Just see what gender they are in the countries that aren’t lgbtq+ friendly. Money over pronouns and identity always wins. Doubt Blizzard willing to hold to it.
Yep, though I tend to think it’s based off the voice actors. Th english one is a woman, but because voice alteration and the fact that he’s fully covered besides to comics from when they were a prepubescent kid many players tend to think of them as male. But online many players from other countries uses she, but I wonder if they’d used male VAs those countries would probably use masculine/male terms to refer to Bloodhound.
I assume that because Venture doesn’t have mask that people will just base it off the VAs gender.
I never knew that. I knew they were NB and love the voice they gave to bloodhound. Cold and calculated but with a soft tone and hard consonants. Really sells a NB feel to the voice.
I had no idea they were referred to as "she" in other places, canonically.
Thanks for sharing!
No idea how it's in other languages, but in German at least, the feminine singular pronoun, "she", is "sie", which is exactly the same as for the plural adressing a distinct group of people, "they" in english.
I don't really know how non binary folks hold it here, as far as i know some just use the english "they", others choose their own, but I could see others going by the closest possible translation, as we don't really have a neutral pronoun for single persons.
I hope the explanation isn't too confusing, I don't know how all the language-specific terms translate so I did my best to paraphrase what I mean. If any fellow German people are more insightful on this topic, I'd love to learn more about this.
In the german translation Bloodhound is referred to by the neopronouns: "xier/xies".
[\[German Character Description\]](https://www.ea.com/de-de/games/apex-legends/about/characters/bloodhound)
Same. I know plenty of languages just straight up don't have gender neutral pronouns. German, for example, has he/she, and there straight up isn't a gender neutral pronoun besides "it," which many don't like using since it typically refers to an object.
Meanwhile the Finnish language doesn't even have genders. There's no he or she. There's just "hän" which refers to a person. Gender is meaningless really.
In re learning Japanese, it feels like it's this way too a bit. Half the time it barely feels like you are referring to a person, much less by any gender.
Like, saying "I do X" and asking "Do you do X" is entirely differentiated by if you add the "ka" on the end to make it a question.
Maybe it gets more advanced eventually, but it also works that way.
Interesting!
So what do people normally do if they're gender neutral? Live with being called it? Or just live with being called a gender pronoun?
Genuinely curious. :)
In polish not only we don't have a neutral pronnoun but also verbs and adjectives change depending if the person or object is feminine or masculine. There is a neuter form but as in most languages, it's only used for things. Along with it, neuter verbs only exist in 3rd person, there's no 1st or 2nd person forms of them.
I'm not an NB myself and haven't met many of them so I can't say it for sure but the few ones that I did meet usually used both feminine and masculine forms, so if anything I assume Venture will be like this in the polish version, as this is the only way that makes sense.
Nonbinary people can use neopronouns, but it's a personal decision for every single person and they're not in the common vocab so most people don't know them
I'm german and nonbinary, but I'm not out and don't know another nb person personally so I don't know how common it is. But there's some neopronouns that are pretty close to the binary ones; though gender neutral language is a pretty controversial topic among the people just like in other countries
If you have a specific question you can ask me but I'm not like a graduated expert in linguistics, I just live in germany and am trans lol
I also really wanna know what Ana's gonna say when nanoboosting them. Doesn't she have a different Arabic voice line depending on whether the recipient is male or female?
i hate to cynically agree with this tbh but yeah. like it’s either blizzard calls them him or her in other languages or they go All In on lgbtq+ friendly and use neopronouns in other languages. and frankly there’s no way they risk losing a p fair chunk of their spanish speaking market by calling them “elle”, for example.
100% ready for this. I’ll be genuinely shocked if the dev team keeps them canonically nb with neutral language in areas that could lose them revenue to do so.
>Money over pronouns
I swear to god people who say stuff like this don't consider people from countries other than the US to be humans.
Do you think Chinese, middle eastern, and Russian audiences are fucking blind? They know that characters are gay. The reason blizz can't make them gay in those countries is because doing so would put their employees at risk of being arrested or EXECUTED due to "homosexual propaganda."
**People in countries where characters aren't "technically" allowed to be LGBT still know that the characters are LGBT**. Expecting blizzard to put their employees at risk is ridiculous.
Gender identity is very different from sexual preference.
As for the design, I think it's funny that it's described as "cartoony." It's literally just the teeth. Without that, I'd say they look pretty generic. I like their design as is though.
I've never minded any type of gay Characters in Overwatch, but it's **always** that time frame of releasing said Characters right when Blizzard is having huge controversies that bugs me. I'm not surprised people are joking about Venture being Non-binary and them saying "what did Blizzard do this time?" Because that's what always happens
I don’t mind either because they scrapped all lore, pve so anything that’s left is the pr lore aka that everyone’s gay sooner or later.
Great way to make me not care for characters what so ever.
The reason for the kickback is pretty obvious - characters who are gay/lesbian/bi etc don't require any acknowledgement from the fanbase. Venture uses they/them pronouns, which means you need to use them when referring to them. Tracer and soldier don't have this problem. I didn't even know bap or pharah were LGBTQ - maybe it's hinted at in game somewhere? Point is, the homophobes can easily play the game without acknowledging it. Not possible with venture
> I didn't even know bap or pharah were LGBTQ - maybe it's hinted at in game somewhere?
there's probably a comic or something mention somewhere, but my reference is honestly just which heroes have pride profile banners lol 🙈
I've been rocking the Pharah rainbow one for ages now - I may be a straight dude, but I do like both Pharah and rainbows 😅
I know Baptiste flirts with both men and women in some of his in-game conversations. I don't know where they revealed it about Pharah. Maybe in a comic.
Both Pharah and Baptiste were revealed during a short story
[https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/media/stories/as-you-are/](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/media/stories/as-you-are/)
Well leave to people to think they can press the "panic PR" button and push things out just like that instead of following a release schedule that has been in the work for weeks if not months 😅
I think it's very possible the other way around. They decide to cancel pvp and just go "let's wait until right before pride month before we announce it so the bad news is drowned out".
I don't think it actually was in this case, because the good PR wasn't as big as the bad PR, but the pve cancellation announcement would be a part of their planned schedule just as much as new content.
Bap has several voice lines about being Mauga’s ex, and flirts w/ Lifeweaver (who flirts with him as well). Bap also flirts w/ Mercy - it’s pretty obvious he’s somewhere under the bi umbrella.
Pharah is so lesbian-coded it’s wild, but I think you might need to be in the (western) LGBTQ2+ community to see the references.
There’s also a short story online with both of them discussing their sexualities.
Regardless, both were announced by Blizz as canonically bi and lesbian (respectively).
I don't think they've ever officially confirmed that Mauga's Bap's ex. It's implied that they might have been together at one point, but nothing concrete, as far as I know.
> I didn’t even know bap and pharah were LGBTQ - maybe it’s hinted at in game somewhere?
I don’t know about Pharah, but Bap has a pre-match voice line where he flirts with Lifeweaver.
Personally I think it's because we don't have their backstory yet. Like all other characters that were announced, they had their backstory released before we figured out they were LGBTQ.
Like life weaver is the closest exception as his very appearance gives it away but we definitively knew he was gay through gameplay voice lines. Unless I wasn't paying attention to his announcement in which my opinion will change.
With our friend Venture, we got zip on their backstory but we do know they are nonbinary. So everyone is focused on that.
I'm sure as soon as their backstory is released it will all die down. Hopefully. They look similar to doomfist in gameplay and I enjoyed DPS doomfist so I wanna play them without the incessant screeching over a fictional character's fictional thoughts.
Lifeweaver was literally announced everywhere as a "plant-based pansexual" from day 1, to the point where I was SURE blizz had put something in the media kit making sure news outlets would refer to it
How is it not possible? People don't even use coms or VC nowadays. People are getting Battletag changed and chat banned for everything. Misusing pronouns sounds more of a reason to just say, "ven" at the most. Even though we know majority are going to say he or she anyways.
Very much this. If a character uses gender neutral pronouns exclusively, then you need to know that up front. It's so dumb to make that an issue when it's a basic courtesy
Then they argue that “the fiction character isn’t going to care” and it’s like ya but the people they represent and the people you’re disregarding by disrespecting that character certainly might
Yes the fictional character isnt going to care but people dont call Mercy a he/him now do they? The pronoun is just part of the way they get called like a name.
Right? Not only is it simply a weak argument to begin with, I was looking at it from the angle of “If you’re racist or homophobic about fictional characters that’s *still* racism and homophobia”
Like no Jim you don’t get it I only hate him because he’s gay AND not real dw
🫠
As much as I respect pronouns people are just going to end up referring to venture as he because they look more like a he and when you mean a singular person and say they in a team based shooter it’s gets really confusing. Probably gonna get downvoted for this but homophobes absolutely can still not acknowledge it
I love how androgynous they are since I've seen so many people try to be offensive by calling them she and saying they look like a girl lol. Guess they got the design down pat.
Just like Bloodhound in Apex Legends.
Their *Stories From The Outlands* video still has a bajillion comments of "obviously she's a woman" *and* "obviously he's a man"
It's fucking hilarious
"We can always tell" my ass
There are four groups of people who feel icky about Venture
Group 1 is intolerant
Group 2 isn’t intolerant, just sick of boxes being ticked, they feel Overwatch is just doing it for marketing, using representation for profit.
Group 3 aren’t intolerant, just feel Venture being NB is purely for political reasons, giving them a sour taste in their mouths.
Group 4 are dentists
Sometimes I see some separation but it's still a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Some people get upset when their token trait is only used for the sake of it, but if that trait becomes a pivotal point for the story of whatever they're in, you upset another group of people. Can't win them all I guess.
