Jimquisition: Mass Effect 3 And The Case For A Gay Shepard

[rutger5000]

Okay sorry but I have to say this:
I don't buy it.
I don't buy that there was anyone who didn't get Jim Sterling's point after the previous video with the gay fanfiction in it. Neither do I believe that Jim believed there actually were some people.
I might be wrong about that, but I like to think better of the human intelect. Sure someone would have posted some homophobic comment on the previous video, but this is the internet. You can't take everyone seriously. I'm quiet sure that Jim Sterling realizes that equally as well.
I'd be inclined to believe that he just made this video to make the video. It's a nice and easy topic to disguse, so I can see why he did, instead of making a video with a new and original topic.

 

[rutger5000]

Now I don't really care about the gay Shepherd issue at all, but I do want to address an argument that Jim kept using.

I've never found the "BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO LOOK AT IT!" argument to be valid at all.

I don't HAVE to watch the Transformers movies, does that mean that I can't express my opinion about how fucking retarded and poorly made they are?
I don't HAVE to do to interact with other people, i could just stay in my apartment and never go outside, does that mean that I'm retarded for complaining about people acting like idiots because I didn't HAVE to expose myself to them?
No. It fucking doesn't.
If I think something is retarded, then I'm gonna say that it's retarded, even if I didn't "have" to expose myself to it.

What you say makes good sense, but it isn't flawless. Fact is we where continously shown the commercials and trailers of the Transformers. It was rather hard not to look at it a little bit, and many people hated Transformers for it was a terrible movie, shamelessly making money from a popular brand.
Mass effect's gay option will likely be a bit different. I doubt we'll see many commercials regarding this option, and looking the other way will be easy. Without Jim's video's I would never known.
However if the game will continously make you aware of the option, then I'll have to agee with you that the "But you don't have to look at it" is indeed invalid. And homophobic gamers would be entitled to complain about it.

 

[Julien Brightside]

Jim speaks the truth.

 

[Julien Brightside]

Jim speaks the truth in a refreshing way I`d say.

 

[ACman]

I any body is wondering about what Therumancer actually said I'll break it down for you:

Jim is basically a left winger in support of the gay rights movement trying to make a point about the "stupidity" of people objecting to Mass Effect 3 having gay content. His point takes place in his snarky comments about this now being canonical, and Mass Effect "turning everyone who plays it gay" like that's the concern. Sort of insulting the people who would be offended by this through portraying it.

Hmm. Maybe the people who are offended by this need to take a deep breath and relax.

As much as I agree with a lot of Jim's points, I disagree with this one (obviously) and feel that he is missing the entire bloody point, while getting caught up in his own liberal rhetoric. He's basically argueing in an offhanded way from the perspective of what his "side" wants to believe the other side is like, instead of facing the realities.

Really? And what are those realities?

Even those who aren't anti-gay men oppose this because it's about entitlement, basically the gay rights movement having gone from a "we have the right to exist and not be actively hunted down and prevented from holding jobs" to a demand that despite their tiny numbers they have an ACTIVE prescence in pretty much everything. The basic arguement being that despite tiny numbers they believe that there should be gay sex in any product that touches on the issue of sex or romance at all.

Two of the most famous studies of the demographics of human sexual orientation were Dr. Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). These studies used a seven-point spectrum to define sexual behavior, from 0 for completely heterosexual to 6 for completely homosexual. Kinsey concluded that a small percentage of the population were to one degree or another bisexual (falling on the scale from 1 to 5). He also reported that 37% of men in the U.S. had achieved orgasm through contact with another male after adolescence and 13% of women had achieved orgasm through contact with another woman.

Paul Gebhard, Kinsey's successor as director of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, dedicated years to reviewing the Kinsey data and culling its purported contaminants. In 1979, Gebhard (with Alan B. Johnson) concluded that none of Kinsey's original estimates were significantly affected by the perceived bias, finding that 36.4% of men had engaged in both heterosexual and homosexual activities, as opposed to Kinsey's 37%.

A logic which if followed means that you can't create anything without every group being represented. A lot of the opposition comes from the insitance of entitlement, rather than the content itself. This is why you didn't see the same kinds of protests over the gay men present in say "Dragon Age: Origins", they were intended to be there by Bioware as that is how those characters turned out. In "Mass Effect" there was no such intention from the creators and the demand is to create such content specifically due to entitlement when it was never intended to be there to begin with...........................

Yeah I'm going to stop you there. Bioware was going to include homosexual scenes in ME2. They didn't for time and cost reasons. This led to understandable disappointment amongst the homosexual community but the hope that it would be included in the future

Sort of like calling the makers of a popular TV show racist if they don't introduce mor minority characters and give them substantial screen time, even if it ruins the entire show... this is the sexual version of it.

