The more I read @FairyGodfeather’s posts, the more vigorously I nod my head. Not just in this thread.
I voted for “Writing a story from one definite point of view is fine, so I’m okay with not choosing my main character’s gender,” but I only sort of mean that.
I’d rather pick (though I’ll generally pick to play a girl/woman), but there are some genres where the protagonist’s gender is part of the formula. If the author wants to do the work of inverting the formula, awesome. But it’s OK with me if they’ve got other creative things going on. And, like, this basically only holds for genres where the main character is usually female, since it’s hard to distinguish between main-character-in-this-genre-is-male and patriarchy.
As for romantic interests… I haven’t been unhappy with either less options (NPCs with static preferences across playthroughs), MC-sexuality (which, I agree with @malinryden, doesn’t necessarily mean the character is bi- or pansexual), or everyone’s bi.
I do think its good to present a range of genders both for the protagonist and various NPCs, ideally without comment otherwise (off-topic: But an idealized world with no or way less, depending on author ability, oppression).
That poly relationship is seen initially as a fling, and is later unstable. So I don’t think we have any poly options in CoG, except for infidelities such as in Affairs of the Court.
Tin Star allows for a couple of threesomes and I think there are endings where you can settle down with two or more of your lovers. I haven’t gotten through a play through with enough people liking me to tell for sure, but I think that’s a thing. They seem pretty enthusiastic about the shared dates.
Edit: Oh, and only certain of your partners will get along. There are two females, for example, who can’t stand each other and won’t share you with each other in any way.
Personally I stand with the point @Wyrmspawn makes in his earlier post. On my part from an author perspective. Is it an interactive book or a game?
Note that below I use examples of the two WiPs I have shown on these forums. It shouldn’t be too hard to find either one of them if you want to pick holes into my argument, I in fact hope you do.
To point out the immediate flaw in my own views: I absolutely admit openly and freely that I am extremely ignorant and uneducated when it comes to non-binary relationships and genders. I’m not a people person, I don’t have large group of friends, I don’t hang out enough to have developed real friendships with any non-binary or trans people. For full clarity the few I have come to know in passing were not very nice people in general, which may also have tinted my perception.
With my first WiP, which I think I will be continuing because that’s a story I want to finish, I included transgender as an option. I ended up getting a lot of feedback about that which I will end up carrying on to future projects with a new insight. The plan was to give as many gender and sexuality choices as it would be feasible, because it was an interactive game and I was treating it as such. There was a story, but the focus at the start that I wrote was for the player to get sucked into the setting and find out who she or he was in the world.
In Lords of Aswick, which is now in the publishing queue, I focused on the story. There are less choices, but those have longer-lasting repercussions. There’s no gender options, because the setting more or less demands it. It is an interactive book and I treated it as such. I would like to think characters are more defined and sharper for that. I hope that to the reader the setting comes to life because of that and isn’t just a fantasy world where everyone can be anyone because they so choose. As sad and deplorable as it is, that is not how historically human culture has worked. Someone will always be oppressed and repressed.
Nonetheless, it also opens up future cultural shifts by having a woman in a particularly important church position, as well as God being openly identified as a Mother of the world and thus female. Even so, the reality of human history is such that despite having a female God, it would have been men in the most important political and religious positions, establishing a “male dominance” in the pages of history. Despite that, women are also seen as powerful figures on their own; when the MC is away, it is the mother and eventually the wife who take up a position of leadership.
The difference there is that one was a game where I wanted the game to be about the player finding themselves in the plot; the other is a book where I as the author have limited the MC to a not necessarily a very nice man in order to tell a more detailed story for the reader.
The vampire’s servants aren’t love interests, unless you choose the history for your first servant where you liked each other previous to him/her/them becoming supernaturally attached to you. The demon, on the other hand, is all about tricking people into loving it; if you play one and stick to the traditional expectations of your species, you’ll end up doing various morally questionable or arguably “evil” things.
