It’s probably best to move discussion about NPC sexuality to the below thread, as this thread is more about gender-selectable romanceable characters than NPC orientation:
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To jump back to an edit I didn’t see until now:
Not trying to talk you out of your reading, but I didn’t think role assignation in the AotC-verse was random – at least, not any more random than the arbitrariness built into any class system. Or to put it another way, it’s the randomness of “who’s the eldest child” and “who’s got more money” rather than the randomness of chromosomes and genitalia.
I think it’s an interesting question of terminology whether the world of AotC has “strong gender roles.” It certainly has incredibly strong social roles attached to the central binary of “those who court” and “those who are courted,” but that binary is established entirely on the basis of social status (primogeniture plus wealth) with no connection to sex. The world’s magic system has stripped sexual dimorphisms of their meaning, but the rich upper crust can still impose power dynamics analogous to those of our world’s 16c western European aristocracy – they’re just linked entirely to class, not sex.
If we read the gameworld as a world that was like ours until relatively recent magic/tech developments, so the characters would have historical memory to support some sense of a “discrepancy between the societal gender roles and the actual genders,” I agree there could be some fascinating stories to tell – a bit like in our world’s Sexual Revolution, after tech developments upended various historic roles. But I don’t think that’s how the authors mean us to understand the AotC world.
The characters wouldn’t perceive a discrepancy. There was no point in historical memory when e.g. only women were pushed into a submissive role, where only they were valued as trophies, where only they had to wield power indirectly, etc. In the world of AotC, that social role of “the courted” has been played by people of any sex for as long as anyone can remember. And in that context, if one of the characters started talking about how weird it feels that both men and women are “the courted,” rather than just a single sex…that would be peculiar in ways that verge on unsavory.
That one’s pretty obscure even for an archaism. So I don’t think it’s a great example of acknowledging gender “even without meaning to.” If you’re digging up unused words to gender your characters, then you meant to. 
And as Harris noted, “beautiful” and “handsome” are only gendered at the most basic level of communication – there are plenty of real-world, not especially gender-subversive contexts where you’d write or talk about a handsome woman or a beautiful man.
As an explanation of the double-counting of the straights in ParrotWatcher’s already very bi-centric hypothetical gameworld, I thought it was worth a chuckle, whether or not you’re aware of Freud. But I’m never particularly surprised when people find one of my jokes lame. What I didn’t initially get was why it gave offense, and fsix explained that.
Next time I’ll follow your advice and stick to puns. No one would ever think a pun is lame.
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I would definitely call them “gender roles”, as they are clearly very closely modelled after the gender roles present in the real world at the time (and to a lesser extent now). Regardless of whether the people in the story see them as “gendered”, we the audience do, so I feel it’s fair to use the term.
I don’t really recall any mention of primogeniture in the story (it has been a while, so I might be misremembering). The only siblings I recall were the MC and their younger sibling (both definitely “courted”, and the MC is definitely the eldest child) and all of the monarch’s children (less clear here, especially about the eldest daughter, but Tomas and the MC’s sons all felt more “courter”-coded). And obviously the difference between a struggling noble family and the children of the literal monarch could very much be about the wealth, with primogeniture only really playing a part in-between.
As for wealth, I’m just having trouble wrapping my head around exactly when a family decides that it’s rich enough to have the first child be a “courter”, and it does feel like such a system would probably end up producing far more "courted"s than "courter"s. This feels like it could be a problem, especially when it comes to war, as now there are no second sons to send off to fight, as they’re all "courted"s instead, and the "courter"s, whose gender role permits them to join the army, are the ones whose deaths would impact the family most. (Although now I’m thinking of a story about someone who was groomed all their life to be a “courted” only to be thrust into the “courter” position at the death of their older sibling… or conversely, someone groomed as a “courter” and forced into the “courted” position due to a sudden loss in family standing… 
)
But there is one part of the setting that really could have worked as a gender replacement: magic type. There are two types of magic, which are very important to the setting, especially when it comes to inheritance (and if I recall correctly, magical birth)… and yet they are completely unrelated to the societal “gender roles”, and I think this was a very big missed opportunity.
Sorry, I tend to overthink a lot of things… 
Well, I was originally going to skip straight people entirely, but don’t tell anyone. 