Umm. No. You can only make that comparison if you have a choice of male and female Buffy's and then a choice of male or female love interests for Whedon's protagonist.

If Shepard being gay ruins the entire show for you A) You are the worst kind of person, and B) Why did you play Shepard gay you fucktard?......

Oh wait he's not finished.

This is to say nothing of the entire issue of "tolerance vs. acceptance" which I think is be an increasingly nasty battleground in the next few years. Getting past my own personal opinions,

I'm sure you haven't but go on...

this is no longer about as gay supporters would say "not caring about what people consentually do in their own bedroom" it's about people wanting to bring that behavior literally into the homes of those who aren't interested and wave it around. Taken to it's conclusion the demands for inclusion would mean no romantic media without equal amounts of gay content. That's pretty much what we're seeing with the demand for such content in Mass Effect 3. Forcing homosexuality onto people who aren't interested is incidently EXACTLY what the gay rights movement was calling ridicuolous and saying wouldn't happen a decade or so ago.

....................................

.........................

You realise that Mass Effect 3 doesn't force this on you right? You can choose to not be gay? (funnily enough unlike real life)

Who the fuck is forcing this on you? If you say no none of the characters rape you. What the fuck are you complaining about here?

The bottom line is that like 99.9% of the population are not gay,

Where did you get this figure? I would say out of your ass but your so homophobic that this is obviously not true. Here are the real statistics for homosexuality:

Australia
2003
Men 1.6% as gay and 0.9% as bisexual.
Women 0.8% as lesbian and 1.4% as bisexual.

Nevertheless, 8.6% of men and 15.1% of women reported either feelings of attraction to the same gender or some sexual experience with the same gender. Half the men and two thirds of the women who had same-sex sexual experience regarded themselves as heterosexual rather than homosexual.

Canada
1988
A study of 5,514 college and university students under the age of 25 found 1% who were homosexual and 1% who were bisexual.

1998
A stratified random sample of 750 males aged 18 to 27 in Calgary, Canada included questions on sexual activity and orientation. 15.3% of men "reported being homosexual to some degree" on the basis of three (often overlapping) measures of homosexuality:

(1) voluntary, same-gender sexual contact from age 12 to 27: 14.0%;
(2) overlapping homosexual (5.9%) and/or bisexual (6.1%) self-identification: 11.1%; and
(3) exclusive (4.3%) and non-exclusive (4.9%) same-gender sexual relationships in past 6 months: 9.2%.[8]

2003
A survey of 135,000 Canadians found that 1.0% of the respondents identified themselves as homosexual and 0.7% identified themselves as bisexual.

About 1.3% of men considered themselves homosexual, almost twice the proportion of 0.7% among women. However, 0.9% of women reported being bisexual, slightly higher than the proportion of 0.6% among men. 2.0% of those in the 18?35 age bracket considered themselves to be either homosexual or bisexual, but the number decreased to 1.9% among 35?44 year olds, and further still to 1.2% in the population aged 45?59. Quebec and British Columbia had higher percentages than the national average at 2.3% and 1.9%, respectively.[9]

Denmark
1992
A random survey found that 2.7% of the 1,373 men who responded to their questionnaire had homosexual experience (intercourse).[10]

France
1992
A study of 20,055 people found that 4.1% of the men and 2.6% of the women had at least one occurrence of intercourse with person of the same sex during their lifetime.[11]

Norway
1988
In a random survey of 6,300 Norwegians, 3.5% of the men and 3% of the women reported that they had a homosexual experience sometime in their life.[12]
2003
According to Durex Global Sex Survey for 2003, 12% of Norwegian respondents have had homosexual sex.[13]

United Kingdom
1992
A study of 8,337 British men found that 6.1% have had a "homosexual experience" and 3.6% had "1+ homosexual partner ever."[14]
2005
HM Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry completed a survey to help the Government analyse the financial implications of the Civil Partnerships Act (such as pensions, inheritance and tax benefits). They concluded that there were 3.6 m gay people in Britain?around 6% of the total population or 1 in 16.66 people.[15]
2010
A representative survey of 238,206 Britons, exclusive to their categories, found 1% were gay or lesbian and 0.5% were bisexual. A further 0.5% self-identified as "other", and 3% responded as "do not know" or refused to answer.[16]

As of April 2011, approximately 3.5% of American adults identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, while 0.3% are transgender?approximately 11.7 million Americans.[1]

3.5% reported. I'm willing to bet there at least that many in the closet (because of people like you).

homosexuals are a very tiny group despite how much noise they make.

So are fundamentalist Christians.

Nobody is concerned gay media will turn them gay,

Then why are you worried?

so much as they find it disgusting not being wired that way. People do not want to be grossed out in order to play a video game, watch a movie, or experience any kind of normal romantic stuff due to the requirement this also be present.

