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I keep saying this take lately, across a bunch of different widely-shared posts, and idk am I the only one who's super weirded out by it??
I get the logic but I think there's a lot of implications people really, really aren't thinking about
It makes me think about Dragon Age 2, where you could date any character as any gender, and how they actually backed away from that for Dragon Age Inquisition because they wanted to actually tell stories about characters of different sexualities
For example, Dorian's story in Inquisition is about how he's a gay man who was threatened with, basically, magically-enforced compulsory heterosexuality and so was forced to run away from his family and homeland
That's a pretty meaningful story! And I bet it was meaningful to a lot of gay people playing that game who had similar experiences with bigoted families. But I don't think it would hit the same if Dorian was attracted to women
That could totally be an interesting and meaningful story in its own right, but it wouldn't be the same story. The threat of magical non-consensual gay conversion therapy at the heart of that story wouldn't really be the same
Dating games can be wish fulfillment but they also usually tell stories about their characters too, and 'everyone has to be functionally bi/pan' is a massive limit on the kinds of stories you can tell about different queer experiences
And for that matter queer dating wish fulfillment can often revolve around meeting and dating and loving someone who is similar and relatable to you, who you see yourself in, who understands and shares important aspects of your identity and experience
Anyway to put it more bluntly: 'you shouldn't have lesbians or gay men in dating games' is actually a super shitty take lmao stop sharing it and please think about it for one second
I think maybe some of these posts are really about how not enough games let you be gay in the first place, but if what you mean is 'less straight characters in video games' (a good take) then just say that please!!!
You can't have good diverse queer representation if you also insist that queer characters in video games need to be put in the LGBT blender until they're all totally indistinguishable in their queerness! That sucks!!!
I promise you that having a cast of characters with a wide range of different sexualities and queer exeriences is about a hundred times more meaningful than 'let everyone date everyone'
