anyway something I hate about video games is when they make some assertion about the fictional society not being homophobic and yet the society is still heteronormative like. that’s not how things work
example: skyrim sexual orientation isn’t really talked about at all afaik and every person who can be married can be married with either character gender but like: everything is straight. I haven’t played skyrim in a while but like it’s all straight I feel like also there’s things people say in it that are heteronormative and are in there bc the people creating it didn’t see it as a problem or at odds with their apparent homophobia free society and like how can you create a fictional homophobia free society when you ain’t free of your real life assumptions. Anyway
I’ve noticed this with misogyny too, like when you go to pick your character’s gender in dragon age it says something about how men and women are considered equal and there are equal numbers of men and women in the army and in leadership positions etc.
and then you go to actually play the game and the overwhelming majority of the soldiers are male, soldiers are constantly referred to as “men,” there are characters who will say blatantly misogynistic or sexually aggressive things to you (like, blatant enough that it must be misogynistic on purpose)
and it makes me die
Some of this has to be because the people who made these games are almost exclusively straight white dudes – and while they may have had the intention of being inclusive, they literally cannot imagine what a world without heteronormativity and misogyny would look like. They give us the game mechanics to be a woman warrior or to marry a character of the same gender, but they didn’t extend this train of thought to imagine how a society where this was normal would be different from ours.
In Dragon Age, for example, the major world religion is centered on a woman, lead by women, with all-female priestesses. AND YET in everyday life characters still interact as though men are naturally in charge and express surprise at a woman issuing commands. This is directly contradictory and frankly lazy world building to suggest that people raised in a system lead exclusively by women would still somehow end up expecting male leadership, as though sexism was a sort of natural law that would happen in any society. It’s not. Also, the founding myth of their religion has the original sin as sexual jealousy rather than punishing female sexuality, which would suggest totally different social norms around monogamy, sexual orientation, and the whole idea of promiscuity. Instead they’re… More or less exactly the same as our society, slut-shaming included. This makes no sense!
It’s a complete failure of imagination, not to mention frustrating and sad. And a big part of the reason why inclusion can’t be limited to the characters in a game. We need more developers and writers of all races, genders, and orientations so we can make better worlds and better games.
diamond and pearl were so fucking STUPID honestly. two fire types available in the whole region and then they made a fire type elite four and nowhere along the development process did they think ‘hey maybe if we have to give the fire type elite four three pokemon which are not fire type, we should, add some more fire types to the region,’ until it became time to make platinum
It’s Mormon conference weekend, which happens twice a year, and is when all the Mormons stay in and listen to new talks given by their leaders all day long on Saturday and Sunday. It’s consequently also a very scary time for the gay community in Utah, and the whole weekend we often send and receive lots of texts checking in, making sure everyone’s okay, asking if they’ve heard the latest awful talk condemning us. There’s real world applications to everything that happens there. Parents are “moved” to disown their children, coworkers and friends and neighbors are reminded to Other us and treat us accordingly. Suicide rates increase significantly. I remember the year after they announced children of gay parents would have to formally disown them before they’d be welcome in the church, and for two weeks afterward a group chat updated the gay community in my area almost every day with a handful of names who were not longer with us. A talk just concluded that said confusing both your gender identity and your gender role is the influence of Satan, which is deeply harmful to young trans kids and to young women. This isn’t a fun or sexy post for your timeline it just sucks and I hate Mormons and I can feel how difficult this next week is going to be as a result.
I just… I know it’s easy to just joke about Mormons and consider them harmless cause Utah is just one state and who lives there?? But like, I do. And lots of gay and trans people do, as well as poc, and young women who have had their whole lives and concepts of self defined by this bullshit. It’s the popular culture and it’s the state laws and it’s everything it’s not just something people do in Sundays. A friend of mine went on a Mormon mission and realized he was gay after he’d been having psychosomatic seizures. For four months. Because he’d been trained to repress it so well. Like you all KNOW it’s important to me to love and respect all religions but that’s not a fucking religion they’re absolutely evil and making millions of dollars off of this shit and it makes me so mad.
as someone who lives in the capital of utah and is surrounded and well educated on the mormon church i can say with no hyperbole it is a cult motivated by money, it is terrifying the influence they have on everything from laws to culture in utah and the conference was very anti lgbt focused, be there for your utahn friends
sky's stuff 