Is being able to be Bi or Gay that important?

Whereas when it comes to my worlds, I’m a Calvinist God. Despite the illusion of free will, the characters do exactly what I tell them to do. :slight_smile:

But what you describe is exactly what I love about tabletop role-playing, where I provide the world and situations, and other players provide the main characters and take them (and the story) to places I couldn’t have imagined. And like you, I think that’s a good analogy for the God-human relationship, and that more theological reflection on D&D would be fruitful.

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“Coming to theaters soon, however, is a real Western that addresses the homosexual theme: Brokeback Mountain, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal (see p. 72).”

Wow, that’s a throwback if I’ve ever seen one. Also the title of this article got a great chuckle out of me. Also a good learning experience. I kind of always assumed that heteronormative men in situations where women aren’t readily available would lay with each other, but this crystallizes it. Very interesting read.

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I know! It’s so old! I was so disappointed that Brokeback Mountain wasn’t a Western. I really, really wanted the wild west and cowboys, and action and adventure. Not hours of the most boring movie ever with the worst depressing end.

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Well in a gameworld that has fully functional gender changing surgery or magic it wouldn’t be relevant as transmen could simply be men and transwomen would be women, unless their legislature also has a silly “bathroom law” that requires even someone who has undergone a perfect gender change to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their birth gender. :wink:

Hmm…I always got the feeling that Simon in your game is either a bisexual leaning towards women, normally speaking or mostly straight. A 1 or 2 on the Kinsey scale, but that his possible hero worship complex for the male mc overrides this to an extent. Or it could just be the class difference between my mc and him at work there, or their very different attitudes towards sex, as my mc there is more of a “let’s rut like bunnies” type, lol, relationships are infuriatingly complex, even in some well written videogames, it seems. :sweat_smile:

Hoo boy, ain’t that the truth of life. :disappointed:

And most mc’s in these sorts of games have the advantage of being truly exceptional, then again many of their RO’s are exceptional too.

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I have mixed feelings about the Everyone is Bi trope - it is certainly pragmatic and inclusive for all kinds of readers but it gets to the point where I question if its even realistic for every character to be bisexual.

If in-game everyone is bisexual as a consequence of being ‘player-sexual’ then I suppose it depends on how a reader prefers to see characters - should all romancable characters all cater to the MC’s chosen orientation to be viable ROs in every playthrough - or does being playersexual and having their sexuality determined through player choice inadvertently hurt the individuality of their character?

You are right about Black Magic, who was probably the most emotionally fleshed out RO in the trilogy, and gender-flipping didn’t affect that. (But I never really saw BM as playersexual, they were probably pansexual in every alternate narrative continuity established by the player and just happened to find the MC attractive, regardless of the MC’s chosen gender and orientation.)

Tin Star ROs were also pretty well written individuals, each with their own mindset, quirks and personalities. I suppose as long as they’re written well enough, making everyone bisexual or player-sexual is pragmatic and it doesn’t affect their character, whether its written well or bad.

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I don’t subscribe to Freudian theories – never found them plausible. So like I said above, my answer to

is No. But I’ll continue to argue that

is the wrong way to look at it. Everyone usually isn’t bi in a CoG; they have

which is the opposite of everyone being pan/bi (when “Everyone Is Bi,” it takes the choice away from the reader).

Whether having the reader determine an NPC’s sexuality hurts the individuality of the character is an aesthetic preference on which reasonable people may differ. :slight_smile:

When we look more closely at the common claim that gender or orientation flipping risks makes a character “cookie cutter,” though, there are plenty of counter-examples in the CoG canon – characters who, as you say, have their own distinctive mindset and vivid personality despite being potentially either male or female, gay, straight, or bi. Where CoG characters are thin, it’s usually more to do with their genre (e.g. Choice of Zombies is a plot-driven action horror game, not a character-driven story) than their gender and its flippiness.

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Before I begin; apologies to @Fiogan - I extensively quote her and knowing her, this will embarrass her. I am quoting her because she is well written and writes on point very well.

In many ways, my choosing to write Helvetti in the ancient world was to allow a spectrum of relationships without expectations. The ancient world, both historically, and in pop-culture is “relationship-fluid”. Alexander the Great can conquer half the world, have a male lover on campaign and have three queens at different edges of the world (Egypt, Macedonia and Persia) and no one would question me on it.

So, as a writer my setting allows me to write the characters I write about naturally and no-one should get upset they are relationship-fluid.

