I disagree.
It's important to build a world that is accepting of Gays and Queer folk, that they are there and accepted.
Having it be a requirement that a primary character has to be gay and not acknowledging a world that welcomes queers is frankly stupid IMO.
The simple fact is VIIR made me feel like Square was saying that Gays are welcome here, that they are just as valid and we want them to know that even if this is not a story implicitly about sexuality.
I did not say "a primary character". I referred to
any character. However, there are no explicitly queer characters in FF7R, and I feel that it's important to both show and tell during a fledgling time in queer representation. When your media is based entirely around the queer identity, implication is entirely valid. When it's a game about eco-terrorists taking the fight to a fascistic energy corporation, especially in a genre known for strongly (often harmfully) queer-coded villains, I would like for open and positive depictions of queerness.
Hmm, I get where you are coming from but I can't agree with this myself. While I liked Andrea a lot in the game, he is not explicitly queer, only highly queer-coded. Having characters only be coded queer has been a sort of plausible deniability for media to hide behind while depicting queer people. I don't think it need to be main characters (though that has a danger of a too low bar) or be a story about queerness, but I think there needs to be some level of explicitness and examination. Not relying on coding by use of tropes.
Precisely this. We don't live in a world where characters in media that's not about queerness can always be queer-coded and viewed by the audience as being queer. Moreover,
not every queer person acts like a queer-coded character. I like Andrea a lot, but that's not the kind of queer person I am. My identity can't be reduced to a masculine person who dresses in femme clothing, behaves flamboyantly, or wears a ton of makeup, because that's not all that queer identity is, and it's
all of what FF7R's queer-coding is.
To me, it's not enough to just make a character "look gay", because what is "looking gay" if not a constant in the pop cultural zeitgeist that was, for decades, an incredibly harmful stereotype of queer men? That can so easily be treated as a joke as it can be a supportive element of queerness, which is why making it explicit and positive is really important, especially when (as I've said previously) your game isn't centered around an exploration of queerness. We're not at the point culturally where implicit queerness isn't going to be written off as a joke, or a denial of queerness entirely.
www.glaad.org
