How do you feel about LGBT characters in games?

[Alexander Amnell]

   This topic has taken a strange turn. Hmm, I'll just say I don't really think it's so cut and dry as "they change, or they're born that way" though this is just from my personal experiences and I'm far from claiming to be an expert here. My own life experience has gone from fearing I might not be straight (having been born into a highly religious family but never really being interested in any girl I'd laid eyes upon) to experimenting (once) with a homosexual relationship and then deciding after experiencing much the same as the heterosexual relationships of the past that I 'just wasn't into it'. From there I lived my life believing I was asexual until love blindsided me four years later and I ended up a married, heterosexual male. Yes I believe I am heterosexual now, but then where did those doubts come from. I certainly never felt any pressure at all to 'not be heterosexual'.


  Personally I can't say what people choose or don't choose, and I don't really care. I think there is a lot more going on in our brains than even we can comprehend that just comes with being human and being driven by intangible thoughts rather than pure instinct. Talking from growing up on a farm and always being around animals when it comes down to it most animals (I realize as with everything there are exceptions such as certain bird species that mate for life and what have you) tend to lean strongly towards bisexual, the instinct to breed may most often show itself with paired male/female couples but few are the animals in the prime of their lives that wouldn't go for a same sex (or hell, even inter-species) truss now and again when one wasn't available. Because humans aren't so widely influenced by pure instinct we are free to explore so many different variations of thought and opinion as to boggle the mind, and unfortunately somewhere along that line many people feel compelled to the assertion that their personal variation is correct, and all others somehow wrong. Free will isn't so simple as that, with the freedom to break away from impulse comes a whole pandora's box of questions to which I for one, simply believe that there might not actually be a 'factual' answer for.

 

[Ksi]

Maybe you're pan? That's basically based on the person themselves, not the gender. It's what I am - I could give two figs about gender, it's the person who matters most. A lot of people think they're bisexual when it turns out they're pansexual (and vice-versa - in some circles they're pretty much interchangeable, though there is a difference).

 

[Alexander Amnell]

Maybe you're pan? That's basically based on the person themselves, not the gender. It's what I am - I could give two figs about gender, it's the person who matters most. A lot of people think they're bisexual when it turns out they're pansexual (and vice-versa - in some circles they're pretty much interchangeable, though there is a difference).

   Quite possibly I am, though at the end of the day I'm satisfied with being happy, and the labels people might put on it don't really matter to me. There's just to much variation out there, to many different life experiences out there for me to personally ascribe to the idea of all these different labels at all, I kind of feel that the labeling and the cut-and-dry measuring of it is the problem here and why we have so much tension between orientations; whether it manifests itself with hetero groups saying everything else is unnatural or LGBT groups screaming everybody is born with a specific orientation. If it were that simple, I feel that sexual orientation would be obvious to anyone who accepts more than their own, for instance that I should be able to sort of tell what my own kids are going to lean towards when they grow up, when in reality I don't believe they even have an inkling as of yet themselves.


   We are to capable of change, to capable of variation above and beyond any other known species on this planet for me to believe that such things are ruled entirely upon hormones and wiring that's present from birth. That's just my own thought on the matter, maybe I'm misguided in this but I can't help but feel that humanity as a whole is a little to arrogant with 'facts of nature' when we prove ourselves time and again to be the very antithesis of nature.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

I never really liked labels until I found one - even now I think things are never so easily sorted-, but I see and understand these labels for what they are. I can understand the peace there is in finding out that there is a word for how you feel. It somehow makes things less lonely knowing a label exists. If that makes sense. (but don't force labels on people; people need to be able to pick whether or not they want to accept a label onto themselves. If someone rejects the idea of a label, then it isn't anyone else's place to try to pin it on them. It should be a personable choice.)

 

[Reavenator]

You know, technically Cloud is bisexual. At the very least a cross-dresser (which, granted, has nothing to do with sexuality, but still) and almost everyone has played that game, so... Congrats! Welcome to the world of OMG I PLAYED A GAME AND THE CHARACTER WAS BI... AND I LIKED IT~ (insert Katy Perry song here)

Cloud is not a crossdresser, though. A crossdresser is someone who crossdresses regularly.


Cloud only did it once, so he's not really a crossdresser.


And you can actually go through the date with Barret? when I watched a video of that, I thought it was just a game hack.

 

[Ksi]

Cloud is not a crossdresser, though. A crossdresser is someone who crossdresses regularly.


