Wait. . .what?

There will never be another character like Blackwall Dragon Age. He's a Grey Warden. The first time you meet him, he saves you from being kirked. He's an idealist. He's a romantic. He's a war hero and a protector and a knight in shining armor. He's a liar and a bullshitter and a coward. He's a family man. He's traumatized by his family's tragedy and his own failures. He's a sports fan. He hates nobles. He's trying to impress nobles. His best friend is a lesbian half his age. He made a suicide pact with his coworker. He's a fuckboy. He genuinly likes women. He helps his friends get laid. He makes toys for children in his free time. He's a child murderer. He always lies about who he is. He always tells the truth about who he is. He gets psychoanalyzed by Varric without either of them realizing it. He fucks so loud it scares the horses. He idolizes courtly love. He's not a Grey Warden. He's every Grey Warden that ever walked on Thedas.

“The LEGO Movie was my favorite movie of 2014, but it strikes me that the main character was male, because I feel like in our current culture, he HAD to be. The whole point of Emmett is that he’s the most boring average person in the world. It’s impossible to imagine a female character playing that role, because according to our pop culture, if she’s female she’s already SOMEthing, because she’s not male. The baseline is male. The average person is male. You can see this all over but it’s weirdly prevalent in children’s entertainment. Why are almost all of the muppets dudes, except for Miss Piggy, who’s a parody of femininity? Why do all of the Despicable Me minions, genderless blobs, have boy names? I love the story (which I read on Wikipedia) that when the director of The Brave Little Toaster cast a woman to play the toaster, one of the guys on the crew was so mad he stormed out of the room. Because he thought the toaster was a man. A TOASTER. The character is a toaster. I try to think about that when writing new characters— is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster?”