Why is it OK when there are tons straight characters in DBD but when there is one gay it's an issue
Seriously, where was this energy when there were characters confirmed straight/bi/? SERIOUSLY, I don't understand why it's OK when straight people get representation but when the LGBTQ community does it's an issue.
And for anyone questioning why this post is needed, I'll put a small essay (tldr will be in comments because I know people don't have time to read an entire Bible on here.
Ever since I was a kid, I was bullied for acting a lil too... you know 💀💀💀
It eventually got to the point where I would literally suppress my feelings for crushes and people I loved just to fit in.
(good God I'm tearing up while making this)
It was so bad that I eventually ended up dating girls even though I barely like them sexually. ( I am bisexual but have more of a preference towards men ).
Eventually when I came out at 14, I got kicked out and had to live on the streets for a few months. It was rough, and it was all because I simply liked men.
So when I finally met Kason (my boyfriend) my world changed.
He and my brother introduced me to DBD.
So when I saw that David was confirmed gay, me and the rest of the LGBT community rejoiced and celebrated. You wanna know why?
Because if we didn't celebrate it, who would've?
TLDR: I got bullied and got kicked out of the households for being 🌈 when I was a teenager. I met my bf Kason, who introduced me to DBD, and when I saw David was gay, me and the LGBT community rejoiced because who else would've?
And Kason, if you see this (even though you probably don't use the forums, just know that I love you too much to even put into words.
Comments
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It is not issue.
People who think this is a problem are a real problem.
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I don't think people have problems with David being gay, I think people are complaining about how it was implemented.
I personally don't care about the lore of Survivors that much
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Yeah it did kinda feel more like they tried to make it more of a big deal than it actually was.
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Typical BHVR.
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As others have stated BHVR implemented it poorly imo. My whole problem is that it does not feel very genuine, it's the same reason I have problems with other companies implementing more inclusive things.
It feels corporate over humane. That's just me though, you may view it differently. It's not that big of a deal, but at the end of the day, it just gives me the vibe that they're trying to be more inclusive purely for business. Which just rubs me the wrong way.
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Boring and overdone: All characters are cishet until stated otherwise
Based: All characters are LGBT+ until stated otherwise
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Who said it's an issue?
The only time this kind of things may be seen as an issue, is when a company does this for "brownie points".
I don't understand how it is relevant at all mind you. I don't really care much about the lore. Some details are interesting but aren't that important : how some character became a monster; what was the job of some survivors. Their love life wouldn't register on my radar if it wasn't announced.
It seems to matter to a lot of people though.
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I thought the should have made a new survivor who was gay. I feel like it would have been better received.
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I think there are only 3-4 characters actually confirmed straight, the rest of them are up to interpretation
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First thing that came to mind for me too. There's not a 'ton' of straight characters. Sexuality just doesn't get a lot of focus in this game.
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Tbh sexuality shouldn't get a lot of focus here anyway
Only thing that should is more brutal moris, or a selection of them
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Like other already said, 90% of the roster are left to interpretation but behaviour had to make a big pr stunt out of declaring one character official as gay.
That's just the lamest kind of "look we are also hip, trendy and liberal" pr and just comes across as cheap and embarrassing.
The fact of pushing it into everyone's faces as some kind of new innovation which they expect praise for is the big problem. Like all the time when companies make it their big achievement when it should just be standard and not something to celebrate.
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The issue, at least to me and probably a lot of other people, is that they went and took a previous character and made him gay just cause they wanted a gay survivor for the "We represent people" news. If they had made a new survivor who was gay, I guarentee you 95% of the people who are mad about this wouldnt even care.
