L(P)GBTQ Zone - It turns out, we were The Gays all along...

I’m Jeff and I’m a cis man and I don’t even fucking know what the fuck. I’ve been with a series of women in my teens and 20s but I’m 31 now, live alone, haven’t dated in literal years, and haven’t really felt attracted to much of anyone lately. Truthfully, I feel like I wouldn’t recognize feelings of love or even infatuation in myself because I haven’t experienced those emotions in a super long time. I’m also extremely commitment-adverse.

I’m constantly reminded (mostly at work) that the interests and priorities all the cis het men around me don’t really compel me at all, at best they make me feel like I don’t have anything in common with the other men I’m acquainted with, at worse they put me off or make me feel super uncomfortable. I don’t really feel welcome or comfortable in most “traditionally” male spaces.

I’m tryin’ my best but I don’t really grok a lot of this stuff, and I don’t even really know how to begin to figure these personal things out for myself. Self-reflection on anything personal for me is kind of a difficult thing for me to do. I’m frankly a little jealous of people who seem to have their identity figured out.

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Hey, I’m a gay cis guy and you can add me to the “likes to kiss chubby boys” party.

Games with good representation, I guess I really liked Dragon Age: Inquisition because of it? Shitty game mechanics aside I really loved how two characters were exclusively gay, there was a transman, and you can even fuck a pansexual bull man.(I really loved how much fun they had with the post-sex/romance scenes, especially Iron Bull’s)

Also to add to the P4 talk, I still 100% believe they wanted to make Kanji gay and Naoto trans, but backpedaled super hard. Even if the game says otherwise, I still say Kanji’s gay.

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Dinquisition has its problems yeah, but I really really love that they finally started actually thinking (Even if it’s Bioware writing, which doesn’t mesh with me very well in any sort of serious sense) about characters’ sexuality, likes, and dislikes on a character to character basis while also being inclusive instead of going for “everyone is tentatively bisexual all the time”. (Which, don’t get me wrong, is great for options and better than the typical heterosexual conga line) Even if I didn’t like a lot of the characters (Iron Bull, you have a tiny head and I can’t see you as anything other than Freddie Prinze Jr in some sort of terrifying qunari-skin muscle suit) it was really nice to see such diverse representation without it being the whole focus of how characters developed.

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I’m sure that the writers of Persona 4 definitely wanted that inclusivity, but I’m not sure who didn’t want it. The original version of Persona 2: Innocent Sin was never released outside of Japan for several reasons, one of which being that you could romance one of the boys. Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse tries to be inclusive by (ENDGAME SPOILERS) having you be able to choose a guy as your True Goddess, but nothing else beyond that.

I like to believe it was mislead corporate meddling, but there’s nothing set in stone. I’m sure Persona 5 is going to take a weird half-step before backing off, and that does suck.

Figuring yourself out is hard. Especially because it’s hard to identify feelings or desires until you experience a contrast. Especially because we’re conditioned to suppress thoughts of same gender attraction or desires to do things not seen as gender-appropriate.

The best thing to do is find a safe way to experiment and see what makes you feel good. This goes for both sexuality and gender. And you’re never too old to start kissing cute chubby boys or presenting gender differently/transitioning. Wear some nail polish. Absorb some good LGBT media. Change things up and then reflect on if that’s something you want to keep doing. Focus more on being happy than the implications your behaviors have on your identity labels.

Yeah, as much as I like being able to romance anybody, having Fallout 4-esque romance is robotic and boring. I like when the sexualities matter and it’s clear what’s happening. I’m all for bisexual representation but not when it’s used to just make every character interested in whoever so there’s no toe-stepping.

(also yeah I chose Iron Bull cause he’s the most “my type” but god his head is so tiny)

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Innocent Sin was a bit weird in that the gay romance option was the only one that kind of made sense to me Man, like everyone in that game had ISSUES, and Maya was too much of a cool older sister kind of character for that not to be weird. but at the same time, while it was handled seemingly as the main character and said guy having real, legitimate feelings for each other (To the extent of the rest of your party mostly just reacting to it was “Well… Huh. I guess that makes sense actually”) it also had the issue of when being used a social link it had the effects of… making the demons (from hell and various world mythologies) being shocked, afraid, angry, and sometimes very rarely… aroused? Plus Eternal Punishment kinda made Maya the implied “real” option AFAIK.

Then again, it was a PS1 game, and for a PS1 game that was downright progressive when I saw it.

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I mean, the only other game I know of on the PS1 that was any way progressive was Final Fantasy VII and only for having Cloud crossdress, so it’s not like there’s really much competition.

Speaking of which, can anyone recommend any good sources for LGBT media recommendations/discussion of LGBT media? The only ones I know about so far are Infamous Sphere/Infamous Queer and Rantasmo/Needs More Gay.

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Howdy. I’m a gay* guy* with a husband. We have two dogs.

I really regret not experimenting with my appearance more in college. Should have died my hair (I started graying really early so I think my salt-n-pepper hair would look rad tinted blue), should have done nail polish. Now it’s sorta too late, at least at my current job. I love it, but it’s mostly people over 40 who are a bit humdrum. Don’t really want to stand out as the “young weird kid”. (Already had an incident the first week where the office “”“funny”"" guy said something stupid to his friend and my boss immediately walked over to him and told him to cut it out and reported it to hr. My boss is amazing)

*by convenience. I feel like the real answers are more complicated and I don’t really have the language for it at this point, so I’m 85% fine with those labels.

