Someone please tell me I’m not the only one who gets overwhelmed reading all this sex and gender terminology. 
My poor cis het brain can only take so much at a time. 
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Hahaha, I’ve just been reading up on both the transgender thread and this one. I know less now than I did when I started.
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Well you’re fluent in English. Imagine poor Mara trying to found the sense some labels that even don’t exist yet in my language. My way to understand this is humble asking the person what he she or they feel and follow that and being open other people feelings. Labels are just words put there to divide, the important is People each one of them. Empathy should be the force whom save the world.
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Take your time, you don’t have to remember it all overnight. Language is changing pretty quickly in the last decade or two. The nice thing about the Internet is that you can always look it up if you forget something while you’re typing.
An earnest try is usually good enough, unless you’re creating something for mass consumption, like a game… and that’s why we have editing and beta testers.
@Razgriz That feeling of confusion is usually a sign that you’re learning something after all, so hold onto that. 
It’s disorienting to know enough to know you know less than you thought.
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Sorry for the reviving of this topic but while editing UnNatural a dilemma occurred that @Fiogan remembered this topic and how it is useful for helping solving it.
So okay here we go; originally UnNatural had set sexualities for the romanceable npcs. You had Ashley, Austin, Scarlet and Victor who were straight, Denise and Lakota were bisexual and finally you had Craig/Sarah who were gay.
As the game progressed and after feedback post release; Scarlet and Victor were made bisexual (although victor’s gay path seemed to be bugged which I’ll be fixing with these edits. Later feedback led to me considiering making Ashley and Austin bisexual as well in these edits.
However personally as a reader and writer I prefer set sexualities and that everyone being bisexual isn’t the right way to go. So I have been working on a way to allow them to be available without everyone is bisexual. My answer was to actually set the sexuality but switchable depending on the player. For example If my character was straight Ashley, Denise and Scarlet would be romanceable options depending on my path. likewise if my character was gay Austin, Anthony, Craig and Victor would all be gay.
This when i thought more of it sounded more playersexual but for some reason it made sense to me as linked to the protagonist sexuality as opposed to the player themselves (if you understand?).
Trying to rework the Craig/Sarah’s confession in Episode 3 wasn’t working and felt weird so I asked @Fiogan if she could spot what was “wrong” with the writing. She pointed out something which makes the current idea bad. That wouldn’t this system mean straight players not encounter gay characters. To me Craig/Sarah’s sexuality is part of their background and is important but if I make everyone availble wouldn’t i need to make them available to straigh players? (which is possible due to the fact that in the edited version players can choose whether the friend who became their bully is male or female.
I’ve given it a lot of though the past 3 days and this is where my current thoughts are;
Keep Craig/Sarah as gay, then for the others have a set sexuality which is semi-set until the player expresses interest. So using Austin as an example, he’ll be straight pre-game with no hints to his sexuality but then at a certain point allow the player to express interest in them if the player is male then Austin will be gay in that playthrough, however if they choose not to be interested/or is female they find out about his wife.
But even this seems wrong. So would you wonderful CoGgers help me out give me your opinions on this in general help me come up with the best course of action so i can continue kicking the ass of these edits!
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I’m gonna try to say this as gently as possible and I want to make sure you know I’m not trying to attack you or make assumptions about your personal viewpoints, but reading this block of text gives me kind of a biphobic vibe.
Bisexuality is absolutely something that can be a set sexuality, and feels a lot more like one than what your post later describes, which is 100% what playersexuality is, and feels way more disingenuous. Having an abundance of bisexual love interests isn’t an issue at all, and I don’t think many players will pay it much mind. It’s a pretty common way of doing things in these games anyway. As opposed to just actually having the characters switch between gay and straight, which erases bisexuality as an identity.
I don’t think it’s important that every player be able to romance whatever character they want, and from what you’ve described the balance of love interests that looks best to me would be having Ashley and Austin straight; Scarlet, Victor, Denise, and Lakota as bisexual; and Craig and Sarah gay. This would give you set sexualities as you say you like in your work, and give players of any orientation a fair number of romance options.
I’ll end this comment saying that I haven’t actually played through UnNatural, so maybe someone who has will have a different opinion, but I definitely think that going for playersexuality with your characters isn’t a good move.
