Hello!
I’m having trouble in writing the orientation choice. I’d like to not let people that identify themselves as non-binary getting put to the side. But i don’t know how to write my code for each orientation.
LIke if the MC is non-binary but attracted to men how do i write that please? (Same for women attraction or both)
Thanks!
I’m not sure what you’re asking. You just did write it. What exactly is the problem?
So what you’re asking, essentially, is how we enbies label our sexualities. And that’s, well, a very complicated matter and depends on too many factors.
So instead of making the player choose a label for themselves, it would be easier to let them state “I’m attracted to %gender(s)%” or “I don’t experience attraction” or what have you.
Hope that helps.
Why not just skip coding in orientations and let the players flirt with who they want? And if you have any scenes where another person asks the MC out, simply have an “I’d prefer to be friends” option.
If you have to specify for some reason, you could just use homosexual/bisexual/heterosexual, skipping identities and specifying just biological sex. But many players will dislike that so I’d just go with the approach above.
Do not do this. 
I’m pretty certain you would alienate everybody who’d want a non-binary option in the first place.
If you have to differentiate between attraction to men and attraction to women, just say that.
I was thinking of a setting where same-sex relationships are illegal under oppressive, homophobic governments who don’t care about identities, just biology (which is a case for many real-world countries OP may have chosen as the place where their game is set). I do agree it would alienate readers looking for a story in an inclusive setting, which is why I added that caveat!
I also generally recommend not writing IF stories in such settings. I have talked about this in several other places, but my main point is that realism does not inherently make a story good, especially if that realism is mainly being used to hurt minority players.
I’m not saying you can’t include bigotry in IF games, but if you do, it should be targeted at the character, not the player, and either all players should face that persecution, or the choice of whether to face persecution or not is unconnected with things like sexuality and skin colour (I understand that this is how Choice of Rebels handles it). This is especially true if the setting is fictional (if you’re making your own setting, you can definitely choose exactly how much bigotry there is), but it’s even true for settings based on more bigoted places and times in the real world.
For one thing, what we think of as “realistic” is often incorrect. For example, in the Middle Ages, both Christianity and Islam were far more tolerant of homosexuality than they are even today in some places. And even in places and times where there definitely was/is such persecution, you’d be writing a whole lot of extra story which would only really be encountered by players who wouldn’t really like that content, so why not just make it more accepting? You’re definitely going to be going against realism in other places; it’s pretty much inevitable.
Also, I hope @Flashe doesn’t mind, but I changed the subforum to Writing and Content, because this topic didn’t really fit in ChoiceScript Help.
Yea it’s true that i wasn’t really clear. I want to put gender-swap for the characters that can be flirted with. That’s why i need to put the orientation.
But after posting this i thought of something.
Maybe i can set the orientation for people that choose their MC to be men or women as “gay” or “straight” or even “bisexual”. And for people that choose to be non-binary i could just flip the gender of the characters that can be flirted with ?
EDIT : And no i don’t mind you changing the subforum @ParrotWatcher ! I thought i choose the right one since i was having trouble to create a code for choosing the orientation D:
…What? How would flipping genders of NPCs relate at all to nonbinary MCs? That doesn’t make any sense.
What you wrote in the OP is already the best way to do it. “attracted to men” is an orientation completely independent of gender.
Yea i get what you are saying. But non-binary people aren’t that simple. If they feel like men and attracted to men they are gay, but sometimes they can feel like women so they are straight. That’s what i mean. It depends one the feeling they have at this or that time. And i’m not sure it’s still THAT simple xD
When i asked to a non-binary community i know i started world war 45 of gender…
Oh, I see the issue, it’s that you’re very confused what nonbinary means. What you’ve described is called M/F genderfluid. That is one very specific gender inside a huge nonbinary umbrella. And they usually don’t consider themselves to switch between gay and straight, either; they’re just always neither gay nor straight.
Regardless though, it’s completely unnecessary to label any MC as gay or straight regardless of their gender or orientation, when you could just describe who they’re attracted to.
Yea you make a really great point. I shouldn’t bother with setting orientation right? I should just make a choice to change the gender of the other characters right? Like that :
*fake_choice
*I prefer men
*set name1 “Harry”
*i prefer women
*set name1 “Anna”
Right? (ofc with the right indentations and everything xD )
You need to use # for the options. Also, I’d include options for bi and ace players too (which can be male, female, or nonbinary), so it would look something like:
*fake_choice
#I prefer men.
*set name1 "Harry"
#I prefer women.
*set name1 "Anna"
#I am attracted to men and women.
*set name1 "Harry"
#I am not attracted to anyone.
