Hey! Wow, thank you for the thoughtful and insightful comment.

Okay, here's what I wanted to do with Rhoslyn:
*Spoiler Alert for those that haven't played Rhoslyn route yet*
------------------------


I am a cisgender. I seeked advice from my genderqueer friends before writing the full Rhoslyn route. People's answer varied, but general advice was to treat Rhoslyn like how you would treat every other characters.
Also, I was hesitant about making gender jokes, as it could come across as offensive unless done very tastefully. I don't think I'm there yet haha.

Rhoslyn's route is also more serious/difficult compared to others.
I purposely made a character that isn't easily lovable. They beat player up, insult and is rude.
They can't be encountered unless you specially go into the forest and has multiple route terminating choices.

I wanted player to continuously make choices to support Rhoslyn, be there for them, and stand through them when they aren't at their best.
I wanted to give Rhoslyn a person that will truly love them.(In this case, a player) , so that Rhoslyn would be happy.

So I guess that's my reasoning on why Rhoslyn route may lack humor/ fun factor.

I wish my writing was bit better to portray Rhoslyn better. I really think they're most deep character.

Sorry if this isn't the exact answer you're looking for.
I really appreciate your insight and it was pleasure reading your writings!

Have a good day :D

I don't think there is anything at all wrong with the quality of your writing, I think the other routes demonstrated it. But Rhoslyn's route almost seemed like it was written by some one else.

Now that could just be the result of listening to different music while you write, but given the content of your reply I am guessing that the difference was in part due to inhibition.

When writing 'funny' of the gender bender variety, just remember that the joke isn't upon the person of indeterminate gender, or the man in a dress, The joke is on social conformity. As long as you target the person that wants to put people in a box you wont offend any one. ... Ok so you might offend people that put people in boxes, but they wont say anything, because if they admit to being offended every one else will pile on them for their missbegotten box putting in ways.

In the case of an androgynous character such as Rhoslyn it should have been fairly easy to play this up without being offensive. Either the man character, or another of his associates could have been determined to 'solve the mystery' with a series of hilarious and unfortunate consequences to themselves, ending with the heartwarming lesson that it never realy mattered any way. Also bees. Don't mess with bees. That is also an important lesson which we could have learnt. How not messing with bees relates to gender classification we will never know now as you didn't write it... dammit now I am curious.

All that said there is nothing wrong with Rhoslyn's route it just felt like there was something vaguely off about how it fit in with the rest of the game. And after thinking about it for a while, I decided that it was because the comedy was ignoring the big gender neutral elephant in the room.

I enjoyed all the other routes and clearly I loved the game enough to give it some thought, so well done for engaging me.

BTW still willing to donate organs for a June route.

Also what colour are gender neutral elephants any way? They cant be pink or blue... orenge maybe? This is probably a job for a comitee, some one should form one.

Hahaha Don't mess with the bees.
Gender neutral elephant is.. probably grey....?? <3
That is a topic for another forum.

I do really appreciate your insight and I might have missed some prime opportunity.
Knowing that a large number of VN players are males, it might have been an interesting way to open people up. :c RIP

Originally posted by PistachiStudio:

I wanted player to continuously make choices to support Rhoslyn, be there for them, and stand through them when they aren't at their best.
I wanted to give Rhoslyn a person that will truly love them.(In this case, a player) , so that Rhoslyn would be happy.

So I guess that's my reasoning on why Rhoslyn route may lack humor/ fun factor.

While I could see the scenes ctcc42 mentioned playing out with these characters, I think you did alright with that path - it's a good atititude to take with such a game IMHO. Ruler by Default offers quite a fair bit of humour in the overall scheme of things but Rhoslyn's and Mori's stories are actually quite serious in nature. That worked out really well as a whole.

// goes and joins June's organ doner queue.