Also @roselilymarigold there’s WAAAAAY too little cult content, I hope MC gets to use/summon Phoenix fire soon.
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I think you’re right. It’s a holdover for when I was planning to gate it behind the Celestial childhood choice, but I couldn’t think of a non awkward way to do it.
I have so many edits to get to hahaha T__T
And there will be lots more Cult stuff in the next arc. A whole branch, if my planning is correct!
Lol I’m not being aggressively crazy with pointing all these… Am I being aggressively crazy?
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Noice… And can we control the Phoenix fire at some point?
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I was referring to the scene where you could help an orphan’s monetary troubles with ice
An option that is greyed out if you didn’t summon ice to save your mother earlier, even if you used the tooth to free your father’s corpse in a stunning feat of cryomancy.
Which makes using the tooth to commit a stunning piece of cryomancy a dead-end when it comes to actually using cryomancy. Narratively-How does that make sense? Especially since lore wise the cryomancy all comes from a single source- The Winter Dragon.
I was apparently just mistaken about the sword being the vessel for the dragon’s cryomancy when you defend your mother.
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@stsword
Ah I see what you mean now.
So, this is what I was going for in my head. It sounds like it wasn’t executed very well, and the logic might be flawed behind why I’ve done this.
Let me know what you think of the below and blur out your answer in the reply.
When you first free your father’s body in the ice, you assume it’s a one time thing that comes with the tooth.
You don’t realise that under certain circumstances, you can repeat the feat because you still have a connection to the tooth itself. Until you trigger it by accident in the scene where you stop your mother from leaving.
That’s why it’s greyed out unless you hit that scene, because the player character still operating under their base assumption that it can’t be done without holding the tooth
I feel like in a situation like this, I might just completely make that choice invisible instead of greying it out if it’s not available… cos it might confuse people
Lol
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Hey I just had a question which I think I know the answer to but just want to be sure. If we go into the woods with our mom and meet the shapeshifter, is that shapeshifter Katua, and if so will she remember us?
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Yes, and she only remembers you if you pick the nice option.
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Yes 
if you pick the right choices
Although I like ice drago tooth options to control ice dragon’s ice, I’d rather go with the cult and control phoenix fire… I’ll be eagerly waiting for them… Lol my first and prior pick was the Phoenix cult (although it was after I learned that it’s not the typically portrayed evil cult).
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Okay, yes, that makes sense.
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We really need more noble female interests for the story specially when as a female you can tie the not with the crown Prince or even a Duke,more than the noble heiress someone like a foreign princess would compensate the RO list better.
Is it that strange to want our boy to seek that money marriage?Give us just the equal number of alternatives for both genders mcs.
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@eldensalkeld I appreciate the feedback and actually have been thinking on the issue of love interests for a bit.
The scope I have planned in the story doesn’t really involve any foreign powers/nations at all. So no foreign princes or princesses will feature.
That being said, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the next chapter is pretty much driven by Hugo von Falkenhayn and his actions. And I think because he is such a pivotal character, not being able to romance him does cut out a lot of potential depth to a particular sub-route I have planned.
I am thinking of making Hugo gender flippable and writing a female equivalent. Idk. I usually don’t like gender flippable characters, but I might need to make an exception in this case…
Either that, or make the Crown Prince gender flippable. Or both!! Idk.
Does Hugo’s general personality type seem like an appealing female RO option?
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Why not do both the prince and Hugo and let the readers decide for themselves?
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Like, gender-flipping has a lot of upside flexibility, but for me as a writer, I don’t enjoy using it as a tool.
I have a very specific vision for characters, from my background as a hobbyist novel writer, and I usually envision characters as being set or determined. I’m kinda afraid if I put gender flipping in it’ll ruin like, my artistic vision of the characters themselves, the way I think about, conceptualize, and write them.
I also think that, given that I initially envisioned both Hugo and Derik as male, I don’t want to end up having their female counterparts be just watered down and pale imitations of the original?
I’m only really considering gender flipping cos I’m afraid players that only date female NPCs won’t get the full experience of one of the possible plotlines if I don’t allow Hugo to be dateable as a girl.
I think I’ll finish writing the next chapter, post it, see what feedback i get about people’s experiences playing without gender flipping, and if people who decide to go down a Hugo-centric path feel like they’re missing out, well, I guess I’ll implement it then.
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There can be a heiress/leader’s daughter of a group or something if that can be included
…
People tend to make crap load of pronoun mess with the gender-flippable characters.
Prine Hugo seem a bit wild adventurous and reckless at most times (and lol a bit snobbish too). It’d be interesting to see a female character with those characteristics.
Isn’t there that gender flipping magic or something? Hugo is already a bit curious driven adventurer, so you can add a choice where he CAN change…
Lol if they ACTUALLY miss it out, it’d be hard or close to impossible for most to realise that they missed if it isn’t as obvious as a huge HOLE in the plot progression though.
