Romantic Interest Weight:
Romance was never the draw for me, and over time I’ve become less and less interested in trying romance paths. I don’t dislike romance, but most romance paths don’t interest me, even when I’m invested in the RO. And truthfully, a lot of ROs don’t get me invested in the first place — so many feel forgettable and fungible.
I could get into the reasons why, but I think that might be a little off-topic for this thread?
Preference Polls:
I find polls like these hard to vote in because what I’m really looking for are games where the mechanics align with the design goals. Whether a game has 1 RO or 11, gender-choosable playersexual ROs or set genders and sexualities, my question will always be “Why?” What does having unsignposted RO deaths, ROs that can romance each other, or ROs that are prevented from it add to the game?
My favorite option is the one that enhances or at least don’t undermine the game’s objectives and themes.
For example, the romanceable characters in the Infinity Saga have set genders and sexualities. With a metric ton of branching and flavor text, I think it’d be theoretically possible to pull off gender-choosable and sexuality-variable ROs without compromising narrative verisimilitude. But I still wouldn’t enjoy it. While I wouldn’t necessarily call the series a disempowerment fantasy, a big theme is the limits of agency, the ways your environment constrains your actions. Having those themes then turning around and handing the player a lever to change the environment for their own benefit feels off. Mechanics == message.
Re: Inclusion and Representation
When it comes to writing in gender/sexuality-based differences, I think you can group differences into two categories: continuity differences and what I’ll call subculture differences.
Continuity differences are differences added to well, keep continuity. If a RO says, “nice to see you ladies” when not everyone in the group is a lady or “I’ve never seen a naked man” while being a man himself, I’d chalk that up to not having enough continuity differences. I’m all for adding continuity differences, and I don’t think that’s a particularly controversial opinion.
Subculture differences are differences added to reflect the ways being outside the norm changes behavior/relationships/existing in the world/etc. For example: a moment of “yeah, I get it” between the PC and an RO with the same identity, dealing with discrimination, internal conflict over coming to terms with one’s identity.
I’m also all for subculture-based differences — I love Fallen Hero and the Infinityverse for their differences — but I strongly disagree with the idea you must include subculture differences for “true inclusivity” or “real representation”.
I think it’s entirely reasonable to have settings and characters for whom gender and sexuality are such non-deals that any differences simply don’t warrant screentime. I get skeptical when people talk about “actually representing queer people” because “actual representation” so often seems to mean portraying things I, a single person, think are Universal Truths of The Queer Experience.
It’s interesting to me how the “gay characters in a medieval setting are unrealistic” and “not including queer-specific storylines is basically homophobia” crowds are both so fixated on LGBTQ+ people as the Other. Queer people are just so, so different of course they would be discriminated against in this setting. Nevermind it’s a world with talking turnips. Queer relationships are just so, so different of course they can’t be written interchangeably and of course every queer person feels alienated by society at large. Nevermind it’s an egalitarian fantasy setting where LGBTQ+ people are and always have been fully accepted.
It’s not that I don’t understand why people would love seeing more gender-specific or sexuality-specific writing. Ortega’s bisexual awakening subplot is great. I’ll happily take as many bi subplots as writers will write. But I hate this idea that writing characters who are ambiguously bi or vaguely bi or disaffectedly bi or “no one’s sure what John’s deal is and we don’t ask” is somehow now falling short morally.
“A character must tick at least five out of ten boxes I just made up in order to be considered Proper Representation” isn’t something I’ll ever agree with.
Relatedly, I think bisexual (and gender-variable) characters face an unfair level of scrutiny. No one sees a straight character on a RO list and goes, “I know the author said he’s straight, and the character says he’s straight in Chapter 3, but he never talks about past relationships or attraction to women and doesn’t watch sports — can we really be sure he’s heterosexual?”
I sometimes get the impression people (sub)consciously read with the intention of finding things that let them say, “Ha! I knew this game didn’t actually want to give me male/female/bi ROs! It was pandering all along and clearly designed to screw me over, specifically.” It’s like negativity bias, except for CSGs.
Thank you. I’m 100% with everything you wrote. For me, the most frustrating thing is, when the RO is gender-selectable, but obviously written with a specific gender in mind. In one game - I don’t remember which one - the male LI said to the male MC (who blushed when stumbling over him changing clothes), that he obviously never has seen a naked man. Stuff like this just throws me off, when all the author had to do was change ‘a man’ to ‘another man’. But yes, if the author is willing to put some work into it - and I have the feeling that this happens more often than not in the last few years - it can be as awesome to have GoC characters as pre-set ones.
