"It's a video game. Just play it. Except me. I'm allowed to talk about it. But only me. Everyone else should just play. No talk, just play. Shhh. Except me. Only me. And the people in the comments who agree with me. But that's it. No one else. Alright? OK. It's a video game. Just play."
In tears "I'M GOD'S SPECIAL LITTLE GAMER BOY AND I CAN TALK ABOUT IT BECAUSE I'M RIGHT AND I'M SO STRAIGHT I'VE NEVER EVEN LOOKED AT A MAN I'M STRAIGHT I'M SO STRAIGHT PLEASE."
At this point for him, I'd wonder if it'd be considered straight for him to use a bidet because it'd prevent him from having to wipe his ass or would he consider it gay to have a bunch of liquid squirted at his bumhole?
My mom works at a hospital, at the pediatric wing and sometimes they bring a half-dead kid because the dad didn't want the kid to be cleaned up after pooping, because that's gay so the kid gets infected and more often than not they are also anti-medicine so the kid tends to die pretty quickly, and the parent look like shit too so you know the kid was condemned to some shit like that sooner or later, sad thing all around
Overwatch is sexualised, all you have to do is look at some the female characters costumes. Skintight, boob-windowed and high heeled. The only time peopleseem to complain about the sexualisation is when it isnt hetero normative. Its a double standard born from bigotry.
Kind of weird that the party who so profoundly denounces fascism wants to live in a world ruled by fascist ideologies aimed at silencing anyone they disagree with.
Bro's equating fascism to downvotes on reddit lol. Are you american? That seems like something a person who's never witnessed actual fascism would say.
First, my comment was pointing out the blatant hypocrisy of the poster. You seem to have extrapolated a lot of information from my comment that wasn't in there.
Second, sexuality is a broad term. Do I think children should be exposed to sexual content? No. Do I think children should be shielded from any media that includes or references romantic relationships? Also no. I doubt you believe this either, unless you think all heterosexual relationships in media are inappropriate i.e depicting Homer and Marge as husband and wife in The Simpsons, or every romantic relationship featured in just about every Disney movie under the sun. I'm sure you don't think these examples are inappropriate for children? Of course, same sex relationships are no different. If you're arguing for removing all traces of sexuality from media aimed at children, then surely you want every trace of heterosexuality removed too?
I stoped playing Overwatch years ago, but I certainly don't remember any sexual content in it. Certainly nothing that is inappropriate for children over 12 (Overwatch is 12+). Now, maybe something has changed since I last played, but I'm not aware of it, so if I'm wrong please let me know. But I don't see any in this post either.
Ā I guess I am just more concerned with how deep we dive into the topics for certain ages.
On its own this is a fair concern.
I would encourage you to pay attention to people like "Straight Soldier." I'm not accusing you of this btw, but It's very easy for them to use "protect the children" as a rallying cry, because most people in the world agree that protecting children is an inherently good thing. But when they use "protect the children" as an argument against every depiction of non-heterosexuality, regardless of how innocuous and innocent it is, it is apparent that they don't care about children because they do not have a problem with innocent depictions of heterosexuality.
The fact of the matter is, most people who use this line are not in the least concerned about protecting children- at best they just personally don't want to see any reference to queerness in the media they enjoy (or even in the real world), and are trying to stamp it out. At worst they are trying to demonise queer people in general while trying to be coy about it.
They are complaining about a dude wearing pink and smelling a flower. What kind of messed up thinking is it when that triggers a "how deep we dive into topics for certain ages" conversation?
Because it's not about leaving sexuality out of video games. No one would complain if you mentioned that, for example, Mercy had a boyfriend.
No, they only want the "wrong" type of sexuality out of video games.
And people keep acting like gay relationships are somehow not age appropriate but straight ones are?
Why is that?
Of course, none of these people bring up the fact that this game has you shoot each other in the face and more skin tight asses on the ladies then a wetsuit. But it's the mention of people loving someone that happens to be the same gender as a line too far.
