TheFlyingGerbil

Well, I just wrote out something that bordered on the coherent, but that just vanished into the ether. My points were: You don't need better writers: If in that trailer Marus Fenix had looked down at a photo of himself with his arm around a guy, that would not need better/more characterisation, and it would not have involved any sort of stereotyping. The entire rest of the games writing could have remained unchanged. The problem here is that people seem to think that gay characters need to be written differently in the first place. They don't. 99.9% of what I say would be the same whether I was gay or straight. All you need to do differently is change a gender pronoun every now and again. I think that progress should be made in the opposite way that most people seem to think. Push for representation first and then make it better. How can it improve if there is nothing there now to improve upon? Get the bad gay characters that make the young gay people to want to get into the industry to improve them. Now they just think "it's not for me" To quote Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” At the moment we are mostly at the ignore stage, but when there is a sighting there is plenty of laugh and fight to push the status quo back to the start. We need to stand our ground and endure at points 2 and 3 if we are ever to forge ahead to winning. And I hope I don't need to point out (at least on this forum, though I'm sure I would elsewhere) that the win state is not a world full of muscle march or even a gay character in every game. It's just to have the world that we escape to to include a few of the more bits of the world we're escaping from.

[i am adding in this disclaimer: this post is a rambling mess, because on this issue, I am a rambling mess] Making the main (or any) character gay would not make them shoot or climb or throw better, no. but that is the point. Being gay doesn't make you better or worse at anything than being straight. If a character was shown to be entirely 'normal and capable' (dare I say it, straight acting) and he turned out to be gay it may make a few of the on the fence bigots out there thing "hey, not all gay people are limp-wristed nancies". It doesn't have to be (and shouldn't be) shoved down people's throats to be effective either. People say sexuality doesn't come in to most games so why even put gay characters in? I can assure you the main characters (hetero)sexuallity is nearly always referenced and it doesn't just have to be terrible mannequin sex either but it is in nearly every game and it is always hetero and becuase of the world we live in it doesn't even register for most people, Take the GoW2 trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=v1EIaWtGwto#t=18s Right in the trailer you have the main character looking at a picture of his wife so you know before you even play the game that the main character is straight. Most people in the comments sections of articles about sexuality in games prove that a majority of heterosexuals don't notice the constant affirmations of heterosexuality in games. And fair enough there is no reason they should but you cannot argue they are not there and so any gay references should equally not be there. Not referencing sexuality at all so a character could be gay is not the same thing either, because as I've already stated it will just be assumed the character is straight, but something as simple as the photo in the trailer would work and you'd have to be a hardened bigot to get your knickers in a twist over that. Problem is that a lot of gamers are hardened bigots. Saying game writers are to poor to be able to tackle it isn't great either - if we can have poor straight characters why do the gay ones to be brilliant and believable? We can't realistically wit until game-writers are any good at it - they just need to write equally badly for a diverse cast. As to why the world needs gay characters at all, when you are gay and struggling to come to terms with your life being different to everyone else's and you feel alone it does help to have a gay visiblity wherever and in as many different places as you can find it so you know there are other people out there like you and that gay people aren't just the things that are shouted at you in the playground at school. It is perfectly valid to think 'it's only a video game why does it need to try and solve the world's social problems?' and you'd be right. It doesn't, but why the hell shouldn't it?

To start my own business, though I already know I won't keep it so I don't know if it counts :/

how'd you manage to get it for that price?

How old are you MasterDex?

You look happy to be back but does anyone know why I can see the photos in firefox but not chrome?

Finally got my hands on Skyward Sword. I've only managed to play a few hours because other people insist on existing but the time I did have was accompanied by a massive grin on my face. SO IN LOVE.

that you looked like you huff aerosols?

and my birthday

he has a lot of funny tweets. I hope he comes up with them himself.

Best celebrity tweets of 2011. LOL@celebs

Maybe they could practice for zelda by making starfox adventures 2. Though I think I would be the only person that to actually buy it.

I just thought of another one I do. I read iOS as "eye oss" instead of "eye oh ess".

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/12/50_best_photos_of_the_natural.html Tweeted by Major Nelson, so burn your xboxes not me if you don't like it.

I can't even tell if you're joking...

Just bought Mario kart 7 and super mario 3d land again. Stupid the hut where I ordered them from first time said they were both in stock for dispatch within 24h when I ordered them. Got an email saying there'd be a delay on SM3DL of a month(!) so I cancelled that and waited for mario kart. That said expected dispatch of 7/12 for several days after that date but was still 'processing order' then got an email saying they were trying to get it from suppliers, so waited a couple more days, and finally cancelled this morning after another email saying they were working with their suppliers. Meanwhile it still says expected dispatch of 7/12! Got them from work today, and even with my discount they were £5 dearer in total but I couldn't be bothered with ordering them from the internet again. I'll still use them again though as they have some ace offers. Just not when I actually want something in a specific time frame.

"it's dreadfully common" is an (I thought well known) joke phrase that would not cause offence to anyone I know in real life. Usually with an affected accent and usually more poking fun at upper rather than lower class people. I've only ever heard the common people* doing that to nouns. Anyway, wouldn't making words sound more casual generally indicate that you are moving them down the class ranks? As a generalisation more formal, "correct" language is considered more educated and therefore higher class and the more colloquialisms you use and deviations you take from standard English the lower down the class ranks you are. Isn't that pretty much one of the standard ways people use to decide what class someone else is? *yes, I'm joking.

keep your knickers on, nothing wrong with lower class, I never even said what class I consider myself. I personally just hate that group of terms and didn't want it to sound like a blanket insult of a whole load of people. Having something I don't like associated with a particular class does not mean I dislike that class in general. Ozzy is perfectly common in Liverpool. I believe Liverpudlians to be the worst offenders for y-ifying words.

I hate to sound awful but it is a (lower) class thing, not an English thing to put a 'y' at the end of words: present becomes prezzy, hospital become ozzy, television is telly. There are a _lot_ of them.

it's dreadfully common though...

You're also playing into their hands by being part of the statistic that justifies in their minds their DRM measures.

you know that's just tempting fate to make ads more intrusive, right?!

you... don't like potatotes?

Still waiting for Nintendo to bring out their eShop cards so I can get some discounted funds. In the meantime, at least you can save your credit card information now. Can't believe this came out so soon in the EU. Don't like the English name though. Pinball tables work well with the 3D. I like having a download pinball game as I don't think they warrant carrying a card around, but I do love them.