Overwatch Christmas Comic Reveals First LGBT Character

[SlumlordThanatos]

This isn't newsworthy. As I have said before and will probably continue saying until I'm blue in the face, the sexuality of your fictional characters does not matter and shouldn't be treated as though it's a big deal.

Can we talk about the quality of the comic instead? It had some interesting parts, but overall...I'm having a hard time believing that people got paid to write and draw that. We all know that Blizzard is capable of putting out quality content, just look at some of their other comics, like "Going Legit". Compared to that, this comic just makes it look like Blizzard is phoning it in and hoping that all the "OMGZ TRACER'S A LESBIAN" hoopla will cover it up.

The Blizzard forums prove this is actively untrue.
And a few posts here, even.

The Blizzard forums are a wretched hive of scum and villainy on the best of days. There's at least one guy who keeps posting NSFW pics while begging for schoolgirl skins, and it takes forever for the mods to ban his account. Then he just makes another one and keeps doing it.

No surprises there.

 

[The Lunatic]

Well, that's a bit disappointing.

I mean, they've built up this whole "ONE OF THE CHARACTERS IS LGB!!!" for like a month now and then they go for the safe option.

It's just a bit "Oh, that's it?" I suppose.

Good for Tracer, I guess. A game with no storyline now has slightly more things in the background.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Junkrat smooching on Genji.

I want this.

Why not a space firefox from the forestplanet?

I also want this... and to be fair, it would make fine sense to have in Overwatch.

Regardless of the lack of gay female characters in games, lesbians are still more appealing to the straight male demographic than gay men.

I have a hard time understanding the appeal of lesbians to straight men. I know that it's a thing, but I don't understand it. The lesbians aren't interested in him, they aren't going to suddenly beckon him over, he will never play any part in it. What is the fantasy here? Just watching?

 

[spartandude]

Cool I guess. To be honest though I would have been impressed if it were one of the male characters being gay. No offence to lesbians intended at all, it's just we rarely see gay men due to gay women being a "safer" option.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

.

Can we talk about the quality of the comic instead? It had some interesting parts, but overall...I'm having a hard time believing that people got paid to write and draw that.

Okay. Let's talk about it. What exactly do you have a problem with? The art quality? The dialog?

Both.

Like I said, it had some interesting parts. McCree passed out at a bar with Sombra (Do they know each other, or was this a coincidence?), Widowmaker visiting the grave of her husband, Reaper stalking an unknown family, and Ana not spending Christmas with her daughter were all very interesting tidbits.

But the art style, the panel layout, and the dialog just ruined the rest for me. More than anything...it seemed lazy, as though it was either rushed or Blizzard didn't care as much as they usually do. Neither of those sit well with me.

 

[The Material Sheep]

I think what really sold this to me as a really good representation of a lesbian character was that we got a long time to know Tracer independent of knowledge about her relationships. Then she just casually gets a girlfriend added to her story. She exists as a character independent of her relationship and treats her relationship as just a thing, and not some persecution fantasy.

Well done Blizz and nice little Christmas comic.

 

[SirSullymore]

I've seen a lot of people are saying they are going to main Tracer now/buying the game to play as her...so Blizz, can you please make all the support characters and the payload LGBT?

McCree passed out at a bar with Sombra (Do they know each other, or was this a coincidence?)

I interpret that scene as Sombra was following/spying on McCree on Christmas to discover his loved ones but he just went to a bar and passed out so she was like "screw it, I'll have a whiskey."

 

[Chareater]

I mean I almost feel like they did this just to check a box. Muscle girl, fat girl, LGBT girl and so on.


Did they really make tracer gay because that was best for the character? Or just to say LOOK HOW DIVERSE WE ARE EVERYONE!

 

[Zydrate]

I mean I almost feel like they did this just to check a box. Muscle girl, fat girl, LGBT girl and so on.


Did they really make tracer gay because that was best for the character? Or just to say LOOK HOW DIVERSE WE ARE EVERYONE!

