You’re a straight man who plays Mass Effect as female Shepard, had her be gay in the first installment, and when faced by the total lack of meaningful wlw love interests in Mass Effect 2 decided to get with the sole Black guy in the universe because you have a weird racial-sexual hierarchy in your mind. You almost certainly make assumptions about other guys’ dicks based on their phenotype and ancestry, which isn’t good for you or them or any of the rest of us.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: I’m pretty sure it’s actually straight women who hate Jacob the most, specifically for leaving Shepard for another woman between Mass Effects 2 and 3. Better, I think, to hate the writers for caring so little that they didn’t come up with better material for the only Black guy in the galaxy besides dropping one woman to knock up another. Jesus fucking Christ.
Garrus Vakarian, Mass Effect 2
What He Says About You: You have an overly close relationship with your pet bird, but at least it’s very rewarding. You always say “ACAB” when everybody else does, but there is a secret part of you longing to be the toxic wife of a toxic cop.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: Straight guys love Garrus because he’s a funny guy and he never questions any decision you make, though it would occasionally be wise to do so. He is also physically unlike any existing man of any kind, and thus incapable of reflecting any standard of appearance or demeanor back upon them.
Thane Krios, Mass Effect 2
What He Says About You: You need to fix people. Your first thought upon waking and last thought before sleeping is “I can fix him.” However, you cannot fix space lung cancer, or, more urgently, a stab wound delivered in a cutscene by one of the top ten worst NPCs of all time.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: They don’t want to sit with the fact that they’ve made themselves so toxic that licking a spaceman with hallucinogenic skin is a more appealing prospect.
Steve Cortez, Mass Effect 3
What He Says About You: You wanted so badly for Mass Effect to include an mlm romance. You didn’t count on them finding a way to make that mlm romance still all about a gay man dying.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: I don’t think they remember he exists.
Zevran Arainai, Dragon Age: Origins
What He Says About You: You are still, despite everything, into yaoi. They won’t let you cross any of the borders into the Iberian Peninsula because they know you’re there for sex tourism.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: They don’t understand why a blond, bisexual, elven Inigo Montoya-a-like would be hotter than they are. Their loss, obviously.
Alistair Theirin, Dragon Age: Origins
What He Says About You: Either you were once into Doctor Who, or you were once into One Direction. Either way, you still get a little sloppy when a guy’s British, despite the fact that this surely means he eats cold beans on toast.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: I actually think straight guys like Alistair. He has anxiety and he covers for it by being a try-hard funny guy, which is relatable to them and everyone else who plays video games habitually.
Fenris, Dragon Age 2
What He Says About You: You have a voice kink and your ideal man is simultaneously skinnier than you and stronger. If a guy pledged his troth to you and only you in husky yet chivalric tones, you’d finish on the spot. Toxic though it is, you believe bigger truly is better.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: They don’t like his beautiful bishie tendencies, though if they got to know him and his aggro-trauma tendencies, they might at last feel seen.
Anders, Dragon Age 2
What He Says About You: If you are a heterosexual woman, you often have crushes on guys who turn out to be gay. If you are a gay man, I hope you also often have crushes on guys who turn to be gay. Either way, if you were to become a nurse, you would almost certainly marry a doctor, which is better than the most common alternative of marrying a cop.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: They see Anders as sublitorally gay, on account of the way he shares his body with a male-identifying spirit. Also, on account of the fact that he’s had sexual and romantic relationships with other men.
Blackwall, Dragon Age: Inquisition
What He Says About You: You expected the developers of this game to put the time into make playing as a female Qunari or dwarf enjoyable and full-featured. That was your mistake. Luckily, you later would find greater and more delicious gratification of this type in Ifan Ben-Mezd from Divinity: Original Sin II.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: They’re afraid of DILFs, rightfully so.
Cullen Rutherford, Dragon Age: Inquisition
What He Says About You: You have dated at least one man who was so white and so unremarkable that everyone in your life assumed unthinkingly that he would be an ideal partner for you. They were wrong about that, though the scale of their misapprehension varies widely.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: I’ve never seen a single post or statement or opinion or thought about Cullen I believed was made by a straight guy. They seem to consider him a sort of utility function.
Dorian Pavus, Dragon Age: Inquisition
What He Says About You: You stuck it out in video games long enough to make it to a detailed, well-articulated, and conclusive mlm romance in a AAA CRPG. Congratulations! You have the endurance of a tank.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: They feel left out, even though they also don’t actually want to play a gay romance. They should discuss this with a therapist, not the whole internet.
Iron Bull, Dragon Age: Inquisition
What He Says About You: Honestly, I’m completely at a loss for this one. Iron Bull was so far outside the realm of a game character I would select I rarely even took him on missions. You like guys with pants the size and pattern of a circus tent?
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: He doesn’t even make me mad.
Solas, Dragon Age: Inquisition
What He Says About You: You were very smart to realize that the developers made this game with the assumption that everyone would choose to play an elf, despite giving us four different species options.
What He Makes Straight Guys So Mad: He reminds them that if they had rizz, sensitivity, and compelling backstory, it wouldn’t matter how bald they were at all.
We must pause here, but know that behind the curtain I possess another ten imaginary beefcakes, whom I shall unveil here next week with accompanying dunks for your amusement.
Before then, write into the blog with your best guess as to which of these video game boyfriends were my boyfriends when I was playing Bioware! If your guess is correct, I will send you my top five most secret and serious video game romance writing tips.
