Pandageddon said:
Kratos' sexuality was pretty well defined in God of War 3 when you got him to bang Aphrodite in a mini-game
But aside from that I think Kratos is a perfect example of a character who could potentially be gay! I live in a city with a huge gay scene and I see chaps that could pass for Kratos walking arm in arm with their boyfriends all the time. Also, he's an ancient Greek, and they were quite accepting of homosexuality. Being gay shouldn't automatically equate to "fop".
Religion is certainly a big reason why some people are homophobic, but there are also plenty of non-religious people out there who just plain hate gay people, too.'Gay' or 'fag' seem to be catch-all insults in some gaming communities. Even though WoW players don't represent all gamers, it is still a huge and very visible community.
Going back to your other post, I appreciate that Rebbecca wasn't singing some kind of feminist manifesto. But she did call Yahzee misogynistic, which is a pretty unpleasant thing to be accused of. I think if you're going to use that word it should be at a truly deserving target. You mentioned that you thought Yahzee tended to come down harder on female protagonists than male ones- might that be because those characters have been particularly badly realised? As you pointed out, mainstream games are mainly aimed at guys- but they're also overwhelmingly made by men too. In Bayonetta's case, it was made by men who appear to have only observed women from a very great distance
. I've seen Yahzee reviewing games with female characters on them where he hasn't ragged on them purely for being female.
Fair enough. I haven't actually played God of War 3, so I wasn't aware of that. Still, it took until the third game to realise that feature and it only seems to happen once.
I can only see Kratos as a kind of Carry-On style camp, talking about his "Flailing weapon" at times. In England we don't have quite so much of a gay scene, and we certainly don't have men with biceps wider than their heads, so it would be hard for me to make the same comparison. I am aware of the Greek's tendencies towards homosexuality, but still maintain the point that being a divine entity does mean being detached from normal human activities (Which Yahtzee incidentally commented on in his review of GoW3)
Tolerance of homosexuality is much better than it used to be in countries like England and America, which is where the majority of the immature haters come from. It comes down to values. I was brought up under the mantra of "All human beings are equal" and have developed enough of an open mind to not give 2 sh**s if someone likes members of their own gender. Quite a lot of other people (Mostly Americans, I'm afraid) aren't quite so open minded due to their upbringing, religious or not.
Female characters being badly realised just gives Yahtzee an excuse to hate on them (Which is the entire point of ZP, to hate on games, no matter how good), which gives the impression that he is a misogynist. He might be misogynist, I don't know. He might even admit that. I doubt he's going to take offense though.
As with men being the primary heads of gaming companies: Well, thats life. Men are more obsessed with gaming and will therefore be much more obsessed with game design and production. For example, of the 22 guys and 27 girls I keep in regular contact with, 8 of the guys and only 1 of the girls have expressed an interest in game design at some point. Women just like to pursue other interests.
