Frustrating relative lack of LGBT NPCs in this game

Oh my Lord he necrod a thread back to the fold

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Originally Posted by Kiurai

Oh my Lord he necrod a thread back to the fold

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It's less than a month old. That's not necroing a thread.

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Originally Posted by CazzT

NO company should be concerned about it unless that is their focus. SquareEnix makes games. They aren't a company founded, or focusing, on LGBT issues. Stop shoving your politics into everything and everywhere it has no place to be.

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Ah, yes, the FAMOUSLY apolitical SquareEnix, who donated to Black Lives Matter months ago, who made SEVERAL games about taking down an authoritarian empire, whose game that YOU'RE playing is FILLED with politics: including the dangers of authoritarianism, the plight of political refugees, class disparity, race discrimination, ACTUALLY has LGB characters and options for player characters...

Gosh, politics have NO room in a SquareEnix game, not when 7 had a clear anti-pollution, anti-monopoly message, or every Yasumi Matsuno game ever (Yoshi-P's a big fan of Matsuno btw); Matsuno, who literally based his games on the Yugoslav War (Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre). No, damn, Politics have NO room in video games.

(Note: I know this is a troll thread but this is just willful ignorance. People don't actually CARE when games get political, they just get mad when it's not THEIR views)

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Originally Posted by WhiteArchmage

Ah, yes, the FAMOUSLY apolitical SquareEnix, who donated to Black Lives Matter months ago, who made SEVERAL games about taking down an authoritarian empire, whose game that YOU'RE playing is FILLED with politics: including the dangers of authoritarianism, the plight of political refugees, class disparity, race discrimination, ACTUALLY has LGB characters and options for player characters...

Gosh, politics have NO room in a SquareEnix game, not when 7 had a clear anti-pollution, anti-monopoly message, or every Yasumi Matsuno game ever (Yoshi-P's a big fan of Matsuno btw); Matsuno, who literally based his games on the Yugoslav War (Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre). No, damn, Politics have NO room in video games.

(Note: I know this is a troll thread but this is just willful ignorance. People don't actually CARE when games get political, they just get mad when it's not THEIR views)

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I don't agree with you. I care when is no longer a work of art but propaganda. Art is open to my interpretation, while propaganda hammer the point home to ensure I recieve a very specific message.

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Originally Posted by Driavna

I don't agree with you. People care when is no longer a work of art but propaganda.

Art is open to interpretation while propaganda hammer the point home to ensure the viewer receive the message.

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Way to miss the point. Of the critical and audience favorites we have games that are VERY political: Persona 5, Bioshock, the whole Metal Gear Solid series (in which Kojima will stop the game for 30 minutes to give a "War is Bad" lecture each game), InFamous (government overreach), Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines (the first, it takes A LOT of potshots at the Bush administration), The first The Last of Us (the whole quarantine zones, firefly rebellion, Tommy's independent settlement), and, again, this very game (Literal Shadow conspiracy pulling the threads of governments for millenia).

And people's tolerance for what stops being "art" and starts being "propaganda" is very different. If you don't agree with something, seeing it represented makes you yell "propaganda" or "indoctrination", but if you agree with it, it's "accurate representation". Heck, art is deeply political by itself, seeing as how writers and playwrights had to make nice with their sponsors (usually kings or nobility) to get funds or simply not be killed (see: all of Shakespeare's plays around the kings of Britain).

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Originally Posted by WhiteArchmage

Way to miss the point. Of the critical and audience favorites we have games that are VERY political: Persona 5, Bioshock, the whole Metal Gear Solid series (in which Kojima will stop the game for 30 minutes to give a "War is Bad" lecture each game), InFamous (government overreach), Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines (the first, it takes A LOT of potshots at the Bush administration), The first The Last of Us (the whole quarantine zones, firefly rebellion, Tommy's independent settlement), and, again, this very game (Literal Shadow conspiracy pulling the threads of governments for millenia).

