Gay Representation in ChoiceScript games?

@TSSL

In addition to Kevin from Totem Force and Tommy from ZE: Safe Haven I could cite Solitary from Slammed!. He’s an openly gay pro wrestler, and it’s mentioned at one point he was arrested for punching out a homophobic cop. Overall these are pretty minor parts of his character. Solitary is highly memorable because he went from being a mid-card nobody to having the world’s biggest wrestling promotion by the proverbial nutsack through a combination of pure fighting skill and ruthless cunning.

Solitary is one of the coolest gay characters I know of.

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This thread is starting to get heated and turn personal.

Let’s remember to refrain from attacking each other when articulating our views.

Please be considerate of the community and the administrative staff that runs this community.

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This is something that I’ve expressed before:

In my post, the stereotypical lesbian secretly attracted to males is specified but my statement about: “making it easier to marginalize and differentiate people” apply in all the broad spectrum of representation.


@Dark_Stalker - History is a continuum, not easily broken down and split into neat ven diagrams. Many of the ideas and concepts bridge periods and it is when there is this overlap that cross-era comparisons are validated. Their existence proves the historical record for the ages surrounding them.

More modern examples: Modern-day science existed alongside quackery science in Victorian days but the overlap allows us to validate pre and post scientific eras.

With today’s world there are a lot of social norms being re-written. The 1990’s America is a wonderful overlap of pre gay marriage eras and post gay marriage. What was happening in Massachusetts could be used to understand today’s American society and the American society of old.

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Its scrapped so you can continue loving Denise. It was too much of a loaded subject. Instead the player just has to win the wolf over like in the short story.

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On top of my head.

  • Having to fight and justify for rights straight couples just take for granted. For example while gay marriage has just become legal in churches in my country the priest can still deny to marry the couple.

  • Problem with adoption since a lot of caseworkers still thinks that a family is a mother + father which means there is an bias against the same sex couple. Likewise there is a problem with getting approved as a support family for young people - despite the fact that vulnerable youngsters who are lgbt+ properly more than most needs somebody who can understans them.

  • Poor medical awerennes from doctors. Example spoilered for crudeness. For example women wants to have an examination of their uterus gets asked if they have had sex and by sex the doctors means PinV - other kinds don’t count and that means that the doctors aren’t as dilligent as they should be.

  • People assuming certain personality traits because of your sexuality which can mean a worse chance of getting a job.

  • Danger to your life from bigots.

  • People think that they have right to ask invasive questions such as how do you have sex? And if you are trans these invasive questions are required if you want hormones.

  • Sexuality still being diagnosed in certain aspekts. Trans and homosexual? Too bad you are not trans enough, you can’t get the help you need. Suffering from and depression and stress? You are much more likely to get a much more severe diagnose because you do not behave in a genderstereop typical way. In general good luck with your mental health. You are going to need it.

And now for something asexuality specifics.

  • People don’t think you exist. And can react with violence if you try to tell them.

  • People still think you should get cured. In fact doctors and psychologists might give you are diagnose just because you say you don’t want sex and might get so fixate on it that they refuse to give you the help you actually needs. In other words: It can kill you,

  • If you have a period problem like I do. Good luck getting any doctor to take you serious if you don’t have sex.

  • People finding you creepy. There has been research and people find asexuality uncomfortable and does not want work with it.

  • The problem of living in a highly sexual world you cannot truly connect with.

  • People thinking you are naive and childish because sexual activeness = maturity in most eyes.

All these problems are on top of my head. And keep in mind that I live in a country which is highly progressive. There are more systematic problematics which I haven’t even thought off.

We have not reached an equal world yet. We just have not.

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I’m not going to reply to everything brought up by @Karavolos and @SallyTheSTWitch; pretty much everything I would have said has already been said by @TSSL (thanks! :smile:)

One thing I would like to mention is something I came across regarding how different sexualities are viewed (especially with regard to “throat-shoving”). The most recent main companion on Doctor Who is a lesbian, something she just will not stop bringing up, according to certain fans, at least. Indeed, one reddit user counted the references and concluded that Bill references her sexuality in at least 58% of her episodes, which does seem like a lot. They also counted the episodes in which the straight main companions mentioned their sexuality, finding that Rose (who had a boyfriend, and then fell in love with the Doctor) mentioned being straight in 77%, while Amy (who actually brought her boyfriend onto the Tardis for most of her tenure) was noticeably straight in 87% of her episodes.