Cloud only did it once, so he's not really a crossdresser.


And you can actually go through the date with Barret? when I watched a video of that, I thought it was just game hack.

You can go through the date with Barret. It's fun~ If I didn't like Yuffie so much instead, I'd have my Cloud go on Barret date all the time, but Yuffie's a cutie so...


To be fair, my Cloud always when the whole hog with the crossdressing - full makeup, best of the wigs, pretty tiara, prettiest dress and perfume of the highest calibre, so... I mean, he went to some real effort to look good. That's real dedication there... just sayin~


labels have their uses in bringing people together and giving them something to unite and call themselves. it helps a group feel more like a whole, concentrated group than a mob of mish-mash. I mean, I'm pan but also bi, but also pan but also bi? Confused but not confused but also not quite as labelled. The label helps others identify what I am most likely to be like (and what I am most likely looking for), but it's not going to account for things like personal likes/dislikes and whatnot - there's more to it than 'just liking boys/girls/people in general', of course.


I'm not a big believer in labels, but I'll use them to make a point when someone tries to be stupid about something.  People just are, and each one is different, but there are overlapping experiences that can indicate a grouping. There's always going to be outliers and differences - nothing is ever absolute - but sometimes there's enough commonalities that you can say for surety that most of the time x is a particular way. It's not saying that all of this is this way, but that for a lot of the cases, this is this way - enough that it is the norm in that particular case for it to be like x and not like y.


So while there may be some people who choose their sexuality, it's a very very small group in comparison to the overwhelming amount who have voiced that they were always what they were but came to a realisation. And perhaps part of the people who think they chose in reality thought they did because they didn't know themselves as well as they thought they did.

 

[Emmych]

   Quite possibly I am, though at the end of the day I'm satisfied with being happy, and the labels people might put on it don't really matter to me. There's just to much variation out there, to many different life experiences out there for me to personally ascribe to the idea of all these different labels at all, I kind of feel that the labeling and the cut-and-dry measuring of it is the problem here and why we have so much tension between orientations; whether it manifests itself with hetero groups saying everything else is unnatural or LGBT groups screaming everybody is born with a specific orientation. If it were that simple, I feel that sexual orientation would be obvious to anyone who accepts more than their own, for instance that I should be able to sort of tell what my own kids are going to lean towards when they grow up, when in reality I don't believe they even have an inkling as of yet themselves.


   We are to capable of change, to capable of variation above and beyond any other known species on this planet for me to believe that such things are ruled entirely upon hormones and wiring that's present from birth. That's just my own thought on the matter, maybe I'm misguided in this but I can't help but feel that humanity as a whole is a little to arrogant with 'facts of nature' when we prove ourselves time and again to be the very antithesis of nature.

this post makes my shriveled little heart sing ;__;


SINCE... YEAH... this is also how I feel!  Trying to pin a label to my own identity has never made me happy.  When I did let go of that and just said "okay I am goong to be what I will be," I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. 


I've often felt like a label comes woth a set of guidelines I never was able to adhere to, and thus was never an accurate descriptor.  For simplicity's sake, I often say stuff like "I am bonbinary" or "I am bisexual", but neither of these labels really communicate my experience and how I feel.  Basically you hit the nail on the head: STUFF IS COMPLEX and the born this way narrative usually is used to suit heteronormative understandings of sexuality anyway, and often serve to pathologize LGB people.  It's kinda sucky!


@Ksi Tbh the Miss Cloud thing strikes me as more of a transmisogynistic joke than an actual expression of someboy's gender.  I recently played theough that part of the game and found myself cringing wicked hard since...yeah...uncomfortable. 


And like, alright, fans have co-opted it to say "Cloud is femme!!", but that doesn't change the fact the source material plays to a lot of really gross tropes that shouldn't be replicated or aspired to by game makers. 

 

[Ksi]

It's been a long time since i last played the game but I remember being secretly happy that they were going down a route like that because it put some things in perspective for the 15 year old me at the time, so maybe I have some personal realisation bias added in, but I always made sure my Cloud was very determined to do it right.


