Thought/question on this: Your reasoning is 100% fair, but one thing I would appreciate being tracked - how blushing is conveyed. Lighter skin tones visibly show flushing, while darker ones do not, so unless you intend to just, wholly, only use general/neutral descriptors like: 'their face warmed', I'd think linking something like that to skin color useful? (Even if it's not mentioned or an option in game, my MC is dark-skinned in my head. i.e. would like to avoid immersion breaking)
I don’t think I’ve used blushing so far but the intention is to keep it neutral as you suggested. I am a white person and may slip, I’ll be honest, but I do actually intend on keeping it to ‘you feel your face warm’ and if characters were to comment on this kind of situation, it would be based on other behavioural cues rather than a visual one. I did consider including skin tone for the blushing situation but I felt it would unnecessarily complicate things when it would be focused on MCs experience of it and not the other characters perspective.
Thank you for the honest answer; happy to see you're aware of it. It's a big irk seeing the 'universal red blush' in so many customizable MC games (if you can put as much care to pronouns, I feel you should also map things like this). I don't know if you use betas now or will in the future, but that's a great way of catching sensitivity issues you might otherwise miss. :)
So long as it's kept consistent, neutral descrips/behavioral cues are fine with me! Never had a problem with the ambiguity otherwise!
I just checked, there’s no blushing in chapter 1, but yes I always intended to ensure it was ambiguous regardless or face or skin colour. I already knew I’d have to be careful with people like Anwar and Scarlette as well, due to being dark-skinned, but honestly for most characters, even white ones, I’d rather focus on how they behave rather than an obvious cue like blushing, with a handful of exceptions for characters like Amber who wouldn’t often blush in any form so it would actually be notable if she does, if that makes sense. MC will be treated the same as dark skinned characters in terms of blushing because it’s easier to assume it’s not visible and give them other physical ways to show that moment.
I'm a HUGE body language fan (+ the challenge that can come with writing it), so I love this. I think it's incredibly easy to default to blushing when there are *So* many ways the body can visibly show embarrassment/shyness/etc.. All that to say: I'm looking forward to finding out the cast's unique cues depending on their personalities -- and seeing similar with my MC!