Disliked Elements, Mechanics, and Tropes

Those are some really strong opinions against coffee when both coffee and tea contain caffeine…

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This! But then with alcohol. So many stories assume the main character drinks, while I really just don’t. It’s already annoying to someone like me, who simply dislikes it, but I can imagine it is way worse for people who don’t drink for religious reasons, past addictions, medicine use, etc.

It’s basically the same in society as a whole. There was a toast as work for their x-th year existence, and there was no non-alcoholic option, so I stood between the flutes of champagne with a paper cup of hot chocolate.

Like, seriously. Knock it off.

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I know, but as far as I’m aware coffee is much more addictive and the effects (particularly on the teeth) are worse.

Same for that too! And that’s way worse than me just being weird about the two most popular drinks in the world/history. I find it funny that fucking Cyberpunk 2077, in a world of excess hedonism, lets me play the straight edge I am (blatantly addictive personality and an intense family history really makes someone refuse to touch any of it), with some characters even pointing it out, and yet plenty of IF just decides “guess what you’re gonna get drunk in this scene and deal with a hangover later and there’ll be easily avoidable consequences due to this” like it’s fine to force a character into drug use. Also done with weed; less common but still very common to just assume you’re fine with it.

I get exacerbated by the hot drink choice but I’ll real easily drop a story for making the protagonist get drunk/high.

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Me who has to drink either tea or coffee at least thrice per day (breakfast, lunch and dinner):
What?!

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What about a dirty chai? It’s an occasional drink of a work colleague of mine, that is both tea and coffee

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Coffee is toxic, foul-smelling sludge, the mere smell of which makes me physically queasy.

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I agree but
cappuccino isn’t bad
pobrane

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Is it even necessary for player character to specify what he likes to drink and eat? I always find it weird when the game asks me if my character is vegan, eats kosher or halal, prefers to drink alcohol, tea, coffee or water - I always filled such gaps in my head with ease and such questions can’t help but break my immersion a bit because they feel so, well, minor in how they affect my character and his behaviour.

Doesn’t help that often such customisation is spread to almost every aspect of your custom character… except their behaviour, where customisation should probably matter the most.

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Apparently, a lot of people are very sensitive about that and more

This :point_up: :point_up: :point_up: should be written on a golden plate

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Leaving it open to player interpretation/filling in the gaps is a totally reasonable way of handling it and in many (most?) cases that’ll work fine. The problems arise when someone has happily been filling the gaps and imagining their character as vegetarian and then the character tucks into a steak dinner without their input, which can be a jarring distraction. If there isn’t a choice about which meal to go for, I’d prefer to gloss over what’s being specifically eaten - just writing something like “the banquet has XYZ kinds of food and you all eat your dinner” or “after breakfast, you go to your superhero cave” or something.

I don’t think it’s a necessity exactly - I’m not someone who self-inserts in games so I don’t really mind if my character goes for a meat dish - but it’s a small way of expressing something about your character.

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Same goes for animals or pets. Sure, authors are obviously free to include them in their story. It’s also obviously fine if NPCs react in a way where they go all mushy and doe-eyed when an animal is around. But forcing the player character to react in that way is a hard no.

This also plays into my wider opinion that character customization should matter more, and a big part of that is reactions to situations. Yes, the reaction to fawn over “cuteness” might be common, but having an opposite reaction or a reaction somewhere inbetween outright love and hate can also reveal things about a character.

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I definitely agree that customization should focus on behavior and reactions, not superficial fluff like dietary choices or even excess appearance customization; the only exception is if those choices have a direct impact on the story.

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…even if the story takes place in arctic winter and the MC just needs to keep warm?

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Yup. They (and similar things like soups) cause such a very intense reaction in me irl so, since I self-insert, it’ll really take me out of it. Could be -100 of your degrees of choice and I’d still only take a cold drink, 'cause at least that doesn’t cause me to gag. At least in that case, though, it serves a functional purpose and I’d probably overlook it.

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Ah, I see now. (As someone who’s incapable of drinking cold drinks half the year, I was having a bit difficulties.) In that case the better option would probably be to not drink at all, instead of willingly lowering your body temperature.

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Something I don’t like is the idea of a “secret RO.” Like, what’s the point of making them a secret? What benefit is there to not including them?

I would rather have a “difficult RO.” One where the MC needs to make more of an effort to romance that particular RO. Maybe they only romance a particular kind of character. But that way the reader can at least know that

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I usually manage to get the difficult ROs to fall right into my clutches, so I don’t really know if calling them difficult or challenging would ever work. I reliably romance Hawkins each time I replay Mecha Ace and it isn’t much of a trouble to romance Manerkol, either, so I would not call them difficult.

I’m just waiting for a fantasy game with plant people so I can eat vegetables right in front of them.

I’d rather a ro that seems like one but turns out they’re not.

Hawkins is supposed to be the difficult to but it’s the only the one I can snag

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I don’t self-insert, but have a similar distaste for hot drinks. I have a hot drink maybe twice a decade, and that’s usually because someone either forces it on me while I’m too sick to get up and get my own drink or because my nephew made me a cup of coffee (because if he says it tastes good, I tend to believe him). I’ve never gotten everyone’s thing for hot drinks–I like cold drinks and I fill the cup with ice before I ever pour whatever I’m drinking into the glass. Hell, I even freeze my bottles of water, because refrigerator water just isn’t cold enough.

And the only soups I’ll eat are either cold (fruit “soups”, actually) or cream-based, and there are only a couple of the latter I’ll touch.

So, yeah, I get it. And it’d be nice to give my MCs a cold drink for their choice (iced tea, soda, or even cold brew coffee!) instead of hot drinks (and hot tea makes me gag, so every time I see that, I shudder).

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Their existence being a plot point?

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