And people's tolerance for what stops being "art" and starts being "propaganda" is very different. If you don't agree with something, seeing it represented makes you yell "propaganda" or "indoctrination", but if you agree with it, it's "accurate representation". Heck, art is deeply political by itself, seeing as how writers and playwrights had to make nice with their sponsors (usually kings or nobility) to get funds or simply not be killed (see: all of Shakespeare's plays around the kings of Britain).

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Why you are assuming a lot of stuff about me for no apparent reason?

This is my way of thinking: when is so "in your face" or "the message we are trying to send is more important than everything else" I no longer find it enjoyable. That's why I never liked those religious cartoons when I was a kid. Is also why I like The Orville (even when they also have some episodes that are somewhat in your face too. For example, I did not like how they handle "social media bad" with a certain episode, even if I agree with their point of view.) but dislike any of the recent Star Trek stuff.

The existence of LGBT+ people, and the acknowledgement that they exist and that some people simply are attracted that way, is not in itself political.

It has been made into a political issue by people who draw political party lines across every issue.

Prettymuch everything is "political" these days.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

The existence of LGBT+ people, and the acknowledgement that they exist and that some people simply are attracted that way, is not in itself political.

It has been made into a political issue by people who draw political party lines across every issue.

Prettymuch everything is "political" these days.

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Unfortunately. At some point I'm sure we will have political lines drawn around whether or not the sky is blue.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Unfortunately. At some point I'm sure we will have political lines drawn around whether or not the sky is blue.

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Technically it's more of a cyan. Gauntlet thrown. ;)

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Originally Posted by Iscah

The existence of LGBT+ people, and the acknowledgement that they exist and that some people simply are attracted that way, is not in itself political.

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Even that's a stretch. Even acknowledging their existence in media can get called out by political pundits.

https://youtu.be/Ite2Y4z4TiM?t=261

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

Technically it's more of a cyan. Gauntlet thrown. ;)

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I thought it was more of a chartreuse. Come at me.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

I thought it was more of a chartreuse. Come at me.

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Wait... is not red?

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Originally Posted by WhiteArchmage

Ah, yes, the FAMOUSLY apolitical SquareEnix, who donated to Black Lives Matter months ago, who made SEVERAL games about taking down an authoritarian empire, whose game that YOU'RE playing is FILLED with politics: including the dangers of authoritarianism, the plight of political refugees, class disparity, race discrimination, ACTUALLY has LGB characters and options for player characters...

Gosh, politics have NO room in a SquareEnix game, not when 7 had a clear anti-pollution, anti-monopoly message, or every Yasumi Matsuno game ever (Yoshi-P's a big fan of Matsuno btw); Matsuno, who literally based his games on the Yugoslav War (Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre). No, damn, Politics have NO room in video games.

(Note: I know this is a troll thread but this is just willful ignorance. People don't actually CARE when games get political, they just get mad when it's not THEIR views)

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There is a fundamental difference between broad socio political points that are innate to the human experience over generations (I.E evil authoritarians and conflict between two kingdoms/countries over broad differences in belief) and purposefully shoe horning in contemporary political issues that wont age well.

To illustrate this, it would be really out of place if all of a sudden there was an event in game specifically about police brutality (guard brutality?) against darker skinned Hyurs and that the NPCs start talking about Guard Reform and racial justice for Darker skinned Hyurs.

It would be out of place and context for the universe and it's already established lore. It would be tacky and distasteful. If you want to incorporate contemporary politics into a piece of media, you dont brute force it. You carefully weave it via allegory so that it fits within an exisiting narrative without being so brazenly in your face. Furthermore, most times when politics are incorporated into moral tales, they tend to be broad ones that are universal. I.E - Being an authoritarian jerkwad who oppresses people cause theyre different is kind of universal nono. Again, to illustrate an example of what wouldnt work is if you all of a sudden had a 1:1 analog for, I dunno, US Conservatives where theyre portrayed evilly and outlandishly and the good and pure US Progressive fights to stop their evil. That kind of shoe horning becomes propaganda, because it is designed to sell one viewpoint without nuance or tact. This doesnt mean that the other viewpoint is correct, but that to blatently take a black and white view point that specifically props up one contemporary political side or agenda isnt typically welcome.