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There is magic that can change his sex and make him physically female and able to hear children. Hugo could undergo it if he wanted. But
a) he doesn’t want to, I don’t think,
b) even if he did, his family tradition is that only sons directly inherit, although I suppose I could change that if I had to since he’s an only child, and
c) do those attracted to female npcs want to date a character who used to be male in-game but was changed to female because of in-game story magic (The Binding of Duality?)??? It would pretty much be like dating someone trans, except culturally accepted, with perfect magic rather than imperfect surgery
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I actually find the Binding of Duality and its effect on gender norms really interesting—the whole idea that changing your sex is considered culturally “normal” (in a way that it often still isn’t IRL), but there are still strict gender roles, adds an interesting layer to the issue of being trans in this universe. Men are clearly still considered the “stronger” sex in this setting, so it’s not as simple as everyone simply having the freedom to be whatever gender they identify with. The ambiguity of whether Dominique truly identified as female or only underwent the rite for the sake of diplomacy (which is a horrifying thought, but not out of place for this kind of setting) is pretty thought-provoking!
With that in mind, I personally would be very interested to see that play into one of the romances—particularly if grappling with the political aspect figured into it, e.g. in the scenario of a noble RO who was canonically trans and identified as female, even though undergoing the Binding of Duality would put her at a social disadvantage compared to staying “male”. Not sure if this would be compatible with any of the ideas you currently have, but I do think the gender dynamics already established by the setting make the potential inclusion of a trans RO particularly compelling.
With that being said, I don’t think I’d be for using the Binding of Duality as a solution to making an RO gender-flippable. Deciding the gender of a given RO from the ground up is one thing—I sort of think of it as having multiple “versions” of a character and letting the player choose which one to include in the story—but putting the choice of whether the character is cis or trans in the player’s hands feels pretty uncomfortable to me, since you’d basically be letting the player decide an established character’s gender identity for them. If Hugo doesn’t want to undergo the Binding of Duality, the player really shouldn’t have any say in that.
Regarding gender-flippable ROs in general, I will say that I (as someone who does sometimes feel like I’m missing out on compelling plotlines as a result of only being interested in female ROs) would potentially be interested in a female version of either Hugo or Derik, but (as someone who also does not really like to write gender-flippable characters, for similar reasons to yours) would only want you to do that if you felt confident that doing this wouldn’t betray your vision of who those characters are. Considering your audience’s wants is a good thing, of course, but they’re your characters, first and foremost, so I think what’s most important is that you feel comfortable with how they’re presented.
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Hugo is the rebel intellectual blaspheming black sheep with too much defiance for his own good hehehe. He’s one of my faves, although, by the end of the next chapter, cos of certain outcomes, you may come to hate him!! I expect he will be very polarising and I am excited to write it. I await comments of people being like “why is hugo a romantic option??? WTF WERE U THINKING who would want to date that prick??”
@CorvusWitchcraft
I just read your comment!! thank you for the length and detail and thought you put into it (: im glad you find the setup really fascinating. I came up with the Binding of Duality cos I wanted to try to include a trans option for your character to identify as, but I didn’t want a surface level “oh lol also ur trans in a medieval society” so I thought a lot about sex-changing magic, its limits, and what it would mean for a society while preserving much of the traditional medieval power structures.
I am working on trying to include being a true non-binary option as well?? instead of just trans. but it’s kinda hard and most character will not know off the bat that you’re nonbinary, and…
If I wrote a female version of Hugo, I think I might write her as very different in some ways. Like I’d change up her appearance, but make many of her core beliefs still be the same, and she’d still act the same in key political decisions… I’d try to envision her as being a totally different character rather than thinking of her as “female Hugo”. I think that’s the only way I could overcome the cognitive dissonance. But that’s a lot of work, and I’d rather finish a draft first. And who knows, I might get over my genderflipping hang ups any moment now lol
If you play the noble route, you will encounter people who have undergone the Binding for their own reasons, personal or political. In my society, if you’re noble, everything is to be devoted and sacrificed to your House, you are indoctrinated into believing changing your sex to facilitate bloodline passing or strategic marriages is important and necessary and your duty. There’s so much fridge horror if you think too hard about it! So I recommend not thinking too hard heh.
But, hey, cultures are kinda crazy, and we live in a world where rib-crushing corsets and foot binding exists. So this world is kinda crazy, but, I think, very humanly so.
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This actually brings up another question in my mind—I see that there was a poll a while back on how to deal with RO sexuality, and it appears that “any RO can be romanced by any gender” won out.
Given this, I’m curious how you imagine same-sex romances with the noble characters working, if lineage and bloodlines are so important to them. I imagine marrying a commoner like the MC would already be controversial on its own. Trying to make a romance work with a noble—especially the prince (or princess, if that variation ends up happening)—where you can’t produce heirs, on top of the difference in class, seems…almost infeasible in this setting.
Based on what you’ve said, it seems like there would realistically be a lot of pressure for either the MC or the RO to undergo the Binding, or for the RO to just marry and produce heirs with some other noble. Is this something you anticipate being an obstacle in these romances? Or does society get so shaken up by the civil war and/or potential end of the world storylines that it ends up not being an issue?
…I guess you can’t really answer that last question due to spoilers, but if there’s a way you can answer in vague terms, can you clarify whether or not the situation I mentioned is something players will have to be prepared for, and if so, if there will somehow be ways to avoid political marriages or unwanted sex changes in that scenario?
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