A Story Not Worth Telling

Dylan discusses representation in videogames

- Dylan Pamintuan

I am not gay. I am a straight male who wants to find a wife and settle down one day, teaching my kids how to headshot someone from across the map.

I just want to establish this because this article isn’t from the perspective of someone who has had to deal with racism, alienation, and homophobia. The closest thing I ever got to that was being made fun of for being fat by one kid during primary school. For the longest time, after discovering just how horrible human beings can be to each other just because of the colour of their skin or their sexual orientation, I thought humanity had moved mostly past that. More and more, in real life, we’re easing or reversing decades-old laws against gay marriage and more and more people are standing up against people who are willing to just hate people just because they aren’t part of “society’s norms”.

Well... it’s no surprise not everyone has changed, even though very slowly they’re becoming more of a minority themselves.

It’s 2021 and we’re still seeing people complaining about “strong female characters”, “sudden black guys” and “unnecessary gay characters” on Twitter in a lot of media, from shows on Netflix to videogames. It’s really easy to express your hate online because it’s impersonal, and as long as they don’t say anything about where they live or post a picture of their face, no one apart from people close to them can convince them otherwise and even then it’ll take convincing... even when it’s highly likely their encouraging such hateful views.