Tracer being "gay". Made me feel a certain way. Alienated

It did came as a suprise when they announced that Tracer was gay back then. I used to relate a lot to this hero tbh, but that stopped when she was announced gay cause even though i’ve been told I look a lot like her. I am not gay at all.
This did made me sad back then cause she was my favorite and I can’t relate to her anymore knowing her design was meant hint she was tomboy.

What upsets me the most is that this just comes from a great marketing strategy by them. The cast is so diverse yea, but it’s just so hard to relate to anyone. And im talking story wise, there are people who care about this stuff. and if you’re just gonna say the typical “they are video games characters sexuality doesn’t matter” It’s a character trait dude, and characters are important to the overall story.

I just wish they would’ve chosen someone else. I think this diversity thing is mainly done so they try to make everyone have someone they can relate to. Oh you’re hispanic? SOMBRA oh you’re American? Mcree oh you’re Australian? Junkrat! Etc.etc.
What sickens me the most is people complaining when they do something with the character and now it’s just “our favorite gay character” Im just like ugh dude I just loved her cause i was able to relate so much. This alienated me so much tbh.
Don’t get me wrong i still love her design but…I just wished they would’ve gone with Zarya instead.
And also i just love how she can’t be sensual at all or will get poses removed from the game. I wish they would always announce this kind of stuff since the beginning of the character realese or never at all.

Tbh she’s quite adorable with emily and all. But i just wanted to share how it made me feel.

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Tbh there’s a lot of tbhs in your post

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haha so true. I’ll fix this, thanks

I wouldn’t say her design was meant to look gayish. People do code their outfits and hair to appear one way or another, and when it comes to Overwatch this is doubled down on- character designs are meant to reflect gameplay mechanics, backstory, etc. But I’d argue that the short hair wasn’t really any attempt to illustrate her sexuality. Instead, it’s more likely that having shorter hair is more conducive to her high speed potential, as the wider surface area of more cisnormative (the long hair women are generally told to have) hair could create more drag and slow her down. This can be seen in the Slipstream Origins skin, which depicts her in her fighter pilot outfit before gaining her time-controlling abilities, and in all skins afterwards chronologically. Her skin-tight suit, jacket, and Pulse-Pistol holsters (her little arm gauntlet thingies) are also built to maximise her aerodynamic potential, at least in theory.

It’s also easier to animate- long hair would require a more sophisticated physics engine to accommodate that long of a hairstyle moving so quickly. With D.va, her slow movement speed outside the mech allows her to retain her long hair and still make it look realistic and reliably non-buggy. Tracer moves at much higher speeds per second and in much less predictable ways, which would probably cause her hair to flip in crazy and unnatural patterns and overall reduce the aesthetic of her as a character.

The likelihood of her short hair being a device to convey her sexuality doesn’t really seem like it has any precedence either. Soldier: 76, for however lazily it was introduced, is confirmed to be gay, something that took people completely by surprise, given that Soldier doesn’t really have any visual signals or any backstory to communicate that to the audience. I’d say the reason why that reveal was widely panned was because Bastet is a vastly inferior story compared to Reunion and spent little time actually developing its characters, but I digress. It just seems like the Overwatch team doesn’t generally employ visual storytelling when it comes to communicating sexuality, something I greatly appreciate- while I greatly appreciate openly and visibly queer characters, characters who communicate it more subtly can also be great characters when written properly.

Ultimately, if you feel alienated by Tracer being “gay” (she is gay, I don’t know why that’s in quotes), I can’t really say anything other than it wasn’t intentional. Zarya, a character everyone has presumed is queer, has not been confirmed at all- she’s a pink-haired omnic-distrusting weight-lifting hunk all on her own. The characters intended to be relatable aren’t meant to do so purely on the basis of appearance- Lucio wasn’t popular with players of color because he looks like them, on the contrary he received a boost in popularity when he began speaking the language and got more lore based around Vishkar’s abuse of his home, meant to parallel real life instances of colonialism. In my own experience I visually have many similarities to Mercy, (white, blonde, thin, blue eyes, I even have some German ancestry in me as well) but as a trans woman I probably relate more to Ashe or Sombra, having absent parents and being forced to find a way to scrounge it out on my own and be who I am in spite of what I was. It’s story AND appearance, with emphasis on the former, that makes a character relatable.

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youll live lmao. u can still relate to a gay character - it isnt important to who she is as a person. she jsut happened to be buying a gift for her gf in the comics. she wasnt made to look gayish. im a lesbian myself, and not only is there not a gay look, but the stereotypical gay look is def not what tracer has. what she has is this spunky sleek look that fits her personality. gay ppl r different and everywhere. the team behind overwatch is incredibly diverse so youll see incredibly deverse characters bc thats life. if a spunky british white girl being gay is too much for you to relate to, theres other punky british white girl characters in media who are straight. ill just say, as a lesbian growing up, tracer was the first lesbian character i had ever seen. so if you wanna complain about alienation, think of about how every other group has felt for years.

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I actually showed her to some gay and bi friends a while ago. They all said she was coded gay. It looks like Blizz had that planned from the start.

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I’m sorry that you’re offended to be compared to and that you can’t relate to a gay person?? how is that anything but a personal problem.