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I was worried how my words would sound so first of thank you for replying and doing so in a friendly manner. I’m not bi-phobic you’ll be happy to hear I haven’t put it an well as I could have. But basically my main worry is if I make everyone else bisexual I feel like I would have to do the same with Craig/Sarah who was written to be gay which would take a gay character and make them bisexual.
would people take it wrong that an originally gay character was made available as a straight romance option? The whole reason for the edits is to make the game as good as it can be for the second season. So trying to improve the diversity is up high on the list.
Again this isn’t as well worded but I’ve spent the past 3 days trying to run this through my mind and settling down on a set idea is difficult hence this post. so any help is appreciated (such as it coming off as biphobic which wasn’t the intent but gave me a chance to clarify.)
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Definitely don’t make a gay character bisexual, I think that would be really easy to take wrongly, and I don’t think it’d be an issue to have only bisexual and gay LIs. If you’re very concerned about balance, leave Austin and Ashley straight like I suggested. But, like I said, I really don’t see anyone being bothered or even particularly taking note of having your LI options be just be bi and gay
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Yeah that’s what I thought myself. Thanks again for replying 
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I certainly wouldn’t see any problem with that. 
But I think if you’ve got enough variety within the choices any one person can take (I’d probably say at least three options for any monosexual player), then it makes sense to balance the gay ROs with straight ones. Just don’t make it so all the gay options are jerks… And I also agree with @HomingPidgeon that the characters should be explicitly bi, rather than playersexual.
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Story over all. I really don’t see any reason to include a character simply for the sake of including them. That’s pandering. Only makes sense to include a character if they have any reasonable reason to be in the story to begin with. Doesn’t matter if the character in question is gay/bi/straight/a-fucking-dragon, as long as the reason they’re being included is because they have merit within the contexts of the tale.
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I disagree. It’d be great if more people included a diverse cast of characters just because. No one asks what the straight white guy’s doing in the story.
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@aprilhare: I don’t think that’s what @VoiD’s saying. Rather than “don’t make a character a minority unless there’s a reason to” (which is wrong), it sounds more like “don’t include a character unless there’s a reason to”, which is different, and does make sense. Obviously, the characters that you do include should include minorities, and there should be no reason needed to make a character a minority.
As an example, let’s say a story has five characters in. You’re saying that there’s no reason not to make them minorities (and I agree), while @VoiD (I think) is saying that there’s no reason to add a sixth. (Admittedly, if you’re balancing out ROs, there may be a reason to find a new role in the story for the new RO, since that’s an important part of CoHGs.)
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I only ever add characters when the story demands them of me. Now tinkering with an existing character however because a fan requests it is a different thing and as long as there isn’t a story reason to exclude it I more than likelt consider it. Generally most ideas from CoGgers are good, it was listening to fans that resulted in Denise and Victor became romance options (and popular ones they were!).
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As far as Unnatural goes I don’t see anything wrong with how the orientations were really, sure I couldn’t romance Ashley but if it had bothered me all that much I certainly would have begged whine and cried about it and Sarah’s coming out was worth more than dating a former cheerleader (besides, I’ve done that in real life and it wasn’t that great 
)
I do
Do I have to remind you of the chart @ParrotWatcher?
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Clearly that chart needs to be changed to gay men.
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Yes, this was the point I was getting at. A diverse group of characters, of course, is essential to a good story. Adding a non-essential character simply for the sake of inclusiveness is harmful to the story you’re trying to tell. Basically, I think all characters deserve to be fleshed out, and adding one to the story so you can point to it later and say “There, I included X!” is not a good idea. I’m all for representation, but it should not be the sole pillar of a character’s personality. No one enjoys token characters.
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As other people say… yeah, that would be pretty uncomfortable. Even though the purpose would be game balance, it would still give off kind of a vibe that making the characters no longer be gay would be “fixing” them, and, in addition, it would be reducing the representation of gay characters.
