Honestly, this is a video game, i don’t play them to find someone to relate to, i play them to be someone i’m not. I get enough of myself in real life.
For Example: I love Symmetra as a character, but i’m not an indian woman, nor do i have autism.
There is actually not a single character on the roster that i can relate to on a personal level, but this does not bother me, because i don’t look for myself in characters.
I look for compelling characters that are unique and not forced. Characters that are more than one aspect of their being. Tracer is a gay character, but she’s not just gay, there’s more to her personality than just that.
You want a gay male character? Is he anything else? Is there anything important about him? Or is he just a walking rainbow that you can check off a list for representation? Forced representation isn’t good representation, these things have to come naturally.
Actually gay people have existed throughout time - and in great quantity. Just because your perception of them is that they didn’t exist or they were hidden or written out of history does not mean that they didn’t exist.
It’s like how people think there were no black people in Medieval times England, but the reality is that there were actually several wealthy land owners and successful Lords and Ladies that were black in that time period. Don’t ever forget that what you ‘know’ is simply what you’ve been told and taught more often than not, and it’s entirely possible that you were told wrong.
I mean who didn’t grow up hearing about how great Christopher Columbus was?
if Michael Chu said “Genji is gay” right now and nothing else changed, how is that any different than saying “Genji’s favorite color is green” or any other fact about the hero? It isnt. This is just a smokescreen “argument” people use to mask their own personal issues.
You had me until this… All people are subject to poor treatment at some time in their life. I can say that I went through a level of bullying that I would put on par with torture and regular torment. I wont get into all the details here but just because somebody is straight doesn’t mean they have had the world handed to them on a silver platter.
I agree with the premise that LGBT people are and have been mistreated terribly. I agree that it is good to have positive role models represent ALL type of people. Nevertheless we shouldn’t use our negative experiences to make sweeping generalizations about the rest of the population either.
We are all just people trying to make it in a difficult world.
Wanting to be represnted in arbitrary video games is a unhealthy habit to perpetuate.
It only feeds insecurity issues further and is, at best, a very temporary band aid fix that doesn’t help the real problem:
YOU need to accept yourself for who you are. Video game representation will not do it for you.
And frankly, people who are against diversity in video games aren’t bigots or racists or what ever. They’re just tired of it because its handled in such cringe inducing, ham fisted ways.
Most games and movies now days ruin movies and games with AWFUL handling of representation. They don’t make the representation digestable. They don’t make it feel organic. They make it so forced and out of place making it just all sorts of silly and cringey.
We, and I as a bi person, don’t want that to happen to Overwatch.
Do diversity, that’s fine. No one cares if a character is gay or bi, or black or Asian or what have you. But when you handle the diversity so poorly it becomes well worthy of complaints. Do it well, or don’t do it at all. Lately many games and movies have been failing to do it well.
I assume the same of you because homosexuality isn’t actually being removed from the gene pool of humans because it’s likely not something that exclusively occurs on alleles passed down like physical traits.
“Study.” You mean a cringe post for your buddies back on 4chan.
If you can name a time when heterosexuality was condemned by society and lead to the mistreatment of straight people as a collective, I will absolutely apologize.
W-wait where is there a bi character in the game? Did I miss something other than Tracer being a lesbian or did they come out and say someone else was specifically bi?
They were probably talking about the fact that no one gets bullied and hated BECAUSE they are straight. I’ve literally never seen a group of highschool bullies picking on a kid because he was straight, but I’ve seen plenty of kids getting their asses handed to them for even being percieved as gay, regardless of what they actually were themselves. And I don’t think that’s an abnormal experience, that’s… Pretty standard.
Most people are assumed straight until proven otherwise. It’s the baseline assumption- if we had a ‘blank’ assumption, we’d assume everyone was asexual until we were told that they were interested in the opposite or same gender. But that’s not how it goes, is it?
What does this mean, exactly? Does a character being gay make them OP? UP? Does writing in some footnotes that Tracer has a girlfriend suddenly make her pulse bomb do 100 less damage?
I am saying I don’t see a correlation.
Also, based on 100% personal experience, you absolutely need to soften your tone when in an lgbt thread, or you will get silenced for a week. It has happened to me a couple times now.
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are headed.”
-Zenyatta
They have like 50+ character concepts waiting to come to fruition? I’m certain they have the backstories of several already figured out, and a few of those might be what people want to see.
So just because some part of the community want this hero to be x gender, the rest will have to go with it? How about this? Make a full character that is LGBT instead of trying to force us who may have different vision on that hero to you, have to accept what you want.
I am perfectly fine if Blizzard makes a new hero like that, I would play him if he is cool but I don’t want my opinion get oppressed just because someone I don’t know want it. It’s not about gender. Equality comes with no extra privilege, being indifferent is not equal hate, I hang out with gay friends just fine irl.
I am sure the characters creating team would appreciate people to not forcing and bending their right to imagine and freedom in story writing.
