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Writer refuse to work with a studio because none of the characters in the story are LGBTQ

clem84

Gold Member
Are all their back stories based entirely around being a straight person? I'd put money on being able to make one of your characters gay without changing a single thing about their back story.
But then it becomes kinda meaningless doesn't it? You're asking to add something that has nothing to do with the rest of the story, "just because we should." I would think one of the rules of basic story telling would be to only add details to a story when it improves it.
 
Good for them to stand for their principles, now go work in a studio that fits your "values". You'll be able to make games with characters that are both stunning and brave!
Happy New Year Champagne GIF by Robert E Blackmon
 
Your company dodged a bullet OP. Honestly some people are just fucking weird with stuff like this. I don't think I've ever created a gay character in my entire D&D history, because it feels like too much of a self-insert.
 

dezzy8

Member
Long story short.The studio I'm working with on a project needed to bring in a writer to help flesh out the story and the lore of the universe they created which centers around 5 main characters. So when the writer came in for an interview and was brief on the story, he asked are there any LGBTQ characters in there. He was told no there isn't and he said well would you mind changing one of the characters to be gay or lesbian. He was told sorry but the characters already have background stories and they didn't want to change it. So the guy gets upset and said sorry but I can't work here if you aren't willing to make the project LGBTQ friendly and said they were being homophobic. Mind you, there are three LGBTQ staff members in the team.

I can understand he doesn't want to work on the story because of his preference but to label them homophobic gets my blood boiling. I had to bite my tongue.
You should’ve let it fly. Dude is a weirdo.
 
Does the apparent virtue signalling not annoy you at all?. I don't think anybody is saying there shouldn't be representation. I do however think people are fed up with stories forcing gay characters into stories that feel out of place or font make sense other than browns points to internet warriors

What does that even mean?

I see this all the time where people say its ok for gay characters to be in a story as long as its not "forced." I'm not understanding how something can be forced in a fictional story. Can you give examples?
 

benno

Member
What does that even mean?

I see this all the time where people say its ok for gay characters to be in a story as long as its not "forced." I'm not understanding how something can be forced in a fictional story. Can you give examples?
In games with gay/trans characters, are there straight characters who need to announce they're straight?
 

sn0man

Member
Man, i wish I was lying but if I post any evidence of it, it could get ugly legally. So I don't want to take the chance.

I'm not even upset the guy asked to change one of the characters to be LGBTQ. My gripe with the whoel thing is that he called them homophobic when they refused to change it, because they already have stories and background for these characters. Plus the fact there are three LGBTQ people on the team.
OP do NOT share more. You seem really even keeled. Do not potentially harm your career.
 

hemo memo

Gold Member
Are all their back stories based entirely around being a straight person? I'd put money on being able to make one of your characters gay without changing a single thing about their back story.
Nah being gay now is more about fashion and attitude than identity so they’ll have to change plenty. Also, who the fuck he think he is to demand that or quit and insult everyone?
 
Man, i wish I was lying but if I post any evidence of it, it could get ugly legally. So I don't want to take the chance.

I'm not even upset the guy asked to change one of the characters to be LGBTQ. My gripe with the whoel thing is that he called them homophobic when they refused to change it, because they already have stories and background for these characters. Plus the fact there are three LGBTQ people on the team.
That's wild, Prolly best they didn't join. They would seem like the type that would get you fired over a tweet you made 12 years ago :p
 
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Comandr

Member
Long story short.The studio I'm working with on a project needed to bring in a writer to help flesh out the story and the lore of the universe they created which centers around 5 main characters. ….*snip*

As a gay man and a writer, I think OP was completely in the right. Imagine telling your black/white/gay/straight/whatever neighbors that they aren’t good enough material to have a story or be interesting and should change because you don’t like them. Without even knowing anything about them. The fucking audacity.

My characters are my creation, my art. However flat or nuanced they turn out to be to fit their respective roles in a given story, they’re mine. I’m not going to just rewrite one to appease a potential hire. Certainly not if it couldn’t be done so elegantly in a way that would fit in with the rest of the narrative. If David or Xythorp or whatever this person’s name is - is some hard boiled space cop with nothing to lose and nothing to believe in - oh also foot note they’re trans, just slapped on - then that itself is insulting.

TL;DR: Good for you OP.
 

zcaa0g

Banned
What does that even mean?

