Way back during this era, me and my friends used to call it Goices (gay choices) because we loved that you could be gay. Even in the games that were genderlocked-female, there were always female ROs, and they were great. Not to say there wasn’t an imbalance between attention for male ROs and for female ROs, but it was still unique among IF apps like that. Now… yeesh. The only times you see f/f relationships in those types of apps now is for cliché fetishy “hot sexy taboo breaking” stories. Going from “you and your queer gang of friends solve a horrifying supernatural mystery” to EXCLUSIVELY “oooh your sexy (one forced love interest) bad boy bodyguard cant keep his hands off you!” because a ceo saw a spreadsheet that said these types of stories make them more money feels…bad.
Actually, Choices has f/f relationships in every new game, single RO is always genderflippable and I’ve read that there is additional dialog when RO is a woman. M/m relationships are rare and it’s mostly submissive MC and dominant RO anyway (like in majority of games).
I would like to point out that the books with f/f relationships that are gender flip, the sex scenes are written very heteronormative. They don’t have a wlw type writting in mind at all.
Yep.
Also yep. Thanks for doing my job for me. 
Yeah, the MC gets pushed as a villain for not falling all over the lying wretch. And then your MC is forced to notice poor widdle Rebecca’s teary eyes. One of my MCs isn’t that observant about emotional things, and wouldn’t care even if she noticed because she’s too sick of R’s manipulative BS. She wants to know about her dad, but instead of getting to search for that in the Agency records, she was forced to choose whether or not to spy on Mason after he just called her a slampig in public. Yeah, she’s not going to look him up at all, but especially not after that. Had she had the choice, she would’ve searched for her dad, but the narrative can’t allow that because it has to be blocked and slow dripped over seven freaking books, just like the “romances”. 
How true. The MC “swoons” over the stupidest shit. I can’t stomach N’s route anymore because it’s just too weird. His “wannabe M” pool table sex scene was just out of character for him, but his “suave” stuff doesn’t seem suave to me at all. He’s just a big dork who puts on a weird show because he thinks it’s hot (he’s the poster boy for “tries too hard to be sexy”). Plus, he’s a hypocrite with the way he’s always on Mason and MC’s ass about being inappropriate. SHUT UP, NATE!
I think Sera made a huge boo-boo with the N route. The N route should’ve been the slow burn one*. F and M are proceeding at the appropriate pace, but N goes from “courtship must be done according to PROCEDURE” to “let’s fuck on the pool table right now” while you’re distracted by a cheetah speeding by.
N’s route should be the lengthy courtship one, because that’s what the route basically tells you what it’s about for the two books. I think it would’ve worked better and more in-character for N if at the end of B2 you had the officialisation of the courtship and then you had the courtship, instead of the two entire books of faffing about and then absolute wantonness that we got.
*A’s should be the fast burn one, via flamethrower
I was skim-reading because headache, and hoo boy did these two combined paint a picture 
I’m honestly not surprised the devs of these apps (such as Choices, Fictif etc) are clearly making content for cishet women while ignoring everyone else considering they’re based on P2W systems such as premium choices or keys/energy. Their sole purpose is to generate profit.
Yeah dw, I feel like a lot of people can relate.
Wayhaven is guilty of a lot of things you’ve brought up in your posts. The MC is clearly written with a submissive woman in mind while the ROs are written with straight men in mind. The dynamics always feel heteronormative. It’s like there’s an option to change the pronouns just to have that “Play as a man, woman, nonbinary, straight or gay yadda yadda” in the premise. And then the MC is forced to ogle the ROs and fangirl all over em…
There’s literally one moment where a character tells you that “You’re a strong, independent man” if you play as male. You can just feel it’s supposed to say “woman” there… + everyone treats you like a damsel in distress.
This would be Officer Tina Poname, who honestly should’ve been an RO because they’re a better choice than any of the Bravos. At least they’re FUN.
This had me smiling at my screen like a clown while fighting off a laugh 
when i am supposed to be doing something serious. You have summarized N’s route pretty well, it has been the only route i played, but with the big disappointment i felt after finishing it, i couldn’t bring myself to read any other route, the pool table scene had me cringing so bad that i had to go back and be contented with the choice of hugging them instead.
Besides, what left a sour taste in my mouth is that after confronting N about being overprotective, and choosing to act distant like sitting far from them because of said confrontation, the narrative seems to completely ignore that, proceeding as if MC is over it, without so much as a scene for settling the issue. And apparently in this book A is more forthcoming about their backstory than N.
F’s route is pretty consistent as a “my partner is my bestiest” thing, and M’s is an excellently-written piece of character development throughout the currently-existing three books.
Not to give undue credit but that’s actually really funny.
Wayhaven may be a strong example of this in the “clearly gendered” way, but I think a lot of IFs are guilty of this through the “neutral to the point of emptiness” way. Unless it’s set in a super gender/sexuality-neutral setting and thus justified, I get frustrated when IFs never even make a token effort to recognize that men and women are treated differently by others in society, or that maybe people struggle with realizing they’re gay, or what have you. I’m not saying a story has to make my character experience bigotry ofc, but something as simple as making an NPC change their nickname for you based on gender can go a long way. A lot of the time, I don’t feel like I’m playing as a gay man, or a nonbinary character, or whatever the game told me I could play in that little blurb, because there are zero gendered experiences at all; I’m just an amorphous invisible featureless protagonist completely detached from the worldbuilding.
Sir would perhaps enjoy @burninglights’s Merry Crisis, if sir has the time to gay in it.
burninglights does excellent writing as always! unfortunately I already have plenty of opportunities to experience the story of a queer Chinese man from New York returning home to be a weird family disappointment, such as: logging offline. /j
but yeah, merry crisis is a great example of how to use gendered experiences in ways to shape the worldbuilding and the MC without actually making the story about that.
