I did not like it, because I felt it restricted my options.
I don’t think it is exclusive a female thing, but I do think it was written by the perspective to what a straight woman would do of she found her husband with a younger and attractive young woman.
And I think you are right about it, they don’t feel like what I normally play.
I love that quote.
And this.
Because it’s all putting a new light on the game, and your position to me.
Actually the whole post is too great for just the like button.
I think if you’re a gay man, who’s unable to give your bisexual husband the child he so desperately wants, and you find him in bed with an attractive young woman, there’s a lot at play there too. Admittedly the whole magic children thing does make things play out slightly differently than it would in this world.
AND due to that issues. With what TSSL says, it is suddenly so very interesting, that it might be the man whose role is threatened. That he’s the one who’s unable to give his wife the child she desperately wants. Usually it’s the woman who’s blamed. I like this flip, especially since it’s the sperm that’s responsible for male/female.
And yes that woman in the Queen’s bed is a threat to you. She can have a child with the Queen, one the Queen doesn’t even need to carry herself, (which maybe she finds preferable). Is the Queen really going to let you join in, and risk impregnating her? Even assuming her lover is bi and would want you there. Your position is in jeopardy.
And I will keep saying that the story was written with the view of a straight women only in mind, then just added the choice to swap the gender. Still it is clear the writer view, and again, I’m not the only one who saw it, and you can see it in this very thread, it is not only my opinion.
The queen will always have lovers, it is clear from the begnning where she cheating her husband with Thomas’ mother and the MC. The best the MC can do is please the queen to not lose favor.
The MC would need to have teleport powers to do that with the Royal heir without anyone noticing.
Where I said they shouldn’t do it? i was saying why I felt it, it was the whole set, not only one thing.
I found out I didn’t like it and have no interest to do it again.
The girl was a black mage too, she couldn’t do it. And I never said she would allow, I said there is no option to even try.
The problem is that it really didn’t work that way for me. I basically just ended up visualising my MC as a straight woman, and just couldn’t see her him as a man, which basically goes against that idea. I think part of my problem may have been that in the male/male version, my “male” MC was acting like a mediaeval lady, while many other men at court act like mediaeval men. Had it been a full gender swap (male character romancing the queen), I might have been more inclined to see the gender role subversion, but as it was, the gender roles were all over the place.
Even of you went with the full gender swap, it would not help, because there are man who act like medieval men anyway, like Vega and the General. So this role felt forced to only my character and his brother.
It was age based, not gender-based.
I think this is a really interesting discussion, and I will weigh in on just a few issues.
While Hermia, and the other characters of A Midsummer Night’s Dream were in my mind to some degree, her influence was really minimal. The protagonist is inspired more by Rosalind and Orlando from As You Like It. The game as a whole is way more As You Like It flavored than MSND flavored.
I think part of what’s going on here has to do with the nature of Shakespearean comedy–his romantic comedies tend to have much more focus on female protagonists (and the tragedies on the male protagonist). Usually. So there’s a tendency to think of a generic MC in a Shakespearean comedy as female by default. That’s just the nature of the genre as we have it. But my goal in the game was to think of the situation–the romantic peril–which I think anyone could imagine themselves in.
I have had people tell me that the MC is too much of a man, and some say that they are too much of a woman. I figure that balances out.
Not that it matters, but as for what was in my mind when writing it: I tried really hard to maintain a flexible image of the four characters in it who can be make or female. I don’t have a “preferred” version of any of them.
Even when my MC was older, he couldn’t act like them.
I wouldn’t just slap Vega when he forced himself on me, I would have beat the crap out of him.
Thanks to @Gower for your input. This is all quite interesting. Out of curiosity, do you remember anything offhand that people thought made the MC too male?
There’s also women who are always women with positions of influence. The roles don’t all line up with gender. It’s more about ending up in a position that our culture associates with gender rather than just flipping the gender roles.
I don’t know. I played a gay male before I tried it with a hetero one, and he never felt female to me. Granted, I did picture him as sort of weepy nonetheless.
I can see where the coding gets fiddly, though.
Not being treated that way can be rather unpleasant, yes.
Okay, and this is where I go from disagreeing with you to feeling actually uncomfortable.
Vega’s the one who will back off if you reject him. He won’t force himself on the main character if you tell him to leave. This makes him the opposite of Gabriel/la, who really has issues with taking no for an answer.
I didn’t tell him to leave, because I didn’t understand that he was talking about me (English is not my first language), then all of sudden he was forcing himself on me.
Yeah, I agree that he should ask before kissing someone. Nonetheless, given that he apologizes profusely, however, and he never makes advances again, wanting to beat him up is disproportionate.
The reason I felt uncomfortable is that there’s something called the “gay panic defense,” which people have often used to justify anti-gay violence by saying that the victim made advances on them. It’s a different matter if it’s self-defense if someone’s really forcing himself, but there’s enough history of gay people being assaulted for minor reasons that I felt concerned.
Hmm, I suppose you’re right. Still in the game, I don’t think we ever get older than 30 do we? It is a bit weird in regards to ages and not all that consistent. So I guess yeah that doesn’t hold true.
I was feeling the exact same way about the response, but having issues putting it into words.
I am glad that the choice to beat him up wasn’t given. It wouldn’t have been given, or even expected, if Vega had been female after all.
It’s not very explicit, but I think rank plays into it as well, at least in effect. The main character’s family is under financial stress, while men like Vega are considerably more secure. I don’t think the story addressed this explicitly, but that was the way it read to me.
Do not move in on my FG turf.
He sexualy harassed my character, to me it is a good motive to beat him.
There are other games where male characters flirt with my character, in all of those they ask before trying anything. I never wanted to beat them.
Vega just forced himself, he deserved more them what he got.
Well, my MC ended up as a sex slave for Tomas, so you got off lightly. (And given that Tomas was the younger man, it goes against the idea that sexual control is proportional to age.)
I hate Thomas too, and I can make the bastard pays for what he did.
And I never wanted to beat Thomas, I wanted to kill him in a very painful way. Luckily this is exactly what he got.
Actually you didn’t. The game is extremely explicit that Tomas at no time forces you to have sex. There’s one kiss that’s forced upon you and that’s it from him. I remember @poison_mara getting really upset until they explicitly clarified it in text.
That said Tomas is utterly despicable in all that he does. It’s just that he isn’t in that way.
For the sake of argument, beating up Vega would be a sure way to commit political and/or social suicide, leading to scandal, leading, perhaps, to you both exiled, at best, or executed horribly, most likely.
There was that one game where you were the commander of a space fleet/navy where the mc’s gender was, I believe, never quite specified and didn’t really matter in any case.
Very true, though outside of the very melodramatic K-drama’s it is not a trope I am particularly fond of.