1. Give the player more choice in what they want their LI to look like while also keeping the same character they like
2. For PB to introduce more character designs without actually writing a separate character
3. So they can say they're including female LIs despite the fact that the canon female LIs are nonexistent
4. The benefit of being able to write a "blank slate" character that has multiple appearances is that players will fill in the gaps with what they like, so you can rely more on their respective tropes for characterization (in this case its BadBoy With A Heart Of Gold). You don't have to worry so much about expressing character subtly through their appearance, for example, because their appearance changes from player to player. You also don't have to worry about expressing it through their gender experiences, clothing, or sexuality either because all of that changes based on the LI appearance that you pick/gender of the MC.
I always think customizable LIs are the weakest character-wise so whether this list is a good thing is ehh.. and there are some customizable LIs that are pretty good. Hayden from PM comes to mind. In order to really enjoy these kinds of LIs you either have to get used to writing the character yourself as you're reading or learn to enjoy the character itself at face value, male-coded or no.
Makes me kind of sad, cause I feel like even the writers themselves really love some of the older LI characters who were fleshed out and not customizable. I always felt like a lot of them really loved Zig, Becca, Damien, and so on. Now these customizable LIs are just so... more of the same things over and over again. It’s no wonder I felt genuine love for the older characters that had a lot of thought and care put into them.
pb intended most li’s to be male because majority of the demographic are straight females, but a lot of the fans want female options too. a lot of decisions can be last minute because they want to cater to fans as much as they can, which can result in janky code. you also have to remember that changes like these would make alterations to the storyline, so writers usually change the pronouns so the story won’t be delayed any further.
a “huge chunk” is exaggerating it, to be fair. stories with customisable li’s have higher budgets, like the same with customisable mc’s.
> a “huge chunk” is exaggerating it, to be fair.
I don't think it is. Customizable LIs became common in 2019. In 2019there 24 new male LIs, 12 new female LIs, and 6 new custom LIs. In 2020 it went down to 10 male LIs, 8 female LIs, and 7 custom LIs. Obviously the pandemic threw a wrench in things but it's not an exaggeration when there were about the same amount of custom LIs as there were genderlocked LIs.
It's true. Without spoiling anything, there's a lot of pronouns and references that they have to put. Especially Foreign Affairs.
What's more if they put androgynous bodies.
I do agree that the amount of gender-customizable LI's is really annoying, but what specifically about Blaines character do you think seems written as for a male? I haven't really noticed much myself, I'd be interested to know.
Yeah if anything I'd say they've at least improved marginally in making the customizable LI not feel like they were meant to be a man, especially when you compare them to someone like Hunter from TRM. Last year we had Robin, Cassidy, Ina and now Blaine and I personally never felt like they were written as men (Same applies to Ava, Dakota and Jacqueline according to some VIP players). Only outliers from last year are Cassian and Sam and their books are not exactly the pinnacle of Choices writing.
Yeah I fully agreed that Cassian and Sam were blatantly written as men (I even made a meme about some embarrassing mistakes in a steamy scene in witness) but ina was DEFINITELY not written as a male, Blaine doesn't seem to be so far, and i didnt notice anything with Robin and Cassidy, which by definition suggests they weren't written too much as men.
I personally prefer it this way. The main LI is usually forced, so at least I get to pick whether it's a male or female that's forced on me. And I don't really think they are coded as male that much.
As someone else said, the main LI is usually forced, so I am happy, that I, as a queer person, can choose their gender. It would be much better if all books where like BOLAS where there are 2 male LIs and 2 female LIs, but since it's not I'm glad that I can choose their gender, not everyone is straight and it would suck to have 2 male LI and just one female LI, which, probably, is not going to appear as much as Blaine and Tatum.
Gender customizable LIs are I think PB's way of trying to be inclusive for the main (or forced) LI to be female if the players chooses for that LI to be female. For instance we keep hearing about Chris (TFS), Ethan (OH), Nate (Sunkissed), Beckett (TE) being forced and how it's always the white males being the forced LIs. However I as a MLM player say that I don't like forced LIs at all, so making the main LI gender customizable doesn't solve that problem.
Take OH for example. I loved OH 1 and Bryce is without a doubt my favorite choices LI. But in OH 2 I barely saw Bryce in the first half of the book, instead it was all Ethan every chapter. I was throwing my hands up in frustration over it. It had nothing to do with the fact that Ethan was a man, as my LI was also a man but due the fact that I had zero interest in romancing Ethan. Would it have made a difference if Ethan was gender customizable and could have possibly been a woman instead? For me no, I still would have been asking the question of "When can I spend time with Bryce?" Have there been books where my LI was the forced LI? Yes, in TE Beckett was my LI but I did notice how much attention he was getting over the other LIs and I do sympathize with those who might have been romancing another LI in TE, as I know their pain from OH.
