Representing the Rainbow

As was briefly discussed in our lectures a few weeks ago, alongside women and racial minorities, gay gamers have it hard when it comes to representation. If a gay character appears, then their entire identity is likely to revolve around their sexuality, or, as with racist portrayals, they’ll be nothing but a stereotype—your classic flamboyant man flouncing around in glitter and tights. Lesbian characters seem almost invisible: girl-on-girl flings are commonly depicted and seen as titillating for the assumed straight male audience, but the participants will almost always turn out to be bisexual and completely willing to engage with the (again, male) protagonist once they’re done fondling each other. There are definitely some canonically gay characters done right—Persona 4’s Kanji Tatsumi, Assassin’s Creed’s depiction of Leonardo DaVinci, and Shadow Hearts: Covenant’s Joachim Valentine, for example—but it’s rare.

So it’s unsurprising that a decent portion of gaming fandom is dedicated to interpreting the unconfirmed sexualities of certain characters, and using them to create interesting ‘confirmed bachelors’. These range from plausible theories to downright bizarre ones, but all of them are united in a single purpose; to add to the number of queer characters and couples for gamers to enjoy, both those looking for representation of their own sexuality, and those who simply find the theories and stories in these fandoms intriguing.

The games and characters caught up in this phenomenon are many and varied. In certain parts of Team Fortress 2’s sprawling fandom, it’s considered entirely plausible that The Medic and The Heavy are in a romantic relationship—the two characters are depicted together in most official videos and art, in game they’re inseparable due to their complimentary roles in battle, and Valve, the game’s creators, give some small nods to the possibility. You’ll receive things like ‘Beaux and Arrows’—an achievement for the Sniper class given when he kills a Heavy and a Medic assisting each other; and a set of matching hats, the Officer’s Ushanka and the Gentleman’s Ushanka. Furthermore, the Medic’s hat’s description advertises it as a way to ‘let the officer in your life know you’ll always be right behind them, with a Medigun and a matching wardrobe’.

Art by DarkLitria

 The Metal Gear Solid games have implications that the series’ main protagonist, Solid Snake, could be gay—Snake ostracizes himself from society until after Metal Gear Solid 1, when he starts living with Otacon, a tech-savvy man he meets over the course of the game. The pair share lengthy conversations about the nature of love, and adopt a child together shortly before Metal Gear Solid 4. While Snake is depicted with a female love interest for a short time—Meryl Silverburgh— he leaves her after realising they’re unsuited to one another, and never specifies what drove the decision. There are easter eggs hidden across the series where the player can take photographs of men and send them to Otacon, who offers to print them off for Snake 'if he likes them so much’. On top of all this, the voice actors for both Snake and Otacon have admitted to playing their scenes as love scenes, adding to the subtext substantially.

"Hal and Dave, that's a good one. Maybe we should take a trip to Jupiter?"

Meanwhile, lesbians interpret representation through characters like Fang and Vanille from Final Fantasy XIII. The pair share very close physical contact, with Fang at one point lifting Vanille’s skirt without her permission and to no complaint. They also interact in a way largely consistent with that of romantic lead pairs from the other Final Fantasy games: Fang’s purpose in the game is to protect Vanille from physical harm, while Vanille tries to defend Fang from her forgotten past, which she believes will hurt her if remembered. This lines up with the romantically paired protagonists of Final Fantasy VII, Cloud and Tifa, who went on a near-identical quest, with Cloud trying to save the world (in line with Fang trying to save the party from being killed) while Tifa guarded him from remembering their teenage years together, realising some of the memories would damage him. In mirroring what previous FF instalments used to define heterosexual love, Fang and Vanille make themselves into a credible homosexual pairing.

Placement of Vanille's hand here has raised questions (see the comments)

While each of these examples can be seen as joking pandering or unintentional implication, there is something to be gained from interpreting characters as homosexual: appropriated representation. Where gay gamers cannot normally find characters with relatable relationships, they can make their own. This sets the gay gaming community apart from other minority groups who are unable to meaningfully alter the narratives of the stories they experience and love to include lacking representation. If gay gamers wish to project their sexual identity onto The Medic to create meaningful parallels to their own lives, they are able to without contradicting any established information about him; the same goes for Solid Snake, and for Fang; unlike, for example, black gamers, who cannot take the text they are given and interpret the physically white characters as matching their race.

This creates an interesting problem of its own, however: if gay gamers are free and happy to create their own homosexual alterbiographies in games, is there incentive for game developers to include more gay characters in the built-in plots of their products? Adding to their ranks would doubtless be helpful, increasing exposure of the gay community to people outside of it and dispelling some of the myths and stereotypes games currently perpetuate. But can it possibly be warranted, when the community seems content to take existing characters and interpret them in an inclusive way?

I’m curious to know what people think—how can the gay community balance their current methods of finding representation with pushing for official depictions of gay characters? Or, alternatively, can the decision to interpret characters as homosexual be seen as a quiet push for more—filling a need for representation at the same time as displaying to others that there could definitely be a lot more of it if developers tried?