I see. You don't want to see two men kissing. A woman and an alien woman in the last game was okay for you; but two men.... Too much.

Fuck yourself. No seriously. Though shit.

Men fuck each other (in a good way). DEAL WITH IT. Men can fuck each other in this game if you
so choose. DEAL WITH IT!!!!!!

If that grosses you out don't do it in the game.

Why is that so hard?

Ultimatly a lot of the opposition over Bioware inserting male homosexuality into these products is because it's being done out of demands of entitlement (as opposed to being intended to be there to begin with), and because while a lot of the gamers might not care what people do on their own time, they really don't want to have people waving homosexuality in their face during their escapism. It doesn't have to be intense gay porno, simply having homosexuals make passes at them and sit around pining and making it clear the option is there is enough.

Yeah we get it. You hate gay men. The option for it in Mass Effect makes you sick. Somehow you've manage to take request for it to be included in a ROLE PLAYING GAME and turn it around in your sick little brain into gay men being "entitled".

You're the on who is entitled. You are the one insisting that the only option be yours.

My basic attitude, my whole opinion about gay-men aside (which can probably be found in some old back posts)is that if Bioware decides to write gay characters, so be it. They obviously don't shy away from this when it fits. As soon as people start demanding they be there out of entitlement, when they weren't intended ot fitting into the intended story balance to begin with, that's just wrong.

What story balance? Seriously, after ME2 who gives a fuck about Mass Effect's story? And as to Shepard he's so deliberately bland he could fuck goats in his spare time and I wouldn't bat an eye.

The problem with Jim's rant,

Rant? he's reading gay slash fic..

is that I think he's characterizing the majority of the opposition entirely wrong, which kind of ruins what otherwise might have been a pretty impressive way of making a counter arguement about it's ridiculousness.

Umm no. I think he's just trying to say that homosexual thoughts are okay in his own way.

But then again one of the problems with the left wing and those defending left wing issues is that they tend to create an image of the enemy in their own mind,

No that would be the Republicans and their FauxObama construct.

and beat up straw men, without ever dealing with the actual issues.. and that's one of the reasons the US at least remains so polarized despite the left wing blowing it's own horn and trying to act like it represents a massive, clear majority when it doesn't (which is an issue well beyond this)

Oh good... Moral majority. Good for you.

 

[Cheeseman Muncher]

Like I said about the previous video, this is very much spot on. In RPGs, I tend to make my choices based on what I would do myself. In the case of ME1&2, generally pick things that would make me the stereotypical "good guy" and, as I'm a straight man, pick a female love interest. My flatmate on the other hand (who's gay) may like to do to same and play the game his way. Why should he be stopped from picking a guy as his love interest? Or a female friend of mine who happens to swing both ways, why shouldn't her character be able to do the same?

Like Dragon Age II before it, the optional romantic subplot is exactly that: OPTIONAL. If you're going to be offended by it, simply don't go looking for it. Easy as that.

 

[Xanthious]

Hey Jim, you mad bro? . . . .

Moving on. Looking back at how Bioware handled gay relationships in the past I find the "You don't have to bother with it" argument to fall flat on it's face. Dragon Age 2 was about as subtle as a hand grenade with their gay characters.

Of course my argument is, and will continue to be, that the people pushing for inclusion of gays are simply a bunch of hypocrites. When it comes to getting what they want into the game it's all about being open minded and "it's only an option, you don't have to see it". And god help you if you disagree with them you get labeled a homophobe or a bigot.

However, when someone pushes for another alternate lifestyle to be brought in that they personally find distasteful well then that open mindedness, acceptance and having the option not to see it goes right out the window.

So I guess it's ok that their Shepards can bugger men but as soon as someone wants to push the boundaries a little and suggest that they'd like their Shepard to bugger a cow or the vacuum cleaner or random corpses or alter boys well then that offends their delicate senses and is an affront to decency.

The thing is once you start forcing acceptance of your lifestyle on people telling them it's just an option that they don't have to see and call them close minded bigots and homophobes for finding what you like distasteful you come off as a hypocrite when you turn around and start doing the exact same thing as the people you would call close minded bigots to people with another alternate lifestyle that people would like represented in a game. Even though at the end of they what they want would just be an option you wouldn't have to see.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

Anders, Fenris and Isabella are quite clear about their lack of preferences if you take time to talk to them. It does not ask a lot of effort to raise the issue.

But even then, you're taking the effort, however little it might be, to bring the issue up.

Yes, I like to select most dialogue option with any NPC in the game. Because I find fascinating to explore the personality of the cast since that's one major asset of Bioware games. Maybe I have to deal with a lot of problems as you kindly put it but for me it's like reading a book or watching a movie: I like to know the protagonists of the story.