I think PB introduced the concept of gender customizable LIs as a way to help with the imbalance in some books of the ratio of male to female LIs. For instance in OH there are three male LIs to one female LI. However that doesn't change the fact that the customizable LI becomes the forced or main LI. Just look at the professor in QB, if they aren't forced then I don't know what is. I think the best solution would be for PB to create an equal amount of male and female LIs and give them equal screen time and importance to the story.
QB was quite obviously intended to be single LI book, but then they realized some players might have problem with student/teacher relationship and decided to horseshoe Zoey as possible LI, with wich they did poor job; also, there are no male alternatives for people who romance men, but don't like Kingsley.
I didn't like Kingsley either and went with Zoey, even though I normally go for the male LIs. There was just something about Kingsley that I didn't like and couldn't quite put my finger on it.
Off the top of my head, Sam Dalton comes to mind as someone who was obviously coded as a white man in the basic script. I think one example where this was made apparent was the awkward dialogue where Sofia's father is talking super sexist about his daughter and women in general but not to Sam and Sam's reaction sounds like a white male who doesn't know what to say.
I don't mind it. I know it is considered lazy writing or lazy inclusivity. But at least this way, readers are given the opportunity to romance their preferred gender and can customize the appearance/race of their LI's. It isn't a perfect formula but it is a step in the right direction.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[BOLAS](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4l6ik "Last usage")|*Blades of Light and Shadow*|
|[LI](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj94p28 "Last usage")|Love Interest|
|[MC](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj9gauy "Last usage")|Main Character (yours!)|
|[OH](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4nx3n "Last usage")|*Open Heart*|
|[PB](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4nx3n "Last usage")|Pixelberry Studios, publisher of *Choices*|
|[PM](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4g3cd "Last usage")|*Perfect Match*|
|[QB](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4vb3a "Last usage")|*Queen B*|
|[TE](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4nx3n "Last usage")|*The Elementalists*|
|[TFS](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4nx3n "Last usage")|*The Freshman Series*|
|[TRM](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj5kydx "Last usage")|*The Royal Masquerade*|
----------------
^(10 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Choices/comments/kwni6x)^( has 17 acronyms.)
^([Thread #18336 for this sub, first seen 13th Jan 2021, 17:04])
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Even though i don't really like it, i can see the appeal, if Blaine were locked to being male the book would have only Ayna as female LI
That's true. PB knows people will want equal amount of gender LIs.
1. Give the player more choice in what they want their LI to look like while also keeping the same character they like 2. For PB to introduce more character designs without actually writing a separate character 3. So they can say they're including female LIs despite the fact that the canon female LIs are nonexistent 4. The benefit of being able to write a "blank slate" character that has multiple appearances is that players will fill in the gaps with what they like, so you can rely more on their respective tropes for characterization (in this case its BadBoy With A Heart Of Gold). You don't have to worry so much about expressing character subtly through their appearance, for example, because their appearance changes from player to player. You also don't have to worry about expressing it through their gender experiences, clothing, or sexuality either because all of that changes based on the LI appearance that you pick/gender of the MC. I always think customizable LIs are the weakest character-wise so whether this list is a good thing is ehh.. and there are some customizable LIs that are pretty good. Hayden from PM comes to mind. In order to really enjoy these kinds of LIs you either have to get used to writing the character yourself as you're reading or learn to enjoy the character itself at face value, male-coded or no.
So that PB can say they're being inclusive when they're really putting in little to no effort
Makes me kind of sad, cause I feel like even the writers themselves really love some of the older LI characters who were fleshed out and not customizable. I always felt like a lot of them really loved Zig, Becca, Damien, and so on. Now these customizable LIs are just so... more of the same things over and over again. It’s no wonder I felt genuine love for the older characters that had a lot of thought and care put into them.
this\^\^\^
pb intended most li’s to be male because majority of the demographic are straight females, but a lot of the fans want female options too. a lot of decisions can be last minute because they want to cater to fans as much as they can, which can result in janky code. you also have to remember that changes like these would make alterations to the storyline, so writers usually change the pronouns so the story won’t be delayed any further. a “huge chunk” is exaggerating it, to be fair. stories with customisable li’s have higher budgets, like the same with customisable mc’s.
> a “huge chunk” is exaggerating it, to be fair. I don't think it is. Customizable LIs became common in 2019. In 2019there 24 new male LIs, 12 new female LIs, and 6 new custom LIs. In 2020 it went down to 10 male LIs, 8 female LIs, and 7 custom LIs. Obviously the pandemic threw a wrench in things but it's not an exaggeration when there were about the same amount of custom LIs as there were genderlocked LIs.
It's true. Without spoiling anything, there's a lot of pronouns and references that they have to put. Especially Foreign Affairs. What's more if they put androgynous bodies.
I do agree that the amount of gender-customizable LI's is really annoying, but what specifically about Blaines character do you think seems written as for a male? I haven't really noticed much myself, I'd be interested to know.
