I love that after posting this:
@HeartOfDarkness:
A creator/writer not being authentic is not a big deal?
you posted this:
@HeartOfDarkness:
Can you prove that Ellie isn't/is straight, or gay, or asexual, or bisexual, or pansexual without the kiss scenes or using the directors word? I'll wait….
Let me turn this around then.
Can you prove that the creators are not being authentic? Can you prove that making Ellie gay is NOT what the creators thought was the natural decision they wanted to make for this character?
Prove this, or your entire argument is moot.
People CAN naturally WANT to tell stories about LGBT individuals. Why is our inclusion in ANYTHING automatically an issue or a sign of bad writing or any of that?!?!
@HeartOfDarkness:
Yea, Ellie is gay because ND decided to throw a kiss scene between her and that other girl in the Left Behind dlc.
It doesn't mean, or effect anything, or even says much about Ellie as a character.
@HeartOfDarkness:
Wouldn't it accompolish much more if the character has depth, is complex, and him/her being gay is explored?
Like talking about an issue without actually talking about the issue doesn't…..change anything. So you made a character gay? Then what? What does that accompolish?
Why does it have to mean anything? Why does it have to accomplish anything?! Why can't she just be gay and that's it?
As a BT member of the LGBT+ community, I absolutely hate this permeating sentiment that my mere existence is automatically political. Like it's somehow automatically an issue if I'm included in anything.
Sexuality is more permeating in video games than a lot of people realize, they just don't notice all the straight people stuff because that's long past normalized in society, so they see that and it doesn't register.
Was it a forced political issue when that curtain came down in Zelda II and the little Zelda sprite moved closer to the little Link sprite?
Were all the times Peach kissed Mario forced political moves?!
What about all the romance in the Final Fantasy series?! Cecil and Rosa, Locke and Celes, Aerith and Zack, Tifa and Cloud, Squall and Rinoa?! Was ALL of this forced political statements?! Hell, Final Fantasy X was basically a love story and it's sequel was all about the grief one of them had from losing that partner and a quest to revive them.
Guess that whole game was just one forced polticial move right?
Dragon's Lair was all about saving a princess so the main character could get with her and the sequel has them married.
The original God of War series is set off because Kratos lost a wife, but it also has scenes where you have Sex and there are QTEs involved.
It's a character trait of Ezio in Assassin's Creed that he's kindof a ladies man. Hell, one of the games, I think Brotherhood, opens with him having sex and they used that to explain why he loses all his upgrades from the previous game.
What about Nathan Drake and Elsa? They actually got married!
What about literally any couples on this list of 100 Romantic couples in gaming?
I'm not familliar with a lot of them so I can't fully vouch for all of them fitting a strictly romantic couple, but a lot of the ones from my list above are in there, so I know a good number of them must.
Why do NONE of these ever raise any eyebrows with the majority of the gaming public? Their inclusion is just fine without anyone being mad about them, but you put ONE gay character in a game and suddenly it's all about justifying their sexuality.
"Why is this here?"
"What is the point of this?"
"Why does this character have to be gay?"
These are all questions that ONLY get asked about gay characters but not straight characters despite there being literally nothing different about romance involving them from a writing standpoint.
If Ellie had been kissing a guy in this, nobody would have batted an eye. But it's a girl, so suddenly it's an issue. UUuuuuugh.
I'm staying away from this thread for a while BTW. This one and the Nintendo one. I wanna watch the Nintendo Direct entirely today and I want to be surprised, but I'm at work now so I'm going internet dark until I get home from work.
So If I don't reply to the discussion about how my existence is automatically poorly written pandering, it's not because I don't have anything else to say. It's because I'm not home yet lol.