On naming conventions, I prefer either alliterative names or a gender neutral name. From the perspective of a player who does replay the book but is otherwise in a vacuum, either way works on that front while I think Sarah/Zane gets confusing always. Sarah/Zane also seems like it would be confusing from a coding perspective.
However, I’m a nerd. I like to discuss things, and there are pros and cons to choosing gender neutral names vs. an alliterative name in discussions.
Gender Neutral Name:
Pro: One name makes it very clear the character is the same character.
Cons: It makes it a bit harder to distinguish between which gender we are discussing. Now often that won’t be relevant, but if I’m trying to have a discussion on the gender differences between Riley and Riley, I have to come up with a differentiation method. While not all that difficult, it’s less easily standardized and people may end up confusing traits specific to one gender of the character as being universal.
Alliterative Name
Pros:
Similar names make it easier to realize these are the same character compared to using completely different names.
As long as authors are intentional with their name choices, you can use the letter the character’s name starts with to indicate if you are discussing something that applies to the character regardless of their gender but if you are discussing something gendered, you can just use the name that goes with the gender of the character you are discussing.
Cons:
Some people will still be confused by the fact that there are different names.
The author loses the ability to use alliterative names for other purposes such as narrative symbolism, twins, etc.
As for appearance I couldn’t really vote because I don’t think the question actually gets at what changes I want in appearance. If and how appearance changes shouldn’t be just be based on a cisnormative idea of sex changes (ex: there are 6 ft tall women and 6 ft tall men, there’s no reason Sarah and Sebastian couldn’t both be 6ft tall unless it matters for the setting such as they are both high-profile models and so would have different height expectations based on industry standard)
Instead it should mostly change based on how that character is going to be influenced by their experience with gender given the setting of the game. This means that some characters who are either more likely to conform to gender norms or don’t really care about xyz feature and so just comply with whatever the gender norm is may have longer hair as a woman than they would as a man.
However, it is also totally reasonable that there are characters who really care about their hair being a certain length and would keep it that way regardless of gender. Maybe S has sensory issues around hair in their face or finds short hair easier to deal with and is not easily influenced by the opinions of others so they might both have short hair.
Maybe Sarah has it in a pixie cut while Sebastian has a more masculine cut. Or maybe S presents masc regardless of gender, and so both of them go to the barber and have a masculine haircut. Depending on the setting, this appearance feature may be the same, but the world around them may react differently to them, which will inform their actions as a character.
I agree with a lot of this. I think a lot about how a lot of gender-selectability in IF falls short of actually doing anything interesting with gender selectability, re:
More than just appearances, I think this applies to most traits of GS characters, like a domineering man is treated exactly the same as a domineering woman or a shy man is treated the same as a shy woman when IRL these traits are reacted to very differently. It lacks nuance in the gender department, and sometimes (well, most of the time) I really miss that nuance.
I think there are some writers who struggle with the idea of how to write experiential/behavioral gender differences in a way that doesn’t come across as sexist (which is a fair concern), so they opt to ignore it completely; I guess the philosophy here is that because women and men are equally as capable, so they get to do just as many things, thus their experiences are basically the same. But then they leave in, frankly, weirdly essentialist or culturally specific ideas like “man short woman tall” and “man have short hair woman have long” without questioning that idea at all.
One of the better examples I can think of that has a thoughtful handling of gender-flipping characters (beyond IFs like I The Forgotten One or even Ortega in FH) isn’t an IF at all, but the manga Dungeon Meshi.
Extremely minor spoilers
There’s a short gag where the main character, Laios, is looking into a wishing mirror to see why another character, Toshiro, likes Laios’ sister Falin (who he is extremely similar to) so much, but hates Laios. In the mirror, he sees what life would be like if Toshiro were a woman, and F!Toshiro has Laios as the object of her affection; her relationships were completely different just because of cultural attitudes about how men and women should interact. Confused, Laios runs through different universes where he and his friends are gender-flipped.
F!Laios is living a very different life and never became an adventurer, because she never went to military school like M!Laios and escaped her controlling father, so she has no choice but to live the way he wants (extremely traditional gender roles). M!Falin, on the other hand, is very similar to his female counterpart, because unlike Laios, F!Falin was able to escape her father to go study magic. M!Marcille is nearly identical to F!Marcille for similar reasons, and M!Marcille has hair just as long and well-maintained as F!Marcille. Kabru is a character that is a manipulative liar with good intentions, but while M!Kabru is best able to achieve his goals by playing the part of an intrepid explorer, F!Kabru finds more success by exploiting her sexuality. Meanwhile, a character like Izutsumi, who has no allegiance to society and social norms and only knows how to be true to herself, is the same regardless of gender.
Overall, it does a lot of interesting stuff with the idea of not just gender roles, but how people are forced to conform to them and who gets to be exceptions to that rule. Some must conform due to circumstances outside their control, some are able to escape, some are aware of how they are perceived and use that to their advantage, and some just simply don’t give a shit.
For names, I’m writing one flippable character at the moment, and they always have the same nickname, but a different full name. So it’s Wilson, Wilma, and Willow, but 9/10 times the narrative just calls them Wil.
Yeah. All those gender neutral princesses* out there…
*technically it’s actually “woman of high rank.” So never will this name be gender-neutral, any more than Amir, which is “prince” or “he who’s vision will never die” is. Just for those of you wondering. shrug Also, various sources will have varoius meanings, yes, I know. But these two names specifically are not gender neutral by their very basic meanings.
Didn’t choose anything in the polls, since I’m mostly fine with all the options.
