Maybe I when I read that one i was too much under the influence of Jane Austens books. Those certainly imply that even men who are lower in social regards to a woman like to be assertive. An example would be Lidia and Wickham: Wickham had nothing so obviously Lidia was superior even if she was just a minor nobles(?) or whatevers more wealthy mans daughter. And still it Wickhem whose will influenced the relationship.
That might be, because Lidia is silly and Wickham a manipulative char, who thinks very highly of himself^^
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Technically, Wickham would have to come from some kind of property to be selected as an officer for a militia unit. Likewise, the fact that he was allowed enough contact with Georgiana Darcy to almost fleece her meant that he was at least high up enough to be in her social circles.
The Bennets, on the other hand, are landed gentry, but they’re not very high up on the scale. With the estate entailed (meaning it has to go to a male heir) and the family income being split between raising so many daughters, there’s not much chance of Lydia (as one of the youngest) having much of a dowry or inheritance to make her an “attractive” prospect, and I think she knows this to some extent. Her flirtatious personality could just as easily be part of her own attempt to establish her self-worth, to make herself feel “wanted” in a situation where she isn’t really treated as someone with all that much value.
There’s also the fact that Wickham is still a military officer (albeit a weekend warrior), and a strong, reasonably fit young man. He has more physical presence, and can offer something which Lydia feels like she needs: validation.
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It’s the retold story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, that’s why it was written that way. Probably could have done with an explanatory note that’s what it was to make less people annoyed with the railroading. It’s less a classic love story, and more a retelling of history with fantasy elements to mix it up. I actually quite like it, but then I accept that’s where the story was going because I know the history behind it. It’s also why everything has a tudor England feel, particularly in the way that the MC has to act around the ruling King/Queen and why there’s a misprint or two referring to the MC in a feminine way even if playing as male.
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Ah, no. It wasn’t really about the royalty with non-royalty thing. I shouldn’t have mentioned it, actually. It just kinda came out of me (or my fingertips) 
I’m sure it’s just a personal thing and more rational individuals wouldn’t have taken it this way at all. It was just if you looked at it from that angle, where it sounds like you must be with the queen and be submissive and all that because she wants you and she wants you submissive and if you don’t, she’ll ruin you, it has an uncomfortable air to me. I’ve dealt with “predators” that wanted “prey” in the past and I didn’t grow up to be a very capable adult or a whole person in general.
I think I misinterpreted the wording and i know that’s probably not what you meant by that, which is why I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place lmao
All these years I had NO idea. This is the first I heard this. I definitely agree if it mentioned that anywhere, things would have made a lot more sense/been less annoying 
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If you like Jane Austen, Emma Woodhouse might be a better example on the matter. She is independant, and may choose to marry or not, it would not change her position, so she only marries when really in love. She has no need to marry for money or status, so she is astonished, when Elton declares his want to marry her.
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I did sort of mean that. The Monarch in AotC is a rather predatory figure, and the relationship which they have with the MC rests a great deal on their whims. Given the historical precedent which most people seem to agree on, that makes a lot of sense. Henry VIII was not a nice dude to work for, oppose, or be married to.
Taken as a whole, the series is about someone who walks the razor’s edge between opportunity and destruction, and while that appeals to me personally, it might not appeal to someone who, for example, has been in an abusive relationship before or someone who wants a straight power fantasy where you take the reins of power right off the bat, Catherine II style. I don’t consider the idea of stepping in the role of a junior partner in a relationship with a powerful sovereign who slowly slips into dangerous paranoia to be power fantasy, and I respect that, but I do think it maintains enough of the trappings of power fantasy to lead to some confusion.
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Oh, then I stand by my original statement lol. Well, rather than say stories with non-consensual vibes don’t appeal to me, it’s what they’re about and how they’re written determines if they don’t appeal to me. If it’s supposed to be about love and doesn’t acknowledge what feels like is happening, then it’s a no from me, mostly.