The problem is that people don’t notice things that are common, like heterosexuality, only things that are rare, like homosexuality. Rose and Amy may do the same things that Bill does (more, even), but it’s ignored, and neither of them have to justify their behaviour, but when Bill does it she’s “shoving it down viewers’ throats”.

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Off topic the Doctor really should get a cute gay or bi male companion again. Then again I do not normally watch doctor who, but the episodes with Captain Jack are a major exception to this. Of course it helps that Jack’s actor is both super cute and gay in real life.

Yeah, which is again why I enjoy being able to do so vicariously in games like many of these for the moment because the real world still hasn’t quite reached that stage. Despite the presence of several very prominent openly gay attorneys the Dutch bar association and legal culture as a whole is still quite conservative for example, meaning that unless I do ever get a serious enough boyfriend that I’d bring him with me to official functions most gay jurists like me still operate on a de-facto “don’t ask don’t tell” basis. :unamused:

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@idonotlikeusernames, is the fact that this post is a reply to mine an accident? Because otherwise, I don’t see a direct relation between your post and mine.

Anyway, @SallyTheSTWitch, I don’t think that I can add alot to what’s already been said by @TSSL. However since you are new to the forum, it would be easier for you to see where members like @ParrotWatcher are coming from once you take into an account that the expectations for the content of GoG games might be different from mainstream media.

CoG seems to be a community and a brand that has form its own identity around ideas of pushing inclusivity and more progressive ideologies forward. In fact, some users have gotten into the community because they deeply value this ideas and have a desire to see themselves represented in these games.

Although I don’t believe that every game needs to met these requirements of inclusivity if that somehow compromises the quality of a story or goes against the personal taste of an author, It’s understandable why this particular community is more concerned about these issues. And authors can benefit for opening their minds to the concerns of their audience.

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That is a good point: if the author really doesn’t want to write a gay romance, but feels forced (either directly by fans, or by “ticking the diversity box”), then they almost certainly won’t write a good gay romance. And, as with the bad stereotypes, that could end up doing more damage than good.

I would, however, say that I do not feel there are many situations where inclusivity would compromise the story all that much. Historical fiction (at least Britain 1533–1861), certainly, but if it’s a fictional world, it’s up to the author to choose what kind of romances are acceptable, and which are likely to change the story.

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Even there, you can have an inclusive game without having to portray an inclusive setting (indeed my own game is set in 1729 Britain and gay romance is a possibility). People definitely still had relationships with members of the same sex in the early modern period. Many heterosexual kinds of relationship were also socially or legally forbidden but still happened (out of wedlock, adultery, between social classes etc.), and we wouldn’t balk at portraying them.

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I think one of the issues with bad representation is that it gives people the idea that asking for representation entails inserting new and unnecessary characters to a preexisting plot. It should instead entail creating representative characters throughout the writing process, not after the fact.

This reddit discussion also contains a link to an article which notes that oftentimes men perceive gender balances as being equal when women are about 17%, and women as overrepresented when at 33%. This certainly goes a long way to explainingthe bewildering shortage of female roles in most things, and I believe is a related phenomenon.

And even then, I think discrimination in settings should serve not as a reason for excluding those discriminated against, but as a reason to write about those who are disadvantaged rather than those who benefit from it.

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Oh, I know; my point was more that this was a setting where making the central romance gay rather than straight would certainly change the plot, a lot. There were definitely gay people back then, and they certainly fell in love.

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Oh… yeah, I was just preemptively arguing against the people who say things like “it’d be unrealistic to have a gay option in this setting”… obviously not an argument you would make, but one I see way too much.

And hey, that time period you mention also happens to include the period when the subculture of the mollies existed :grin: which, for those who aren’t familiar, was a gay subculture in England in the late 18th century. Further proof that there’s a lot more interesting stuff to gay history than just getting executed all the time. But most people don’t realize that kind of history’s out there…

Plus, there’s also the point you’ve made before that it’s not really fair to give a substantially worse storyline to people doing gay playthroughs than everyone else. Depending on the setting this can be a rather difficult act to balance, though :grimacing: but happy gay endings should at least be possible even in bigoted settings, because happy gay couples have existed even in bigoted times.

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Ugh, the cross-dressed Molly subculture wouldn’t be very appealing to me as I tend to be attracted to the masculine.

As I’ve discussed with Mara before if they didn’t have a very controlling family (read mostly fathers or older brothers) gay men who were a part of the elite have traditionally had much less to fear from the law even when found out and prosecuted.
For example during our golden age in the case of the son of a wealthy man being accused of having sex with his servant the lordling was simply banished to France (exile) with a substantial fortune, while the servant was deported to the equivalent of slave labour for whites in the colonies. :unamused:
Then again given my political leanings it is no secret that I’m particularly interested in how social class relates to being gay (and lamenting decades of socialist movements who have termed being gay as a “bourgeois affliction” because of historical incidents such as the one mentioned.) :unamused:

True, though in some settings they would be quite difficult to achieve because of the stifling oppressive culture (and/or regime).

