I agree to a point. I actually like grumpier characters with a short fuse (probably because I can relate, lol). But the problem is that “grumpy” characters always get shoved into the abusive role or an over-the-top tsundere. Some people are just not the happy shmappy sunshine types, but that doesn’t mean they’re abusive, and it doesn’t mean they don’t know how to have fun. It just means they have a different default personality. Same with emotionally repressed people–under the right circumstances, and with the right company, they can open up.
But every time you see a grumpy character, they’re abusive. They’re nasty and mean to people around them, with a few signs of niceness here or there before returning to being an asshole. It’s like no one actually gets it. And the idea that you can’t have challenges and drama just because the MC and Li get along is a very myopic view.
But yeah, that’s my worry with a pre-determined spouse, too, that it’d either be a wuss or someone who is nasty. Nothing more… normal…
Yeah, that’s part of my point and part of the problem. We get three personalities in almost everything, T, Y and jokey jerk. There’s almost no room for anything else, particularly as most of the time there are only four or five ROs and the one or two safe ones are either different stripes of NiceGuys™ or underdeveloped and under-represented. I don’t need (or want) someone to be a constant ray of sunshine, but that doesn’t mean that I want someone who seems more likely to punch me in the face as a way of acknowledging my existence than just saying a simple hello. I don’t know how the authors keep missing this, or conflating grumpy with abusive, but I think some of them take the “kill your darlings” type advice either too far or too much to heart (in all the wrong ways.)
Disclaimer: I’m sort of an old fart now. Well, not old-old, but older than when I first made this account. I’ve gotten “over” and found that I don’t enjoy the “teenage romance drama” that’s a staple of all these YA romance novels.
It’s not enjoyable from my perspective as an adult. It’s a good guilty pleasure if I just want to shut my brain off, or if I’d like to go revisit it from a perspective of what I don’t want to do in my own writing, but that’s it.
Exploring more of the “What happens after they get together?” is worthwhile and rarely represented in media. So yes. I’d like more of it. Show me those relationships that have lasted 10, 20, 50, and then 75 years. Show me how someone still loves so deeply even after their spouse has passed away, how they cope with the day to day and remember their loved one.
Is the IF genre the best way to explore this? Maybe, maybe not. It’s a swing and a miss depending on the spouse’s personality.
I have times where I don’t do well with a lot of noise and motion, and I’m not a “spontaneous” person at all. I would LOVE to see some calm, quiet or stoic ROs that aren’t slotted into that “cold and distant” charachterisation that they so often seem to be. And I like steady, strong people, but being/feeling solid in character doesn’t and shouldn’t mean literally being a WALL and just being silently unapproachable until MC throws themself against a boulder and breaks themself enough. And once the relationship is obtained, keep some outside interests! Love story or not, it’s is extremely unhealthy to suddenly drop everything else in your life and become obsessive over another person. “I need room to breathe and so do you” could be a guiding sentiment. Just because someone wants a bit of time to themself doesn’t mean there’s a strain in the relationship, it means someone needs some time alone to recharge! (Can’t tell I’m an introvert, can you? LOL) And there is NOTHING wrong with a comfortable silence, or having a day where you can’t bear to be touched, or wanting to only interact vaguely physically but not having the mental energy/capacity to engage verbally (example, sit and lean against someone, but can’t hold a conversation.)
I mean…yeah, some of these are just plain my issues, but I know I’m not unique. I just would like a nice, stable RO that can be quiet and/or still with me once in a while without constantly being an ass about it. Even in the midst of drama, just to Take. A. Breath.
It surprises me a bit when I see the posts saying abusive ROs are everywhere, or there’s only a narrow variety of personalities of ROs around, or too many ROs are solely tropes and nothing else because… it doesn’t match my experiences at all. I don’t know if it’s because I mostly play completed games, or that I’m just playing different games to what others are playing, or but every time I see it I want to jump in and recommend my favourite games and ROs (or even stuff that I’ve written which feels a bit gauche).
