thank you for saying all this without swearing, which i probably could not have done. garbage post (you replied to). "how entitled that you want things to cater to you", says straight boy who is catered to 99% of the time. now this whole thread is derailed by one single homophobic concern troll. every single time, i swear to god.
that one (Zelda being playable in her own game) is infinitely easier request to fulfill for this Japanese company that seems to have a problem with it the longer it is ignored. As compared to this from the same Japanese company
What is "queer life"?
This is what makes the whole issue so complex. While we all want and strive for more representation we need to acknowledge that proper representarion doesn't just mean seeing those characters and scenarios but but having the game/media itself be created by the very people meant to be represented. Whether that's a woman, a POC, a gay man, lesbian, bi-sexual, trans, handicapped or any other marginalized group. It's the only way to portray the authentic experience. I don't think people want a story about the gay experience from a straight perspective, the black experience from a non-black POV, the female experience as understood by a man, etc.
This is also where I feel having every NPC be a blank slate of sexuality is a bullshit cheat. You can argue that sexuality shouldn't be a defining trait of a person but when it comes to romance that's an aspect of one's character that is undeniably important in shaping who that person is. It affected how they grew up, their relationships, their perception of how others see them, etc.
That some W/W relationships can fall a little flat because they're mostly identical to M/W ones seems like a nicer problem to have than MLM do in this game. I'd definitely rather have it than not... I wouldn't say this problem is an issue solely when it comes to queer relationships. In a lot of games where the player can influence the narrative, events can seem tailor made to your situation improve the experience for you. It can sometimes be deflating when you find out they're not. Will this necessarily make them less meaningful to the player? It depends. I don't mind the idea of the same cutscenes and character interactions having different slants depending on your cutscenes and I suspect it's less of an issue for me because... I always do the same thing generally. I liked Isabela's rivalry in Dragon Age II and the way Hawks seemed to successfully push her to be a less selfish person at crucial points. Other players can get to a similar point by developing a more cordial friendship with her, which didn't initially make sense to me. But you know, it's fine.
The article also touches on this, but: two of those options are not romantic. I wouldn't say their existence as S-Ranks for guys had anything to do with considering queer men - they just extended the sole platonic S-Ranks in the game to both genders. I don't think the fact that Byleth marries a random, different-gender spouse was a malicious trick played on queer guys, the devs just weren't even thinking about them, even stereotypically.
Straight people who run the media and decide what belongs in entertainment and what doesn't, and as long as they are happily enforcing heteronormativity in their products, and therefore pandering to the identify of a straight person, I don't think your comment is really fair.
Genuinely, I don't understand this. I don't know how the two or three lines of description that the characters receive can draw that conclusion.
Well, what prompted that was when I was looking at one of the female Blue Lion students. One of the few lines given about her was that she "was bad in the kitchen". No hint of self-awareness there.
I understand it, but I don't see it worse than ... practically any other game with very few exceptions.
If the story is going to at all delve into a character's backstory and the setting includes any kind of homophobia, chances are their sexual orientation will have shaped them in one way or another and if it has, the character really should be written with that in mind. Honestly, there are very few instances where I feel like writing a character as playersexual (not bisexual) is preferable. For example, if your game's writing or exploration of its romanceable characters is so shallow to begin with that this sort of thing would never come up anyway. I would rather have fewer romance options in each "category" (male LIs interested in female protagonists, male LIs interested in male protagonists, female LIs... you get the gist) that are fully fleshed out, well-written and where the same-sex options are actually representative of LGBTQ people than have everyone be romanceable by everyone without any exploration or mention of their orientation. I feel like playersexuality in some ways isn't full representation. Unless it's actually presented as the characters in question being bi or pan but then that's not playersexual, I'd argue. And, of course, not all games are meant to be power fantasies (though if we're talking about the kinds of big RPGs that often tend to feature romance content, yeah, those generally are).
Right it's always going to change on a case by case basis.
i've noticed this trend in general not just with lgbtq, but others and could never think of a phrase for it, but the phrase wanting consumerism to validate you is exactly it.
Even though we live our lives like everybody else, things like race or orientation do still have an impact. It changes how the world see us, and that informs how we act and see ourselves. Like the first example in the article, expressing romantic interest in someone is a different experience for a lot of LGBT+ people; how negatively if not outright hostile the environment is and all the possible consequences are things a lot of us have to consider. Those lines hold extra weight to a queer person that they otherwise wouldn't to most straight people, because it's a reflection of our own experiences as queer people in a world that doesn't see us the same.
I agree that many of these attempts to create LGBTQ backgrounds and stories for characters don't turn out particularly well (you need look no further than Mass Effect: Andromeda's Gil for an example of that - though at least they tried, I suppose). And it's also true that many same-sex romance arcs don't actually feature LGBTQ-specific issues or themes at all. However, I'd argue that they should. Not that it should always be super in-your-face (I do not want every same-sex romance to turn into a preachy "gay rights are human rights" cringefest) or the focus of the romance arc but the characters and their stories should be written with it in mind. My logic here isn't "ah well, the writing is shitty and shallow, anyway, so might as well make them all playersexual" but "the writing is shitty and shallow, it needs to be improved". Now, better writing is harder to achieve than "just" switching around a few pronouns, recording the same dialogue twice, adjusting the animations and flipping a switch in the code but I do think it's worth striving for. Part of the problem is probably how romances tend to work in these games to begin with. They are often far too gamified and mechanical which probably makes it more difficult to write them well.
I disagree with your take on my perception simply being "it all sucks so just make them all playersexual," but it seems like we want to strive towards the same end.
My bad. Considering you have to finish the game to see the S support, I assumed non-path-specific main story spoilers would be fine in this thread.
That is acknowledged, at least for romances between the other characters. I assume that was easier there since they didn't have to write two versions
