We're here and Queer!

This is a blog discussing the reprenetation of queer & LGBTQIA+ characters across the many forms of media out there! We are specifically focusing in games and on TV shows and films! We may expand our scope in the future! 

[werehereandqueer]

Let’s Talk About Bi...oware

Now I’m not going to tell full-faced lies and say I don’t indulge in the game series from one of the most hated, and justifiably so, publishers of all time. Mass Effect and Dragon Age were my gateway games into the land of virtual and tabletop RPG’s if you don’t count Legend of Zelda (which I don’t). 

But even my intense love for these game series, I won’t sit here, cover my eyes and say “Bioware did nothing wrong!”. It could be argued that EA are the one’s more to blame, and I’ll be the one pointing that finger, but Bioware themselves aren’t faultless...but that isn’t to say they didn’t give us some good rep. So let’s give credit where it’s due and pick apart some examples of that.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

The third game in the titular series offers the most diverse rep within your circle of companions, some who stuck with me more than others.

Dorian Pavus proved to be one of the more ground-breaking characters--an openly gay mag from the land of Tevinter which isn’t a fan of that label. (Kenneth Shepherd wrote quite an interesting piece you can read here). His sexuality is a huge part of his character, and a point of conflict between him and his father. 

But he is written in a way so he has so much more to offer. Charming, witty, intelligent and suave as Gomez Addams (even sporting a ‘stache that’s just as awesome). Having not had the chance to play through Dorian’s romance, I can’t comment much on the route, though I did notice it had gained a lot of popularity. The only downside is this mod. It pained me to even google that. To add insult to injury, it advertised as a “bi” mod which is bad enough to start with, but it locks out male inquisitor’s from romancing Dorian when it’s installed. Just say it’s a straight mod, Karen, you coward. If that’e not enough, there’s also a bi Sera mod too, you know, the lesbian archer

The BioWare fandom has quite the reputation online, and it’s these kinds of people that are the cause. Even now as I’m writing the article, I’m fully expecting angry pterodactyl screeching in the reply section or ask box (I’m gonna take this op to politely ask people to remain cordial even if you disagree. My button will be hovering over the block and delete button with vigilance)

Some of the screeching, granted, is justified. Trespasser being exclusive to the current gen consoles, and containing plot-vital information was a dick move. And with EA pushing the envelope on their new IP game Anthem panic is spreading that Mass Effect might have the plug pulled on it.

And this is the perfect segway to talk about their other famous RPG series--Mass Effect!

Mass Effect

Mass Effect doesn’t seem to have as much controversy surrounding it, or maybe I’m just been lucky with the lack of ME discourse on my dash. There is still something to be said about the series though. One of most notable being the sexualised asari (just because this is a queer rep blog doesn’t mean misogyny gets a free pass from us). The asari are coded as a ‘monogendered’ alien race, able to conceieve children regardless of the race or gender of their partner. Want to know what this monogendered species looks like?

Yup, unfortunately they have fallen into the sci-fi trope of “green skinned space babe”, only difference being their skin violet/blue. The asari are highly-sexualised in the game, most working as dancers in seedy clubs

And a lot of NPC’s have some opretty creepy things to say about the asari.  Even Shep has some less than savoury things to say, such as in The Shadow Broker DLC

When I was playing the DLC for myself, I hadn’t romanced Liara, so the comment came off as even creepier. BioWare unfortunately has this annoying tactic of seeming to code Liara as the ‘canon’ romance. One line in particular sticks with me. When asked why Liara chose to hand Shepard over to Cerberus she said “I couldn’t let you go”. Romanced, this sounds fine, sweet even maybe. When not romanced, it seems to show signs of possessiveness, as though claiming ownership over someone she has no right to. I’d be very much interested to hear what Kaidan, my LI, would have to say about this.

Speaking of LI’s, that was something I found very lacking with the original Mass Effect. You had three choice: Ashley William, Kaidan Alenko, and Liara. Bioware wrongly assumed none of their player-base would want to get down and dirty with the likes of Garrus, a mistake rectified in later installments. What’s even worse is that both Ashley and Kaidan were coded as straight. If you’re a gay man, too bad I guess. It wasn’t until ME3 came out that Kaidan was made bisexual, but sadly Ashley remained straight. At the very least, BioWare can be given kudos for later adding more choices, and widening their range of LGBT characters. 