Like: I think the last game I played a couple of months ago was The Dragon and the Djinn, and romance wasn’t the most important part of it, but even the romanceable characters whom I befriended rather than romanced were vividly written, interesting, and fun to spend time with; the romance I played was a lot of fun and it felt like we were both part of a team getting to do adventurous things and plot schemes together. The romanceable characters were neither awful nor bland. Off the top of my head I can think of several grumpy, quiet, or steady characters whose romances I’ve played through and enjoyed and I’m very aware that I’ve played only a small sliver of the released games available.
I guess this is all a long-winded way of saying if you haven’t tried out all the demos of released games and are feeling the lack of romanceable characters you want to hang out with, I’d recommend checking out more to see if the game and characters feel like your cup of tea?
(I don’t mean to be pointed at all: just that I enjoy when people find game romances that they love, especially if they’ve struggled to previously, and I want to help that happen! )
Re pre-existing spouses: I haven’t played all of it, but The Hero Unmasked starts with being married I believe, in which you can decide your feelings about the spouse and there are other potential love interests as well. It wouldn’t be the same as the poll describes of simply having one romance, but it might be of interest.
Romance to me is about exploring relationships that aren’t available or healthy in real life - an RO who is just a nice, supportive person with whom you never have any issues or feel too safe with in romance is romantically dull, there’s no danger in that relationship, no edge and no excitement. These kinds of lukewarm ROs are rarely popular for that reason. There are a multitude of stable ROs in CoG games that nobody seems to remember or discuss.
That’s why you see all these dramatic situations and overrepresentation of RO’s that you deem as yandares/tsunderes (if that label is even applicable, I don’t believe N from Wayhaven is a yandare for instance).
I don’t think nice, supportive ROs are necessarily romantically dull - a lot of people have told me they love Asher from Royal Affairs, who is deeply nice and supportive - but they have to have traits on top of that which I think @AnneWest was also saying re having outside interests. And if they’re stuck in a game in which not much is happening for the player to engage with, or all their interactions are one-note/repetitive, then they will be.
But that isn’t necessarily about the ROs being nice/supportive, it’s about making them fully fleshed out and the rest of the game being interesting. A mean RO will also be tedious without that.
Asher was plenty angsty as far as RO’s go The bodyguard-royal is a classic setup that could be read in a multitude of ways. For as nice as they are, they are not conflict-less. This is really about conflict in romance. That comes easier by making RO ‘mean’ or ‘cold’, but it’s true that can also be just as bland. If you already read one or two romances like that, you’ve read them all, if that’s as far as it goes.
An RO that’s just supportive and happy to take the world alongside MC, and there’s nothing else besides it, no internal conflict or struggle or spice, I’m confident they are not popular.
That’s fair! I totally agree that Asher’s path isn’t issue-free and there is certainly drama in terms of the world around you disapproving of you getting together, but I will say…
…there aren’t conflicts with Asher, once the relationship begins the MC is always sure how Asher feels, and there aren’t arguments in the relationship. They are not a dangerous or edgy character and neither are the interactions you have with them.
Which is not me dissing Asher or their path through the game at all, I love them and enjoyed writing it - just pointing out that external drama isn’t the same as stress coming from conflict in the relationship. I read your above posts as referring purely to the individual RO’s personality and the relationship between the MC and RO, rather than the external drama impacting a couple (thank you for the clarification!) I didn’t read @AnneWest’s comments as wanting no stressful external situations in the game, but more about being interested in ROs who will wholeheartedly support the MC through those situations and understand where the MC is coming from.
I suppose this could all go to “Internal vs External conflict in RO paths” but maybe that’s too nerdy for a topic External issues can cause internal and so on, so on.
This is not about conflict. There are plenty of ways to have conflict without getting abusive (or starting off abusive.) And abuse isn’t always just a matter of getting hit, or being overtly terrible to someone. It’s perfectly possible to be psychologically and emotionally abused by a cheerful, happy person that “everyone” loves who smiles all the time. It’s perfectly possible to be abused by someone who’d “never hurt a fly.” It’s possible to be abused without conflict.
? I can’t agree with that. Abuse is conflict. When I say conflict, I mean literary: it’s not two or more people fighting verbally or physically, it’s people fighting against a problem together that causes tension between them or against each other. All problems within the fictional relationship are conflict.
Well, to round things off, I’m rather surprised that a set relationship isn’t a dealbreaker to more people.