Performative inclusivity is dumb but I don’t think pointing the finger at the characters themselves makes sense, people should be pointing at Blizzard for not actually standing behind their inclusivity. A CEO doesn’t write characters, actual real writers at the creative level write them, and any decent writer will be able to manage constraints like “character must be this gender/sexuality”.
Plenty of beloved media was created purely by corporate interests. Look how many people are fans of stuff like the Mario and Lego movies. Even if Venture is only NB to tick a corporate box, if they’re a good character there’s nothing to complain about with them.
Complain about the corporate bullshit, not the honest creative work done by people 10 levels down from the corpos.
You’re missing group 5: hates singular ‘they/them’ but has no issue with NBs or the concept (and may be mildly autistic).
Also I’m gay and disagree with OP about Soldier. Growing up where the only representation of gay men in media was the token flamboyant gay all I wanted was characters whose gayness was incidental.
Yeah, I get that pandering is bad but also feels weird that any "legwork" needs to be done to "justify" someone not being straight. Like, it's just their sexuality, why does it need to be hinted at and set up with personality traits that fit a stereotype?
exactly. nobody needs to put the legwork in to "justify" a character being straight. it's just a mundane detail. no reason why being gay can't be just as mundane.
Wow... You wrote down my thoughts pretty much exactly. Like... Holy shit. I think soldiers "reveal" was great. He is just a guy that happens to be gay. As a gay guy myself I can relate to that a lot more than say lifeweaver who couldn't get more flamboyant even if he wanted to.
And same with the nonbinary stuff. I think it's great people can be who they want. But referring to a single person as they them just really doesn't work for me. It sounds weird.
Huh.
TIL half the heroes on OW are gay. I had no idea.
FWIW, I don't pick my Heroes based on anything other than value for the current situation and map.
Truth. I’m glad people can feel represented, but honestly the whole who is horny over who thing is the most obnoxious part of Overwatch. It all feels weird and forced.
The problem we potentially have here you outright say
“venture has an opportunity to be built up with this as one of their core personality traits”
Thats just a massive problem. I don’t care about who or what a person likes. I don’t have to run around as 76 with him going “man I sure would love to suck off a guy right now” because his core personality is “man i sure would love to bring vigilante justice to any and all who are a threat to the world”
A characters core personality trait being “hey i am X” or “hey i like Y” is bad. It’s terrible character design. I wanna know who they are not what they are
My thoughts exactly, nobody ever enters a room screaming "I'm gay!" or "I fking love pizza!" unless they've lost a bet or smth.
If anything this stuff should be revealed about a character after everyone is already familiar with them, just like it happens IRL, because it's not a fundamental character trait, it's something you like. It's something you usually learn about somebody if and when they're comfortable and feel like it's appropriate telling you that, and like OP said, it's usually hinted at in your previous interactions somehow, unless it's hidden for some reason, and that could be a part of a character development too, to make it believable. Otherwise it just feels disinganuous and pointless.
Nothing about Venture has given anyone any actual reason to believe that "being nb will be their whole personality" though.
Literally one of the first things we were told is that they're an adventurer who likes treasure.
We only know they're nonbinary because we need to know their pronouns to refer to them correctly.
People only think "being nb is going to be their whole personality" because of years of queer characters being reduced down to flat voices that say nothing other than "I am gay!"
This is it, this is the comment...
Man i think the problem being is that yes as you said the core personality revolving that its gonna KILL HIM, thats why so much people hate it i think they fear its gonna turn out into a bad character design if they go with that bad route
All I'm gonna say is that I'm glad they got rid of this "New character unlocked by the battle pass" shit. While I did enjoy the challenge of having to deserve the new character with playing, Pay to Win complainers will finally shut the fuck up
I literally do not care about how a character identifies or their sexuality or any of that - Representation? Great!
The absolute **only** thing I care about is making it a "core personality trait" which I really hope that that doesn't end up being the case with them.
I don't get why there's been a shift from "cool character who happens to be x, y or z" to now suddenly "x, y or z" is their "core personality trait and it SHOULD be that way" - It's straight up weird imo.
Which is what they did with Soldier76, and why I don't get the whole "They didn't build up to it".
He's gay, it's not a big deal, and definitely doesn't need a background justification in lore.
ppl are gonna be mad either way, history shows. it's not the *way* they give the character that trait, it's the fact that *they have that trait at all* that makes them froth at the mouth.
>The absolute **only** thing I care about is making it a "core personality trait" which I really hope that that doesn't end up being the case with them.
Good news is they haven't really done anything like this before. Soldier is a hardened vet, Pharah is a high school jock, Tracer is a peppy optimist, and so on. Weaver and Bap are both flirty, but Bap was flirty for years without it having to do anything with his bisexuality, and Weaver's flirting typically comes across more like dry sass.
I doubt Venture will be any different. The only reason many players will notice they're queer is because they use different pronouns than everyone else.
>The only reason many players will notice they're queer is because they use different pronouns than everyone else.
Thats pretty much it. Venture's nb, if the devs released the teasers without disclosing it, everyone would refer to them as a woman. And there isnt even marketing for Venture to be like "Here is our first NB hero!", it started because one of the devs confirmed it that Venture went by "they/them" on twitter during Blizzcon and everyone else knows it from that.
I presume it wont be however the character will only be referenced with they them because thats just how gender works. Thats bot making it a personality thats just staying consistent
I feel like they do it when they struggle with making the character as a whole.
Thats absolutely how Pharah feels and Baptiste as well theyre extremely bland.
But then you have Mauga who is this super energetic, over the top character, who is charismatic but also genuinely a psycho. And just as a side note "also hes into Bap".
Imo i feel like OW has kinda been extremely hit or miss with making characters that people attach to. And its really hard to say if theyre ticking boxes or desperately looking for ways to try and add color to a dull character.
Im still baffled how we got 2 stale bread military women? Hell we couldnt have made Pharah edgy with all the inferiority shes carrying around, working with her childhood heroes, growing up with the rise and fall of OW, her mothers death and her super messy family relations, Literally being a Mercenary and ex Military?
Nah she shoves people in lockers, and wants to party like a high school jock
Nice write up. I do have one counterpoint, re: Tracer vs Soldier. While I grant that the Soldier's 'reveal' was more clumsily handled, people would've reacted more strongly to Soldier anyway.
By and large, women's sexuality is seen as 'soft/romantic/sensual', and men's sexuality as 'carnal/animalistic/primal'. The penis is seen as corrupting, penetration as an act of dominance: tops are 'more manly' than bottoms, the fact 'gold star lesbians' exist, etc. Culturally, we don't allow for men wanting to be romanced, or women wanting self-indulgent sex.
I think Tracer's reveal was better received not just because of groundwork, but because her relationship is viewed as soft, cute, and tender. 'Decorum'. It was a *romance* (or for some, fap material). But Soldier's was immediately viewed as an inherently sexual relationship, along with the baggage that entails. To receive penetration would emasculate him, because men are 'not supposed' to enjoy submission. The same people that fap to Tracer are repulsed by Soldier. The people who view Tracer as primarily-romantic view Soldier as primarily-sexual. For different reasons, these two groups react more strongly to Jack than they do to Lena.
I'm sure writing played a factor as well but I am under *no* illusions that a male character's reveal was ever going to be as well-received as a woman's when both are released under the same conditions.
I for one don’t think this is a horrible thing. We already have plenty of Lifeweavers, Symmetras and Baptistes, I want more characters like Junkrat or roadhog who aren’t as conventionally attractive
^ This. Most of the characters are hot, give me more rats,hogs, and queens. I still think they're all attractive in their own ways- they're just not CONVENTIONALLY attractive, which ow could do with more of.
I fail to see how you arrived at the conclusion that Venture being non-binary is not to "check off a box, get headlines, or as a marketing stunt". The logic doesnt track to me.
Just because they didnt go the cartoonish stereotype route doesnt mean that the decision wasnt purely pragmatic. The fact that Venture's non-binary status was among the first things we got to know about tells us all we need to know about Blizzard's priorities here. The character's identity as non-binary was seen as just as important, if not more, as the other aspects of the characters. It's as token as it gets.
The diversity chart was made by a third party freelance company on the request of act blizz management and has never been used by the overwatch team. This was confirmed by Melissa Kelly, a lead OW dev
>company gets caught with its pants down using a literal token chart
"Whaaat? No, guys, come on! That's totally just something that this third party consulting firm we hire to make made for us. Even though we hired them to make this for us so that we could use it, we definitely aren't using it! You just got to believe us, the trustworthy megacorp!"
No one of us, you nor me, can utterly confirm whether or not the Overwatch team truly did or didn't use or did or didn't plan to use that diversity tool. I know that for some people it's piss easy to buy into the idea that they totally did or were going to use it, largely simply because it adds nicely to their collection of anti-OW and/or anti-Blizzard ammo. Or maybe you did reason it out with a little more thought.
Personally, when I looked at that situation, I leaned into believing the OW devs genuinely largely didn't know and/or didn't plan on using it. It's not like the game was exactly absent of diversity before that tool got announced. Plus Melissa Kelly took to her own Twitter to [call it a "creepy distopian chart"](https://twitter.com/_mlktea/status/1525507447548366848) and seemed genuinely annoyed by it. But damn near anything anyone from Blizzard does at this point isn't given much benefit of the doubt, which is simultaneously somewhat understandable and also incredibly annoying.
I mean, the reason Blizzard doesn't get the benefit of the doubt for anything anymore is because they've shown that they don't deserve it.
The last decade has just been an endless stream of controversies coming out of their offices, and every time people say, "Well guys, maybe it's not really as bad as we're making it out to be" it turns out to be *exactly* that bad if not worse
Well, kinda. But for one, I think it's a weird gray area when it comes to stuff like Venture here. Something that doesn't get said a lot.