*set name1 "Anna"
I would probably also recommend having the characters keep similar names, so you know who’s who, and giving the variable a name related to that, but that’s up to you.
Can I perhaps ask how you coded your gender choice? Is it a simple choice where the player gets to choose if they identify as a man, woman or non-binary, or did you make something more complex?
*choice pronoun body
# I go by she/her pronouns ...
# ... and I have a body typically associated with women.
*set body 3
*set gender 3
*goto confirm_pronouns
# ... and I have a body typically associated with men.
*set body 2
*set gender 3
*goto confirm_pronouns
# ... and I have a body that can't be easily sorted into the gender binary.
*set body 1
*set gender 3
*goto confirm_pronouns
# I go by he/him pronouns ...
# ... and I have a body typically associated with women.
*set body 3
*set gender 2
*goto confirm_pronouns
# ... and I have a body typically associated with men.
*set body 2
*set gender 2
*goto confirm_pronouns
# ... and I have a body that can't be easily sorted into the gender binary.
*set body 1
*set gender 2
*goto confirm_pronouns
# I go by they/them pronouns ...
# ... and I have a body typically associated with women.
*set body 3
*set gender 1
*goto confirm_pronouns
# ... and I have a body typically associated with men.
*set body 2
*set gender 1
*goto confirm_pronouns
# ... and I have a body that can't be easily sorted into the gender binary.
*set body 1
*set gender 1
*goto confirm_pronouns
I don’t really know how to feel about doing it like that. If you only want to track what kind of pronouns the player wants to use and what kind of body type they want to see in an (explicit) sex scene, then that is a fine way of doing that. However, if that choice is supposed to track whether the MC is cis, trans, intersex or non-binary, then it’s kind of limiting? Like if I were to choose
would your game automatically assume that my MC is cis? That would kind of disregard transitioning. Edit: Nonbinary people who don’t use They/Them would also be disregarded (thanks for the catch @geldar)
I think that is true and goes for any label regardless of whether it’s orientation or gender. Because everyone can feel different even though they may use the same label, the answer to that question can be a bit too nuanced for a game if an author doesn’t want to write a lot of flavour text. I get that not every author wants to write that and not every player wants to read that. So just asking for pronouns and body type is a legit solution, if the game doesn’t also assume stuff based on these choices. For people who do want to read a lot of flavour text, I can recommend taking a look at @CC_Hill’s game The Midnight Saga: The Monster and its sequel The Midnight Saga: The Hunters. I am kind of sleep-deprived, so thinking is a bit hard for me right now, maybe someone else also has some good game recommendations to look at how to handle gender and orientation choices.
The actual reason I asked @Flashe what kind of gender choice she implemented in her game is that she seemed confused about what nonbinary meant and I wanted to know if her gender choice also reflected that.
Yeah, I agree. I personally don’t identify as trans, but I am nonbinary… and just he/him pronouns plus body typical of men (both of which are true for me) doesn’t really tell you that.
Yea i don’t know why i typed " * " when i used # in my code.
Yes that’s what i did. For each of my characters i took a Female name and gave the men version a similar name. And my variable are named after theirs names.
And actually i know i can’t satisfy everyone. Even if i would really like. But i’m not a native english. So i’m really limited. And it’s my first time i try to create a game at all. (I work in a bakery xD )
For pronuns i searched a lot and finally settled for the most basic. Because, like i said, it’s my first time doing that and discovering the non-binary community. So i’m not used at all D: . I really hope i didn’t offend anyone with my meager knowledge …
I think this level of granularity is asking a lot from writers. I’d be interested in exploring a game that goes into this level of depth – sexuality, pronouns, gender identity, body assigned at birth and all subsequent changes, and anything in between and/or outside – but yeah I’m not really the person to write a story that can do justice to the breadth of human experience in exploring identity. I like that this is a space where we can do that, and when I’m playing games I go out of my way to play as characters who don’t match my own identity, but that’s not always a realistic expectation for every story.
We tend to forget that CoG titles are actually pretty unique in how they offer nonbinary pronouns and the option to distinguish gender from sex for main characters. Even in the interactive fiction space, sometimes just offering a choice to be a woman instead of a man is unusual. I think that’s changing for the better these days.
What the game does is use the pronouns you select when it comes up, and because it’s a game about human bodies, the details of the character’s physical body is important. I can’t recall if any scenes remark if the two are the same (I think it might be simplified in choicescript_stats if that’s the case) – but I do know that it also comes up for the purpose of romance, as two characters have strong preferences for romantic partners. Neither of these require sex and gender to match.
I can say for certain that the game does not distinguish between a cis man and a trans man without body dysphoria. All I really cared about was “which pronouns do I use for the MC” and “how do I describe them naked”.