Is being able to be Bi or Gay that important?

Game Development Writing and Content
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Its more important to stay faithful to a character and their personality and history rather than arbitrarily making everyone bisexual just for the sake of catering to all possible ROs.

Jenny Yu from the Heroes Rise trilogy is only romancable if the MC is female, this probably bolstered her popularity as she felt more like a person rather than a cardboard stand-in that could be romanced no matter what.

Tin Star is one of the best interactive novels ever written though it didn’t help the suspension of disbelief that every RO was (openly?) bisexual, especially when the story is set in an era where such an orientation was frowned upon by the general public (and the law?).

Thus its better for each RO to have their own personal sexual identity, probably helps in fleshing out their character, making them more individualistic. And if their orientation is considered a social taboo in the context of the story in which they exist, then it should be brought up in some way that is organic to the story, relationships need to feel real, both between the RO and MC and the reaction of background characters.

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You’d actually be surprised by how common and nonchalant homosexuality was in the Old West. Hollywood is the main reason people think otherwise. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I don’t know, in some cases it does help to be pragmatic about it if there’s only a few available LIs, just to ensure no one feels shafted if their only option is the character they don’t like.

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Hmm… perhaps you’re right.

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Unrelated to interactive fiction, this happened to me in Dragon Age Inquisition. As a gay player playing a gay protagonist, my only two options were Dorian and Iron Bull. Iron Bull was an automatic no because his romance arc is just full of squicks for me leaving me with Dorian. While I like Dorian as a character, he’s not the kind of character I’d pursue as an RO unless he was my last resort. :frowning2:

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That’s been my concern with my current WiP…At the moment, I have only four ROs, and they’re very different to each other. Even if I made one straight, one gay, one pan, and one ace (say), I’m not sure how well that would go over.

The RO’s also have an exclusive scene each, so adding another four ROs would be more work than might be sensible…I do want to finish the game eventually.

I like @Havenstone’s method of assigning the NPC’s preferences according to the MC’s, but I hadn’t required players to specify their preferences specifically and I don’t know if I want to change that.

So I’m a bit stymied currently on what would be best; I don’t want readers to feel cheated if their one option happens to be a character whom they don’t find appealing.

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I’d rather a game where everyone is bisexual, than everyone is heterosexual.

I agree though. If someone’s uncomfortable with the idea of including same-sex options to the extend it makes them question their own sexuality, then maybe best not to.

Bisexuality is a valid sexual identity though. I’ve also found that being queer, most of my friends have identified similarly. But, that’s considered unrealistic, I suppose.

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This, to me, brings in the Creatures Such as We dilemma. It kind of comes of as non-consensual, in my opinion, to force a character to romance you, just because you find them appealing. If you’re creating 3-dimensional characters who have their own sexual preferences, it should be respected by the player. I loved Dorian in Dragon Age: Inquisition, but it didn’t bother me that I had to run up a male character to romance him.

I’d rather have only one romantic option that is interested in romance with someone of my gender (female) than have all romance options interested in everyone. It just feels cheap and squick-y to me.

Maybe I just look too deeply into fictional characters :joy:

Oh, same. If it’s all heterosexual or all bisexual, I’m all for it being all bisexual. I have a very fluid sexuality, myself, though I tend to say I’m hetero? idk. LOVE WHO YOU LOVE, BRO. So, like, I enjoy romances with females, males, etc.

I just feel odd when every character is bisexual, because, while it may be true for a lot of people (love is love, you can’t help who you love, etc.), I don’t find it realistic for ALL characters in a game to feel that way.

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I absolutely hear what you’re saying.

The flip side for me is that I can make essentially the same character in a lot of text-based games and just tick a box that says ‘male’ instead of ‘nonbinary’ (or whatever the case may be) and then cause said preferred NPC to romance me whilst still essentially playing the head-canon MC in my original gender. And that feels even weirder.

