I can appreciate you're drawing on a literary tradition. And I understand using shorthand. I do it myself on some things.... but it gets me in trouble with communication too.
I think if we're going to take race (and other issues) more seriously though, shorthand isn't going to cut it. It's part of the problem.
That's so funny about Harkness. I never knew that. Kind of like British used to be in the States (like Star Wars).
As for Jack, I don't know what was stopping them if they really wanted her that way. The same writer also wrote Samara, and she's bi. Like I said earlier, I'd have no problem with it and even see benefits for her popularity... but I'll just accept that they had their reasons. It's not my character. I don't think there is some particular coding there though. A lot of people can see themselves in Jack. I can myself. The actress who played her goes on about this too, but she's got a husband herself (from what I can tell, she's a little older than me, but pretty much grew up around punks like I did). On the plus side, this is a good thing... if all kinds of people recognize themselves in an estranged character. That's progress.
The other part of it is, of course, we all bring our own baggage into any story we read. Straight people, presented with pretty much any character, will assume straight until proven otherwise. (Some idiots will assume straight even *after* proven otherwise, but that's a whole different problem). People in the LGBT community will generally look harder, and pick up on subtle behaviors that people outside the community miss. Certain word choices, playing the pronoun game. Using the word "spouse" in place of wife or husband (which is kind of like the pronoun game, advanced level). Sometimes, the behaviors are stereotypical, yes. Sometimes not. Sometimes we pick up on a behavior so minor, we couldn't even tell you later why we're reading a character the way we are, without going back and reviewing the media in question. Some people will see it because they want to, even when it's not actually there, (contrary wise, some people will deny it even when it's so blatant it might as well be wearing a neon sign).
For race, the issue is a bit different. Race is, in general, something that's a lot less subtle. You don't have to guess, at least in visual media, if a character is black, or Chinese, or Indian or Latino based on behavioral queues. It's pretty much just out there, though even then, there are exceptions.
Which goes back to why people in the LGBT community *are* so attuned to behavioral queues. Because there aren't usually blatant visual queues, 99% of the time.
As for why the decision was made not to include any same sex romances in ME2, outside of Kelly/Femshep (which I guess kinda counts) and the LotSB continuation of FemShep/Liara, I doubt we'll ever get a straight answer. I could speculate on it a lot, and I can tell you there was a *lot* of frustration about the decision, just like there was a lot of frustration over the decision to not let FemShep romance Ashley, or BroShep romance Kaidan in the first game, even though the dialog was apparently recorded. At this point, it honestly doesn't matter. The decisions are 5 to 8 years in the past, and Bioware did pretty well by us in ME3 and in DAI.
As for the shorthand, I don't think it will ever go away completely. I think as a writer, you have to be extremely careful how you use it, but it's too useful a tool to completely give up.
Retour en haut
But I don't think it'll change the basic demographics of this type of game.
Let's hope BioWare is listening to our great ideas. I'd buy two copies of the game and a compilation of the fan reactions. Glorious!
:
