@Pixie It sounds like you have a lot of frustration at stuff like this getting regularly ignored and the side-effects that has on our culture, and well justified. It's gonna be a while until games across the board are generally representing this stuff well, and I'm looking forward to that - and the games that handle that well already.
We just got a blast from the past, and it does amaze me it was only a couple of decades ago that gay people were considered a valid punch line in a joke in public performances.
@doppelgreener Arguably more recent than that... Rock of Ages has a couple of guys realising they love each other, in a way that came across as very much played for laughs
As I said at the beginning, my experiences here may differ from others'. I spent a lot of time struggling with my sexuality precisely because I had been assumed straight since childhood and had no models to even make me aware of the possibility that I could be otherwise.
In the absence of actual attraction, I also assumed I was straight, because everything around me told me that I must be. When I began to actually realize that I wasn't, there was a lot of fighting against internalized expectations and stereotypes. I had to get used to the idea that I could be and was allowed to be something else.
I didn't experience much of a struggle so much as a lot of calm confusion, but I did experience some struggle about gender identity and stuff. I really do look forward to a time when all of this is pretty broadly represented and there's people to look to.
It was pretty hard for me. I feel like I might cry just having thought about it enough to say that much, haha. It really wasn't that long ago (maybe... 3, 4 years?) that I was able to say it for the first time, and it took longer for me to really become comfortable with it.
I look forward to that time as well.
And, like, with things like that ruling -- it's not that they're a big deal. I'm used to them. I have to be. Ultimately, it's something you have to get past, and you can figure out ways to work around it. Doesn't mean I don't notice them, though, or that they have no effect on me.
TwT I'm reminded that the color is wrong on this screen and I haven't been able to fix it. Still... [readread]
Yeah, similar subject. The way lack of representation manifests varies between groups, but it is common, and it does affect the way people connect with things and perceive themselves.
2013 is the latest year I've encountered information on, but the studies I've read on LGBT characters, women, and characters of color in major films, for example, are all depressing -- even more so when you go on to consider the manner in which a given group tends to be depicted.
And then there are studies like the one discussed here, which suggest that watching TV increases the self-esteem of white boys but decreases it for both black and white girls and for black boys.
@doppelgreener That is a good thing. It's important to me too. I don't know how much I'll ever be able to affect things. Still, in speaking up and keeping these issues in mind when I create things, maybe I will be able to broaden some perspectives and make some people feel a little less alone.
(Now if only I could speak up when co-workers say things they're only saying around me because they assume I'm straight. Alas. It is an interesting position to be put in when you are not out, to say the least.)
Me too. I've been pretty attached to the Metroid series since a friend first sat me down to play Metroid a few years ago. (The first one. The apparently extremely labyrinthine one. I didn't play lots of it.)
and I am glad that the complete badass main character in the metroid games is a lady, partly because women-in-actual-armor are underepresented
that being said, gender shouldn't matter when being badass
I just have an issue with the way many (but not all, just too many) video games (not only them of course but they are what I am talking about right now) portray women, even in many cases where said woman is a badass
