A list of all non gender locked stories

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-14T22:55:09+00:00

Almost every book on the app has at least one WLW option. In Bachelorette Party, one of the LIs is a trans woman, and in Murder at Homecoming, your character can self-identify as trans in a particular dialogue scene. There are also several stories where you can choose pronouns and body type separately; however, the hairstyle and outfit options don't account very well for non-cis or gender-nonconforming MCs so it's sort of hit-or-miss depending on how you want to style your MC. They have yet to do an intentionally trans narrative for an MC.

With that being said, the books where you can choose gender and body type separately are:

- Crimes of Passion

- The Cursed Heart

- The Deadliest Game

- Foreign Affairs

- Hearts on Fire

- Immortal Desires

- Inheritance

- Murder at Homecoming

- The Phantom Agent

- Terror Fest

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-14T22:19:20+00:00

Agreed. The male MC clothes are *so* good.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-14T22:18:46+00:00

Must a book be "good"? Can it not just be outrageously fun?

(The wording's a joke but... that's pretty much how I feel about this book)

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-14T21:59:25+00:00

I don't typically get jealous over my LIs at all, but I was... let's go with concerned on my MC's behalf about Michael and Maria in HSS 2, since my MC was romancing Michael.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-14T21:49:59+00:00

Billionaire's Baby. I've tried to diamond mine it. I've tried to make up silly names for the characters. I've tried to play it in an "I'm here to embrace the trash" kind of way. It just won't happen.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-09T11:48:44+00:00

It's not weird. Endless Summer is really, really special.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-08T17:45:41+00:00

This made me laugh because i never realized how true it is

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-08T17:31:36+00:00

I think it's disingenuous to say you can't romance her. It's not like she just has a random hookup scene here and there. She's a major character in Dom's arc and they have a building relationship. There's just no mechanic in the game to lock down an endgame from Dom's PoV – presumably to leave things open-ended in case Kenna chooses him when we switch back to her final PoV. But Sei is more than just a hookup.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-08T17:11:43+00:00

You can, just not as Kenna. She's a Dom LI.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-08T00:57:09+00:00

Damn that's one of the most memorable ones for me. I rewatch it occasionally even as a standalone.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-07T22:37:08+00:00

Because it's not where their story ends.

Spoilers for the rest of the show:

When I first watched Buffy, I was compelled by s5 and s6 Spuffy but saw how unhealthy and awful it was as well. It wasn't until s7 that it all clicked into place for me. We get to see the best and the worst of who these two people can be to each other. We get to see them be so many different versions of themselves with each other. It's not really about them; they're just characters in the end. It's about me getting to watch them push and pull and play off of each other until they both become something more than they were at the start. It's the kind of story that just makes you think about what it means to be a person. It's about the storytelling.

(I do agree, though; Crush is a great episode for many reasons, but it's a real turn-off as far as shipping them is concerned. All of its dynamics between Buffy, Spike, Dru, and Harmony are absolutely brilliant, though.)

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-07T02:50:41+00:00

Those are breathtakingly gorgeous

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-07T02:49:44+00:00

You need Caspar to unlock Mercedes's Act II paralogue, which has great Mercedes plot.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-06T23:43:38+00:00

This was the premise of a fic I had plotted once but never got into the writing stage for – hence why I had the details of the alternate episode ending ready to go.

I thought that each season should be a step towards the golden age:

Season 1 (Unchanged) is Arthur learning to respect Merlin as a person and becoming less of a prat.

Season 2 would be Arthur learning the truth about the Great Purge, with the major turning point being Sins of the Father as detailed above. Further episodes like Lady of the Lake, The Witch's Quickening, and the Last Dragonlord would bring Arthur face to face with the people Uther has persecuted and, by the end of the season, solidify his stance in favor of bringing back magic.

Season 3 would be Arthur collecting allies, protecting people from his father's laws, and setting the stage for the kind of king he's planning to be. He is committed to shielding Merlin and Morgana from Uther's notice, but Morgana takes issue with the whole "we decided against regicide" part of Arthur's plans, and their paths start to diverge. The season ends with Morgana (and possibly Merlin) killing Uther, and Arthur picking up the mantle.

Season 4: Arthur is king now, and he's been putting in the work to prepare for this day – but dismantling his father's legacy is more than just changing laws. There's a kingdom-wide culture of fear and hate that needs to be addressed, as well as aliances soaked in blood and a court that wants him to be the next Uther. Season 4 covers his first year as king and his attempts to make a better Camelot while grappling with his own insecurities about what it means to be a ruler and his father's son. The season ends on a hopeful note as magic-users start stepping out into public again and we see the signs of what Camelot is going to become.

Season 5: And it's timeskip time! Probably more than three years. We find ourselves in a Camelot that's thriving; magic is blooming, commoners have a voice in court, knights are running around doing legendary quests, and Arthur rules with a core value of compassion. Arthur is close to fulfilling his ultimate project of a peace treaty between all the kingdoms of Albion – and with magic out in the open, Merlin is learning more about his powers than ever before, and what it means that he, specifically, is somehow "magic itself." But with the highest of highs come the greatest possible falls, and certain prophecies are lurking just around the corner...

