i feel like every couple weeks i see someone on tumblr asserting that a certain DAI romance was the "most popular" (usually because they're annoyed with it) and using it to make some larger comments about bioware or gaming itself or whatever and like.
it's not. it never was. it may be the most prevalent or have the most longevity in the active tumblr fandom. but this is very much NOT where the majority of people who play games are, and you cannot take tumblr demographics and extrapolate them upwards to the rest of the gaming community in a real way. because trends here are WILDLY distinct from what's most popular elsewhere. these statements mean nothing if you take them out of the context of these very specific online spaces that tend to attract certain kinds of people who engage with fandom in very specific ways.
i'm going crazy. hello. does anyone else remember Bioware sharing in 2015 that only 32% of players even picked female inquisitors. and at the time articles everywhere onlne went "WOW! 1 in 3... a Woman????" like. the straight male love interests from this game were not even accessible to 70% of people who played the game. yes we here on tumblr (and twitter/bsky) can make a lot of loud noise about our favorites in the ways others wont, and so we do see more engagement back from the devs on them because of it. but we are Not the majority, or who were being catered to by the industry or bioware as a whole
you can complain about tumblr specifically or specific fandom space online for sure! that's not my problem here. gripe away about how you don't like a character's prevalence here specifically. but you can't take that data upward. it's false!!!!! you are sampling from a misrepresentative subset!!!!!! this is inaccurate statistics that would never hold up to peer review