One ‘mistake’ I’ve seen a few times when games use unisex names, is that sometimes those names are actually heavily gendered, but used for male or female in very different cultures, so using them for the same gv character might not make so much sense.
One common way I see authors dealing with their gv characters having very differing names, is to give them a somewhat unrelated nickname, that they prefer to be called by, so their actual name don’t come up much, and the readers have a name to use whan discussing them.
With gender neutral names, yeah, at some point it’s easy to repeat them with other games too - I can’t count the number of Wren’s that I’ve seen over the VNs and WIP’s I’ve read. Wren, Sam, Taylor etc. you will run out at some point.
But I also don’t think it’s a big deal if a male character - or female character - has a name more commonly used for men or women. It can even be referenced.
As for the nickname - very good point!
Lighten up, dears. It was just an example. And yes, princess can be a gender neutral term Everything can be gender neutral if you try.
Princexx/Princex/Prinx/Prin/Prinxe/Princet/Princette/Princev/Princen/Princus/Heir Other gender neutral terms for Prince/Princess/Royalty incorporating the letter x ; a common indicator of gender neutral language. Gender neutral language in English - Nonbinary Wiki.
Ultimately it’s just a string of consonants and vowels we assign meaning to, I’m not that uptight about it. I was curious whether you had some anecdote in your pocket about how it has evolved into a masculine or neutral name I wasn’t aware of or if you were trying to make fetch happen or whatever.
They probably weren’t literally meaning that Sarah was a gender neutral name. More just like a placeholder for [insert unisex name] because they were using Sarah as an example name in all three options. So the (gender neutral) part is the important part there, not the actual name being used. You could probably fill in the blank with, say, “Sam” for example.
At least that’s how I automatically interpreted it.
“And yes, princess can be a gender neutral term”
Personally…I actually often use usually uh gendered (?) terms as gender neutral terms and not in an insulting way. Only around others that do it too since I know it can be seen as insulting to some people.
“I just find names, their meanings and their history interesting and I thought that maybe other people might as well.”
That was interesting!
personally not a huge fan of replacing letters with x for gender neutral terms but that’s just me lol
Honestly, if you’re going to have gender-variable characters, just make them 90% the same. To me, majorly different characterization among gender variants just comes across as Butterfly Effect at best and gender essentialism at worst. If your setting demands that the genders have significantly different life experiences, don’t have gender-variable characters.
Considering it’s easier to add checkpoint systems to choicescript now, I was wondering if this is preferred over a Chapter Select menu. Ideally, having both in one game is best, but not all games would work with Chapter Select. If you had to choose one, which do you prefer to use?
I prefer games with a checkpoint system
I prefer to select which chapter to go back to/restart the chapter
No opinion/don’t use either
0voters
Also, do you like having a Cheats menu in games?
I like playing with Cheats
I like playing with Cheats but not on my first playthrough
When playing as an arromantic and/or asexual character, do you want to be able to opt out of romantic/physical interactions individually? Or would you prefer to opt out of all romantic/physical interaction?
For example:
Opt out individually: the story plays out exactly the same than for an allosexual MC. You can kiss a character even if you previously say to them that you don’t like kisses (you have to initiate the action though)
Opt out of all: if you say you don’t like kisses, for example, you won’t be offered the option to kiss anybody.
Opt out individually.
Opt out of all.
0voters
I know this is an oversimplification of the issue, but I wanted to know your opinions. Thank you!
I prefer to opt out individually because, playing an ace character, I’m usually interested in romances.
That said: In my opinion, you don’t offer a genuine ace-aro experience if players have to opt out of every single romance/sex choice. That would feel jarring and uncomfortable, an all-around unenjoyable gaming experience. In the same way, you shouldn’t automatically exclude ace or aro MCs from sex/romance content. If you’re doing this, you’re offering an ace-aro experience but ignoring characters who are either ace or aro.
Conclusion: I fear oversimplification doesn’t work here. Both approaches are valuable for their intended audience. As long as you make clear who’s being represented, either can be fine.
For me, it depends. If I choose for my MC to be aro-ace, I would prefer to opt out of all choices that lead to romantic/physical interactions since they wouldn’t be interested in any kind of relationship.
However, if I choose for my MC to be only aro (or only ace), I would prefer to opt out of the scenes individually since in most cases I still want to try the romantic routes. Especially if the game acknowledges that the MC is aro/ace if I decide to pursuit a relationship (be it in the form of an internal monologue or in a conversation with their partner). I’m very fond of this kind of flavor text, actually.
It depends. Aro and ace are both on a spectrum and even if they’re on the far side, they may still want to engage on a meta or character level for an assortment of reasons. I prefer in the least being able to choose whether it’s never happening period no matter what or whether it’s more complicated than that–in which case, being able to choose whether you want to in the moment may be more appropriate.
In my ideal world, the game would ask you before hand whether you want the text to completely exclude anything of that nature if your orientation conflicts or whether you want characters to flirt with you when they’re interested and do not know you aren’t (not taking into account games that may include characters not consistently respecting a “no” here because that’s a different topic), for you to be able to choose your actions regardless of orientation, etc. When people write aro and/or ace characters and main character choices, it tends to be an either or. “Either I’m fully allo or I 100% despise and refuse all forms of romance/intimacy” which…just isn’t always the reality when dealing with identity as well as identity vs. behavior. I am ace-spec but I still experience attraction, so for people like me ace is definitely not defined as or represented accurately by a total absence.
Everything can be gender neutral if you try.
and not in an insulting way. Only around others that do it too since I know it can be seen as insulting to some people.