![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So: I just finished playing Mass Effect 1, because I am a rather behind-the-times RPG fan. As with many bioware games, there are romance options. I found the romance-able characters to be the most unengaging in the game (oh, earnest, bland, and whiny -- is there ever a better personality trifecta?), and quipped to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
madalchemist that you should be able to romance the pilot, since he's the only human character with a decent personality. His immediate response is that the pilot has brittle bone syndrome and you'd break him.
A brief survey of obsessed forums on the net shows that that's the common response, too, and it's seriously been eating at me.
Healthy Gamers of the Internet: Do you seriously believe that people with severe, chronic health problems never have romantic partners? I'm not even talking about pure, deep love where sex of any kind isn't an option, though it exists.
Face it: The human race is fucking creative, especially about fucking.
People with this medical condition and countless others don't just stop experiencing life as human beings. They do tend to experience body image issues, especially in their teens, out of fear that no one will ever be able to look beyond the illness or be willing to make the compromises necessary for their condition, whatever it is. Whole forums of people who assume that a character with their condition can never have any kind of partner sexual experience whatsoever help that alienation a lot, I'm sure.
There are other issues with the way video game romances are written (romance is the only way to have long conversations; all romances end in sex for an 'achievement' etc), but other people have written about those. To my knowledge, there hasn't even been another character with a severe chronic health problem*, and I haven't seen anyone talking about it with an eye to the fact that REAL PEOPLE ACTUALLY HAVE THESE PROBLEMS.
I applaud Bioware for writing a character with a disability. That's awesome. Now, in ME3, don't ruin it by saying "he's too breakable to love anyone but his ship", okay? Because that takes the "hey, we included a cool character with a disability!" medal and pisses on it.
*Partially understandable. People with severe chronic health issues don't usually end up on the adventuring party or in the marines. The importance of the ship in Mass Effect means the pilot can kick ass and take names while still sitting down all the time.
madalchemist that you should be able to romance the pilot, since he's the only human character with a decent personality. His immediate response is that the pilot has brittle bone syndrome and you'd break him.A brief survey of obsessed forums on the net shows that that's the common response, too, and it's seriously been eating at me.
Healthy Gamers of the Internet: Do you seriously believe that people with severe, chronic health problems never have romantic partners? I'm not even talking about pure, deep love where sex of any kind isn't an option, though it exists.
Face it: The human race is fucking creative, especially about fucking.
People with this medical condition and countless others don't just stop experiencing life as human beings. They do tend to experience body image issues, especially in their teens, out of fear that no one will ever be able to look beyond the illness or be willing to make the compromises necessary for their condition, whatever it is. Whole forums of people who assume that a character with their condition can never have any kind of partner sexual experience whatsoever help that alienation a lot, I'm sure.
There are other issues with the way video game romances are written (romance is the only way to have long conversations; all romances end in sex for an 'achievement' etc), but other people have written about those. To my knowledge, there hasn't even been another character with a severe chronic health problem*, and I haven't seen anyone talking about it with an eye to the fact that REAL PEOPLE ACTUALLY HAVE THESE PROBLEMS.
I applaud Bioware for writing a character with a disability. That's awesome. Now, in ME3, don't ruin it by saying "he's too breakable to love anyone but his ship", okay? Because that takes the "hey, we included a cool character with a disability!" medal and pisses on it.
*Partially understandable. People with severe chronic health issues don't usually end up on the adventuring party or in the marines. The importance of the ship in Mass Effect means the pilot can kick ass and take names while still sitting down all the time.
