LGBT in Overwatch Mega(y)thread 🏳️‍🌈

Story Discussion
14290

i guess they left it open based on various interactions…hopefully either way the canon ending isnt iron bull dying.

14291

That elmo gif is a work of art

Also, I totally predicted the 76 reveal 11 months ago :wink:

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14292

Let’s tally some of the ridiculous posts I’ve seen so far:

“I don’t feel represented anymore”
“I feel it was too random”
“It needed to be foreshadowed”
“This game isn’t about sex”
“My head cannon is not happening so it’s wrong”
“Why not create a NEW character?”
“Blizzard is seeking attention”

I expected this when the reveal happened but, I didn’t expect such… such… such a lack of IQ and common sense.

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14293

My favourite:

“We know most of the world is straight, so why do they keep making characters gay?”

O RLY? You KNOW that do that? You just psychically ~know~ it? Or are you claiming to have some evidence that isn’t just a survey in which LGBT+ people lie about being straight because they fear the reprecussions? No? That’s what I thought.

So sick of hearing this debunked myth. Also hearing lots of:

  • all LGBT+ = gay
  • People assuming you can tell when someone’s gay or not
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14294

Don’t you just love it how it’s suddenly SO important for this game to be “realistic”? Meanwhile the gorilla scientist, a hamster operating a mech and a terrorist turning to smoke would like to say hello. But I guess that’s ok as long as they are not gay cuz that just doesn’t represent our reality man!

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14295

When I was going through some councilling years ago about liking other guys there was a thing I got taught called the 3 ‘i’

Indifference, ignorance, intolorance

They are the pillars of the kind of minds that are posting frequently recently. Not here in this thread because we are all lovely. I was taught that anyone harboring one of these 'i’s is not an ally. (Though I do find indifferent people okay because they just leave things the heck alone)

I just want to quickly say this because I’m stumbling upon venomous replies from our own community that are also making us look badly too. If youre angry and feel like you need to reply please please please take the moral highground and dont let that anger show.

I know its hard because ive seen some outrageously horrendous posts from people reacting negatively to recent news and its mind boggling how they are even still active forum users or even allowed in game with a mind functioning that way.

HOWEVER our unicorn blood runs through our veins as a symbol of unity, strength and faith in a better world. We cant choose our allies in the game, but we can choose our allies here and I’m glad I’m part of our little topic. :rainbow::rainbow::rainbow:

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14296

That’s a great point, people like to excuse more mild homophobia because they’re not out actually assaulting gay people but we can’t accept any of it, especially people that want to claim to be our friends and family while having those traits

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14297

Well said, this is why I’ve been staying away from the forums for the most part the past couple of days aside from the odd pithy reply concerning some of the really egregious indefensible stuff.

I have a lot of thoughts about the recent reveal and not all of them are positive but in the end I’m extremely happy the “multiple LGBT heroes” talking point was not just Blizzard paying lip service to the idea to keep LGBT people champing at the bit for an indeterminate amount of time, as well as them releasing lore under a new medium that should (hopefully) result in shorter production time on releases.

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14298

the only thing i see as negative about this is if soldier and tracer are all there is, nothing else. it’s not that im ungrateful, soldier is awesome and it was done well, but it would just mean more people telling us to stop whatever speculation or headcanons we have.
edit: i could probably word this better, but im exhausted at the moment of typing this.

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14299

My main sticking point is that I think there is something in the criticism that the gay male hero is also the one who is least in the position to actually eventually settle down and have a relationship/family, due to obligations and/or personal hangups. This much was lampshaded in the short story, so I don’t think that’s the route they’re going to take; however any conjectures on what might happen are just that as of now.

I’m also going to approach the angle with how Soldier’s sexuality is revealed with trepidation. The way it is framed still leaves the possibility open that Vincent will only exist to inject tragedy into the story via his death before anything substantial between them happens, and then the topic is never explored again. That would feel real cheap and I don’t think anyone would be happy with that arc of his backstory if that is how it ends.

Another smaller gripe I have is about the prose used in Bastet. It’s extremely stilted at times to the point where parts were honestly kind of hard to read. But that’s also just me being a bit of a prick if I’m being honest. God knows I’m not a stellar writer. :stuck_out_tongue:

Also in this criticism I feel like I should point out that I didn’t see it as disrespectful or anything like that.

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14300

I can only hope that they’ll not do Vincent dirty, and maybe even release his husband as a hero or something (that being REALLY far-fetched). But alas, I think it’s only convenient for them to never explore Soldier’s sexuality or his past with Vincent ever again, and it’s probably going to be completely irrelevant to the story and his characterization going further.

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14301

I kind of feel like the only purpose of Vincent is to be a “what if my life went differently” train of thought for soldier. I’m pretty certain that this is reflective of Ana too, they never really got a chance to be normal people. We’ve seen Jack as cold Soldier, a justice warrior without much humanity and I think this was a great way of stripping back the layers of that. Ironically “dying” is probably his first chance of being alive.

