The SuperDQP Weekly - October 21, 2024

Romance is an increasingly large aspect of video game storytelling, and I have an interesting relationship with the ideas of romance and sexuality. Let’s talk frankly about it.

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Before That, A Game Recommendation

One of my friend groups is book-clubbing this week’s recommendation (thank you Joe DeVader for bringing this game to my attention); it’s the gothic horror visual novel The House in Fata Morgana.

Fata Morgana may be a piece of interactive software, but it’s structured very linearly. There are few dialogue options (one of which is pictured above), and non-canon options rarely lead to much aside from game overs or quick bad endings. This is a largely straightforward book that you read on a Switch or a PC.

With that said, it does indirectly touch on a lot of themes that we’ll be discussing today, in ways that I can’t really specifically mention without spoiling a whole lot of what makes the game special. Just know that if what you read in this week’s newsletter strikes a chord with you, you should play The House in Fata Morgana. It’s an excellent, though very heavy pick for the spooky season. It may move you if you let it cook.

The House in Fata Morgana is available on PlayStation, Switch, and Windows PC via Steam. While the PC version is playable, it is a bit old, and setup will be more painless on a console.

On Asexuality and Video Game Romance

Romance in video games fascinates me. Of course, it’s rarely very realistic; many role-playing games have you fulfilling a number of quantitative criteria to enter a relationship with a party member or NPC, and after those criteria are met, the relationship rarely re-enters the story aside from a pre-climax scene near the endgame, or something of the sort.

Real romantic and/or sexual relationships take time. They require compromises. They don’t reach conclusive happy endings after a set of criteria is met. They require work and commitment for as long as they last. And that work and commitment is highly subjective. Every relationship is different because very human being is different. That’s hard to quantify in game design.

But I want to put a pin is that and add another juicy, thorny layer of complexity to this topic.

I am somewhere on the asexual spectrum. To put it simply, while I feel sexual drive, I don’t feel sexual attraction towards specific people the way that allosexual (read: non-asexual) people do. There is a difference between drive and attraction in this respect: attraction is directed towards people, and I do not feel that kind of attraction.

So, while that means I’m not sex-averse, that still puts me somewhere in the direction of “asexual.” It’s a label I feel more comfortable with than allosexual.

If that sounds weird, that’s because it felt weird for me to experience and discover.

As for romance, I’m still figuring that out. Many asexual people are also aromantic: they don’t feel romantic attraction, either. And yes, there is also a difference between sexual attraction and romantic attraction, though for many people, the two intertwine.

For me, my feelings towards romance are severely muddled by previous experiences with abuse. The strongest romantic feelings I’ve felt towards someone were directed towards a person who gaslit and isolated me. So, were those feelings really romance, or just brainwashed codependency?

I’m a long way out from sorting all that. In the moment, it felt like love. In retrospect… I have no clue.

All of this took me a very long time to figure out. I only realized I was on the asexual spectrum about a year after graduating college, and until that point, I just assumed I was heterosexual or possibly pansexual, because, well… what else could I be?

I had friends who were asexual, but I had incorrectly assumed that label translated to no sexual feelings whatsoever, which has never been accurate for me. Again, I feel drive and not attraction, but I didn’t yet know the difference.

I grew up with the heteronormative cultural expectation that I would find a sweetheart in high school or college and settle down with them as I grew into adulthood. This expectation was set in real life, as school colleagues were settling comfortably into that life path, but it was also set in media and entertainment.

Dashing and/or dorky heroes would often find some love interest and end their stories in a comfortable “happily ever after” with them. This was true in everything from the Disney movies of my childhood to the raunchy comedies available to me as a teenager, to, yes, video games.

As I moved through high school and college, thinking I was heterosexual but failing to comfortably settle into that “happily ever after,” I felt distraught. It felt like I had failed at something, like I couldn’t accomplish what so many of my peers had.

It was in that time of confusion and frustration that I played a lot of video games that prominently featured romance, among them the Mass Effect trilogy, Persona 3 and 4, and the visual novel Katawa Shoujo.

Mass Effect is a sweeping epic with an action movie’s idea of romance, and while my (first) Commander Shepard fell for the headstrong engineer Tali, each romantic plot trail feels like a supplement to the greater narrative of driving back the Reapers. And while the Persona games take time to focus on high school life, it takes a back seat to the other social elements and more fantastical plot driving the games. But Katawa Shoujo is smaller and more intimate, with grounded stakes focused entirely on romance.

The relationships in KS are more realistically portrayed, with conflicts, problems, and compromises arising between you and your partner. And playing it at age eighteen made me yearn for romance, yearn to be a part of this aspect of the human experience that so many other people my age had already discovered.

A part of that yearning still remains, even today, as I’ve come to terms with my asexuality. For many people, that is a part of “queerness:” being outside, estranged, from the heteronormative cultural narrative, and wishing they could participate, wondering if it would make them feel more whole as a human being.

But I know that I will likely never find that “wholeness” from a conventional romantic or sexual relationship. And you know what? That’s okay. Because I believe that that “wholeness” is a myth, at least for me.

If you’re reading this and you’re not asexual, this all may strike you as tragic or depressing, but it’s really not. Because for me, discovering all this has provided its own sort of “wholeness.” It’s helped me love and accept myself more completely. I’m more confident in who I am. I know what fulfills me, and I’m able to more accurately seek it out, find it, and revel in it.

And besides, the romantic fantasies of video games and movies are just that: fantasies. Even the most grounded depictions like those seen in Katawa Shoujo require truncation and quantification just to fit into the format of a computer program. The same goes for romantic movies and books.

My life is so much more than a “happily ever after” fairy tale, and that brings me so much joy. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

A Wishlist Recommendation

It’s only fair that I cap off this newsletter with a humorous, deconstructive parody of video game romance, appropriately titled I Just Want To Be Single!!

As you could probably surmise from the title, it’s a sort of anti-dating sim where you play as an ace/aro protagonist who is thirsted over by nearly everyone at their new school the moment they arrive, with the goal being to maintain friendships without letting them blow over into full-blown romance. It’s an over-the-top and charmingly funny setup and it’s executed as such.

I think it really touches on what I’ve mentioned earlier, regarding heteronormative societal expectations to find someone in high school to latch onto, marry someday, and start a nuclear family, and satirically exaggerates it to demonstrate how weird and comical that expectation actually is.

And you really feel for this protagonist, who earnestly expresses near the end of the game’s current demo how much they yearn for connection that doesn’t need to be romantic or sexual. I wish I were that confident in my own asexuality.

I Just Want To Be Single!! Season One is currently planned for release in early access on Windows PC via Steam on October 31.

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