Hey OP, how'd you'd reckoned this thread would go? Anything like it is?
Hah, in truth I had no idea. The forums seemed really positive so I was hopeful, though, and everyone has been great and respective about what I know can be a charged topic in some areas.
To be clear, as someone whose only interest in M/M scenes is how they relate to the game and to role play, this is something I find a thousand times more interesting than rules-lawyering minutiae. Moderators, if that's out of line, I'll happily edit, but I feel strongly about this. This game has a possibility to advance sex-positive sexuality, and how that happens is so much more interesting than wild speculation based on assumptions.
Fwiw, I agree with this entirely. Sex positively is HUGE and something the US doesn't really do well. Honestly we haven't seen it much in games in general, either. Sex positivity, alternative lifestyles... One can argue it isn't a game's place to do it, but particularly for an RPG that's so focused on options and customization, being able to sort of feel more like 'yourself' in whatever form that takes is incredible and so, so important. I know growing up games with male/male pairings simply didn't exist. The fact that we've come as far as we have is super exciting and I'm thrilled to see it. I just know we can go FURTHER and be more respectful and realistic with the way we handle this sort of writing instead of dwelling in stereotypes; for the most part we're still in that sort of problematic/stereotypical area of writing when it comes to LGBTQ+ topics, but we're getting better.
I'm excited to see what Larian does, and I'm genuinely hopeful to see a broad array of dynamics and relationships on display. I might be let down, but hey, hope is something I didn't have for a long time at all in this regard, so I'll take it.
