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Let Taric be come out of the closet.

Sland·2/4/2015, 8:56:39 PM·6 votes·1,063 views

For those that don't know, Carena Philippines recently announced on February 3 that the number of “lesbian, gay, and transgendered” women who can join the Iron Solari League of Legends tournament will be limited to one per team.

Riot promptly tweeted "LGBT players are welcome at official LoL tourneys. We're working with partners to ensure consistency with our values across all regions" and I'm sure had some private phone calls with those running the tournament. As a result, the tournament reversed their decision and now all lesbian, gay, or transgendered women are welcome to play.

First off, Bravo! Thank you Riot for your amazing response!

But lets talk Taric. We all know you are doing a visual update on him, as well as his lore. Is there any chance that Riot, would allow him to remain effeminate or allude to possibly being gay.

The only reason I see they can't, is that certain countries won't let games be sold if they portray gay characters. :( so sad. But look at Dragon Age. They do an amazing job advocating for gay rights through their game. I wish Riot would do the same.

9 Comments

Shinjusuke2/4/2015, 9:24:48 PM8 votes

Or, or, here's a thought, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever for character's sexual orientation to matter in the game.

Seriously. Not everything has to send a "[insert some group here]'s rights" message.

Taric doesn't "come out of the closet" because it's completely irrelevant. The only remotely canonical relationships are a theorized relationship between Ezreal and Lux as a running joke, and a political marriage between Tryndamere and Ashe for Freljord (and that might not exist any more, I'm not sure).

No, League of Legends does not need a LGBT posterboy, just like it doesn't need a "straight" posterboy. Sexual orientation is a completely unimportant topic within the confines of the game, and forcing it in there just for it to be in there is stupid. For all we know, Darius and Swain are banging each other, and we'll never know, because it does not matter.

The incessant need of some (emphasis on some) members of the LGBT community to make sure there's "representation" in video games is idiotic and adds nothing to the games they force it on. It never adds anything except now there's "the gay character", purely to have "the gay character" in the game.

Sure, Taric's effeminate, and very well might be homosexual or whatever. Congratulations, good for him, glad he's happy. Guess what? He's the same person regardless of orientation. All you're doing is defining a person/character by something they're born as, which is literally the entire basis for all ignorant prejudice in the history of the human race. Taric could be straight as an arrow and still be his "outrageous" and effeminate character.

Riot just showed you they advocate for the equal treatment of LGBT persons, and your immediate response is to say "give me more confirmation!" and try to guilt-trip them into specifying champion orientations? I'm not asking Riot specifically state which champions are straight because a) they're characters, and b) their orientation doesn't define or affect their game-play and has no place in this game. League isn't a romance game, and it's not a story driven game, and what Taric or any other champion does with their junk doesn't change who/what they are as characters.

This kind of "WOOOHOO I'M DEFINED BY SOMETHING I WAS BORN AS!!!" attitude is just as ignorant and harmful to humanity's progression toward treating each other as people as any homophobe or racist is. How you were born doesn't matter, and you shouldn't be treated as if it does.

Apologies for the angry post, but this stupid topic comes up at least once a year, and every year those of us with functioning brains have to sit here and think "Are you friggin' serious?" and it gets old really fast. It's a ridiculous and irrelevant issue.

Lost R2/5/2015, 6:04:50 PM2 votes

"He is gay, guys. Only he doesn't talk about it all the time, on account of having interests outside of being gay." Ryan North on Utahraptor, Dinosaur Comics

The thing is sexual orientation never really comes into play in-game, so it's almost guaranteed to never happen. Really, at this point Taric's sexuality is mostly tongue-in-cheek, and if most of the fanbase wants to think he's gay (and they do), Riot will just roll with it (and they have). It comes into play more in Mass Effect and Dragon Age because those games actually have cutscenes and storytelling, where character interaction is just as important as the gameplay. The same doesn't really transition over to a MOBA game, where 97% of the game is the gameplay.

A transgendered character will raise a bunch of questions about the medical advancements in-universe, since a sex change operation is very invasive and complicated, and like the LGB, T never comes into play. Genitals never come into play; not in a T-rated game. For all you know, everyone in the League are hermaphrodites or transgendered, even Jinx with all the nothing she wears. I joke about this frequently in the champion select screen, that one female champion or another has an enormous trouser snake. Sometimes more than one.

What you COULD have, though, and potentially get away with it, are sexually ambiguous characters. I've experimented with the idea myself, of having a character with both masculine and feminine qualities but largely left up to the player what gender they are, a male with a thin or girly frame wearing non-masculine armor/clothes (Ezreal would be the closest example we have to this, currently) or a female with large, defined muscles, which is usually attributed as a masculine quality.

EsterienGRE2/4/2015, 9:14:43 PM1 votes

wtf?