WARNING!!! I will be spoiling some details about The last of us and the last of us: Left behind
I am not a feminist. Feminism has become so twisted and mutated that most people who call themselves feminists (or at least the ones that I have met, not judging beyond my own knowledge) don't know what it's all about, and I won't go into it because that's not what this is about.
I am all for equality. I have spent my life treating everybody with the same amount of respect, or at least the amount of respect they deserved, not making any difference between man or woman.
I like to believe that most people think like me and from my experience I have never really encountered sexism or racism in my day to day life. Sure you hear some inappropriate jokes from time to time, but when the chips are down and things are being taken more seriously I have never met a person who is outright hateful in any way shape or form.
I guess some would call me sheltered because of this and I probably am to some degree, but this has given me the opportunity to develop along the right paths. I never had to scream my beliefs in someone else's face and never had other peoples beliefs screamed in my, until a couple of years ago.
It may sound unbelievable, but it was only recently that being gay became widely accepted. At the turn of the millenia, people would still be lynched if they came out. It was weird and wrong to be gay and people would be upset when someone told them they were gay, but the something happened. All of a sudden it was ok, great, we can finally start accepting people for who they are and people could finally be themselves. There was, and still is, a lot of resistance to the whole thing but over all the world said "it's ok to be gay" but then something else happened. Gay rights movements, Feminists and anti-racism groups started taking to the streets. they figured that since it was ok to be gay, it was also ok to start raising you voice about it. This is of course a good thing, spread the message, but they became so passionate and almost fanatic about it that they started hating people who, wasn't necessarily against gay people and feminists only not as vocal or involved in the discussion as they were.
If you weren't at the front of the Pride parade you were a gay basher, this was their philosophy, and that sounds so wrong to me. Why did the fact that it became acceptable to be gay turn so many gay people into militant advocates for their cause? there is no need for anger anymore, shouldn't we rejoice in the fact that the anti-gay community have shrunk tremendously over the last few years?
The situation has spiraled so far out of what it once was that straight people are actually scared not to voice their opinion even if they are positive towards homosexuality, because if they don't say that they are pro-gay they think people will believe the opposite.
A perfect example (and the reason why I wrote this) is the DLC for The critically acclaimed video game The last of us. in the DLC we get to play Ellie (one of the main protagonists of The last of us) before she appears in The last of us. We get to meet her best friend and see how their friendship develops. At the end of the game they have to go their separate ways and at that moment they share a kiss.
For me, that ruined the game. Not because they were gay, but because the issue of homosexuality was addressed so incredibly blunt and not to mention the fact that love ruins friendships. Sure, this was the last time they were going to see each other so their friendship was kind of getting ruined anyway but why did the writer, Neill Druckman who also directed it, feel the need to address homosexuality so abruptly?
The funny thing is, In the main game, homosexuality had been introduced but in a much smoother and better way. The character named bill Was gay, he lived in a town with his partner and it never got shoved in your face. Instead we got a incredibly touching scene where Bill finds his partner dead. His homosexuality had never been mentioned before but the second you saw that scene you knew Bill had loved that man more than as a friend. it was a perfect depiction of how un-spectacular it is to be gay in the world of today. Homosexuality has become such a ordinary thing that there is no longer a need for people to make a big deal about it. Instead of looking like a person who's fighting the good fight, they come of as ignorant for shouting out what we already know.
Of course, homosexuality is still not accepted everywhere. There are still countries where it is punishable with death to be gay. That is where the fight needs to be. I recently read about the first ever Pride parade in in Nigeria. That was a truly brave act, but to hold a gay pride parade in Sweden (where I live) seem like a wasted opportunity to me, instead take the fight where it needs to be fought.
Stop shouting in my ear about gay rights, I know all about it and I am all for it.
After reading some interviews with Neill Druckman it becomes clear that he is a victim of peer pressure. Before the game was released, there were never any mentions about homosexuality and Feminism (both subjects are expertly handled in The last of us). He had simply written characters who had a purpose for the story, not adding a bunch of female characters to make the game more appealing to women or shoving in Gay relationships for the sake of them being gay. This was simply a game filled with different, and very human in all manner of ways, characters.
After the discussions about Ellies sexuality started popping up on the Internet, Neill started to change his opinion. All of a sudden Ellie had always been gay but there was not a chance to explore that properly in the game, why did'nt he just say she was gay from the beginning? Why did he choose to reveal that first after people started speculating? because he was afraid people would be mad at him if he had said that she wasn't.
The point I am getting to, and have already mentioned but I'll do it again for the sake of things, is this. There shouldn't be such a big deal that a Video game protagonist is gay. We live in a world where it is as normal to be gay as it is to be straight. We should not emphasize the fact that She/he is gay, instead we should focus on the things that these two persons love about each other.
Focus on the love and the attraction rather than the sexual preference.
Like Seth Rogen said in Paul
"It's all about the pleasure thing"
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