oZode said:
I don't know where to find more reliable sources.
If you're going off of sources with some pretty obvious, notable flaws, the right path is probably not to declare something based on them whether or not you have better sources. I would argue the basic premise that it's sometimes better to simply say "we don't know." Estimates of homosexuals range greatly, as do any other body in the LGBT community, and a good chunk of them for good reason. Hell, we actually have instances of people who have sex with the same sex and consider themselves completely straight. Or claim to be straight, but I actually do believe they think of themselves as heterosexual. This is unfortunately an area where there's no clear marker, like the majoprity of cases of skin colouration, or eye colour, or even handedness.
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It was a poorly worded argument, I more or less was arguing against quotas because adhering to quotas that correlate to the real world doesn't make sense in a video game setting where the people may be very different in terms of demographic. Why, many games have ethnics that don't exist in the real world at all.
I see. This is a reasonable argument, though on that note, I find it funny we're (overall) more accepting of elves and cyborgs than minorities.
No reason why not, although I suspect the easiest way to have a gay protagonist is to have their gayness be in passing reference (like with many hetero characters- being straight doesn't define a straight person, why should it define a LGBT individual either?) unless it is relevant to the narrative as a whole.
I agree. Unfortunately, it seems to be a common opinion around here that homosexuality or any sense of "other" should be some sort of variant of Chekhov's gun. This is also problematic because the response to such a thing is the aforementioned "rubbing it in our faces" sort of thing.
The distribution of LGBT individuals would affect the RPG's character cast, although I was thinking in overall terms. For instance in a fantasy game where Sparta may has many LGBT individuals, would that mean Rome or Byzantine would as well?[1]
If you ant to do footnotes properly, look at the code I use here[footnote]stuff[/footnote]. Just a useful tool for the future. Of course, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing, I'm just offering it as a suggestion.
I'm fine with different levels of diversity in different regions. I mean, it might bug me if they decided that the only gays or blacks existed on "queer island" or in "Negropolis" time and again, but we already sort of do this. Of course, we have a tendency to whitewash history, as well, so what people expect and what is realistic are often two different stories. I mean, I know England wasn't exactly the greatest cosmopolitan nation ever, but people talk about is as though it was whites only until the last couple centuries. Similarly, when people argue there weren't black people or black people of power in France as why you shouldn't be allowed to black a black guy in Assassin's Creed University, it's just dumb. Or homosexuality in Rome wasn't all that uncommon, even as the Empire turned to Christianity and it was more looked down upon. Hell, in a more modern example, the US has had several public figures play morality police, insisting that homosexuality is a sin or a crime, then get caught sucking off some young dude.
Almost always men, though. Maybe lesbians are just more discrete?
Even the people who think it's wrong are doing it, though. Granted, this doesn't mean IO think there should be gay orgies in high society, but that's usually not the scope of the games we play.
It really is bizarre how even in los angelous, among the more *progressive* places in the US (don't quote me on that) there is a belief that everyone is gay until proven other wise. Why, my parents suspected I might be gay simply for not having a girlfriend in high school.
You'd think heterosexual until proven otherwise would be more "logical" of a stance. Yet it seems there is insecurity among even the writers of video games that declaring sexuality is needed where it is not; gears of war for instance I found Marcus having any declared sexuality as totally pointless. Dom's wife is a major sub-plot in gears of war 2 (along with him being an archetypal family man pre-locust invasion) and with cole it's part of his character (being the archetypal alpha male womanizing football player), but I never got why the developers decided to declare Marcus Fenixe's sexuality as heterosexual. Perhaps it had to do with some gay jokes media made about the game around gears 1 or 2.
I think "gay" might have been more a diagnostic in your case. "he's not chasing boobies, maybe he's gay."
We as a culture do this with atypical behaviour. George Takei just posted something about a kid who was bullied to the point of suicide for daring to be a *gasp, faint* male cheerleader. There's no indication the kid was gay, but a lot of his bullying appears to have been sexuality-based. Because hurr hurr, any guy who likes cheerleading, even a little kid, is totally gay.
While I have at least one developmental disability of sorts (ASD or something like that), it pales in comparison to fundamental change to life having to find a partner of the same sex must be. I know people who have trouble finding a partner of the opposite sex as is. Having to find someone else who is also gay who also is interested in you enough to engage in a relationship seems like the social equivalent of finding the pot of gold in a sprawling mine field.
This does more or less depend on the area. Some places it's worse than others. I live in town with a pretty large gay community (per capita) in a blue state. I mean, there are still homophobes, still hate, still problems, but there are definitely worse places to be.
[1]Technically sparta would be mostly Gay/Lesbian while rome would be mostly Bisexual.
I'm not sure it breaks down so readily. Both Rome and Greece tended to practice homosexuality as a cultural deal, so one could argue bisexuality. Spartans were reputed to have gay sex, but by all accounts were also into women, and had utilitarian marriages. The same is true of some of Japanese culture, where both homosexuality and pederasty were practiced. A lot of old cultural practices regarding homosexuality seem to come down to the notion that sex with a woman can lead to babies, and gay sex was frequently treated as birth control.
I'm not sure these people were actually gay, especially since Greece Rome, and Feudal Japan all had taboos about homosexuality.
History is a tricky thing, though. I mean, you just look at the legends that have arisen around Elvis Presley, and then think about how much misinformation we have to sift through--if records even exist. That doesn't mean it's impossible to understand history, but it does put it in the proper perspective.
