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Posted: **Wed Jan 22, 2014 6:00 pm**

spoilered for safety

Spoiler:

f/f is definitely karen for me, the fact that she's loren's mother doesn't really bother me at all (or loren it seems, unless you're evil and raise both of their affections at once). i like how it's never really 'flirting' between them, they just come to care about each other naturally. i also think she's the most beautiful woman in the game, so nice plus.

f/m is the one i have the hardest time picking from, for me it either comes between amukiki or rei since mesphit's isn't my taste for elanor. just basing off conversations and cutscenes and chemistry between two characters i prefer her with amukiki since i do find rei a bit pushy, but the only problem i have with amukiki's is their ending since i personally don't imagine elanor (at least the way i played her) being very happy living in grimoire.

while with rei, while having a generally little less preferable personality, the fact that a point in their relationship is him helping her get in touch with her elven-ness which i thought should be an important part of her arc and finding freedom in rejoining her people is poignant to me.
(again this is just how i chose to play her and imagine her thought processes, plus my favorite elanor is forceful one where she comments the myrth at one point how sooner or later she wants to leave loren and try to find her clan again).

m/m draco is my favorite, his dialog if you have saren sacrifice himself is the only one of the romances that made me tear up. i can't even think of my favorite thing about their romance, only how seeing draco reveal his ears all the time later in their arc makes me smile a lot.

the other m/m close second favorite i have is with mesphit. i really enjoy his romance arc but i prefer him with saren since putting him with elanor would mean another story where the woman is the love martyr to a troubled dangerous guy which is nice sometimes but something that i personally am a tad tired of (i still think their route is well written and nice but just not my thing).

there isn't any m/f pairings i like or can get attached to tbh, just from my own picky as hell taste. saren/loren i don't like that much because, and i realize a decent amount of her character development if you choose to play saren is trying to get past the hangups amazon culture has about men, i just prefer to think of loren as a lesbian anyways. i like myrth as a character a lot, i actually like how angry she is about the dark elves for a while, it seemed more natural to me than her being all good from the get go but her romance and i just didn't click. (and chambara doesn't interest me at all really m/f or f/f sorry chambara lovers.)

apologies if this double posts and if it does i'll try to delete it but this is my first time using the forums! exciting but when i tried to post this reply a minute ago it says it posted but is no where to be found.

Posted: **Sat Jan 25, 2014 9:16 am**

Well, I don't know if I had talked about it before, but some things that I had noticed about the romances options really got on my nerves(I mean, REALLY.). I apologize in advance if this irritates/offends anybody, it just my opinion, I don't want to hurt nobody feelings, it just what I noticed and now I believe to be an issue. With that been said, let's get started.

Spoiler:

Loren is a wonderful game, I had stated this many times. it was quite bold in changing a very important aspect that many games developers don't have the courage to change: The main character is a servant rather than the "big hero", and this made me enjoy the game like no other... But, there's no perfect game, and the aspect that bothered me, was something that I believe that most of players didn't noticed/cared:

The game talked about a female society where males were slaves and their company used only for procreation or pleasure, a society where is implied that females could seek another female company without any problems attached to it, since, technically this would be like, the very best... But there's not even a lesbian in the game. Yes, not a lesbian at all.

"That's not true! There is three romance options to a female character! There is Loren, Karen and Chambara! Your argument is invalid!" Well, actually, my argument is more valid. None of these options is a "real" lesbian. Karen loved a man, Chambara(even though is the only GxG option that I really loved in the first game since is the only one that seemed to genuinely love Elenor 99% the times) is into anything that gives her power... and Loren... Oh, let me give an "in dept" answer about this one:

