@playchoices…every other fan has written some incredible posts about their “favourites”, and these moments are far too many to count…so I’ll give you just one.
My favourite moment was when one of the book leads of The Royal Romance - in response to news of a dumb answer about Hana’s sexuality from the Choices Support - said this:
….and then proceeded to never show Hana’s journey of “figuring this out”. In fact they made it barely visible in the playthrough where she is married, and not even once in the playthroughs where she isn’t. Moreover, the same Hana who struggles to even articulate her love for a woman in Book 1 and who speaks of her parents constantly searching for men she could marry… suddenly has parents whose problems with her marriage to the MC are solely based on her being of “new money”. Suuuuure.
Like y'all cared so little about Hana being bi that instead of building her coming out journey with the love it deserved, you practically retconned an important element of that journey before tossing it aside.
That is not to mention how you didn’t even bother to code Hana’s wedding so that she didn’t sound like a bridesmaid more than a bride, or how even in playthroughs where she was getting married to a literal Duchess - she was still being called a failure for “failing to bag the men she was in line to marry” by other women. In a country that supposedly celebrates same-sex relationships. This is not even to go into how the team of this book forces her, time and time and time again into painful situations (bullying. emotional abuse from her parents. being in the closet. losing her home. infertility.) without adequate resolution, and just have her continually support the MC and the group without the same level of support extended to her. This is not even to go into how your proposed alternate pairing for her with Madeleine…was more for Madeleine’s “development” and Madeleine’s benefit than it would ever be hers (let’s not even talk about how y'all thought pairing a bully with her victim and trying to gloss over what said bully put her through, was okay. I shudder to think what y'all would have come up with if the fandom hadn’t started complaining).
There are a number of female LIs you’ve done dirty in different ways. Lily. Sloane. Jackie. Teja. Victoria. Leah. Shreya. Aster. Mira (for Party Twin). Gender-customizable characters whose surnames constantly slipped to “him” when we chose “her”. There are far too many for me to name. Some of them are introduced much later than their male counterparts, and hardly ever given the chance to catch up. Wlw players are made to toss diamonds at scenes that become increasingly poorer in quality and content as the stories progress. Very often (as in Jackie’s case) they’re written in a way that pushes them out of the plot, or generally just given far less space, with their issues forgotten. Let’s not even speak about the one book where you had us choose a sexuality, introduced an incredible aroace character - then tossed all that aside for “try something new” and focused more on the white dude.
For me personally Hana hits differently because I’ve felt that coming out journey in my own life. I know what a long hard painful process it is, especially in the kind of environment she grew up in. The kind of growth it takes to get to the point where you can say “I’m here, I’m queer and I’m proud” when you’ve been that far deep in the closet is phenomenal, unimaginable. And yet you treated it like it was nothing.
As far as favourite “Choices Pride” moments go, nothing can beat that.
annaxmalina
baratheonpilled
titsay
vaporwave
jbbartram-illu
