So, full disclosure, I am cis, and exclusively attracted to men, since that is sure to influence my viewpoint on this.
I am of course referring to this: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EveryoneIsBi
I think that this is essentially the laziest way to do gay/bi representation. Everyone’s just inexplicably bisexual. I’m sure some people are happy with that for whatever of what I am sure is long list of valid reasons. If you like games where you don’t have to worry about this, I’m not arguing that you shouldn’t. And I can’t know how bi people feel about this at all from my experiences alone, so any bi people with an opinion on this please do share so I can further develop my own perspective on this.
Like, when I want representation, I kind of want it to reflect the real gay experience. That means the tragic bits too, including that not everyone is on the table as a potential partner. And that doesn’t even mean having only one in ten or so characters being an option, I have seen VNs where there are so many gay people that it is clear that there is something in the water making everyone gay, that represent that aspect better. Something like getting the wrong signals and getting turned down by someone who can’t reciprocate your feelings towards them? It’s a tragic experience, but one that can be worth representing in media, because it’s a real experience. But I don’t know if that ever will be represented properly, queer people are already a small portion of the market, queer people looking specifically to be tragically rejected by a straight person have to be an absolute minority.
Why I say this is possibly a step backwards, is that games like Dragon Age: Origins (2009) had romance options that all had distinct sexual orientations, you had two straight and two bisexual companions you could romance. Fallout NV had no real “romance” options with companions, but did have Veronica and Arcade as distinctly lesbian/gay. And honestly, this seemed a bit more… it feels really fucking wrong to say “natural” in this context, but I will say it feels uncanny in comparison when I can put on a necklace in Skyrim and suddenly everyone I have run an errand for wants to marry me. Or that every companion in Fallout 4 will constantly forcegreet me after I max out friendship trying to get me to start their romance line.
It also just feels so much like an afterthought in comparison as far as the character writing goes. Looking at the games I mentioned, the distinctly bi and gay characters do feel like they have bi/gay energy, and that feels like it adds to their character design. I don’t feel the same representation I felt with someone like Arcade Gannon in this type of setup, where there was a character who was like me (though to be fair I didn’t know I was like him at the time I played – well, I kind of did, but I was in deep denial at the time – it’s complicated), it just seems empty – none of these characters are like me in that way.
I think when a game has limited dev resources, making like 4-6 romance options for each orientation might eat too much into the budget, as ideal as it may be representation wise. If there are only 5 romance options overall, I’d prefer to see how every one of them works out instead of getting railroaded into the one gay option (something I’ve seen in several VNs).
That said, TES/Fallout always has lazy programming and modded in romance options will tend to have more interesting arcs.
Bethesda are a terrible company with terrible writing. Letting Devs write quests is the dumbest shit ever, and I say this as a programmer myself.
Letting Devs write quests
Eww, is that what the problem is? Writing is a skill! Hire professionals!
TES/Fallout mods are great though. I still think about my awkward Ashlander husband sometimes and I haven’t played Morrowind in like 9 years.
They’re only bisexual if you play the game more than once, technically. The first time they just happen to align with your single character.
I think it’s a case-by-case thing where games that want more player freedom of self expression would require more ‘everyone is bisexual’ type design while games that want to have more story and meaning encoded onto the NPCs would give the characters more rigid sexual preferences the same way they’d give them more rigid representation in other aspects.
Edit: they can also blend the two styles together if wanted as well for certain gay/straight-specific characters if needed.
Yeah but there’s a difference between writing a gay character, a bi character, and a straight character, an aroace character, and anywhere else someone might fit in that constellation. They’re all going to notice different things, react to different people in different ways, ignore some things but catch others. Something as subtle as a character mentioning “My ex, he used to like this” can give a lot of insight in to who the character is. You could ask the player what their character’s preferences are and have lines tailored to reflect that, I suppose.
It’s lazy writing, but given the choice between getting to do some gay shit and not getting the option at all, I’d rather have the ability to get lazy rep if I want it. I think it’s far less harmful than just never getting queer people in games.
It’s the same reason why I can only be so mad at games that let you play as a woman, but it’s clear that the male character option is the default and they didn’t really make any changes for playing as a women. You get a lot more incidentally gay shit in those games (even though it’s written in a way that obvious feels very hetero and not remotely sapphic)
Basically I’d rather have imperfect rep than no rep
It’s the same reason why I can only be so mad at games that let you play as a woman, but it’s clear that the male character option is the default and they didn’t really make any changes for playing as a women.
Have to shout out Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and Persona 3 Portable on this.
The former because they designed it around the female protagonist and then were forced by execs to also make a male protagonist option, but he clearly got less attention.
The latter because they actually had the female PC be significantly different than the male one, like just a completely different personality. Though it should be said that they only added her in a rerelease, and there’s also a weird :funny-clown-hammer: romance option for her
Totally agree with you about imperfect rep, I can fill in the blanks enough when this happens to roll with it. If you’re on PC, the modding scene can also always patch the rough edges.
Yeah for sure. Plus these games were never going to add actual gay storylines and don’t tout themselves for having gay rep, so it’s not like it’s coming at the expense of legitimate or good queer content, so I can’t really be mad about it.
Getting mad at AAA studio games for only including gay people as a dialogue option feels like getting mad at Disney for doing their “look at our first gay character (background, cop, racist)!” every couple of months
It’s the same reason why I can only be so mad at games that let you play as a woman, but it’s clear that the male character option is the default and they didn’t really make any changes for playing as a women. You get a lot more incidentally gay shit in those games (even though it’s written in a way that obvious feels very hetero and not remotely sapphic)
sometimes it works better than others, like Ripley.
Some people don’t call this approach “everyone is bi”, but use terms like “the gay button” instead. Because these NPCs usually aren’t written to be bi. as a bi woman, i do not see myself represented in such characters. there’ll normally be nothing in the dialogue showing that they are interested in more than one gender, they’re either presented as completely straight if you romance them as a character of the opposite gender or completely gay if you romance them as a character of the same gender. in a hetnormative society, this makes straightness their assumed default orientiation and the queer content only shows up if you actively look for it by trying to engage in same sex romance with them. it does not become part of the text otherwise. so, you need to “press the gay button” to have queer representation in your game and if you’re a capital G Gamer where the G doesn’t stand for amazingly Gay, you are never bothered with queer content in your gaming experience at all.
You probably see were i’m going with this. Writing characters with a sexual orientation that behaves like Schrödinger’s Cat is a lazy cop-out that tries not to offend anybody and ends up being offensive to everyone through this cowardice. You do not feel represented, i do not feel represented and if the straights wouldn’t be so used to being represented anywhere, they probably wouldn’t feel represented either. And it all comes at the expense of character depth, too, with these NPCs being straight-passing blank slates with a sexuality that works like a new skin or a palette swap.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous was pretty good about this. While many of the companions are romanceable by a player of either sex, they are pretty adequately explained as being actually bi regardless of your intervention, and I was relieved to see the gay man cleric companion was just not into my woman protagonist.
Also has a trans character whose trans status is actually relevant to a plotline, and you will only ever know that she is trans if you help her and her wife with a very personal matter, and even then you have to probe to learn what “medical treatment” the character is talking about it.
The representation, it was pretty good. The first one also had a poly couple where you could romance either or both of them, and they’d be cool with it either way. It’s a fantasy game - why not get to play a unicorn?