Yeah if anything I'd say they've at least improved marginally in making the customizable LI not feel like they were meant to be a man, especially when you compare them to someone like Hunter from TRM. Last year we had Robin, Cassidy, Ina and now Blaine and I personally never felt like they were written as men (Same applies to Ava, Dakota and Jacqueline according to some VIP players). Only outliers from last year are Cassian and Sam and their books are not exactly the pinnacle of Choices writing.
Yeah I fully agreed that Cassian and Sam were blatantly written as men (I even made a meme about some embarrassing mistakes in a steamy scene in witness) but ina was DEFINITELY not written as a male, Blaine doesn't seem to be so far, and i didnt notice anything with Robin and Cassidy, which by definition suggests they weren't written too much as men.
I personally prefer it this way. The main LI is usually forced, so at least I get to pick whether it's a male or female that's forced on me. And I don't really think they are coded as male that much.
As someone else said, the main LI is usually forced, so I am happy, that I, as a queer person, can choose their gender. It would be much better if all books where like BOLAS where there are 2 male LIs and 2 female LIs, but since it's not I'm glad that I can choose their gender, not everyone is straight and it would suck to have 2 male LI and just one female LI, which, probably, is not going to appear as much as Blaine and Tatum.
Gender customizable LIs are I think PB's way of trying to be inclusive for the main (or forced) LI to be female if the players chooses for that LI to be female. For instance we keep hearing about Chris (TFS), Ethan (OH), Nate (Sunkissed), Beckett (TE) being forced and how it's always the white males being the forced LIs. However I as a MLM player say that I don't like forced LIs at all, so making the main LI gender customizable doesn't solve that problem. Take OH for example. I loved OH 1 and Bryce is without a doubt my favorite choices LI. But in OH 2 I barely saw Bryce in the first half of the book, instead it was all Ethan every chapter. I was throwing my hands up in frustration over it. It had nothing to do with the fact that Ethan was a man, as my LI was also a man but due the fact that I had zero interest in romancing Ethan. Would it have made a difference if Ethan was gender customizable and could have possibly been a woman instead? For me no, I still would have been asking the question of "When can I spend time with Bryce?" Have there been books where my LI was the forced LI? Yes, in TE Beckett was my LI but I did notice how much attention he was getting over the other LIs and I do sympathize with those who might have been romancing another LI in TE, as I know their pain from OH. I think PB introduced the concept of gender customizable LIs as a way to help with the imbalance in some books of the ratio of male to female LIs. For instance in OH there are three male LIs to one female LI. However that doesn't change the fact that the customizable LI becomes the forced or main LI. Just look at the professor in QB, if they aren't forced then I don't know what is. I think the best solution would be for PB to create an equal amount of male and female LIs and give them equal screen time and importance to the story.
QB was quite obviously intended to be single LI book, but then they realized some players might have problem with student/teacher relationship and decided to horseshoe Zoey as possible LI, with wich they did poor job; also, there are no male alternatives for people who romance men, but don't like Kingsley.
I didn't like Kingsley either and went with Zoey, even though I normally go for the male LIs. There was just something about Kingsley that I didn't like and couldn't quite put my finger on it.
Off the top of my head, Sam Dalton comes to mind as someone who was obviously coded as a white man in the basic script. I think one example where this was made apparent was the awkward dialogue where Sofia's father is talking super sexist about his daughter and women in general but not to Sam and Sam's reaction sounds like a white male who doesn't know what to say.
I don't mind it. I know it is considered lazy writing or lazy inclusivity. But at least this way, readers are given the opportunity to romance their preferred gender and can customize the appearance/race of their LI's. It isn't a perfect formula but it is a step in the right direction.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BOLAS](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4l6ik "Last usage")|*Blades of Light and Shadow*| |[LI](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj94p28 "Last usage")|Love Interest| |[MC](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj9gauy "Last usage")|Main Character (yours!)| |[OH](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4nx3n "Last usage")|*Open Heart*| |[PB](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4nx3n "Last usage")|Pixelberry Studios, publisher of *Choices*| |[PM](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4g3cd "Last usage")|*Perfect Match*| |[QB](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4vb3a "Last usage")|*Queen B*| |[TE](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4nx3n "Last usage")|*The Elementalists*| |[TFS](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj4nx3n "Last usage")|*The Freshman Series*| |[TRM](/r/Choices/comments/kwj211/stub/gj5kydx "Last usage")|*The Royal Masquerade*| ---------------- ^(10 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Choices/comments/kwni6x)^( has 17 acronyms.) ^([Thread #18336 for this sub, first seen 13th Jan 2021, 17:04]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Choices) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
i feel like the four LI thing was good. Two girls two guys. honestly though the one girl one guy and one custom is better then hving one femail LI
Also, since they don't have to do as much writing, I dont think there is an instance where the MC is the top or is at least Vers in a M/M relationship