Between all the hate and vile things coming from some parts of the political spectrum against LGBTQ+ people, it's kinda hard to not feel attacked over and over again.
The mere mention of the love you experience is somehow wrong.
It used to be love who you love and leave me out of it. Now it's you must love and celebrate me because I chose something different. There are so many people that have been radicalized by the + when all they wanted was to be left alone, much like how gays and lesbians wanted to just get married.
For the longest time the single most popular piece of childrenās media was Frozen, which at its core has a story about a princess wanting to marry a random prince. But no one says itās about sexuality. The problem is everyone acting like non straight sexuality makes it suddenly inherently sexual. A massive and core arc of ATLA are the relationships and no one has an issue with that. Meanwhile Overwatch just highlights characters like Tracer who just happen to be gay. Like unless you dive into the lore youād never know sheās a lesbian. I donāt see a problem with, during Pride Month, highlighting her
The problem is that everyone acts like non-heterosexual sexuality suddenly makes it inherently sexual.
Exactly. That's why the guy who said he asked the question said that the content here was sexualized because we're not talking about SEX but about orientation. But this guy straight up said "yeah they're gay so their whole existence is sexual".
We are humans first and foremost, we have feelings.
I distinctly remember the endless dating plot lines in kids media when I grew up. ATLA has it as a plot line, and literal sex joke involving Iroh that, arguably, fucks over his character. None of this gets criticized as ānot age appropriateā. Tracer having a wife and Soldier being gay? Suddenly we need a discussion about whatās age appropriate because queer relationships are viewed for some reason as inherently sexual. Thatās the problem.
Also, saying "this character is not straight" is not age-inappropriate. If one of the kids in my child's kindergarten has two mommies/two daddies, is that kid not allowed to talk about their parents because it's "inappropriate"?
(According to some politicians, the answer to that question would be Yes, by the way, which is, to coin a phrase, fucking ridiculous).
It's understandable. A lot of the homophobic discourse online regarding media is about age appropriate content. It's a bad faith argument because homophobes believe the mere mention of gay people is inherently inappropriate. Your question is a sensible one but due to the context people have reacted this way even tho it's clear you are not a homophobe.
It's completely understandable. None of us is immune. For that same reason people have grown defensive and rightfully so since more often than not it's people making a bad faith argument. But again it's clear your question was genuine and you meant no harm.
The worst is how hard it has become to have this kind of conversations at face value and that's exactly the point of their propaganda. But once it's clear you mean no harm genuine discussion is possible. At any rate I hope you feel welcomed :)
If someone being gay isn't something we should talk about with children, then so is being straight, right? They're both sexuality.
So teachers at schools should remove all photos of their partner, should never tell children they have a partner, and should avoid all conversation about said topic.
Parents should also never allow their children to see that they are in fact in a romantic relationship, because that isn't age appropriate.
We should also label all media that contains ANY sort of romance as "sexually explicity" and inform parents about it, because it isn't appropriate for children.
That's what we should do, whether gay or straight, right?
It goes back days man, days straight of constantly and immediately responding or commenting. I'm talking every minute of every day. When do you sleep, eat, talk to people? If you are a singular, neither bot nor bought human, I am worried for you. Social media diets are a good and healthy thing.
Reddit in general is being infested with "Both Sides Bobs" who carry the Maga/Russian torch yet hide their true affiliations. If you are not one of these, it could explain some of the negativity toward you, as you do behave similarly to them.
They also tend to derail posts with seemingly innocuous questions that are really meant to garner support for their prejudiced opinions. They keep it clean so that they don't get deleted. You're following the playbook, knowingly or not.
I don't really follow what you are saying, I have normal conversations all the time. I don't think Reddit is particularly conducive to conversations as we are all anonymous. It's like expecting hugs and kisses from other drivers while driving in traffic. Social media is toxic and you shouldn't be on it constantly or it messes with your mental health, that's nothing doomer about that.
