DrivebyHaiku

This presupposes that marriage is a strictly religious tradition - which is false. Marriage as a concept exists across many cultures sometimes as a religious tradition and sometimes as a civil one or as a swearing of personal oaths.

It is also not strictly a thing that all religions abhor same sex unions or do not have traditional same sex marriage as a thing. There are a number of Indigenous religions across the world which have gay marriage as a feature, new religions can factor them in as valid or existing religious sects can change. Bans on gay marriage force the state to adopt the traditional Christian stance on marriage at the exclusion of other religions and cultural traditions... While also denying a number of functions at a civil level such as spousal benefits, rights regarding legal decisions, visitation rights in hospitals and so on.

It's like any neurodivergent situation where certain things just take work. There's specialized apps that allow alters (personalities) to communicate and co-ordinate things like scheduling. From folks I have talked to there's a lot of masking involved where folks with DID will collaborate across different alters to try to appear to be contiguous. A lot of the time from the outside they just seem kind of forgetful in a similar way that non-DID people can be. The source of DID is often severe trauma where the different personalities are created via partitions of memory so that no singular expression of self remembers everything all at once. This allows the whole to function as each peice has functionally a job to do. It's at it's core a coping mechanism taken to an extreme but it still functions as a coping mechanism.

Often times you really don't know someone you've been around for years has it because they are scared to tell you. DID has a fair bit of stigma behind the condition.

Why is the assumption by these people that there is a sexual component required in the explanation? Age appropriate explanations are easy.

"Know how some families have one mommy and one daddy? Some families have two mommies or two daddies instead."

If the kids ask about the actual mechanics of procreation they are old enough to hear something like:

"Some couples adopt or they find someone to have a baby with who helps them make a family."

Was there any need to mention surrogacy or donors? No. Kids don't need to oversexualize queer people. Adults don't need to over sexualize queer people! When people are sheltered from our existence until they are in their early teens they tend to think of gay couples as explicitly just sexual relationships rather than romantic or family building ones that are as dynamic as straight relationships because they were introduced to them as a sexual mechanics first kind of way. It's dehumanizing.

The "right" shy of outright fascists are neoliberals. The term was coined in the eighties and describes a system that like Liberalism classic works primarily off of an idea of a protected class of citizen (as opposed to lesser protected classes of non-citizen) with a series of fundemental "rights" to basic protected freedoms from government interference and choice of "style of life" based around a personal property centric system.

Where Neo-liberalism differs is it detests the welfare state, seeks widespread government deregulation as they see it as an economic deficit, practice widespread government austerity in public programs and seeks to privatize swaths of government services to create new market sectors.

Neo doesn't mean new in a "of the minute" kind of way. The people who came up with the distinction between liberal branches were describing the likes of Ronald Regan and Margret Thatcher.

Because I don't find you terribly sympathetic. Yes, I would like better inclusion and more variety in games and can look at past examples and point out what worked and what didn't from a queer perspective but you came in hot with your nose out of joint about how what is being asked is bad "for everyone" as though you are the arbitor of the everyman.

It's worthless to conceed ground over and over again to people who always wanted us to disappear. It doesn't work. You want to go on the woke advisory board on Steam and see how nit picky they get? This isn't about media. This is part of an interconnected effort to get all of us to disappear from public life forever and it didn't start, it never stopped and the point is it won't until it all goes back to the way it used to be.

What is "in it" for the non-queer gamers is realizing they aren't the center of the fucking universe. That they can show their support for something that isn't explicitly for them and leave homophobic assholes with no wonderful jungle of slightly less homophobic assholes to hide behind. But no the second it costs you anything suddenly it's the end of the fucking world. People want to feel all nice and accepting and open minded but they never want it to actually inconvenience them.

By all means keep on harping your one fucking studio you hate. I hope it keeps you warm.

Was it worth it? Coming down hard on queer and telling us we're terrible people for daring tp ask for something better and throwing your lot in with the oppressors at the smallest hurdle?

Are these "bad things in the name of inclusion" just making a game you don't like? The push against "inclusion" on a general scale has lead to real world harms because a bunch of babies can't come to terms with there being pieces of media with choices they don't like and threw a fucking tantrum. There isn't really a side anymore where railing against the harms of "inclusion" isn't propping up the arguement that minorities "earned" the actions against them by asking "too much".

People will take your words as tacit endorsement that queer people "had this coming" because a bunch of businesses responded to a body of queer theory and made some fucking games. The anti-DEI crowd is the Conservative crowd and you might be on the fringe but you aren't outside the radius.

There's no "actual homophobes" vs " not homophobic but still unhappy that queer people and 'forced inclusion' are in a game people" - that's just different degrees of homophobia.

Games changed a bit so that they aren't all made for you specifically. Those franchises didn't belong to you and for some people those 'ruined games' are their favorite games. Everyone has studios they don't like. Not all representation is gunna be great because not all writing is going to be great but when inclusion "ruins it for everyone" in your veiw look around and ask if the people around you who are discussing it is actually a good cross section of "everyone".

Ah yes, the two sexualities - political and non-political. You really aren't as far along as you think.

I can accept that you are unhappy and want your games to not make you feel uncomfortable. Gods forbid they ever be like every other form of media and actually have a message they want to convey or try anything new. I can say having something tailored specifically for you is quite nice - now that more of us actually get to experience that.

Leonardo.

I have a long held theory based on the history of the Mona Lisa (Being recognized as a genderswapped self portrait he literally entitled "the Happy one" carried around by the artist and gifted to his gay lover after death) that the artist was trans.

I would absolutely love to potentially verify this because the idea that one of the most famous paintings in the world has been a trans gender affirming portrait in plain sight of art historians this whole time with nobody cluing in and writing a proper paper about it - is just kind of the best.

By making the player make the first move, they empower the player to choose.

The problem often becomes that the entire sexuallity of mechanically bi characters or all characters in the game are often under player control. In a some circumstances games with this mechanism will have the characters who are not chosen as romantic options pair with no one ever or defer to straight behaviour. This is in deference to games wanting to have it's cake and eat it too.

Examples of this in action :

Stardew Valley where if you don't choose a same sex option to romance - no other characters ever have any romances ever. The one exception is Leah who has an ex who shows up late in the romance pursuit who tries to win her back. However, the ex is whatever gender the PC is so if it's a hetero relationship, it still appears to be a hetero relationship.

Harvest Moon Mineral Town (later editions) give the player to options to romance same sex options... But everyone you don't choose pairs up in hetero relationships and no other characters.

In both games there is no other queer rep so the player essentially opts in or out to all queer representation in the game. Blanket Heterosexuallity or bi-invisibility until given player approval is the default.

Indy games are generally the leaders for actual queer rep that isn't optional to the game's plot where characters sexuallities are not revealed by the player opt in.

Hey, just a heads up assuming "gender politics" don't matter and being upset if a character is noticeably queer - makes you a part of the homophobic conservative circles. People, irl are queer, omitting queer people from settings where they would just exist as part of the world because "they shouldn't be there" is a little queerphobic.

Conservative circles have been screaming about woke games forever just when options to have non-binary people exist at character creation or when there is one gay side character. A lot of folks in the arts, including in game development, are queer and like to make stories that didn't exist when they were growing up. Your opinion is your own but assuming it's universally considered "good game design" to force developers to exclude the things they are passionate to put in their games to appease a howling mob that is never happy even when they get what they say they want is a bit rich.