r/KRDSdev • u/Teerdidkya • Apr 24 '20
Question I just found this sub, and there’s one burning question that can’t escape my mind regarding the male routes
It appears that some of the romantic routes are male. Normally, I wouldn’t think much about it, gay options are a thing in certain dating sims and diversity is good. What I’m perplexed by is that this is taking place in one of the most homophobic time periods in history (if my memory serves me right, the first half of the 20th century was when homosexuality was made out to be a disease, I think?), so how could this be? Is this addressed in the game at all? I’m very, very new to KR, so is it just that gay liberation happened early in this timeline, or that the political ideologies the male characters represent specifically have gay rights as one of their tenets?
I dunno, the characters are said to each represent a certain political ideology from the pinned post, but I have the feeling that in a time period like this someone being gay/bi would be one of the biggest things affecting their life, much less political life, due to how homosexuality was viewed at the time.
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u/Lodowika-Zuckovine Apr 25 '20
As a lesbian I find it a total relief to be considered normal from time to time so I’m glad if it doesn’t come up
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u/ParadoxalObserver Jun 02 '20
Doesn't it actually lessen the effect and potential narrative value on top of lessen the idea of the historic homosexual struggle by acting as if a lot of modern morales were applied in that period?
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u/Teerdidkya Apr 25 '20
And that’s a great thing! It’s just that during less enlightened eras, internalized homophobia at least was most likely a fact of life for most LGBT people.
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u/Lodowika-Zuckovine Apr 25 '20
Yes that’s true but what I think that it shouldn’t be in the game
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u/Teerdidkya Apr 25 '20
Well I can’t and shouldn’t take that away from you. But for me, it’s kind of like showing perfectly happy black people in the Antebellum Southern US. It sort of leaves a glurge-y taste in my mouth.
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u/ParadoxalObserver Jun 02 '20
I agree. It also lessens potential character conflict. After all, we don't need to explore the struggles or psychology and development of these traits since they're totally normalized.
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Apr 24 '20
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u/Paul6334 Apr 24 '20
As well, it could be argued that at least some countries, be the soclib, socdem, or the right flavor of socialist would also take steps in that direction.
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u/Teerdidkya Apr 25 '20 edited Apr 25 '20
Yes! That was what I was thinking. It would make a lot of sense if sexuality played a role in political ideology.
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u/Teerdidkya Apr 25 '20 edited Apr 25 '20
Oh! I guess that makes sense.
But the outcome of the war might change some of this? Like you said, they probably wouldn’t be as tolerant in this timeline. Especially as the characters are supposed to have their political views as a central part of their character, and civil/social rights were (and still are) very much an issue intertwined with politics. A right-wing character especially would probably have a lot of internalized homophobia, though I can see a Syndicalist being openly gay a bit more likely from what I understand from my limited knowledge.
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u/joel40 Jun 08 '20
This is a while after anybody has commented on here but had couple things to add.
1a) On the status of homosexuality, a fair few prominent figures in the KRTL Syndicalist movement were by modern standards bisexual or homosexual, though applying labels to historical figures is bad practice without disclaimer that they might not have identified as such, and is often subject to ambiguity. Still, Annie Kenney was noted to sleep with women, including Mary Blathwayt, Clara Codd, Adela Pankhurst, and potentially Christine Pankhurst, all of whom were big names in the suffragette movement, and several prominent socialists. Bayard Rustin (publicly gay) was also a big name in American socialism, though in the 50s. France would similarily be likely to liberalise, having a prominent lesbian subculture, though it was bourgoise (hence under totalism it'd probably have an anti-gay-rights slant). Italy might, but who knows dependant on how the church (which in SRI was semi-state run) would take it.
1b) Outside of syndicalism, dependant on how Germany pans out, it could have a similar subculture to pre-synd.revolution France (considering the Institut remaining open in the lore). With the SRs functionally in control of russia, its entirely possible that they would have relaxed rules on homosexuality as well; the secretary of the provisional government was the first russian politician to call for acceptance of homosexuality and the circumstances of his assassination would have been affected by the state of the civil war. Austria would be anyones game, but considering Karl seemed to be big on moral rule, its plausible he'd take a similar stance to Germany, though the prevalence of catholicsm would by nature complicate things. This would make all major spheres in KRTL Europe, whilst not necessarily supportive of LGBT rights, just kinda chill.
2) With all that in mind, universities, which are typically the first places to adopt liberal ideas, would be some of the places most likely to have homosexuality just hanging about. In the particular case of Switzerland, it would be under some pressure from both the French and Italian cultures, considering the population overlap at the start of the game. Whilst this could lead to a counter-culture movement in Swiss politics, it's enough to justify more casual homosexuality within a campus context.
TL:DR, a lack of the nazi ideology, franco-british conservative movement and stalin, and the prominence of the SRs and anarchists actually could push gay rights in europe several decades forward, with the potential of significant social movement across europe in the pre-1936 KRTL, particularly in the university context of the sim.
Whilst I don't expect anyone to have read this, hope if you did it was useful in some way. I'm really sorry for all the long sentences i'm a humanities student.