In ME3, we were given bi Kaidan, gay Steve Cortez, gay Samantha Traynor, bi Diana Allers and bi Liara, equaling out the amount of queer and het romance, thus offering more equality than other games. This shows growth, and proves to other companies that having LGBT characters doesn’t detract from a games success. Mass Effect’s original trilogy proved very popular. Even though Andromeda tanked, it had nothing to do with the representation. Granted, Andromeda was attacked for some representation, such as only one canonically gay male love interest. This goes to show, though representation has made leaps and bounds in progress, there is still room for improvement, and I hope games don’t stop producing games with queer romances. 

So who was your favourite romances? Who do you wish you could have romanced? How do you feel about BioWare’s representation? 

[werehereandqueer]

Queerdew Valley

Now I was going to do a dating sim, but I do not have them and could not watch a play-through within a few days so I decided, okay, I’ll do a TV show. I did want to stay topical with all the games Mod Amy knows but I do not have such a range games I’ve played with representation. So this morning I was half writing the article beautifully in my head when it hit me.

Stardew Valley!

And then I realised, how could I have not seen I could have talked about this? It was quite literally in my face as I thought about procrastinating writing a post by playing the game itself.

So for those of you who don’t know – Stardew Valley is a quiet little pixel farming simulator mixed in with a partial dating sim style. The developer, ConcernedApe, himself called it a homage and improvement of Harvest Moon..

Most importantly you are a person who’s been sick of working for Joja Corp (and oh man could I talk about the metaphor behind the company – but moving on) and have a deed for your grandpa’s old farm and then on a spontaneous whim you go to Stardew Valley and work on your grandpa’s old farm.

Now from the get-go ConcernedApe said he wanted the game to be supportive of all different play-styles and allow the player freedom to do what they wanted. And he made this game where you could. One of these things included having same gender marriage within the game! There a wide variety of NPC’s you can date of either gender and the routes are very similar regardless of the gender you choose for your farmer. ConcernedApe has even taken feedback and expanding the list of NPC’s you can date and marry!

Now, I have a very distinct taste, the two times I’ve played Stardew I’ve gone for same gender marriages. Specifically I have married Abigail and Sebastian. (Note: It’s been about a year since I played through Abigail’s route.)

And speaking for the two NPC’s I’ve chosen I’ve been blown away by both of them. They’re both incredibly sweet routes and they’re both very much different people on the opposite ends of the spectrum. 

Without devoting another three months into the game I’m going to wager the other routes are just as sweet and give you a loving feeling no matter what gender you or your spouses are.

I especially like that fact that ConcernedApe in an attempt to make the marriages as lovely as possible have none of the NPC’s discriminate towards you ever – no matter who you’ve married! In fact, most of the valley seems to attend when you get married, which is a lovely touch!

While, some games do tend to have discrimination when you have a same gender partner in them, it is quite refreshing to have a game where no comments are made and no drama is started once you marry a partner of your own gender!

However, this game isn’t entirely perfect. It is lacking in POC, but hopefully when new content is added, there may be more characters added to help increase the diversity of the cast. There is two characters of colour within the game, one married and one date-able, which is quite a shame but as ConcernedApe is quite good with taking on new ideas from the community – there may be more diversity for the game in the future!

Now, I don’t know about anyone else – but I would love to be able to have some form of polyarmous marriage in the game as well as more POC!

What would you guys like to see next in Stardew Valley?

[werehereandqueer]

What is your opinion on Anita Sarkesian?

Frankly, I’ve never heard of her before so I did some cursory research on her and skimmed through a post on Feminist Frequency (a blog she help runs/moderates/writes for?) and she seems alright. The type of writing on the one post I’ve skimmed through is something I aspired to when me and Mod Amy made this blog!

The post of their blog I am referring to is this: https://feministfrequency.com/2017/12/04/eleven-is-the-hero-i-needed-in-1984/ I would assume the rest of a simular quality!

Is there any particular reason you sent this ask for? I’d be interested in knowing if it was simple if you thought we wrote things in the like of Feminist Frequency or some other reason ^^

I’ll apologise for the very delayed response, as both me and Mod Amy have been busy!

[werehereandqueer]

Dungeon-queering

I want to take a break talking about computer and console games and talk about my personal favorite tabletop game: DnD. Now a lot of you might be scratching your heads thinking ‘Dungeons and Dragons? Is there even anything to talk about?’ As a matter of fact, yes there is.

