honestly, i’ve been staying away from responding to this topic, despite it being the kinda subject i’m usually all up in, because as a pansexual agender person, i’m seeing so much wrong-headed and hurtful (and yet for some reason strongly insistent) fundamental misunderstanding of non-binary gender, gender assignment, and gender presentation. so, i’m mainly dropping in finally to thank @theredwoman for nailing p much everything on my mind.
i’m also of the camp of absolutely not tying RO attraction to a genital selection for players. i am generally, genuinely so uncomfortable with the idea that some people are willing to tie genital selection (afab, amab) to locking certain ROs and call it a day in coding than they are apparently willing to write a short, straightforward conversation between the MC and the RO addressing the topic of gender. idk if i’m making complete points here, just like… (for games that bother to have a non-binary player option) if it’s really that important that you not just make your ROs accessible to all players, why is it not at all important to address the nuance of the kinds of real-life dynamics non-binary people dating binary folks go thru. i love dating sims and dating in choice games, but there’s more than a couple of reasons i almost never play as myself and pretty much only play as my binary OCs.
the published games and WIPs get a lot of praise for being LGBT+ inclusive and that is fair and I wouldn’t argue otherwise. but, possibly unpopular opinion time: I think they are, as a whole, getting a little too much credit for being representative. making ROs accessible to all genders is absolutely not the same as queer representation. the number of games where all MCs can date an RO, but simply do so with a pronoun swap far outnumber the games that bother to make any meaningful distinction through, y’know, story-telling. the only one i can think of that even bothers with this for non-binary players is Fallen Hero, but pls do let me know what any other ones might be. this is probably why it bothers me that people are cool with just locking non-b MCs out of certain romances–like just lock 'em out, problem resolved. yes, problem resolved for the writer/coder. non-b erasure and simplification/generalization, complete.
sometimes that matters a lot less, like games where romance is of secondary or tertiary importance, and when that’s the case, i care a lot less. but there’s a lot of romance-heavy and character interaction-heavy games out and in the works that really feel like they just pander to the idea of non-binary people–like they were covering their “inclusion bases” and were like, ok, coded the pronouns, finito.
this was probably a bit rambly? and i might end up editing it a bunch or being crucified for some poorly expressed opinions. but this is an important, complex subject and it’s one that kinda upsets me as it reminds me of my personal, real-life dating history and all the misinformed crap i’ve had to hear from binary (straight and queer) people for a long time. but i just woke up so… yeah, i’ll come back to this thread later