Some people who are attracted to, and who date non-binary people will still identify themselves as straight. (Or gay).
(Of course some people happily have sex with those of the same gender and will still call themselves totally straight.)
Some will identify as pansexual because they think that the word bisexual excludes those who’re non-binary. (It doesn’t).
You’re probably best using pansexual.
Pansexual implies attraction to all genders, which may not be the case. Hence, poly.
I like the way you think, Mara! But polysexual means you’re sexually attracted to more than one gender but not all genders. Don’t confuse it for polyamory/polygamy, where people have more than one lover.
Poly in Spanish is have a open relationship with multiple people. I don’t accept that if you’re with me you are with me.
Huh. Well, that won’t help much in games where the assumption is made that bi- or pansexual means that the MC is attracted to all genders. (Or at the very least to their own and the opposite gender.)
Using any of those terms would in practice just lead to major confusion though, even if they fit in theory. (mainly because of those aforementioned assumptions being made)
It would be nice if there was a clearly distinguishable term for it.
Polysexual… pssst
ceterosexual is also the term for attraction towards nbs but due to the Discourse there’s argument about whether or not it should only be used by other nbs (we don’t use skoliosexual anymore because Problematic)
My friend, who’s non-binary, and only attracted to masculinity calls themselves androphilic.
Androphilia and gynephilia are terms used in behavioral science to describe sexual orientation, as an alternative to a gender binary homosexual and heterosexual conceptualization. Androphilia describes sexual attraction to men or masculinity; gynephilia describes the sexual attraction to women or femininity.
Edit: My Friend’s Explanation Although they’re non-binary you can also use the terms if you are binary.
Gynophilic and Androphilic wouldn’t also asume a binary orientation too? Or does it refer to the sex of the person regardless of their gender? (i’m truly ignorant and curious about the topic) (i’m pansexual but i certainly feel very attracted to androgynous people)
There are already terms like bisexual and pansexual for a person attracted to a larger range of gender that don’t assume anything about the gender of the person doing the desiring. A pansexual orientation would include an attraction to androgynous people. “Straight woman” assumes the person doing the desiring of a man is a woman, “lesbian” assumes the person doing the desiring is a woman, “gay man” assumes the person doing the desiring is a man, “straight man” assumes the person doing the desiring is a man. What was needed was a term for a person of any gender solely attracted to women and non-binary people falling more in the feminine or feminine adjacent range, and a term for a person of any gender solely desiring people who are male and/or in the more masculine range of the non-binary. Gynophilic and Androphilic fill that need and have been adopted in certain corners on the queer community that don’t feel comfortable with attraction terms that force them into a binary gender. I can’t call myself straight or gay, because that is incorrectly labeling my gender as a binary one, and I’m very clearly not bisexual or pansexual, because my attraction range does not stretch that far. Androphilic correctly signals my sexual orientation without incorrectly labeling my gender.
I guess it wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t happen disproportionately often.
I mean, as I gay guy I don’t get too bothered by it, but maybe it’s because I generally like tragedies in the first place. However, yes, I agree that I can’t help but notice when a story is doing it in a way that clearly says “Aren’t you sad that the gay person died?”. It’s kind of sad that it hapens so often to the point that it has become a trope.
Looks too much like poly- as in dating multiple people imo. Which would be weird, because I’m anything but. Maybe even closer to demisexual than just plain old heterosexual. Still trying to figure that out.
@FairyGodfeather You just made my day. (Or what’s left of it anyway.)
I just want some happy ever afters! Although I don’t mind, if the death’s done well, if it’s earned, if it’s Torchwood! Torchwood is about the one show, that killed off a gay/bi character, that I liked, and I didn’t mind, because it served the story. I suppose Black Sails too.
It’s just when they all die, forever, in everything, and there’s no happy, ever.
Well after weeks of deliberate soul searching I can say relatively safely I’m grey-ceteromantic and grey-asexual (I don’t know my sexual orientation because it’s so rare that my sexuality can now be considered extinct in the wild).
Cecilia we are in same case. I am myself that is the only certainty i have. I don’t need labels really. And I use straight because I don’t like my same gender. And don’t like non binary who are near feminine spectrum. I am not pan and not poli. So straight it is easy to understand. Try to explaining other labelling to people in my country is difficult. We are gay and trans friendly. But non binary here doesn’t have a term yet. So i am straight way to hell or something. 
There was this one movie I watched, really cute at first, about two lesbians growing old together. Went through their whole life, childhood friends, teenage crushes, finally confessing, even got to growing old together and going off to get married in Canada in their late 70s or so.
Real cute, 'cept for the fact that one of the wife’s family didn’t accept her, and came to stop the wedding, they didn’t know before they learned she was getting married to another woman.
