Yes, it's midnight but I just woke up with The Issue at Stake crystallized in my brain

For literally two decades, and the last one in particular, I've been passionately interested in representation of LGBT people in gaming and more broadly inclusion of marginalized voices in general.

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There has also been an intense reaction,primarily reaching the surface of the discourse in the past half decade, against the practices and more broadly the literal existence of what we call AAA video games,due to labor rights advocacy but also a broad association w the mainstream

So the phrase [the largest and most well funded studio in AAA gaming] [just made the most LGBT inclusive and physically accessible video game of all time] provokes two different reactions, and no, you can't actually resolve the cognitive dissonance. Either it's good, or it's bad

To me, it's obviously good and very important to support, because to me, representation matters and additionally, *I like AAA games*. To folks who want to see AAA games gone and replaced with cerebral indie titles, this is Bad Actually.

Since the latter group is most of the gaming press, it's become very important for them to find an avenue of attack, given that The Last of Us 2 is LITERALLY EVERYTHING us traditional advocates for diversity in gaming have been pleading for for decades.

And you've found your way to critically destroy it: by dredging up ancient arguments against violence in video games and playing completely innocent when it's pointed out you didn't do this when it wasn't the MOST LGBT INCLUSIVE AND PHYSICALLY ACCESSIBLE GAME OF ALL TIME

you've decided this is the place and time to have The Fight About Crunch Time in Games, even though this has been an issue for years, but of course not coincidentally at all, you've known for years this game would feature major queer themes.

You hate the fact that LGBT gamers have this one thing, this ONE thing that was nearly perfect and clearly made with excellent intentions, so you've boosted the most hostile voices among us who will never be satisfied, because you don't want big games to exist at all.

I want to be asleep right now but I woke up and this was incredibly clear to me and I felt that while none of this is new exactly I needed to say it out loud.

Oh yeah one other thing: you've all managed to successfully suppress this from being pointed out by making everyone terrified of admitting that anything commercial matters to them, that in this shit ass world we need entertainment

You use half baked Marxism platitudes about commodity fetishism to imply that LGBT people are all on your side, that none of us wanted a polished cinematic game before you decided it was time to pull the ladder up so your harasser friends could promote their low budget stuff

Oh,my favorite bit is you promote what amounts to a campaign to limit accessibility and to limit inclusion in games with rhetoric about how the world isn't "really as bad" as a particular work of fiction in the horror genre shows, as if the world isn't worse now than in our lived

My. Reality. Will. Never. Be. Uwu. Stop. Trying. To. Destroy. Everything. Else. Challenge. Fcking. 2020.