Wizards of the Coast themselves have been pushing out a handful of LGBT inclusivity into their campaigns and universe as a whole. Curse of Strahd and Storm King’s Thunder both have canonically gay NPC’s and promise more queer characters in the future; read for yourself here. Even though having just a handful of gay NPC’s might not be a fantastic example of rep, the overpowering rise in popularity of DnD means this rep will reach people from all walks of life, far and wide. We have seen the reach and popularity of DnD with the beloved internet series of Critical Role and The Adventure Zone, which add to the representation by having LGBT characters, such as the bisexual rogue Vax’ildan from Critical Role and  the gay wizard Taako from The Adventure Zone. 

It could be argued that a lot of DnD representation springs from people’s own characters. For example, in my party I play a pansexual elf, and as for the rest of the party there is a bisexual dragonborn, a lesbian human and another lesbian dragonborn. But thanks to the aforementioned internet series, the representation spreads to the audience, giving people these amazing queer characters.  

And even if there is just queer characters that only you and the rest of your party now about, you are still contributing by making queer characters commonplace in fantasy settings.  This type of representation shouldn’t be trivialized.

But not all DnD players are very welcoming. A lot of DnD players have voiced displeasure in the idea of gayness permeating the DnD universe. I’ve lost count of how many tumblr posts I scrolled past after reading homophobic vitriol. But every fandom has it’s bunch of assholes--it’s important to remember which people to block, and which people to surround yourself which. 

But tell us what you think of the progress Wizards of the Coast has made, and how has your DnD experience been on and offline?

And for those playing, may lady luck bless your dice!

[werehereandqueer]

Life is Qu- Strange!

So this week, I am going to discuss my thoughts on the Life is Strange series! Including the original and Before the Storm!

(I do not have access to the Bonus Episode that comes with Before The Storm so that is going to be excluded from this post. If I see a playthrough’s or get access it to myself I will edit in or do an update post about it – depending on its relevancy to the issues discussed.)

 When Life is Strange Episode 1 made its debut, it managed to make top 5 best seller within a month of its release. And I’m not surprised. The game itself has quite a unique and stunning visuals as well as using the butterfly effect and having the use of rewinding time to customise gameplay to each player as they play the game.

But something that really hooked me in when I first played this game was Chloe Price.

Now I love her style and her attitude. But the moment I first heard her talk about Rachel Amber. I knew, I just knew that it was no ordinary relationship between friends. In fact a friend tried to tell me they were just friends. The way she’s protective over the photo Max picks up of Rachel. When Max says she was a good friend and she responds ‘that’s putting it mildly’ and when she calls Rachel her ‘angel’. I knew that Chloe was queer to some extent. I knew she had some semblance of a relationship with Rachel Amber. (Which is made a bit more explicit later on when you find out she was sleeping with Frank.)

But apparently this subtly is not picked up by everyone. Even when Max kisses Chloe and Chloe doesn’t seem overly bothered by it and when, if you choose the options right, after Max kisses Chloe during the final choice – Chloe says ‘I’ll always love you’. 

And apparently for some people this isn’t explicit enough to know these characters love or attracted to each other in a way that isn’t explicitly platonic.

Now I will talk a little bit about Before the Storm before I address some of the issues the game does have.

Now I know some people believe Before the Storm was an unwarranted prequel, merely a stunt to milk the popularity that came from Life is Strange. But there are people who think this but still think that the developers who made it (different than the original ones) still captured the very essence of the game. And I don’t believe it be an unnecessary or unwanted prequel. I see it as a game that finally eliminates the option to deny the deep and romantic bond between Chloe and Rachel. Without a doubt, even if you play the options where they remain friends, there is no denying this bond is just as deep as the one Chloe had with Max – or even goes further than it.

I dare even say I loved this game more than the original. The developers did such a stunning job in continuing to the capture the unique art style of the game and continue with capturing the essence of Chloe’s character – even if she is a younger in this game. Nothing to me, in this game, appears out of essence of the characters we know. We are even introduced to new characters in this game are given the feel of them easily.

But the love and affection Rachel and Chloe and the kindling bond they start with are so stand out and so real it hurts. The interactions they have together are filled with raw chemistry. It’s so undeniable like love and intertwines such a beautiful bond between them – including in the ending credits that I wish I could play more games like it. Both these games lay a foundation for games in the future to set up queer character and especially have them as protagonists and have games that have them both as the main focus and somewhat in the periphery of the games.

 Now, while these games lay a good example it is not entirely perfect. As I mentioned before, in Before the Storm – Rachel and Chloe can remain friends. Which I find incredibly disappointing. Even in a game about choice – the first game shows that sometimes you do not have a choice. I think in Before The Storm that there honestly shouldn’t have been the option to just befriend Rachel. There is that chemistry between them that remains unexplored and does not explain the way Chloe wistfully and lovingly talks about her in the original. Unless it’s explained as an unrequited crush and Rachel never returned those feelings. But I just can’t find it in me to believe that to be true. I know that in a game about choice there should be choices in how the players can control the characters but they could have set it up in an entirely different way – since this prequel was entirely focused around their buddying relationship. The developers should have been brave and bold enough to have this as the one choice you could not change – just like the final choice in Life is Strange.

