#i cant speak to steve's romance since ive never played it through but i imagine it wasnt fetishized like sam's was

[mirandaputsherbestbuttforward]

Call me bitter, but like, the way that people are upset re: only getting bi Kaidan in Me3 (which has its own merits, don’t get me wrong) but then like, forgetting the fact that the wlw who play this game have also been done dirty from the start.

Yes, we had Liara who, despite asari being “monogendered”, was intended to be the player character’s main romance, but again, they always had mshep in mind first, so while it’s a doable option for fshep, it’s still very much a ‘neutral’ and no nuance romance re: the sapphic experience.

Second, once again, Ashley was meant to be a bi option. The voicelines are all in ME1, but she was given the Male Gaze(tm) treatment for ME3 where they, “let her hair down and gave her sex appeal” (ME3 official artbook), which disregarded her character as a career soldier, and acting as if her ‘tomboy’ appearance wasn’t attractive enough. BUT ALSO, at some con, one of the devs said, and I quote “Ashley didn’t fit the bill of bisexuality” whatever the hell that was intended to mean is still biphobic as hell. 

And then cue the issue with Jack wherein she literally talks about being involved with a man and a woman couple before she was betrayed by them. They took out her romance with fshep, Tali, and Miranda as possible options for fear of more outrage from conservatives.

Then we have Kelly (and let’s keep this straight: I like Kelly’s character a lot and think she had a Neat role on the SR2), but her “romance” didn’t count for the achievement and she was, once again, dressed in that sex scene pretty much for the explicit male gaze that just happened to include fshep.

And then! We finally get to ME3 where they’ve put in Samantha and Steve as the first lesbian woman and gay man in the series to romance. Sam’s romance, for the most part, is well done. Alix Wilton Regan, her VA, has two mums, and knowing that, she certainly put her heart into the performance. However, the way that they portray Samantha as having this weird Thing for the shower/hot tub (in Citadel DLC) is very fetishized and most certainly made for a man playing fshep to ‘enjoy the fantasy’ of lesbian sexuality, much akin to a lesbian porn category. 

So... again, not that I’m discrediting the mlm mshep players here, but often times I feel that people are quick to say that wlw fshep players got ‘more’ than they did - which, yes, in terms of options we did, but in terms of playing a romance that didn’t have the male player in mind when they were created?

Yeah no.