I confess to doing this for a few Winter Wolves games–every single game of theirs, I seem to start playing with the female option and then discover that the only RO who really interests me happens to be a gay male. But playing a female or a male really only changes the appearance of my MC, not anything else…

So it seems very, very strange to then go and replay with the male character, just so I can snag my RO of choice–almost more like taking advantage of the poor NPCs. (I agree too, that does sound strange when one types it out.) “Look dear NPC, I changed genders, can I romance you now?!” somehow strikes me as not the best way to go about these things.

Does that make sense?

@FairyGodfeather I agree…right now all (all, ha–all four) of my ROs are bi and I’m actually fairly happy with that. I do see the point of people who think NPCs should have set, and varied, sexualities though.

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Creatures Such as We dilemma. Personally, I find it better to at least respect the character’s preference than to just say EFF IT THEY’RE ALL PANSEXUAL, GUYS.

I’d rather have a pansexual, a bisexual, a gay, a straight, and an ace option–possibly even an aro option – and have to replay my character as a different gender identity, than have everyone interested in my character no matter what.

Besides, if written well, playing as nonbinary or male (or female) can provide a completely different experience of the storyline (like with the WIP Broken Lenses), which is just fantastic.

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True–but depending on the game, that may not be reasonable for the setting. Or in the case of my other WiP, I wanted to make a game where your gender specifically does not affect your experience. So that won’t always do the trick.

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It’s generally not all of the characters though, is it? It’s just the romance options? Usually most of the other characters aren’t, unless it’s a world setting where everybody’s bi.

I think some games do do a very lazy “everybody is bi” where that’s just in relation to the main character, but they’ve otherwise absolutely no past history of same-sex relations, and never mention any sort of same-sex attraction. That frustrates me and does feel shallow.

Josh from Choice of Robots for instance, didn’t feel bi. I’d have said he was heterosexual with an exception, but there was a possibility for two exceptions there. I found him a bit jarring.

And I suppose Zombie Exodus and Tom was another WTF Tom when he hit on a male character. That again felt extremely jarring since there was absolutely no acknowledgement of us being male, nor any sort of indication he was bi, or any sort of surprise from anyone, even if it was gentle teasing from his sister.

There’s others too in various games.

So, I guess my problem isn’t that everybody’s bi. It’s that it can sometimes be badly executed. There’s a wide spectrum of being bi, and it’s more than just equally attracted to both men and women. And being bi does come with its own prejudices.

Yeah it makes sense to me.

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That’s a very good point–thank you for mentioning it! I’ll make sure to attempt to carefully address this if I do keep everyone bi (well, pan actually).

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I feel you, haha. Like I said previously, if it’s a matter of all pansexual or all heterosexual, I’d prefer pan/bi over het any day of the week. It’s just more inclusive.

Even if it does come off as cardboard cut-out romance, sometimes. >>

Exactly – that’s why I tend to shy away from “everybody’s bi/pan to pander to your sexual gratification!” cardboard cutouts. It can be done very well – Fatehaven comes to mind, for this one, because the characters felt 3-dimensional regardless of gender – but, to me, it comes off as odd. Like in Dragon Age II where Anders mentions Karl(?) being his “first” if you’re playing as a male, but just says he’s a friend if you’re playing as a female. If the character is bisexual, why couldn’t Karl(?) be his first either way? It just comes off as pandering.

And, having dated women before, I definitely have felt the brunt of bisexuality hate (though I don’t identify as bisexual??? idk, man. sexuality is weird)

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One thing I have wondered about is how to fit orientations with a non-binary gender. If a non-binary MC gets to romance anyone, while a male or female character doesn’t, it would be quite unbalanced. On the other hand, it would also be wrong to only have the actual bisexuals romanceable by non-binary MCs. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this in a non-discriminatory way?

(This won’t affect my current WIP, where everyone’s MC-sexual, but I’m sure the tips could come in handy for later works.)

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I have to admit that I’ve gone with ‘everyone is bi’ in my WIP (well, four bi, two changes with player preference) and it was originally because there were only going to be 3 options. However the LIs react differently to different kinds of PC (my attempt at avoiding the thing of LIs falling for the PC whatever), so people could still find their options limited depending on the paths they take.

