Soooo We're Finally Not Going To Dance Around Character Orentation
Saw the twitter message and I've got to say I'm pretty happy. I know a lot of people will be bothered or question why explicitly saying what orientation survivors or killers are but it means a lot to me. I grew up in one of the last generations of people where being gay wasn't ok, while im more confident in saying im bi now for a long time I thought I was exclusively gay. This meant a lot of targeted harrasment in school and even caused me to be beaten and choked out because of it on the school bus. While I had a parent who told me she was happy for me with whatever I decided would make me happy I still was in a world that mostly hated me. The world is different now, acceptance is no longer the oddity but the norm. While many people still despise and outright hate LGBTQ+ members there are many many more who don't and support us and treat us like we are people. I'm glad behavior is finally ready to do that.
Being able to see and identify with characters who are like me and share one of the most intimate aspects of my life is one of the best joys I can find. I can finally say "yeah I want to be like that character" or "that character is like me and has similar struggles."
Thank You
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I just hope the characters that aren't straight doesn't have that single thing be their main character plot in the Tomes & character bio.
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That's good your happy with this mate 👍 sounds like this means a lot to you so it's good that it makes you happy. Sorry for your tough times.
Will say though that I hope they tell the orientation of everyone. Hope they just don't tell the orientation of the gay survivors/killers.
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@CashelP14 I completely agree. Representation is only good if everyone is represented. if you exclude an orientation even if that orientation is the majority than you're no better than you were when you were silent on the subject.
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Context: https://twitter.com/DeadByBHVR/status/1271526607828779009
This is definitely going to happen though.
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Its Jusy going to result in shoe horning for cheap sales pitches..if it was made part of the character from the beginning then whatever..but it wont be..so itll just feel like a stamp
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Stop giving your life story. I can understand representation to a point, but if you're that over joyed over a video game character being gay when their sole purpose is to escape a trial, you probably need to find better role models.
What's more frustrating are people who hint at or outright say, 'If you don't have representation of X community, you don't support said community'. Which is basically what you said when Behavior's focus at the time was on creating a fun and competitive game for everyone to enjoy. Behavior's initial idea of leaving it open to interpretation was that it didn't matter what your sexuality was. You're still a human being and having a preference or skin color or gender doesn't make you any less of a human being. People can still support you without shouting it from the roof tops.
I'm not angry at you, good for you for being happy. It's this general idea that people get that personally just annoys me because it's almost ridiculous that people have to do this to feel some "normal".
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I hope they dont make David gay just because people _want_him to be. I hope if hes gay its cause he actually is gay...and not some throwaway trinket towards fans.🌈
That said Claud strikes me as asexual. I wonder.....
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Amen!
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To be fair that happens with every character lore, Claudettes struggles with school, Jane's discrimination, Huntress watching the soldiers etc.
However I welcome this new change. Most of the characters are a blank canvas up to this point so I don't see any harm in doing this, it's not like they are retconing any lore. Besides, no matter how you approach LGBT topics people on the internet are going to complain about it. For reference see the Last of Us 2 controversy.
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little weird to tell me what I should be happy about. Also if you want to hear my whole life story I can start on my book and give you a copy, your obviously my biggest fan. As for saying behavior didn't support me or LGBTQ+ I never said that. Youre twisting my words. Im simply stating im happy that they are ready to be vocal about it and not only that but ready to write about sexual orientation.
Its also weird you mention role models. I never said they were going to be role models to me but its nice to be able to say "that person is like me." Also the concept of role models was originally boiled into fiction instead of reality. Superman is an American icon that is suppose to be a role model for what we as people should stand for. super heroes are our versions of greek gods and all that. Fictional characters are made and can be made to see as to what we should be and act like and what we shouldn't act like. fiction mirrors reality.
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This is technically towards both of you but for different reasons:
Good news is that David is confirmed to have a female ex in his archives. In Memory 342 it says "His ex has moved on and she doesn't want to see his face."
The bad news is that I don't care about canon and he will always be a gay icon in my heart.
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They're fictional characters, they're whatever the devs say they are.
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This is a reductive way of looking at it.
People see characters in various pieces of media who are non-hetero, and they go "Wow, that non-hetero character's non-heteroness seems to be their singular character trait! Man, I wish they would stop pushing this NON-HETERO AGENDA on us!"