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I actually just yesterday had somebody express that the sole gender-selectable (he, she, xe) RO in Drink Your Villain Juice doesn’t feel like they’re written to be a man, which I found to be interesting, as the original version of the character in the planning stages was actually male, and I only chose to make them selectable later on. In general I’ve definitely seen a lot of those comments before about say, the author viewing the character in a specific way or losing depth due to being ‘everything’.
Regarding Wil from DYVJ/writing a selectable character, I definitely feel the whole, ‘it’s difficult to make it reactive’. Lots of extra work on top of all the rest of the work that goes into making an RO, especially if you get into the weeds of how that relates to the MC’s own identity. But I do want to dig into Wil’s relationship with gender some more: they’re intentionally written to be GNC, and I think that’s meaningfully different for a not-traditionally masculine guy vs. not overly feminine woman vs. a non-binary person.
One, I guess, wariness, is that if a character is selectable and the author adds reactivity… are they maybe just leaning into stereotypes in doing so? Like, if RO is male, are we having a snippet that plants a MAN flag? Why is that flag necessarily MAN?
As a reader, I honestly don’t really get it. Even in works where there are very few differences other than the listed gender, the characters usually ‘feel’ different to me. Though there’s some interesting stuff to think about how much that comes from the person reading! Like, I think it’s saying a lot about my perspective that, for example, Max from Creme de la Creme feels so different to me when they’re set as male, despite them doing the same things.
Admittedly, I’m super gay and 90% of the time only romance women or non-binary characters, so often setting a character to male is how I avoid the temptation to romance my faves for the tenth time instead of trying a different route like I was planning ><
Not to cast aspersions, but maybe it’s easier to project one’s perspective onto a character ‘feeling’ gendered than to assess one’s own gendered biases? To take the example of the guard captain, I’m not sure how many people would take a step back and go “huh, maybe I assume this character is male by default because of my own internalised thoughts about toughness and masculinity”
PS: one thing I’ve seen said is that “oh, the writer used ‘he’ here by accident, obviously this character is supposed to be male”. I may only be speaking for myself, but my variables for pronouns are like ${whe}, ${whim}, ${whis}, and sometimes I deadass forget that I’m supposed to be coding when I’m in a writing flow and muscle memory does the rest 
Oh and random thing RE: affairs of the court. Inheritance there at least with the monarchy isn’t entirely primogeniture. Part of the pressure/precariousness of the PC’s position as consort is that they have the same type of magic as the monarch, and opposite-magic children are preferred as heir, so the PC’s kids’ claims are viewed as less secure if they’re born with the same magic as the monarch.
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Havie, I love you, but That was a very bad take. It can be very easy miss interpreted and certainly will piss people from all spectrum.
I really believe that gender and sexuality should not be used as pun in a forum.
Because there is no background and the internet is too fast for a real satire.
Still a bit of mature real deep game of satire and humor could great, but a forum comment no way.
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Fair enough… but it’s worth noting that the complete disconnection from sex in the gameworld makes them a very distinctive kind of “gender” role, and certainly calls into question the societal roles/“actual gender” (or sex?) distinction you would have been interested in seeing the authors explore.
As for the relevance of primogeniture as well as wealth and Deathy-Lifey magic, here’s the Choice of Romance passage that lays out the basic rules of the world for you:
I found the cross-hatched social order of birth order, wealth, and Death/Life Mage status in AotC much more interesting than just mapping “gender” onto a single binary or spectrum, but YMMV. I don’t remember how they dealt with the question of who serves militarily; that may well be an area that needed more work, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s also addressed in passing. (I also haven’t reread AotC in a while.)
This 100%.
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I think where the confusion stems from is that some people seem to look for essential male or female elements while shying away from anything disgusting about how society treats men and women.
You can’t separate these concepts from the world around you any more than you can imagine something that hasn’t been imagined before. We all carry our own baggage and our own relationship with gender, and naturally not everybody will want that reflected in fiction but this is the reason why some characters hit harder with defined gender.
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Essential. Sure a essence that changes throughout all history and every culture and human group.
The idea of there is a gender essence is as ridiculous as say there is a philosopher stone turn every element in gold or in aqua vitae.
From colours, from way to wear, to jobs. What in hell is Women essence? A shampoo?
There is not essences. There is not Gender truth and anything like that.
Because people of five cultures five age groups would see opposite things from the same action
A simple example until XIX blue was for woman not pink. That is a modern take.