When it comes to characters with set sexualities, bisexuality absolutely can be a set sexuality; when it is, it’s often nice for it to be acknowledged that the character is always bi, and that that’s who they really are. (Acknowledgement can vary by character, of course… could be an ex, but some characters don’t have those… could be noticing someone the character finds cute, but some characters wouldn’t comment on that… could be someone explicitly saying “I’m bi” but some people might just not feel like talking about that or might be in a setting that doesn’t use that terminology… etc.) But, that said, it’s also nice to represent gay characters as well… and while you’re doing that, I guess it’s okay to include heterosexual people as well (Of course, that can quickly lead to ballooning cast sizes.)
If you do that, you’d probably see some people complain… but in all honesty, I don’t care
The thing is, it’s super-easy to find games with hetero romance. Gay romance in games is rarer, and when it does exist, the options are often fewer, sparser, less important, smaller, or inferior in any other myriad of ways. Having a game that’s tilted more towards gay options would be a matter of redressing that imbalance.
But, that said, I wouldn’t mind if you keep a couple of love interests as hetero-only. As long as it’s not too hetero-skewed, it’s all good 
[quote=“Lizzy, post:175, topic:20429”]
Do I have to remind you of the chart @ParrotWatcher?
[/quote]
Huh 
I’m pretty sure @ParrotWatcher and I have been following a chart that’s almost identical, but that says “gay guys” instead
(I think what I’d most like is to use both charts together, along with similar charts for other underrepresented groups 
)[quote=“VoiD, post:177, topic:20429, full:true”]
Yes, this was the point I was getting at. A diverse group of characters, of course, is essential to a good story. Adding a non-essential character simply for the sake of inclusiveness is harmful to the story you’re trying to tell. Basically, I think all characters deserve to be fleshed out, and adding one to the story so you can point to it later and say “There, I included X!” is not a good idea. I’m all for representation, but it should not be the sole pillar of a character’s personality. No one enjoys token characters.
[/quote]
Ah, this makes more sense than what I’d originally thought you were saying. I’d say it’s generally good to be including diversity as you’re creating the essential characters in the first place, rather than just tossing token characters in as afterthoughts, since the latter will tend to make them seem much less connected to the storyline… and it’s such a minimal effort that it’s not really much of a representation, either. It’s better if you’re thinking along the lines of “okay, I need a warrior who opposes the crown prince… ah, and the warrior’s spouse, maybe they can be lesbians” rather than “okay, I’ve written a whole bunch of important straight people, guess I’ll tack on a lesbian now!”
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My take away about representation is that there is no “right” way to do it. The best you can do is try your best, be open to feedback, and learn. At the same time, though, it is important to remember that everybody has their own opinion on what is and isn’t good/bad representation.
For example, I’m bi. As a bi person, I seem to be in the minority, and perhaps this is a bit unpopular, but I dislike it when a character is changed to bi/pan from their original orientation. Whether that be gay, straight, or whatever (and it is regardless of orientation to me. No orientation is any more malleable than another), when a character is changed from their original form because people wanted to romance them it just irks me. I think it has to do with how bi/pan characters are often used or included just as a way to allow for the most romance options, so it essentially just boils down to becoming a game mechanic of necessity. My sexuality isn’t a game mechanic, or a quick fix, so, that’s not really representation to me, just convenience. Or used as a point of drama. Similarly, I don’t like when any type of person is left out. Yes, even straight people. My opinion is in the belief that the best way to have good representation is to have a story (or whatever product) that doesn’t exclude anyone, or suggest that they’re unwanted, because the best way to get change to happen is to show good portrayals of a spectrum of people (different cultures, ethnicities, family set ups, orientations, genders, etc.) in an engaging way that normalizes diversity. I wouldn’t play a game where it was clear I wasn’t the target audience, or where my options were limited compared to the rest, or it was clear the author didn’t want to write such content, so I can’t expect anyone else to, either.
In the end, to come to my tangent-less point, I think if you have around the same number of options for any of your players you will be set. I don’t begrudge writers who don’t share my above opinions, and I still enjoy and respect their work, so I guess the point of this was to show that there is never going to be one right way to do anything! 
(How to make a short point long and drawn out 101 - see above! lol Sorry if this isn’t very eloquent, I’m tired and running on two days of essentially no sleep.)
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I would say that while that’s usually true, it can depend on context. There’s certainly a WIP on this site that has sexualities that both don’t really make sense and are biased against gay guys; in such a case, I think that making everyone bi (or just rearranging the sexualities already present) could make for a better story.