The thing here IMO is that romance stories work off of what’s hot, not off of what’s ethical.
I mean, if you tell me you’ve published a romance game about being taken prisoner by a sexy pirate, my first thought is not going to be “ugh, that’s problematic, there’s an inherent imbalance to the prisoner/captor roles and I will never be able to give real consent to her advances”, it’s gonna be “hell yeah, I’m gonna bang the pirate queen”.
And I’m gonna be pretty pissed off if I get the game and find I’ve been taken prisoner by a surprisingly ethical pirate who spends the entire game saying “I’d love to have sex with you, but a captive cannot truly consent and I couldn’t bear to harm you like that”, because if I buy a sexy romance game with a problematic theme, I’m buying it because I want sexy romance with that theming. If what I was really after was a twitter thread about unequal relationships, I’d just go read twitter.
You’re reversing the power dynamic there because an NPC doesn’t have agency. You’re creating a strawman argument, deliberately constructing a scenario where you, the person with the power, are seemingly the person at the bottom of the power dynamic, when in fact you’re also controlling the actions of the other characters through your story.
So let’s take your idea again. You design your character, and no sooner are you yo-ho-hoing as a sailor than you’re captured by your sexy pirate queen. And the first thing that happens, while you’re chained up, is you’re forced - no choices in the story- into having sex with her. Is that still the hot story you’ve imagined? Now, I don’t know you and your kinks (and the nature of what’s hot is entirely subjective - I do not have a ‘getting railed by a dom pirate queen’ fetish), but I’m guessing it isn’t. Because the power dynamic has shifted. Consent hasn’t been given.
And while you might absolutely love that because of your own kink, a wider reader base will not. This especially applies if the game is called ‘Merchant Sailor Simulator’ or something - no mention of being kidnapped and forced to have sex with a pirate queen - as opposed to ‘Taken Prisoner by the Dread Pirate Big Boobs’ or whatever. Again, we’ve got a situation of implied consent there, because you know what kind of game you’re after.
Put that idea into other spaces. You’re the pirate queen. Is it cool to force yourself on your captives? What if you’re the gladiator school owner, is it OK to have sex with your gladiators when you’re feeling a little frisky? What you’ve got is a reinforcement of power dynamics, rather than the subversion of them.
If we’re talking about a book? Yes, that’s pretty much exactly what I signed up for when I picked up a book / fic who’s synopsis was ‘Reader get taken captive by the sexy Pirate Queen’.
If we’re talking about IF? Not really because it’s not an IF anymore so it would have been false advertising if there are NO choices but that has nothing to do with power dynamics.
Yes, that’s exactly what I am doing, because I am describing a hypothetical game where “your choices control the story”. This means that the player gets to make choices that dictate the flow of the game, even when their character is in a position of weakness. This is, in many ways, the entire point of interactive fiction.
This would be bad, but I have no idea at all what this has to do with anything I said. I don’t expect or want any game to force you to have sex with anybody.
What I expect is that when I buy a game billed as a sexy pirate romance game, that game will give me the option to get ‘railed by the dom pirate queen’ if that’s what I want.
What I do not expect is for the pirate queen to sit me down, give me a serious talk about power imbalances, and then refuse all my advances until the last scene of the game, because that’s basically the opposite of a sexy pirate romance.
Okay, this is just ridiculous. What does this have to do with anything?
Yes, if you reverse the scenario so your character is the person at the top of the power dynamic it gets pretty icky. Obviously. That’s why my hypothetical romance game was “You are captured by the sexy pirate queen” and not “You’re a pirate who captures some sexy prisoners”.
In case of Ferrado it’s not even a serious talk. He just mumbles something about power imbalance and says that it’s because of said power imbalance he cannot truly romance you. My dishonourably discharged soldier duelist would probably not even know what the hell he’s talking about, yet for some reason he does and goes “oh, okay”.