I see this all the time where people say its ok for gay characters to be in a story as long as its not "forced." I'm not understanding how something can be forced in a fictional story. Can you give examples?


If there is no back story for that gay character and the gay character is just thrown in there to check a checkbox then it is forced. It is not that difficult to understand.
 
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ZoukGalaxy

Member
What about fuck you unknown writer ? Who are you ?
It's absolutel wrong to dictate mind thinking.
This is ridiculous and pathetic. He's sick. Ignore him.
 
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Fredrik

Member
Because how will people know how woke and progressive you are unless you constantly remind them how gay one of your characters is by making his entire personality, backstory and story arc around his sexual orientation.
Sigh, it’s sad but true, gaming really can’t do subtle. The idea is to normalize it but by throwing it right at people’s face they’re just making it worse.
 

Novacain

Member
Long story short.The studio I'm working with on a project needed to bring in a writer to help flesh out the story and the lore of the universe they created which centers around 5 main characters. So when the writer came in for an interview and was brief on the story, he asked are there any LGBTQ characters in there. He was told no there isn't and he said well would you mind changing one of the characters to be gay or lesbian. He was told sorry but the characters already have background stories and they didn't want to change it. So the guy gets upset and said sorry but I can't work here if you aren't willing to make the project LGBTQ friendly and said they were being homophobic. Mind you, there are three LGBTQ staff members in the team.

I can understand he doesn't want to work on the story because of his preference but to label them homophobic gets my blood boiling. I had to
"If you're not my ally, you're my enemy" is such a shitty way to look at the world and it sounds like that's what this is.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
It’s ok little snowflake, the OP can’t hurt you anymore.
It's okay little snowflake, bad writer can't hurt you, they aren't part of your studio, sadly you can't boast about having 4 LGBTQ members now, but you could still make up stuff about people who can't post their side of the story for some gaf cred. Bit your tongue but not your typing fingers, lol, smh.

You just work with a studio on one project (going by your own words here, Idk if you'll try to change your importance) but you're part of the hiring interviews and/or privy to such information cos there aren't HR departments and who cares about confidentiality, smh, more believable next time pls.

Restored content: little snowflake mods/evilore censor members they disagree with (who mostly post about gaming and only ever get baited into such topics because the "I don't want politics in my games" crowd can't shut up about it or stop pushing theirs to everyone) but allow any like-minded people to generalize, pretending to believe this story just to spread their bullshit, even though politics were banned (more like the board was closed because it made the bigots too obvious). Posts like this or this are fine because non binaries are out to get us even though we let them "pretend" to have human rights and dignity, but I crossed the mean poster line so they deleted this part of my post that caused them to ban me and made it so it appeared as if it was never edited and I got banned for the above which only barred me from the thread, their actions sadly confirm it's all true🤦‍♂️
 
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You can also meet 10 random strangers and have an excellent chance of all 10 of them being white.

Doesn’t mean it’s ok to have modern movies with only white characters in them.
But that is ok you racist weirdo.

Should Friday have had token white people in it?

And i’ll be the one to say it ; adding a gay character adds nothing of value to a story.

Oh Suzie you like to lick twat? Ok… let’s get back to killing aliens.

All this shit is is tokenism
 
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If there is no back story for that gay character and the gay character is just thrown in there to check a checkbox then it is forced. It is not that difficult to understand.

There are plenty of characters in games who have no backstory, why do gay characters need that to justify their inclusion? Anyways I can't think of any gay characters in games that I've played lately other than Last of Us so you're gonna have to give me examples of this egregious forced inclusion that is in games.
 

benno

Member
Why would they need to do that? The default assumption is someone is straight unless you're rupaul or something
because if you play a video game and while playing it you start assuming or need to know some random game characters sexual orientation then you're just a weirdo.
 
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PJX

Member
It's okay little snowflake, bad writer can't hurt you, they aren't part of your studio, sadly you can't boast about having 4 LGBTQ members now, but you could still make up stuff about people who can't post their side of the story for some gaf cred. Bit your tongue but not your typing fingers, lol, smh.

You just work with a studio on one project (going by your own words here, Idk if you'll try to change your importance) but you're part of the hiring interviews and/or privy to such information cos there aren't HR departments and who cares about confidentiality, smh, more believable next time pls.