Christ.
Evening the board of representation has to start somewhere. You gonna be one of those people that scoff at every step forward?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I dunno, what good is story to a game? Bioshock Infinite would be one of the worst over-hyped shooters in history without it.

Story in a game is an admirable trait. But unless this revelation serves a purpose in the game, I don't see the point of it.

 

[SAMAS]

All I can see is people being happy about this, really. The only ones who seem to be complaining are dudes mourning their waifu.

"SJW's are never happy"
(Meanwhile much rejoicing from people normally labelled as SJW's)

The point was that some people think it's great but also think the men aren't allowed to like it.

That's not an SJW. That's an asshole. Learn the diff.

On the other hand, I can see how stuff like this:

So hot. 100% in approval of this.

...can get annoying.

Me? I'm just glad they sank Tracer/Widowmaker. God, I hate ships like that.

 

[Chareater]

I mean I almost feel like they did this just to check a box. Muscle girl, fat girl, LGBT girl and so on.


Did they really make tracer gay because that was best for the character? Or just to say LOOK HOW DIVERSE WE ARE EVERYONE!

Christ.
Evening the board of representation has to start somewhere. You gonna be one of those people that scoff at every step
forward?

I'm not against having gays in games. But make it mean something rather than just "lets make them gay so we can say we are pro-LGBT"

I'm against diversity for diversity's sake.

 

[Zydrate]

I mean I almost feel like they did this just to check a box. Muscle girl, fat girl, LGBT girl and so on.


Did they really make tracer gay because that was best for the character? Or just to say LOOK HOW DIVERSE WE ARE EVERYONE!

Christ.
Evening the board of representation has to start somewhere. You gonna be one of those people that scoff at every step
forward?

I'm not against having gays in games. But make it mean something rather than just "lets make them gay so we can say we are pro-LGBT"

I'm against diversity for diversity's sake.

....

I'm against diversity for diversity's sake.

What.
w h a t

 

[RedDeadFred]

Jesus fuck, how are people complaining about this? If Tracer had gone home to a husband and kissed by the fire, nobody would have batted an eye. But because she's with another women, it's immediately an agenda. For fucks sake, grow up. If you were talking to a woman in real life and she said something along the lines of "my girlfriend really liked the gift I bought her", would you tell her to stop shoving her agenda down your throat? This is pathetic. It's funny because you often see these same kinds of complainers bitching about safe spaces too when in reality, it seems they require the safest space of all.

I really don't buy that people are annoyed about this because they think it'll somehow impact the integrity of the story (it's OVERWATCH). If this comic actually bugged you because it showed that Tracer is a lesbian, I strongly suggest you rethink your priorities in life.

My main complaint is that Blizzard seemed to hype the idea, I mean, if Tracer had gone home to her wife/girlfriend and kissed by the fire, nobody would have batted an eye, but instead we needed an announcement promising that Blizzard would Out a character of theirs, turning it into a goddamn circus. It seems to me that the logical first step in equality between LGBT-and-whatever-else-letters would be treating it like nothing special, but instead were making it seem all important.

I didn't realize Blizzard made a big deal about it and did an announcement. I really thought the comic was all they did. Ya that's kind of weird then. I can understand people being annoyed that the media is making a huge deal of it, but I didn't know Blizzard was tooting their own horn over it too.

Although, from what I could find doing a bit of searching after your response, it seems to be just that some people asked the devs if there were any LGBT characters. The Devs said yes and that they'd reveal who they were. I wouldn't really call that an announcement so much as answering questions in an interview. The media is responsible for trying to make the whole thing a bigger deal than it is. Now you could argue that Blizzard knew that the media would do this, but.... what are they supposed to do in that scenario? Say "no there aren't any LGBT characters."? That seems worse.

Basically, I find it hard to fault Blizzard all that much in this situation.

 

[MerlinCross]

I mean I almost feel like they did this just to check a box. Muscle girl, fat girl, LGBT girl and so on.


Did they really make tracer gay because that was best for the character? Or just to say LOOK HOW DIVERSE WE ARE EVERYONE!

