I recently came across your comment that if you had to make Auri again you wouldn't include a romance - at least not a straight one - and honestly I feel that so hard. Nexus users can be the worst sometimes, pushing heteronormativity onto an implicitly lesbian character developed by lesbians for lesbians.
I would say go for it. Let them complain. This is your mod - not theirs. Your comfort, not their fantasies. Be unapologetic, stand firm, stand up for LGBT representation an in era of evaporating LGBT rights.
I hear you anon.
I was a lot younger when I wrote Auri, and I wanted to please everyone. Still fighting that impulse a bit - but that's on me, not the Nexus users.
To change Auri's orientation from playersexual to gay now, after almost a decade, would be a cruel and petty thing to do. Straight gamers aren't bad people just because they want to romance Auri when a romance is made available to them.
Perhaps this is a controversial opinion, but after all of these years of modding, I've come to a conclusion that a character kinda stops being your character once you release them into the wild. People will mod their games in a billion different ways. They'll change how the character looks and behaves to suit their own playstyle. As follower authors we just kinda have to accept that.
That's why I would never recommend you make a beloved OC into a follower. If you want full control of how your character is used in other people's games, don't make a follower. Your wishes will not be respected and that's just how it is.
Of course, representation is super important, but again, failing to do so from the beginning was my fault. I'm sorry.
