2) Vivienne, as a black woman, not being a LI:
I get that some people are disappointed. That's fair--she's pretty awesome, and could have made for an interesting romance if she had been concepted for one. Considering that one could also make an argument about a black woman being present in the game solely to be a fetishized sex object (as if no-one ever made this argument about Isabela?), or that this brings up awkward discussions about skin color vis à vis Josephine, I'm not sure this is a good road to go down. I would hope a character could make for great representation in the game, and do so by being a great character and not solely by whether or not they're available to be romanced, and that this will be evident once someone plays.
To be quite frank, while I love Isabela, she does fall into the Jezebel stereotype that is basically in the top 3 of racist stereotypes for black women. The hyper-sexualized black woman stereotype also has horrific history as a way to justify the very high amount of rape black women experienced at the hands of white men during slavery. And the stereotype still persists today and causes massive damage, so it doesn't surprise me that some people made that argument as it is a rather (for lack of better word) sensitive area.
I do think you and others are missing the point in regards to Viv and race to an extent. Going by what we know of Viv, she is a strong independent black woman, who is ambitious, have goals that she is working hard to reach and she likes to look fabulous. A lot of these things fall into stereotypical traits. If you go into circles where black women discuss these traits/stereotype, what they say very often they would want to see in order to humanize these characters and tear apart the stereotype, is allowing her/them to be vulnerable(!), shown as worthy of love/desirable and showing/receiving affection. And these aspects are very often presented in a romantic context. This partly relates to that this stereotype is often default single, and particularly never shown to be open, affectionate or vulnerable with a romantic partner.
Furthermore while you have the Jezebel as the hypersexual, another very widely spread stereotype is The Mammy who is basically treated as asexual. There is no in between here. "At best" you got the Sapphire who nags and nags and emasculates her husband and puts everybody down. That has now partly morphed into the "Angry Black Woman" and what all of these common stereotypes share, is an utter lack of positive romantic relationships, which also not so subtly suggests that black women in general are not good romantic partners or even potential ones.
So it does not boil down in "wanting to bone" her as some might think. It is simply that the path with most potential to humanize and flip the bird to those stereotypical traits lie in the romantic path. And it loses out even more because romance is done from the player's perspective. So you also lose out on many people (potentially) running into this stereotype, and then being an interactive part in seeing the stereotype fall apart. Lastly this is not related to Josephine remotely who has a different personality and does not seemingly present those stereotypical traits nor situation.
The whole arm-flailing about Vivienne status as non-LI and accusations of racism has come from ridiculous to downright disgusting. I've seen argument that, brought to the logical end result in Viv HAVING to be bonable because she's black, and THAT is not racist ?
I think you are misunderstanding this matter. Several of the traits Viv seems to have are part of some rather stereotypical ones. They most easy and preferred way (as expressed by first and foremost black women) to deconstruct or tear those down these, is by having her in a romantic relationship (in the case of this game, it would be as a LI since any relationship she would be in with another NPC would be 99% in off-screen land). People aren’t pulling these conclusions out of their asses. The posters I seen express disappointment over this loss, are obviously familiar with these stereotypical traits and discussions surrounding them. I think misunderstandings are arising because some people are not familiar with these issues (heck in another thread someone said that they don't even believe these things are stereotypical nor a problem because they don't see them. That is despite that if you spend 20 secs on google looking, you will stumble across lots of information about this easily).
The problem is that successful black women in the media are usually depicted as "Too strong for a man." and somehow immune to love and affection to the point of coming across just as manly as any man. All too often white women are the beautiful damsel worthy of love and adortion. So I can understand white females being proud of being shown as career minded, focused, successful, and without a man. But for black women it's nearly the opposite. It's not to say that black women do not like those depictions as well... I guess the best way to describe it is that white women are often shown as the epitome of femininity and a lot of that has to do with romance and family whereas black women are usually the antithesis of that. I'm not sure if this is what the poster means, but that's my interpretation of what I see in the media.
And no BioW is not wrong for not making Viv a romance option. I don't think anyone is saying they are wrong. But it would have been really nice if she was romancable. Especially since we don't see a lot of dark skinned African featured women in romances in the media.
I can not like this post enough. Black women and white women have some issues in common but others they do not when it comes to representation in the media, and you articulated one of them quite beautifully.
To end this big post, would just like to say I do not think anyone is calling the action itself of excluding Viv as a LI racist. Some are just expressing concerns and talking about what could had been and how it would had been great from the perspective of race.
*small disclaimer that I am aware we are going by limited information and impressions formed from it.
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