Just goes with the standard where everything is a clear and simple binary in interactive fiction (you’re an emotionless asshole or you’re a jubilant child, you’re a pathological liar or you’ve never lied in your entire life, etc), which I acknowledged is likely mostly for ease of coding but it still can get very frustrating. At least it means I can always appreciate when something has greater depth and nuance, like Conspiracy in Emerson where how you present yourself doesn’t have to line up with how you are internally, for example.
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They are! But I like to play sub MCs, and almost all the caring ROs are subs themselves, which makes the relationship awkward more often than not. Contrary to popular belief, you can be a caring person and dominant at the same time. You don’t have to be an asshole to qualify… lol.
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It always annoys me when the romance doesn’t seem to progress, when each romantic interaction is pretty much the same (both characters instantly being attracted to each other but not actually doing anything about it for god knows how long), until they randomly kiss and boom now they’re together. Imo the romance should have a certain flow to it, you should be slowly getting to know the RO better, let the feels grow until confession - instead of blushing and stammering during every single interaction in the exact same way without actually getting closer.
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I just had to quote your entire message. That’s exactly how I feel about it, and it seems to be the norm for “romances” because everyone salivates over slow-burn. Unfortunately, slow-burn usually means it’s dragged on to the point where I’m left rolling my eyes at how stupid both my MC and the LI are forced to behave, because no one can be adult enough to say what they want and actually stop jerking each other’s chains.
I get that some people want the blushing and stammering to last forever and not actually have a relationship with the LI until the end (because they, apparently, see “romance” as the build-up to getting together), but it’d be nice to have the romances where they could be played at a speed that flows better and quicker for people who don’t need to flirt and angst for so long to know they actually want to be with the person.
And I hate it when authors tell me the romance can be played “differently” but, ultimately, it happens at the same speed no matter what your MC does.
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Romance is just so incredibly difficult to do right. It’s so easy for it to end up rushed, shallow, or dragging on forever.
It’s funny because I guess it’s just because there is that many ways for it to go wrong. Honestly though, the amount of times I have an RO stick out in my mind and stay there? I can count them on one hand if we are only counting the positive ones. I’ve played… a decent chunk of the library. A lot of ROs are fun, but it feels like they are rather one dimensional, like once you are introduced to them within a scene you more or less know what is going on with them. [Hence my infatuation with FH series I guess, everyone seems one way but in reality is a lot more complicated.]
It’s too easy to play into archetypes I guess. You don’t want to mislead the readers, but oftentimes that comes at the sacrifice of blowing a reader away.
Response to @vera :
You know what’s, eugh, angsty? Realising you ultimately do not work together and are people too different to be happy in a pair. Sacrificing everything for someone you love or not being willing to abandon everything for love alone.
I do love the idea of being able to ‘break up’ with an RO, even if it means going on a romanceless path, sometimes I just want to see the ‘what if.’ Though it’s pretty unreasonable to ask from anything other than a solely romance focused game [which is something generally out of my interests anyway] so I don’t know how soon I’m going to get a chance to see it. [Outside of a specific beloved series earlier mentioned.]
Situations that mainly work with established strong connection that isn’t some dumbasses being unable to spit it out for several damn books. Situations that use actual ties between characters as a source of drama, not some cheap longing glances and prolonging misery for several books at worst.
I’d love to see more games where the ‘longing’ period is for a good reason, makes sense. Like Obren, or Ortega, where there is attraction but there is risk and both of you are too intimidated to even attempt to label things at the start. I love that kind of thing. [If there is to be a longing period at all, I’d prefer it be due to in character reasons rather than merely circumstance.]
Honestly though, overall I’m kind of annoyed at how much ‘longing’ there is all the time. I wish there was more ‘yo wanna go out’ and you don’t even know if you like eachother but you spend time together, enjoy the company and eventually end up in that unlabeled awkward stage. That isn’t really ‘longing,’ but I love that kind of unspoken thing, assuming the reader can choose to voice if they want to. It just feels very genuine to life. No weird contrivance preventing a relationship other than a mutual disinterest in clarifying it.