I can sympathize with that. I've always been a fan of story/character driven games, and that tends to be more of a saving grace for me if coupled with lousy gameplay than if it's the other way around.

Having said that, the problem is not so much how I gain the info. The problem is that those romances (and in many ways the charachters themselves) are quite shallow and empty because of that design choice. Those charachter are defined by their romance status in many ways and since the romance is generic, the charachters themselves seem more generic as a result.

Wait, what? Did you really look at the exchanges and think that they were somehow cheapened by the fact that you could get to the same point as the opposite gender? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that sounds an awful lot like you're just equating bisexuality with promiscuity. If you successfully shack up with Anders in both of two playthroughs as male and female, it doesn't mean that he's just the community bicycle. It just means that, in two universes exactly alike save for Hawke's gender, gender wasn't the reason Anders became involved with Hawke.

It's not a mistery that the best charachters in DA2 are Varric and Aveline. Strange enough: they are not romance options and the result is that they sound more convincing as separate entity from the PC.

Erm...or it was because they pretty much got the most screentime by default. And were similarly easy staples of any given party, making them gain even more screentime. I don't know about you, but if I was putting together a list of pros and cons for the character roster, "Would bone me despite gender" wouldn't be on either side because it isn't very much of a deciding character trait. It doesn't add any depth, but it sure doesn't detract from them. If I were considering the romances themselves, the issue of gender wouldn't even come into play.

Morrigain and Alistair are the most convincing charachter of the DA lore so I have to assume that it's not a problem of being a romancable charachter or not. The problem is how the romance option are designed.

Say what now? Alistair I can understand being on that list. But the reason his romance was so unique was in its details, not the player's ability to access it.

But Morrigan? Really? She had her moments, but it was almost in spite of every interaction I had with her. Courting her without a strategy guide was like trying to perform open heart surgery with a brick while simultaneously juggling cobras. Every time I brought her along in my party, she would hate me unless I indulged in every chance for gratuitous murder. The only remotely reliable way of getting approval was to determine what I, a generally good person, would normally do, and then doing the polar opposite of that instead. She only liked the choices that resulted in the most dead, preferably innocent bystanders. Her every opinion on anything was so far detached from her self-proclaimed advocacy of survival of the fittest.

Meh, moving on. This could go on for a while unless I curb it now.

In DA:O romances help the plot and the charachterization. In DA2 they did nothing. No matter the sexuality of your PC, they all feel generic and bland. I believe that the "open romance" design was one of the most important cause of that problem.

Okay...then explain to me exactly how Alistair's romance would have been dramatically cheapened if it could take place with a male hero.

I would have prefer a "hit or miss" approach with every charachter being a defined individual indipendent from your PC (being straight, gay or bisexual).

Alright, let's build on that hypothetical structure.

Imagine a group of five romancible characters, all of your character's gender. For the purposes of this, you're homosexual, and roleplaying as such. And out of those five characters, three are straight, one is bisexual, and one is gay.

Now imagine that the only ones of that group that appeal to you are two of the heterosexual characters. The bisexual one is just a 'bones everything that moves' type, and you don't really like the homosexual one for reasons unrelated to his orientation.

Doesn't that sound like a fun game? A harsh reminder that, from a statistical point of view, your ideal romantic partner will never like you in the same way that you like them? That if you want any sort of romance in your life, you'll have to settle for someone you don't like?

But that would cause a lot of complains from bio-drone crybabies who have indeed a lot of problems and that would start to whine on the forums: "oh, I'm straight why I cannot romance gay charachter x?" or "oh, I'm gay, why I cannot romance straight charachter Y".

That sort of entitlement toward romances has plagued Bioware fanbase since BG2. But it has reached crazy levels in the last years. To the point where fans on the forum asked to romance their sister in the game only because she had big boobs and she was hotter than the other female options...

...okay, that's about as separate from the issue at hand as the "next Shepard will be a pedophile" argument.

And even then, I can guarantee that you stand a much, much higher chance of adventuring with a group that turns out to be predominantly bisexual than you do with getting a fraternal twin who wants to screw with you.

 

[idodo35]

thank god for jim! but seriously who thinks homosexuals=pedophiles?! seriously
also WHERE AND WHY THE LIVING HELL DID YOU GET THAT GIANT PINK DILDO?!

 

[ACman]

Let's keep going with Therumancer shall we?

I've written some detailed posts on it with mixed responses, no need to start a fight about it. In short we don't have a "cure" for homosexuality that's viable right now, though ideally that will happen with time, and more akin to what I've posted in commentary on science fiction (ie have the condition elimited in the process of simply making people perfectly healthy) as opposed to some kind of witch hunt with people being run down and dragging off to surgey clinics or having needles stuck in their arm or anything.

................................

Essentially what you're saying is that you want to breed a specific genetic trait out of humanity?

