I think that although these kinds of discussions can end up overlapping, things are moving off topic. Please try to keep to the topic of the thread, which is about gender-locked or gender-selectable romances and whether they appeal.
For reference there are a lot of forum threads about depictions of sexism, homophobia and other discrimination, including:
I have noticed, in quite a few threads, a rather worrying tendency for people to assume that a realism automatically makes a story good (often with LGBTQ issues, but I’ll get to that later). The first thing I think we should ask is not “Are realistic stories good?”, but rather “Are good stories realistic?” and I don’t think they generally are. A good story will have an intriguing beginning, a compelling middle, and a satisfying end. Real life has a generic beginning, an unplotted mess of a middl…
I actually made my own topic on this very issue a while back:
which was later incorporated into a more expanded topic:
My main point still stands: realism does not inherently make a story good, especially if that realism is mainly being used to hurt minority players. Now, that doesn’t mean that stories that deal with realistic bigotry can’t be good, but these are stories that have to be written about bigotry. A story in which the bigotry is incidental can end up normalising it, which I’m s…
There are so many discussions about customising the player character and playing as “yourself” that it would be hard to list them all but here are a couple of recent ones:
In many of the discussions about playstyles, particular COGs and HGs and about COGs and HGs in general, the difference between people who tend to self-insert and those who get into and stay in character, are often brough up. While I understand that it can also be considered as a continuum or spectrum where it’s possible you might not be fully one of the types, but tend more towards one than the other, I’ve always find it hard to relate to either of those “types” for most of the COGs and HGs I’v…
Fairly new to interactive fiction here, so I would appreciate some help on how people like to customise characters. Some of it seems rather pointless to me and I don’t know whether this is because I’m new to it or whether I should just be reading a different genre.
An example:
You often get asked something like “what is your hair colour?”
My immediate reaction is, who the hell cares?
It’s different where the hair colour is clearly relevant to the story. e.g.
What is your hair colour?
Blon…
Finally, the topic of this thread is a fairly well worn subject and it’s worth taking a look at other past discussions such as the one below to see the similarities and differences to discussions happening now:
I read a post by @FairyGodfeather and it really resonated with me because I overthink things way too much and it was topic I’ve been ruminating on these last few days.
In order to like someone romantically do they have to conform to the gender you prefer in order to realise that love (in-game)? Are people okay with having a non-physical relationship (in-game)?
In reality you have to embrace people for who they are and you cannot change them. Then again, I fully respect the right of people to …
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