For those for whom it is an automatic no, I’d be interested in hearing about exactly where that limit is.
Would a certain amount of customization of the spouse make things more palatable?
Or do you have to have multiple options (including the option for no romance) for you to be interested?
Is it only romantic relationships that are a problem, or do you also dislike when the MC has a close friend or sibling, that you are forced to have a certain relationship with?
I think we can generally expect a high level of nerdiness, from people who hang out in a game-making forum, and participates outside of WIP threads.
I do think we’ve reached the point where further discussion of that tangent belongs in one of the different ‘types of ROs’ threads.
I’m not one of the auto-no people, but! I have opinions on this. I don’t mind having a premade close friend - I think it works well in Sixth Grade Detective and Psy High - but with a friend or a sibling, as with characters that are new to the PC, I want to be able to choose how my PC feels about them and guide the dynamic of the relationship through the story.
Still trying to figure out the full plot of this IF I want to write, and… most of the relationships are forced to be unconventional solely bc of how singular and complicated the MC’s whole situation is (they got brought back to life dshnkds-) How do you all feel about ROs where the exact nature of your love isn’t clear? (Think QPRs.) What about romance paths that aren’t really romance paths, but more an exploration of your two dynamics, and whether they clash positively or negatively?
ROs where there aren’t really any “relationship checkpoints” (ie; hand-holding, kissing, confession scenes, etc,) or if there are, they don’t really mean what they usually mean (ex; the RO making a move to hold your hand, but not meaning anything by it, or you going in to kiss them and them accepting, but not necessarily assuming that means you’re into them, or a really long and heartfelt confession scene but when you say “you’re singularly important to me, I haven’t felt with anyone else like this” it’s more platonic than romantic.)
Basically, how do you feel about ROs that aren’t really ROs but can be but also. Aren’t. It’s complicated. I know some people get super squicked (for good reason!) at rejection, or instability in choosing to pursue someone, or someone who you don’t want to romance actively pursuing you, etc. so…?
Edit: AHHHHHHHH Okay I clearly didn’t word things correctly here so to clarify: I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT MISUNDERSTANDINGS/LEADING CHARACTERS ON. I’m talking about unconventional relationships in the purest sense of the words. Relationship dynamics outside the norm. Not necessarily toxic or painful, just more complicated than normal ones. A little more nuanced outside of “I love you romantically and desire a romantic relationship with you”. Both parties would eventually come to an understanding, but my intention is to convey that the understanding of their relationship would grow as the relationship itself develops, not that one feels a certain way/wants some kind of relationship while the other doesn’t, and the heartbreak that comes with all of that. The question is whether or not any of you would be comfortable with exploring those unconventional relationships, or if you would prefer they just be clearly romantic ones, with all of the confessions and “datemate/partner/spouse” titles.
How comfortable are you with unconventional RO paths?
I actively seek out explorations of unconventional relationships.
I don’t have enough knowledge about them, but they sound interesting.
Only if I was really interested in the RO.
I feel uncomfortable when their feelings/the progression of the relationship isn’t clear-cut.
I’m not sure where that poll is buried in this thread, but hard sci-fi has never been a popular genre for CSGs. Softer sci-fi can sometimes do better but are still often outliers (like choice of robots).
My answer, which is basically “no thanks”, was based on what I think you were trying to say here, which is that these aren’t romances but may appear to be romances, and will involve a lot of rejection, misunderstanding, not defining things, or no commitment. If that’s not what you meant, I may change my answer.
I would like to clarify that it’s not just self-inserters who dislike rejection and instability, or being jerked around. I RP, but I have to, first, be able to identify with the MC, and, second, find RPing the MC to be fun. RPing someone who is constantly shit on, rejected, or led on is not fun. My MC having no path to a happy ending is also not fun to RP.
That said, a lot of people would love this, because they love angst and pain and misery. So I’m probably in the minority, as usual.
)
The bodyguard-royal is a classic setup that could be read in a multitude of ways. For as nice as they are, they are not conflict-less. This is really about conflict in romance. That comes easier by making RO ‘mean’ or ‘cold’, but it’s true that can also be just as bland. If you already read one or two romances like that, you’ve read them all, if that’s as far as it goes.
