Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual Characters

Honestly, I've never much seen how any character's orientation matters unless romance options and plotlines are in the game. Whether a character is straight, gay or whatever else, it doesn't affect the character.

Then again that could be my own views that gay people are just regular people that are attracted to the same gender.

Reaver from Fable is also bisexual, but he's rather depraved.

I can't think of any straight out gay/bisexual Player Characters that aren't using a Gay Option.

Well, there's Heather and Jann, as mentioned earlier. They're nowhere near main characters, but they're playable.

Exactly, though. The fact that it doesn't matter makes it mean much more when they throw the community a bone.

And while that argument may be valid for the LGB portion, being transsexual or transgendered most certainly affects a character, so it'd be nice to have them respectfully portrayed when appropriate. And not just an excuse to men beating women (coughPOISONcough)

Alright, I can see that I guess. Makes sense.

edited 1st Aug '11 12:59:11 PM by MarkVonLewis

Oh I call bullcrap on that. I remember Hana flirting with both genders sure enough, but she shows mostly lesbian tendencies in the 2nd game.

edited 1st Aug '11 1:02:21 PM by DRCEQ

Two more from Valkyria Chronicles:

Ted Ustinov gets both the "fancies men" and "fancies women" potentials.

Dallas Wyatt develops a crush on Alicia.

Regarding the "why", the other issue is somewhat covered by the No Bisexuals trope. Unless we're told a character is LBTG (through dialog or actions), we assume they're heterosexual.

I think it's also worth noting that video games are still pretty slow on diversity on most fronts. I asked early on about LGBT main characters because that seems to be an extreme rarity. Most of the characters listed here are supporting cast, with a few characters that are player-defined allowing the player to inform their sexuality personally. But can you imagine, say, a Call Of Duty game targeted to bro-gamers chronicling the story of a gay soldier? And much as we love to joke about the Bromance of Marcus and Cole, there's no way in hell Epic would actually go the extra step and make them actual lovers. Speaking of people we joke about, the androgyny of the Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts series is never going to further than that because Square Enix knows they cannot sell a story about two teenage boys and their love that spans time to the same people that buy Disney games at Wal-Mart. It's just going to be up to the fangirls to fill in that blank.

Seems like there's one more hurdle we need to cross, honestly.

Yeah, that does make a lot of sense.

edited 1st Aug '11 1:50:50 PM by MarkVonLewis

It also leads to the unfortunate effect of people wanting gay characters so badly they will see it in places it doesn't belong.

I recall when Brawl came out there was this big rumor that Ike was supposed to be a lowkey homosexual, and it all boiled down to subtext in a single scene from his game in which he comforts his childhood buddy Soren who is freaking out on the battlefield. I finally tracked it down and... Well, there really wasn't a damn bit of substance to that rumor, let me tell you.

Soren and Ike are a pretty popular fan couple, and they're also one of the only double endings in Radiant Dawn, period. But I think people read too much into it myself. The same game showed they're fine with depicting gay characters without the subtext by giving us Heather (though she got a bit of censorship in the English release to cover her more obvious dialog).

Fire Emblem probably doesn't help in that it's certainly implied a number of potential relationships over the years in the supports (Lucius and Raven come to mind), but until Heather, nobody was ever out in the open.

Well, there are trailers to Fear Effect Inferno (such a shame that such a game was cancelled). At least one of the trailers show the relationship between Hana and Glas deepening (like hand-holding and Hana rubbing her head against Glas's neck). There is also footage showing Glas and Rain has sex. Rain becomes disgusted with herself afterwards (presumably because she betrayed Hana) and as a Rage Against the Reflection moment in which she punches out a mirror. There are also indications that Rain and Deke started a relationship. Talk about complicated relationships!

If you are curious, you can find the trailers on You Tube.

edited 1st Aug '11 2:31:10 PM by TiggersAreGreat

From F-Zero? I'm pretty sure she's straight, Random Chaos. Or am I getting her confused with another Jody Summer?

Also, I would like to nominate Fang and Vanille.

I don't really want a Final Fantasy about two effeminate boys in love, but then again, I'm not a fan of love stories in general, and I thought the romance in VIII and X was awful, so...

edited 1st Aug '11 2:48:00 PM by Beorc

The page on Wikipedia has a bunch of them, though most of them listed are of the Subtext or Les Yay variety.

