About soldier 76 sexual orientation

General Discussion
1

I am mostly a lurker in the forums and usually do not post unless i really feel the need to, and this is the case.
Let me clarify from the start that my english isn’t the best and my intention is to offend nobody and only clarify why a lot of people are displeased with soldier 76 being hinted at being gay.
I believe the issue behind it all is the feeling of “betrayal” we felt when reading the comic and the fact that it was a rather “artifact” way of introducing the subject that’s upsetting a lot of folks.
Let me explain these two points in detail:
As a community that is fond of the game characters and gets little bits of lore and mostly relies on the character’s attitude in game to get a feel for their personality, we cannot help but form an image in our mind of what a character “has to be” for us, being it an image reflective of reality or not.
When the devs shed some light on that personality and it doesn’t conform to the image we depicted in our mind we suddenly get a feeling of “betrayal” (i believe that is just human nature, not anybody’s fault). And that can apply to a character’s sexual orientation, religion or personal trait. (What if they suddenly revealed that Mercy is not the gentle medic we tought it was but instead was evil?)
Of course there are homophobic people but i want to believe they are just a little minority.
So what a lot of people don’t understand about the rage generate by these reveals is that people are not angry because a character is gay, but because it wasn’t presented in a way that could please the public.
I am pretty sure little to no people would have a problem if they made a chracter and declared he was gay from the beginning, why? Because we wouldn’t have time to make that “virtual image” in our mind about that character.
Hell, they could make a stereotype character called Diego Fernandez with a sombrero and big mustaches that throws maracas at enemies and say he was gay and i wouldn’t care as long as they were clear about it from the beginning. (I would actually love a character like that, please papa Jeff?)
On to point number 2:
People criticize the sloppy writing on these reveals but that falls into the personal preference category.
Personally i didn’t mind tracer having a girlfriend at all, it was a story all about her having to buy a gift for her and it didn’t feel “forced” to me.
On the contrary, soldier is just a little side note inside of ANA comic as if to say: “Oh, btw soldier is gay”. It felt forced and meaningless to the story’s dept. This has nothing to do about it being subtle or not, but more about it being “out of place”.
That being said, i hope i didn’t offend anyone, it wasn’t my intention from the beginning and we can just hope that devs can learn from their mistake and that we can be more open-minded as a community.

TLDR:
It’s nobody’s fault if ppl are upset, they should just say this stuff from the beginning so ppl can’t have previous misconceptions about a character.

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I don’t think they should have said it right away.
It’s like telling the end of the story without even getting to the middle it.

There is a time for everything, spoiling everything right at the beginning doesn’t make sense.

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They shouldnt have to make him ‘as gay from the beginning’. He has always been gay - it just was never confirmed either way. I loathe that queer characters are introduced as queer straight away.

People dont introduce themselves as hi im straight/gay irl - so why should a character.

People made an assumption that was wrong, there is nothing wrong with not explicitly stating sexuality from day one

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No hints Mr Chu confirmed it :stuck_out_tongue:

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They told us in 2015 and 2016 (that’s 3-4 years ago) that multiple heroes in the game are LGBT. This means base heroes. This means more than Tracer and Soldier.

It’s not new. It’s not random. They didn’t turn him gay to please anyone. He always was.

:upside_down_face:

Michael Chu in 2016
Like we said, it’s very important for us to have diversity and inclusiveness of all types, and that includes LGBT characters. There are definitely LGBT heroes [in Overwatch] — that’s multiple heroes.

It’s a decision that we make when we’re developing these heroes early on. We want the stories about characters relationships — and not just romantic, but familial relationships and stuff like that — to come out in the course of stories that we feel really do them justice.

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