The player can choose one of two characters to represent in the game, Saren, the male human or Elenor, the female elf. The thing is, Loren is attracted to females, some scenes of the game made this quite obvious. If you played as Elenor, ok, no problem, but in her version, Saren isn't the slave selected to accompany Loren in her search for her mother. But, if Saren is the chosen one, Loren could be romanceable by him, thus reinforcing the myth that "a lesbian is only a lesbian because she hasn't found the proper man to convert her." Not to mention, the romance scenes are practically the same, theres isn't much of a difference between both, except in some(not all, mind you) crucial aspects. Like the ending of the game, where Saren and Loren could have their almost "fairy tale ending" while Elenor and Loren had a bitter and sad ending, which only reinforced in me the feeling that the romance was a waste of time. There is nothing in her that is worth the try, she give lesbians a bad name with this "I would change for the right man" and "regardless of how much we love each other, since you aren't a man, we deserve this sad bitter end". I'm really, REALLY disappointed in this, she could be a great romance, but made a very sad mistake in a crucial aspect of the game. By the way she was created, she should just be a exclusive straight option from the start, since that would actually make way more sense, just needed to remove the nymphs scene and done. Now, just what was needed was to give to the lesbians a real romance option, one that wasn't somehow offensive, like Loren was.(but since we know this is like IMPOSSIBLE to change, just forget it. I really wish some good luck in trying to write her romance part in the sequel with Elenor. I'm not even joking, it really would need a master to make her romance appealing to lesbians if they know they would get a bad ending and a bad message anyway, so why bother?) I really hope Breza's romance in the sequel could be way more different. A happy ending for a change and please, enough of this no sense of "flirt with a guy" or "converting for a guy". We have enough of this on the media. Please, don't add one more to the list.

Now, I can already see some people thinking "you are prejudiced against bi characters". No, I'm not. If I was, I wouldn't love the Chambara's romance, or cared for the Karen romance. They are both bi characters which I felt was beautiful and cute, and were well written(even though I felt Karen somehow used Elenor as a tourniquet in the beginning of the romance). I only wish for some equality. There is a proper BxB option (Draco) in the game(wonderful character and romance, I want to add), why can't the lesbians get a proper GxG option?

I am apologizing again if my words seemed rash, I'm just sad in seeing this kind of thing again and again in the media. Nobody take lesbians seriously. I wish to see this change at least in future games.

Posted: **Sat Jan 25, 2014 9:32 am**

For what it's worth, I agree with you that it's sad there isn't exclusive lesbian characters in Loren. However, it makes sense to me that Loren herself, as the titular character, needs to be romanceable by both PC genders.

Posted: **Sat Jan 25, 2014 9:37 am**

Well there are no MAIN character lesbian, but all the other amazons are

Breza is one for example, is a NPC but there she is. I understand that you meant "romanceable lesbians characters" but the statement is not really correct. Seems like that all the other amazon at the citadel were bisex, which obviously is not true. There only weren't any in the main game. In the sequel there'll be Karen & Breza at least

Posted: **Sat Jan 25, 2014 12:21 pm**

The lack of a lesbian romanceable character didn't bother me that much, but it's good that there will be one in the next game. I guess I was happy that there's even one character who really is gay. (Another reason Draco rocks!)

I don't see why Loren gets much harsher criticism than Karen does. I'm sure Karen never considered the possibility of falling in love with a man either - before it actually happened. And afterwards she goes back to being a lesbian. If you wanted to interpret it that way, you could say that symbolically this means that any lesbian can be converted, but only for the right man. The only difference between Karen's straight love story and Loren's is that Karen's is in the past. (That thing about the endings does sound unfair, though. I've never romanced Loren so I can't comment on that. However, I will say this: stop giving us sad endings!)

Also, using male slaves for procreation and/or pleasure is not something I'd associate with being a "real" lesbian. Procreation is a necessity, but pleasure is not. The Amazons are a homonormative society, but they're not an exclusively lesbian society. I never understood all the details, though. Apparently if a man and a woman were lovers they would be killed, but using male harem slaves is OK? Is it the unauthorized sex that's illegal or the relationship?

Here's another lore question: Amazon society is bound by tradition and duty, so I was wondering about having children. Is it the duty of all Amazon women to try to procreate at some point in their life, or can they choose freely? Or are only certain women expected to have children?

Edit: Also, since we're discussing sexuality I'd like to point out a pet peeve of mine. You can't roleplay Saren as completely gay. Saren is attracted to Jul and he is also attracted to Myrth when he meets her for the first time. I don't mind about Jul, but Myrth?

Posted: **Sat Jan 25, 2014 1:01 pm**

I'll leave the other comments to Aleema, even if I guess the answer could be that:
- Amazons are free to choose if procreate or not, but I imagine that they should to keep their numbers
- Regarding male/female relationship, I think is the relationship itself. If is only pleasure is accepted, but if is something more (an amazon starts to consider the slave more than that) then would be illegal

Also but about this:

Choklad wrote: Edit: Also, since we're discussing sexuality I'd like to point out a pet peeve of mine. You can't roleplay Saren as completely gay. Saren is attracted to Jul and he is also attracted to Myrth when he meets her for the first time. I don't mind about Jul, but Myrth?