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That one definitely is difficult. You don’t want to insult someone who identifies as truly gender-queer by asking them if they have a more feminine or masculine appearance (for the heterosexual or homosexual leaning ROs), but you also don’t want to limit their romantic prospects.

I definitely think bisexual and pansexual characters would be the best option for nonbinary people, though even bisexual is iffy. Most bisexuals I know aren’t interested in nonbinary people romantically, though pansexuals generally could be.

There’s always the option of going the Heroes Saga route with the more advanced character customization that came in later games – where the player has the option of saying “female, but it’s more complicated than that” “I was born female but identify as male” “does it really matter”, etc.

Personally, I think that’s a great way of being inclusive, and I may implement it in my own WIP.

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Were they? Did they show an interest in anyone of the opposite sex to the MC? I don’t remember that, though it’s been a while.

Everyone: it’s fine if you as a reader of IF don’t like “playersexual” characters… but worth noting that they’re not the same as bi or pan characters. In particular, a game where all the ROs are playersexual shouldn’t require suspension of disbelief over the ostensible higher-than-normal bi population of the gameworld.

If on any single playthrough, there’s no reason to read an RO as bi, then the fact that they’re a slightly different character in the alternate universe where the MC is a different gender etc. shouldn’t be taken as evidence that they’re bi. Any more than the MC should be seen as transgender because their sex changes from story to story.

If you care about the integrity of the character – and it’s clear that many of you do – don’t label them bi or pan if that’s not how they’ve been written. Some are, like several already noted in Zombie Exodus. Many others are written to be single-sex attracted, though; it’s just that the preferred sex varies by player choice. In any single read-through, they will only be interested in the sex that the MC happens to be.

Of course, some readers have a strong preference for their NPCs to remain identical (in sex, personality, preferences, etc) whatever the MC’s choices are. Fair enough; I totally get that as an aesthetic preference. But it’s worth recognizing that some authors are implicitly inviting you to be co-authors, not just of the MC (choosing things like gender and appearance that only authors, not characters, can choose) but of key NPCs and aspects of the world as well. You can turn down the invite if that’s not the kind of experience you want; but if you don’t accuse the author of lazy and arbitrary writing, hopefully they won’t accuse you of shirking your co-authorial duty. :slight_smile:

As for fleshing out characters, to stick with Heroes Rise, I’d argue Black Magic had a pretty distinctive personality (that went to some pretty weird places from game to game, sure) despite genderflipping. In fact, I’d say BM comes close to being a more distinctive character than Jenny. By contrast, Lucky was a pretty generic RO… but I don’t think giving them a fixed gender would have fixed that!

What author gets consent from their characters? If this is the standard, then we’re all severely ethically compromised.

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@ParrotWatcher It’s also possible to have, for instance, a female NPC who is interested in both female and nonbinary characters (but not male characters). That’s my plan for my other WiP, which has a larger number of ROs…some characters are attracted to genderqueer individuals, some are not, just like some are attracted to female individuals and some are not.

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Oh another point, even if someone’s attracted to your gender, that doesn’t mean they’re attracted to you. Sometimes people might be, straight with an exception. (That actually seems a very common plotline in slash fanfiction,) Or gay characters might be willing to romance someone of the opposite gender, even if they’re not sexually attracted to them, maybe because they’re in denial, or because they want a family, or because it’s the done thing.

There’s so many nuances beyond the whole “everybody is bi”. And of course there’s those who’re bi, who treat men and women differently, who might only be interested in romance with women, and courting them, whereas it’s all buddy buddy with men and has a different dynamic.

And there’s of course the romantic scale as well as the sexual one.

Anders is bi regardless of whether you’re playing male or female, and Karl was his first either way. He just doesn’t bring it up to the female character though, and that seemed realistic to me.

Not all non-binary people are bi/pan. I’ve a friend, for instance, who’s genderqueer, and identifies as androphiliac; only attracted to men. And not all bisexual and pansexual people are attracted to those who’re non-binary. Some straight people can be though. Some people are attracted to androgyny, for instance, (Not all non-binary people are androgynous though.)

I’d think a non-binary person might find their dating pool a lot more limited, depending on how they present. But I also don’t think fairness really matters.

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