Talk:Across the Void/@comment-36398858-20181121163812/@comment-3452092-20181125205540

So first off what I meant by noticing their gender. Men and women are different. There are plenty of things that they might do the same, but might doesn't always mean it makes sense to people. Acknowledge that is is uncommon for girls to play football. Yes, girls play football. It is definitely a thing, but maybe Brian teases the football playing female MC about that while it doesn't come up for the male one, because that is a thing Brian would do. Basketball and baseball are less so, but outside of the MC and Emma if they played, how many girls played in High School Story? Same with guy cheerleaders. They certainly exist, but they are not the norm, so I could see Brian teasing a male MC about that. Neither of those things is wrong, but they are not the norm and it makes sense for certain characters to notice this. There was a slight acknowledgement of gender when you try to flirt with Brian and he tells a guy MC he's only into girls. And it seems like there is a similar thing with Max, somewhere.

In the play, female Rory as a knight. Okay that's not the norm. No characters I can think of that might actually point it out, but it's a gender difference that could potentially make a difference.

I am seriously curious what happens if the old MC is male and the new MC is female or vice versa. . . because I will be playing that way at some point. Do they acknowledge that they are changing the character from a prince to a princess or a princess to a prince? They do seem to notice gender more in that book, but do they acknowledge that?

You mentioned Hayden. Okay. Let's go with that. I would have loved to see one of Hayden's memories be something that they did as a "child" and say it was football and a female Hayden said this during the get to know you meal, "I was the only girl on the high school football team. The other girls didn't get it, but realy they didn't know what they they were missing. It was really fun." Or maybe it was ballet, an activity that certainly has men in it, but is still thought of mostly as a female activity and a male Hayden said something like this during said meal, "Ballet. I know. Not too many guys are involved in ballet, but there were three of us who were in classes together for years. It's by far the best way to exercise I have found and it's great fun to see the way people react after a performance." Also a great opportunity for Hayden to be upset later upon realizing these guys he thought he spent so much time with didn't actually exist.

Handsome Stranger and Beautiful Contestant don't really belong in this, because their genders are always the same, just their looks change. And my issues with them are not about their looks only the characters themselves. Likewise the prince/king is just an appearance change. I don't have an issue with that.

I'd actually love to have a love interest every once in a while who is gender specific interested verses playersexual as some on here call it. Someone one suggested that they could have done The Freshman series and had Zack be a love interest to a male MC while Kaitlyn was a love interest to a female MC. It would take a little bit of doing, but I think it would have totally been worthwhile to do something like that. I'm not saying for everybook, but it would be nice to have love interests who are only interested in your character if they are a specific gender some of the time.

This is an example of what I mean by noticing the genders of the characters. Yeah, saying the character is feeling perticularly male today would be ridiculous (unless it fits a sense of ridiculous in the character themselves, but that's an entirely different subject), but acknowledging that some things are different because they are male or they are female would be nice to see. I don't mean it should dominate the character. I'm looking for offhanded comments and characters who change how they react based off gender, not all characters and not all the time, just the characters who it makes sense for them to react that way.

Trust me, I know I am in the minority in enjoying this book. That's okay so long as the majority doesn't try and ruin it for those of us who do like it. And right now, things are kind of in limbo, so I don't know if they have or not.

And no, they really don't have to spend time with every love interest exclusively to make that work. What they have to do is make it make sense why the love interest should be part of the plot in a non love interest sort of way. For example:
 * Sol is the first officer. This should necessitate conversations between the MC and him. These actually do happen, though they would logically happen more often then they do.
 * Titania is the pilot. This does not necessitate as much interaction between her and the MC, but it does necessitate more than is shown, because the MC should be on the bridge way more.
 * Meridian is the medical officer. This could be used through the fact that they are in the middle of a warzone if people were getting injured. Since people are not, yes, they messed up there. I like the guy, but I am not shy about the fact that he doesn't work well as a love interest.
 * Kepler would make way more sense as a love interest for Eos, but since she's not as a security officer, maybe we still see her interacting with Eos . . . you know, ever. Sure it wouldn't help with her status as the MC's love interest, but the point is to make the LIs fit more into the plot which I am all for.
 * Zekei as a childhood friend of all of the siblings, he should be seeking them out. Maybe he's not close to Pax, so it makes sense for him to not seek her out, but it would make complete sense for him to seek out both Eos and the MC just as a friend. When there are problems with the passengers, it would make sense to have him helping out with that, make sure there are no security issues as a result and working with either Eos or MC to do this.
 * Lyra actually is one LI they seem to have done a decent job of keeping her relevant to the story and including her.
 * Deimos and Oberon should have, if not been brought in earlier, been at least mentioned earlier. Oberon easily could have been brought up in training between Eos and Zekei. Likewise as someone higher up for Eos and Zekei, Deimos would have made sense for them to bring up before she actually showed up.
 * Zeniah as a higher up for Pax should have been around far more, involved in things Pax was doing as an engineer, but we never really saw Pax working much as engineer, so that's a pity.
 * Holmes, amusingly makes no sense to have been so involved i Pax's life, but I think once he was in there it made sense for him to keep seeking her out. He needs friends and someone who doesn't see him as just a clutz. Like Lyra I think they did a ood job of including him in the story, although not such a good job of making it make sense.

I'm not blind to the fact that this could use work to make it better, but I still enjoy it as is. And I do think it has story. I just don't think it has the story that people are looking for and I think it is the slow kind of build story which I do enjoy, but clearly many people do not, which again, causes dislike in some (yes, I realize people dislike it for a variety of reasons).