Thats what people mean by keep your politics out of games. They dont want to have debates over nuanced specific contemporary politics in a piece of fantasy escapism because we get enough of that in real life as it were, not everything needs to be about contemporary politics, and I would say 90% of hte time when it's done in media its a ham fisted one sided propagandist mess that fails to actually fairly or truthfully address issues. This is double so when the media just slaps you in teh face with it bluntly and disparages you overtly for having a viewpoint that may not be universal or has nuance.

Can we just not bring the SJW stuff onto the game? Leave it on Twitter and Tumblr where it belongs. And by that I don't mean the LGBTalphabetsoup stuff. If they put it in the game fine. But the complaining about representation and if it's there or not, and all of that. Just leave it to the cesspools of the internet. People use games to escape reality. Don't drag reality in.

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Originally Posted by Nekaru_Infitima

Can we just not bring the SJW stuff onto the game? Leave it on Twitter and Tumblr where it belongs. And by that I don't mean the LGBTalphabetsoup stuff. If they put it in the game fine. But the complaining about representation and if it's there or not, and all of that. Just leave it to the cesspools of the internet. People use games to escape reality. Don't drag reality in.

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Honestly, there's no escaping it. It's everywhere. However, I do think that we are finally at a tipping point where people have had their fill and then some and just want it to go away.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

Thats what people mean by keep your politics out of games. They dont want to have debates over nuanced specific contemporary politics in a piece of fantasy escapism because we get enough of that in real life as it were, not everything needs to be about contemporary politics, and I would say 90% of hte time when it's done in media its a ham fisted one sided propagandist mess that fails to actually fairly or truthfully address issues. This is double so when the media just slaps you in teh face with it bluntly and disparages you overtly for having a viewpoint that may not be universal or has nuance.

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I agree with your earlier points (although I still hold that a great deal of literature that has survided to our days is itself political: Richard III, Don Juan, the Divine Comedy, the Aeneid... the only thing is we now lack the political CONTEXT of them), however I will draw from my experience (which, I know, anecdotal evidence) that when people say "keep your politics out of my game" it tends to be towards inclusionary measures such as "We have added a completely optional female main character", "We added a trans character, who only outright says they're trans via a specific dialogue tree", "there are now same-sex couples in the game" and are met with the reactionary "keep your politics out of my games".

I won't contest that there ARE ham-fisted ways to do so (the ending of BlackKklansman, or the entirety of Birth of a Nation, and Citizen Kane wasn't shy about the titular character being a stand-in for Senator McCarthy), but (and I'm not saying that YOU'VE said this, but others, including the poster I was originally responding to, certainly have), but when "keeping politics out of games" is used as a stand-in for "keep people that I don't want to see in my games out of them" THEN I have a problem.

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Originally Posted by WhiteArchmage

I agree with your earlier points (although I still hold that a great deal of literature that has survided to our days is itself political: Richard III, Don Juan, the Divine Comedy, the Aeneid... the only thing is we now lack the political CONTEXT of them), however I will draw from my experience (which, I know, anecdotal evidence) that when people say "keep your politics out of my game" it tends to be towards inclusionary measures such as "We have added a completely optional female main character", "We added a trans character, who only outright says they're trans via a specific dialogue tree", "there are now same-sex couples in the game" and are met with the reactionary "keep your politics out of my games".

I won't contest that there ARE ham-fisted ways to do so (the ending of BlackKklansman, or the entirety of Birth of a Nation, and Citizen Kane wasn't shy about the titular character being a stand-in for Senator McCarthy), but (and I'm not saying that YOU'VE said this, but others, including the poster I was originally responding to, certainly have), but when "keeping politics out of games" is used as a stand-in for "keep people that I don't want to see in my games out of them" THEN I have a problem.