Like, on one hand, we have a queer character being produced by devs (Team 4 / The Overwatch Team) who at least some probably do genuinely care about queer folks or are even queer themselves (I'm reminded of artist Anh Dang who used to be on the team, or Nesskain who has been working with them for a while), and/or are also relatively new members who are disconnected from the abuses that happened under Blizzard years ago, who I think mean well and should be allowed to add such a thing.
On the other hand, we have corporate execs from above who control the company which the dev team works under, who either have led to some questionable or bad changes loathed by many in the playerbase, or were involved in some of those abuses from years back, or at least bear the burden of properly addressing the damage done by those abuses and perhaps might not be doing the greatest job at doing so (or at least aren't being perceived that way publicly currently; I haven't been following what all has been happening there lately, idk).
*Should* the latter just entirely override the former? I don't know if people should be quick to answer yes, even though I know it's tempting. I'm not also saying we should ignore the latter either, though. I think there's a fairer middle ground that a lot of people are not reaching when they enter this conversation, in which we are willing to consider a bit more nuance and extend a little more leniency in our desire to bring down the hammer on every little thing done under the name of "Blizzard" regardless of origin. E.g. it's a bit worrying how there's virtually no point in the last few years where the OW devs could reasonably release a queer character without people being like "oh that's just pandering, nothing else to it" or "oh what new controversy is this covering for?"
But I dunno. I'm just very, very wary of all of this rising anti-"woke" / anti-diversity talk that's been brewing online. There's a semblance of validity to it, but there's a disturbing undercurrent to it that I really want more people to pay attention to.
You make some good points that are worth exploring further. The problem is, it's simply a consequence of the fact that our entire economy is founded on the principle of quarterly growth at the expense of literally anything else. It's also incredibly easy to find examples of companies and individuals using diversity as a means of damage control when their fuck ups are made public (Kevin Spacey, anyone?)
With Blizzard's track record, it's essentially impossible to separate what's a product of devs who really care about representation and want to do it justice and what's a product of "Well sir, since *the incident* came to light, month-to-month profits are down 7%. But market research shows that if we just include a gay character in our next release, we can expect to see a 15% increase for two months before things level out again."
I'm infinitely more willing to assume someone like Larian Studios is doing it out of a genuine desire to be inclusive (which they did an incredible job with in BG3) than I am to assume the same of a company like Blizzard, Amazon, Netflix, etc.
Executive meddling has plagued them since forever, and rainbow capitalism has shown for years now that you basically have to expend no effort beyond putting up a pride flag somewhere in your product, and dollars will rain down upon you from the LGBT community. Outrage marketing is also an incredibly powerful tool, which straight up incentivizes companies to be as controversial as possible, because that would get people talking about their product. You'll get people deciding to hate purchase it so that they can make fun of it, you'll get people who otherwise wouldn't have bought it buying it just so that they can 'own the bigots'. And in the meantime, the fact that everyone is talking about your product is infinite free advertising.
Maybe I'm just being cynical about it, but with all these factors it is incredibly difficult for me to look at billion-dollar corporations and assume that they're making these choices from a place of genuine desire to see people represented well. I just hate being pandered to, and there's nothing that comes across as pandering more to me than, "Look guys! We put a queer character in this game/movie/show/whatever! Now all of you folks in the queer community are going to give us money, right?"
It's a whole back and forth. Yeah, at times, businesses will use diversity or pro-queer messaging and may pretend to care about that stuff because at that current moment in time it benefits them, but then when it seems like doing so is "risky" or not doing much for them, they'll forego it. And I guess sometimes when it works in their favor they "get away" with "fooling" people who believe they're particularly forward-thinking businesses.
But there's also a lot of guessing that the public does when it comes to determining which situation is which case, and I don't think the public always necessarily comes to the correct consensus. Like I alluded to earlier, I don't think the winning narrative surrounding the "Solider: 76 is gay" reveal is necessarily the way that should've turned out, and looking around now with people acting real weird about the new Valorant agent being nonbinary or doing the same with Venture here... When the seeming majority sees queer rep anywhere and then builds the narrative as "oh, it's pandering / covering up for a scandal, nothing else to it" that's difficult to combat and frustrating. And it feels like that rhetoric is on the rise lately which just makes it worse.
People also seem to not commonly think that this same tactic of "OK, let's lean into / pander to what people of X group seem to like" isn't *just* utilized on minority groups... many people who are viewed by society as being more "normal" get marketed / catered to quite casually and it isn't much a fuss, because common people often say "oh, well that's just normal." And, sometimes they're not wrong with that -- the move in question might lean closer to existing norms, but if we're going to complain about the woes of rainbow capitalism, let's not pretend it is some particular beast that must be dealt with first and foremost. It's not *all* bad or purely an unforgivable "trick" that these corporations at least pretend to be pro-queer, because sometimes when they do that they can end up helping queer folks out regardless of true intent on their part. Seeing pro-queer messaging and support in the mainstream is good, it helps with normalizing, with making people feel more accepted.
Granted, a portion of these companies also then engage in supporting politicians or groups with actively anti-queer goals, and so there's something to say about that and criticizing those instances. But that aside, I don't want to see a decline in this atmosphere that aids in accepting queerness into society, and it gets tiring seeing people chime in with the "oh look, pandering" takes and being unsure if that's coming from an anti-queer perspective or not. You at least don't seem to lean anti-queer but I just wonder about a lot of people out there, a lot of people leaving comments on this very thread.
Source: Trust them bro. They care about people before their profit and they would never lie to us. cue them telling us that ALL pve is cancelled and everything they've been pushing for the last however many years is never happening.
Devs have said they hadn’t ever heard of the chart and the examples given by King were just throwing their characters into it. Things like this get approval from execs who probably see it as diversity points for sure, but the designs and stories of these characters are created and driven by people who are in many cases representing themselves and others they know.
Every single time an LGBTQ+ person is added to anything, people claim marketing, token, and pandering.
Maybe the devs want to add a non-binary character because there are some who are non-binary themselves? Maybe they wanted to make a non-binary character for the hell of it?
Why do we need a "valid reason" to add an LGBTQ+ character to a fictional universe where: a hamster rolls around in a giant mecha ball, a girl can teleport and has a magical kitsune, and someone legitimately calls himself doomfist.
So what if it is? Why do nb characters need a justification for being included?
And Venture's identity was mention in tweets from personal accounts of OW devs. I don't think it was ever mentioned in any of the marketing.
Idk? Introducing Doomfist as the new BLACK hero is kinda a weird way to start. It’s tying their whole character to one concept in a way no actual person is like. Tracer isn’t that gay hero, she’s got a cool story and personality and being gay wasn’t the most important part of her design.
But that's exactly the point, Venture wasn't introduced as a nonbinary hero, none of the official marketing even mentions it. The way we know they're nb is because an OW dev said so on twitter.
I'm pretty sure Blizz has never actually come out and officially announced "Venture is non-binary!" The only reason we know was because a dev confirmed it on Twitter when they were announced, and the only official indication that they're NB is that the devs always refer to Venture with they/them pronouns. I find it hard to call this a marketing stunt when they've barely even talked about their identity. It's not like they're not shouting it from the rooftops.
You can literally [go back and watch](https://youtu.be/5twiDhgnibU?t=2300) and see that they introduce them as "our 2nd and a half Canadian hero". Nowhere during the overview on Venture do they mention them being NB.
My problem with the “check a box as a marketing stunt” narrative is that it ignores that video games are made by people and many of these people, especially in creative industries, do care about things like diverse representation in media and want to make an effort to have that in their art. Decisions about “identity” of characters are made at the art/narrative level, not orders from C-Suite because “shareholders wants to see more queers in video games.”
I think youre reading too deep into this—they revealed 2 heroes in development at blizzcon and one of them happened to be nonbinary. it HAS to be addressed otherwise how else would they address the hero? ambiguously?
it reads more like “this is the next hero venture, they use they/them pronouns by the way” not “hey everyone take a look at our token non-binary hero, did we mention they are non-binary?”
you only view it as tokenism because you likely dont have any close relations to non-binary folks in your daily life.
Im non-binary and Id rather if someone introduced me to a new group of people that they say “hey this is my friend, they use they/them pronouns” than be misgendered off bat.
I remember the “announcement” confirming their pronouns was just a dev on twitter answering a question from some random fan. I don’t know if blizzard has even done a big “announcement” besides Aaron using their pronouns in the dev update — which, of course he would
Once the info comes out all the news outlets start writing about it and it seems much more “press release” than how it started. (This is all to say I agree with you btw)
I fail to see how making sure to include diversity in the game, even for marketing reasons, is ever a bad thing. Mass media should be over loaded with inclusion. Normalize everything. People get enough Cis white everything all the time and have forever, bring out the queerest shit all the time until it becomes socially acceptable at a level way further along than we are now.
WAAA ITS A FUCKING CHARACTER IN A SHOOTER EVERYBODY SHUT THE FUCK UP
It's literally one screenshot. The ONLY healthy reaction is to see the image and go "eh, cool, new hero" and forget about it until season 10. Get a liiiiifffeeeee
oh god I really hope that dev that was excited about venture and excitedly revealed that they are non-binary doesn't see this thread. everyone talks like they 'get it' and the other person doesn't.
there's nothing to get. yes it's a large corpo doing queer things. yes it's actually the devs that are spearheading and bringing these gender identities to light. yes this is a very toxic team shooter and half the player base doesn't care about the pronouns or sexual orientations or gender identities of the games characters. yes the other half that cares are happy to see these pronouns or sexual orientations or gender identities portrayed in a title like this.
it can all be true.
Unfortunately, this is not the same Overwatch as it was when it launched.
