this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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I personally don't understand the whole thing of a fictional character in a video game where there is absolutely no romance anywhere having a preference. I don't care whether my character in a game like Borderlands is straight, gay, lesbian, or anything in between so long as I can pop the heads off my enemies.
Because a lot of games have a story of some sort and traits can help flesh out a character?
Okay, but then leave it ambiguous and let people think of the character whatever they want. It doesn't matter if doomguy was gay, it matters that he slays
And then of the characters significant other is important? Like they complained about Spimer-Man 2, despite the playable characters not even being gay. We know that because we know who they are after.
It Takes Two. Me and my boyfriend played it. Beautiful game. Loved it. Plan to wait a few years and play it with him again. It's about a straight couple. I can't imagine how that game would work if we didn't know that. Like I guess we could keep stretching the argument to "Well they could be bi", I guess. We don't need to know that. But it kind of helps to know they're married to know the story. Otherwise it's gonna get weird with the kid involved.
We don't have to try and out progressive everyone for everything. A story can have a romance and we can see the romance and we can know who they're dating and we can know they're sexuality. None of this is the issue.
Your example would make sense in Doom. Sure. I've literally never seen anyone ask for it in doom. It's a terrible example because it's not that kind of game.
But for many games where the story is actually a big part, and not for games like Doom where the story really doesn't matter, it's fine. We can still celebrate love in really any shape or form(thats not harmful). If a game wants to avoid it, thats also fine. Once again, not arguing every game needs it. But if that's the story, that's the story, and it seems pointless to be angry that you know who a character is dating.
The movement for queer acceptance isn't for people to be hush hush and for us to make the closet bigger to invite straight people in. It's to get people out.
There's 2 problems with that
LGBT people deserve explicit representation as much as cishet people do, and cishet representation is all over media
Even if there's a LGBT coded character people will fight to death to say that they're actually very straight and that the degenerates are attacking them personally
Deserve how? I might be too simple to understand.
The ratio of representation is off, because the ratio of clientele is off.
When the demand grows, demand from actual paying customers, the representation will rise. Get more diverse people playing and creating games, and you'll get more diverse games.
Forcing representation has never helped any group, ever.
What makes you think it's forced and not LGBT creators creating or reinterpretating the characters?
What makes you think that LGBT people aren't consuming video games? The indie game scene is gay as fuck.
Why do I think that? Because that's how a capitalist market works.
Demand creates potential value. And no game developer would leave potential value untapped.
If there were a few really bestselling LGBT games, others would hop on the wagon, the market will get saturated for a while, and then it levels out a bit and some good concepts remain.
I don't necessarily disagree, but my question would be how to quantify the number of LGBT characters/games. If we assume LGBT people comprise about 10% of the population, we would expect about 10% of the content should reflect that perspective/experience. To argue that LGBT content should be actively encouraged and expanded, one would have to demonstrate some kind of data regarding the relative prevalence of LGBT content, no?
Or is that point moot, because you believe it's a desirable outcome to have an inflated media presence due to the fact that the LGBT community is a minority? I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that either, but it's a very different argument than fighting for equal representation.
I will not rest until all the characters are gay and you will not stop me
In all seriousness, this is a non issue and idk why you're trying to do some weird gay ratio calculus
It seems to me that you're the one doing some weird gay ratio calculus. As far as I'm concerned, there is plenty of LGBT representation in video games and LGBT creators and consumers are perfectly able to create and consume all sorts of content that suits their sexual preferences. Sexuality can be emphasized or it can be minimized, depending on the individual preferences of the creators and consumers.
But you think that this state of affairs is problematic, and that we need to be making a strong effort to make sure that video game characters are explicitly stated to be LGBT as much as possible. Feels pretty egocentric; your obsession with having characters in media reflect your own traits would seem to indicate a difficulty empathizing with people from other groups with different experiences.
I just made the following characters gay and/or trans
The Riddler
Crash Bandicoot
All of the characters of Kingdom Hearts
Don Lino from Shark Tale
Your mother
Isaacs mother from The Binding of Isaac
Ness' mother from EarthBound
I will continue and you cannot stop me.
You can have whatever headcanon you like, but imagining that fictional characters are gay and getting angry when others don't indulge your fantasy doesn't seem like the most enjoyable activity. Just let everyone interpret art however they want. Thank you for your cooperation.
You are now gay
Always has been
They deserve it, because they exist.
They aren't doing anything wrong by existing.
So developers should not have their creative freedom of using non-cis characters in their stoies taken away.
That's an interesting one because I actually always headcannon doom guy as gay ever since I was a kid and it was just being silly, always pictured him as a badass marine that loves sucking cock and he's fighting his way to hell because his bf died and was sent there.
Duke Nukem on the other hand was explicitly hetro which is fun, I would have also enjoyed in a different game a character like the duke who was aggressively homosexual or even better a good representation of a ego obsessed badass power bottom that has all sorts of fun quips like 'I'm here to suck cock and kick ass, and I already drained everyone's balls...' it would be silly, fun, and we could have lots of shots of his toned butt and stuff... But no, thirty years later and people are still scared of fun. Sad.
:::
Couldn't he slay more fabulously though, if he was gay?
He killed demons with a chainsaw, the man has style