In the future, what I do will change depending on the story I write. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. The key here is that I have a testing group that will provide me with various perspectives. If one of my key testers is telling me that he or she is feeling x,y or z… I will then use their feedback and make adjustments.

With all this said, I need to respond to some things dear @Fiogan says:

As of this moment, what you need to do is write your story. Honestly, I don’t think you’ll have to worry because your character development is fleshing out quite well and the characters in your story are built deep enough that most every reader will find someone they can appreciate, in one way or another. If you don’t believe me, you can ask your current testing crew; I hear they are a diverse bunch that includes some old military dude and a nubile flirty party chick … between those two, your testers should give you a decent range of feedback to test your character development against.

This is where you create problems for yourself - you start to over think your writing and you make changes to counter things that don’t happen yet (or ever). Your writing is excellent, don’t ever doubt that simple fact. Your instincts are a good place to write from.

This is where the full circle of setting comes into play. Your setting for Beasties is one of history’s most fluid relationship experimentation and as such, you need to trust your instincts as I wrote above because your setting will accommodate whatever you do decide your characters have as relationship possibilities…

Write your story true to your instinct, let your testers tell you if there are bumps in the relationships and then go forward from there. It is pretty simple if you just be yourself. The wonderful, caring and accepting self you are.

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There’s also Brett Golightly in Metahuman Inc, who’s gay.

I can’t think of any other characters in the official choice of games that aren’t player-sexual. While Choice of Robots does have two straight romantic interests, you only ever see the one that’s the opposite gender to you, so even if you’re not interested in them, they’re still interested in you.

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In other words, it’s not that you can’t or don’t want to write same sex romances, it’s that you have characters with a set orientation and don’t want to change this. As said before that’s completely fine :smiley: I’ve played choice games where certain characters are only attracted to certain genders or you need to be a certain gender to romance a certain character.

This is me xD I have a hard time admitting I like playing male characters mostly because I usually end up romancing the male characters omo;

Though, I also have to admit, in my ever-so-slowly progressing WIP most of my ROs will be “player-sexual” if only because I can’t really decide their sexualities xnx Though, it is possible Finian is actually Pansexual while Cadence is Demisexual.

I feel like such an ass. I never even considered that. I just assumed him being an RO was a red herring. This is what I get for assuming things.

edit: to be fair, my OTP ended up being MC with Rival. I could not ever do anything but romance my rival. I just…couldn’t. It was so PERFECT.

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Man, I can relate to this so much.
one of the reason why I prefer all RO to be available is that when the specific gay option available they tend to be…
“here, have the most flaming/fab/flamboyant gay male ever” or if not
“here, have some Bear, total muscly type. you gay people like this kind of thing right?”
while the hetero RO tend to be more fleshed out or interesting as a character. (I am talking about stuff outside of CoG tough there are some game that makes me feels the same)
it’s depend on the execution/how the writer did it, I guess.

I want my RI to have an interesting background, interesting dynamic with my MC, and non generic characteristic etc. for example my fave RI is J.T. Preston which most often than not will be made explicitly straight in media which just blah :tired_face:.
I talk based on my personal experience only but yeah it’s good to have a specific set of character with specific interest as long as it’s not limited to some stereotype RO. make it diverse and interesting.

Same here, except I was playing a lesbian. Sera was about as attractive to me as a bratty five-year old (unsuprisingly, considering she has about all the maturity of one), so I was left with Josephine - who is a likable character, but not an interesting RO for me.
Meanwhile, I would have given my left leg to be able to romance Cassandra with a lady, but nooooooo, god forbid the most plot-relevant lady companion is not a hundred percent straight.

…I may still be slightly bitter about that. :sweat_smile:

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I feel you on that one. Cassandra always struck me as at least somewhat lesbian-leaning. This could, of course, say a lot about assumptions based on appearances, or how strong female characters MUST be dykes – spoiler for extremely offensive terminology.

but like…i was gonna romance her with my lil’ girlie elf my first playthrough. :frowning2: I guess Solavellan will just have to do wistful sigh

I really liked Sera, but I can still relate; I had the same issue in the Mass Effect series. Jack, Tali and Samara were the only characters I was interested in, so I just played the whole thing single. I did kind of like Samantha Traynor in ME3 and tried that romance with a second character just to see how it progressed, but I felt like it was severely underdeveloped and oversexualized. I did eventually make a male character just to play the Jack route; it was everything I hoped it’d be and it ended up making me feel gross because I’d tossed away my identity to see it. Every time I saw my character in a cutscene or heard his voice, it just put the lie to the whole thing.

