This is what I like to call the Creatures Such as We Dilemma Can a fictional character have consent? At what point does a character become their own person? Personally, I think itâs at conception of the character. Some authors feel differently, and thatâs totally okay!
EDIT: Like, I feel that my job as an author is to put these creations of mine into a world and situations of my creation â with their own ways of dealing with things. I let my characters write my story. To bring religion into it, because I am incredibly religious, itâs like God creating humans, giving them set rules, then saying âok u enjoy urself now, bruvâ
Iâm at work so I canât really look up the articles for it, but the TL;DR version of it is that if someone was tough enough to survive out in the Old West, no one really gave a damn who you were bedding - especially considering there were more men out there than women.
Whereas when it comes to my worlds, Iâm a Calvinist God. Despite the illusion of free will, the characters do exactly what I tell them to do.
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 couldnât have imagined. And like you, I think thatâs a good analogy for the God-human relationship, and that more theological reflection on D&D would be fruitful.
âComing to theaters soon, however, is a real Western that addresses the homosexual theme: Brokeback Mountain, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal (see p. 72).â
Wow, thatâs a throwback if Iâve 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 arenât readily available would lay with each other, but this crystallizes it. Very interesting read.
I know! Itâs so old! I was so disappointed that Brokeback Mountain wasnât 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.
Well in a gameworld that has fully functional gender changing surgery or magic it wouldnât be relevant as transmen could simply be men and transwomen would be women, unless their legislature also has a silly âbathroom lawâ that requires even someone who has undergone a perfect gender change to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their birth gender.
HmmâŚI 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 âletâs rut like bunniesâ type, lol, relationships are infuriatingly complex, even in some well written videogames, it seems.
Hoo boy, ainât that the truth of life.
And most mcâs in these sorts of games have the advantage of being truly exceptional, then again many of their ROâs are exceptional too.
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 âplayer-sexualâ then I suppose it depends on how a reader prefers to see characters - should all romancable characters all cater to the MCâs 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 didnât 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 MCâs 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 theyâre written well enough, making everyone bisexual or player-sexual is pragmatic and it doesnât affect their character, whether its written well or bad.
I donât subscribe to Freudian theories â never found them plausible. So like I said above, my answer to
is No. But Iâll continue to argue that
is the wrong way to look at it. Everyone usually isnât bi in a CoG; they have
which is the opposite of everyone being pan/bi (when âEveryone Is Bi,â it takes the choice away from the reader).
Whether having the reader determine an NPCâs sexuality hurts the individuality of the character is an aesthetic preference on which reasonable people may differ.
When we look more closely at the common claim that gender or orientation flipping risks makes a character âcookie cutter,â though, there are plenty of counter-examples in the CoG canon â 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, itâs 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.
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 ârelationship-fluidâ. 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. Iâll 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 donât think youâll 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 donât 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 donât happen yet (or ever). Your writing is excellent, donât 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 historyâs 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 possibilitiesâŚ
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.
Thereâs also Brett Golightly in Metahuman Inc, whoâs gay.
I canât think of any other characters in the official choice of games that arenât player-sexual. While Choice of Robots does have two straight romantic interests, you only ever see the one thatâs the opposite gender to you, so even if youâre not interested in them, theyâre still interested in you.
In other words, itâs not that you canât or donât want to write same sex romances, itâs that you have characters with a set orientation and donât want to change this. As said before thatâs completely fine Iâve 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 âplayer-sexualâ if only because I canât really decide their sexualities xnx Though, it is possible Finian is actually Pansexual while Cadence is Demisexual.
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 beâŚ
âhere, have the most flaming/fab/flamboyant gay male everâ or if not
âhere, have some Bear, total muscly type. you gay people like this kind of thing right?â
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)
itâs 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 .
I talk based on my personal experience only but yeah itâs good to have a specific set of character with specific interest as long as itâs 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 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 â spoiler for extremely offensive terminology.
but likeâŚi was gonna romance her with my lilâ girlie elf my first playthrough. 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 itâd be and it ended up making me feel gross because Iâd 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.
To be fair, Johnâs voice actor is so much worse than Janeâs voice actor. Iâm pretty sure everybody felt off when he spoke.
But thatâs me digressing and being extremely biased.
To get back on topic, Iâd, 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 didnâtâŚBut at the same time, I think thatâs incredibly realistic. Itâs 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 thereâs such a thing as at least putting in the bare minimum like a passing comment about how they donât 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 heâs dating a man now instead of a woman. Thatâs gotta be quite a change for a man who had married his childhood crush and is a recent widow.
Huh â I think youâre basically right, on reflection (and not having played Metahumans myself yet). I hadnât noticed because Iâm not bothered by orientation flipping and because Iâd been mentally conflating it with gender flipping. But yes, even where ROs donât genderflip, they almost always preference-flip. Iâll 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 donât 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 âoweâ them the most immersive or real-seeming experience we can create. Or maybe we âoweâ them access to romance plots while playing as themselves. I donât actually think we have either obligation in any strong sense; but it seems to me thatâs a more plausible ground for debate than obligations to the characters.