Well, she stopped the wedding, had a chat with her niece, tears, cute moment, acceptance, etc.
Then she dies.
In the car. On the way to the church. Just keels over and has a heart attack.
Why? Why?
She had no medical problems beforehand. Sure, she was old, but she seemed to be in pretty good shape. Nor was there any foreshadowing or set up to such an event. She literally just fell asleep in the car on the way there, soft guitar music playing, then when they got out to take her to the church, they realized she wasn’t waking up. Cut to the funeral. Why?
Could they not just… get married?
Cases like that make me mad. Because there’s just no reason for it.
So, yeah, I’m with you. Give me the happily ever afters! Cut out the funeral scene and give me hot cocoa on a porch with the two cuddled up together or something sappy like that.
I think that is a punishment like so you are a immoral for going against my ideas well then all your stories are doomed to end in death and tragedies. I am tired of all is not really social stereotyping has to be gloomy and tears. Like you are a dominant woman you will end alone because men has to be the dominant so your men with left you for a real woman. I saw a film wuth exactly that guion starring by Robert de Niro when enter assistant of a successful woman with a home stay man . Results man put an ultimatum in her or you become a normal woman or divorce. and was him who banged other women. How he dare. It was because "being in home make me feel less man soni had to proof my manhood. HOW What MACHISMO BULLSHIT IS THIS???
Well, at least I think it’s becoming less common nowadays, maybe because audiences and writers are becoming aware of that trope.
Por maybe it’s just the way I percieve it because of the media I consume. I try to have some variety with it, I might had not seen too mucho in Hollywood yet but I’ll always have the internet.
This doesn’t happen often in ChoiceScript games since most of the time the ‘gay’ romances are just playersexual scenes that are the same for either sex/gender, but if anyone were to undertake the task of writing romances exclusive for characters with a set sexual orientation, please do us all a favor and write them all equally. There’s nothing more disheartening than finding out that the character you romanced had the smallest content because they happened to be the gay option/lesbian option/nb option. Like I said, this doesn’t happen often in CS games, but I still feel the need to say it.
No, it ends with bittersweet at best too, just ask @Cataphrak. 
True that. 
Well that’s the reason why I was first drawn here in the first place, since the stories here often work out just as happy, or shitty, for gay men as they do for straight ones.
Well, at least dead gays can’t turn the other characters magically gay by just looking at them funny, right?
Divine (or Karmic) retribution for our “deviant” lifestyles. Ugh, sometimes it still feels like we’re stuck in a fifties time-loop, just with a fresh and more pleasing coat of paint slapped on it.
Although they did get the super cute Matt Bomer to play one, this time. Bet he’ll get an award for it too.
Nothing is ever written equally, but I can say that from my time beta-testing the old Vendetta build, I seem to recall that Adamo had the second most “screen time” or content out of all the RO’s, just slightly behind one girl. And @Vendetta did try to write his characters there as people with set genders and sexual orientations, which would be appropriate for 1920’s and 30’, prohibition era America.
Hey! I’ve written happy endings before! There was-
Well, uh…
See-
Crap.
I’ll be doing the same thing with Lords of Infinity, in an equal-but-unequal sort of way. For example, your same-sex ROs have the same “screentime”(or more) than the heterosexual ones. (In fact, All three same-sex options have already been introduced and given considerable development, while I’ve yet to introduce the last hetero RO). However, because the MC is acting in a heteronormative society, a lot more of those romances are subsumed in subtext or friendship than outright romance: furtive glances across a table, tentative advances that can be brushed aside as a joke if necessary - the line between friend and lover is a lot more blurry here than it would be in the set rituals of heterosexual courtship Tierran society allows its aristocracy.
A player who seeks to romance one of those characters will get their money’s worth, but that doesn’t guarantee that the character in that story will necessarily have the same volume of “conventional” romance that they’d expect from a work set in a better and more tolerant time and place.
I suppose the cessation of life which could lead to the beginning of a possible afterlife or to the end of suffering for an individual could be considered a happy ending in a macabre way. That’s happy…I guess?
Finally the player can get with the strapping young Highlander!!! And suck it up and marry somebody.
My comment was more towards any potential authors deciding to toss in an M/M or F/F romance just so that they can meet an LGBTA quota and pat themselves on the back while literally providing ~1/3 the content of the traditional romance(s). I don’t mind if the romances have to be held relatively in the realm of subtext like @Cataphrak mentions―I actually think that those kind of romances have the potential to be some of the most powerful ones so long as we actually get to see a glimpse of how they act when it’s just the MC and the RO in a room. What I do mind is if the romance obviously feels tacked on, incomplete, or otherwise severely underdeveloped compared to the other ones.