 But unlike many franchises that leave us begging for scraps of representation – I at least applaud Life is Strange to have the more queer options as canon. Even if I wish they would change some things about their representation.

But I suppose for now, we will see if any other game companies stand up and start having games with more queer protagonists in them!

[werehereandqueer]

Persona 5 has a real straight problem...

Oh, Atlus. We need to have a talk. I’ve been a loyal fan since I got my hands on a copy Of Persona 3: FES in 2009, and spent my entire summer seeing it through to completion. I unfortunately skipped out on Persona 4 due to losing my PS2, but you can imagine my excitement for Persona 5.

When the ‘Take Your Heart’ edition arrived on my doorstep, I tears open the packaging and immediately turned on my PS4. And I was floored. The more gritty, darker story, the streamlined combat, the slick and sexy aesthetic--everything was new and improved. 

But therein lies the problem that’s permeated most of Atlus games. It’s a straight problem. 

Atlus has never been known for handling their queer characters well., Kanji and Naoto from Persona 4 are proof of this. Kanji’s palace, ‘The Steamy Bathhouse’ is a homophobic mess. And let’s not even get started on Catherine, it’s horrendous treatment of trans-barmaid Erika, and the promotion pictures for the new character Rin in Catherine: Full Body:

But that’s a topic for another day. Today I want to tackle the issue of Persona 5.

From the get-go the problem is apparent. As the protagonist, there are plenty of different woman to choose as your LI, should you wish a love interest, but the men? They’re a no-go (make Ryuji romanceable you cowards!). And without even giving the option to choose the gender of the protag, despite the positive reception of choosing between Minako and Minato in Persona 3: Portable, there is absolutely no option for any same-sex relationships. But let’s be real, likely the female protag could only romance the men. That’s how it was handled in Persona 3: Portable. 

The only canon-gay characters present in P5 are the adult men who predatorily creep on Ryuji, dragging him away in the Red Light District and again on the beach. What’s more, it’s played out like it is all a joke, when in reality this sort of representation is part of the problem as to why poor presentation is so prevalent, and in turn leads to the sort of alienation that is dangerous to LGBTQA+ people. This could be because of how homosexuality is viewed as Japan, as “Japanese gay men and lesbian women often conceal their sexuality; with many even marrying persons of the opposite sex” (1) despite Japan saying their are tolerant of same-sex relationships, this shows some level of intolerance which may be the reason for the reluctance to include healthy representation.

But this shouldn’t be used as an excuse for literal homophobia and transphobia in the games. If anything, it should encourage more positive representation to challenge the homophobia ingrained into society. It’s not going to improve unless queer relationships are shown in a healthy spotlight. 

We’re here, we’re queer and we won’t be silenced. 

[werehereandqueer]

Welcome!

Hello guys, gals and nonbinary pals! Welcome to We’re Here and Queer, a space for safe and intellectual discussions on LGTBTQA+ representation in video games and movies. 

Let’s introduce ourselves! I’m Mod Amy, a bisexual cisgender woman, joined by Mod Dess, nonbinary trans asexual. To give you a better idea of what we’re doing, we’re both university students at Liverpool John Moore University, and this is one of our projects we’re doing.

For a modul called “Writers at Work” we are encouraged to put ourselves out into the world as writers and, well, work! We decided to do work with something we’re passionate about--the LGBT community. 

Bouncing around a few ideas, we decided to make a tumblr blog, a space were other members of the community can join us in celebrating good representation and picking apart flawed representation, and what creators can do better.

Now, onto housekeeping!

1) We ask that only LGBTQA+ people follow this blog. It is a space for discussing queer representation, after all.

2) No trolling, bullying, harrassment or otherwise unsuitable behaviour. You will be blocked and reported immediately.

3) Be respectful of other people’s orientation and gender. This should go without saying, but there it is just in case.

4) Asks, replies and reblogs on our posts are encouraged. This is a blog we want people to feel comfortable opening forums of discussion on. We look forward to chatting with you!

5) No spamming. We know it can be tempting if you are waiting for replies but we are both very busy individuals and can’t promise immediate responses. We hope you understand. 

Watch this space over the next few weeks for our first official post!