I have. I pretty much said somewhere that I did an extra playthrough of DA:I just to romance Dorian because he was generally the only sane-seeming RO. I really didn’t care for any of the others but I can respect that they’re all individuals with their own agendas. Which is kinda my point. I’d rather have individuals I either can’t have or don’t want to have than being able to have everyone cause it’s all the same.
I’ve actually never spoken out against any sexual representation, people just chose to interpret it that way despite it not being there. I’ve spoken out against generic representation for representation’s sake regardless of quality of the outcome. And I have an issue with anyone demanding representation of anything just for representation’s sake. I don’t think anyone is served by making everything generic.
Have you seen the original discussion that lead to the post move to this thread? In my interpretation it came off far more demanding and huffy than objective feedback. I understand that there is emotional investment here by @idonotlikeusernames and I sympathize. But I basically only piped up because I felt they were coming on too strong.
I never argued that it wasn’t possible. I’m a big fan of Zachary Sergi’s games which are full of gender stuff and non-traditional sexualities. I don’t even know what you all call them to be honest. I’m usually mostly concerned with my own sexuality and gender issues tend to confuse me. I just don’t think just blanket assigning every possible sexuality to every or any character does anything other than boost statistics. If one character is gay, have them be gay and don’t make them available for heterosexual romancing. If one character is straight, have them be straight and don’t make them available for homosexual romancing.
The forum tells me to use multiple quotes rather than a lot of singular replies but I feel this requires its own post since it’s kinda spinning off the main thrust.
And look, I sympathize. While I like to think we’re all pretty liberal these days (though less so than in the 70s, 80s and 90s, oddly enough) I realize there’s still a lot of close-minded people who hate everything that’s different than them or willfully misrepresent it. My sexuality may be unremarkable but I’ve gotten enough flack for beliefs or things I’ve done because I believe in them. Having a vague idea of what it’s like to be in the minority obviously still doesn’t mean I have any idea what it’s like, mind you.
[quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:315, topic:20429”]If you want your ro’s to be open to both write them as pan or bisexual, but if you do please don’t always go for the (strongly) female preferring bi guys only.
[/quote]
If they were pansexual or omnisexual I’d write them as such. If I trusted myself to properly represent them. I’ve seen enough males who were nominally bi or pan or whateversexual who would essentially chase girls but screw guys too if given the chance. I plain don’t know if that is an appropriate level of representation or not. So unless a character popped into my head where it fits their profile I probably still wouldn’t care to implement things that way. In one of my story concepts there are essentially two main NPCs in the story. One pretty much doesn’t care as long as they get their rocks off but really doesn’t care for anything long-term while the other is super straight-laced. At best the second one would be closeted. Making anyone else a RO beyond flirting or an affair would just sidetrack the story in my eyes. In the other concept, the basic culture is basically like ancient Rome; you marry for politics then screw whomever you like without a Judeo-Christian bias. Much easier to have any kind of romance in that setup. But either way it’s the story determining what’s possible.
This wasn’t what @TSSL was saying. He was saying that there shouldn’t need to be any real difference between a gay or a straight romance, so there should be no trouble in writing a gay romance. He wasn’t suggesting that all characters should always be bi (although I would strongly recommend that for games with low numbers of ROs).
I’m not sure you understand what it is we’re taking issue with in your speech, and what it is we’re arguing for. You seem to be very fixated on this idea of “bad” representation, when–while that is something of a concern to us–that’s really not related to the calls for representation and equality that people are making here.
I don’t think you’re doing it intentionally, and I believe that you aren’t against representation for marginalized groups, but you’re repeating phrases and sentences and sentiments that bigots say when they’re trying to tell people they don’t like to sit down and shut up. Things like “if you do it like this you’re going to be disappointed” isn’t helpful to us; we know that people can write us badly. I’ve never seen someone here point out a problem with representation without also offering a solution–the goal of people here isn’t just to tell people that they should be better, it’s to help guide content creators to make better representation. We have our bases covered, and by using rhetoric that basically amounts to telling us to stop asking to see ourselves in media under a guise of concern for us being disappointed with the results, you’re coming off as holding a similar position to people who would rather us not be represented at all.
