nevarras:

Of course I can explain, and thank you so much for asking and being considerate and polite instead of, well, what I’ve usually come to expect on Tumblr.

The very beginning of their “relationship” made my alarm bells go off: In the majority of their conversations, the Iron Bull aggressively pursues Dorian with lewd sexual comments in front of the entire party:

Iron Bull: “That staff’s in pretty good shape, Dorian.”

Iron Bull: “You spend a lot of time polishing it?”

Dorian: “Ugh.”

-

Dorian: “Watch where you pointing that thing!”

Iron Bull: “Mhh. Dirty.”

Dorian: “Vishante kaffas! I meant your weapon!”

I could go on citing quotes from the game, but I’ll stop here. The fandom seems to find this adorable, but this reads — as someone who has experienced the same in a working situation — as verbal sexual harassment to me. Even more so because it does not matter who starts the conversation or what it was about originally. On Dorian’s side, he never gives any indication of liking the Bull in their banters. He is mostly greeted with frustration and exasperation and the prejudice you’d find in a mage from Tevinter against a qunari.

It continues with the way it progress into “something more”: the Bull sleeps with Dorian when he is drunk. Given how big a deal Bull makes out of consent — when it suits him, of course, and when he doesn’t explain what that consent entails — this alone is deplorable enough. A drunk person is not capable of proper consent.

But considering that Dorian has a very obvious, very apparent problem with drinking judging by how he often he craves drink or a tavern or even how often other party members will talk to him about it, Bull’s actions become downright despicable.

I’ve said this before and I will say it again: Iron Bull is one of the most valuable and special spies of the Ben-Hassrath — one who notices everything about a man with just a few glances as evidenced by banter in Redcliffe, among several others — sleeps with the person he has been harrassing with unsolicited sexual comments that are not returned in any kind at any point before the “hook up” — or even after —, the same person who very clearly, very obviously has some sort of drinking problem after that person has been drinking

Lastly, there is the way Iron Bull will treat Dorian during their “relationship”: He belittles him, he talks over him, he drags things that are private out in the open for no other apparent reason than boasting, he ignores Dorian’s explicit and implicit wishes.

He talks about Dorian leaving his underthings in front of the entire party, he boasts how Dorian got “got so excited he set the curtains on fire”. He has a banter with Varric about their relationship in which he shames Dorian for his — again — private preferences before telling him to get over it when he interjects. He forcibly projects his rape fantasies onto Dorian, who is evidently distressed, as you can see in this banter:

Iron Bull: Quite the stink-eye you’ve got going, Dorian.

Dorian: You stand there, flexing your muscles, huffing like some beast of burden with no thought save conquest.

Iron Bull: That’s right. These big muscled hands could tear those robes off while you struggled, helpless in my grip.

Iron Bull: I’d pin you down, and as you gripped my horns; I. Would. Conquer. You.

Dorian: Uh. What?

Iron Bull: Oh. Is that not where we’re going?

Dorian: No. It was very much not.

In general, Bull seems to care little for Dorian and what he actually wants aside from boasting and the physical aspect of whatever it is they have.

A friend of mine referred me to these two great posts from BSN that put it much more eloquently than I will ever be able to phrase it. You can find them under the Read More.

Read More