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I fully agree that there are those who have been, for lack of a better word, trained to view certain included topics to be seen as an overtly political (adding a trans character to a game, as an example) by default and that this isnt a fair position to take. However its also just as important to note that there are plenty of creatives who actually do 'hi-jack' an IP or concept to insert their own political beliefs - context to existing narrative be damned. So when you encounter the former, its cause the latter exists as well. I keep an ey eon the media industry and there are plenty of cases where creatives will do something purely for politics or their own 'agenda', even if it is narrative, world, or character breaking to do it. And frankly, if Im going to be blunt, this pisses me off because it is making story and proper development take a backseat so creatives can either virtue signal about some cause they hopped on board with cause its a trend, or to push a political point at the expense of a story, thus creating propaganda in the process.
I think the tactful approach is as I suggested - if you want to incorporate it, do it carefully and through allegory that fits the pre-existing narratives. If you cant make it work, dont include it. Doing hard 180s on characters or making big changes cause "current political topic that the creative is invested in on an emotional personal level" where in its a one sided ham fisted propaganda point isnt acceptable in media and should be rebuked when we encounter it. The key difference, of course, is as long as this is done with some forethought. Meaning, dont knee jerk rebuke the inclusion of a trans character in media as a political agenda. It is possible for creatives to write a story about a character who happens to be trans. If it turns out the creative takes a pre-existing character, warps and breaks them just to make said character trans when it has no contextual meaning to the story at large or the character, and said creative is a big activist on said topic and has openly stated that their intent was solely to create more 'inclusivity' in a pre-existing narrative by making this 'adjustment' (read forced change), then yeah we can push back and say this wasnt appropriate.

This went down about as well as I expected...

I was about to say the game doesn't really specify one way or another, but there's a few instances. Thancred is shown to be interested in women (early on, at least) tho could just be for info-gathering, Alphinaud too apparently? Urianger seemed pretty into Moenbryda, female characters are not allowed relationships lest the nerds riot actually Krile and Mikoto (who?) express interest in male characters so there's that...

On the flip side besides the WoLsexual characters (Haurchefant, Alisaie, Aymeric??) I can only think of the Wanderer's Palace (Hard) duo, a Hyur and a Miqo'te both male... which, yeah there's barely anything...

Hopefully Ryne and Gaia, as reasonably major characters, can change that but that's probably not happening

Don't answer to this thread. It will only make the necro pay off for our usual forum troll.

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Originally Posted by BokoToloko

Don't answer to this thread. It will only make the necro pay off for our usual forum troll.

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Well... that's true, but they're not the one who made the thread, and I think this's something worth discussing.

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Originally Posted by Tsiron

Well... that's true, but they're not the one who made the thread, and I think this's something worth discussing.

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Discuss it on a non Troll post?

It's the sort of subject that doesn't make for a great discussion since any opinion other than full, unconditional support is treated with disdain more often than not. To the point where the opinions of LGBT players who happen to be against inclusion for inclusion's sake end up being treated terribly.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

It's the sort of subject that doesn't make for a great discussion since any opinion other than full, unconditional support is treated with disdain more often than not. To the point where the opinions of LGBT players who happen to be against inclusion for inclusion's sake end up being treated terribly.

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⊂(◉‿◉) A...are you saying (X_X) ☜ (◉▂◉ ) you don't support LGBT people...! (╬ಠิ益ಠิ)

You don't get the necromancer title by raising old threads :(


Also was haurchefant not good enough?

I wish these threads would stay dead since there's clearly no seeing eye-to-eye...

Almost as bad as necroed threads are the people who post under every "necroed" thread that it is a necroed thread and giving the poster the attention they want instead of letting them alone.

Trolls are clearly pulling up everything related to the LGBTQ to cause discourse.

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Originally Posted by Wavaryen

You don't get the necromancer title by raising old threads :(


Also was haurchefant not good enough?

