It helps not think of it as “playersexual” but as bi/pan sexual. That’s more common than people think, not something strange to be found in a game.
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B-but… mah bi-erasure!
(though the redhead is not being sarcastic here, the comic IS being sarcastic about her being not-sarcastic)
I can see the problem with genders of the RO’s being flippable, because very few gender flippable characters are actually written to be gender neutral, the author usually has a canon gender in mind - and without acknowledging their gender there’s certain shallowness to them, a hole where their identity and experiences should be.
But playersexual? Does being bisexual require a certain personality? Not really. It only seems relevant if the in-story world has an opinion about LGBT that isn’t full acceptance.
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A lot of times, I see the difference as when an RO’s exes are automatically the same gender as the MC. Or other similar references. That setup makes it seem like the RO is only interested in whatever gender you’re playing as, flipping rather than really being bi/pan.
I definitely prefer not flipping and just letting them be bi/pan. Makes it feel more like actual representation and who the character actually is. If someone used to go out with someone of a different gender than the player, let that be so.
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I see this said a lot, and pretty much every time I think it speaks to reader stereotypes rather than author intent. “This character is so strong and brash! This character likes tea parties! This character is seductive and bats their eyelashes at me!” All that actually means, canon-wise, is that the author thought those traits could fit with any gender. And readers who would accept the traits if assigned to a fixed-gender character (“guess I’m reading about someone with a trait more commonly associated with a different gender – how mildly quirky!”) fall apart when asked to pick.
I also bet that if I took a fixed-gender character with plenty of distinctive traits and motivations, where nobody had ever complained about them being thinly or unconvincingly written, added a choice of pronouns for them, and changed nothing else… there would suddenly be a rash of people claiming that the character had a certain shallowness or a void at the center.
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I think this is probably usually the case. At least for me, I can’t conceptualize a character without also conceptualizing their gender. However, also, I usually can’t tell what someone’s gender is when it’s someone else’s character. Even for my own characters… it’s not exactly easy to demonstrate that a character is pangender-paramascflux without using those words. Your biggest hints are that his pronouns are he/they and their nickname is usually a feminine name. But then you also have another, cisgender male character whose actual full name is usually a feminine name.
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Just to note that the only time gender-flipping hasn’t worked for me (Affairs of the Court), it wasn’t anything to do with individual characters, but rather because the society had very clearly delineated gender roles, and all characters were clearly “male-roles” (as far as I recall, all the love interests) or “female-roles” (the MC and their sibling, the monarch’s previous spouse) – with the former being able to essentially control their own lives, and the latter having no choice but to marry into wealth – and the roles are essentially just handed out at random (I have seen suggestions that the gender roles could have been chosen due to age or social standing, but the former is definitely untrue, and the latter seems unlikely). This is especially noticeable if you’re playing as a gay MC, and the majority of the characters are the same actual gender. Now, if the story had been written as a satire of gender roles, looking at how pointless and limiting they are, it could have worked for me, but it never really leaned into it hard enough.
By contrast, I’ve never read a ChoiceScript story where gender-flipping individual characters was an issue for me.
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You’re right, if a character is just a collection of traits and hobbies genderflips can be seamless.
@ParrotWatcher also makes a great point, that as long as there are no specific gender roles or expectations it works - and a lot of HGs would rather just make a perfectly accepting world because at the end of the day it is escapism.
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Fwiw I’d said motivations, nothing about “hobbies,” so I don’t think you’re actually agreeing with me. 
Especially with that telltale “just”. I’d happily expand the list to include relationships, history, arcs, pretty much anything meaningful you can write around a character.
At the end of the day, what I’m saying is that some CoG characters are shallowly written, but it’s not the genderflip that makes them shallow; and a well-written character doesn’t lose what makes them good if their gender is chosen by the reader.
A whole lot of readers don’t/can’t let go of the metafictional knowledge that they picked the character’s gender, and it colors their experience. Fair enough, but that’s not on the author.
I’d add that a world with less or no gender discrimination doesn’t have to be cheap escapism (though it sometimes is). Discrimination isn’t an inherent consequence of sexual dimorphism.
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I recall having this conversation before…
Yes it isn’t brow raising at all when out of the blue a female character with no super powers -effortlessly- lifts a male character off of a balcony and gently sets him on the ground.
As I recall the MC liked tea parties specifically because they made them feel like a woman, which is off putting when the MC is male. And why were tea parties specifically associated with feeling like a woman in the text? If that wasn’t a dead give away that the author was primarily envisioning a female MC I don’t know what is.
I just wanted to comment that sometimes it is justifiably possible to get the sense that there is a canon gender in the author’s mind, and other genders don’t get the same attention, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that occurs in the majority of games.
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Frankly, unless he’s been established as some kind of physical powerhouse and/or the female is a midget or a child, I’d be raising my brows if the genders were swapped and a male did that. Adult people are not that light, male or female.
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True, nevertheless it’s a staple to the point of cliche in traditional romance novels with a female target demographic, ie. the whole idea of being “swept off your feet” and into the arms of someone much physically stronger (generally male) who can make you feel protected. You’re certainly welcome to deconstruct it though.
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When a COG or HG is specifically set in a different world from our ons and even in a Fantasy one, it seems quite silly to automtically assume that the men and women will be excactly the same as the men and women in our world. There is nothing that says that women and men in an fictional alternative world, particularly a Fantasy world have to be excactly like men and women in ours. Things like men usually being bigger and stronger than women apply in our world, but saying that this also have to apply in Fantasy world where “unrealistic” things like dragons and people using magic are both facts of life, seems quite strange. Particularly when the COG in question never gave the impression that how women and men compare to one another, physically and mentally, and relate to one another in that particular world is not that similar to how they compare to one another and relate to one another in this world… This certainly includes the female RO in question being much stronger than the male MC, since the COG, in a straight male playthrough, never gives you the impression that males are supposed to be generally bigger or stronger than females in that world.
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I would counter-argue that it is silly to argue that something is different from our world when no evidence is given that it is. The author needs to narratively support those differences to make them feel reasonable.
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Really? Even for a romance novel, I would have thought that that would be taking ‘swept off your feet’ a bit too literally. Then again, it’s not like I read romance novels, so I’ll defer to your expertise there.
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If I’d take that literally, it’d be tripping someone with a broom, but maybe that’s just me.
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There’s plenty of things to indicate that the world in that particular COG is quite different from our world, or at least our Medieval times. Like in a straight male playthrough, women will be in more postions of power than the male, which would seem to indicate that the world is either a flavor of matriarchal or kind of egalitarian. Using that as a starting point, it doesn’t seem that big a stretch to me to that this also could well mean that how men and women compare physically in that world is different to how they compare physically to ours, like women being bigger and stronger or women and men being about equal in size and strength. Of course, it’s not necessarily that way either, but I fail to to see how that is any less likely than things being just like in our world.
If it’s reasonable in the storyworld, not making a big deal about it is probably the best form of narrative support, since none of the characters would.
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Tbf, that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow for me, that would raise my libido. Strong women are hot
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I can enjoy the appearance of a chain mail bikini and simultaneously raise an eyebrow at the utter impracticality of the thing. The libido likes what the libido likes. Some people have a giantess or Amazon fetish. There is nothing wrong with any of that. I just prefer to be told she’s a giantess or a super human Amazon first before I suddenly get hefted like a pepsi by a potential RO.
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