I do believe that was one of the ROs in a recent HC game, which I did an RO review of if I’m not mistaken. He worked for an agency that answered directly to the mayor and had basically the same objective as the agency you worked for, but for the fact that the mayor and your boss keep butting heads with each other, which is really the only reason your respective groups don’t just collaborate with each other already.
I’m writing a (private) thing right now that spits right in the face of that trope for a laugh: two characters despise one another (think “pompous noble looking down their nose at feisty commoner” - and make no mistake, when I say “despise,” there’s no room for any other interpretation. No shattered former friendship, no playful rivalry, no misunderstanding that blew up out of proportion, they both just took one look and hated each other immediately and now want the other to die in agony and humiliation for daring to waste their precious breathing air). Eventually, circumstances lead to one character finding out that the other has a secret crush on them, and they immediately become viscerally disgusted by this knowledge and refuse to go any further down that road, to the point of outright forcing a change in subject any time somebody tries to bring it up.
I’ll admit it, their interactions with each other are basically my hate letter to the enemies-to-lovers trope. Sometimes, an enemy is just an enemy, and there’s no chance of anything more developing between them.
This is the reason why I love Shawnie and Skylar from BloodMoon and Vendetta respectively. They’re not shy characters and neither do they hold extreme uncertainty with their relationships and I love that.
And this is also the reason I will most likely never touch A’s romance route in Wayhaven, that indecisiveness is just ew. At times it just feels like emotional manipulation with how push-and-pull they are.
What I find a lot more enjoyable than enemies-to-lovers is enemies/lovers… which I haven’t seen many IF try to do so far apart from The Evertree Saga with Winter and Arcadie: Second Born with Stan…although in his case, there’s just a potential kiss.
Summary
Stan’s your enemy from the start - he slaughters your parents and spends the rest of the game trying to kill you and your sister (succeeding with the latter) - and you still fight him at the end of the game even though you can spare him if you wish…but in the middle of all that, you can kiss him…prompting him to say you’re insane (which…yeah, fair enough) but he kisses you back…and he then proceeds to tell you that it doesn’t change anything and he will show you no mercy on the battlefield and expects none from you either (and he is true to his word).
You’re probably doing the best thing for your mental health, stay away. Don’t be like me and other suckers who thought we were gonna get a relationship upgrade in the last book. Just to end up with more bullshxt. Someone hand me a bottle of cranberry vodka !
It’s mostly about who they want to romance. Clothes shopping indecisiveness doesn’t really bug me that much. Deciding what you want to eat in a restaurant? I could strangle people for that. You have five minutes to look at the menu–make up your damned mind! That’s just a personal pet peeve of mine…
Haven’t played Vendetta, but I did love Blood Moon. I didn’t romance Shawnie (not into girls), but Farro was pretty decisive about what he wanted, which I appreciated.
That said, I’ve noticed this trend toward female ROs being decisive, strong, and pretty awesome, while male ROs are indecisive, shy, and basically annoying as fuck. I really hate this trend. I get the whole “we don’t want gender roles” thing, but ffs, making a strong, decisive, and assertive male character is not a crime. So someone, please give us that. This is literally why I hate The Golden Rose… the only male RO is a blushing feminine wuss. The one with the best personality is the female RO, which is out for me. It sucks.
It’s emotional abuse. I found it amusing that, in b3, A thinks about what they’re doing the MC then not only continues to do it, but ramps it up to the highest level at the very end. I was done with A after that, and I barely tolerated that path before b3. It sucks, though, because I like A as a bff and a character–he just gets turned into an emotionally abusive asshole in his route. But some people are into that.
If it makes you feel any better, M-mancers got a pretty much perfect M in b3 but now have to deal with another entire book or two of M being a complete and utter moron in the name of dragging their “romance” out longer. passes the cranberry vodka to you and grabs some golden grain instead
I mean, I get being annoyed, but wanting to kick them to the curb for needing an extra minute to decide seems overly harsh to me. Blame my own trauma responses if you will.
That’s what I’m looking for at this point mostly. Kinda just academically curious to see how far it goes.
I’m not talking about an extra minute. I’m talking about the people who have five to ten minutes, then the waitress shows up and they say they’re ready only to “um and hmm” for several minutes after everyone else at the table has placed their order. If you weren’t ready, say so. Don’t say you’re ready then fuck around and doubt whatever decision you made before you said “yep, I’m ready!”.
That said, I wouldn’t kick someone to the curb only for that. I would just express my annoyance in a mature and calm manner… or be snappish and roll my eyes, which is far more likely.
I’m calling it now–A-mancers will get their due in b4. Probably the end of b4, but it’ll happen. M-mancers are all kinds of fucked, however.
I’ll check it out. I actually checked out a WIP called “Merry Crisis” last night and loved it, mostly. A few things grated, but they have a bad boy RO who’s in a band, is muscular, and wears leather so I was good to go. Don’t care about the rest, lol.
I don’t think I got that far in the fully released game to meet him. From what I heard, he’s a good option, and definitely not a wuss, but he wasn’t really a romance for b1, was he? You just met him and went on your way? I remember some guard guy from the demo, too, but he wasn’t an option, either. So I figured it was Hadrian or nothing. I’d rather have nothing, but without a romance option, I didn’t care for the game because it moved too slow and the writing was so flowery and bloated.
He’s an RO, but you only meet him in one scene in Book One. The perception that only Hadrian exists is understandable, but that’s a bigger issue with The Golden Rose’s pacing – Book One’s more set-up than anything else.
FWIW, female MCs have 5 male ROs to pick from in that series, and all of them are/can be met and flirted with in Book One: Hadrian, The Pirate King, Alain, Lance, and Rafael.
I love the guy, loved that you could just go ahead and hook up and start to fall for him without a bunch of stupid forced drama. The ex annoys me (and is named Nat, which automatically makes me think of Nate from Wayhaven), and the other ex from high school is… meh. I may like him better and make a MC to play his route when more of the story comes out, but I don’t really care enough to do that right now.
The next door neighbor is close to perfect, though.
Thanks for the link. I’ll check that out, too. I definitely like her writing style, and like the MC in Merry Crisis. They’re set enough to not feel like a blank slate, but not so set that it ignores the personality stats that are given. And the family humor is so spot on. I also like learning about their culture, too.
Merry Crisis is delightful, my only gripe with it is that it’s the author’s secondary project so it gets VERY infrequent updates.
Qiu can suck shit, though. You were talking about hating wishy-washy ROs? Qiu is your RO in school, then you break up, then eight years later tries to hook back up with you again after you’ve already been in and broke off an entire other relationship in America.