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straight relationships are actually mentioned way more often than people give it credit for:
Nurse and her husband
Frank and Julie in their tome lore (which was on the edge of being disgusting and definitely being shoved down our throats)
David having had a girlfriend (turns out he is not straight, but that was still a heterosexual relationship in the lore)
Felix and his pregnant wife
Oni is the direct ancestor of Spirit thus implied to have had a wife
Dwight having a crush on a female coworker (though admittedly this one is pretty low on the list)
Ace referred to as womanizer no some cosmetics
Wraith and Nurse having (romantically) implied cosmetics/texts
other characters in lore:
multiple parents explicitly stated as father and mother (Jake, David, Spirit, Trapper (not sure about his mother mentioned), Hillbilly, Meg (pretty sure her father is mentioned), for others I guess it’s mostly one parent mentioned and thus not explicitly heterosexual)
Pretty sure other relationships in tome/background stories (shout out to the one gay relationship in one of Haddies story’s i think - which didn’t get any further announcement by BHVR)
all of these weren’t necessary and could have been told the exact same way without mentioning the genders/pronouns explicitly while still telling the same story. Except for David as they apparently gave a reason for why he had a girlfriend and they were telling a coherent story.
Take Yui as another example: in her tome lore an ex partner is mentioned, but only by name and not by gender/pronoun. This was actually pretty well and subtly done.
as for that big news from BHVR regarding David being gay: can you guys show me where that is? All I have seen is a twitter tweet with a (admittedly rather big) text on their website which you have to go out of your way of to read. Which is also kinda a response to their announcement from (two!) years ago and a response to those (including me) who criticized them for not delivering (sooner).
was there an in-game announcement, dev stream, YouTube video or even in-game event that i missed?? Please I wanna see that BIG announcement!
also: they never turned David gay or changed him in any way. They told a story about a struggle in his life he had to overcome regarding himself and his parents - I haven’t read it yet but from what I have been told it’s well written and not in any way retconning anything but tying past mentions like his ex girlfriend and his rough relationship with his parents together and actually making it an even more believable story.
Post edited by Mooks on9 -
Is this going to be the new "nerf dead hard" thread?
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What energy?
Thus far I've seen a tiny handful of people trying to be edgy, one obvious Poe and a few people asking why they didn't just make a new character - as much from a 'do more BHVR' standpoint as a 'my headcanon is that David was straight' perspective. I think that the vast majority of people went 'oh, okay' and got back to not caring at all about the lore.
I need to paraphrase this as a universal law of internet forums:
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I guarantee you 90 % of the people that are now complaining about it being an old character(retconning, playing it safe, pandering) would also complain about it being a new character (tokenism, only doing it for the money, pandering)
and they didn’t change David at all. He was never confirmed straight. And no one complained about the tome where he suddenly got a girlfriend while there was no partner mentioned in the initial backstory.
people just like to complain about LGBTQ+ inclusion and are using excuses as to why.
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To be fair though, I don't think I've seen a single person complaining that there was LGBT inclusion - it's more about how it was done, and I see as many 'do more' or 'why not a new character?' posts (and one bizarre 'this is queer erasure because David's traditionally masculine and that's not okay' thread) as I do 'I liked David being straight' posts.
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To be fair, people are finding excuses to be against LGBTQ+ inclusion and you can make arguments against any way how it is executed.
as i said, if it was a new character there would be plenty of people saying it’s forced, tokenism, only doing it for the money, pandering etc pp. And it being an old character doesn’t rule out new characters being added.
and David was never stated to be straight.
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Sure. I have no issue with David being gay any more than I'd have an issue with David being straight. Because I have zero investment in the canon lore and prefer to make up my own little narratives ingame.
I definitely think that part of this decision comes down to money though - looking at social media, this is the most anyone's talked about DbD in a long time. But I don't think that's a bad thing - if this helps to get more people into the game, all the better.
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Sexuality should be left out of the game because look at the attention/arguments and division it causes. Its a video game and the only things that really matter are game performance, fun and aesthetically pleasing. Does it REALLY matter what sexual orientation a pixilated character is in a cat and mouse murder game ....
Players should be able to decide for themselves what sexual preference they have.
Post edited by SMitchell8 on5 -
To be fair, it would have blown up on social media even if they didn’t announce it at all. And while from a corporate standpoint it might be a money decision - from the people behind it (the staff, the devs) we know it’s important for them as we actually know plenty of them are LGBTQ+ allies or even part of the community.
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Its HOW they did it.
not THAT they did it.
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Just because something gets attention or argumentations doesn’t mean it should be excluded.
and sexuality was a part of DbD since Nurse was introduced and since then it was part of the lore plenty of times.
it’s a video game - a medium. Let the devs do with it what they want. Let them tell the stories the way they want. Don’t try to dictate and force something just because you feel uncomfortable with it.
and the players can still decide themselves?? What kind of statement is that?