In the short term I think gay men and lesbians need to be considered seperate issues.

What? You find the sapphic honeys particularly desirable but you hate fag-town?

Men and women are differant both physically and psychologically, and this applies to homosexuals as well. Despite liberal assurances that it's not the case, the reality is that gay men ARE more likely to attack children than just about any other group.

....

I think I'm more likely to attack YOU than just about any group.

Even with the statistics put out by the left wing you see you'll notice a trend to use stats compiled from all homosexuals and then applied to the arguements, once you remove the lesbians you wind up with gays being twice as likely to attack children as straight guys which kind of destroys a lot of the point. Not to mention that such statistics are compiled with an agenda and you'd only see the left wing promoting statistics that reinforced what they wanted to say.

What is your source?

Most importantly though I've had a lot of experience with such things, both having been trained to deal with sexual predators,

No, fuck you. You've made an outrageous claim. WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR SOURCE?!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and having looked into it being a sex abuse victim myself (which does not invalidate anything I say). One thing you'll notice is that you just don't see lesbians attacking little girls, I mean sure, I'm sure there are exceptions where it's happened, but very rarely. When you hear about homosexual assault, who is it that does it? Gay men.

Wow..... I'm overwhelmed....... That's fucking amazing. I never would have thought of that; homosexual assault.... is done by gay men.....

I'm fucking amazed.

Next up in Thermaturg's amazing insights: Heterosexual assault done by {DUN DUN DUUUUN} heterosexual men!!!!!

Wow. There is no wonder that this dickhead cannot profess..... [seriously fuck this guy]

That's not just bad press, in about a decade of working as casino security where morons leave their kids unattended off the gaming floor and don't want to pay for daycare or whatever, I have literally dealt with dozens if not hundreds of gay men trying to lure little boys, more than I've seen straight guys with little girls (and that does happen with some frequency). I have not run into a single lesbian trying to pick up little girls... so really it's not bad press, that's how it is "on the street" so to speak from someone who was paid to look out for things like this. Of course due to concerns over NAMBLA we had to treat the gay pedos with kid gloves, but that's a whole differant story.

Ahh! Anecdotal evidence. Fucking meaningless.

Even if your statistically meaningless sample was representational then who is to say that those paedophiles targeting boys wouldn't be well adjusted, normal homosexual men if people like you weren't judging them? And how many step-fathers that rape their step-daughters have you left out of this meaningless anecdote?

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think gay men should be arbitrarly lined up, executed, castrated, or anything else. We're not dealing with a situation where this is the case for every gay man or anything of the sort.

................

I do however think gay men should be registered, much like sex offenders,

.....................................

but without the active tracking. They should be prohibited from going places around children as a matter of policy,

I give up. FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING HOMOPHOBE. THERE IS NO GRACEFUL WAY TO DEAL WITH PEOPLE LIKE YOU.

FUCK THIS GUY.

SERIOUSLY READ THIS.

They should be prohibited from going places around children as a matter of policy, and probably given twice the penelties as normal for violations or if they are caught trying to actually go after children. By a lack of active tracking I mean I don't think an entire neighborhood needs to be informed that so and so is gay, but I do think schools should be basically informed, and it should be attached to IDs so if say some gay guy comes into a casino and gives his ID to be allowed to gamble casino security is aware, and can also inform the guy where to stay away from (arcades, day care, etc..) to prevent accidental tresspass and similar things.

Overall while many people would object out of hand, this is an attitude that has come from long experience, and I've gone through periods where I've been more or less extreme. This seems like a pretty middle ground compromise as it presents few limitations. To be honest as a straight guy I don't hang around schools, playgrounds, arcades, etc... unless I have a good reason (like being paid security) so really being told you can't go there isn't something that is going to hamper most people unless they are up to something to begin with. It's very much one of the cases where I actually think the maxim "only the guilty should be concerned" kind of applies. Some would talk about railing against any kind of limitation, but at the same time I'd ask WTF would an adult man with allegedly no interest in kids fight for the right to go hang around a playground or children's arcade? I mean seriously.

... and trust me, from experience, if you see some solitary guy hanging out in an arcade watching the kids there is very rarely a good reason for it. Sadly you can't do anything out of hand, but trust me, after about 10 minutes you can almost guarantee your going to have to at least step in and make your prescence known at some point (at which point the guy will almost universally go scurrying like a cockroach).

Part of it is what they called "colored glasses" when I took Criminal Justice. Basically people remain optimistic and liberal because they never really see the world properly the way how someone who does law enforcement, "high end" security work, or receives the proper training does. See, you take the right training, watch people through cameras when they don't think they are being observed, and respond to incident after incident and write (or read) report after report, you see things as they actually are, and can recognize behaviors you once wouldn't have been alarmed by for what they are.

