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The original was posted on /r/characterrant by /u/One_Parched_Guy on 2023-07-01 01:29:23+00:00.

Romance is a pretty big part of whether or not I like or are interested in a game most of the time. I’m gay, I like shipping, I like pairing up my character with whoever suits them best. However, there are so, so many games where half of the male cast is just… locked out of romance with a male main character for really no reason. They try to get brownie points by tossing some gay options at us, but more often than not it’s just disappointing if not outright offensive.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is probably the biggest offender I can think of off the top of my head. The only options that gay m!Byleth gets is two androgynous twinks, one of which (Yuri) is canonically frequently mistaken for a girl. Also, he’s a DLC character. So if you don’t want to pay, you have… Linhardt. He’s fine as a character, but you can tell that they intentionally made him as femme as possible . Meanwhile, Edelgard (a house leader), Dorothea, Mercedes, and more are all available to female or male Byleth, and the lesbians only get to have that option in the first place because straight men fetishize them. Weirdly enough, Three Hopes kinda turned it around and is honestly one of the gayest Nintendo games out there. There’s several openly flirty dialogues that happen to Shez regardless of gender, and Sylvain and Yuri in particular flirt with each other and admit that they like it. However, this is also the game that doesn’t have actual romance, so…

Cyberpunk only has 4 available characters for romance. You get one for each orientation: a gay guy (who is… already kinda problematic in that he’s pretty stereotypically feminine for the only gay male rep in the game, but that’s an entirely different discussion), a lesbian, a straight guy and a girl. It’s really needlessly limiting because if you don’t like the one option for your character, you’re shit out of luck. It doesn’t help that Panam and River, the straight options, have flirty and suggestive dialogue regardless of gender. River straight up has you over for dinner with his family and then takes you to a scenic spot with alcohol, it’s very clearly coded as romantic even if you’re not interested and it happens to male and female V. There are also problems with this because (ending spoilers) the guys won’t leave Night City while the girls refuse to stay, so your V wanting to stay or go depending on your preferred ending could end their relationship after alllll the shit you went through for however many hours. And like, yeah, it’s Cyberpunk and it’s not known for happy endings… but it’s just so unnecessary.

Mass Effect is also pretty egregious, though romance is honestly kind of a clusterfuck in general. For gay guys, you got… Kaiden. And some dude literally named Steve, an npc you likely won’t care about. Not to mention that they’re both only available in the third game. I guess you could make an excuse for the first game considering how much shit they got for Liara alone, but the second game came out in 2010, only a year before Skyrim and two before Dragon’s Dogma, both being games notorious for not having gender-restricted romance. Granted, in both one and two the only other real option for guys that people would go for is Garrus… but then, Garrus only likes female women. Because an interspecies relationship between a monkey and a mantis works, but only if the monkey has a vag. Same goes for Thane. Jacob is… Jacob.

DA Inquisition has actual good choices for men in Dorian and Iron Bull, but there’s still Cullen and Blackwall locked as straight. It’s not horrible or anything, but I don’t see the purpose.

I see that this practice is often defended with saying that it’s “Realistic”. Because out of all the things in games where you can make shit explode with magic, tame dragons, explore fictitiously futuristic worlds, slay gods, making sure that most dudes would rather die than suck dick is the most important thing for maintaining their suspension of disbelief. Unless it’s a girl, it’s fine if they’re gay because it’s hot. Just admit that you’re homophobic and move on.

And it’s not like there isn’t a precedent for this. Skyrim, Fallout 4, Stardew Valley, all popular games with romance systems similar or more involved than the ones described above, but they don’t have gender restriction. And who’s complaining? Almost no one. No one complains about it unless they’re complaining about gay people existing.

It’s just frustrating.