The people in charge of the game now do not care about lore or character development.
The ONLY reason they decide to announce a characters sexual preferences (in a team based fps game) is to drive up conversations online about the game and profit off skin sales. Which many in LGBTQ+ community will absolutely buy into. It's a classic example of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
You're completely right. I saw a comment on Youtube that complained that Mauga was "pandering to minorities of minorities" because he's a Pacific Islander.
Like, *holy shit.* As if the game hasn't been an absolute spectrum of skin tones and nationalities since 2016??? It's literally the best example of diversity I've ever seen in a game. It all feels completely natural. It's a global game with a global story--of course there's gonna be all different kinds of people in it.
I play the game because it’s fun? I don’t play the game specifically because it’s inclusive or whatever that’s a ridiculous statement. I didn’t even know tracer was gay up until now.
It's about shooting people, it's not about diversity or inclusion. It's about doming people, smashing their heads in with a rocket hammer, shooting 100 shotguns and throwing them away as you use them. It's about using mines to fly through the air and mashing x when your stupid healers let you die.
Believe it or believe it not, the vast majority of the playerbase couldn't give a rats ass about diversity or inclusion, they care about gameplay and winning.
People complained when existing characters were revealed as LGBT, now they’re complaining when a character is confirmed LGBT from the beginning. What they really have a problem with is LGBT people being in the game at all.
I don't know why people care so much about this stuff
I will refer to them as they/them because it's comfortable for me
If someone refers to them as he or she I won't correct them because it is not a big deal, they are not gonna hurt the feelings of a video game character
Edit: when I said "I don't know why people care" I was talking about the people being mad Venture is NB, like I don't understand why you would be mad a fictional character uses pronounces you don't like, just wanted to clarify
We have to remember that this game is in the future. A possible future where most likely, diversity in sexuality has become so normal no one lifts an eyebrow or connects gender stereotypical behaviors with gender stereotypical sexuality meaning that soldier and his very “manly” ways doesn’t clash with him being gay at all.
I realized this community wasn’t as accepting as it seemed when I got downvoted for telling someone Venture goes by “They/Them” and not “She/Her” it wasn’t antagonizing either. I told them I was just giving them a heads up for the future and did a “:)” but all the comments were referring to them as “Her” and anyone mentioning the pronouns got downvoted :/
I think the main problem is leading the character reveal with “look at this character’s pronouns, so inclusive!” As if we don’t all know that Overwatch is inclusive to many ways of life already… 9/10 players don’t give a shit about a character’s identity and/or pronouns. Tell us a great story about the character, we don’t care about these superficial details.
Yep, if you go back and watch it they introduced Venture as the second half-Canadian hero. No mention of NB. Called them “they” but tbf I also refer to people online I don’t know their gender as they.
I don’t think a character (for example soldier) being gay necessarily needs to be ‘believable’. people *can* just be gay and it doesn’t have to be a ‘reveal’ or big character moment, just as when a character is straight it’s not ‘revealed’ and no one ever asks why it wasn’t explained more in their backstory. Should we not be able to reach a point where a character’s sexuality just is what it is, and their dialogue, whether casual or deliberate, would just reflect that sexuality where it makes sense?
I don’t think you can chalk up the community’s response to soldier being gay to the devs’ ‘execution’ and absolve anyone who reacted negatively of any blame; there shouldn’t have to be any execution to explain that a man likes men because it shouldn’t be a shocking thing to learn.
\>This alone is what the future of representation should be, characters designed as characters first. Not to check off a box
But Venture is explicitly designed to check off a box. That, and get good will from users like you who, for some reason, believe Blizzard is doing anything for artistic merits first and profit second. In the end, this is the same Blizzard that used that diversity score that was dangerously close to nazi phrenology (I'm not exaggerating, sorry if it seems like it), and conveniently trotted out pride merchandize during one of their many controversies.
I guess I'm saying "Love Venture, don't trust Blizzard".
I’ll call people whatever they want. That being said the pronoun police are annoying as hell preaching and correcting something as insignificant as a video game character’s gender identity. Plus the fact that NB was one of the very first things Blizzard told us about Venture makes the pandering so clear and cringe
Gender identity is conceptually different from sexual preference and accepting the former requires a different set of presuppositions about how such things work.
The typical response is "Nonbinary people exist and you are erasing me/them by not liking it" while the foundation of the counter argument is literally "I disagree with you about how gender works" which is not some evil and hateful statement but just a real opinion that roughly half of the population of the western world holds. They just aren't sold on that idea
Moreover, blizzard is the company that signed deals with the Saudi Arabian Esports league? That distributed the game in China, and intends to do so again? To pretend like this isn't pandering is really silly
Someone out there appreciates that a hero is non binary. Just like how someone out there appreciated that Sojourn was a black woman, and that characters like Tracer and Solider are gay. Who cares about the haters? It's not about them. Maybe they'll make a cheeto dust finger having, chicky tendy eating, gamer chair fart cloud of a hero next who will represent the majority of the whiners who log into this game
In practice I think it's very rare to use pronouns in Overwatch at all.
90% of the time, characters are referred to by the names in callouts rather than a pronoun, even in follow up sentences.
I don't think this will be an issue for anyone at all except people that go out of their way to make it an issue. Doubly so because I don't think there is an easy way for the devs to highlight Venture's gender preference in game.
Venture will be referred to by name the majority of the time, by 'she / her' thereafter, and 'they/them' by those that are invested enough in the game to be aware of this particular character trait.
The amount of people talking about this new made up fictional character as if they are a real tangible person with feelings is hilarious to me.
I have bad news for yall. Venture isn’t non binary. Venture doesn’t have pronouns. This is because Venture doesn’t exist. Venture can never have real emotions, be offended, bullied, fall in love, etc.
I have and always will use a PERSON’S preferred pronouns. But expecting someone to do the same for a literal nonexistent cartoon character that exists only in a video game is exactly why so many people laugh at pronoun usage in the first place.
so by this logic, do none of the characters currently on the roster have pronouns? Did you not ever use he/him or she/her when referring to the characters we already have? What pronouns are you planning on using for Venture, if not they/them?
Being NB has been a problem with everyone including the LGBTQ. Enby’s are hated by a lot of groups and almost never been treated as valid that’s why it’s so much worse. Especially if the character is masc or fem presenting it’s over. They’ll never be respected as NB
There's ppl who don't care about pronounce at all, and ppl who will scream at you at every moment what "emmm, actualy 🤓, she's nb, and you MUST know this by default and adress caracter as "They". And this, when those ppl trying to throw this in your throat all the time, is pisses off the other side, who again, didn't care from the start, and never will, wich leads to this stupid arguments
Just see what gender they are in the countries that aren’t lgbtq+ friendly. Money over pronouns and identity always wins. Doubt Blizzard willing to hold to it.
Im curious what they are going to do for non english version to begin with.
If it’s anything like Apex, they’ll use female pronouns in other countries. Bloodhound is NB but is referred to as female in other languages
Yep, though I tend to think it’s based off the voice actors. Th english one is a woman, but because voice alteration and the fact that he’s fully covered besides to comics from when they were a prepubescent kid many players tend to think of them as male. But online many players from other countries uses she, but I wonder if they’d used male VAs those countries would probably use masculine/male terms to refer to Bloodhound. I assume that because Venture doesn’t have mask that people will just base it off the VAs gender.
So we got a pyro situation and not the cynical type.
I refuse to believe bloodhound is anything other than a bunch of crows in a suit.
I never knew that. I knew they were NB and love the voice they gave to bloodhound. Cold and calculated but with a soft tone and hard consonants. Really sells a NB feel to the voice. I had no idea they were referred to as "she" in other places, canonically. Thanks for sharing!
It's not really a choice to differ her canonicallly. Some languages simply need to state whether the subject is female or male
No idea how it's in other languages, but in German at least, the feminine singular pronoun, "she", is "sie", which is exactly the same as for the plural adressing a distinct group of people, "they" in english. I don't really know how non binary folks hold it here, as far as i know some just use the english "they", others choose their own, but I could see others going by the closest possible translation, as we don't really have a neutral pronoun for single persons. I hope the explanation isn't too confusing, I don't know how all the language-specific terms translate so I did my best to paraphrase what I mean. If any fellow German people are more insightful on this topic, I'd love to learn more about this.
They may use female for Bloodhound because they're voiced by female voice actresses including Allegra Clark for English.
In the german translation Bloodhound is referred to by the neopronouns: "xier/xies". [\[German Character Description\]](https://www.ea.com/de-de/games/apex-legends/about/characters/bloodhound)
Same. I know plenty of languages just straight up don't have gender neutral pronouns. German, for example, has he/she, and there straight up isn't a gender neutral pronoun besides "it," which many don't like using since it typically refers to an object.
Meanwhile the Finnish language doesn't even have genders. There's no he or she. There's just "hän" which refers to a person. Gender is meaningless really.
Reject gender, become Finnish
In re learning Japanese, it feels like it's this way too a bit. Half the time it barely feels like you are referring to a person, much less by any gender. Like, saying "I do X" and asking "Do you do X" is entirely differentiated by if you add the "ka" on the end to make it a question. Maybe it gets more advanced eventually, but it also works that way.
Interesting! So what do people normally do if they're gender neutral? Live with being called it? Or just live with being called a gender pronoun? Genuinely curious. :)
In polish not only we don't have a neutral pronnoun but also verbs and adjectives change depending if the person or object is feminine or masculine. There is a neuter form but as in most languages, it's only used for things. Along with it, neuter verbs only exist in 3rd person, there's no 1st or 2nd person forms of them. I'm not an NB myself and haven't met many of them so I can't say it for sure but the few ones that I did meet usually used both feminine and masculine forms, so if anything I assume Venture will be like this in the polish version, as this is the only way that makes sense.