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As I said, it's probably a little of both.
'Allies' has always been an odd word, but if you're saying that there was an ideological basis here...maybe?
But my guess is that this is primarily 'this game has always been something of a haven for LGBTs, and they've been asking for a gay survivor forever, so this will create a lot of good will and maybe get them to buy a cosmetic or two'.
Which again, I have zero issues with.
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I wasn’t talking about an ideological basis. I am talking about people like Mandy - who as far as I am aware are not LGBTQ+ on their own but support the inclusion and are happy about this. Without the thought of just being able to sell more cosmetics due to it.
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Do you feel the same way about Nurse and her husband?
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Great post <3 someone did their homework
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What is a Poe?
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Sort of an ironic troll - someone who says outrageous or ridiculous stuff as a parody of the other side, in the hopes that it gets taken literally and earns support by the extreme fringes of that side.
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Ah okay, thank you!
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I personally believe that a percentage of the people saying "HOW" are using it to cover up "THAT" (note that I am not necessarily accusing you of being one of those people).
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I don't understand why the sexuality of any character is a thing... it's not like it influences any in-game mechanics, and it's not something you can see. I get "representation", I'm part of a community that is not visually represented (i.e. there's no character that looks similar to myself), and I wish BHVR would do better with that. But in terms of inner-traits, why do we care and where do we stop? Should we address religion, political position, etc, as well?
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Because the game has lore, and it adds up to the lore
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Visually, probably the closest character to me IRL is Bill (he has more hair than me though, and a shorter beard) but I've always preferred female avatars in games.
I...don't disagree with all of the rest, but I also like to think of it this way.
- Horror has always been something of a haven for LGBTs, as well as the rest of us that don't always gel perfectly with mainstream society.
- DbD is also quite popular with LGBT gamers.
- Including a gay character is thus simply playing to your audience - much like including a large breasted nekomimi in an ecchi anime is playing to that audience.
- If it encourages more people to play and spend money, that's fantastic - because I do want this game to succeed.
I hope that BHVR give politics and religion a wide miss though, because that's where you start alienating people.
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Couldn't care less about who Nurse dated. Its a horror esc video game. What they did to David and how they did it has caused arguments and division across all social media platforms.
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So why is it an issue with David?
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Ask the people causing friction on social media. Don't shoot the neutral messenger. The point im making is that things like this wont be fully accepted by all, so those in favour of it, will just have to accept that not everyone else is. As for nurse, completely irrelevant that she was married, to me these purely a brilliant albeit controversial character within the game.
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Ah, so we should allow hate to be spread just because it's normal for it to exist? Great mindset to have.
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Im litterly gay
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"(note that I am not necessarily accusing you of being one of those people)"
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I don´t care at all and I have zero problems with it.
I play a videogame for the gameplay, I don´t care if the characters I play are straight or gay
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Sue me for not wanting my sexuality to be a marketing scam, and glorified? They did us dirty by doing the exact same thing Blizzard did with Tracer, we should be upset over poor representation for monetary gain.
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I don't understand why some of these are considered as proof that the characters are straight. If anything, Nurse's character makes more sense if you think she was in a loveless marriage given the time period etc. They could give that precise reasoning for her not being straight despite being married in the future, it would make her more interesting - and it would work precisely the same way as how they dealt with David having a girlfriend. I won't discuss the Wraith/Nurse thing because I think that's more blockheaded than any piece of fanfiction I've ever seen.
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It’s not your personal sexuality. You are not being marketed or glorified.
Davids in-game reveal is not poor representation at all. And not for direct monetary gain. The tweet was maybe overdone but… if they wouldn’t have done it others would come out and say it was handled poorly as well.
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I've seen you in every single one of these David threads and there have been multiple people in those threads saying it's stupid we have a gay character, you are either ignoring it or are blissfully ignorant to it.
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Religion and political positions are choices, sexuality is not, they're not even close to the same.
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DBD has never had any shortage of LBGT representation. I absolutely don't understand the idea that they've FINALLY done it for the FIRST TIME.
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which characters/lore do you mean?
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Because reactionaries gotta be reactionaries.
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