I’m also gonna link this thread in the Mental Health thread if you don’t mind!

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Now I feel bad that I did what is, while true, essentially a shitpost. Fine here’s a real thing.

I’m Mico, Gay, cis, furry boy. I’m 29, single, I was not lying before and am incredibly into fat dudes, I have been at this LP nonsense since 2011, I figured out I was gay in 2005 after graduating high school although the signs were kind of all there before I just wasn’t very good at noticing them. I’m going back to school (shitty county college but hopefully NJIT next year) after dropping out of college in 2006 and get to scream at databases for a living.

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To be fair, I kinda did the same thing.

More better introduction: I’m 24, gay, cis male, also one of those internet furry weirdos (Though I tend to keep to myself and don’t interact with many people in the fandom for reasons). I won’t say where I live except that it’s in the US (It’s not super gay-unfriendly, just I have personal family members I rely on for support for my brain problems and I’d be homeless if I stepped out of the closet locally.) I’m kind of a weird guy and enjoy a pretty wide range of video games and music. I figured out I was gay in like fifth grade (When I grew out of the “ew girls” phase it just ended up being replaced by a general ambivalence toward ladies and a general curiosity toward dudes.) before I really grokked what that meant, but I was a pretty smart kid and realized early on I’d have to keep it to myself as far as my family goes. I’ll lurk this thread pretty hard until I get more comfortable sayin’ stuff and not shitpost too much unless it’s really funny and not harmful.

Also we really need an animated :reasons: emote where it changes colors and sparkles. Because “reasons” is the best reason when you don’t have a reason or don’t want to say the reason by far.

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In 1996, at the tender age of 14, I read a book called Mage’s Pawn by Mercedes Lackey wherein the main character, Vanyel, is gay. He gets into a gay relationship and they literally soul bind to each other in the gayest of gay marriage and this is how I learned homosexuality existed. It’s been a long time since I read this book but I don’t recall anyone reacting to Vanyel and his husband in any way negatively based on their sexual orientation. I recall being floored at the realization that this was an option and my attraction to women made so much more sense. I knew what I was now, I was gay. Thanks Mercedes Lackey!

Later I joined Anne McCaffrey’s fan community and asked what went down between male green dragonriders when their dragons mated with other dragons since the telepathic connection between rider and dragon means their riders have to fuck too. …I was banned from her community board. :worried:

Later still a girl on the internet who would later become my girlfriend and then my fiance before tragedy struck made me watch Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena with her. I can confirm with you now that bisexuals can turn into cool cars.

So yeah. Gayness in media is good and so important. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t read that Mercedes Lackey book.

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I guess I should say a bit more too then lol. I’m gay, 20, and have honestly known I was pretty gay since? Around 9 years old? Incredibly young. Was in like 2nd/3rd grade crushing on male classmates. My (mother’s side) family is super liberal when it comes to gays/women thankfully. Though I still didn’t actually /come out/ until I was 15/16, but by then everyone could tell anyways. (Only really hid it up until then cause dad wasn’t so nice, the things you can do when you can cut someone horrible out of your life)

I’ve been into gaming and toons and stuff since I was young, and oddly enough have been a fan of decently fucked up horror series since I was 10. Used to have quite an obsession with Silent Hill.(Still do :P) Also kinda why I have extreme distaste for young children being shown actual horror.

I’ll stop there though as I have a hard time discerning whether I’m oversharing or not lol

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Hiii~ I’m an asexual, homoromantic trans woman. Currently stuck mid-transition and bitter because I have no real local support network in a highly conservative area and estrogen has basically done fuck all after like 6 years (not to mention the difficulties in getting a stable supply of the injectable form).

As for queer media, I made a bunch of recommendations in the manga thread for lesbian manga worth reading. Also, in terms of trans representation, Wandering Son/Hourou Musuko by Takako Shimura really helped me feel less alone when I was just starting to realize I was trans. There are a few other manga about trans people that handle it well enough (Ai no Shintairiku, Bokura no Hentai, Mermaid Line’s “Ayumi and Aika”), but none of them clicked with me quite as much. There’s also Hayonome wa Moto Danshi, by Chii, which is a neat little autobiographical manga about being a trans woman, and while it’s not translated, the author also maintains a blog about LGBTQ issues.

I still would like to see more good, explicitly trans media, and while I would prefer that works about trans people acknowledge just how painful, scary, and difficult it can be, I could honestly stand to see less stories that are just about coming out and transitioning in the real world.

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honestly, I’d love to see some stories that just had trans characters doing normal protagonist things and not either just either coming out or dying. you know, being treated like a person with dignity. I mean theres a lot of webcomics but we’re like 99% invisible in the big media (when we’re not the butt of a joke) and that sucks :confused:

btw Goodbye To Halos is a good comic. I related to the first 2 chapters so hard.

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I inversely had a hard time relating with Goodbye to Halos because it’s so at odds with my own experiences. Like, on one hand I really hate when series do shit like just throw the trans character through tragedy after tragedy until they die from sad cancer. At the same time, though, stories where the trans character goes from zero to living and being treated as the gender they identify as without dealing with the debilitating dysphoria or discrimination just kind of makes me feel bitter and envious. Not that I can’t understand their appeal to others.

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I went ahead and made this because of :reasons:.

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You are a gentleman and a scholar sir, and I wish joy and happiness for you for all of your days :smile:

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