Buuut, as much as I love Soldier being a man of similar taste I kind of sense this is going down the Voltron route of us potentially never hearing from Vincent again. I would love him to have been some sort of field medic and be a part of Mercys story in someway since I got an inkling that everything mentioned is sort of linked in someway… OR maybe vincents new spouse is potentially one of the big villains. I will be very suprised if he is anything more than an artifact of Jack Morrison though.

Also I read some absolutely terrible stories and enjoy them, I enjoyed this and it didnt feel as shoehorned to me as I thought it was going to be. We got a lot of interesting information (off topic info) but tasty info :drooling_face:

14302

Well, they confirmed Vincent to be gay, which is weird as they didn’t do that with Emily, making me think that maybe, just MAYBE Vincent could have more room to grow as a character (which he is barely now) in the future, or at least be referenced.

Because Vincent doesn’t have much character, they can do basically anything they want with him, but I’m doubtful that that’s the route they’ll go. I was honestly thinking that maybe Vincent could be a journalist of sorts, and he’d get his hands on something really lore relevant, like, I don’t know, something astounding about the Shambali, in a good or a bad way, or any information that Overwatch would really need and appreciate.

And then there’s the fact that he is married, and it’s not like a child or two is out of the question. That’s at least two new characters they can use to give Vincent more plot relevancy instead of being a throwaway character whose point was to reveal Jack is gay.

So there’s a lot of potential, but whether they do something with that remains to be seen. We have an alleged happy gay male couple in the game, but we haven’t seen any of it. Kinda sucks.

But regardless of my moaning, it was some really good characterization for Jack, and made him more than just a dull career-obsessed cold commander.

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14303

I just realised that this is also weird because Emily actually appears in multiple panels, has spoken lines and is apparently not only an active girlfriend, but is very much aware of Tracer’s situation. Not that Tracer could hide that she’s a superhero, but Emily is invited to a Christmas dinner over at the Watchpoint, socialises with Winston and Athena which is kinda odd considering Overwatch is currently an illegal organisation and bringing Emily to their current HQ is potentially very dangerous.

So not giving a specification to Emily is weird, considering she’s much more prominent than Vincent.

I’d like to think this means Vincent might return, but I don’t want to be too hopeful. I’d also like to think we’ll see more of Emily and get a confirmation for her as well.

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14304

My cold pessimistic heart is kind of telling me that the reason Vincent was confirmed to be gay, is so that people won’t think that the family Reaper is talking is Vincent and his new wife. But I don’t know why they felt the need to do that because it would have just added to people making up their own theories, and they have never shied away from that.

And, well, also leaving Emily less confirmed gives the writers more freedom to write about her in the future I guess. We’ll see though. I’m sure we’ll get more of her, especially now that people are pretty much 100% accustomed to Emily.

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14305

did anyone actually ask chu if emily was lesbian or bi? i mean…i know people right away started asking about vincent. did anyone bother to ask or just assumed because of the page time?

14306

I don’t think anyone was rushing to ask about Vincent and his identity, but maybe I’m wrong. More people were focused on Jack (obviously) and whether the family Reaper was stalking is Vincent, which Chu probably wanted to debunk right then and there so he confirmed Vincent to be gay as well, not sure if that was really needed though if that was their intention. I mean if he wanted to debunk the whole ‘’ Reaper is stalking Vincent and his new family ‘’ he could’ve just said ‘’ no, that is not Vincent. ‘’

14307

No idea, honestly. I know people were asking for Tracer and I remember the heated debate over whether Tracer is lesbian or bi (some people were saying to not ship Tracer with men, which was immediately replied to by saying she could still be bi, which is fair). So Chu ended up clarifying that she’s a lesbian, but never mentioned anything about Emily.

With Jack and Vincent, it looks like he confirmed both men of his own volition. As Rot said, probably to debunk the thing about the family Reaper is watching (as many people asked whether or not that’s Vincent).

14308

well it sure seemed like 20 minutes after the bastet short came out there was a confirming tweet that both were gay…so…i’d say people rushed to ask.

so i’m again wondering if anyone asked about emily. you’re putting a lot of stock into the confirmation being important to the future (when it’s probably not) by saying emily wasn’t ever confirmed. that’s why i asked if anyone bothered to ask about emily or we all just collectively assumed she was a lesbian because tracer is one.

14309

You know, it’s fine if you are good with Vincent being a useless character who has no importance in anything except being a gay reveal plot device. I don’t want that, so can you just drop it, I already acknowledged that they might never do anything with Vincent, which I 10000% disagree with nevertheless. But I’m going to remain hopeful and keep the discussion about what Vincent could be alive, because THIS IS LGBT IN OVERWATCH MEGA THREAD, and VINCENT, is one of the only confirmed LGBT characters in the lore.