To those that are saying they don’t see a problem with this mod. Let me put it to you this way. Instead of a mod that turned one gay woman into a straight man what if it turned one black character into a white character?
There literally was a mod like that in Stardew Valley that turned Demetrius into a white character, and it was rightfully deleted from Nexus mods. If someone has that much of a problem with a character being a different race, sex, gender, or sexual identity then they’re clearly bigoted no matter what they say to the contrary.
It’s gay erasure, and it’s bigotry, plain and simple.
The creator of the mod actually wanted to do just that. He wanted to turn Wyll white, erase all LGBT references, and make Mizhena a trans person who regretted their decision and detransitioned.
I have no problem with a mod that changes someone’s sexual orientation, someone’s race, someone’s species, or just plain removes or adds new characters. Why would I care how someone else is playing a game?
It’s honestly surprising to me the bigots haven’t set up their own mod hosting site. They’ve done it for everything else when they’ve been told that they’re asshats.
It’s free to host a mod on github. Mods like this and the pride flag remover for Spooderman are just trolls seeking attention and outrage, so they have to make sure to be very visible and find-able. Nexus has no obligation to host those files and if the modders actually wanted to play the game with the changes (and enable others to do so) it’s totally possible to do that without Nexus. They upload to Nexus (which has a clear policy against this) so that they get exposure when “journalism” reports their mod being deleted (since talking about this is free Engagement™)
You don’t have to care. No one does. No one is blocking this from working.
It’s just not being listed on Nexus.
Moreover this mod wasn’t giving options to players to choose how they wanted to play, it was changing very specific things and advertising it. Nexus doesn’t care to let them use their platform to advertise a mod made for a very specific audience of really shitty people.
This is patently false because if no one cares, it wouldn’t have been removed. It was only removed because enough people cared and spoke up about it. Even just reading this thread makes it clear that plenty of people care about it.
I actually don’t think it is ambiguous. “You don’t have to care” implies that some might, but it doesn’t matter. “No one does” is clearly reinforcing that point, rather than making a new point which contradicts the first part of the first point.
Not if you read cardfully, but it is easy to gloss over. I’d give them a pass, especially since changing your opinion when presented with different information isn’t nearly common enough.
Literally the only care that mattered in this situation is the admin(s) at Nexus mods, and they didn’t have to even care that much. The thing could be removed with about 5 minutes of work, if that. Nexus has shown that they will not platform bigotry, and this is them following through on that once again. Other people’s opinions didn’t even matter.
It really depends, but in general if you feel that lgbt characters or black characters hinder your enjoyment of the game enough to bother modding them away or different then it speaks about who you are in a way that tells me that I dislike you
rugged individualism is not the path to a functioning society. in any society worth living in there are certain views that cannot be tolerated. the kind of bigotry expressed by the mod creator is one of those views that cannot be tolerated.
I can absolutely understand these people being outraged when someone releases a mod that exists solely to erase them the same way they’d been erased from western media since western media was a thing.
Ignoring racism and bigotry has literally never worked, outside of maintaining personal delusions. The more comfortable people are in their hatred, the more bold they become in acting on it. Slavery and genocide happen for a reason, and it’s in part because people don’t take that shit seriously until it’s too late.
I’m tired of being quiet about hateful content. I’ll call it out and hope they get their nexus account banned if they keep it up. I’d rather review bomb it in force to show the public opinion.
Right? This is entirely opt-in. Who cares how other people are playing out their fantasies at home? I literally don’t care if someone else is racist or homophobic as long as they’re not pushing that shit on kids, employment prospects, housing decision, or whatever.
My point isn’t about them. My point is about you and media companies deciding who gets a platform and then acting like the people you silence are the ones oppressing and censoring. I’m not a Republican. I’m gay AF. I simply loathe double standards and hate seeing Facebook decide who gets heard.
This is a stupid take. You’re tired of the people who own and use a platform controlling that platform to represent their morals? If you want a platform to host bigotry, you should make one. They often do so well. Just because someone has something to stupid say doesn’t mean others have to tolerate it in their home or place of business.
Nexus mods is doing the bigotry through their removal here. Look in the mirror. Companies are not people.
Have fun with the political landscape being controlled by billionaires. If it’s ok for us, it’s ok for them. Nobody is gonna stop them with hypocrisy and less money.
Nexusmods are doing what they believe is the right thing to attain the highest profit, it’s no more complex than that.
The people in charge voted on where the line in the sand should be (to simplify the corporate process somewhat) and homophobia, they decided, should be on the wrong side. They figure that inclusivity, rather than bigotry, is the way to more customers. (I mean, duh.)
They are entitled to do just that, as the modder is to mod the game how he sees fit.
It is not bigotry to be intolerant of the intolerant, that pathetic argument has been dead since before you were born.
It’s fascinating watching how quickly my side has forgotten the state and corporate censorship of the 2000s. I don’t enjoy defending rightoids but I remember being on the losing side and I’d rather be principled now than on the backfoot again when the pendulum swings back.
Truth and fairness take a back seat to profits. Got it.
It’s not intolerant to offer an alternative game experience for those who might choose it. You’re so lost in the juice that you’re ok with doing things the wrong way so long as it supports your side.
My problem here is that the same mechanism that entities Nexus mods to do this is the one that lets Facebook give Trump a win. You’re all blind to that though because you think this random guy is hurting gays or whatever with a game option that’s not imposed on anyone.
Platforms with near-monopoly level control of public discussion should be considered part of the public forum. This weird libertarianism from “lefties” deeply concerns me.
