#playersexual

[prohivemind]

[kaija-rayne-author]

I really wish people would stop with the term 'playersexual'.

It's flat our erasure of bisexual and pansexual people. Kiiiinda homophobic too.

[bees-bees-fear]

I feel like people lost track of what "playersexual" actually means. It doesn't mean their orientation is automatically straight or gay depending on the player. It doesn't mean that the only person they ever are attracted to is the player. It just means that when they were written, it was as a romantic interest first and foremost. Their romance exists as a gameplay feature rather than a pillar of their personality. It's written for you to be able to experience as a person playing a game. It does not mean "if you play a dude then he's gay". It means anyone can experience the exact same dialogue as anybody else. I'm repeating myself because people like to miss the point and say random non sequiturs in response.

[sewermageboy]

I wanna take the word playersexual away from y'all.

Not just the ones who say that the bg3 companions are playersexual, obviously they're not, they express desires and queerness outside of the player character.

But also those who say that the word "playersexual" in itself is bi/panphobic. It's not. It describes a game mechanic in which love interests are blank slates, and their sexuality (and especially their queerness) only reveals itself through player interaction, a mechanical bisexuality as opposed to a narrative one.

Learn the meanings of words before chucking them around and making blanket statements about them.

[colourfulgreyscales]

What are your thoughts on player-sexual characters?

I am not familiar enough with the topic to have a concrete opinion. But I am following the topic with interest.

[larena]

The thing about "playersexual" as a video game criticism buzzword isn't necessarily that it's completely useless at describing a real thing - if you want to discuss the bizarre way Skyrim romance works, or things like Leah in Stardew Valley having an ex that changes to match the player's gender, sure, "playersexual" might be a term that describes those things.

But it's just so utterly tainted by bad faith biphobic criticism of actual bi characters that it's impossible to trust it's ever not being used as a cudgel to eliminate bi representation that someone has arbitrarily decided doesn't count.

Like the thing that always gets proposed as the alternative to "playersexual" characters is characters with "set sexualities" - here almost always meaning monosexual characters. And there's nothing wrong with wanting more monosexual queer representation, but to claim that it's "more realistic" is just flat out biphobia plain and simple.

If people want playersexual taken off the shelf they've gotta stop acting like five bisexual people being in the same friend group is impossible.

[kitschhazel]

“Playersexual” will always be valid in RPGs for me because game devs still don’t have any idea how to design a romanceable canon gay man character that is actually *my type* or if they do design a character who is my type they don’t make him romanceable at all let alone gay

[mompleaser]

“playersexual” as a term once had some discursive value. it doesn’t solely mean “attracted to player character regardless of sex”, which is near identical to being bi or pan, it means attracted to player character as either homosexual or heterosexual depending on player sex while being otherwise written to only be heterosexual or homosexual with no mentioned possibility of bisexuality, or an intentionally vague sexual/romantic history that doesn’t include mentioned gender. it’s a term that described a biphobic phenomenon, but not biphobic in and of itself. that’s not to say it’s not incorrectly used to describe actually bi or pan characters in a way that erases their identities and is therefore phobic, but that is not its only or original use.

i highly recommend mark darrah’s very brief youtube video explaining it, but as a short explanation for those unfamiliar, playersexual describes a non playable romanceable character who, depending on the player’s sex, has whatever non bi or pan sexuality matches up with them. for example, a character who is played entirely as straight if they’re male and the player is female, by way of pointedly not including any dialogue that hints at same sex attraction or possible bisexuality, such as in dragon age 2 when, if playing a female hawke, anders’ lines about having previously been in love with karl are very deliberately missing, which makes their (anders’ and karl’s) past relationship seem plausibly platonic so as not to be off putting to biphobic heterosexual female players. however, if you play a male hawke, anders will very clearly tell you he and karl had something more. this is an example of catering a character’s sexual identity to what the developer believes a straight player would want to hear. it’s biphobia, because the implication is a straight female player playing a straight female character would be uninterested in romancing anders if he was believed to have been attracted to men at any point.

the characters in baldur’s gate 3 do not seem to be playersexual, though i haven’t played it, and seem to be written to be bi or pansexual. the way you can tell the difference is that the romance dialogue between the player character and romance character is largely the same regardless of the gender of the player character, and no attempt to cater to biphobic heterosexuals by leaving out “gay” dialogue was made.