To tie this back into the poll, any of the monster classes can be any of several genders/sexual orientations, except that the demon currently can’t be asexual (it would be too hard for them not to starve.) An incubus (male) might be gossiped about differently than a succubus (female) - huh, what do you call a gender-neutral 'cubus, anyway? - but both have the same basic survival strategy.
Omnibus I think? Certainly that is the term Fenoxo uses for his demons with both biological tools attached. Thats about as much as I can wrap my head around. The other permutations I don’t yet grasp and I’m not entirely sure a succubus/incubus/omnibus would turn out that way. While potentially a possibility I firmly believe sex demons are going to be sex demons and anything more than that is unnecessarily over-complicating things. You can’t possibly account for every permutation in a fantasy story.
Lust-oriented demons being asexual is stretching both credibility and coding. Being neither male nor female is totally within accepted monster/demon parameters. It’s fairly easy to code in, just need a couple of extra orientation descriptors, etc. and some subroutines to switch them out.
BTW: I love the term Omnibus but I’d feel bad stealing it. I think I might just have the hip Demon kids call NB-cubi 'Cubi. As in, “That is one good-looking Cubus.”
Omnibus is a joke. Incubus, Succubus, Omnibus, the last is a joke. Even if Fenoxo uses it, it’s still a joke.
Since Incubus/Succubus are generally the two forms of a gender-shifting demon I suppose if it doesn’t present itself as any gender I’d, hmm personally I’d just call it a demon I suppose.
You wouldn’t be stealing the term. It’s hardly an exclusive joke. I’d heard it long before Fenoxo, and it is a rather funny one, especially if you have a character with a sense of humour. I’d be tempted to make the joke anyway. Actually I’d likely be tempted to make some other name jokes on the whole incubus succubus thing but I’m just like that.
I’m evidently in the minority here, but I usually prefer games that force a particular configuration on me.
Some games do use gender/orientation/race choice to great effect, increasing replay value. However, successfully doing so is very difficult. In some choiceof games, for example, the gender choices feel largely cosmetic. Assuming that the author has limited time and resources, I generally prefer that they focus on a character’s substance, rather than give me 5 different flavour options. (Gender/race/orientation do inform a character but I don’t think they necessarily define them. I’m much more interested in who the character is - and who I can make them be - than in how many different types of genitalia I can assign them.)
I have no problem accepting a fixed initial template/premise as long as I can really get into the protagonist’s skin and immerse myself in their decisions. To me, ‘fixed’ characters usually feel more fully realised, while a character that I can choose to gender/orientation/race-swap almost always feels more diluted. (There are exceptions of course.)
Both approaches are equally valid. It’s just personal preference. Kind of like The Witcher’s approach vs. Bioware’s approach. Some would say that The Witcher’s model enables deeper decision-making because no energy has to be expended catering to 10 different possible character configurations. On the other hand, choosing different races in Dragon Age, or a different gender in Mass Effect, can lead to interestingly varied results. The consequences are still mostly superficial, to be honest, but they can nevertheless drastically alter the character of a player’s experience. (I would have probably enjoyed Mass Effect far less if Femshep hadn’t been available.)
Edit: my preference especially applies to NPCs. I like, for example, when an NPC is of a fixed orientation (unless pansexuality is part of who they are). NPCs who are “McSexual” give me the feeling that they exist solely for my benefit. Like some sort of plastic sex doll with no agency whatsoever. It takes away from their personhood.
I just realized I haven’t played ZE yet (I will correct that at my first opportunity) but wasn’t Josh MC-sexual? I almost always play women, and I seem to remember seducing him about half of my playthroughs. Raj and his female counterpart, whose name I forget, are I believe the ones who swapped out based on your orientation and thus might be strictly queer. If someone has played Choice of Robots more recently, please refresh my memory on this?
It’s been a while since I played Robots, and my brain’s a bit fuzzy on the details.