Criminals an predators survive because they seem normal, your child molester, shoplifter, pickpocket, stairwell rapist, mugger, or whatever doesn't look like some dude from America's most wanted. He looks like your ordinary person, and can talk a good game about being harmless. Most homosexual predators for example are EXACTLY the guy who looks like the poster child for "we're unfairly maligned, and don't attack children" they don't go walking around covered in tattoos and looking like prison rapist nightmares, or dirty old men. Just like a shoplifter might be an old lady who looks like (and probably is) someone's grandmother, especially if it's part of an organized ring because people tend to be a lot more laid back with the elderly not to mention all the special laws about treating them with kid gloves and so on. You watch this crap 20 million times on a camera and it burns in.

While I'm rambling in a long post, I might as well explain how this kind of thing works as well. See, little boys are braver than girls and have immortal action and adventure fantasies in their head, they are warned, and take warnings less seriously than girls who tend to be a bit more aware of people being after them probably because people teach them more seriously. Your typical gay pedo is going to be some normal looking guy in his 20s or 30s, maybe even good looking, who hangs around an arcade or similar place, to see who has been left without parents or a sibling, and hasn't fallen in with another pack of kids. Or more indidiously for those carrying books, because kids have homework and a lot of your casino parents will have the kids their kids bring the homework to the casino. Basically the pedo will probably play a few video games, offer the kid some extra quarters or something, and then when the kid runs out offer to help him with his homework. The kid probably wants to go somewhere quiet to concentrate with a flat surface so it's pretty easy to gert the kid to enter a stairwell, where the cameras tend to be aimed at the landings. The pedo gets the kid into the stairwell and then goes to do homework with him in the middle of the landing where they can sit, or the kid can *ahem* turn around and use the steps as a flat surface. In that position it's where the pedo can do his thing and unless a security officer comes by on a patrol, at the right moment your going to find the traumatized lad crying with the guy long gone. Even if you find him, because it happened between landings there won't be a great video record since the act itself took place between landings. This is assuming the guy didn't mess with the cameras and security wasn't too busy to notice (given that there are tons of them). Now granted this rarely goes down, because well. there are procedures that make it harder to get away with, but really you'd be shocked how many normal looking dudes have tried to carry out that basic plan.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

Hey Jim, you mad bro? . . . .

Hey, look who came out of the woodwork! I was wondering if you'd show up in this thread.

Moving on. Looking back at how Bioware handled gay relationships in the past I find the "You don't have to bother with it" argument to fall flat on it's face. Dragon Age 2 was about as subtle as a hand grenade with their gay characters.

Of course my argument is, and will continue to be, that the people pushing for inclusion of gays are simply a bunch of hypocrites. When it comes to getting what they want into the game it's all about being open minded and "it's only an option, you don't have to see it". And god help you if you disagree with them you get labeled a homophobe or a bigot.

So you're offended that there are things in the game that are available if you look for them because...you don't like the idea that other people might be looking at them while you aren't? Does someone hypothetically playing a gay Shepard somehow make you feel insecure about your straight Shepard?

However, when someone pushes for another alternate lifestyle to be brought in that they personally find distasteful well then that open mindedness, acceptance and having the option not to see it goes right out the window.

Ah, I see it now. You're offended by the concept of hypothetical homosexuals and find yourself compelled to track them down and...be offended by them, I guess.

So I guess it's ok that their Shepards can bugger men but as soon as someone wants to push the boundaries a little and suggest that they'd like their Shepard to bugger a cow or the vacuum cleaner or random corpses or alter boys well then that offends their delicate senses and is an affront to decency.

I guess that clears it up. We shouldn't tolerate gays because next we'll be expected to tolerate necrophiliacs and pedophiles. Just like how giving voting rights to blacks not much over a century ago (back when they were literally considered to be sub-human) led to other domesticated animals being given civil rights. Or how banning private ownership of assault weapons led to all guns being banned.

The thing is once you start forcing acceptance of your lifestyle on people telling them it's just an option that they don't have to see and call them close minded bigots and homophobes for finding what you like distasteful you come off as a hypocrite when you turn around and start doing the exact same thing to people with another alternate lifestyle that people would like represented in a game. Even though at the end of they what they want would just be an option you wouldn't have to see.

That's the most hilariously broken logic I've ever heard. It assumes that nobody can do anything without every possible extreme happening as a result. Let's apply your thinking to age of consent laws.

The AoC in New Jersey, for instance, is 16. But what about the people who want to have sex with 15 year olds? We can't deny them the same acceptance when we so readily grant it to others. And once we've done that, what about the people who aren't allowed to screw 14 year olds? Or anyone at all? I mean, I'm sure that some people want to screw newborns. Who are we to say that their choice of lifestyle is less deserving of acceptance than that of two adults of the same gender?

