222: Too Gay for the U.S.A.

[Risingblade]

Does anyone remember how Fallout 3 was commended for its inclusion of homosexual NPCs in the wasteland, yet of the three gay men, one was a prissy fashion-queen & the other a moustached, hard-voiced rough character with a weaker, dominated lover, & that the two lesbians had hideous rotting skin?

There were gay guys in Fallout 3?

I don't remember this @.@

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Anyone else up in this thread who had to think about the Migamel Brothers of Shadow Hearts Covenant?
Or if not, Joachim Valentine and The Great Question?

Or the gay twins from God Hand?

 

[Towels]

You know, if Birdo really was born male but wanted to be completely female, I think she would like the fact that people just assume she's a girl and not remember she used to be a boy.
Sexual identity and orientation are only tangetally related anyways.

Oh, and we Americans did finally get rid of Don't Ask Don't Tell, and more and more states are starting to legally recognize gay marriage. . . . Oh who am I kidding? I live in the south, where in some states the act of two men loving each other with their bodies is an offense punishable with jailtime. *sigh*

 

[chif-ii]

But while Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland only features a few campy sequences that imply he might be gay - such as a brawny construction worker whistling as he passes - Nintendo still deemed it unfit for North American release.

"Deemed unfit?" It was not "deemed unfit" for the US because of the connotation that Tingle is gay - it was deemed unfit because everyone in this hemisphere HATES him.

 

[Damien Granz]

Too Gay for the U.S.A.

Traditionally, Japanese developers haven't shied away from depicting gay and transgender characters in their games. But when these titles make their way overseas, it's a different story. Andrew Webster looks at how publishers have censored gay characters for North American audiences.

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While I'm glad that you've taken the stance against censorship you have, and the stance that you're pro-portraying non-heterosexuals and non-cisgendered people in games without the need to whitewash them or portray them as jokes, etc., I think that some of your examples are hardly championing that cause (or showing Japan as being the respectful enlightened entity that the article implies).

Ash, from Streets of Rage 3, and Cho Anaki are hardly good examples for positive portrayals of LGBT people in the media. I can't say that censoring or removing them entirely is somehow better, but they're about as positive a portrayal of LGBT as giant rubbery lipped blackface people are to race relations.

Granted, in Cho Anaki's case, that's sort of the point of the whole genre, and it's better to get all voices, warts and all than none, but still.