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I've been thinking about how Dragon Age ties into archetypes and stereotypes and gender and STUFF and it all mooshed together in my brain to create a series of pictures and some meta. This is very rambly, I've been thinking about this for a while but I haven't had much chance to talk about it so have lots of miscellaneous tangents to untangle. For a more abstract take see Fanart meta: genderswap, crossdressing, and trans-ness.
So, first I saw this picture and was struck by how cool and self confident Zevran looks in a dress, and had this mental image of him in a less sexy more feminine dress self-confidently assassinating someone. But I had this niggling unease at the idea of drawing it.
Then I got the idea for a Merlin and Dragon Age crossover. But it involved Arthur dressing as Anora, and I couldn't see any way to do that that wouldn't come across as all "LOL Arthur's in a dress!" (rather than just "Lol, Arthur is Anora", which is amusing since they're so different and everyone hates her)
And thinking about those got me thinking about how different Dragon Age would be if some of the characters were the opposite gender. I drew genderswapped and sexswapped Morrigan but again had a niggling sense of unease, so I sat down and hammered out my thoughts and ended up with this general post about genderswap and crossdressing fanart.
And it helped open my mind a little, and I realised that most of my "genderswap" fanart is just "How would this character look if they had been cast as a cisgendered woman instead of a cisgendered man?" (or vice versa) and there's no need to make sex-switched or cross-dressing versions of canon characters unless I deliberately choose to do so because it suits the picture.
In Dragon Age the clothes have male and female options and I used this to make my Merlin and Dragon Age crossover with no crossdressing.
Meanwhile, the character of Sten makes no sense as anything but a cisgendered man(*): he is defined very much by (a)Being a warrior and (b)Believing in a rigid society structure that doesn't allow women to be warriors. Take one of those away and he's not Sten any more. So I imagined a totally different female character who had as many things in common with Sten as possible, fulfilling the same position in the plot, and thus: Qunari woman.
And then I thought about separating gender from sex. What if I swapped one but not the other? I kind of like the idea of Wynne as a trans woman, but am for some reason really taken with the idea of Alistair as a trans woman. In a lot of ways he's quite a feminine character, I think, and it ties in really well with his self consciousness about sex and EXTREME unwillingness to become King. Thus: Genderswapped Alistair. (Also, if Alistair is assigned male at birth and Cailan is a cis girl that makes the "Alistair threatens Cailan's throne" argument actually make some sense. Anora/Cailan is kind of creepy with the genders swapped, though)
I still have some stuff to poke at I think. And maybe some more stuff to draw: I am quite taken with the idea of Zevran as a cis woman.
And there's other AU changes to consider besides gender of course! But I've found this thought experiment quite useful in helping get my thoughts about genderswaps etc sorted in my head. Also it make me open my mind to the idea of drawing trans characters which inspired me to draw Sense and Sensibility: Henry which was hugely happy making.
(*)you could decide that Qunari society allows for trans men or intersex warriors etc, but I'm not sure I'd be comfortable having such a character be so sexist (EDIT: because I don't think I'd be up to writing it and not having it go to a bad place, not because it's impossible, see comments).
So, first I saw this picture and was struck by how cool and self confident Zevran looks in a dress, and had this mental image of him in a less sexy more feminine dress self-confidently assassinating someone. But I had this niggling unease at the idea of drawing it.
Then I got the idea for a Merlin and Dragon Age crossover. But it involved Arthur dressing as Anora, and I couldn't see any way to do that that wouldn't come across as all "LOL Arthur's in a dress!" (rather than just "Lol, Arthur is Anora", which is amusing since they're so different and everyone hates her)
And thinking about those got me thinking about how different Dragon Age would be if some of the characters were the opposite gender. I drew genderswapped and sexswapped Morrigan but again had a niggling sense of unease, so I sat down and hammered out my thoughts and ended up with this general post about genderswap and crossdressing fanart.
And it helped open my mind a little, and I realised that most of my "genderswap" fanart is just "How would this character look if they had been cast as a cisgendered woman instead of a cisgendered man?" (or vice versa) and there's no need to make sex-switched or cross-dressing versions of canon characters unless I deliberately choose to do so because it suits the picture.
In Dragon Age the clothes have male and female options and I used this to make my Merlin and Dragon Age crossover with no crossdressing.
Meanwhile, the character of Sten makes no sense as anything but a cisgendered man(*): he is defined very much by (a)Being a warrior and (b)Believing in a rigid society structure that doesn't allow women to be warriors. Take one of those away and he's not Sten any more. So I imagined a totally different female character who had as many things in common with Sten as possible, fulfilling the same position in the plot, and thus: Qunari woman.
And then I thought about separating gender from sex. What if I swapped one but not the other? I kind of like the idea of Wynne as a trans woman, but am for some reason really taken with the idea of Alistair as a trans woman. In a lot of ways he's quite a feminine character, I think, and it ties in really well with his self consciousness about sex and EXTREME unwillingness to become King. Thus: Genderswapped Alistair. (Also, if Alistair is assigned male at birth and Cailan is a cis girl that makes the "Alistair threatens Cailan's throne" argument actually make some sense. Anora/Cailan is kind of creepy with the genders swapped, though)
I still have some stuff to poke at I think. And maybe some more stuff to draw: I am quite taken with the idea of Zevran as a cis woman.
And there's other AU changes to consider besides gender of course! But I've found this thought experiment quite useful in helping get my thoughts about genderswaps etc sorted in my head. Also it make me open my mind to the idea of drawing trans characters which inspired me to draw Sense and Sensibility: Henry which was hugely happy making.
(*)you could decide that Qunari society allows for trans men or intersex warriors etc, but I'm not sure I'd be comfortable having such a character be so sexist (EDIT: because I don't think I'd be up to writing it and not having it go to a bad place, not because it's impossible, see comments).
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I didn't mean trans men can't be sexist (I have seen counterexamples to that myself!). I just meant that in any hypothetical fic based on this premise it might have unfortunate implications for there to be one-to-one correspondence between trans men and very sexist men (in the same way as there it is unfortunate in the game for there to be a 1-1 correspondence between extreme sexism and being from a ethnicity which is roughly equivalent to middle eastern :/) I think a good author could write a horribly sexist character who was trans or intersex without it going to a bad place, but I'm not sure I could at this point.
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Sorry for being ambiguous.