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Long story short.The studio I'm working with on a project needed to bring in a writer to help flesh out the story and the lore of the universe they created which centers around 5 main characters. So when the writer came in for an interview and was brief on the story, he asked are there any LGBTQ characters in there. He was told no there isn't and he said well would you mind changing one of the characters to be gay or lesbian. He was told sorry but the characters already have background stories and they didn't want to change it. So the guy gets upset and said sorry but I can't work here if you aren't willing to make the project LGBTQ friendly and said they were being homophobic. Mind you, there are three LGBTQ staff members in the team.

I can understand he doesn't want to work on the story because of his preference but to label them homophobic gets my blood boiling. I had to bite my tongue.

OP you should be thankful that fucking idiot nutjob isn't working on your team. You dodged a bullet.
 
It's okay little snowflake, bad writer can't hurt you, they aren't part of your studio, sadly you can't boast about having 4 LGBTQ members now, but you could still make up stuff about people who can't post their side of the story for some gaf cred. Bit your tongue but not your typing fingers, lol, smh.

You just work with a studio on one project (going by your own words here, Idk if you'll try to change your importance) but you're part of the hiring interviews and/or privy to such information cos there aren't HR departments and who cares about confidentiality, smh, more believable next time pls.

WTF?!?!

Are you high?
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
What does that even mean?

I see this all the time where people say its ok for gay characters to be in a story as long as its not "forced." I'm not understanding how something can be forced in a fictional story. Can you give examples?
Well, forcing/shoehorning is infamous for suspending suspension of disbelief in any kind of media. Do you sometimes notice product placements in TV and movies f.ex.? I for one sure do.. It's often annoyingly blatant and can often take the viewer out of the zone/experience.

 

Reallink

Member
Good he didn't get the job.

Quite the opposite. The guy is clearly successful and wealthy enough to walk away from job offers over nonsense, implying there are plenty of other suitors courting his talents.
 
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Kataploom

Gold Member
If you checked my post history, you would have clearly seen that I work for a game development studio. But you were so dead set on getting that mod job, you didn't ever bother checking.



I would post evidence but for legal issues, I can't or else the studio would be liable.
I'd prefer you stay incognito, that way other devs can come and post their stories if they feel so with no fear... Maybe EviLore EviLore takes care of those verification
 

Sentenza

Member
One of the stupidest things about this "representation and gay rights" rhetoric is that it tries to pass the idea that you either are "homophobic" and "against human rights" entirely or you must be fully on-board with having gay characters and all sorts of rainbow/alphabet people in droves in ALL your stories and products.

Homosexuals should have full right to pretend parity in civil rights and human dignity. I have absolutely no objection on that and I'd count myself as a supporter of that cause.

Conversely, they should NOT be in the position to:
- force people to like them. No one OWE them appreciation or fondness and having rights doesn't mean you can dictate how others feel about you.
- demand to be "represented" in every single piece of media. Just because you have "right to exist" doesn't mean everything must become about you.
- pretend that any "cis-hetero" representation (or, you know, the biological norm) should be apologetic for its own existence and/or toward their minority for whatever reason.
- expect (let alone demand) that EVERYONE should be interested to listen about them and the "excruciating plight of being gay in a hetero-normative world" constantly.
 
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nkarafo

Member
Why everyone assumes all characters in a story are straight, just because someone doesn't mention he/she is gay or act like he/she is gay?

Not all stories need to mention any of the character's sexuality. Who they like to fuck may be something that's never mentioned in a story, at all.

Forcing such thing in such story makes no sense. Because LGBTQ is a sexuality label.
 
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RoboFu

One of the green rats
Stories in video games haven’t been good in a long time. Just get someone’s chain to write a page worth and move along.
 

nkarafo

Member
I see this all the time where people say its ok for gay characters to be in a story as long as its not "forced." I'm not understanding how something can be forced in a fictional story. Can you give examples?
It's not forced because they are LGBTQ, it's forced because they always advertise it and make it the most important thing about them. And when some project doesn't need such labeling in their story/characters, it automatically gets labeled itself as homophobic. And because that can cause a huge damage to a project, most try to incorporate LGBTQ characters in their stories to avoid it and always make sure everybody knows they are LGBTQ in the most unsubtle ways.

How is this shit not forced?
 
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Sentenza

Member
Not all stories need to mention any of the character's sexuality. Who they like to fuck may be something that's never mentioned in a story, at all.
Pff. Don't you know that supporting basic human rights means getting all tingly in your pants imagining that Bob likes to take it in the ass?
 
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