This is just my personal take, but I feel like an author should be allowed to (while the story is still being written, which it is if any part is WIP imo) change or evolve. If the author find that their character is gay when they were previously bi, or use different pronouns—or anything really—to me we’re still discovering things while writing. And I see that as a good thing. And I see characters, same as people, to be able to change with time?
Why are people assuming negative intent, speculating about things that were never promised or said, and jumping to conclusion?
Don’t we like ana, don’t we like the story? Don’t we trust her vision and her ability to be nuanced as she has shown before to be?
I realise feelings are running high, but we don’t know much yet, and it’s so easy to assume things where one lacks information. The kind thing to do would be to give Ana time to breathe, and then further explain if need be.
I wasn’t going to say anything, just leave it as not following anymore. As defending the author’s choices (maybe a bit aggressively) only for it to not matter left me feeling a kind of way.
With the debates in the past and being pretty certain that they have continued, it feels more like caving in to demands that what she said on her blog. Which carries an additional ick factor because Neia specifically was a lesbian only to now be forced to being bi to cater to male romance desires.
One thing that, even after sleeping, bothers me. Why does a character’s sexuality need to be relevant to the story in order to justify it? What would that mean moving forward, not just in the case of TGR, but other sexualities anywhere, such as being ace? They shouldn’t be represented unless it’s relevant to the story? It’s a terrible excuse to change something like that. Plot/character relevance is just great to have in order to defend against people who don’t want that sort of thing. But really, why should it be needed? Why couldn’t she just be a lesbian just because?
As for Vallen, I wasn’t too bothered by her addition. Ana has always had a more organic approach to writing. She has added ROs as they come up naturally in the story. Which feels great.
I think the solution would have been better off making any ROs moving forward bi/pan rather than retconning and sexuality flipping existing characters.
All of this left a really bad feeling with me and I made the choice not to follow moving forward. In the end it is her choice to do it, regardless of feelings, as is her right as an author. I hope people continue to enjoy it.
Disappointed personally. I was looking forward to seeing a romance with Neia as something specifically written to be sapphic. And I agree that a characters identity / sexuality doesn’t need to be plot relevant to exist.
And there are so few lesbian ROs across pretty much all IF that it irks me to lose a potential one.
And retcon-ing a characters identity (both for Pirate King and Neia) purely to cater to demands is… not great in my opinion.
I don’t see what other reason there could be. Especially considering that there has been drama in that past about people angry over Neia being a lesbian RO.
The author elaborates on her decision in the announcement post. It’s basically “while playing BG3 i couldn’t romance a character without changing MC’s gender, didn’t like the experience and don’t want to subject my readers to it”.
Ack, you’re right. It was a what-if rather than actual experience, i forgot BG3 doesn’t have romance blocks.
I think authors answering questions on Tumblr or Patreon do more harm than good, when an author wants to do some change on their characters. People usually take these aswers like the absolut truth set in stone (well, is the main source of information, after all ), but sometimes the author changes their mind about something, and the result of this is people being upset about a character that in their “canon” appearance only tried to murder you (bissexually-murder-sexually)
My only demand to Neia is that she is STAY AWAY FROM MY MC tbh what a psycho
Before I say anything, I will fully admit, I was one of the people who wanted more female ROs and wasn’t super thrilled about some ROs only being available to certain genders. That being said, I’ve gotta give the author a lot of credit for her decision her, and not just because it lines up with what my personal preferences are in IF. It would’ve been really easy to say “yeah I think ROs should be available to all players in this setting, but I already told everyone some won’t, and it’d be easier to stick to my previous statement”, but she didn’t, so massive props for that.
On the subject of Neia no longer being a lesbian, I personally don’t have an issue with it (as a lesbian). Imo there’s nothing wrong with making ROs more accessible to everyone.
On an unrelated note, damn Book 2 is at 400k already? This is definitely gonna be an experience.
Edit: also I truly don’t think this is author “caving to fan’s demands” or anything like that. She straight up says in the post that her feelings on gender specific romances have changed after playing BG3. I don’t think that’s caving to fan demands, that’s changing your mind based on new experiences and going with it.
I do understand that is how you feel, but that technically does not remove it from being speculation, I’m afraid. If the Tumblr post was vague to you, perhaps it would be better to wait (whenever this would be) for further clarification. Speculation can be very painful to have to read.
And to answer my question about intent, Ana states:
So yes, the original intent was to have Niea’s orientation woven into her experiences; representation is as important here as it is for Tommy or Steel in the other stories.
Yeah I think just keeping any new characters going forward bi/pan would be better, if she wants to follow Baldur’s Gate 3 example.
Ana is one of the nicest authors I followed, so I never once thought she had any ill intent or anything. If people were hesitant, I encourage reading their posts fully since I realize sometimes we see headlines and assume the worst.
This post should be pinned, and for everytime a discussion like this starts, people should read it, take a 10 minute break to think about it and then give their opinion on the matter.
I saw a lot of people complaining that the author was “caving to fan demands” by changing it, so are they going to be saying the same now that the fans demanded it go back to the way it was and the author did that?
Considering the initial post about the change made absolutely no mention of any fan demand and just the author’s personal experience and opinion and the recent post did make mention of fan demand or feedback, I’m just interested to see if the same standard is going to apply now that the people claiming the initial decision was because of that got it back the way they wanted it.
Also I notice there was no mention of the pirate being changed back; not sure if that was an accidental omission or if they weren’t because there wasn’t any outcry about it.
People who complain about stuff like that, huffing proudly, like they solved world hunger, are the ones who I believe are ruining the IF works in general.
Cause they believe that pressuring “rightfully” authors to follow a checklist to satisfy them.
This is why the latest games has been mostly bad.
Cause IF is already a niche genre (No offense, but just the cold truth). And now authors have to care about fullfiling a checklist for a loud minority, instead of working on making a good piece of literature.
And I do suspect, that this is why a lot of good authors don’t even want to bother to do an IF. If they will find such an entitled audience
I think it is worth keeping the above quote from the author in mind, rather than making sweeping comments about pressure, the community in general, “checklists”, or unrelated games.
The author was considering a change, asked for feedback, and responded to feedback in the way she chose. If someone is attacking an author here about changes they made or are considering making, please flag it but there is no need to invoke the fictional scary loud minority terrifying authors into writing lesbian characters.
As well: we get to see a lot more of authors’ processes in this WIP-focused community than we do for other kinds of games or novels. That’s a great part of doing this. Sometimes seeing that involves characters shifting away from an original concept, or how we have interpreted them. And that is OK - in my opinion there is no “canon” set in stone until a game is published, whatever is said/written outside the game, and even after that an author may update a game to reflect something that came later. We can have feelings about it but it is the author’s prerogative to have the freedom to move in the directions that feel right to them.
Author can change the characters she created as she want and honestly only RO I care about is Alessa she is the only RO I am interested in so I dont really care about sexual orientation of other RO’s
Can’t wait to play the game.