Originally posted to tumblr in 2016, reposted here for archiving of posts I want to keep.
[tw: death, homophobia, biphobia, abuse]
Sometimes I’m hit with just how bitter I am at the way DA2 brushes Karl Thekla and his relationship with Anders under the rug.
Aveline and Anders have both recently lost their significant other, both with the same additional trauma of just how said significant other died, too. For starters, that’s a clear parallel between two of your Hawke’s companions, which gives insight into both their characters.
Karl is dead because of templars, people like Aveline’s husband Wesley, so Anders doesn’t feel inclined to be respectful to Wesley’s memory. Anders calling templars jailors of innocent people whom they abuse with little to no consequences is something Aveline tends to not want to hear, because her late templar husband was a good person, right? That Aveline and Anders don’t get along well enough to support each other in their loss is sad yet makes sense, though there’s potential for better understanding if only they both knew they have this in common. The emotional impact and context for the way they behave towards each other is certainly lost if the player doesn’t know it.
And it ties in with the bigger questions of the story, too, what with Wesley getting to be someone’s husband in the first place, while Circle mage couples are forcibly separated if found out. What a good example of how the problems don’t stop at the occasional extremists like Meredith, with the extra punch of being personal to characters the player presumably cares about.
But while Aveline and Wesley being married is made clear from their introduction, there’s a good chance the player never finds out about Anders and Karl—if you play as f!Hawke you just plain don’t (though with this mod you, too, can!), the dialogue doesn’t happen, and even for m!Hawke it’s hidden behind a flirt line you need to select first. When this is (I think?) the only canon same-gender couple in the game outside of potentially player character x love interest we’re talking about, there’s no excuse for that. I can understand Anders being hesitant to talk about the relationship, but that just means it should be made known in a different way, or later if not right away. Those bothered by LGBT+ characters, and people, existing where they can’t ignore our being LGBT+ and wanting to pretend their partner isn’t bi because they’re dating a person of a different gender don’t deserve any more pandering, and literally nobody else benefits from this.
Hawke gets several opportunities throughout the game to check on Aveline recovering from her husband’s death or to just talk about him with her, and Wesley keeps coming up in party banter, too, including with companions who never met him. Conversely, after the scene where Hawke may find out about Anders and Karl, the player never gets to broach the subject again, and by the time he gets mentioned one more time by Anders in Act 2 the player may very well have forgotten who Karl even was—with the exception of Fenris the other companions as good as seem to have.
While Wesley’s death when we hardly got to know him is kind of a progressive twist on a shitty trope—he gets fridged for a woman’s character development instead of the other way around—Karl’s death is still bury your gays played utterly straight (no pun intended) because the history of LGBT+ characters tending to be killed off is still there no matter who else dies, too. But I would have at least liked for deaths already so similar otherwise to be presented as equally tragic instead of the confirmed-nonstraight character’s as less so.
[tw: death, homophobia, biphobia, abuse]
Sometimes I’m hit with just how bitter I am at the way DA2 brushes Karl Thekla and his relationship with Anders under the rug.
Aveline and Anders have both recently lost their significant other, both with the same additional trauma of just how said significant other died, too. For starters, that’s a clear parallel between two of your Hawke’s companions, which gives insight into both their characters.
Karl is dead because of templars, people like Aveline’s husband Wesley, so Anders doesn’t feel inclined to be respectful to Wesley’s memory. Anders calling templars jailors of innocent people whom they abuse with little to no consequences is something Aveline tends to not want to hear, because her late templar husband was a good person, right? That Aveline and Anders don’t get along well enough to support each other in their loss is sad yet makes sense, though there’s potential for better understanding if only they both knew they have this in common. The emotional impact and context for the way they behave towards each other is certainly lost if the player doesn’t know it.
And it ties in with the bigger questions of the story, too, what with Wesley getting to be someone’s husband in the first place, while Circle mage couples are forcibly separated if found out. What a good example of how the problems don’t stop at the occasional extremists like Meredith, with the extra punch of being personal to characters the player presumably cares about.
But while Aveline and Wesley being married is made clear from their introduction, there’s a good chance the player never finds out about Anders and Karl—if you play as f!Hawke you just plain don’t (though with this mod you, too, can!), the dialogue doesn’t happen, and even for m!Hawke it’s hidden behind a flirt line you need to select first. When this is (I think?) the only canon same-gender couple in the game outside of potentially player character x love interest we’re talking about, there’s no excuse for that. I can understand Anders being hesitant to talk about the relationship, but that just means it should be made known in a different way, or later if not right away. Those bothered by LGBT+ characters, and people, existing where they can’t ignore our being LGBT+ and wanting to pretend their partner isn’t bi because they’re dating a person of a different gender don’t deserve any more pandering, and literally nobody else benefits from this.
Hawke gets several opportunities throughout the game to check on Aveline recovering from her husband’s death or to just talk about him with her, and Wesley keeps coming up in party banter, too, including with companions who never met him. Conversely, after the scene where Hawke may find out about Anders and Karl, the player never gets to broach the subject again, and by the time he gets mentioned one more time by Anders in Act 2 the player may very well have forgotten who Karl even was—with the exception of Fenris the other companions as good as seem to have.
While Wesley’s death when we hardly got to know him is kind of a progressive twist on a shitty trope—he gets fridged for a woman’s character development instead of the other way around—Karl’s death is still bury your gays played utterly straight (no pun intended) because the history of LGBT+ characters tending to be killed off is still there no matter who else dies, too. But I would have at least liked for deaths already so similar otherwise to be presented as equally tragic instead of the confirmed-nonstraight character’s as less so.
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