I know the comic was a while ago now though it still disappointed me considering that it was for pride month. I feel as if blizzard knew exactly what they were doing when marketing Wuyang, marketing him with an aesthetic that strongly resonated with the queer audience and drawing on personality traits that have been historically associated with queer-coding to lead us on, then steering him towards a heterosexual romance. You might think that I’m just “feeding into stereotypes” or that “he could still be bisexual” though I feel that there was a clear correlation that wasn’t done for no reason as they were historically used as codes. Please consider this next time, this year’s Pride disappointed me a lot.
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Hi!
I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think it was ever intentional of Blizzard to suggest Wuyang was queer. However, I find it hard to believe that analysts and community managers weren’t aware of the perception a significant chunk of the fanbase, who are also minorities, had of him, and how they identified with the character. And if they did, just outright making canon that he’s not queer is still out of touch.
The best answer here would have been to not lock him into any romance or interest and leave the door open to speculation. Shutting the door on the face of the fans of a given character is never a good idea, and I can’t believe they decided to keep pushing the whole “Juno x Wuyang” thing after the initial backlash. Honestly, just stay away from shipping, please. Leave that to the fans.
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Hey, I actually agree with this a lot and is kinda what I wanted to get across. I feel that all ships should be left ambiguous and left open to different interpretations by players (I don’t mind it when they’re shipped with someone non-playable as much, though).
My view on this topic has changed as I’ve looked into it more and I definitely don’t think that he was fully intended to be queer but you could still argue that blizzard sort of knew what they were doing when giving him certain aesthetic qualities as they’re associated with queer men, and the team also must have known that the majority of his fan base is queer. I will admit though, a lot of the assumptions that people make about him purely based on his appearance are highly speculative.