Gay Representation in ChoiceScript games?

Don’t you dare get my hopes up. :cry: You’re almost as bad as @TSSL .

3 Likes

I do this too :stuck_out_tongue: no worries.

By that measure, I’ve seen a lot more heterosexual men obsessed over talking about, comparing, and drawing a certain anatomical feature than gay men :stuck_out_tongue:

I think it varies a lot by individual, anyway, just judging from conversations I’ve had :thinking:

I’ve certainly seen lots of times when guys being gay seemed to be the joke in and of itself, nothing else to it… I still remember a production of Twelfth Night at my college, where, during the curtain call, the two lead women kissed, and the two lead men kissed. The former got a big cheer… the latter got laughter… this was… unsettling…

I got jokes about homophobic straight men…
“He’s such a homophobe that he wears a blindfold in the shower so he won’t see a naked man!”

Yay! :smile:

Oftentimes, but it does depend on the where and when. Certainly the Ancient Greeks weren’t shy about this, including background mentions. And there’s no shortage of gay content in Chinese literature before Western influence… and sometimes it’s a little hard to tell, due to pronouns not being gendered (until recently, and that only in the written language…).

I am hopeful at the signs that this may be changing for the better in more recent times, however :smile:

Hi :stuck_out_tongue:

I’d rather give Alex a turn at kidnapping me :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I’m gonna have such cute gay and bi guys with so much romance and excitement and even poly possibilities :grinning:
…Hey, I’m a slow writer, that’s all :sweat_smile:

3 Likes

Meanwhile in Ancient Greece You should (romantically) love men because (romantically) loving women is weird.


Meanie…

Joke stolen from the internet.
Straight guys: Nohomosapiens

Didn’t you have two Ilyaaren WIPs? Well, whichever one, I look forward to it. :smile:

Eh, they still had to actually marry women… :unamused:

1 Like

Pretty much my experience with mainstream portrayals of gay men too, unfortunately. Whenever we are featured it is either as an “informed attribute only” or a joke or both. Still I guess it is progress in that a few decades ago we weren’t featured in the mainstream media at all.

If it will get my mc out of super-school I guess that could possibly work too.

Agh…the…anticipation…is…killing…me. :stuck_out_tongue:

If you say so. [quote=“ParrotWatcher, post:236, topic:20429”]
Well, whichever one
[/quote]

I know only of the Citadel one with the separated twins.

3 Likes

The other one was from last year, and the MC was a princess’s best friend (but I just wanted some alone time with the cute guard :cry:):

3 Likes

They’re both active! The Explosion is the one with the really in-depth romances. I focus more on gameplay and gameplay mechanics with Citadel, and tbh that’s what’s taking me so long. When I get bored with one, I work on the other.

it exists! I have to double check his sexuality, but I think he’s one of my gay options. Annnnd I just double-checked, and he is.

lol at dat formatting tho.

I think it’s so important that romances be sexuality-locked. I’ve always hated player-sexual romances. They feel a little bit cheapened for me; I’ll still play them, but, to me, they feel like the character isn’t allowed to be themselves. A lot of people on the forums disagree with me on that, but, y’know, I’ll do me. I’m slowly getting this out there, and one day it’ll be done, and probably for free bc lol y’all gon’ have played the full thing anyway, so why charge.

3 Likes

Well, I’d say that “all ROs are bisexual” is different from (and far better than) “all ROs are playersexual”, and while I would agree with you in principle (heck, that’s why I started this thread), I do have experience of several WIPs where giving the ROs their own sexualities ended up leaving gay players with far poorer options.

2 Likes

A lot of that depends on opinion. There are definite cases where the author doesn’t put as much effort into the gay romances as they do into the heterosexual ones, but I think the real question here is why you feel that it’s a poorer option. Did it feel like the author didn’t actually want to write it? Did it feel like the author put less time into it? Or did you just not like the romantic option(s)?

That’s a big thing. I know it’s important to have romantic options that you like, but the reality is that not all romantic options are going to be liked by everyone. For instance, I couldn’t stand Iron Bull, Sera, Josephine, or Blackbeard (or whatever his name was) in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Two of those were for women only, one of whom was specifically lesbian-only. A lot of people liked all of those romantic options and felt fully satisfied by the storylines. I loved Dorian and was quite upset that he was male-locked, but I respected that.

So, the real question is: do you feel that the poorer options are half-assed or do you feel that they aren’t as interesting, generally speaking, because you tend to prefer the characters written as straight?