This is a big problem because, either the writer writes the character completely NEUTRAL, until the player with his / her choices makes clear the sexual orientation, or otherwise is a bit hard to do. Is common in games with a big variety of romances and sexual preferences: the writer cannot know how the player want to play the game beforehand. A solution could be to have the player choose at the beginning, but this would really complicate things a lot, so usually the player is portrayed as bisex to leave all the options open. I don't think I can do more than this, otherwise writing the story would take twice the time

Posted: **Sat Jan 25, 2014 4:45 pm**

The game stated in many many MANY times that the amazons(nt all of then, but some of them) used man for pleasure, I'm sorry, but what kind of lesbian would do that? No lesbian would want to be with a man, we simply aren't like that. So the argument that the amazons are all "lesbians" is invalid since they aren't. I believe most of them are either straight or bi, but like the old civilization of the greeks, didn't cared if a female were in a relationship with another female(like the greeks didn't cared if a man loved another man). And calling Karen a lesbian is somehow insulting. She ISN'T. She is a bisexual. So in the sequel we(lesbians players) only have one lesbian character. We are with a disavantage since all other romances are bi. "but Karen is a exclusive lesbian option." I know and thats fine, but this is not the problem here. The problem is that there isn't a lesbian romanceable character. And making Loren bi wasn't the real issue, it was the real issue, but the way it was handled. They should have made clear that Loren was atracted to man, making clear that she was a bisexual character, not a lesbian. And I really mean it when I say "good luck" in the sequel. Because either you will need to make some serious changes in her romance to make her more appealing to females or simply scrap her as a option for females and give us another option. Because she isn't a option like she is right now. And the sad ending will have to go away as well, since is unfair that the males players get a good ending but not the females.
Other thing that I ask is to diferenciate the romance if is a male or a female, since we are talking about bi characters. This would make the romance less than the recycled feeling that I always get in those kind of romances.

Posted: **Sat Jan 25, 2014 4:57 pm**

OK for Karen, but for Loren it depends how you play the game.
I mean, if you play as Elenor, and you romance Loren, in that playthrough Loren IS lesbian since she's not attracted to any man.
Otherwise you could say that Loren will always die or that Loren sword is only the Ember Blade, and so on. When you have multiple choices in games, I don't think matters if there's another option, because in practice the game lets you play the story how you want.
Is different if a character explicitly says in the story/dialogues that he/she likes both man and women, then yes he/she is bisex. But for the others depends how you play the game.

Madance wrote:Other thing that I ask is to diferenciate the romance if is a male or a female, since we are talking about bi characters. This would make the romance less than the recycled feeling that I always get in those kind of romances.

Yes I know, we'll try our best. SOME dialogues might be shared, but others are exclusive (in Loren many dialogues are exclusively male or female for the bisex characters).

Well, at least in SOTW nobody will complain about this because each character is either straight or gay/lesbian (they'll complain about lack of romance options though!

)

Posted: **Sat Jan 25, 2014 7:55 pm**

I agree with Madance that the lesbian characters all have the "but of course they'll sleep with guys, too" baggage with them. It's pure sexual fantasy for straight men, but actual lesbian women pay the cost. It most definitely is harmful to continue the stereotype that lesbians just need the right man to convert them. I was bothered when I learned I had to write certain things involving Karen and Loren's sexuality. I tried to write them in the most tasteful way possible, but it probably doesn't matter how well you write it, it's still offensive as a concept. I felt the same way about Michelle from Planet Stronghold. She has a similar story to Karen's and an unfortunate pattern is showing. For what it's worth, I think you're right. I think it's about time there's a lesbian character that is exclusive to women.

Also, I want everybody to know that Jack is actually really receptive to issues like this. When he realizes there is a problem, he actively tries to fix it. You can probably expect better gay romances from now on.

Posted: **Sat Jan 25, 2014 8:05 pm**

Aleema wrote: Also, I want everybody to know that Jack is actually really receptive to issues like this. When he realizes there is a problem, he actively tries to fix it. You can probably expect better gay romances from now on.

I know he is

And that is to his credit. That is one of the reasons I'm really looking forward to future releases.

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