…I may still be slightly bitter, too.

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To be fair, John’s voice actor is so much worse than Jane’s voice actor. I’m pretty sure everybody felt off when he spoke.

But that’s me digressing and being extremely biased.

To get back on topic, I’d, personally, rather have to go against what I may feel in real life in order to respect the integrity of the characters.

I do hate that Kaidan suddenly became bisexual, when Ashley didn’t…But at the same time, I think that’s incredibly realistic. It’s something I can respect, though it might have irked me at the time.

Mark Meer actually improved a ton by the third game. His lines were delivered in an obnoxious monotone a lot of times throughout ME1 and 2, but there was a significant improvement in his line delivery in ME3. His confession scene with Kaidan to trigger the romance? It was A+.

Honestly? I think it was mostly due to the fact that a female Commander Shepard had a female RO/LI available in each installment of the series and fans had been demanding an M/M one since they found out the romance lines for Kaidan with a male Commander Shepard were in the game itself. If you modded the game, you could romance Kaidan with most of the voicelines intact.

Piggybacking off of that comment though, I do think suddenly making someone bisexual is a poor move. @FairyGodfeather already went pretty into that, but there’s such a thing as at least putting in the bare minimum like a passing comment about how they don’t usually date x or y.

I loved that all the romance options in Fallout 4 are bisexual, but I wish that Bethesda had put more depth into what their preferences were. Take MacCready. He was married with a wife. I love the brat, but he makes no comment about the fact he’s dating a man now instead of a woman. That’s gotta be quite a change for a man who had married his childhood crush and is a recent widow.

A little acknowledgement goes a long way.

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Huh – I think you’re basically right, on reflection (and not having played Metahumans myself yet). I hadn’t noticed because I’m not bothered by orientation flipping and because I’d been mentally conflating it with gender flipping. But yes, even where ROs don’t genderflip, they almost always preference-flip. I’ll agree then, we could use more stylistic diversity on this one.

I feel like a certain type of pro-choicer at a pro-life convention when people say things like this. Applying an ethical frame to something that is (to me) self evidently not a real individual seems a baffling choice.

We authors don’t owe it to our characters to make them three-dimensional. If we had ethical obligations to the fictional characters we create, they would surely start with neither killing nor inflicting pain on them, and then where would the drama be?

We have obligations, if anywhere, to our readers. Maybe we “owe” them the most immersive or real-seeming experience we can create. Or maybe we “owe” them access to romance plots while playing as themselves. I don’t actually think we have either obligation in any strong sense; but it seems to me that’s a more plausible ground for debate than obligations to the characters.

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Yeah, I can respect that. I think it depends at least a little on what your background is, though, or it did for me. I grew up in a place where it was physically dangerous for me to be gay, so I lived in the closet for six years. To me, it felt like my choices in Mass Effect were: have a romance with someone I wasn’t interested in, be alone, or do something very reminiscent of going back in the closet, denying who I was in order to get what I wanted. Those didn’t feel like great options to me.

Also, for the sake of context, I played the first game just after I got to college and came out, and the second one a year later, after I’d spent some time out and proud and attended my first Pride. I was very conscious of anything that felt even remotely like denying my identity. And that’s not even going into the fact that, like a cliche, I fell in love with my straight best friend/roommate, so being forced to play a man in order to be loved by the girl had an extra special sting to it at the time. Sure, it’s realistic, but not really the kind of realism I’m looking for in a fantasy reality I paid $60 for. Context is everything, I guess.

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Following this topic because I’m interested in the line of thinking you’ve reflected in the back half of this last comment.

Have you ever read Heinlein’s The Cat Who Walks Through Walls?

I ask because the main character finds out that he is in fact, the product of a novel.

It was a hell of a twist.

Ahh, I certainly understand your point of view better, now. As someone who, for the most part, identifies as heterosexual (for the most part. I’ve had my fair share of non-hetero experiences), I’ve never really had the issue of feeling unsafe due to my sexuality.

Except when I went out in public with girls I was romantically linked with and held hands or hugged or something. But when I was dating girls, I lived near DC, which is arguably one of the more socially accepting areas of the country. So for me, I don’t have as much of a fear of being hurt for my beliefs, my skin color, or my sexuality.

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