Christ.
Evening the board of representation has to start somewhere. You gonna be one of those people that scoff at every step forward?

I am but not because "Hate the gays, boo more representation". The characters in Overwatch just feel so focus tested, sandblasted down archetypes to me. Which is why Tracer being LGBT doesn't surprise me. It feels like who a focus group would want to say is LGBT or would accept as one. That or Zayra but given that Tracer is the Pikachu of the game, let's go for the bigger of the two for marketing reasons eh?

Yeah I'm happy there's more representation for them in Overwatch thanks to Tracer now but it still feels off to me thanks to AAA devs loving to focus test everything these days. Was it good for Tracer's story and background(I wonder if they will sell a pose of her looking a picture of her girlfriend), or was it something they ran past testing and said "Yep this will do"? Don't know, sorry to come off as a downer, I'm gonna just bail from this.

Off topic, back when it had a story, League of Legends' backstory/worldbuilding was done better than Overwatch. If only because they tied it into the game in a decent fashion. Tracer is a Lesbian, great. Can you guys explain how shooting clones of yourselves in game is going to somehow save the world?

Off Off Topic; Will any of the ripoff/bootlegs of Overwatch come out with their Tracer or another character?

 

[Erttheking]

I mean I almost feel like they did this just to check a box. Muscle girl, fat girl, LGBT girl and so on.


Did they really make tracer gay because that was best for the character? Or just to say LOOK HOW DIVERSE WE ARE EVERYONE!

Christ.
Evening the board of representation has to start somewhere. You gonna be one of those people that scoff at every step
forward?

I'm not against having gays in games. But make it mean something rather than just "lets make them gay so we can say we are pro-LGBT"

I'm against diversity for diversity's sake.

And this is diversity for diversity's sake....because you say it is.

 

[Chareater]

And this is diversity for diversity's sake....because you say it is.

In my opinion this wasn't done to add depth to tracer's character it was just done to get diversity points.

As much as I love Overwatch I feel that they try to pander so hard with all characters to appeal to as many people as possible.

Can you really tell me blizzard made Tracer gay because they think that was best for the character or because they thought having a gay character would get them more attention?

 

[SirSullymore]

It's not like when DC made the Green Lantern gay just for the sake of appealing to the gay community

Minor correction, making Alan Scott gay was a way of rectifying one of the consequences of making him younger, the eliminating of his son Obsidian (one of DC's admittedly few gay characters) from canon. That's what the writer says at least.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

And this is diversity for diversity's sake....because you say it is.

In my opinion this wasn't done to add depth to tracer's character it was just done to get diversity points.

As much as I love Overwatch I feel that they try to pander so hard with all characters to appeal to as many people as possible.

Can you really tell me blizzard made Tracer gay because they think that was best for the character or because they thought having a gay character would get them more attention?

Considering that Blizzard doesn't really need more attention and that this argument could be made for literally any character...

Yeah, they probably had Tracer as gay the whole time and this was the first opprutunity they had to show her have some quiet downtime with the GF.

 

[Erttheking]

And this is diversity for diversity's sake....because you say it is.

In my opinion this wasn't done to add depth to tracer's character it was just done to get diversity points.

As much as I love Overwatch I feel that they try to pander so hard with all characters to appeal to as many people as possible.

Can you really tell me blizzard made Tracer gay because they think that was best for the character or because they thought having a gay character would get them more attention?

Well they flat out said that one of their characters was LGBT some time ago. So I'm going to take a wild stab and say that she was always gay, or at the very least they took a lot of time to plan it out. The same way they planed out Ana coming back into Pharah's life and Pharah being glad to see her, despite the initial take on the lore being that Pharah was very mad at her mom.

And as much as people like to talk about people pushing quotas, I honestly feel like the opposite is the problem. You can't have your cast be TOO diverse. You can't include too many nationalities, people of different body types, age groups, sexual minorities, otherwise you get called out for pandering. (Because what you should've been doing is pandering to the same groups that always gets bloody pandered to apparently.)