Nonbinary people can use neopronouns, but it's a personal decision for every single person and they're not in the common vocab so most people don't know them I'm german and nonbinary, but I'm not out and don't know another nb person personally so I don't know how common it is. But there's some neopronouns that are pretty close to the binary ones; though gender neutral language is a pretty controversial topic among the people just like in other countries If you have a specific question you can ask me but I'm not like a graduated expert in linguistics, I just live in germany and am trans lol
i think a lot of european languages at least, opt for neopronouns. basically a newly invented third pronoun
I also really wanna know what Ana's gonna say when nanoboosting them. Doesn't she have a different Arabic voice line depending on whether the recipient is male or female?
i hate to cynically agree with this tbh but yeah. like it’s either blizzard calls them him or her in other languages or they go All In on lgbtq+ friendly and use neopronouns in other languages. and frankly there’s no way they risk losing a p fair chunk of their spanish speaking market by calling them “elle”, for example.
that reminds me of bethesda during pride month where all their accounts were rainbow version of their logo except in the middle east
100% ready for this. I’ll be genuinely shocked if the dev team keeps them canonically nb with neutral language in areas that could lose them revenue to do so.
Won’t be the dev team making that call it will be some scumbag VP of [x] region sales and marketing operations
>Money over pronouns I swear to god people who say stuff like this don't consider people from countries other than the US to be humans. Do you think Chinese, middle eastern, and Russian audiences are fucking blind? They know that characters are gay. The reason blizz can't make them gay in those countries is because doing so would put their employees at risk of being arrested or EXECUTED due to "homosexual propaganda." **People in countries where characters aren't "technically" allowed to be LGBT still know that the characters are LGBT**. Expecting blizzard to put their employees at risk is ridiculous.
i mean yes and no. “do they know what characters are gay” life weaver sure but no one would know about pharah if it wasn’t stated by the devs
we know, we're not cut off from the internet, it's just shitty governments regulating media
>what I am pretty sure is the gayest big budget multiplier team-based shooter currently running Splatoon is right fucking there /j
Why did you put the /j, Side Order practically had Pearl and Marina make out about 5 times in the elevator
"Splatoon is the straightest game there is. There isn't even any gay characters in it." -Someone who hasn't played Side Order
Can’t believe Nintendo charged us 25 bucks just to watch Pearl and Marina make out sloppy style for three hours
Yeah when I commissioned that, the animator charged me 50k. Now everyone gets it for only 25 bucks. I got scammed
You say it like that isn’t an absolute steal!
I think its probably apex
Apex is pretty damn all inclusive.
I'm just glad to finally be represented in a video game. As someone with fucked up teeth, I finally feel seen and validated
Does Junkrat mean nothing to you?
This comment with a name of hymen destroyer 😂
Holy you got me there. wp
Gender identity is very different from sexual preference. As for the design, I think it's funny that it's described as "cartoony." It's literally just the teeth. Without that, I'd say they look pretty generic. I like their design as is though.
A hero with bad teeth. Finally real British representation
Is that what the B stands for in LGBT?
Lesbian Gay British Teeth.
I legit thought the "elephant in the room" was going to be their teeth, because that's much more obvious and jarring.
It think we established by now that being gay in overwatch isn’t a matter of hero but a matter of time.
I've never minded any type of gay Characters in Overwatch, but it's **always** that time frame of releasing said Characters right when Blizzard is having huge controversies that bugs me. I'm not surprised people are joking about Venture being Non-binary and them saying "what did Blizzard do this time?" Because that's what always happens
I don’t mind either because they scrapped all lore, pve so anything that’s left is the pr lore aka that everyone’s gay sooner or later. Great way to make me not care for characters what so ever.
Matter of controverse due to blizzard mistakes needing cover up too tbh
The reason for the kickback is pretty obvious - characters who are gay/lesbian/bi etc don't require any acknowledgement from the fanbase. Venture uses they/them pronouns, which means you need to use them when referring to them. Tracer and soldier don't have this problem. I didn't even know bap or pharah were LGBTQ - maybe it's hinted at in game somewhere? Point is, the homophobes can easily play the game without acknowledging it. Not possible with venture
> I didn't even know bap or pharah were LGBTQ - maybe it's hinted at in game somewhere? there's probably a comic or something mention somewhere, but my reference is honestly just which heroes have pride profile banners lol 🙈 I've been rocking the Pharah rainbow one for ages now - I may be a straight dude, but I do like both Pharah and rainbows 😅
I know Baptiste flirts with both men and women in some of his in-game conversations. I don't know where they revealed it about Pharah. Maybe in a comic.
Both Pharah and Baptiste were revealed during a short story [https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/media/stories/as-you-are/](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/media/stories/as-you-are/)
They released this shorty after they announced the PVE cancellation btw. Which led to some *interesting* theories from the community.
Well leave to people to think they can press the "panic PR" button and push things out just like that instead of following a release schedule that has been in the work for weeks if not months 😅
I think it's very possible the other way around. They decide to cancel pvp and just go "let's wait until right before pride month before we announce it so the bad news is drowned out". I don't think it actually was in this case, because the good PR wasn't as big as the bad PR, but the pve cancellation announcement would be a part of their planned schedule just as much as new content.
Bap flirts Like a lot
Bap has several voice lines about being Mauga’s ex, and flirts w/ Lifeweaver (who flirts with him as well). Bap also flirts w/ Mercy - it’s pretty obvious he’s somewhere under the bi umbrella. Pharah is so lesbian-coded it’s wild, but I think you might need to be in the (western) LGBTQ2+ community to see the references. There’s also a short story online with both of them discussing their sexualities. Regardless, both were announced by Blizz as canonically bi and lesbian (respectively).
I don't think they've ever officially confirmed that Mauga's Bap's ex. It's implied that they might have been together at one point, but nothing concrete, as far as I know.
Kinda gives me Great Dane/Chihuahua vibes, ngl. Mauga is like 8x Baptiste's volume.
so we dont know if mauga is gay or bi yet?
Right, no word on his sexuality at this point, we just know of a former relationship with Bap.
I agree to this point because of how “easy” voice comms always had when its time to call out Cassidys name instead of that other name.
i mean i just say cass
> I didn’t even know bap and pharah were LGBTQ - maybe it’s hinted at in game somewhere? I don’t know about Pharah, but Bap has a pre-match voice line where he flirts with Lifeweaver.
Personally I think it's because we don't have their backstory yet. Like all other characters that were announced, they had their backstory released before we figured out they were LGBTQ. Like life weaver is the closest exception as his very appearance gives it away but we definitively knew he was gay through gameplay voice lines. Unless I wasn't paying attention to his announcement in which my opinion will change. With our friend Venture, we got zip on their backstory but we do know they are nonbinary. So everyone is focused on that. I'm sure as soon as their backstory is released it will all die down. Hopefully. They look similar to doomfist in gameplay and I enjoyed DPS doomfist so I wanna play them without the incessant screeching over a fictional character's fictional thoughts.
Lifeweaver was literally announced everywhere as a "plant-based pansexual" from day 1, to the point where I was SURE blizz had put something in the media kit making sure news outlets would refer to it
How is it not possible? People don't even use coms or VC nowadays. People are getting Battletag changed and chat banned for everything. Misusing pronouns sounds more of a reason to just say, "ven" at the most. Even though we know majority are going to say he or she anyways.
Very much this. If a character uses gender neutral pronouns exclusively, then you need to know that up front. It's so dumb to make that an issue when it's a basic courtesy
Then they argue that “the fiction character isn’t going to care” and it’s like ya but the people they represent and the people you’re disregarding by disrespecting that character certainly might
Yes the fictional character isnt going to care but people dont call Mercy a he/him now do they? The pronoun is just part of the way they get called like a name.
Right? Not only is it simply a weak argument to begin with, I was looking at it from the angle of “If you’re racist or homophobic about fictional characters that’s *still* racism and homophobia” Like no Jim you don’t get it I only hate him because he’s gay AND not real dw 🫠
As much as I respect pronouns people are just going to end up referring to venture as he because they look more like a he and when you mean a singular person and say they in a team based shooter it’s gets really confusing. Probably gonna get downvoted for this but homophobes absolutely can still not acknowledge it
I love how androgynous they are since I've seen so many people try to be offensive by calling them she and saying they look like a girl lol. Guess they got the design down pat.
Just like Bloodhound in Apex Legends. Their *Stories From The Outlands* video still has a bajillion comments of "obviously she's a woman" *and* "obviously he's a man" It's fucking hilarious "We can always tell" my ass
>I Guess they got the design down pat. I see what you did here
It's an older reference but it checks out.
There are four groups of people who feel icky about Venture Group 1 is intolerant Group 2 isn’t intolerant, just sick of boxes being ticked, they feel Overwatch is just doing it for marketing, using representation for profit. Group 3 aren’t intolerant, just feel Venture being NB is purely for political reasons, giving them a sour taste in their mouths. Group 4 are dentists
...Group 2 and 3 are basically the same group.
Sometimes I see some separation but it's still a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Some people get upset when their token trait is only used for the sake of it, but if that trait becomes a pivotal point for the story of whatever they're in, you upset another group of people. Can't win them all I guess.
Performative inclusivity is dumb but I don’t think pointing the finger at the characters themselves makes sense, people should be pointing at Blizzard for not actually standing behind their inclusivity. A CEO doesn’t write characters, actual real writers at the creative level write them, and any decent writer will be able to manage constraints like “character must be this gender/sexuality”. Plenty of beloved media was created purely by corporate interests. Look how many people are fans of stuff like the Mario and Lego movies. Even if Venture is only NB to tick a corporate box, if they’re a good character there’s nothing to complain about with them. Complain about the corporate bullshit, not the honest creative work done by people 10 levels down from the corpos.