The curse of marginalized groups is that their marginalized status has to be called out in order to shine a light on the problem that exists, to acknowledge the thing that they struggle with. You aren't going to see a character bio that calls out a character's proud straight-ness because that's the "default" and is -- relatively speaking -- unremarkable. It would be amazing to live in a world where people of all colors and orientations were treated with the same social fairness and respect, and for all of this to be -- relatively speaking -- unremarkable in terms of the factors that make up our individual human identities.
But that isn't the case, and you can't call attention to it without calling attention to it. This is the crux of what is unfolding in the world right now.
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They wont touch orientation of any character because:
1-I dont really think Entity mind you to be gay, bi, or any orientation.
2- Surely it would make game to change the tag it haves about age recomendation. Thats why we dont have childs in game.
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Are we also going to get political affiliations too? Some might say it's not needed but we want to be diverse, right?
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@Primalux135 sorry to say buddy but you should probably look at their twitter because they just publicly said that they will no longer be avoiding talking about character sexual orientation. Also the game rating wont change because of someone sexual orientation that's not a thing.
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Well for me its fine I thought they avoid childs, gore stuff (specially mori), sexual things due to game tag 🤷🏻♂️
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Trapper is gay, Dwight likes trains and David only loves himself. Integrating sexual orientations into a "horror" game is a bit awkward. I don't get it, but I don't have to, right?
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you can talk about orientation without talking about explicit sex.
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Honestly, I think now's a good time for this. Their Twitter post made me think about things in a different light to before - because the Archives let us deep dive into parts of the characters' lives, they're no longer blank self-inserts to project ourselves onto (I say as a Bill main on survivor when he has a clear lore, but ah well). Makes it a good time to reassess where the characters lie on all sorts of things because they've chosen to go deeper into what makes them, well, them. I'm fully supportive of this, and am curious to see if any of my personal thoughts on characters wind up being true.
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Is it though? since most American horror icons have sex very heavily ingrained into their films. Friday the Thirteenth, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, ect ect. I mean there is a reason why the trope is that the virgin girl is the final survivor in horror films, literally an entire horror movie "Cabin In The Woods" was made to make fun of the trope.
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Exactly. A heterosexual in media is seen as perfectly fine, but a non-heterosexual is somehow a political statement and solely defined by their non-heterosexuality. Same thing goes for non-white and non-male characters. If you have a combination of two or more of these, they're clearly just a token character, because everyone knows there are no non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual people in the world. Zero.
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"While many people still despise and outright hate LGBTQ+ members there are many many more who don't and support us and treat us like we are people. I'm glad behavior is finally ready to do that.'
Didn't twist your words. You wrote that yourself. You implied that before when Behavior didn't outright say 'X character is X sexuality', they weren't supporting you or treating you like a normal person. Also never told you what you should happy over and that your role models had to be based in reality. Even though the term 'role model' was not boiled into fiction, it was coined by a sociologist when it was talked about and compared to Athletes or Entertainment Artists. What I said (and what I should've phrased better) was that getting overjoyed over a game character who doesn't talk and sole purpose is to be mutilated thousands of times in a trial about murder and possible hope just because you can "identify" with that individual on the basis of their sexuality is seemingly shallow.
Were you unable to identify with the character before just because you didn't know their sexuality? You can't identify with Dwight's nervousness and wanting to fit in? You can't identify with Meg who through hard work and determination, got a scholarship through her athleticism? What about Claudette who's a geeky introvert (possibly autistic) who likes to study botany?
Lastly, the whole point of telling you not to share your life story is that it's no one's business. And it definitely doesn't correlate with you getting beaten and choked out on a bus and Behavior suddenly wanting to detail characters sexuality in a video game.
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I don't think a character in this game should have which gender they like to bang be a part of anything. Not because I hate gay people or straight people or anything silly like that, but because, well..
Why does it matter?
Is the Spirit liking to munch on carpets going to change her? No. Is David liking to pound the other cheeks of men going to change anything? No. Is the Clown liking to suck on something that definitely ain't a finger going to change him? No.
So why does it matter? Can't they just be characters with their own bit of lore of what they did and why they're here?
Besides, the more cultured of us have already read up on what Clown and Kate get up to in the fog, thanks to Kaidou Kana.
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Well they did state the sexuality or part of the sexuality of some characters before. (At least the Nurse was married to a man and as mentioned above David has an ex girlfriend; I am sure there are other mentions).
they just reflected on themselves and saw that this could be interpreted as some kind of exclusion or contradiction to what they previously stated so I see it as totally not problematic at all as long as they don’t create a character whose only personality trait is their sexuality, and i am confident that they will be able to integrate it without it feeling forced or something.