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I’ve been following this thread for a while and finally had something to say, concerning the ‘but now homosexuality is accepted!’ argument because it’s simply not true.
The ‘gay panic’ thing has been mentioned but the US also voted against an UN motion to condamn gay sex penalty. Today. Like, yikes, that’s definitely not a sign of ‘oh hey now that we have same-gender marriage, gay rights are over and everything is equal’.
And that’s only talking about the US. As we speak, there are countries where you can be jailed or killed for being gay. Even if it’s not technically illegal in some country, as in Egypt where gay people are being arrested right now under the pretenses of ‘debauchery’ and ‘blasphemy’. So yeah, there goes that ‘equality’ argument.
Anyway, sorry if I’m derailling the subject of that thread a little, as a gay dude myself I find it incredible that some people think that our so called modern society treats gay people the same way they treat straight ones.

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Yeah, I think that in this type of settings it would work better taking a clandestine romance angle. Or the romance being developed in a place, situation or community that is somehow distant of mainstream society and its ideas.

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Or you can do like my mc in @Havenstone 's game and just (attempt to) overthrow the culture and the regime, of course that is not for everybody but if you manage to place yourself at the top of the pyramid you’re generally exempt from the law.
Wealth and power, like it or not most often do afford a certain amount of protection even in such societies.

Azerbaijan is already a bit closer to Europe, they even hosted the Eurovision contest once already for crying out loud, Putin’s Russia too and let’s not forget the new South Korean regime headed by a supposedly “renowned” human rights lawyer who personally sanctioned the Korean military position to make male homosexuality de-facto impossible for boys again, entrapping them on dating apps, shadowing them on leave and then saddling them with a criminal record for life.
Again hard to imagine the indifference of the crazy, corrupt and reactionary daughter of the former dictator was preferable to the current regime if only because she didn’t care one iota about male homosexuality. Not that she lifted a finger in support of the Korean LGBTQ community ever, far from it but the new president seems to somehow see male homosexuality as a personal affront to him or something. :unamused:

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To be fair, the mollies probably included a whole range of people who nowadays might identify as trans as well as gay and bi, and would have some variety in how much cross-dressing any individuals were getting into :thinking:

But yeah, everyone’ll have their own personal preferences for what attracts them (if they experience attraction, that is), and as for me, I often think that a bit of the feminine is cute in a guy (though I daresay I’m a fair bit further on the feminine side of the scale than my boyfriend is :stuck_out_tongue: mainly in mannerism rather than appearance, but still). I understand there can be an issue with people devaluing femininity in general, though, even in LGBT communities, like when the term “straight-acting” gets used to perpetuate certain standards of masculinity and to disparage those of us who don’t fit them. And when people act like feminine gay guys are inherently a negative stereotype, which can throw us under the bus in favor of more masculine gay guys. Representing that gay guys can be more than one way is useful too! (And feminine straight guys, for that matter.)

But, of course, “masculine” doesn’t have to mean “masculine in a sexist and patriarchal way,” either. There’s lots of ways to be masculine. And it’s worth reinforcing that gay guys can be masculine just as much as heteros can, too. And that masculine and feminine preferences are just as valid, just like male and female preferences are just as valid too :pensive:

In some cases, a happy ending might look rather different, yeah. I’d mainly just caution against writing a situation in which heterosexual characters get lots of access to happy endings, while gay characters will end in poverty, misery, and ruin :cold_sweat: Maybe it’d take a little bit of bending to ensure that the gay characters are lucky enough not to face the worst brunt that they could, but a bit of bending in service of a happy ending won’t sacrifice the setting.

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Can’t wait for a game that will literally give me the option:

“Destroy heteropatriarchy”

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Maybe in mannerism sometimes, not in appearance at least not for me, I’ve got nothing against men wearing “dresses” or skirts or robes but they should, imho, do it in a way that enhances their body, instead of working against it.
Clothing that is clearly not made with the male form in mind does not look “cute” on men to me. Though that is strictly my personal opinion as a fashion addict who likes to see the male form glorified and celebrated, not diminished. though that is just my own idiosyncratic preference, if guys really want to wear women’s stuff who am I to judge but it doesn’t make them at all appealing to me.