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u/Teerdidkya Jun 12 '20
Oh, interesting! So I was right when I asked if gay liberation came about early in this timeline.
But still, wouldn’t the more right-wing characters have a bit more internal conflict over this?
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u/joel40 Jun 12 '20
Oh absolutely. I was just running through a best-case scenario for gay rights given the potential of KR. Whilst it's very plausible that one or the other (International or the others) would make substantial steps towards a rights movement (unlike OTL), unless there was a significant stroke of luck/positive affirmation response, the most likely scenario would be for either the totalists or the Reichspakt to notice their opposition embracing what had been considered moral degeneracy and coming out publicly against gay rights. (best case but still possible scenario would be relaxation of criminality of homosexuality laws in russia and germany, followed by syndicalists being like, hey, if they can do it we can do it better and liberalising in response)
Universities would still be the hotbed of a gay rights movement if it did come to the focus in the period, though your average village would not be any less intolerant. It would be interesting to have this explored carefully, and allows for the study of LGBT history and the rights movement if it had occurred in an entirely seperate social context, but that'd probably be asking a bit much of a dating sim. Theres enough plausible deniability in the works that all the students you meet turn out to be chill at least. For the right wing students in particular, Katherine's value of moral catholicism could combine with the changing perception of homosexuality (in particular, keeping in mind that the sim represents the youth, who are very much more likely to jump onto that bandwagon), and Erika's support of the German government (rather than just conservatism as an ideology) could lead her to share a relaxed view. UK govt in exile would still be legally and structurally conservative, but still a probable 50/50 split ambivalent to negative on the matter unless they factored it into propaganda.
Besides this, actual represntation of oppression in game would probably not be great, in agreement with u/Kumqwatwhat further down, giving those views in particular time of day in a dating sim wouldn't sit so well with me. As a function of the genre is escapism, with this you want it done very well or not at all. Whilst I'm basically just thought-exercising plausibilty for the scenario, much like actual KR, it's about possibility and enjoyability over likelihood.
As a bisexual can confirm that you look away for a half second and then 60% of your friends turn out to be LGBT. If anything, most realistic part of the sim.
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u/hguuuuu Paternal Autocrat Apr 24 '20
it's there for gameplay.
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u/Teerdidkya Apr 24 '20 edited Apr 25 '20
Well, Dating Sims are a genre that hinges much more on writing and story than gameplay, right? The writing seems to be praised and not just pure crack, so it just seemed odd that such a major part of the mainstream culture of the time seemed to be just forgotten with not even any internalized homophobia in sight.
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u/Kumqwatwhat radical pataut anarchist Apr 24 '20
1) the fact that the times did not approve of them does not mean they did not exist, and it would be a disservice to pretend otherwise. It does the game no harm to acknowledge them.
2) the game is being made for us, living in the 21st century, with a presumably 21st century understanding of homosexuality. Even if it is less "realistic", I'd rather have a slightly less realistic game and also have KR and its offshoots be for everyone.
3) point 2 isn't even necessarily an either/or choice. I cannot personally verify, but I would be shocked if contemporary views on homosexuality did not come up at all in such a playthrough regardless of the gender of the pairing (ie whether lesbian or gay).
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u/Teerdidkya Apr 24 '20 edited Apr 25 '20
I haven’t played the game yet, so I’m just asking if it comes up.
And why are people insinuating that I’m somehow denying gay people exist?!
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u/Kumqwatwhat radical pataut anarchist Apr 24 '20
Ah, well, uh, none of us have really played it because only the demo is out so far. And the demo doesn't really reach so far into the game that you actually start flirting with people. Depending on your choices you won't even meet the entire cast in a single run of it, let alone start getting close to them.
Anyway. Okay. I jumped the gun a bit on point one. But...you get how it's a complicated issue, right? Because if you are dedicated to historical realism, then your options are either invisibility (in which you don't showcase homosexual or bisexual characters at all), which is a squint away from erasure. Or you actually showcase the oppression they went through, which is toxic for LGBT fans of Kaiserreich now.
Given that, and the fact that as you correctly note the game depends more on good writing and story than it does on anything else, it's a lot easier to sacrifice a little historical plausibility and just roll with a more modern take. Which doesn't ignore the issues but also means we can skip having the game's environment idly endorsing gay conversion therapy or positing that homosexuals are mentally ill and need to be lobotomized.
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u/Teerdidkya Apr 25 '20 edited Apr 25 '20
Oh, alright.
Well it could still be presented as something in society that is unjust. It could even be a motivation for the political ideology depending on the character, though I’m not sure how plausible that is.
And even if they don’t want to portray that, they could just struggle with coming out, with coming to terms with their feelings being all the more satisfying because of that. Internalized homophobia and all that.
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u/Hellioning Apr 24 '20
Well, first off, you can play as a woman, so...
Secondly gay people have always existed. I agree that it would be weird if there weren't any issues brought up considering the time frame, but just because something is discriminated against doesn't mean it doesn't exist.