Back to the point about the game though. A lot of it does make more sense now that I know that fact, but I’m still not into it. Or, rather, I played Affairs of the Court way back when it was only Choice of Romance and it really wasn’t advertised as any other way than a romance game. Of course with the other games coming out I understood it’s not that anymore at all, but at the time was a different case, ya know? (Especially cause I was an impressionable, young teen with repressed trauma that didn’t know why he felt uncomfortable with the game but just that he did)
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The fact is for some this power toxic relationship is in fact love. And it is very positive portrayal in media I am Loking at You Jane Austen. Were x young part normally woman has to allow being controlled posesed and used by a toy by the rich older normally men. It is not a real story of love at least not really. It is the story of what power change people and how power shallows innocent or a power scheme younger could end in power.
I have always seen it as what is a politic scheme game disguised as romance . Romance games are basically this in most part.
You girl you blush you have to submit to this old man or guy. You have to act coy and wait to marrying due marrying solve anything and is the happy ending. I love the affairs because show how all that patriarchal stereotypes are fake as hell. And how marriage is not a fairy tale. and toxic romance normally ends terrible. But if you take choice of romance as romance well it was never the intention
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Yeah, now it makes a tonne more sense, actually.
This thread is too vague to contain its contents, and therefore we ought to embrace its expansiveness and willingness to challenge traditional notions of what it means to be contained within a thread. What is a lock if not a call to open that lock?
Well for me, it doesn’t reinforce the patriarchy…or at least not any more than any other piece of art that focuses its story on a man. It’s fine. You are fine, my dude. And I 100% was not directing any flak your way. As I said, Hosted Games are Hosted Games.
But people on here are always crying out for games with different playthroughs based on gender choices especially because they believe this will result in “historical accuracy.”
And 
I gotta speak my unpopular opinion that women and other marginalized genders/voices generally want to feel like that’s the least interesting thing about them. Hence: games in which your gender does not impact your playthrough. Though I find it hilarious to note that people (cismen??? 
) freak the geek out when not presented with an actual gender *choice such as in Congresswolf or Undercover Agent.
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I mean, that’s basically what I was referring to. It’s a decision I made before I realised it was a consciously political one to make, but it still reinforces a status-quo by being a status-quo.
One thing I’ve come to realise over the past couple years is that there is no medium which could possibly create completely accurate historical fiction which is 100% true to the time of the setting, if only because our knowledge of those times will always be incomplete at some level, and that a “completely accurate” game in a setting beyond living memory would be so utterly foreign (I have enough trouble explaining the purchase of commissions alone, at that ended less than 150 years ago) as to make it unplayable.
Ultimately, when you consciously decide to make a “realistic historical game”, choosing which aspects to push the most is itself a political decision. I have yet to (for example) see a Viking game where a male PC has no control over his income, or a WW2 game where the heavy use of stimulants by combatants (Pervitin by the Germans, Benzedrine by Commonwealth troops, and certain amphetamines by the US) is brought up at all. The fact that “women can’t do [thing] in this setting” is shorthand for “this setting is ‘historically accurate’” is itself kind of a political statement, and it’s one I do regret reinforcing, even inadvertently.
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This reminds me of an analogous thing where a female writer gets asked “Gosh! How do you write men so well?!” or a male writer is given accolades for writing female characters so well. Think S.E. Hinton and The Outsiders as an example of the first. When you know, the reason they write the opposite sex “so well” is that they treat gender as being basically irrelevant.
And now we get into historiography itself, which is this political decision exactly. It’d be doubly so when we’re talking about it in the context of art, since: thing that happened in the past → “history” → historians’ interpretation and valuation of same → consumers of “history” → art → consumers of art.
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I’ve actually gotten a bit of that when I’ve written female characters in traditionally “male” archetypes, but not necessarily as positive feedback. I think we have a certain comfort zone when it comes to “androgynous” character types, but there are still gendered preserves (like, to use an example earlier in the thread, the role of ‘monarch’s younger, less powerful lover’) which are still coded strongly enough to make some uncomfortable when playing them.
Not that this is any particular reason not to write them, of course.
It’s funny how a lot of that seemed to fly over my head when I was actually getting my degree only to sink in years afterwards when I had a chance to apply it properly.
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