As a straight black guy, I DESPISE Representation rooted in corporatism. This tends to lead to shoehorning and Tokenism I.e. Soldiers gay reveal.
Corporations tend to only do representation that might be controversial when they’ve already got a safe foundation on the market. For now LGBTQ representation has to come after they’ve sold you on everything else about a character - especially in a demographic Like OW.
Think about, why has it taken 4 years to announce a Black female as a character? And I’m willing to bet they go for some double tokenism by making Sojourner Lesbian too.
So what your fighting against isn’t morality it’s amoral market representation. What you need is someone’s Identity to be represented in mannerisms and look instead of revealed months or years down the road when it’s now “safe”.
I didn’t say there was in overall numbers, there its about right, I was saying that beyond the current count would be mis-representative. I think I made it very clear what issue I did have with the form of representation. Not all representation is necessarily good or equal in context.
This is the OW forums not your own personal diary.
First of all, explain how the “LGBT” heroes in this game aren’t tokens. We know very little about Tracer’s girlfriend aside from the fact that she’s Tracer’s girlfriend. We have nothing about Soldier’s gay past except he was into a guy. Now maybe if Emily (Tracer’s girlfriend) had some back story or something to flesh her out or she was an important part of OW, then you’d have a point. But it’s been years and we really have nothing about Emily except she’s Tracer’s lesbian lover.
How does that not scream tokenism to you? It’s like an afterthought put in just to appease people and as someone who is gay, I’d rather not have it at all.
Yes, to appease people and this post and others are an example of why that was a bad idea. Because even when they do release LGBT heroes it’ll never be enough. Because there will always be someone whining about not being represented in game.
If you can’t understand or don’t care why people would rather not have characters sexuality shoehorned in for social points when the devs can’t even bother to keep their lore updated frequently enough - then leave the game alone.
Because once again, as a gay man, I’d much rather them add in lore that is important to Overwatch in GENERAL. You know, the whole game? I’d rather learn about what’s happening that is crucial to the lore and adds on to it, rather than learn something silly like Reaper had a gay experience in college and is bisexual.
You are absolutely correct. Adding more lgbt characters would result in overwatch overrepresenting the lgbt community.
I fear I misunderstood your problem. You said you found disproportionate representation distracting and annoying. Does that go for every individual piece of media or media on the whole?
And I agree, not all representation is good or equal in context. But we still need to include minority representation when we can and when it’s appropriate. That often doesn’t happen.
Theres no problem with them being LGBT. They are not using this as a gameplay feature. And i honestly like this little lore touches like when on Kings Row attack Tracer thinks about meeting with Emily but then rather focuses on the mission and in the OW2 cinematic that she had a picture of Emily at the control panel.
You knew full-well what you were doing when posting this thread. Blizzard reveals LGBTQ+ heroes as they please, contrary to how the rather entitled LGBTQ+ community gets things they want.
I’m gay, and I agree that they need representation. But I’m sick to death of companies jumping on the LGBT bandwagon, just because it’s the fashionable thing to do (that will also make them a LOT of money). An example was last year, or the year before in Aus around the time of Mardi gras; there was a company that started selling LGBT (Lettuce, Gauc, Bacon, Tomato) sandwiches. It was scummy.
Same goes for game developers who decide at the last minute that X character is gay for inclusivity reasons. Not saying that Blizzard have done this, but a lot of people felt that way about Soldier. I don’t want Devs adding this stuff into games unless they genuinely want LGBT representation in them. It’s shallow and sad to do it just because others are, and being seen as the only company that DIDNT do it would be bad for their image.
That was just a cute take on BLT sandwiches, dont be so cynical and backwards.
Soldier being gay was hinted on in christmas reflections comic back in 2016… They included lots of hints for him being LGBT from his backstory (few know about this btw) to his visual design elements.
Tracer wasn’t shoehorned in either, she wore one left-earring which is code for being gay.
Soldier also has an accessory that serves the same function, but I am not telling you that because you are clearly not in the know