Same way in Renaissance men used High heels taller than women.
So basically if you read a real work of that era with high make up masquerade men in high heels…
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Sweat, I’d wager.
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Please, one scientific analysis of the nature of Tali’s sweat was more than enough.
Roles are weird.
I don’t have an issue making OG poster a woman or a man. If I plan to romance, it’s a she. If I don’t want to end up doing the same romance, as Izzy pointed out, have to make them a man.
I do not see the Captain strictly man or woman because she is built and capable with a weapon.
Consider a General who gave birth then continued her war immediately after. Or my cousin who can tackle down men three times her size.
I do not see strength or capabilities as certain specific types. Real world factors, yes not typical or common for some to do certain things due to muscle build or lack of fighting skill.
The Captain if choice, I can go either way. Unless an LI in general. I don’t think of the men as attractive, even if Captain has same personality in either direction. I should say, not attracted to masculine type bodies? Can be cool men, but that is as far as my mind goes.
To understand how that works, can’t be open to anyone. I believe requires preferences or empathy to understand.
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Sugar, spice and all things nice (as the English Children’s rhyme goes) /s
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Huh, I’ve only heard “sugar, spice, and everything nice”
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Y’all forgetting CHEMICAL X 
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I’ve been known to explain my relationship to gender as “Made of sugar and spice and puppy-dogs’ tails, but the spice is garlic and the tails are elegant little pug coils.”
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And I thought I was the only one thinking of the Power Puff Girls
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A really interesting example of this have been the cogs where we never select the mc gender. There is almost always complaint of…
“The mc is always obvious written as oppositie gender than I want to play.” It is actually really fascinating.
I remember the spy game (where there is a woman on the cover, so a lot of people assumed woman) or the midsummernight pasthice were a lot of people assumed opposite than they wanted. It was deeply fascinating and a really good example of how much we just assume stuff about gender that we only think about when something goes against it.
I really wish I could find the thread and discussion and reviews again, but they were soo fascinating and really made me think about my own very complicated thoughts on gender.
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Okay, thinking about it, I think I’ve identified he root cause of my problem (and it’s even still somewhat on-topic).
It’s a quite tired cliché by now to insist of having gay pairings be between one more masculine man and one more feminine man (and similarly for lesbian pairings, one butch woman and one femme woman), as though trying to insist that gay pairings should be straight actually. Now, obviously, this kind of pairing is fine in real life, and honestly, even in stories, individual pairings like this are generally fine, in and of themselves; the problem is when it becomes a major trend.
This is my issue with, say, the Omegaverse setting: gay pairings are normalised, but only if they adhere to a new “gender binary” which has just replaced the old one. Men can date men, but alphas have to date omegas.
And it’s the same with Affairs. You are definitely right that the setting put more thought into it than I remembered, but it still all boils down to a binary: “One either courts or is courted.” You can’t, say, choose to date another “courted”, even as one of the throwaway, early-end, non-monarch ROs; all of the options are “courters”.
Granted, this does mean that my issues with the story are less the genderflipping itself than a combination of the setting-enforced gender-equivalent roles and the story that doesn’t really give you any ability to actually fight back against those roles (or if it does, they’re not easy to find). And sure, that obviously wasn’t the story the game wanted to tell, but it did draw my attention to the genderflipping in a way that most other games with genderflipping ROs doesn’t.
I generally just feel like snips and snails. 
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My issue with almost every discussion of this nature in the past 5 years is that this game was released 11 years ago and instead of being discussed as a game of its time, it is always discussed as if it were still a WiP being made at the time of the discussion taking place.
Heck, this game has been even “remastered” by being condensed into a single game – something that tried to “modernize” it, but because the game was written to a different set of expectations, I often feel it is villainized a bit too harshly for its “failings” as seen by a “today’s” perspective.
I think you are spot on about there being a set of “binary” expectation about courting … yet in its day, all the VNs and such also had this going on; this is not just an “Affairs” issue and often it is discussed as such.
Society has changed since then, and despite the destructive efforts of many to take us “back” to that era or even earlier, there are aspects of today’s society that has changed for the better.
I feel gender expectations is one such area that has changed for the better, even in just a decade of time.
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That’s a fair point. I feel it’s still a good thing to be able to discuss issues with older works, so as to better avoid them, but it is a game of its time, and should be judged as such.
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