And on the other side of the coin:
“Wow. I’m so glad I shot you.”
(Paraphrasing, I forgot the actual sentence.)
12 Likes
And here I thought my theories were wild. Can we talk about this in the Lux thread? I’d be so interested to know how you came up with that theory!
2 Likes
We can, but take note that I played this quite a while ago (when Lux 2 comes out I’m planning to do a full Saga replay before tackling it), so my memories of it are… let’s go with “iffy”. 
3 Likes
That’s cool, my memories of that particular playthrough aren’t very good either, because I was already bored with Lamuel and did admittedly not pay that much attention to his “sidequest”.
I must admit, I have no remorse
7 Likes
This is more a note than anything else but i would bring the ROs of the Pon Para saga into this thread. The routes are pretty weak and only show themselves in small missable tidbits most of the time.
But to be honest i think this works into the games favour, the amount of worldbuilding and options is so inmense and interesting (specially on the second game my god) that i actually care little about dating and i find myself focusing on y’know, saving the world.
4 Likes
The big complaint I have about Pon Para ROs is that you have to pick between the romance scenes and doing stuff. No, not that kind of stuff, get your mind out of the gutter.
12 Likes
I mean if my player didnt have enough agency i would rather read a good novel/book rather than playing a cog/hg game no? The whole point of playing a cog/hg is having enough player agency or enough freedom in a story if i want to read something normal or a linear story books/novels are way better.
11 Likes
Yeah. Im guessing author felt obligued to add them but didnt know what to do with them?
1 Like
I’m not sure that’s true. AMR also has the same situation in places (you can choose to interact with the rest of the White Fangs, two of which are ROs, after saving the kids from the slavers, but that eats up skill improvement chances), and it doesn’t really feel like the author was forced to put romances in.
1 Like
I just realized that I have yet to give ROs I disliked. While I do not have any ROs that I actively disliked/hated except Captain Hayden Winter who pissed me off after kissing Daisy(I like them very much as an antagonist to my MC though), I did found some of them as annoying and frustrating at some point of the story. Ava and Morgan at the beginning of Book 1 of Wayhaven Chronicles are quite annoying for obvious reasons. There’s also Daisy who pestered my MC by requesting for a threesome with Winter even though my MC said that he prefers to have her all by himself in bed at the start of Sordwin. I know that she had a good character development after this but it did annoy the hell out of me when I first read that part.
7 Likes
I feel like everybody agrees that A and M are annoying jerkwads all the way up to Murphy’s attack on the apartment. For me, A goes back to being an annoying jerkwad in Book 2 until the sewer raid.
12 Likes
I don’t really get this, personally. Disliking the characters from Wayhaven is fine, everyone has their opinion, but I can’t see how one relationship can be “more straight” than another, or “feel straight” when it’s not.
As a woman with a preferance towards other women, I didn’t get this impression while playing through (primarily) Morgan’s route or Farah’s. I guess for me, characters are characters; regardless of gender they are who they are.
24 Likes
Ah, for me, I started to like Ava at the scarf scene lol. I guess I’m just a huge sucker for clichés 
I only started to like Morgan in that scene in book 2 where the MC stayed for a night in the warehouse. It’s a surprisingly chill and peaceful scene for an RO who likes banging most of the time in book 2
3 Likes
Okay, I really need to comment on this. I know this is oversharing, but screw it.
I agree with you, and while I think I can see where she’s generally coming from, describing content and relationships as straight or - my personal nemesis - “made for straight women” can backfire real hard and cause harm to queer people.
What I’m writing now isn’t directed at anyone in particular.
As a gay trans man who likes some of this stuff, this feels at times very invalidating to me, because the thing is, one of the many reasons I transitioned so late in life was because I was always told the things I enjoy (like reading and writing mlm slashfics) were made for straight women, not actual, real gay men. So I couldn’t possibly be an actual, real gay man, right?
And as a trans gay man, it’s mostly not even cishet people who give me shit, the most vile, hateful, toxic, invalidating comments come from cis gay men (not all of course) who LOVE weaponizing these arguments. “If you like this, you’re a 14 year old tumblr girlie, not a REAL GAY MAN”.
In my very first comment here on this forum, I have even described myself as a woman who enjoys playing gay male MCs, because I was still unsure and felt so ashamed and like I had no right to claim either the “male” or “gay” label. I have since gone back and edited this part out, but to this day, WITH EVERY SINGLE POST, EVERY TIME you have seen me talk about Hayden here, a voice in my head went “You sound like a fanGIRL, you sound like a fanGIRL, you sound like a fanGIRL, they’ll think you’re a GIRL, don’t write like a GIRL”.
It’s mind-poison and so damn hard to get rid off!
Thx for coming to my TED talk.
39 Likes
Honestly, fanboying over male characters is a really gay experience. There’s a whole bunch of us, both cis and trans, who do that all the time on this forum… it’s fun, it’s cute, and it’s a way to be gay! Anyone who’d say that’s just for girls is just being prejudiced and wrong.
Like, sure, there’s some tropes that I look askance at, but there are other ways to criticize them.
Being a gay fanboy is actually awesome 
16 Likes
To me, in Wayhaven in particular, the ROs are clearly written to be men with the option to be women (technically this is an assumption, I know, but I would be really surprised if it wasn’t the case, at least subconsciously). They consistently act in stereotypically masculine ways, taking the stereotypical masculine role in relationships, with the protagonist having no agency or power as is standard in otome games. More directly otome games have the same exact feeling but when the genders of everyone are locked and the protagonist getting all flustered at the slightest opportunity at the big tall masculine dominant men it’s more obviously meant for people looking for that stereotypical portrayal of straight relationships. Does any of this make sense and explain what I’m meaning? Like I’m not saying only [target audience] can enjoy it or anything, just that the target audience (even if it’s just the author unintentional bias) can be pretty clear with how it’s written. Like Samurai of Hyuga is pretty obviously written by and for young straight men, if that works as a comparison. I don’t mean anything by it other than I prefer more queer stories (examples I’d give as more queer-feeling stories would be Fallen Hero and Smoke and Velvet), my wording was largely joking.
Hopefully any of that rambling word vomit helped explain what I meant 
30 Likes
I’ve heard this as well from other transgender people. And hell, as someone who doesn’t identify as trans (I’m nonbinary, but I never really had a trans experience so it always felt disingenuous to call myself trans), one of the most invalidating comments I’ve gotten was… not directly by a cis gay man, but he agreed with it. Even the anti-gay hate comments I’ve gotten weren’t invalidating towards gay people, just hateful.
3 Likes
Tom, from Zombie Exodus, is the absolute pits — and I curse my younger self for ever wasting time on exploring that romantic interest despite the pathway being paved with waving red flags and blatant ‘are-you-really-that-dumb-sis?’ fluorescent warning signs.
19 Likes
And yet, ironically, I’m a cis straight dude quite enjoying Wayhaven, but I’m not even going to try Hyuga because even reading second-hand accounts about Jun/ko makes me wanna gag.
18 Likes