A Story Not Worth Telling

I am not gay. I am a straight male who wants to find a wife and settle down one day, teaching my kids how to headshot someone from across the map.

I just want to establish this because this article isn’t from the perspective of someone who has had to deal with racism, alienation, and homophobia. The closest thing I ever got to that was being made fun of for being fat by one kid during primary school. For the longest time, after discovering just how horrible human beings can be to each other just because of the colour of their skin or their sexual orientation, I thought humanity had moved mostly past that. More and more, in real life, we’re easing or reversing decades-old laws against gay marriage and more and more people are standing up against people who are willing to just hate people just because they aren’t part of “society’s norms”.

Well...  it’s no surprise not everyone has changed, even though very slowly they’re becoming more of a minority themselves.

It’s 2021 and we’re still seeing people complaining about “strong female characters”, “sudden black guys” and “unnecessary gay characters” on Twitter in a lot of media, from shows on Netflix to videogames. It’s really easy to express your hate online because it’s impersonal, and as long as they don’t say anything about where they live or post a picture of their face, no one apart from people close to them can convince them otherwise and even then it’ll take convincing... even when it’s highly likely their encouraging such hateful views.

Still, we’re fighting these types of things every day, teaching newer generations to tolerate and accept people through their favourite shows and games.

And maybe one day... these events won’t be treated as a selling point. A... random piece of trivia about a character rather than a major reveal.

More recent games with romance options have started to allow the player to date and marry (and um... bone) any gender, with the game slightly being changed in order to fit that. Instead of birthing a baby, you adopt one. Apparently everyone is bi in these games, like in Stardew Valley. However, some games take into account the romanceable character’s own sexuality. You want to get with Judy in Cyberpunk 2077? You have to be a girl because Judy’s a lesbian. Unless you mod the game, you’re not going to get a sliver of a chance while playing a guy. Other games like Dragon Age: Inquisition, Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Mass Effect also take this into account. It’s more realistic that not everyone will be willing to accept your advances based on their own preferences.

But I think the Borderlands series does it best when it comes to representation... and that it is just a thing.

Borderlands 2 started with it, back in the days where it was still funny to call little people “midgets”. A small glitch with Axton the Commando had him say flirtatious lines to both male and female characters when reviving them. The writers proceeded to make the character bi because, well... it’s the future, 2864 and beyond more specifically. Hopefully, humanity has moved past such prejudices and it’s now a footnote in a world filled with monsters and guns. However, one of the things I loved about Borderlands 3 was Alistair Hammerlock and Wainwright Jakobs’ relationship. Not often will you see a gay relationship between two aging men and even then it’s treated as a joke, but in the world of Borderlands it’s quite serious and intense. Through the audio logs, you can see how Hammerlock is comforting his boyfriend as he laments how he doesn’t feel worthy of his family name. It’s fleshed out quite well, and I admit I smiled when they got engaged during the credits and getting them married at the end of the Guns, Love, and Tentacles DLC. In a world filled with "69" jokes (seriously, your character will giggle when getting 69 damage) and over-the-top violence is a surprisingly human story about two men’s love for each other. And that was a subplot - totally optional thing you could miss (probably not but I have seen people who have reduced the voice volume to 0) and it’s great.  And that’s not the only example you’ll see in Borderlands. Heck, in Borderlands 2’s last DLC Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary, a side quest implies a thing between Brick and Mordecai that I admittedly missed when I played through it.

And that’s what I want to see some day, or something that finally happens in the distant future. A “huh” rather than a “holy shit”.

Don’t misconstrue though, I don’t want it to be like J.K. Rowling and her attempt at representation (and her stuff as a terrible person). I still want it to be acknowledged throughout the story of a game. Don’t just ignore it and say “oh, by the way, they’re gay/bi/trans/asexual/pansexual/queer” after the story is over. Give it meaning, not just some informed trait that can easily be ignored. I just don’t want it to be at the centre because it proves that there are still people who feel it’s important to tell these stories, to show that they’re human beings like everyone else with their own struggles when it should be a given, but face so much hate and discrimination that it causes people to create stories of their fight for equality. Hell, if people can send death threats through DMs and comments over criticising a game and giving it a low score (as many a reviewer has gotten especially here on GameGrin), it’s most likely worse for tons of LGBTQIA+ people who have to deal with it in real life with people who are willing to hurt them physically and mentally.

We’ll eventually have LGBTQIA+ representation in games and media not centered around how a gay relationship broke apart the bonds between family and friends like in 2013’s Gone Home. Or they won't have some moral lesson about tolerating people, or they won’t become a talking point when discussing a game’s story and its characters like from Ellie in The Last of Us or Qatherine/Rin from Catherine: Full Body. I even found a list on Wikipedia detailing who isn’t heterosexual in games and it feels a little uncomfortable that there had to be one in the first place.

I hope stories about people coming out and discovering their sexuality become stories not worth telling in the future, because it shouldn’t be dramatic with plot twists and drama. It should just be a part of life and accepted as a fact; like not downloading cars and how guards in stealth games have the eyesight of moles.