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Horsefart*

I just did the ShB role quest for healers and noticed that Giott is a male Lalafell (Dwarf) who is refered to as a female and looks very feminine. So either the devs themselfs can't make out the difference between male and female Lalafell (male Lalafell have darker ears) or this is indeed a transgender NPC.

Garland Tools also says it is a male character model:

https://www.garlandtools.org/db/#npc/1029998

They probably did it like that so it'd be a surprise when the reveal happened, like "wow this gross foul-mouthed alcoholic was a girl all along!!"

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Originally Posted by dustdjinn

Trolls are clearly pulling up everything related to the LGBTQ to cause discourse.

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It's a bait that keeps on catching fish.

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Originally Posted by Zorvan

This is a fantasy game. If the fantasy doesn't match your particular fetish, perhaps look elsewhere.

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hear, hear !! /clap
well said.

I really don't get what people want. They want the pronouns, gender identity and sexual orientation to show up beneath a character's name? They want their first line to be "Hey Warrior of Light, I know I am a total stranger to you and while I have some pressing matters that I could use your help with, it's very important that you realize that I am gay and my pronouns are they/them! With that out of the way, could you go save my friend over there that is about to die and every second wasted is critical?"

I get that you Americans obsess over these things, so it may be different there, but around here people don't go around asking total strangers what they bedroom preferences are seeing as these tends to be private things. Some characters are hinted at, some are ambiguous, some are pretty clear, but like real people, they don't go around telling everyone about their identity and they don't have the internet to flaunt those around in their profiles.

Just be like me; Headcanon them all as LGBT+.

Except Gosetsu. He's the token straight.

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Originally Posted by Hysorn

I really don't get what people want. They want the pronouns, gender identity and sexual orientation to show up beneath a character's name? They want their first line to be "Hey Warrior of Light, I know I am a total stranger to you and while I have some pressing matters that I could use your help with, it's very important that you realize that I am gay and my pronouns are they/them! With that out of the way, could you go save my friend over there that is about to die and every second wasted is critical?"

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Isn't that what a character's "search info" could be used for if someone really wanted to?

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Originally Posted by Tint

I just did the ShB role quest for healers and noticed that Giott is a male Lalafell (Dwarf) who is refered to as a female and looks very feminine. So either the devs themselfs can't make out the difference between male and female Lalafell (male Lalafell have darker ears) or this is indeed a transgender NPC.

Garland Tools also says it is a male character model:

https://www.garlandtools.org/db/#npc/1029998

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I suspect Giott may only be using a male character model so that her emotes are the male version and don't clue in any players who would deduce her gender from it. It's played as a surprise reveal.

It could go either way, of course, but it's not the first time a character's model hasn't strictly lined up with the character, though it's more often about the wrong race or clan being used.

I'm completely hetero, and not remotely offended at the lack of representation of LGBT or even hetero people in the game. This game has an extremely diverse cast of characters (more than I've seen in other online experiences) and it does so without just trying to say "Hey we've got this (insert this advocacy group) checked off here, rejoice!!" kind of way. I feel like when it's time, whatever representation feels underrepresented will have their characters tossed in that way.

The eternal bond ceremonies are left open tho, and that is massive, I came from ultima online and even Lineage II had marriage options (at one time), and it was completely M>F only, and if you brought it up in any capacity people were openly mocked and ridiculed. My brother was LGBT+, and an advocate among other things but was one of the most relaxed, laid back people I knew. He was a WOW guy, and eventually started his own guild and it got huge on his server. He didn't really say much about it online, other than his Guild was LGBT friendly and welcoming of all kinds and ages.

I don't know what all I'm trying to say here, except, let the characters come to light as they come to light, don't try to push and shove the devs in a rush to produce whatever kind of character you feel needs to be included to feel included. But, I hope you do continue to find enjoyment in game. o/

Seen the hair dresser lately?

You know someone can be gay/bi/lesbian without subscribing to the LGBTQ+ ideology or political group. It doesn't have a monopoly on what a gay/bi/lesbian person can be and cannot be.

THANK YOU.