Honestly, I’m very surprised to see you writing this, given that this is exactly what we’re all vying for. (Granting that not everyone here is a fan of Sergi specifically, but his philosophies in character design wherein his characters display a great diversity in gender and sexual identity is something we all would like.) More games with more types of people is our goal, and for a lot of the people here who have marginalized identities, the policies of this company to ensure that their published works measure up to their level of inclusitivity is one of the main draws. I know I first became invested in CoG while I was figuring out my own identity, and the ability to explore that freely and see it treated casually and kindly was a boon I don’t think I’m capable of repaying, and I can’t imagine I’m a unique story here.
No one who goes into a WIP thread and asks about the same gender romance options is expecting the author to just tack on flat characters, or take away traits from the characters that already exist. What we want is for content creators to be more aware of who they’re representing in their work, and more self-aware of whether or not it skews towards cisgender and heterosexual people. DA2 got some pushback for their “playersexual” characters, but as @ParrotWatcher said it was a lot more complicated than just “having everyone be bisexual is unrealistic.” (Most of the responses I saw was that it felt like Anders’s character was only attracted to men if Hawke was a man, meaning that his sexual identity was tied to Hawke and making it seem like the writers wanted a female Hawke to perceive Anders as just heterosexual rather than acknowledging his bisexuality–although I don’t doubt that some people felt like having everyone be bi was in and of itself an issue, most of the people I’ve seen who were unhappy about it were more concerned with bisexual erasure than the options feeling generic or unformed.)
At the end of the day, no one here is forcing you to write gay characters, or bi characters, or trans characters, or any characters you don’t want to write. But the CoG audience is made up in a large part of people who don’t identify as cisgender or heterosexual, who came here to see themselves represented equally, and so will speak up when they feel like a content creator isn’t living up to those standards. And it’s that push for more equality and awareness in media that leads to more fulfilling and non-stereotypical representation, for a larger variety of identities.
I get where you’re coming from as a lesbian woman. But why should you make a big deal? Honestly, if gender flipping happened frequently. I believe it would ruin the character someone spent so much time crafting. Quality over quanity.
I feel like you’re making the LGBT community more of a victim than we really are.
On gay issues that is simply not true, not in the USA and not in (Western) Europe. Peak of tolerance and liberalism on gay issues was seemingly around the early 2010’s with sadly a slight backsliding going on right now.
I don’t think making a character available for same-sex romance needs to “ruin” them as @TSSL already said. Gender-flipping also doesn’t necessarily have to hurt the character, just look at Evertree or XoR for example. Still not every author wants to tackle it but I’m still going to point out, much as @ParrotWatcher also did in the recent “Drop of Night” WIP if things are patently unequal and offer suggestions on how that might be remedied. Like all feedback the author doesn’t have to take it, but I will try to voice it at least once if I think it could make the project (more) worthwhile or interesting obviously.
Here is where I don’t agree. That might hold true for some works on this site, but then again this site is a rare haven where my expectations are raised and I’m hoping for more then token gay options in the works around here.
For the mainstream media however, we already know there isn’t any form of quantity, so kindly point me to the quality. If this differs for Lesbian women today I apologize, but you won’t find much if any quality representation of gay guys in the mainstream media, movies, books, television etc.
When gay guys are featured at all it mostly hasn’t progressed beyond simple queer-baiting or lame, hurtful, thirteen in a dozen stereotypes that have been in-vogue since at least the 1990’s.
On Dutch Television and in the main Hollywood productions (the state of AAA gaming has already been abundantly discussed here) the number of times they appear and thus the quantity may have slightly increased over the decades but the quality is still as disappointing and stereotyped as it has always been.
