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La Ron S. Readus
La Ron S. Readus

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Fictional Character Crushes in Video Games (VIDEO SCRIPT)

 

Now I know you asked what my top 10 fictional crushes are. So...here are my top 5 crushes...in video games! That’s the same thing, right?

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Trust me, Readers: I knew my original video on character crushes was WAY overdue for a revamp once I noticed that everyone started flocking over to it after they were done watching the video I made on Shape of Water

The only reason why I waited so long to do something about it is because for the longest time, I didn’t know how to properly approach it.

I wanted to be CLASSY about it, y’know? I wanted to go about it in a way that didn’t just sound like y’all were yelling at me:

“TELL US WHO YOU WANNA SMOOCH!”

But it turns out, that’s exactly what y’all wanted!

One of the questions I got for my 20K subscriber Q&A video was what are my top 10 fictional crushes.

And I have to be honest with you. I have...a LOT of crushes. Throughout a LOT of mediums. So to just pick 10 throughout all of them I believe just wouldn’t be fair

So instead, I decided to do them justice and list the all-time crushes I DO have according to the medium they belong in.

And since the majority of the ones I’ve told you all come from them in the first place, I figured I’d start off this potential series with the top 5 character crushes I developed in video games.

So I’m gonna start with my Number 5 and just work my way up to Number 1, which I’m absolutely sure you all know by now who my Number 1 is considering the category.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with my Number 5: Iron Bull

When they showed off Iron Bull in Dragon Age Inquisition and announced he was romanceable, I was like, “Oh. Okay.”

Then I found out that he’s available to be romanced by both men and women, I immediately went: Oh, so what you’re saying is it’s TIME

Because to me, Iron Bull was a step in the right direction that I wanted BioWare to take Dragon Age romance wise. Specifically when it came to the range of their queer party NPCs in comparison to the franchises queer fanbase.

When it comes to writing characters, there’s more to queer dudes who identify as dudes than just the stereotypical prettyboy that TV and boy-love anime-slash-manga like to present; there has to be a range because that range EXISTS in real life.

Like it isn’t fair to continue to present characters like Zevran and Dorian out into the fray, when characters like Gibraltar from Apex Legends deserve just as much exposure and could relate to others just as much as they can

I’m not saying that Zevran and Dorian aren’t complex and interesting in their own right, but they just didn’t represent what I wanted when it came to queer characters in video games.

And I’m not gonna lie; Iron Bull wasn’t completely there either. Part of his dialogue when you first start romancing him sounds like it comes out of a cheesy-ass porno

“You wanna ride the bull?” Really, dude? I’ve been complimenting and hitting on you for months, you just turned Tal-Vasoth last night, you finally realize I’m digging you, and your opening line is “you wanna ride the bull?”

If THAT’S the case, I’ll just take the unsolicited dick pic traditionally followed by the word “WOOF” over that!

Also, not really into BDSM...NO.

I mean, I’m not THAT vanilla; I have my own kinks and stuff. But I’ll leave the whips and chains to Rihanna

/But what attracts me to Iron Bull is that when he loves you, he loves you, and he doesn’t want you to be ashamed of or secret about it. That leads to some pretty heartfelt dialogue both in the main game and the DLC later on down the line that always brings a smile to my face because it feels genuine. In my opinion, all the other romance options are pretty boring in comparison, to the point where Iron Bull is pretty much my canon romance in Inquisition/

Dragon Age 2’s Isabella on the other hand is a bit more complex with me.

Off the bat, there’s already a lot that I like about Isabella.

She has the looks of Disney’s Esmeralda from Hunchback as well as the spunk, a personality similar to that of Selina Kyle but not quite mirroring it entirely...

Basically, it’s like Spike Spiegel said in the Cowboy Bebop movie:

(I love the kind of girl that can kick my ass)

/I said what I said about the Selina mirror because kinda like Selina, Isabella has a more vulnerable bit about herself that she hides behind her badass personality, that, despite the fear of being hurt because of it, she slowly starts to show you as Hawke -- whether you’re male or female./

But unfortunately, I never really got a chance to explore the level of vulnerability she hides. Because I give her to the Qunari. EVERY. TIME.

Even when I’m playing a NON-canonical run of Dragon Age 2 with the intention of properly romancing her, I always choke up and give Isabella to the Qunari when she returns the book because I’m so used to playing my Mage Hawk a specific way to the point where it’s second nature.

Maybe one day I’ll buy another 360 and replay it to see that arc through.

So when it comes to Thrall from Warcraft, I do have to admit that my attraction to him is all aesthetic.

That’s because I haven’t played ANY of the original games, and I’ve only played an hour or so’s worth of Vanilla WoW because it’s free

The most I’ve consumed of Warcraft was the movie directed by David Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones. Which I was surprisingly able to coherently follow, considering I knew damn near nothing of the lore.

But yeah, Thrall -- specifically how he looks in the Cataclysm expansion -- was just...hot.

I remember seeing him in the game footage of the Guild Grumps mini-series that the Game Grumps made once upon a time as an NPC, and I legit just started looking up images and getting small summaries of his story from there on out.

As a matter of fact, seeing this version of Thrall...on Guild Grumps...ALSO made me interested in playing WoW for as long as I did.

So yeah, there’s no real story as to why I’m crushing on Thrall. I just find him fucking sexy. The end

Can’t say the same about my top 2 though!

Morrigan. Morrigan, Morrigan, Morrigan.

Why is our son white?

Sorry. That part of Inquisition still doesn’t make sense to me. Um, Morrigan is awesome.

She’s witty, no-nonsensical, and her giggle. Jesus Joan of Andraste Christ, her giggle.

Like Isabella, she has that Selina Kyle aesthetic when it comes to her personality as far as being a badass

/And because of her history with her mother Flemeth, you can tell that there are guards in place and that the feelings she develops for you once the relationship starts are both new and scary for her/

Now I do admit, the fact that she can only be romanced by a man in Origins make the arc choices for her romance sound very “eh” in this day and age

Especially when there are PLENTY of stories that go the “love is weird and I don’t like it” angle a lot better than how Origins handled it

Part of why I’m willing to give it a pass is because it was definitely a learning process and BioWare has clearly gotten better when it comes to handling tropes like that.

At least in Dragon Age, I can’t say the same for Mass Effect. BECAUSE I’VE ONLY PLAYED THE FIRST GAME. Calm down, people.

Now then. Let me tell you why I’m in love with Winston from Overwatch.

His origin video, which I believe was the first character origin video for the game IMMEDIATELY had me smitten.

Seeing how he was as a baby, how he got his glasses. Seeing how he acted and reacted in times of crisis. All that was enough to just immediately start feeling a certain type of way about him

Then there’s the opening cinematic of the ACTUAL GAME

He just pushed all the buttons for me. A huge dork. An adorable-slash-goofy ass laugh. And then finally the smolder he gives when he takes off his glasses, I just... (frustrated huff)

So yeah. Those are my top 5 video game crushes. And now you can clearly see why I am the certified mess that I currently am.

But I’m curious, Readers. So YOU’RE homework assignment for the day is to write in the comment section below what some of YOUR video game character crushes are.

And who knows. Maybe if this video does well, I’ll do a character crush video on comics or something; we’ll see how far I can stretch this out.


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