Ready for another gay-bashing on Neeko?

Since no matter what I say that will be how this post is viewed, I figured I’d just give you guys the quote you all wanted.

So for those who actually want to read, let’s get to it:

#Neeko should not have been straight any more than she should be gay - her sexuality is mishandled and completely out of place.

There are a couple of reasons for this, and I’ll greatly appreciate it if you stick with me until the end though I know for some of you this stance will be tiring for you.

#1. Neeko’s base character

Neeko is curious - I mean, obviously. Her title is quite literally “the Curious Chameleon”. But what exactly does this confer to us?

I want you to check out a number of other champions’ titles - do you notice a pattern? It’s that for the vast majority of champions, this is basically a profession identification - but for a select few (such as Fizz), this title emphasizes their character.

Neeko is curiosity. It is such a prevalent character trait for her that you could legitimately say she embodies the trait, in all of its positives and negatives. She embodies this trait to such an extent that you could even call it “child-like wonder”.

Combined with her description of being “innocent” as well, this assertion is dead accurate. She is child-like - and her animations, actions, and dialogue largely backs this up.

So for a lot of us, the prevalence of her sexuality just comes of as weirdly emphasized - even forced - not because of what it is, but because it’s there at all. She doesn’t act like an adolescent, she acts like a child. She’s like if Simba was hitting on Nala when he was a cub in The Lion King - just... weird.

Is she older than those two cubs? Yes. So reasonably sure, it can absolutely be argued.

Does she act like anything older? No - and this is why it is initially weird that she’s sexualized at all.

#2. Neeko’s lore

This is the biggest discrepancy with Neeko’s sexuality - and honestly, I could get past point one if point two wasn’t such a glaring contradiction.

The Oovi-Kat were peaceful beings, of unrivaled potential. Their harmonious society blended seamlessly with the spirit realm, so that their sho’ma—their spiritual essence—could intermingle with other beings through mere proximity, and even help them mimic other physical forms.

Sound familiar?

The Oovi-Kat are basically the Asari from Mass Effect. Their race mingled with a “higher form” of other species to get a true understanding of each other, this “melding” basically allowing their race to have a deeper understanding of whoever their partner in the melding was.

And this is where the discrepancy arises - I will let Mass Effect take the explanation on this one:

According to Liara, "male and female have no real meaning for us," and, if asked, says that she is "not precisely a woman."

As well as this:

Even among the asari, many individual asari are referred to as “she” and “her“ but some asari prefer male pronouns, while others gravitate toward gender-neutral where language allows. Asari also bear feminine titles like “huntress” and “matriarch” and asari offspring are referred to as “daughters“, however the asari may have chosen feminine pronouns to simplify language translations.

Neeko should not have a sexual identity on-par with other sapient species. It clashes with her own lore as well as the concept of interaction of the soul.

The idea of a “soul” is that it is outside the realm of the body - in most (if not all) literature, it is what makes us all sapient. It is basically our personality and consciousness.

Now this may come as news to some of you, but your sexuality does not dictate your personality or by extension your soul.

Think of it like this: if our species were basically the equivalent of sentient worms or amoebas, would we have a sexuality? Pretty much no - we’d be both or we’d have no sexuality at all in those two instances. It would not conceptually be a thing to us - we wouldn’t be able to fathom it. Something that is strictly dictated by our biology is not reminiscent of the soul is what I’m saying.

Identifying Neeko as a single sexuality not only goes against her lore but cheapens the character immensely.

Neeko should not be a lesbian - she should be omni-sexual. Soul-sexual? Something-sexual? Her attraction to characters should be dictated by the preference of soul, not body.

So with this in mind, I want to ask any who have read until the end here a very important question that you should certainly think about yourselves:

#Was this the lesbian character you all wanted - or simply the one you got?

A champion like Fiora - someone who’s revealed to be a lesbian but with no focus on it at all - comes off as naturally gay. Nobody cared - hell, nobody even noticed, perhaps because she doesn’t mention it. And that’s fine for her.

It’s also absolutely fine to have a character more openly gay who mentions it a few times or makes moves on characters of the opposite sex - there’s no problem with that at all.

But with any writing, it should absolutely match with their character as a whole or it will come off as forced.

A warrior like Leona as a lesbian? Sure. Pyke was once gay? Okay. Maybe Jax is - who knows with him? LeBlanc is a lesbian - or is she? Dunno. Classic misdirection, though.

But if you took a character design like them - an actual sapient creature with a sex drive dictated by the flesh - and made a character that was gay, there’d be considerably less questioning. Sure, you’d probably still get people who would call it pandering - but those of us who don’t care much about sexuality wouldn’t even bat an eye.

But Neeko isn’t that - she is a being that intermingles with the soul. The fact Riot chose to ignore that and make her more basic than that feels like a blatant betrayal to what she could have - and should have - been.

Not to mention hey, how many champions do we have that are attracted to somebody’s soul? Zero. Check your privilege or whatever.

######I’m joking plz no flam

#The TL;DR is that Neeko’s sexuality feels weird with her character to begin with but then also directly contradicts her lore as a whole - this reveal is honestly a disservice to the LGBTQ community and should have been used to characterize a character more fitting and with appropriate lore.

Also, no, the innuendo of “The Curious Chameleon” being a lesbian is not lost on me. I had a good chuckle at that.