Okay, so let's see. There is Super Mario Bros 2 (1988). It has that one character Birdo/Catherine that is supposed to be male but likes to be a female and be called Birdetta/Cathy. Obviously, Birdo is a debatable example, but still, the year 1988 is pretty far back.

Then we have Final Fight (1989-1990). That game has Poison and Roxy, who were supposed to be women. However, people on the North American objected due to Wouldn't Hit a Girl. So, they apparently tried to fix that by making Poison and Roxy men who look like women, and not to mention replacing them with male thugs in at least one version.

In both examples, we have characters who have rather an ambiguous gender (or have ended up as such). Also, it seems that Japan and North American had different levels of censorships from the 1980s to the early 1990s. Am I wrong here?

edited 1st Aug '11 3:13:01 PM by TiggersAreGreat

The thing with Birdo is that s/he was a villain, and a bad one at that. And the manual made it sound like the gender confusion issue was something to be laughed at. It doesn't help that they just pretend that Birdo is 100% all-natural woman in the modern games, unless you subscribe to the fan theory she is now post-op.

Now, Poison and Roxy? That was just sneaky censorship circumvention. There is nothing about their characters that actually implies they are men.

The staff certainly still treats her as transgendered. And honestly, the point of being transgendered is that you're living as the opposite sex. If it's gone well and you're (in Poison's case) post-op...then yea, the only way anyone will know is if you tell them.

We could ask the question of what her life was like before she became a newhalf, but considering the extremely slight storyline that the series she's featured in has, it's really not going to be more than a footnote.

Isn't that so much the wayn though? Queer characters (Lesbian, Gay, Asexual, Bisexual, Transgendered, Transexual, whatever, I'm just going to use this as a general purpose umbrella word) are rarely presented in a way that doesn't limit them to being villainous(Metal Gear Solid), punished (Phantasmagoria), pityable(Persona) or a subject of mockery (Shadow Hearts).

Are there many games where they're not treated as the Other? I can think of a few, like Dragon Age (Isabella, Anders, Lelianna, ect.), or New Vegas (Arcade, Veronica, ect.), which features queer characters in prominent and complex roles. And Persona 4, which does a fairly good job until they start injecting too much ambiguity into the characters (Is Kanji really gay? Is Naoto really trans? And what does it say if the former's LI turns out to be a woman, or that the latter can give up her understanding of gender for the MC? It's not exactly positive.

The way gay characters are treated currently isn't too different to how they were treated in the movies up until about the 1970's and 80's. Full of subtext, or negative readings on sexuality.

Yeah, it's the way things are now, and it royally blows. For once, I'd like to play as the knight in shining armor rescuing his fair prince, or something along those lines. I'm tired of LGBT characters just being another freak I beat up on the way to the end of the level, or comic relief whose feelings don't matter because who cares if gays ever get their happy ending?

Well, I wouldn't say Fire Emblem or Valkyria Chronicles are like that, since they're meant to be made so that you care about each one of your characters, and at least in Fire Emblem, they each get their own happy ending (well, usually happy). It's not incredibly progressive, but it's there. Actually, what bugs me more is yuri and yaoi just because of the fetishization of the whole thing. I wouldn't mind if there was a game about a guy going to save his prince inherently, although the idea kind of asks to be turned into something that screams "HEY, LOOK AT ME AND HOW PROGRESSIVE I AM".

I think in the case of Persona 4, either character being sure of their sexuality is a bit much to ask considering they're still quite young and are just beginning to question their sexual identity. Being really confused about it is pretty normal for that age. But yea, Naoto wearing a dress on request was a little creepy to me. Especially when the rest of the time she won't do it - such as the beauty pageant.

Hell, I'd just like a Gay Option in games with dating elements like Harvest Moon. Being able to marry a person of the same gender would be awesome.

(Yes, I am aware of the "friendship ceremony" in the Japanese version of DS Cute)

Dunno if this was mentioned yet, but Makoto from Enchanted Arms for sure.

edited 1st Aug '11 4:11:56 PM by DRCEQ

Tiggers Are Great, I do not want to sound like a broken disk, but I found some very interesting extra tidbit regarding the Tokimeki Memorial Sotoi example I told you at post n°41.

Translated from the Tokimeki Memorial Characters' List at Wikipedia Japan:

edited 1st Aug '11 5:53:51 PM by AceNoctali