It’s about several sentences worth of discussion about power imbalance, and after that he just constantly repeats this word. That’s not really a serious talk, it felt like the book was deliberately cockblocking me since I’ve fucked Eryx without him ever mentioning that as, a senior gladiator and the star of the entire arena, he probably also has some sort of power imbalance over a fresh arrival into the arena.
The real world isn’t fiction. If the author chooses to be reflective about real world considerations, so be it. They are not obligated to nor are they are required to contextualize it in some “proper” way should they choose to incorporate it. Their only obligation is to tell the story they want to tell in the best way they can tell it.
Some people have problems to distance themselves from fiction and project their own ethics and sensibility on fiction without considering… Well that it is fiction.
One can not change that from outside. As that is an international projection on to the outside.
I think it is for everyone to know if they like to lose themselves in fiction or not. But please remember to at least try to understand when people want to immerse themselves in a fantasy may it be political corret or not. The fun thing about fiction is that you can experience things that you would not want to experience and of we “clean” Fiction for modern sometimes overly sensitive minds we will soon don’t have fiction anymore.
I think it is important to see that people are disappointed when they get confronted by the political correctness in their escapism fiction.
But also consider that the author wanted to tell a story and that is their right. But it is also the right of the readers to criticise them in turn.
I think this conversation about power dynamics in IF novels is sort of glossing over the fact that NPCs by definition can’t have power over you because they’re, you know not real. They’re bits of code and writing that can only ever have preprogrammed responses and only exist within the book. The sexy pirate queen can’t reach though the screen and force you to read about her domming the PC. You as the reader always have the “power” to just stop reading.
Is “if you don’t like it stop reading” a bit of a cop out answer? Sure, but it doesn’t make it not true. By all means if “1880s Merchant Simulator” suddenly turns into getting forcefully dommed by a pirate queen with no content warnings then it’s well within your right to be upset and leave a review warning others. However, that doesn’t make the fiction itself some sort of uncontrollable moral cancer. You didn’t like it for valid reasons, someone else might like it for equally valid reasons.
Worked briefly on a game that was going to have that, but sadly it got scoped down. Would have been amazing if the budget and time had been there for it. (Sadly, I can’t say what the game was.)
There are several successful long running game series with that concept anyway.
That’s the part I don’t get, there are VERY fucked up stuff that happen in this game like War, slavery, forcing slaves to fight for entertainment and your very own country deciding you deserve to be a slave since you didn’t die rather than be capture (if you take the foreign soldier origin)
So for Ferrado’s storyline to be the one that need a ‘power imbalance’ in-game PSA is weird to me, especially with how vanilla Ferrado is the storyline is closer to ‘rich person rescue a gladiator from their condition’ / ‘Royalty & Pesant Romance’ rather than to ‘Master / Slave Romance’ (And that’s ignoring than in many origins, you’re essentially closer to a prisoner serving a prison sentence than a slave).
Oh, I agree his romance was vexing!
Very frustrating and ripping you right out of the story.
Maybe his romance was flagged by the proof readers or the author just wanted to implement that into the book.
To be fair I think it is just a theme now because this is about RO’s and Ferrado is a recurring participant in this thread .
You know like Jun from SOH or Leon from a Mage reborn. I really enjoy reading the criticism of different characters because sometimes it gives wonderful insights and gets you to reconsider a RO from a different perspective. Also I miss the Mage reborn thread (very entertaining … Don’t judge me this forum is my source of drama ).
I am actually pretty surprised I have not seen Seven pop up here. The update is coming online so it will probably depend on how that goes. Also no one there had been flagged and hunted out if the thread for their opinion. I think that’s also part of it.
The thread is basically 40% thirty, 10 % story and 50% seven hate
Sry I could not remember
Respect for seven that is a feat . I guess you are not alone
If you like toxic characters that are confused and have a lot of growing to do. Like angst and are prepared for the narrative to be in their favour check their romance out.
It’s a different kind of angst than Leon for example.
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I don’t even look at this thread because this game upsets me too much.