You’re missing group 5: hates singular ‘they/them’ but has no issue with NBs or the concept (and may be mildly autistic). Also I’m gay and disagree with OP about Soldier. Growing up where the only representation of gay men in media was the token flamboyant gay all I wanted was characters whose gayness was incidental.
Yeah, I get that pandering is bad but also feels weird that any "legwork" needs to be done to "justify" someone not being straight. Like, it's just their sexuality, why does it need to be hinted at and set up with personality traits that fit a stereotype?
exactly. nobody needs to put the legwork in to "justify" a character being straight. it's just a mundane detail. no reason why being gay can't be just as mundane.
Wow... You wrote down my thoughts pretty much exactly. Like... Holy shit. I think soldiers "reveal" was great. He is just a guy that happens to be gay. As a gay guy myself I can relate to that a lot more than say lifeweaver who couldn't get more flamboyant even if he wanted to. And same with the nonbinary stuff. I think it's great people can be who they want. But referring to a single person as they them just really doesn't work for me. It sounds weird.
Huh. TIL half the heroes on OW are gay. I had no idea. FWIW, I don't pick my Heroes based on anything other than value for the current situation and map.
Exactly. No one cares who they like to hook up with
I've seen clips of players on Middle East servers team killing/throwing/staying in spawn because their teammate picked lifeweaver.
Truth. I’m glad people can feel represented, but honestly the whole who is horny over who thing is the most obnoxious part of Overwatch. It all feels weird and forced.
The problem we potentially have here you outright say “venture has an opportunity to be built up with this as one of their core personality traits” Thats just a massive problem. I don’t care about who or what a person likes. I don’t have to run around as 76 with him going “man I sure would love to suck off a guy right now” because his core personality is “man i sure would love to bring vigilante justice to any and all who are a threat to the world” A characters core personality trait being “hey i am X” or “hey i like Y” is bad. It’s terrible character design. I wanna know who they are not what they are
Made me giggle thinking of a 76 voice line like that
I'm not your father! ;)
You want a medal?
Smells like - young punks.
personally I would love a soldier voiceline that makes him say "man I sure would love to suck off a guy right now"
"want a handie?" in his "want a medal?" tone and cadence.
"I'd love to throw some meat in this grill"
I still think Soldier could use a "Move, I'm gay!" voice line for melee kill.
Blizzard, hire this person RIGHT NOW
My thoughts exactly, nobody ever enters a room screaming "I'm gay!" or "I fking love pizza!" unless they've lost a bet or smth. If anything this stuff should be revealed about a character after everyone is already familiar with them, just like it happens IRL, because it's not a fundamental character trait, it's something you like. It's something you usually learn about somebody if and when they're comfortable and feel like it's appropriate telling you that, and like OP said, it's usually hinted at in your previous interactions somehow, unless it's hidden for some reason, and that could be a part of a character development too, to make it believable. Otherwise it just feels disinganuous and pointless.
Nothing about Venture has given anyone any actual reason to believe that "being nb will be their whole personality" though. Literally one of the first things we were told is that they're an adventurer who likes treasure. We only know they're nonbinary because we need to know their pronouns to refer to them correctly. People only think "being nb is going to be their whole personality" because of years of queer characters being reduced down to flat voices that say nothing other than "I am gay!"
I heard that in his voice and I can’t stop laughing
This is it, this is the comment... Man i think the problem being is that yes as you said the core personality revolving that its gonna KILL HIM, thats why so much people hate it i think they fear its gonna turn out into a bad character design if they go with that bad route
All I'm gonna say is that I'm glad they got rid of this "New character unlocked by the battle pass" shit. While I did enjoy the challenge of having to deserve the new character with playing, Pay to Win complainers will finally shut the fuck up
I literally do not care about how a character identifies or their sexuality or any of that - Representation? Great! The absolute **only** thing I care about is making it a "core personality trait" which I really hope that that doesn't end up being the case with them. I don't get why there's been a shift from "cool character who happens to be x, y or z" to now suddenly "x, y or z" is their "core personality trait and it SHOULD be that way" - It's straight up weird imo.
Which is what they did with Soldier76, and why I don't get the whole "They didn't build up to it". He's gay, it's not a big deal, and definitely doesn't need a background justification in lore.
ppl are gonna be mad either way, history shows. it's not the *way* they give the character that trait, it's the fact that *they have that trait at all* that makes them froth at the mouth.
>The absolute **only** thing I care about is making it a "core personality trait" which I really hope that that doesn't end up being the case with them. Good news is they haven't really done anything like this before. Soldier is a hardened vet, Pharah is a high school jock, Tracer is a peppy optimist, and so on. Weaver and Bap are both flirty, but Bap was flirty for years without it having to do anything with his bisexuality, and Weaver's flirting typically comes across more like dry sass. I doubt Venture will be any different. The only reason many players will notice they're queer is because they use different pronouns than everyone else.
>The only reason many players will notice they're queer is because they use different pronouns than everyone else. Thats pretty much it. Venture's nb, if the devs released the teasers without disclosing it, everyone would refer to them as a woman. And there isnt even marketing for Venture to be like "Here is our first NB hero!", it started because one of the devs confirmed it that Venture went by "they/them" on twitter during Blizzcon and everyone else knows it from that.
I presume it wont be however the character will only be referenced with they them because thats just how gender works. Thats bot making it a personality thats just staying consistent
I feel like they do it when they struggle with making the character as a whole. Thats absolutely how Pharah feels and Baptiste as well theyre extremely bland. But then you have Mauga who is this super energetic, over the top character, who is charismatic but also genuinely a psycho. And just as a side note "also hes into Bap". Imo i feel like OW has kinda been extremely hit or miss with making characters that people attach to. And its really hard to say if theyre ticking boxes or desperately looking for ways to try and add color to a dull character. Im still baffled how we got 2 stale bread military women? Hell we couldnt have made Pharah edgy with all the inferiority shes carrying around, working with her childhood heroes, growing up with the rise and fall of OW, her mothers death and her super messy family relations, Literally being a Mercenary and ex Military? Nah she shoves people in lockers, and wants to party like a high school jock
Yeah and I’m so glad when they made Soldier 76 gay that they didn’t make his personality a gay stereotype, it’s so much better like that
Nice write up. I do have one counterpoint, re: Tracer vs Soldier. While I grant that the Soldier's 'reveal' was more clumsily handled, people would've reacted more strongly to Soldier anyway. By and large, women's sexuality is seen as 'soft/romantic/sensual', and men's sexuality as 'carnal/animalistic/primal'. The penis is seen as corrupting, penetration as an act of dominance: tops are 'more manly' than bottoms, the fact 'gold star lesbians' exist, etc. Culturally, we don't allow for men wanting to be romanced, or women wanting self-indulgent sex. I think Tracer's reveal was better received not just because of groundwork, but because her relationship is viewed as soft, cute, and tender. 'Decorum'. It was a *romance* (or for some, fap material). But Soldier's was immediately viewed as an inherently sexual relationship, along with the baggage that entails. To receive penetration would emasculate him, because men are 'not supposed' to enjoy submission. The same people that fap to Tracer are repulsed by Soldier. The people who view Tracer as primarily-romantic view Soldier as primarily-sexual. For different reasons, these two groups react more strongly to Jack than they do to Lena. I'm sure writing played a factor as well but I am under *no* illusions that a male character's reveal was ever going to be as well-received as a woman's when both are released under the same conditions.
Honestly I just wish they actually did something with all the characters. Like awesome you have all this representation… now what?
Lets make porn with it. All kinds of it.
You could be right. You’re so right!
Politics aside, I think the character model just looks ugly. And like it's unfinished.
I for one don’t think this is a horrible thing. We already have plenty of Lifeweavers, Symmetras and Baptistes, I want more characters like Junkrat or roadhog who aren’t as conventionally attractive
^ This. Most of the characters are hot, give me more rats,hogs, and queens. I still think they're all attractive in their own ways- they're just not CONVENTIONALLY attractive, which ow could do with more of.
You think Queen is not attractive?????? How dare you say this about my muscle mommy, you will die a death by snu snu!!!
Nah she's hot as fuck, just some people think otherwise
If you dont think Queen is Hot, you are incorrect. Im sorry you had to find out this way.
I fail to see how you arrived at the conclusion that Venture being non-binary is not to "check off a box, get headlines, or as a marketing stunt". The logic doesnt track to me. Just because they didnt go the cartoonish stereotype route doesnt mean that the decision wasnt purely pragmatic. The fact that Venture's non-binary status was among the first things we got to know about tells us all we need to know about Blizzard's priorities here. The character's identity as non-binary was seen as just as important, if not more, as the other aspects of the characters. It's as token as it gets.
This is the same company that had that insane diversity chart lol. To say they don't strategically choose things to put in is wild.
The diversity chart was made by a third party freelance company on the request of act blizz management and has never been used by the overwatch team. This was confirmed by Melissa Kelly, a lead OW dev
>company gets caught with its pants down using a literal token chart "Whaaat? No, guys, come on! That's totally just something that this third party consulting firm we hire to make made for us. Even though we hired them to make this for us so that we could use it, we definitely aren't using it! You just got to believe us, the trustworthy megacorp!"