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Doesn't matter, the ratings have a heteronormative bias. If you include non-heterosexuals, your content will be rated T, minimum.
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Personally, I feel indifferent about this. Like for me personally it doesn't matter what the official lore of a character is, because I make one myself for my favourite characters anyways. Thanksfully the multitude of cosmetics help me with that approach. But if people want lore pressed on themselves by a corporation, sure do whatever makes you happy.
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What is bisexuality?
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If a creator doesn't want people to think that changes are part of an "agenda" or tokenism or a cynical marketing tactic, maybe don't have your legal department or whoever craft careful statements announcing to the world how inclusive you have decided you are now prepared to be.
Companies/corporations are not our friends. Do not look to them for anything in these areas. Yeah, Nike can have an ad featuring Colin Kapernick and claim they're on your side, but they still have kids in sweatshops in China making their shoes and are siphoning your tax dollars. (And yes, economics is the true force harming the majority of people. Don't let them make you forget it.)
There are heroes and role models for all sorts of people out in the world doing real things and being real inspirations. Do not look to the corporate world to carefully craft nicely sanitized figures for you to look up to, coincidentally just as soon as it's convenient and "relevant" for them to do so.
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Not sure what your assuming but I would really enjoy the devs telling us which survivors have what political views. Let's be inclusive now.
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I only see a few ways to organically incorporate something like political affiliation.
Maybe they were evil in their time in government and the entity took them when ######### went bad or a scandal broke out, whatever
Maybe they worked for the government in some capacity before being taken as a survivor, whatever
Those are about the only 2 reasonable ways to include political affiliation without reaching hard.
Conversely, it is much easier to include someones sexual orientation organically. You can include any past history and relevant persons from it (partners), have them be the reason for becoming a killer (betrayal, town was trying to kill them for being gay, etc...) or be the partner they're trying to get back to as a survivor.
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So you don't like books, TV series, or films?
Where's all that coming from? Please, point out how any of that's relevant to what I actually wrote and not what you imagined I said.
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Honestly, if not for the archives, I would agree with you. The archives, however, have mentioned a female ex from David and Dwight crushing on Rose, just as two things I can recall off the top of my head. If the archives are going to throw those kinds of details in, inclusion officially matters.
If they were still blank everymen outside their basic backstories, then I would agree it's not necessary to call it out. But they're not anymore, and we have implicit understanding of at least a couple peoples' sexualities already. If it's going to be there, then it should be representative of the whole, not just what's considered the "norm" by society.
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Or just not have their orientation figure into their current situation at all. People do things for reasons that have nothing to do with their orientation, you know.
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Let's not drag politics into this, thanks.
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I'm not saying it has to be the sole or direct reason, it can just be a matter of fact in their past that has lead them to their current situation. Much in the same way they did for David.
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Why not? I don't mind what views they have, do you?
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And I'm saying it doesn't even have to be that. Dwight's crush on Rose isn't why he wound up in the Fog.
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No, I make up stories myself in my head. I sometimes do however take other people's stories as inspiration, but thats about it.
I assume my free spirit is outside of the norm in today's society, but thats okay for me.
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On the main topic, it would be nice to have a gay male character to play as when I fancy playing survivor.
Not everyone is straight... At least having 1 person would be fairly more representative than none.
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It's definitely odd, but you won't be persecuted for it.
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I don't want the game to be political. Is that a bad thing?
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maybe the words came out wrong? Where did I exclude or ignore bisexuality?
i explicitly stated they have stated sexuality OR part of the sexuality of some characters.
For all I know, the Nurse could be straight or lesbian or bisexual, the thing is they have mentioned (potential) straight relations but avoided any other.
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Everything is inherently political to some degree. Especially art and games that try to mimic the real world.
You're always making a statement, even with the things that you don't say or have in your game.
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I don't want literal politics in the game. Is that a bad thing?
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What about in-universe politics as is called for by the lore/story?
Other than that I agree.
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Who cares what sexuality survivors and killers are? I'm fine with this so long as they don't push their agenda to players in game.
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Preach, people got issues is all i'll say idc if the characters are gay or straight cause it doesn't matter they are fictional characters and they don't exist. Hope the devs don't pander too hard where it starts getting silly.
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It's pretty obvious this is a political statement. If it was done during any other month I wouldn't bat an eye but doing this on pride month is a pretty obvious "How do you do my fellow gays."
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