http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2284-i-put-trans-character-in-game-gamers-went-insane.html
So, here's an article about trans characters in video games that's actually about a trans character in a video game, and boy is it ugly.
Toy wrote:How many different types of cancer can I expect to get after reading it?
Tesseracts wrote:In this age of falsehoods and lies, it's comforting to know some people are genuinely idiots.
gisambards wrote:Elements of the article are a little one-sided.
Obviously, the abuse transgender gamers and game developers receive is abhorrent. That one goes without saying. The others are a little more murky.
As I think was discussed somewhere else on this site, the Baldur's Gate "trans character" is actually incredibly badly done - she gives you an unsolicited speech about how she's trans and goes to great effort to mention how everyone is perfectly okay with it. The player character normally is given a possible rude response in every other dialogue tree in the game, but in this case only has polite options. Personally, I'm not going to identify with a Mary-Sue who assumes everyone's interested in their gender identity and has never experienced any difficulty regarding it. It's really not a good example of how to write a trans character by any stretch of the imagination, and I don't think the writer behind it really deserves to be considered some sort of champion for promoting LGBT people in video games, because she's terrible at it.
They also comment on how games with character creators don't allow trans options, focusing, bizarrely, on Fallout 4. They thoroughly ignore that The Sims 4 now allows you to do exactly that - very well, I might add - for the sake of giving an overwhelmingly negative message. But with The Sims 4, transgenderism is relevant because you're meant to be playing someone's whole life - in Fallout 4, when would the transgenderism come up?
I also dislike this whole assertion that a trans person can only identify with a trans character - it contributes to this false notion that transgender people are some third gender. I identify most with female characters, whether they're trans or not. I'm perfectly content to play as a cis woman in any game that allows it. I would like to see more trans characters if they're done well, but personally I think attempts like that in Baldur's Gate are a little pathetic, more than anything. They don't prove anything, and I don't really even think they're that progressive.
Toy wrote:How many different types of cancer can I expect to get after reading it?
gisambards wrote:Elements of the article are a little one-sided.
Obviously, the abuse transgender gamers and game developers receive is abhorrent. That one goes without saying. The others are a little more murky.
As I think was discussed somewhere else on this site, the Baldur's Gate "trans character" is actually incredibly badly done - she gives you an unsolicited speech about how she's trans and goes to great effort to mention how everyone is perfectly okay with it. The player character normally is given a possible rude response in every other dialogue tree in the game, but in this case only has polite options. Personally, I'm not going to identify with a Mary-Sue who assumes everyone's interested in their gender identity and has never experienced any difficulty regarding it. It's really not a good example of how to write a trans character by any stretch of the imagination, and I don't think the writer behind it really deserves to be considered some sort of champion for promoting LGBT people in video games, because she's terrible at it.
They also comment on how games with character creators don't allow trans options, focusing, bizarrely, on Fallout 4. They thoroughly ignore that The Sims 4 now allows you to do exactly that - very well, I might add - for the sake of giving an overwhelmingly negative message. But with The Sims 4, transgenderism is relevant because you're meant to be playing someone's whole life - in Fallout 4, when would the transgenderism come up?
I also dislike this whole assertion that a trans person can only identify with a trans character - it contributes to this false notion that transgender people are some third gender. I identify most with female characters, whether they're trans or not. I'm perfectly content to play as a cis woman in any game that allows it. I would like to see more trans characters if they're done well, but personally I think attempts like that in Baldur's Gate are a little pathetic, more than anything. They don't prove anything, and I don't really even think they're that progressive.
gisambards wrote:I also dislike this whole assertion that a trans person can only identify with a trans character - it contributes to this false notion that transgender people are some third gender. I identify most with female characters, whether they're trans or not. I'm perfectly content to play as a cis woman in any game that allows it. I would like to see more trans characters if they're done well, but personally I think attempts like that in Baldur's Gate are a little pathetic, more than anything. They don't prove anything, and I don't really even think they're that progressive.
To be fair to the gaming industry, its portrayal of transgender characters hasn't been any worse than Hollywood's, in which trans people have historically been either punchlines (Ace Ventura) or murderous monsters (Silence Of The Lambs). If you want an unintentionally sad snapshot of the situation, look at Out's "7 Trans-Friendly Video Game Characters." Their list includes Birdo, a dinosaur creature tennis enthusiast who started off as "a boy who thinks he's a girl" in 1988 and was almost immediately changed to just a girl ...
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