Of course, you do have to look at the era that a game was made in and measure it by it's peers at the time and there weren't many games that even touched on such subjects at all, but the fact that they added that section in (and the date with Barret, and Cloud being femme) was in itself a big step forward at the time of its creation. Was it done well, not in comparison to other games nowdays, but then again, the social aspect of such things back then were a lot less forgiving and lax. That they even broached the concept of sexuality in the game where sex wasn't the main point, made for a way to pave, so it has some kudos that should be attached to it in that aspect at least. It is one game that helped game devs push the boundaries on sexuality and acceptance of sexuality within 'serious' game story, without falling to cheap sexing up of women as objects (though there is Tifa, but she's treated pretty decently for the most part), even if it was done in a jesting tone.


Here's hoping the remake treats it a bit better, though. >.<)b

 

[aliensalmon]

I personally don't mind "LGBTQ" characters in games...even if there's romance. I played and enjoyed some RPGs with romance where the lead's love interest isn't someone I'd find sexually attractive (Final Fantasy X and Tales of Graces f - actually I think the main character Asbel had a male love interest as well.) I've also played countless games with a female lead, too.


So I guess that I would enjoy a game with an LGBTQ-type romance as well. I guess it helps that I'm not really immersed in the character's shoes, but rather the game as a whole.

 

[Mama_B]

You know, technically Cloud is bisexual. At the very least a cross-dresser (which, granted, has nothing to do with sexuality, but still) and almost everyone has played that game, so... Congrats! Welcome to the world of OMG I PLAYED A GAME AND THE CHARACTER WAS BI... AND I LIKED IT~ (insert Katy Perry song here)


@Berylstone - uh, personality is not sexuality. I think you're confusing the everything.

In case it hasn't been said, a single episode of cross-dressing does not make someone a cross-dresser.  There is also no canon to support Cloud being bisexual in the game lore.  There's a crapton of Japanese doujinshi that would tell you otherwise, but there is nothing solid that says anything about Cloud's sexual preferences being anything but straight.  Honestly, any other sexual preference that might have come up would have seemed like it was "shoehorned" in given the story run.


And remember: Cloud spent the majority of the game not even being himself, so at the point that the cross-dressing came up, it wouldn't have been about him anyway.  The majority of his personality was someone else's for about the first two-thirds of the game.  He was probably only just really finding himself when Advent Children took place two years later.

 

[Emmych]

In case it hasn't been said, a single episode of cross-dressing does not make someone a cross-dresser.  There is also no canon to support Cloud being bisexual in the game lore.  There's a crapton of Japanese doujinshi that would tell you otherwise, but there is nothing solid that says anything about Cloud's sexual preferences being anything but straight.  Honestly, any other sexual preference that might have come up would have seemed like it was "shoehorned" in given the story run.


And remember: Cloud spent the majority of the game not even being himself, so at the point that the cross-dressing came up, it wouldn't have been about him anyway.  The majority of his personality was someone else's for about the first two-thirds of the game.  He was probably only just really finding himself when Advent Children took place two years later.

I agree with this but for different reasons.  Cloud could have been bisexual very easily in a way that wasn't shoehorned!  All they needed to do was show him having some sort of attraction to another man, plain and simple (like, say, showing he was in love with Zack.  It would have been very easy to pull this off).  But they don't,  so it's pretty safe to assume Cloud is straight, since we unfortunately live in a world that is straight-until-proven-otherwise.


So basically, Ksi is correct in that Cloud could totally be bisexual and have The Genders.  But, because we are never given evidence to support that beyond a transmisogynist joke and a homophobic (maybe rape?*) joke that takes place in the honeybee inn, this doesn't really hold any weight beyond being a fan theory, which is not adequate LGBT representation.  


*No, really, go look up what happens to Cloud in the Group Room.  Idk if it's a bad translation or what, but WOW does it ever look like Cloud is part of some maybe-not-consensual group adult activity during that part.

 

[Galenmereth]

Yeah no if you start reading the Cloud events in FF7 as proof of homosexuality or bisexuality, then you're really reading too much into things and/or projecting. It's obviously a series of (actually quite funny) joke moments that nobody would dare to reproduce these days for fear of backlash from oversensitive communities.


On the topic of how I feel about LGBT characters in games, it's no different from writing any other character, regardless of gender, race, religion, opinions, or sexuality. Give them a reason to be where they are, act the way they act, and think the way they do. That's really all there is to it the way I see it. Make characters that feel in place in the world you build around them. And please remember that our preconceptions are based on our cultures, upbringing and societies. You can put everything on its head when you write the world and its history. Why not try to put a focus on preconceptions by inverting some of the most commons ones we have, and make it believable based on past events? This is what is so great about anything that's fiction: You can take a sharp look at any topic from angles not possible in our reality.