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Honestly, I grow to despise fictional relationships dragged and forced into slowburn for supposed angst’s sake.
You know what’s, eugh, angsty? Realising you ultimately do not work together and are people too different to be happy in a pair. Sacrificing everything for someone you love or not being willing to abandon everything for love alone.
Situations that mainly work with established strong connection that isn’t some dumbasses being unable to spit it out for several damn books. Situations that use actual ties between characters as a source of drama, not some cheap longing glances and prolonging misery for several books at worst.
I’ve liked Mecha Ace tying romance to both approval and personality values - ultimately, ROs want different people to be together with. Weaver won’t be happy with a Passionate MC, Hawkins can’t accept a Pacifist as his mate and it made characters feel more real, much more so than fixed orientations and made personality stats matter. Ultimately, I’d say Mecha Ace is one of few games where personality stats matter because of this detail.
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I typically don’t like the whole “breaking up” thing in a game. Games are too short to waste having my MC dedicate themselves to a LI then dump them. I’d rather see them work through it.
That said, in AMR, my MC considers her LI burning her alive to be an official break-up (by him, not her). So screw that guy.
Anyway, I actually like locking in a RO because it means your MC and LI could have ups and downs without having to worry that the LI has lost too many “points” and now hates the MC and my MC will find them in bed with someone else. By the same token, I expect romances that are “locked in” to have more opportunities for forward movement than a moment or two a book, with the LI taking huge steps backwards at least that many times. It’s locked in–there’s no need to drag it out unless the player gets off on that.
My Sidestep didn’t “long” for Ortega for long. After the beginning of b2, they quickly went from “complicated” to publicly affectionate or something like that. Now my MC is in a poly with Ortega and Daniel, lol. Now that, I expect to take some time to work out.
Or being too stupid to realize they don’t just want to bone the MC…
And it usually results in the LI shitting on the MC repeatedly because of whatever plot device is being used to keep the angst high.
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I’ve liked Mecha Ace tying romance to both approval and personality values - ultimately, ROs want different people to be together with. Weaver won’t be happy with a Passionate MC, Hawkins can’t accept a Pacifist as his mate and it made characters feel more real, much more so than fixed orientations and made personality stats matter. Ultimately, I’d say Mecha Ace is one of few games where personality stats matter because of this detail.
OOOO boy do I love this conceptually. If only I could get into the mecha genre to read it for myself. Alas, it is one of few [along with Westerns, which I didn’t know until I attempted to play Tin Star and a WIP on the forums] which I cannot find myself invested in. I love the idea of a threshold system though, monitoring choices, depending on a few select key choices it will change the conversation if you reach a certain bar on the stat from a ‘confrontation,’ ‘ultimatum,’ or flat out ‘break up’.
Response to @EvilChani :
Anyway, I actually like locking in a RO because it means your MC and LI could have ups and downs without having to worry that the LI has lost too many “points” and now hates the MC and my MC will find them in bed with someone else. By the same token, I expect romances that are “locked in” to have more opportunities for forward movement than a moment or two a book, with the LI taking huge steps backwards at least that many times. It’s locked in–there’s no need to drag it out unless the player gets off on that.
I don’t think it should be easy at any rate to trigger a ‘break up’ from the RO side, I would imagine it would be something that would need to be clearly foreshadowed, or something that the reader should know would cause a problem. [Massacring people for example, in FH, if anyone finds out you are the villain and you are a mass murderer, it’s doubtful any of them would still be down with that lmao.]
My Sidestep didn’t “long” for Ortega for long. After the beginning of b2, they quickly went from “complicated” to publicly affectionate or something like that. Now my MC is in a poly with Ortega and Daniel, lol. Now that, I expect to take some time to work out.