 

[Darknacht]

So I guess it's ok that their Shepards can bugger men but as soon as someone wants to push the boundaries a little and suggest that they'd like their Shepard to bugger a cow or the vacuum cleaner or random corpses or alter boys well then that offends their delicate senses and is an affront to decency.

Did you miss the being gay is not a bad thing RAPING KIDS IS A BAD THING statement?
And if they want to include an option to have sex with a vacuum cleaner who cares? Its their game they can do what they want.

 

[verdant monkai]

Let me just get this out of the way "I AM CLEVER AT VIDEO GAMES".
Any way my complaint with gayness in ME3 was that it was too late in the series, Jim said that you could choose to be gay or not. If this is the case than that is absolutely fine.

Shepard is an avatar for you in the Mass effect story, and if you are gay so is your Shepard.
HOWEVER in Dragon Age 2 another Bioware game which is basically fantasy, mass effect now. When a character started to flirt with Hawke in a gay way I was given three options. Two of which were options to reciprocate the flirt and act gay. The other was something along the lines of F*CK OFF I AM NOT GAY. Which would have upset the character, and given me rivalry points which I didn't want.
There NEEDS to be a neutral option here so you can say something like "I am flattered but no thank you". So NO I am not Homophobic and pedophilia is not something that should be compared to gay sex, pedophilia is an act of evil, gay sex is a matter of free will and choice.

Jim has put my mind to rest, to a certain extent and I agree that Homosexuality probably will have no impact on the plot but. I will be annoyed if Characters make Gay sexual advances on me and my only choice, is to Bed them or tell them to F*ck off.
And you cant say fairer than that.

 

[Cheeseman Muncher]

SERIOUSLY READ THIS.

They should be prohibited from going places around children as a matter of policy, and probably given twice the penelties as normal for violations or if they are caught trying to actually go after children. By a lack of active tracking I mean I don't think an entire neighborhood needs to be informed that so and so is gay, but I do think schools should be basically informed, and it should be attached to IDs so if say some gay guy comes into a casino and gives his ID to be allowed to gamble casino security is aware, and can also inform the guy where to stay away from (arcades, day care, etc..) to prevent accidental tresspass and similar things.

Overall while many people would object out of hand, this is an attitude that has come from long experience, and I've gone through periods where I've been more or less extreme. This seems like a pretty middle ground compromise as it presents few limitations. To be honest as a straight guy I don't hang around schools, playgrounds, arcades, etc... unless I have a good reason (like being paid security) so really being told you can't go there isn't something that is going to hamper most people unless they are up to something to begin with. It's very much one of the cases where I actually think the maxim "only the guilty should be concerned" kind of applies. Some would talk about railing against any kind of limitation, but at the same time I'd ask WTF would an adult man with allegedly no interest in kids fight for the right to go hang around a playground or children's arcade? I mean seriously.

... and trust me, from experience, if you see some solitary guy hanging out in an arcade watching the kids there is very rarely a good reason for it. Sadly you can't do anything out of hand, but trust me, after about 10 minutes you can almost guarantee your going to have to at least step in and make your prescence known at some point (at which point the guy will almost universally go scurrying like a cockroach).

Part of it is what they called "colored glasses" when I took Criminal Justice. Basically people remain optimistic and liberal because they never really see the world properly the way how someone who does law enforcement, "high end" security work, or receives the proper training does. See, you take the right training, watch people through cameras when they don't think they are being observed, and respond to incident after incident and write (or read) report after report, you see things as they actually are, and can recognize behaviors you once wouldn't have been alarmed by for what they are.

Criminals an predators survive because they seem normal, your child molester, shoplifter, pickpocket, stairwell rapist, mugger, or whatever doesn't look like some dude from America's most wanted. He looks like your ordinary person, and can talk a good game about being harmless. Most homosexual predators for example are EXACTLY the guy who looks like the poster child for "we're unfairly maligned, and don't attack children" they don't go walking around covered in tattoos and looking like prison rapist nightmares, or dirty old men. Just like a shoplifter might be an old lady who looks like (and probably is) someone's grandmother, especially if it's part of an organized ring because people tend to be a lot more laid back with the elderly not to mention all the special laws about treating them with kid gloves and so on. You watch this crap 20 million times on a camera and it burns in.

