This discourse was going around twitter today apparently and im curious takes from here.
Which is it for you?
For me i prefer playersexuality. I want to be able to romance any romance option regardless of my charachters gender. I dont want to be stuck with only Arcade Gannon if i want to do m/m
I agree that sexuality can be important to a charachter. But if you wanna do that, seems like the charachter can just not be a romance option.
That said. In RPGs devs can do what they want. You want a charachter to be monosexual and a romance option, have at it. (Unless theyre all straight, then fuck you).
I do kinda hate what The Sims did by adding monosexuality. Felt like such a virtue signal that made the game less fun. All Sims being pansexual was always more fun for me. Especially since i usually play that game as a pansexual slut. Unless i decide my player Sim is mono, but thats on the player's end.
Monosexual townies in the Sims should at least be optional (is it? Idk havent played Sims 4 since this update).
I don't like playersexuality, because I prefer my gay and bi characters to actually have experience with (and reference their experiences with) homophobia, which is something that every gay and bi person ive ever met has had in common. A love story between gay characters that has absolutely nothing to do with homophobia is just a straight love story with one of the characters' genders swapped
I get where youre coming from, but what if its a fantasy world where queerphobia doesnt exist? Seems nice for queer people to engage in some escapism where being queer isnt suffering.
"its a fantasy world where those prejudices dont exist" just feels like a copout to me. lazy writing. i guess in theory there could be stories written by gay people as escapism about worlds where those prejudices dont exist, but ive never encountered one
Idk i find the idea that bigotry not being the same as it is in the real world is a "cop out" actually limits creators in an unhelpful way. In one of my fantasy worlds, queerphobia exists in some cultures but not others, and functions differently from the real world in the cultures where it does exist. Also related, but racial constructs are completely different. Now obviously the difference here is that ive thought this out rather than just eliminated it to not think about it. But thats for a highly in depth kinetic novel with lots of world building. I think its fine for a story to just not want to deal with that aspect, but still have same gender romance options.
I also find the "if it doesnt involve suffering its not real queer romance" idea reductive and kind of upsetting as a queer person?
if youve never experienced homophobia then you have not shared the experience that, as i said, every single gay and bi person ive ever met has experienced. i dont think its reductive to say that that makes it fundamentally different from a relatable portrayal of a gay relationship
I wont say that ive never experiances bigotry but i will say that queerness has been much more positive and experiance for me than a negative one. And that im exhausted of queer media (not games, tbf) that focuses on what feels like suffering porn and prefer lighthearted stuff.
Your preferences arent wrong though. But for me, a queer charachter (and their romances) only feeling queer if they experiance bigotry is very grim. Queerness doesnt have to be suffering. In fact, we are fighting for a world where it isnt.
Guess im just escapism pilled though.
at no point did i say that im looking for "suffering porn" or media that focuses on suffering or even CONTAINS suffering at all. i just cant relate to a relationship of two or more "gay" characters who have NEVER encountered the concept of homophobia in their lives. that is an inextricable part of the experience of being gay on the planet on which i live.
Eh ok fair. Sorry for reading more into your words than you intended
I still think i dont need a charachter to experiance or talk about experiancing homophobia for them to feel validly queer though.
Ok, youre back to linking queerness to adversity as some sort of essentialist thing again. This denies that we have a future free of queerphobia that fiction can explore. (Its also, as someone privately pointed out to me, Eurocentric).
If you simply cant relate to a queer charachter who hasnt experiances bigotry, then fine I guess. Thats just taste.
But treating it as a requirement (and scare quoting gay when the gay person doesnt experiance homophobia) it does kind of take away the positive parts of being queer, like queer culture and, importantly to the topic of this thread, love.
Its also worth noting i think that that rhetoric echoes a lot of exclustionist arguments about, for example, ace people. Which i find troubling.
I didn't "scare quote gay" I literally quoted a phrase you said and put it in quotation marks. Why are you being so disingenuous?
how could (good) star trek possibly have queer federation characters then? the optimistic future earth would not have that bigotry except as a history that most people won't engage with.
I find it very difficult to believe there is anyone in the Federation who has never heard of the concept of homophobia.
in a history book, sure. certainly not in the personal experience way you would find relatable.
Technically most real life cultures didn't have the kind of prejudice about gay people and such as we have. So that checks out. There would be weird rascism but it would probably just sound silly because we'd lack context for bulling people for having the wrong hair color or something
boyfriends
not really a comment on this particular story because ive never heard of it, but another point on this topic is that "it's escapism" is not a defense against an accusation of lazy writing. escapism might be the most inherently lazy form of writing ever conceived
I don’t think it’s inherently lazy, but escapism is directional. It’s escaping from somewhere and it’s escaping to somewhere. Cishet white dudes using video games as escapism and getting upset about “political” characters are trying to escape from a diverse world to one where their supremacist presuppositions are catered to. I think it’s different from a gay artist escaping from a world rampant with homophobia and into a world without it.
I feel the same way. I love Karlach and all but I like my lesbian romances to resonate with my experiences.
I do get why people like playersexuality though because it does often feel like it's that or basically no options. Like in Fire Emblem 3 Houses, I can either have like 20 straight options or 3 lesbian options, one of which isn't available in 2 of 3 (or 3 of 4, depending how you count) routes. My actual preference is characters having actual sexualities with comparable options for all, but failing that I'll take playersexuality