Damned Daniel and his stupid puppy eyes! Bugger! Stupid Daniel, naive, thinks your worth something… Now you have two perceptive worry warts on your ass. I am a fan of all the ROs in FH, which is weird, because I’ve never had it happen before. If I wasn’t gay as shit I would definitely want to do a specific one for Argent but as much as I love her character trying to read a romance is markedly different from a friendship path.
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Mecha Ace was one of several things that jumpstarted my love for mecha genre. It’s more of real robot genre, so no supernatural stuff and aliens a-la Mazinger and focus is more on people stuck in five-year war, young and old. Mecha is just a tool for the story to take place in. It’s like Universal Gundam, were you to cut out Newtypes and other Space Magi elements.
Generally, I think you can somewhat easily read the book even if you don’t like mecha genre. Mechas are not the main focus.
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“Dear Abby, my love had me burned alive. Do you think this is the end of the relationship, or can I still salvage it if I get hotter on my own? That’s what he was telling me, right?”
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Guess you could say your relationship went up in smoke.
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I do think that it’s reasonable for some NPCs to have dealbreakers - which can then cause angst because the PC can deliberate over whether they’re going to prioritise someone else’s values or do something they feel they need to do. Otherwise then you end up with NPCs just being cardboard cutouts and going along with whatever the PC’s preferences or actions are. But! It’s a balance of course - if an NPC breaks up at the drop off a hat or it feels arbitrary, that’s another kind of cardboard. (Hopefully not flammable cardboard…?)
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What you said makes sense. I just fear that kind of thing would quickly become “the author doesn’t like this, so all the cool ROs will dump the MC if they do it.” I just hate forced angst or “problems” that really shouldn’t be problems if the interested parties are adults (well, mature–being an adult doesn’t guarantee maturity).
If used infrequently and for reasons that are drastic enough to make sense, then it would work. A RO that has a long list of things that would make them dump the MC isn’t a very good RO. One that has a line that can’t be crossed–like, say, deep frying them–is fine, provided that line isn’t something ridiculous or ill-fitting to the world (unless that’s what the author is going for–I have a couple of ridiculous OCs that would make terrible ROs, but they’d be entertaining as hell to try to romance).
Yeah, exactly. The FH example is a good one.
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I actually have something like this planned for my own story!
One of the ROs has certain issues with physical intimacy and the discussion of it. You can ask her about this at the start of the relationship, and she immediately closes the topic and says talking about it makes her uncomfortable. The MC proceeds to apologize and ask her to forget they asked, but she says ‘I can’t’.
As the game goes on, you’ll get a few more options to bring up that same matter to her. If you do it enough times, she proceeds to leave you, and your relationship takes a very substantial hit.
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I actually have something like this planned for my own story!
That’s great! I haven’t read on your story, I still have exams going on so once they’re done, I have a few IF’s that I want to go through, but this topic REALLY gave me some good insights on what I should and shouldn’t do in the project, so I’m glad to see someone else taking notes haha
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I hate it when you are running around in a video game, and you’re collecting pages of a journal one by one. No one loses book pages like this!
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What can I say… Thoose book binders must really suck at their job.
And apparently everyone loves recording themselves and then leaving the tapes around.
But the real dumb ones are those who leave around password and combinations
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OTOH, real-life people routinely do this, which is why every company’s IT Security department is always incredibly stressed.
Still better than posting your crime on Twitter and Instagram, which, again, real-life people do. Fuck if I know how these people manage breathing.
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I especially love it when the things they record would get them into serious trouble and yet they leave the recordings laying around in random, often public places.
“I violated the Geneva convention again today and covered it up with a triple homicide.”
“I hate my boss with every fiber of my being and am totally not conspiring against him!”
“My company regular commits massive fraud with all our products and sells personal information to foreign powers.”
Nothing like incriminating yourself on tape and then losing the tapes.
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