While I'm rambling in a long post, I might as well explain how this kind of thing works as well. See, little boys are braver than girls and have immortal action and adventure fantasies in their head, they are warned, and take warnings less seriously than girls who tend to be a bit more aware of people being after them probably because people teach them more seriously. Your typical gay pedo is going to be some normal looking guy in his 20s or 30s, maybe even good looking, who hangs around an arcade or similar place, to see who has been left without parents or a sibling, and hasn't fallen in with another pack of kids. Or more indidiously for those carrying books, because kids have homework and a lot of your casino parents will have the kids their kids bring the homework to the casino. Basically the pedo will probably play a few video games, offer the kid some extra quarters or something, and then when the kid runs out offer to help him with his homework. The kid probably wants to go somewhere quiet to concentrate with a flat surface so it's pretty easy to gert the kid to enter a stairwell, where the cameras tend to be aimed at the landings. The pedo gets the kid into the stairwell and then goes to do homework with him in the middle of the landing where they can sit, or the kid can *ahem* turn around and use the steps as a flat surface. In that position it's where the pedo can do his thing and unless a security officer comes by on a patrol, at the right moment your going to find the traumatized lad crying with the guy long gone. Even if you find him, because it happened between landings there won't be a great video record since the act itself took place between landings. This is assuming the guy didn't mess with the cameras and security wasn't too busy to notice (given that there are tons of them). Now granted this rarely goes down, because well. there are procedures that make it harder to get away with, but really you'd be shocked how many normal looking dudes have tried to carry out that basic plan.

Pro Tip: Homosexuality =/= Paedophilia. Just because a man likes to nom willies does not mean he wants to nom the willies of small children. Get a fucking grip you homophobic edjit.

EDIT: I realise I've quoted the wrong person. This is not aimed at ACman.

 

[Darknacht]

HOWEVER in Dragon Age 2 another Bioware game which is basically fantasy, mass effect now. When a character started to flirt with Hawke in a gay way I was given three options. Two of which were options to reciprocate the flirt and act gay. The other was something along the lines of F*CK OFF I AM NOT GAY. Which would have upset the character, and given me rivalry points which I didn't want.
There NEEDS to be a neutral option here so you can say something like "I am flattered but no thank you". So NO I am not Homophobic and pedophilia is not something that should be compared to gay sex, pedophilia is an act of evil, gay sex is a matter of free will and choice.

This is true in so many games. BioWare is terrible with this gay and straight, and so are many other games. The first Witcher had this problem when interacting with females, you never knew when not being an incredible ass-hat would lead you to accidentally have sex with a girl.

 

[Cheeseman Muncher]

HOWEVER in Dragon Age 2 another Bioware game which is basically fantasy, mass effect now. When a character started to flirt with Hawke in a gay way I was given three options. Two of which were options to reciprocate the flirt and act gay. The other was something along the lines of F*CK OFF I AM NOT GAY. Which would have upset the character, and given me rivalry points which I didn't want.
There NEEDS to be a neutral option here so you can say something like "I am flattered but no thank you". So NO I am not Homophobic and pedophilia is not something that should be compared to gay sex, pedophilia is an act of evil, gay sex is a matter of free will and choice.

This is true in so many games. BioWare is terrible with this gay and straight, and so are many other games. The first Witcher had this problem when interacting with females, you never knew when not being an incredible ass-hat would lead you to accidentally have sex with a girl.

Yeah on both these points. With Anders it was a case of "Yay, Imma be gay with you!" or "Get the hell away from me!" with no middle ground of "Sorry pal, I'm not interested." Same for the majority of the romances actually. It was either relationship or complete alienation.

And in the case of the Witcher, within about an hour and a half I'd got laid 5 times. Without even trying. I wish real life worked like that. =<

 

[faspxina]

Is it me or is the art in this show getting slightly better?

 

[Treblaine]

Really thy don't want even the gay OPTION! They don't even have that option with their own lives, nothing stops THEIR OWN lives going that way.

All there is is a gay character you can interact with and reciprocate the sexy-time. If you can't resist that you aren't a homophobe... you are a homosexual - in denial.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

I've never found the "BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO LOOK AT IT!" argument to be valid at all.

I don't HAVE to watch the Transformers movies, does that mean that I can't express my opinion about how fucking retarded and poorly made they are?
I don't HAVE to do to interact with other people, i could just stay in my apartment and never go outside, does that mean that I'm retarded for complaining about people acting like idiots because I didn't HAVE to expose myself to them?
No. It fucking doesn't.
If I think something is retarded, then I'm gonna say that it's retarded, even if I didn't "have" to expose myself to it.

There is a difference between exploring why a movie is shitty, and getting onto a game developer for giving player the option to pursue a male homosexual relationship.

The former applies to this game, as I've heard that the gay scenes are done rather horribly. So calling Bioware out on that is one thing.

In the latter, you'd have to actively seek it out... and then be offended. For those who are offended simply at the thought of gay relationships being included in the game, then they're a completely different level of bigot. Admittedly, Mass Effect really isn't much of an RPG.. but the game still sells itself as one, and giving you options is one of the cornerstones of a good roleplaying game.

Homophobia seems to be the last major prejudice that people can actively cling to, these days. Imagine if people made a stink about a developer including the option to make your character black. It's the same damned thing, only in a different color clan uniform.