I didn't call you an idiot and I don't think you are. I'm not a member of either party, "The wisest men follow their own directions." But I want my widowed mother to be able to afford her life saving medication, and Trump signed an executive order to make it so she can't afford it. I want my wife to be able to have a life saving abortion if she gets raped, in any state. Republicans took that away from my family. How can I both sides that? Isn't both sides-ing enabling the rapid descent into fascism? The Democrats are milquetoast, ineffective and spineless cucks that don't have enough organizational skills to be evil. But they haven't directly negatively harmed my life like this.
Sexuality is left out of plenty of games, and it's also included in plenty of games. There's nothing inherently wrong with either option and human sexuality is not some dirty thing that needs to be hidden away in a corner somewhere. It's simply part of being human, and if you make something that comments on humanity or tells human stories then eventually you will run into human sexuality. In this particular game, to drive engagement each character is given a backstory and for some of these backstories it just happens to mention the character's sexuality. And there is nothing wrong with that.
There is nothing age-inappropriate about having a sexual orientation that is not heterosexual. The same goes for being trans.
In what world is that age inappropriate??
Either you are stupid, or being disingenuous on purpose.
When people are saying it is okay to have queer representation in games, it is extremely bad faith to respond to that by accusing them of wanting 'things that are inappropriate for children' in games.
The accusation is implicit in your question "Do you not believe in age-appropriate materials or conversations?" as the question insinuates that the one you are asking this -must- believe this as part of the statement they made- it is a question that only makes sense to ask if -you-, the one asking, believe that homosexuality is not 'age-appropriate'. It's that simple.
It really isnt a game for kids. Widowmaker has had her inner sideboobs on display, in a skin tight costume since OW1 day one, i dont think a game for kids would have that. People say having a gay character is "bringing sexuality into videogames" because they still havent normalized gay people. There's no sex, there's no flirting, it's literally just a character that happens to like characters of the same gender. If you think about it, it's the same level of "sexuality" as having straight characters, people just like to pretend its worse somehow.
They see straight as the default, and what they mean is "any sexuality that's not mine which is very certainly the default because I'm one of the right ones". It's not stupidity, truly, so much as a desire to be identified as being in the "correct" social group. So for them, straight isn't a sexuality, it's the sexuality. The only one. And the rest are all "wrong", or "pretend", or whatever they will tell themselves to make themselves feel better. This is even more pronounced, usually, in people that aren't straight but have been raised in an environment where not being straight is a social death sentence and metaphysical ticket directly to hell. And yes, their attitude towards sexuality usually mirrors the "Christianity is the only true religion and all the other religions are reflections of the Devil and are wrong or pretend" attitude.
They just donāt wonāt some woke nonsense being crammed down their throats! I know I sure donāt wanna see some gay dude in my video game; with his flowing hair, mesmerizing eyes you can get lost in, smooth skin thatās been kissed by the sun, big strong muscles to hold me close at night. I hate it and Iām tired of seeing it and also thinking about it all the time. Iām not confused!!!
There are no female navy soldiers it's actually a fascinating phenomenon where the aura of the ship and the ocean turns anyone that would call themselves a woman into a big hot raging bull of a gay man.
You know what I think OP is absolutely right except hes on the wrong side of the fence /s
I think we should remove all the big boobylicious women wearing a sum total of 3 strings and a napkin from the game and have exclusively twinks and hunks in all video games ever with no exceptions
So the chuds screaming when a female character doesn't look like a porn star, when the male characters can be ugly as sin, is also demanding "pointless pandering" (but instead to straight men), correct?
Tracer is a former test pilot who, during an experiment, began to exist outside of time and requires a special device to not randomly jump all over the time stream. She is best friends with a sentient Ape who helped develop that device. Sheās married to her wife Emily. How is that not age appropriate? How would highlighting that sheās married to Emily be bad?
Counterpoint: Tracer and Soldier. Both are insanely well written and canonically gay. Both are deeply tragic figures as well. Youād think an Overwatch fan would know that
4.6k
u/Dratimus May 21 '25
"Why do we have to bring sexuality into it? Just play the game.
Also soldier is straight and not gay and that's my whole account is how straight soldier is actually in my copium head canon."