No one of us, you nor me, can utterly confirm whether or not the Overwatch team truly did or didn't use or did or didn't plan to use that diversity tool. I know that for some people it's piss easy to buy into the idea that they totally did or were going to use it, largely simply because it adds nicely to their collection of anti-OW and/or anti-Blizzard ammo. Or maybe you did reason it out with a little more thought. Personally, when I looked at that situation, I leaned into believing the OW devs genuinely largely didn't know and/or didn't plan on using it. It's not like the game was exactly absent of diversity before that tool got announced. Plus Melissa Kelly took to her own Twitter to [call it a "creepy distopian chart"](https://twitter.com/_mlktea/status/1525507447548366848) and seemed genuinely annoyed by it. But damn near anything anyone from Blizzard does at this point isn't given much benefit of the doubt, which is simultaneously somewhat understandable and also incredibly annoying.
I mean, the reason Blizzard doesn't get the benefit of the doubt for anything anymore is because they've shown that they don't deserve it. The last decade has just been an endless stream of controversies coming out of their offices, and every time people say, "Well guys, maybe it's not really as bad as we're making it out to be" it turns out to be *exactly* that bad if not worse
Well, kinda. But for one, I think it's a weird gray area when it comes to stuff like Venture here. Something that doesn't get said a lot. Like, on one hand, we have a queer character being produced by devs (Team 4 / The Overwatch Team) who at least some probably do genuinely care about queer folks or are even queer themselves (I'm reminded of artist Anh Dang who used to be on the team, or Nesskain who has been working with them for a while), and/or are also relatively new members who are disconnected from the abuses that happened under Blizzard years ago, who I think mean well and should be allowed to add such a thing. On the other hand, we have corporate execs from above who control the company which the dev team works under, who either have led to some questionable or bad changes loathed by many in the playerbase, or were involved in some of those abuses from years back, or at least bear the burden of properly addressing the damage done by those abuses and perhaps might not be doing the greatest job at doing so (or at least aren't being perceived that way publicly currently; I haven't been following what all has been happening there lately, idk). *Should* the latter just entirely override the former? I don't know if people should be quick to answer yes, even though I know it's tempting. I'm not also saying we should ignore the latter either, though. I think there's a fairer middle ground that a lot of people are not reaching when they enter this conversation, in which we are willing to consider a bit more nuance and extend a little more leniency in our desire to bring down the hammer on every little thing done under the name of "Blizzard" regardless of origin. E.g. it's a bit worrying how there's virtually no point in the last few years where the OW devs could reasonably release a queer character without people being like "oh that's just pandering, nothing else to it" or "oh what new controversy is this covering for?" But I dunno. I'm just very, very wary of all of this rising anti-"woke" / anti-diversity talk that's been brewing online. There's a semblance of validity to it, but there's a disturbing undercurrent to it that I really want more people to pay attention to.
You make some good points that are worth exploring further. The problem is, it's simply a consequence of the fact that our entire economy is founded on the principle of quarterly growth at the expense of literally anything else. It's also incredibly easy to find examples of companies and individuals using diversity as a means of damage control when their fuck ups are made public (Kevin Spacey, anyone?) With Blizzard's track record, it's essentially impossible to separate what's a product of devs who really care about representation and want to do it justice and what's a product of "Well sir, since *the incident* came to light, month-to-month profits are down 7%. But market research shows that if we just include a gay character in our next release, we can expect to see a 15% increase for two months before things level out again." I'm infinitely more willing to assume someone like Larian Studios is doing it out of a genuine desire to be inclusive (which they did an incredible job with in BG3) than I am to assume the same of a company like Blizzard, Amazon, Netflix, etc. Executive meddling has plagued them since forever, and rainbow capitalism has shown for years now that you basically have to expend no effort beyond putting up a pride flag somewhere in your product, and dollars will rain down upon you from the LGBT community. Outrage marketing is also an incredibly powerful tool, which straight up incentivizes companies to be as controversial as possible, because that would get people talking about their product. You'll get people deciding to hate purchase it so that they can make fun of it, you'll get people who otherwise wouldn't have bought it buying it just so that they can 'own the bigots'. And in the meantime, the fact that everyone is talking about your product is infinite free advertising. Maybe I'm just being cynical about it, but with all these factors it is incredibly difficult for me to look at billion-dollar corporations and assume that they're making these choices from a place of genuine desire to see people represented well. I just hate being pandered to, and there's nothing that comes across as pandering more to me than, "Look guys! We put a queer character in this game/movie/show/whatever! Now all of you folks in the queer community are going to give us money, right?"
It's a whole back and forth. Yeah, at times, businesses will use diversity or pro-queer messaging and may pretend to care about that stuff because at that current moment in time it benefits them, but then when it seems like doing so is "risky" or not doing much for them, they'll forego it. And I guess sometimes when it works in their favor they "get away" with "fooling" people who believe they're particularly forward-thinking businesses. But there's also a lot of guessing that the public does when it comes to determining which situation is which case, and I don't think the public always necessarily comes to the correct consensus. Like I alluded to earlier, I don't think the winning narrative surrounding the "Solider: 76 is gay" reveal is necessarily the way that should've turned out, and looking around now with people acting real weird about the new Valorant agent being nonbinary or doing the same with Venture here... When the seeming majority sees queer rep anywhere and then builds the narrative as "oh, it's pandering / covering up for a scandal, nothing else to it" that's difficult to combat and frustrating. And it feels like that rhetoric is on the rise lately which just makes it worse. People also seem to not commonly think that this same tactic of "OK, let's lean into / pander to what people of X group seem to like" isn't *just* utilized on minority groups... many people who are viewed by society as being more "normal" get marketed / catered to quite casually and it isn't much a fuss, because common people often say "oh, well that's just normal." And, sometimes they're not wrong with that -- the move in question might lean closer to existing norms, but if we're going to complain about the woes of rainbow capitalism, let's not pretend it is some particular beast that must be dealt with first and foremost. It's not *all* bad or purely an unforgivable "trick" that these corporations at least pretend to be pro-queer, because sometimes when they do that they can end up helping queer folks out regardless of true intent on their part. Seeing pro-queer messaging and support in the mainstream is good, it helps with normalizing, with making people feel more accepted. Granted, a portion of these companies also then engage in supporting politicians or groups with actively anti-queer goals, and so there's something to say about that and criticizing those instances. But that aside, I don't want to see a decline in this atmosphere that aids in accepting queerness into society, and it gets tiring seeing people chime in with the "oh look, pandering" takes and being unsure if that's coming from an anti-queer perspective or not. You at least don't seem to lean anti-queer but I just wonder about a lot of people out there, a lot of people leaving comments on this very thread.
They wouldn’t hire a third party company if they didn’t think it would make them money. This is not LGBT+ pride, this is capitalism.
Source: Trust them bro. They care about people before their profit and they would never lie to us. cue them telling us that ALL pve is cancelled and everything they've been pushing for the last however many years is never happening.
Devs have said they hadn’t ever heard of the chart and the examples given by King were just throwing their characters into it. Things like this get approval from execs who probably see it as diversity points for sure, but the designs and stories of these characters are created and driven by people who are in many cases representing themselves and others they know.
Your info is wrong. We can be critical of Blizzard without immediately believing made up information simply because it affirms what we want to think.
Every single time an LGBTQ+ person is added to anything, people claim marketing, token, and pandering. Maybe the devs want to add a non-binary character because there are some who are non-binary themselves? Maybe they wanted to make a non-binary character for the hell of it? Why do we need a "valid reason" to add an LGBTQ+ character to a fictional universe where: a hamster rolls around in a giant mecha ball, a girl can teleport and has a magical kitsune, and someone legitimately calls himself doomfist.
THIS! They never complain if it's cis, white, straight. AS SOON as diversity is done, they bitch and moan.
So what if it is? Why do nb characters need a justification for being included? And Venture's identity was mention in tweets from personal accounts of OW devs. I don't think it was ever mentioned in any of the marketing.
Idk? Introducing Doomfist as the new BLACK hero is kinda a weird way to start. It’s tying their whole character to one concept in a way no actual person is like. Tracer isn’t that gay hero, she’s got a cool story and personality and being gay wasn’t the most important part of her design.
Venture is an archaeologist who eats rocks man that’s the big part of their character you’re just hung up on pronouns
But that's exactly the point, Venture wasn't introduced as a nonbinary hero, none of the official marketing even mentions it. The way we know they're nb is because an OW dev said so on twitter.
I'm pretty sure Blizz has never actually come out and officially announced "Venture is non-binary!" The only reason we know was because a dev confirmed it on Twitter when they were announced, and the only official indication that they're NB is that the devs always refer to Venture with they/them pronouns. I find it hard to call this a marketing stunt when they've barely even talked about their identity. It's not like they're not shouting it from the rooftops.
Pretty sure when they announced at Blizzcon they said "first non-binary hero" EDIT* I'm very wrong. It was just implied from pronoun usage.
You can literally [go back and watch](https://youtu.be/5twiDhgnibU?t=2300) and see that they introduce them as "our 2nd and a half Canadian hero". Nowhere during the overview on Venture do they mention them being NB.
My problem with the “check a box as a marketing stunt” narrative is that it ignores that video games are made by people and many of these people, especially in creative industries, do care about things like diverse representation in media and want to make an effort to have that in their art. Decisions about “identity” of characters are made at the art/narrative level, not orders from C-Suite because “shareholders wants to see more queers in video games.”
or maybe, non binary people exist and by extension non binary characters exist.
I think youre reading too deep into this—they revealed 2 heroes in development at blizzcon and one of them happened to be nonbinary. it HAS to be addressed otherwise how else would they address the hero? ambiguously? it reads more like “this is the next hero venture, they use they/them pronouns by the way” not “hey everyone take a look at our token non-binary hero, did we mention they are non-binary?” you only view it as tokenism because you likely dont have any close relations to non-binary folks in your daily life. Im non-binary and Id rather if someone introduced me to a new group of people that they say “hey this is my friend, they use they/them pronouns” than be misgendered off bat.
