kukuruyo

(Versión española)

Let it be clear first that i care very little for what kind of sausage this characters eat in their free time. I run what could be considered an lgbt comic, most of my friends are lgbt, and even bought the Tracer figure, so that’s how much i care she does the scissors (tho i would prefer she did them with Widowmaker). I know nothing of that will convince anyone already predisposed to think that i’m an homophobe that i’m not, but then again nothing you could ever say or do could convince one of those, so what’s the point. My point here is that at this point it’s kinda too obvious when and why these lgbt reveals are been made. Both times it has happened has been in the middle of controversies, and both reveals have show signs of been rushed works, not really something thought out from the beginning.

And the first time it happened i wasn’t really into the theory that they did it to avoid controversy. Yes, it was suspicious. Tracer’s reveal was made when they were in a controversy, was done with simply a couple pages of a christmas comic, and it was done with a literal random nobody we had never heard about in any part of the lore, gameplay, videos, etc. I commented about those details in another comic of mine at the time, and it indeed seemed as if they’ve just decided to make one character gay to appease the masses, and went for the one with the most stereotypical lesbian fashion, but i prefered to think to myself it was probably just bad writting.

Now that it has happened a second time in the exact same way, it’s difficult to mantain that thought. Blizzard has been in a lot of shit latelly. The Diablo Immortal controversy was not long ago, but long enough that an artist hired at that time could have had a comic finished by now (coincidence?). The number of players and people watching the Ow esports have been going down fast, to the point it’s often said Ow will not last another year (we’ll see about that), and just some days ago they had another controversy with this Ow girl at esports who was found out to be really a man using a girl to pose for him on camera. And then Blizzard releases a new character been gay with the exact same mistakes as the other one; it’s been done in just a couple panels of a comic, with a random nobody we have never heard before. Only this time they did it with a character that’s probably the less gay thing in the game. I was even convinced he had made out with Ana and she was one of the reasons for his rivalry with Reaper. Couldn’t they’ve picked Hanzo? I mean, i though he WAS gay already before the Tracer reveal…

So yeah, this time, i’m gonna have to agree with that theory; Blizzard didn’t have any of this thought out, and they’re simply trying to evade controversies by making more characters lgbt, so they grab attention from the lgbt community, and if anyone complains about how this looks like, the controversy changes to how vile homophobes gamers are, and danger avoided.

Western games should learn from japanese games how to do this stuff. They’ve been making lgbt characters for decades and no one has batted an eye. But apparently if it’s japanese it doesn’t count.