If you feel that way then good for you. That is your opinion and you’re entitled to it, however I don’t happen to share it. Not at a time like this, when even around here our current Conservative PM is horse-trading with two Christian parties over stronger legal protections on “religious expression” as part of the coalition negotiations.
Stereotyped media portrayals and media bias ultimately facilitate this and help make it so that these things are still possible today.
I view the generally positive portrayal of gender and sexuality in these games as opportunities for grassroots change, which is why I wouldn’t like to see Hosted Games devolve into peddling the same content, with limited gay representation at best that the major corporations already saturate the global markets with.
I do recognize that finding the right tone in comments such as these can be difficult and if I come across as unduly harsh know that it was never my intention to do so and I’ve long said my piece on the topic that started this recent round of discussion and I still stand by what I meant with that feedback even if its “tone” may have unintentionally struck a wrong chord.
Well I’m obviously not best equipped to judge this but I haven’t noticed any backsliding in my corner of western Europe on gay issues in the past decade. But I have noticed a decline in… freedoms I guess. In the 90s and early 2000s there was tons of nudity on my TV whether I wanted to see it or not and nobody thought of bleeping out swears on tv and all of this has changed for sure.
That’s my metric or at least one of them, but it’s not really on topic. I can say that the amount of rainbow flags on display in Berlin doesn’t seem to have wavered over the past decade if it’s any help but I do feel society has become more puritanical as opposed to the decades of excess preceding the millennium.
Here in the Netherlands this has coincided with more then a decade of essentially conservative governments, aided and abetted by the “new left”, neo-liberals in our “Labour” party.
A small hard-core of radicalised Islamic migrant youth also hasn’t helped the situation (unless you’re a conservative aspiring to stoke fear in order to get into government).
Not around here it hasn’t. Sure public television has been “cleaned-up” but swearing isn’t bleeped out on either our public or commercial channels. The nudity has largely moved to the web and behind the decoder, but there is still plenty of it to go around. Although much like in the 1990’s and 2000’s that only applies if you’re looking for female nudity. About the only thing Dutch television censors are guys private parts. That has always been so throughout my entire life and still hasn’t changed today. Guys are nude on television far less often and when they are you see far less of them too, thus feeding that social narrative that attraction to (and on the flip-side objectification of) women is far more “natural”, priced and valuable then attraction to guys.
I don’t think gender-flipping is necessarily bad. Sure, in some cases (Affairs of the Court, for one) it can set up some immersion-breaking plot problems, but in most cases, it just ends up with a slightly more masculine woman or feminine man. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Unless you’re actually getting into the actual mechanics of sex, or looking at a sexist society, then changing a character’s gender shouldn’t ruin them. (And, remember, the author in question was fine with switching one character’s gender already, otherwise I wouldn’t have suggested it for the others.)
Oh, look. Now I’m discussing non–gay representation issues…
That sounds weird to me. I’ve generally seen that a guy’s (flaccid) genitals are allowed while a woman would have to cover. Actually scratch that, I’ve seen erect gag penises too. Though I’m not sure to what extent you’re considering nudity.
Ironically Andromeda didn’t have enough of a difference between a gay and a straight romance for their bi character, at least for @idonotlikeusernames
Which brings to me a question. How do you feel about a character who fits a negative stereotype? Not something that’d make them necessarily a bad person but something with history? What if the writer based them on a real person or was from a place where it wasn’t considered bad?
Well, it’s got to be tricky writing relationships for people that haven’t had them. Worse for those that haven’t experienced the kind of relationships they are in turn writing about.
If you collect all the authors (WIPs included) you get a wide variety of view points. But I’d wager that once you divide them by age experience and orientation you get a very small percentage of +25y/o with the experience and orientation to effectively grasp the reality of a gay relationship. That label in and of itself is the problem, it’s misleading.