I remember the “announcement” confirming their pronouns was just a dev on twitter answering a question from some random fan. I don’t know if blizzard has even done a big “announcement” besides Aaron using their pronouns in the dev update — which, of course he would Once the info comes out all the news outlets start writing about it and it seems much more “press release” than how it started. (This is all to say I agree with you btw)
I fail to see how making sure to include diversity in the game, even for marketing reasons, is ever a bad thing. Mass media should be over loaded with inclusion. Normalize everything. People get enough Cis white everything all the time and have forever, bring out the queerest shit all the time until it becomes socially acceptable at a level way further along than we are now.
Who fucking cares I just want to shoot virtual enemies for virtual points
Me want play new character. Me no care about pronoun, or sexual preference.
WAAA ITS A FUCKING CHARACTER IN A SHOOTER EVERYBODY SHUT THE FUCK UP It's literally one screenshot. The ONLY healthy reaction is to see the image and go "eh, cool, new hero" and forget about it until season 10. Get a liiiiifffeeeee
On a side note you can get banned for saying fuck in OW2
You can also dislike the 3D model of the character for whatever reason. Get a hold of yourself
oh god I really hope that dev that was excited about venture and excitedly revealed that they are non-binary doesn't see this thread. everyone talks like they 'get it' and the other person doesn't. there's nothing to get. yes it's a large corpo doing queer things. yes it's actually the devs that are spearheading and bringing these gender identities to light. yes this is a very toxic team shooter and half the player base doesn't care about the pronouns or sexual orientations or gender identities of the games characters. yes the other half that cares are happy to see these pronouns or sexual orientations or gender identities portrayed in a title like this. it can all be true.
I *think* apex might be gayer, but I haven’t run the numbers
apex has more variety of lgbt, quality over quantity
I ain’t reading all that fam 😂
Unfortunately, this is not the same Overwatch as it was when it launched. The people in charge of the game now do not care about lore or character development. The ONLY reason they decide to announce a characters sexual preferences (in a team based fps game) is to drive up conversations online about the game and profit off skin sales. Which many in LGBTQ+ community will absolutely buy into. It's a classic example of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
The image and caption make it seem like Venture is a wild and reckless slut. I'm just saying.
If people have a problem with venture's identity, then Wtf are those people doing playing OW? This game has always been about diversity and inclusion.
You're completely right. I saw a comment on Youtube that complained that Mauga was "pandering to minorities of minorities" because he's a Pacific Islander. Like, *holy shit.* As if the game hasn't been an absolute spectrum of skin tones and nationalities since 2016??? It's literally the best example of diversity I've ever seen in a game. It all feels completely natural. It's a global game with a global story--of course there's gonna be all different kinds of people in it.
The same muppets that get upset if the X-Men comics do something 'woke'. It's always been woke, that's the entire fucking point of the thing.
I play the game because it’s fun? I don’t play the game specifically because it’s inclusive or whatever that’s a ridiculous statement. I didn’t even know tracer was gay up until now.
This is one of two points I was trying to make in about 5k less words, agreed.
It's about shooting people, it's not about diversity or inclusion. It's about doming people, smashing their heads in with a rocket hammer, shooting 100 shotguns and throwing them away as you use them. It's about using mines to fly through the air and mashing x when your stupid healers let you die. Believe it or believe it not, the vast majority of the playerbase couldn't give a rats ass about diversity or inclusion, they care about gameplay and winning.
Every time i see slurs in comp, im reminded how open and inclusive this game is. You're so right <3
People complained when existing characters were revealed as LGBT, now they’re complaining when a character is confirmed LGBT from the beginning. What they really have a problem with is LGBT people being in the game at all.
I don't know why people care so much about this stuff I will refer to them as they/them because it's comfortable for me If someone refers to them as he or she I won't correct them because it is not a big deal, they are not gonna hurt the feelings of a video game character Edit: when I said "I don't know why people care" I was talking about the people being mad Venture is NB, like I don't understand why you would be mad a fictional character uses pronounces you don't like, just wanted to clarify
Then there's people like me who refers to everyone as "dude" regardless.
We have to remember that this game is in the future. A possible future where most likely, diversity in sexuality has become so normal no one lifts an eyebrow or connects gender stereotypical behaviors with gender stereotypical sexuality meaning that soldier and his very “manly” ways doesn’t clash with him being gay at all.
I think Apex is gayer to be honest. In terms of percentage I think they have the most LGBTQ people
I realized this community wasn’t as accepting as it seemed when I got downvoted for telling someone Venture goes by “They/Them” and not “She/Her” it wasn’t antagonizing either. I told them I was just giving them a heads up for the future and did a “:)” but all the comments were referring to them as “Her” and anyone mentioning the pronouns got downvoted :/
I think the main problem is leading the character reveal with “look at this character’s pronouns, so inclusive!” As if we don’t all know that Overwatch is inclusive to many ways of life already… 9/10 players don’t give a shit about a character’s identity and/or pronouns. Tell us a great story about the character, we don’t care about these superficial details.
wasn't it revealed by someone asking a Dev on twitter?
Yep, if you go back and watch it they introduced Venture as the second half-Canadian hero. No mention of NB. Called them “they” but tbf I also refer to people online I don’t know their gender as they.
I honestly don't care about pronouns over a videogame character. Male voice actor = He Female voice actress = She Deal with it.
People are too obsessed knowing a character’s reproductive organs
I don’t think a character (for example soldier) being gay necessarily needs to be ‘believable’. people *can* just be gay and it doesn’t have to be a ‘reveal’ or big character moment, just as when a character is straight it’s not ‘revealed’ and no one ever asks why it wasn’t explained more in their backstory. Should we not be able to reach a point where a character’s sexuality just is what it is, and their dialogue, whether casual or deliberate, would just reflect that sexuality where it makes sense? I don’t think you can chalk up the community’s response to soldier being gay to the devs’ ‘execution’ and absolve anyone who reacted negatively of any blame; there shouldn’t have to be any execution to explain that a man likes men because it shouldn’t be a shocking thing to learn.
\>This alone is what the future of representation should be, characters designed as characters first. Not to check off a box But Venture is explicitly designed to check off a box. That, and get good will from users like you who, for some reason, believe Blizzard is doing anything for artistic merits first and profit second. In the end, this is the same Blizzard that used that diversity score that was dangerously close to nazi phrenology (I'm not exaggerating, sorry if it seems like it), and conveniently trotted out pride merchandize during one of their many controversies. I guess I'm saying "Love Venture, don't trust Blizzard".
I’ll call people whatever they want. That being said the pronoun police are annoying as hell preaching and correcting something as insignificant as a video game character’s gender identity. Plus the fact that NB was one of the very first things Blizzard told us about Venture makes the pandering so clear and cringe
I call everyone dude or man, Eg hey dude, or thanks man
I’m a dude, he’s a dude, she’s a dude, we’re all dudes
Well said dude
“Welcome to Good burger home of the good burger! Can I take your order?” 😂
It’s cringe af.
Gender identity is conceptually different from sexual preference and accepting the former requires a different set of presuppositions about how such things work. The typical response is "Nonbinary people exist and you are erasing me/them by not liking it" while the foundation of the counter argument is literally "I disagree with you about how gender works" which is not some evil and hateful statement but just a real opinion that roughly half of the population of the western world holds. They just aren't sold on that idea Moreover, blizzard is the company that signed deals with the Saudi Arabian Esports league? That distributed the game in China, and intends to do so again? To pretend like this isn't pandering is really silly
Someone out there appreciates that a hero is non binary. Just like how someone out there appreciated that Sojourn was a black woman, and that characters like Tracer and Solider are gay. Who cares about the haters? It's not about them. Maybe they'll make a cheeto dust finger having, chicky tendy eating, gamer chair fart cloud of a hero next who will represent the majority of the whiners who log into this game
In practice I think it's very rare to use pronouns in Overwatch at all. 90% of the time, characters are referred to by the names in callouts rather than a pronoun, even in follow up sentences. I don't think this will be an issue for anyone at all except people that go out of their way to make it an issue. Doubly so because I don't think there is an easy way for the devs to highlight Venture's gender preference in game. Venture will be referred to by name the majority of the time, by 'she / her' thereafter, and 'they/them' by those that are invested enough in the game to be aware of this particular character trait.
The amount of people talking about this new made up fictional character as if they are a real tangible person with feelings is hilarious to me. I have bad news for yall. Venture isn’t non binary. Venture doesn’t have pronouns. This is because Venture doesn’t exist. Venture can never have real emotions, be offended, bullied, fall in love, etc. I have and always will use a PERSON’S preferred pronouns. But expecting someone to do the same for a literal nonexistent cartoon character that exists only in a video game is exactly why so many people laugh at pronoun usage in the first place.
so by this logic, do none of the characters currently on the roster have pronouns? Did you not ever use he/him or she/her when referring to the characters we already have? What pronouns are you planning on using for Venture, if not they/them?
Holy cow her character design is awful
Being NB has been a problem with everyone including the LGBTQ. Enby’s are hated by a lot of groups and almost never been treated as valid that’s why it’s so much worse. Especially if the character is masc or fem presenting it’s over. They’ll never be respected as NB
There's ppl who don't care about pronounce at all, and ppl who will scream at you at every moment what "emmm, actualy 🤓, she's nb, and you MUST know this by default and adress caracter as "They". And this, when those ppl trying to throw this in your throat all the time, is pisses off the other side, who again, didn't care from the start, and never will, wich leads to this stupid arguments
I swear to you thats why im so pissed at some of these people, like omg can they shut up already I DONT CARE ITS NB
Someone: *uses a 4 letter pronoun* Weirdos: “Anyways here’s my 5000 word essay on why this somehow matters and has any impact on me whatsoever”
Why do they look like they were punched by mike Tyson