On the matter of same-sex lovers (is this even an option or are we talking about this while Cailín is rolling her eyes? oh well)
I was giving this some thought earlier when thinking up my own variation on the Lovers, and I decided that when it came time for recruitment I would say that it's possible though not guarunteed that one or more of my Lover Duos would be of the same sex. I was going to say that if anyone objected to being paired as a Lover with a member of the same sex, they had to PM me with their opinion, and not voice it on the game thread OR I WOULD BE MOST DISPLEASED!!!
The idea behind this is that, first and foremost, it prevents people from being able to quickily and easily narrow down who can and cannot be Lovers. Allowing players to privately PM the Mod is sort of like Dueling Wizards in reverse. Instead of private volunteering to be a Wizard, private un-volunteering to be a same-sex Lover.
And, as Gurthang points out, it's not like the mod is going to be writing steamy erotica anyway. The most we can expect is tears over the corpse and matching graves to go with those embroided towels.
But, you all had to go blasting your opinions all over the place without asking MY OPiNION FIRST AND I AM MOST DISPLEASED!!!
On other matters:
Deadline, whatever.
No retractables. It just means that if you aren't around at the deadline, your vote doesn't count. That's pretty much how I see it. *shrug*