She’s gay and you can still relate 2 her. whats stopping that. gay folks can say we relate to straight characters. we do it all the time. we’re all human at the end o the day.

this is a distinctly “you’ve got some underlying homophobia to go thru” issue, not a “aww why can’t a character I don’t relate to be the gay one”. examine why, exactly, her being gay is stopping u from relating to her.

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This.

OP, you not being able to relate to a character because she’s gay is something I’d advise you look deeply into and consider the reasons. LGBT people have been relating to straight and cis people this whole time and we survived. It’s not that difficult.

You’ve had the privilege of everybody being like you for you to identify with so far and you never learned how it feels to be truly alienated. At least when it comes to sexuality, I don’t know anything else about you so I can’t tell if you’ve experienced this in other ways. I know I have on the basis of gender, as female characters are awful in most media so I learned very early on how to relate to male characters and characters that do not in any way resemble me identity wise.

What you feel is not alienation, it’s underlying issues with your perception and acceptance of LGBT people. It’s all fixable however, if you’re willing to work on yourself.

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Please stop trash story discussion with threads about character sexuality, or this category should be renamed to “Sexuality discussion”

I’m a brazillian with japanese blood (not even a half, all family I descend from is japanese, but I was born in Brazil). I don’t relate neither to Lúcio, Genji or Hanzo. In fact the german man’s sense of protection or the zen robot’s roots to harmony are way closer to my heart. Even Baptiste was a hero that I simply play a lot since his release for liking his style, the way he thinks.
To relate to a character you don’t need to have the same roots, culture, sexuality. It’s more about their ideas and ideals.
The fact you “stopped relating to her” is a bit of homophobia.

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To me your post sounds like this example short story:
“You met woman on the last holiday. Since then you two are spending great time together by sporting, playing, watching etc. You became great friends. Then you get to know she’s lesbian and you get out her from your life”. The hurted woman is real or not, it’s sad.

If you were thinking, you will get girlfriend in this situation but then you were wrong? It’s okay, life isn’t easy. But you shouldn’t ruin the relationships you got on life road but accept and keep them and move forward.

Of course here it’s fictional character and you cannot get in relationship with her - I guess - but sexsuality isn’t everthing and shouldn’t be so much important, at best sexsuality, religion and politic should be the last things you think about. The most important are the same interested, ideas and ideals. These connect many people.

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Firstly, you should not feel bad because people now think you are gay when you are not. You should not let that upset you. I know how you feel but it is fiction and not real. If you let insecurities get to you over a fictional character, what else will? I know you know that it is dumb and I am not invalidating your feelings at all. I just want you to know that you are loved the way you are and should just “let it fly if it doesn’t apply” lol. Life is too short to worry about what others think. If you can’t “relate” to her? Fine! There are other characters that you might. Also, if you feel you can’t relate to her because she is LGBT, then ignore that because that is NOT what makes Tracer Tracer. When I see or hear “Tracer” I think of positivism, hyperactivity, laughing, and caring. There are more to a person that there sexuality.

If you want my personal opinion? Tracer should have been bi. Lesbian could have been Moira, Zarya, or even Brigitte maybe but because “stereotypes” exist, they try to avoid it. I feel indifferent. I also feel Soldier was not intended originally to be gay as a better fit I think would have been Lucio or whoever.

Michael Chu said you can ship/canon anything you want despite what he writes so if you want her to be straight? Go ahead. You want her bi? Sure. You like a certain ship despite canon? Go for it. He knows it does not change canon. To me, they made the top 2 Overwatch icons (Tracer is like the main hero and Soldier the second) LGBT for traction and marketing strategy for sure as there are many other great pics.

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Hello. I couldn’t answer to you due to my suspension in forums for this very post.

I just wanted to say it’s fair. And I do think lesbians need their think. But this things should be announced with their character since the beginning when released. Not after some of us think they can relate so much. And yes sexuality does matter when relating to a character.

Doesn’t that apply to literally anything then?

I can’t relate to characters with children, because I don’t have any. There goes my relation to Reaper :confused: Couldn’t they just tell me from the start he probs has kids?

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Omg thank you so much for this reply. So understanding. Yea she should’ve been bi. So we could all relate at least a little bit, i just wished it would’ve been since the beginning since all my friends say im “the tracer looking person” I just related so much with her. And that just made me drop a bit off her tbh. And yea just canon is what I like tbh. Not fan fics, cause well, that’s just it, a fan fic. I think canon is meant for how the character was designed and her story. I just wished it was announced sooner. Thank you so much for this kind reply. I wish everyone was like you.

I think you have some unconcious biases you need to address. While it does help to have a matching characteristic to relate to…especially if you don’t get to see yourself in characters often…

You shouldn’t stop relating to them the moment you discover they may be different than you in some ways too. Unless they are evil or something. Which Tracer is not.

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I think it’s opinion and perception, for me sexuality is important because it determines someone’s future, and overall bloodline and it’s also a trait. So call me as bias as you want. I don’t care. It’s how the revelation made me feel.

It’s okay for it to be important to you. It’s another matter entirely when you’re incapable of relating to someone else. It’s something you should be aware of and work on.

I’m sorry. I don’t like people telling me what to do, it’s me if sexuality is important to relate to someone. Thank you for your opinion tho.

I didn’t tell you what to do. You are obviously free to choose to lack empathy for your fellow man. I don’t think you should. But that is your right not to choose not to. Just as it’s my mine to point out how it’s bias towards your own self.

Nothing important about Tracer changed. It’s a shame you can’t see that.

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