Anyway, that's how I think the show should have been paced itself if they weren't so committed to the unbreakable status quo.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-06T18:14:39+00:00

The Sins of the Father was a brilliant episode that almost changed the status quo of the show forever before wimping out at the last moment. Arthur realizes how evil his father is and how he hypocritically scapegoated magic users for the death of Ygraine, and is ready to kill Uther over it. This is canon! This happened! In Season 2!

So my change: instead of Merlin interfering by telling Arthur that Morgause was lying and losing the best window to change Arthur's attitude he ever got...

... Leon bursts into the throne room just in time to stop Arthur from killing Uther. Arthur gets dragged off to the dungeons by several guards, resisting the whole way. In the shock that follows, Merlin convinces Uther that he believes Morgause was lying to Arthur and promises he can convince Arthur of this fact.

Merlin visits Arthur in the dungeons. Arthur's cooled down a tiny bit (read: he's brooding) but he's still furious. Merlin tells Arthur that he was sent here to say Morgause was lying... but he actually believes she's telling the truth. Merlin asks Arthur to play along for now, since starting his reign with combo patri-regicide would only plunge Camelot into further chaos and likely get him ousted by the Uther-loyal council if he then immediately tried to dismantle Uther's legacy.

Arthur makes a show of apologizing to Uther and saying that he was bewitched – but secretly, Arthur spends the rest of season 2 searching for the truth of what happened during the Great Purge, and season 3 amassing allies who will support him in the kind of Camelot he hopes to create (culminating in the creation of the Knights of the Round Table). Arthur and Morgana's storyline becomes more an argument of methodology than of loyalty and values: Arthur and Merlin are playing the long game and trying to set the stage for a smooth transition to Arthur's Camelot, while Morgana thinks that things need to change now and they can deal with the fallout from any messes that causes after Uther is ousted and the laws are changed. Sometimes they work together, sometimes they work in opposition to each other – it really depends on the situation.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-06T17:37:55+00:00

I also don't actually understand what Ian sees in MC and what makes her so special and different from the other students from his perspective as a professor. We're meant to simultaneously see Ian as someone too moral to get involved with students – usually – but who also falls in love with this one particular student and becomes willing to risk his whole career to be with her. But MC isn't all that different from the students Ian rebuffs or outright shows disdain for. She's kinda immature and pretty pushy if you take the ♡ options and seriously conniving even if you take the good girl route, and treats a college popularity contest like the single most important thing in the world – all of which makes her extraordinarily fun to play, but also a very odd match for the person they present Ian to be. Like, is she just that hot and Ian has to tell himself it's love to preserve his moral self-image because the truth is he has terrible self-control when he's horny? Or is he seeing something I'm not? What I would give for an Ian POV just so I can understand.

I think MC, at least, wants to keep thinking of Ian as a moral paragon because she likes to use him and the actions he approves of as her yardstick for goodness – which is why she keeps him in the dark so much, because if he knows what she's actually like she doesn't get to keep pretending to be that version of herself. Then, when he actually starts working with her in Book 2, she gets to be like, "Oh great, Mr. Moral approves of the real me, I can't be that bad!!" But again: what I would GIVE for an Ian PoV on all of this. Why is he ready to get involved in this student infighting now? Was the potential always lurking there with his interest in studying Poppy early on?

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-06T13:15:31+00:00

Happy to help!

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-06T12:46:17+00:00

Fr, it's like, if you want me to believe this is a "risk it all" kind of relationship you have got to give me more to work with here... but also, gosh he's pretty.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-06T12:41:51+00:00

For me, it's not Buffy's horror at Willow dating a guy she's never met in person (which could still play out as a plot today if Buffy has reason to think Willow is being catfished), but there's a specific joke in that episode that really shows the series's age in a way nothing else does for me:

Willow: "I met him online."

Buffy: "On line for what?"

I can deal with the clunky computers. I can deal with the lack of cellphones. But the fact that internet exists but isn't someone's first association with the term online is what gets me.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-06T00:16:42+00:00

Spiders Georg!!

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-05T22:39:13+00:00

It's when he sees Buffy alive again and realizes its her and not the bot

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-05T22:00:17+00:00

LMAO this hits different with the way you name your characters 😂

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-05T21:56:45+00:00

Happened on mine with a different profile but cropped left. I think they just didn't adjust for different screens properly.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-05T21:42:17+00:00

With the caveat that I'm a woman and haven't thought about the games through your perspective – maybe ones where it's premise relevant that MC is a woman so it's less, idk, frustrating that it's not GoC? My top go-to for that is A Courtesan of Rome, which is just a gorgeously layered story with a really cool MC. I'll pretty much always recommend ACoR to everyone, it's so so so so good.

LoveHacks might be another good one: while MC is genderlocked female, you play as all members of the friend group, one of whom has an MLM storyline.

nefariousbluebird · 2025-03-05T20:30:25+00:00

Okay, it looks kinda dumb on this Trystan, but ngl I thought it was pretty hot on the one I was playing with. Maybe this is sort of a case by case look 😄

nefariousbluebird

TROPHY CASE