Indigo wrote:I wasn't going to weigh in on this but honestly I'm really uncomfortable with the insistence on charging extra for same-gender couples when it's possible to handle the potion another way. Regardless of the intent it is essentially a gay tax? If we do have to have the potions as an explanation, fine, but I would much rather it be explained as included in the normal breeding fee than have to pay an extra fee for breeding characters of the same gender for no reason except that they're the same gender, you know?
To put it bluntly, yeah, this.
Before, I decided not to get my personal views involved and just work solely on the context of the lore issue, but the tax on non-hetero breedings leaves a sour taste. In most virtual pet websites, same gender couples aren't allowed to breed at all whatsoever (which is honestly kind of silly because they're pixels for one thing and for another thing not all gay couples are unable to have children--as a few have said, this completely tramples the idea of transgender folk). On Evelon, you have to
pay, which is... still strange, from a moral standpoint.
Re: "the gay tax," we have enough KS sinks and though the potions are a cool concept, they only really matter when dealing with cisgender, homosexual breedings. Which again, unless we have some kind of odd permanent "gender database" for all characters ever, is very hard to determine on a case by case basis. And besides that, forcing a user to describe their virtual colorful pixel character's
sexual anatomy is a little bit strange, too (this is more on the side of nonbinary / intersex characters). Which is why I think it should be eradicated money-wise, so that none of the gender database stuff matters, and it's far less of a headache to anyone.
Don't get me wrong, I totally understand that paying to be able to breed same gender is better than not being able to at all. But if we're sticking to this LLP / ELE idea
solely on the fact that "they've always been there," (which is evident in that the idea was brought up to sell them for 5 KS, the price of posting in the Potions Brewery--i.e.
literally free), then I have to disagree. If something is no longer necessary, I think we need to recognize as a community that it's no longer necessary. And if the vast vast majority are on the side of abolishing the potions, it doesn't seem right to deny them. It's not the price that users are upset about, it's the principle of the thing. No matter how cheap the potions are, it still stands that they exist, and their existence implies disadvantage to those who have non-hetero-non-cis characters that they want to breed.
That, and creating more work for the mods (gender database, sending out these very commonly used potions, and lord forbid keeping track of 5 KS transactions) seems counterproductive, when simply abolishing the fee for the potions would create FAR less work and effort. And, it would please those users (again... I'm seeing a majority) who want this to happen.
So. Keep the potion as a concept, for users who actually want to use it in their RPs. Keep it as part of the lore for when two creatures of the same gender want to breed. But don't make it cost anything and don't make it required. It preserves lore, and it makes the userbase happy--so it's honestly a win-win situation.
This isn't meant as an attack on anyone's views. I'm simply presenting my own, and my own common sense about the subject.