 

[Pine Towers]

Like I said in this topic already...

I don't see how this can even come up story-wise.


When playing Chrono Trigger, never I asked myself if Lucca was a lesbian or if Glenn loved Cyrus more than just a brother-in-arms. When playing Earthbound I never stopped to think if Ness was into girls or guys.


To bring this kind of subject into a game, either the core of the game must revolve around this, or it must be really, really, really well executed to not just be a forced dialogue so the game "have X type of character".

 

[Susan]

I'm pretty sure this will be on topic, despite not being a video game character.


In my opinion, this is an excellent portrayal of a LGBT+ whose sexual preference is just one part of his character. He doesn't openly say it, especially not out of context; you just find out as the story progresses. For him, his sexual preference actually adds an immense amount of depth and personality that you can't find otherwise if he was portrayed as a straight character.

Note: the spoiler isn't meant to make fun of the character, but only to present one of the largest, most lovable aspects of this character. And I absolutely adore this character. 







Bonus points to those who recognize him and in which movie he can be found.

 

[JosephSeraph]

To bring this kind of subject into a game, either the core of the game must revolve around this, or it must be really, really, really well executed to not just be a forced dialogue so the game "have X type of character". 

No, to bring this kind of subject into a game, you do it if you feel it is part of what you're making.


It must be as well executed as anything else as it is no different than anything else.

When playing Chrono Trigger, never I asked myself if Lucca was a lesbian or if Glenn loved Cyrus more than just a brother-in-arms. When playing Earthbound I never stopped to think if Ness was into girls or guys.

You make it sound like romance is a rare things in games.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

It must be as well executed as anything else as it is no different than anything else.

As well executed as anything else.... Actually that brings up a point - I kind of dream of a day when all romances can be written as poorly as some hetero romances are written in some games ;D you know? Because DANG there are some AWFUL romances written in games.


The idea they have to be PERFECT probably scares a lot of people away from trying. Bring me some corny cheesy lesbians! Bring on the shoddily written awkwardly forced gay romances! 


Maybe that's just me o3o???? But hey, better to try than just avoid it out of fear that it won't be written in good enough.

 

[JosephSeraph]

that's why I said I wanna see some Squall x Rinoa style non straight romances! Gahahah though I love the game, many say it is poorly written (I say they don't get the plot >:^O)


But yeah you got a big point! Not every work has to be revolutionary and brilliant, some just serve to make you chill on a couch with a pile of sea salt caramel popcorn <3

 

[trouble time]

As well executed as anything else.... Actually that brings up a point - I kind of dream of a day when all romances can be written as poorly as some hetero romances are written in some games ;D you know? Because DANG there are some AWFUL romances written in games.


The idea they have to be PERFECT probably scares a lot of people away from trying. Bring me some corny cheesy lesbians! Bring on the shoddily written awkwardly forced gay romances! 


Maybe that's just me o3o???? But hey, better to try than just avoid it out of fear that it won't be written in good enough.

I dream of a day we call out the bad romances and all the bad writing in everything, but that's just cause I'm a cynic. What I'd say to people trying would be that they should always be imporving, and you can't do that until you try. Bad writing is...and excuse this unintended pun... a transition to good writing, at least it should be)

 

[Pine Towers]

You make it sound like romance is a rare things in games.

It was. You can see at the examples given (Chrono Trigger and Earthbound) and not only restricted to jRPG (Baldur's Gate and Wizardry are examples of wRPG that doesn't have romance). I can't be certain but romance in RPG came alongside in Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

Bring me some corny cheesy lesbians! Bring on the shoddily written awkwardly forced gay romances!

I guess the most critics (in quantity and harshness) would come from the very LGBT community as saying the game is - good Lord! - homophobic by representing them in such a cartoony way, even, - as you said - corny heterossexual romance can be see plenty (not that I endorse it, either)

 

[trouble time]

It was. You can see at the examples given (Chrono Trigger and Earthbound) and not only restricted to jRPG (Baldur's Gate and Wizardry are examples of wRPG that doesn't have romance). I can't be certain but romance in RPG came alongside in Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

What? No, what about all the romance in Final Fantasy games? What about all the RPGs with Dating sim/visual novel elements like Riviera the promised land or Misumete Knight (well Mitsumete is more like a dating sim with rpg elements) There was tons or romance long before Dragon age and Mass Effect.