2 Likes

Well, of the three WIPs I’m mainly thinking of, I really don’t want to talk about one of them, but I’ll go over the others:

The first had four ROs of each gender, of whom, the player is instantly introduced to two (who were both straight), before eventually meeting the bisexual RO. The sole gay RO was in a far more minor role, and while I understand he’ll have a more major part to play later on, it was still a pretty obvious imbalance. (It was pretty much the same for the female ROs.) Fortunately, in this case, the author did change it so that all ROs would be bisexual.

The second (I admit that I only played this once, a while ago, so my memory could be hazy) had three male ROs. The straight guy was a very major character, appearing even before the MC, and being heavily involved in the plot. The gay guy appeared very late-on, and could easily die without the MC’s intervention (and without the MC even necessarily knowing about him), and would gender-flip for a female MC (so whether he was really gay is a moot point).

I should note that in neither case was the gay RO inferior as a character, but it was still a pretty clear imbalance.

2 Likes

Well they certainly are gay I would argue, just not always a guy…however it’s…“intersting” that the specific gay ROs are the only one gender swapping (at least if it’s about the game I think it is, and I’m actually pretty sure by the starting in the pov of one of the ROs thing). Also I think the bi guy at least is more difficult to actually romance for a male MC? Not sure about that point, as romancing him anyway is somewhat counter-intuitive no matter the gender, but anyway even when his bisexuality gets mentioned, we see him more often with female lovers as far as I remember… so yeah gay romance is especially difficult for male MCs in this game (the female bisexual RO is much easier to romance in contrast…) I can see why that feels like getting the short end of the stick, especially as cases like that are rather common. In such cases I would argue that everybody is bi/gay might be a fairer approach to things.

4 Likes

I have a pretty clear idea as to which the first WIP you’re discussing is, but could any of you tell me what the second one is as I don’t seem to recall it.

Well I can definitely dislike it when I feel characters are written and inserted to be gay first, ahem Mass Effect Andromeda, looking at you here, again. And their whole existence seems to revolve around being gay. Now being gay can, due to the way society is currently structured play a greater role than it should, in people’s lives including my own. I’m a gay rights activist so I am known for being gay and that being the only reason some people even know of me in real-life. Had I been straight I would have hardly needed to devote time and energy to being a “straight activist” because straight people aren’t being put in concentration camps in dodgy Russian “republics”, nor stoned to death in Africa, nor being more subtly discriminated against and still occasionally physically harassed and assaulted because of their sexuality over here.
Okay, pfew rant over.

Anyway, gay or straight or bi or pan or even player-sexual I like characters with interesting personalities and yes I do tend to be attracted to the snarky, sarcastic and cute types.
Though, yes, if the gay characters are so minor that it is “blink and you’ll miss them” whereas the straight ro’s are heavily involved and plot-critical (team mates) then it’s a fair bet I’m going to feel underrepresented and left out.

5 Likes

One thing I just want to bring up is the tendency of some writers/publishers to make their gay or lesbian characters all sort of similar…it’s bad representation, but it’s also tough luck for people who aren’t fond of the options given.

One publisher in particular, I’ve learned to play their games as a male character because they typically have one gay RO (smaller casts), and that always happens to be the one and only character I find particularly interesting, personality-wise.

Then I realised that’s because those characters all have about three major similarities that are all traits I like. And I’m sure they don’t even realise that they’re doing it. -_-

So it’s something worth thinking about, perhaps, for people who will at some point have multiple games…make a list of any minority characters you have (particularly minorities that are not one’s own), and make sure you’re not noticing any strange trends throughout your works.

9 Likes

I would like to talk about a trope, if you don’t mind that I change the topic a little bit.

How do you feel about coming out stories?
I mean it’s kind of an obvious one to use once in a while when you are trying to portray gay characters, especially if the character is young.
However I’ve heard from some people that we don’t need these kind of stories anymore, but I think that kind of thinking can be a little dangerous. A lot of this people have already come out years ago and probably lost touch with the expirience of coming out and how importatn is for young people.

I think it’s an interesting trope maybe more for fiction in general than CoG games, but I still would like to know what everyone else thinks.

5 Likes

I don’t like them, mostly because I don’t find them realistic. They all treat coming out like this one big thing you do and then you are out and no it rarely works like that.

Every time you enter a new social circle, or a meet new persons you have to make a new decision about if you want to come out to this person/group. Is it safe? is it worth it? Do you want to risk pick a fight.

