There are exactly two romances in the game that end with full family scenes with interactable children that's I'm aware of.
That's why I said "family content" and not "pregnancy". Aileh getting pregnancy content would not be considered out of the way. Aileh and her kid getting the Kinu treatment is a direction for her character that is not at all suggested by her initial content.
Maybe I don't understand your point here, but it seems like semantics at best. The depth/length of a character's preg/family content is irrelevant when we're discussing character consistency and natural content for the character. I think most people would prefer that model over the nursery number generator, assuming the trade-off doesn't include one-off preg and Miko/Mai dilemmas.
It's a really, really easy position to defend. One is an active detriment to the future content a character gets, one isn't. Brienne takes content from Brint and will continue to do so in the future. Atugia having a sex scene with another person...doesn't do anything. We're not talking about a "route" even, which you could argue will affect future content; we're talking isolated sex scenes with no hint of a follow up.
It's an inconsistent position. Both situations take away development time for the character's original audience. Instead of Atugia + Brint we could've had an Atugia, or Atugia/PC scene, platonic or otherwise. Azzy + Liaden is a defined "route" (branch) that took up a significant portion of her content as a companion. You can opt out of A + L now, which is nice, but that still means it was wasted development time for a good chunk of her initial audience.
"No hint of a followup" is also odd when things like Elthara having threesomes turned into Elthara/NPC preg content, A + L turned into a whole branch, Atugia's talk about her oral skills turned into Arona + Atugia sexoff, Arona bedding Livrea might turn into Arona/Livrea content/preg, etc. When the writers get a foot in the door with stuff like this, it tends to develop into more of that content, even when it's "just casual sex."
If your position is that devs shouldn't introduce elements to a character that are not suggested by the characters initial content, you should be equally down on all instances of this.
I think, by a miracle, Brienne turned out to be a good character and addition to the game, but I know her existence affects the development of Brint's content and vice versa. It differs because ultimately it results in two separate entities. Brienne being submissive and monogamous doesn't
actually affect
Brint, he's still "Brint," and Brint's proclivities don't directly affect Brienne qualitatively, though of course they affect each others content in terms of quantity.
Caits preferences are explicit. That makes sense. Saying, say, Atugia isn't down for X thing when she's made zero show of a preference one way or the other is not at all the same thing.
You're attacking a strawman here, but I'll engage because I think it's interesting and contentious. You're correct, they are different; Cait's preferences are explicit, and Atugia's were/are implicit (kiss-less virgins are generally not down to immediately jump into polyamory or casual sex). Inferring things from text is normal when you're reading fiction; it makes for very dull reading if characters announce everything they're going to do before they do it, but you still expect their spontaneous action to make sense with their prior personality or motives. I think it's important to not get into headcanon, but Atugia being a kiss-less virgin is explicitly expressed, and I don't think people having expectations either in the form of cliché content or scenes/an arc showing her changing is unfair.
If this were real life, I'd agree that saying you know someone off of inferences is often dumb, but we're talking about fictional written characters, whose actions are entirely controlled by their author. Tolkien could've written a Gandalf romance into Return of the King, as Gandalf showed no explicit preferences for or against romance, but I'd still think it was a waste of time and very weird. You see something similar to this in the Hobbit movies with Galadriel, which was a platonic thing, and even that was a bit odd.
I've said the same thing since the beginning, and made the same points. If you think the discussion is pointless, then that's fine, but I don't really need anyone to weigh in on my motivations.
I never said anything about motivations, just your actions. I don't know or really care about your motivations.
But accusing someone of "bad faith" arguments tends to simply be a way to discredit someone without actually engaging.
I'd agree if I didn't engage with your points, but I do, so this makes no sense. You avoid engaging with people's
actual points very regularly which is why I said "it results in pointless discussion."
I'll probably stop here so we stop shitting up the thread.