Robots is Eiji/Elly, Raj is from WUT. Also they’re not actually set to your orientation. You pick whether you get Eiji or Elly right at the start when you get a phonecall. If you pick the phone-call from Josh then the game defaults to Elly.
The only character that is is Silas/Tammy, who’s set to be the opposite of your gender (so only a straight romance option).
Josh is technically MC-sexual, however he read as heterosexual to me, with a few last minute code-tweaks to the game to make him romanceable by men. Which may be a bit unfair of me, but none of the other characters read that way to me.
I did make a previous post about it though.
With Juliet it’s mentioned that you’re both female. The other characters (apart from Silas and his counterpart) read as bi to me.
I prefer one of two options. Either I get the opportunity to choose my gender or it’s not mentioned at all. Weither I’m a female or male it does not make a difference, I just don’t like the idea of being made to be a certain gender.
As for romance options (if gender has been assessed) I think the supporting characters need to be defined, weither they’re bi, straight or just not a touchable, otherwise it just seems out of character for them. I no people fall in love with different people but not everyone should be romance.
The game I’m slowly working on I’m trying not to define gender, so any romantic options are bi and the rest just not attainable. It may sound lazy but it seems to require a lot more work trying to write in way that seems believable for both genders
I get that we have to be politically correct, but I feel that such notion should never be an obstacle to creating something truly magnificent. For instance, if you’re writing a historical game, I feel that having homophobic (or at least not homophillic… if that’s a word) or the lack of anything but openly heterosexual characters would add to the realism.
I have a similar stance with race; I feel like having characters portray degrees of racism should not be banned outright. It makes them seem more human, in my view. I especially feel that way if a ‘good’ character is an incredibly racist garbage. Of course, having such characters don’t glorify discrimination- it just adds depths to the character.
Look, I’m not advocating homophobia/sexism/racism/xenophobia/____ism/____phobia. But my take is that creativity shouldn’t be stifled just for the sake of not pissing off a section of the audience.
You should check out the related poll on intolerance and tragedy. Some interesting answers there. And yes, what genders and how much intolerance to include are overlapping questions, sadly.
While I personally don’t mind games that force me into a specific protagonist’s role (as long as that role feels that it is specialized purposefully–hi there, Zero Escape franchise!), I think one of the amazing things about Choice of Games is that there is a tangible effort being made to broaden the gaming experience across a spectrum of genders and sexualities. It’s actually not so difficult to include a third option to “I’m female” and “I’m male” that says, “Actually, I don’t identify by either of those pronouns.” And then to include a polite little menu saying, “Ah, very well then. Which pronouns should I identify you by?” (I can only see it being a slightly difficult thing if you’re using “they/them” options just for the subject/verb agreement, but even that is a minor addition to the workload.)
Though that’s an interesting question, too - how different do we expect male, female, and non-binary behaviors to be? Hm, hm.
As for relationships, I honestly really like the “everyone is bi” sort of trope, because that means each player can experience whichever relationship most interests them without being gated. I’m less concerned with the realism of the situation, and more concerned with the fact that this is a game meant to appeal to various players. (I mean, really. How realistic is it that you meet half the magical or brilliant or villainous characters you meet in videogames? Really.) At the same time, I’m sympathetic to arguments for having a diverse and inclusive cast. Even if you’re playing a straight character, that doesn’t mean your game should be devoid of LGBTQ representation.
Complicated question! But it’s cool that we’re asking it and talking about it here.
I think I might just have the hip Demon kids call NB-cubi 'Cubi. As in, “That is one good-looking Cubus.”
I’d heard it long before Fenoxo, and it is a rather funny one, especially if you have a character with a sense of humour. I’d be tempted to make the joke anyway. Actually I’d likely be tempted to make some other name jokes on the whole incubus succubus thing but I’m just like that.
Also they’re not actually set to your orientation. You pick whether you get Eiji or Elly right at the start when you get a phonecall. If you pick the phone-call from Josh then the game defaults to Elly.