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Let Taric be come out of the closet.

Sland··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

Shinjusuke8 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.

AuraMax1 votes

{quoted}

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.

It adds more drama.

{quoted}

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 stupid and irrelevant issue.

Sometimes people want to know more about a champion (which the lore helps with) but for questions unanswered they come here. If you find the topic disturbing you can just skip over it and move on to another topic.

Shinjusuke4 votes

{quoted}

Sometimes people want to know more about a champion (which the lore helps with) but for questions unanswered they come here. If you find the topic disturbing you can just skip over it and move on to another topic.

The topic isn't "disturbing", the topic is stupid and harmful. There's a difference. Forcing a spotlight on a nonexistent issue is exactly how you create an issue. Character orientation shouldn't matter to the character, and people like this who actively try to make it matter when it doesn't are just as detrimental to the LGBT equality cause as the people who actively try to prohibit LGBT equality.

If in Taric's lore, he has a relationship and it adds to who he is as a character (random example: Let's say he loves someone and they die and it causes him to become a Paladin), and that person happens to be a man, then he'd be gay. Woohoo. It wouldn't make any difference if it were a woman, and it adds nothing either way to the character. However, there's nothing wrong with specifying it was a man, we'd just know a tidbit of info about Taric's character that we didn't know before.

The problem comes from people like OP trying to force that specification in without any reason, even when there's literally nothing gained from it, purely to shine a spotlight on it and say "LOOK RIOT HAS A GAY CHAMPION". That's stupid. Taric (unfortunately a bad example since they're reworking his artistic vision) should be defined by his wandering sole Gem Knight status, his "outrageous" personality, and his willingness to protect anyone who needs it, not by what sort of naugty bits he prefers.

Riot hasn't specified the orientation of any character in the game, because it's completely unimportant to the game, and "asking" (quotes because OP still sounds like a guilt-trip to me) them to in order to "show their support" after they literally just did exactly that already is not only disrespectful, it's shameful.

Speculating and talking about the character is one thing and that's what the forums exist for, but shoving the "you should do this so everyone knows which side you're on" crap onto Riot when it adds nothing to their game or it's characters and they've not specified any champion orientation is just plain not okay.

Zmuecat2 votes

Shin, I'd like to personally thank you for voicing what I wanted to say in much better, well thought out words.

I don't want someone who is gay, straight, black, purple, invisible, or a turtle just for the sake of them being so. I want it to be part of their character.

Shinjusuke1 votes

Thanks, I'm just glad/hoping what I say gets through to some people lol

AuraMax1 votes

I re-read the OP post and it doesn't sound like a guilt-trip and it doesn't sound like the OP is trying to impose their thoughts on to Riot. Sounds like a suggestion to me("Is there any chance that Riot...").

To me it doesn't matter about Taric's sexual orientation, its just that the way you bashed on the OP was rude. Calling the post stupid, idiotic and ignorant isn't the best way to get your point across.

Shinjusuke1 votes

When it's a hot button issue, and you say things like "show your support", "look at this other company that did this, you should do it too", and "the only reason you can't...", it's gone way past a "could you please do this?" and becomes a "you should do this", like every other hot button issue.

There's an association made regardless of Riot's reaction, because there's no middle ground on the issue. Just because something is politely phrased doesn't make it not expectant in nature. It's a guilt trip, because the OP is very thinly-veiling the implication that Riot needs to do something to go out of their way to show support for an issue that shouldn't be remotely tied to their game, or else they aren't supporters. The classic "Are you a feminist? No? Then you hate women's rights" argument is a parallel to this.

To give a comparison in wording, what the OP is doing is akin to the Mafia boss who visits your store and says "This is a nice store you have. This area of town is pretty dangerous, if you want you could pay me and my boys to protect it". The wording is nice, the implication behind the wording certainly is not.

Lastly, it's not the person I'm bashing, it's the mentality: The sense of entitlement and insistence everyone "wear their colors" as it were is stupid, idiotic, and ignorant, and is harmful and selfish. OP very well might be a nice person, but this wave of "Hey show your support or you're against us" coming from many members of the LGBT community is a problem and needs to stop immediately, because all you're doing is alienating people from the push for LGBT equality because they don't want to associate with people who try to force others to show open support.

That said, I don't really care if I'm being rude: What the OP is doing is rude and disrespectful, not to mention for the billionth time detrimental to their own cause, particularly since Riot just went out of their way to make a very open show of support and the OP just wants more from them. If I give you 50$ as a gift that I'm not obligated by any means to give you and you immediately turn around and ask for more money, you're kind of a dick. This is the same situation.

Hopefully there's enough metaphors for what's going on to be a bit more clear. If someone's going to be a selfish punk and ask for a completely unrelated and stance-declaring change to the game made by a bunch of people who literally just went out of their way to help his cause out, I'm going to tell the guy to back the F off, because they can't and the guy needs to back the F off.

Lost R2 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.

EsterienGRE1 votes

wtf?

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