Quote Originally Posted by Mhaeric View Post
What you're trying to express here is what is known as tokenism. The thing is, however, characters can be LGBT without needing to be fleshed out or have good stories. An LGBT character's existence does not need to be contingent upon additional criteria to be considered worthy of explicit inclusion. That's different than tokenism which has more to do with the intent behind the inclusion. In fact, inclusion of people throughout a game world regardless of how fleshed out they are would work to avoid tokenism rather than being a form of it.

I'm no longer purchasing anything released or produced by Bethesda for unrelated reasons, but I will say that they did this thing correctly in Elder Scrolls Online. That game has lots NPCs whose LGBT status is made explicit and most of them aren't fleshed out in any real away at all although there are several that are

One other thimg, people absolutely should be able to see themselves in fictional characters just because their sexualities align. The parallel to this is that people shouldn't be expected to just be fine with only ever having characters that have differing sexualities than theirs. Sexuality isn't just some clinical trait that people have, it's just as much a part of their identity as their personality is and perfectly worthy of identifying with just on that basis alone.
I can't tell whether or not you understand what I'm saying. Your mentioning of tokenism does align with what I'm trying to say, but it's almost sounding like you think I'm for it, which I'm not. But I could be misinterpreting what you said.

That being said, that goes back to my original expression of why are all characters considered heterosexual until proven otherwise, unless they "act" a certain way. In real life you can't tell a person's sexual orientation just by looks alone, so why should a fictional world be any different.

Also, I'm not denying that someone's sexual orientation is important to their identity. But that shouldn't be the main reason you like a fictional character. Just like I how girls shouldn't like female characters just because they are girls. It's similar to getting into a relationship; looks are important, but if that's all you're focused on you're gonna be disappointed later on.