If you treat it as a ‘gay relationship’ it’s going to come out kinda weird on paper. So ignoring hang ups and stereotypes just look at these people… as people. Once you start from there the writing of it comes out natural and less awkward although one has to have a good deal of security/maturity to pull it off… rare commodities.
BUT I could be wrong and this is just an opinion.
Much luv
Literally being treated like a woman and insultingly being called a “queen” wasn’t my idea of romance and again it speaks more to the fact that EA couldn’t be arsed to put in any budget or quality (control) into the gay (or lesbian, the lesbian character was originally intended as a straight fling for Scott too) elements of the game.
And then they retroactively make the absolute worst romance for straight girls “bi” with almost no alterations for the male character whatsoever.
Even my straight female pal Mara here hated the Jaal romance.
Mainstream media, mainly Television, so from the daily soap opera’s to the late night shows and in those we quite regularly get fully naked women. Granted those who really want to see everything must still get crafty with the pause button, but unlike with male frontal nudity our censors don’t blur it (which is seemingly really the only thing Dutch censors seem to do anymore these days, apart from occasionally screening for hate speech and child-porn). In any case in an age where pictures of naked people are literally a click away it only matters in its inequality.
I think you are spot on. Any two relationships between individuals has more commonalities between them than differences. So, when you break a relationship down, the commonalities should be a greater number than the differences.
The differences are often what intensifies relationships (when developed fully) and they justify getting feedback and advise on but a good solid relationship can be the core of any two specific individuals regardless of specifics.
A solidly written gay relationship is solid because it is a relationship. An exceptionally written gay relationship is exceptional because it takes its differences and uses them to enhance that relationship rather then diminish it. It is very important to do your due diligence in writing relationships to bring them up to the next level. Yet, the solid foundations of all relationships should allow you to write any type of relationship needed.
You mean the bit where the male character was called a “queen”? I would count that along with pronoun changes, as the sort of very minor change that you’d have to do to extend the romance to guys, too. The fact that the game writers didn’t even think to make that change says a lot about how the game handled gay romance.
Such characters can exist (I mean, people who fit stereotypes do exist in real life), but I feel that the author should always include at least one member of the same group who is not a negative stereotype, as a major character. If the only appearing member of the group is the negative stereotype, then the author is presenting a world where the entirety of that group fits the negative stereotype, which is bigoted, whether intentionally or not.
By the way, what are the opinions here about negative stereotypes for LGBT people? I mean, the mere concept of a stereotype is a little bit negative by itself, as it enforces prejudices about groups that are rarely based on truth and those prejudices can have negative effects on peoples live and create a bad perception of those groups.
There might be stereotypes that should definitely be avoided, but I also see people saying that when a character fits a stereotype is a bad case o representation, for example a gay man being effeminate or flamboyant (which I don’t consider necessarily bad, although I wished it was used for something more than comedic purposes). Personally, I feel that it’s better to offer more variety and diversity rather than classify individual characters into good or bad representations.
I’ve been told to stop being stereotypical in real life because I’m an effeminate gay man, by my friend, I might add, and she said that it was harmful. I think a stereotype can sometimes actually be a good starting point for a character, because once you’ve got something on the surface, you can start to explore the depths. That’s how I’ve created some of my favourite and most developed characters.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with an effeminate gay guy. For one thing, gay guys are on average more likely to act more feminine than a straight (or closeted) guy might, not because we are more effeminate, but because we’re more open about it. I guess my previous point stands here, too: if you write an effeminate gay guy, write a more “masculine” one, too.
He was saying that there shouldn’t need to be any real difference between a gay or a straight romance, so there should be no trouble in writing a gay romance. He wasn’t suggesting that all characters should always be bi (although I would strongly recommend that for games with low numbers of ROs).
I would count that along with pronoun changes, as the sort of very minor change that you’d have to do to extend the romance to guys, too. The fact that the game writers didn’t even think to make that change says a lot about how the game handled gay romance.