One trope I never liked was the “destroying entire landmasses/whole planets” thing that’s so common in sci-fi/fantasy.
A part of it is because I’m a bit of a political geography nerd and think destroying these things is going to bother me for the rest of the story. The world is now permanently smaller and I don’t like that.
But more beyond my specific gripes, why the heck to evil empires keep doing this? That’s now land you can’t use for anything. Because it’s gone. You just shrunk your whole empire/potential conquests and lost countless resources. What does this accomplish that glassing the surface wouldn’t? That’d kill everyone. Still dumb to kill everyone but I can see evil empires wanting to do that. Why blow it all up? Glass the surface, then start mining it for resources!
And even if a planet IS wiped out in that manner, people act like it’s now entirely useless. It’s a PLANET! Either try to reterraform it or just build stuff on it that doesn’t require habitability! Robot factories and mines and stuff.
Worst offender is probably Warhamner 40k. So many dead worlds that they just abandon and never mention again.
I think it’s due to the complaints about N being “boring”, sera must have taken them to heart and tried to take a page out of M books. Making them some undercover sex machine, which really doesn’t work for their character whatsoever. Like the first intimate scene we get should have been more romantic and sensual.
I replayed the first three books and this isn’t the same N we meet in the first book. While I’m not a fan of the 18th century flower talk I did like and enjoy their character before book 3.
Warhammer has always had a consistency problem, once it’s dead. That’s about it and we move on.
I agree.
With F, I agree. For M, I still think there should’ve been some semblance of an official relationship formed at the end, especially on the route where A is the MC’s bff. M, in that conversation, pretty much came right out and said they want to be with the MC, and there was nothing in the final chapter that really took that further. Of course, I thought it was bullshit that the MC couldn’t take a shot and was forced there to stare like a backwater mouth-breather instead of, you know, participating.
I have a feeling that’s what A’s route will be. A flashback to olden days where the knight romances the damsel (sorry male A-mancers, but you’re a damsel, too). So they get three and three-quarters books of ̶t̶o̶r̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ slow-burn, then get a wanting to court them at the end of b4. Then they have to suffer through the proper courtship, lol.
I do agree with this. I think it should’ve been courtship, but not the same courtship MC would get from A. Still old-fashioned, but I not as old-fashioned as A. With both of them, I think they should refuse sex until there’s an actual commitment, and I don’t think dating N should count–N seems the type who would hold back until they were certain the MC was going nowhere, which means conversations about becoming a vampire. It would fit with N’s prissy primadonna BS about M being inappropriate, too, and keep them from being a complete hypocrite I want to beat with a 2x4.
A’s could’ve been done as a slow-burn, but either with A just nixing humans altogether and having to work past that, or actually showing them as being demi, slowly growing closer to the MC until they realize they are in love. Love at first sight for A makes no sense in their solo route. In fact, it makes that whole route unworkable. For the LT, it makes sense, but even then, I think A supposedly being demi should’ve locked it into A slowly falling for the MC against their will until they can’t deny it anymore.
If only F didn’t make me hate him in M’s route, I’d probably like that route…
Nah, Nah, Nahsputine,
Undercover sex machine
It was a shame how they changed from book 3 on.
Sera: “Initiative? From MY Detective?! How dare!”
It’s terrible when Sera says this, because I can’t think of a worst flaw for a writer than not knowing what words mean. Either A is demiromantic or that was love at first sight, those things are literal opposites.
Arguably true of all designated-evil-empires in fiction. “We are The Baddies! We are not motivated by greed, or coherent ideology, or need for resources, or anything that has actually motivated any real-world atrocities, but sheer love of being EVIL! Don’t think too hard about it! Logic? What’s that? Can I kill it?” and so on.
That’s something that bothers me. Like, okay, you want to make N sexier? Fine, they’re your OC, whatever. Sure, two people on the same team can have big sexual appetites IRL. But like… the whole idea of the romance route system is to say: “You like these tropes? I got a guy catered to these tropes right here!” Turning N into a weird M clone just screws over the people who wanted the blushing courtship nice guy/gal, and now you’re left with two of M’s archetype in the same cast to deal with.
The only possible reason I can think of doing that is if you wanted to like, siphon M’s popularity and give it to N instead? But then you’re just Frankensteining characters after you’ve already established them.
Commenting on myself…
For the LT, this would’ve actually been a cool way to do it. MC is attracted to A, but A is demi and not attracted to them yet. MC starts dating N, who is a prissy primadonna, and while they like N, they still feel that draw to A. It starts as a friendship, but grows into something else, with A developing feelings by end of b3 and slipping up and saying so, torn because their best friend is with MC but they still don’t want to lose the person they fell in love with–something they have never done in their almost thousand years. That’d set b4 up for a huge conundrum that could’ve been resolved by the end of it, with MC either deciding it’s too late for A because they fell for N or trying to extricate themselves from N, N taking off for a while, and leaving A and MC feeling like shit for hurting N but unable to stay away from each other. It would’ve been a mess, but interesting as hell.
I love this demo, but I did have one related complaint to this comment…
My MC bangs Shay, then gets told Shay is gay. My MC is female. I was confused–I’m guessing Shay is bi?? Having him declare his gayness after banging a female MC felt a bit… not good… and like Shay just wanted somewhere to stick his wiener until a man came along he liked. My MC likes him, but she doesn’t want to be his beard or his temporary fucktoy that he pretends is a dude. So I played it as Shay being bi, which is great.
This is what I think happened. Sera seems constantly surprised and disappointed that so many people like M. It really felt like a, “See, N is better! You get great spontaneous sex and N’s not an asshole!” thing.
Confusion intensifies [haven’t played that one and have no context]