And that is not even to mention those of us who crosses more than one box and thus have to come out multiple times to the same group.

Also those stories glorifies getting out of the closet, which neglect to mention that the closet is a life savoir for some people.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I don’t mind if a young or questioning character has a minor plot point where they come out, but not if it is all of that characters character development or if it is treated like a big twist.

7 Likes

I think it’s still good to see, would be good perhaps with more variation than the most common version(s) which I think is “teenager comes out as gay, is happily accepted/thrown out by family”. Older people? Different circumstances? Coming out as different things? It’s hard to say that everyone’s experience has been covered.

7 Likes

This is probably a running theme with any issue discussed in this thread, but I think it depends on how it’s handled.

I think a good depiction of a journey of a person figuring out that they aren’t cis or het is always useful. I know that there are issues to be had with her overall portrayal, but I liked the way her relationship with her eventual girlfriend developed, and the way there wasn’t ever a sit down with the group to discuss her sexuality, they just found out as they found out and it wasn’t a big deal. It was a smooth, natural way of doing it and I think it was a pretty accurate depiction of the experience of a lot of people.

Conversely, if the character starts the story knowing their identity full well, I’m not really interested in a struggle to tell their friends or family. I’m okay with a character having issues with a single family member–another show that’s definitely flawed, but I think of Santana Lopez’s issues with her grandmother’s homophobia on Glee. It’s a good, realistic scene that shows some of the difficulties that can come with coming out without greatly damaging the character’s life–which isn’t really a depiction I’m interested in seeing at all. (Not to downplay the emotional trauma of being rejected by a loved one that way.)

And I’d definitely like to second everything that @DreamingGames says above–especially about glorifying coming out of the closet. A lot of friends I have that aren’t cishet got a lot of pressure to come out from friends who are cishet, because they thought it would be fine only because they and a couple other friends are accepting, regardless of the overall situation.

5 Likes

When it comes to the defined-orientation issues, I’d say it looks like you’ve all covered most of what I’d want to say :stuck_out_tongue:
To put it into a general principle, ROs with defined orientations (which can include bi/pansexuality) can totally be great for representation, and even ideal with large enough casts. The problems arise when it ends up used as a way to give gay players a poorer experience, and there are several different places where this discrepancy can come in (quantity, quality, variety, likability, importance, etc.)

So with that, it doesn’t really sound to me like you’ll have any problems here, @ashestoashes018

(Actually, I feel a little awkward about this topic with regards to my own WiP inasmuch as the most important gay-only male romance will be introduced later on than the straight-only guy, but the former is also quite a bit more important to the plot, so I think this balances…)[quote=“MockTurtle, post:246, topic:20429”]
How do you feel about coming out stories?
[/quote]

The thing is, this can be such a broad term… it can encompass such a wide variety of stories that there’s room to do it in entirely different ways… like how you can’t treat all “first contact with aliens” stories as the same thing, either. Some approaches will incline to cliché, or the problematic things that fellow posters mention here. But it can still be a rather personal story of someone developing self-understanding, and of someone’s relationships with the important people around them. It can even specifically engage with some of these issues… which is likely to happen if it’s infused with knowledge and experience (whether one’s own or from consulting with people who have had the experience)… like, if the story shows how you can have to come out multiple times, or the pressures that can be involved, or how it works differently for different people, or how it can be a process, or how some people will be aware of their identity earlier on and some go through a longer period of denial or unsureness, or how some people will make a whole event of it, and other people will just casually mention whom they’re dating… there’s a lot to work with, and a lot to explore.

From an interactive fiction standpoint, there might not be as much to work with here. I suppose someone could write a game specifically about a certain LGBTQ experience, in which you’d have a protagonist being more set to a specific group. This would be a bit different from typical ChoiceScript style, but I think it would be a more valuable type of locking than the typical unquestioning version where someone writes hetero-male-only without much consideration. Being interactive could even allow it to explore more of how experiences might differ.
(Or, well, an interactive fiction could just provide some opportunities to come out to various characters in the context of the story… being able to turn someone down with “sorry, gay,” or to flirt with someone with “hey, gay ;)” could sometimes be appropriate…)

I’d also say that any “coming out story” needs to be more than just a coming out story, to show that it’s not really the end-all-be-all defining moment of an LGBTQ person’s experience.

7 Likes

The easiest way to get over with the challenge is to have only one romance. I guess it streamlines the plot a lot… but sometimes there can be only one true love.

But what if the player hates that character? :confused:

7 Likes