Nobody made you open up a social space to the public, and nobody is making you keep it open. Also I want you to explain how you can reconcile being on the left but also supporting corporate rights over those of individual humans?
Major media outlets and companies should not be considered private platforms. Anyone can sign up and post while they use their money and influence to decide who gets heard. This is a problem, and I’m pretty ticked off about how people don’t seem to mind when it’s in their favor. Double standards are bad, no matter which side.
Do you think Facebook should get to control which posts rise up and which fall with their analytics around election time? Me neither. Sometimes you gotta put up with some ugly if you don’t want people silenced for their perspective. I don’t want an echo chamber.
I’m only coming from the standpoint of how dangerous it is for a mass media outlet to control who has a voice. I don’t know how we can articulate this fairly and would like help for that, but I’m not gonna find help in a sea of people who just wanna take sides and ignore the means.
Why should anyone get to own the only effective avenues of communication? Communication is what determines how the world works.
CP is illegal obviously, and jihad doesn’t make sense in the cute cats category the way ‘straight only game mod’ makes sense in the ‘game mod’ category.
You should want to make racists uncomfortable when they do a racism, and bigots uncomfortable when they do a bigotry. It’s part of the hidden contract to living in a nice society. Stand up for others who are affected even if you are not. Shit is not cool, and you should care that your brothers and sisters are being marginalized.
Well there’s never anything wrong with customizing a single player game, I fully support Nexus banning whatever they see fit, especially on these grounds. They have no duty to platform content they rightfully see as reprehensible
so many of the replies read like entries to a libertarian contest. and in traditional fashion it seems they forgot to actually read your comment. it’s nice to see a post that understands why the mod is a problem and explains it well, even if so many in the replies seem unable to grasp it.
Only if you give a fuck, which is far too prevalent in the world. Could be swapping men for women, blacks for whites, whites for blacks and whatever other combination, the real question is, why do you care who thinks what?
I’m truly for all free expression, the world is too concerned with every fucking thing these days, it’s an illness.
Not to shit on you (well maybe as little) but the guy has a point.
You want them to not care. Doesn’t that go both ways? If some edgy straight horny teen wants more straight tiddies and less gay in his game, who the fuck cares?
Cause let’s be honest, that’s what we’re talking about here. Teens and desperate 30 year olds.
And don’t you think what you imply is scary?
And with that I mean : “people’s thoughts influence their actions”
I fucking hope so.
And who are you to tell them what is right and what is wrong?
no. not everything goes both ways. some things are bad, and should not be tolerated.
And don’t you think what you imply is scary?
no i don’t, what about it do you find scary?
And with that I mean : “people’s thoughts influence their actions” I fucking hope so. And who are you to tell them what is right and what is wrong?
just so we’re clear, the context of this statement is me saying “i care about people having racist/homophobic thoughts because people’s thoughts influence their actions”. so, again just to be clear, the “what” that is being discussed is “racism/homophobia”.
in context, your reply reads “i fucking hope so, who are you to tell them racism/homophobia is right or wrong?”.
Well, when the mod author specifically says it’s to reduce diversity as the goal of the mod I think we all have a chance to point out that is insensitive and comes from a place of hatred. Hatred is wrong. Let the people speak against it and let the website host what it wants. I care enough to spend two min to leave a comment here, but I’m not gonna be a reaction youtuber about it.
You know how in the US they aim to remove everything about racism, black history and rewrite native history in many states? This is one front of bigotry. Another one is to remove the visibility in arts and culture. One angle is to remove and supress works created by people from minorities. The other is to remove minority characters from works of fiction.
And at the end of that culture war, when the “ideal” mainstream society is created in the heads it is creates in the real world by persecution of the excluded minorities.
And while the modder has the right to mod how he sees fit, it is perfectly justified for the platform to not help him distribute it. And in such it is different from mods turning mainstream characters into minority characters because it has no negative consequences for peopledown the line.
Hell, I’ve seen accusations that the author of this mod made literally that exact mod for BG3 that “fixed” Wyll and his father by turning them white. Shit’s disgusting.
There are mods for other games (might be for BG3 but I haven’t had time to dig into modding yet) that replace white characters with those of other races, why aren’t those controversial? Also it’s a single player game. Imagine if you were painting an altered version of a Salvador Dali and someone slaps it off your easel because they find your adding dick tentacles everywhere offensive.
I would say so too but my problem was not my best buddies being gay in general or even flirting with me but the awkwardness of having to straight up reject them. It is not bad to have this as a second hand experience in a game but i can see how people do not like it. I suffered through the awkward feeling of telling Gale off but i wish there was a more clear friendship route to begin with. Again, i dont mind flirting or my friend being homosexual and attracted to me. I just wish i could give hints that this is one sided like i would irl.
Not sure in what way the mod did it and i see why it might be taken down but also its not like this mod will vanish because of it.
I suffered through the awkward feeling of telling Gale off
This happens in real life too, though.
And the dialog gives you the options to turn him down, just like in real like you’d have a “dialog option” to turn down a gay person who hits on you. And in real life, it’s awkward just like it is in game.
All sorts of uncomfortable things happen in the game. Friends die. Children get murdered. Girls get kidnapped and used as baby incubators. Gnomes are forced into slavery. A hobgoblin fucks a ogre in a barn. As much as people don’t want to experience those things in real life, you don’t see mods deleting them. Yet people can’t seem to figure out that making a special case for the gayness is quite actually gay erasure. They’re fine with countless uncomfortable things, buy a bisexual character giving them eyes is too icky to handle??
People need to grow up and stop making excuses for homophobia that they wouldn’t make for anything else.
…I was legit trying to forget that ever
happened. There are some things I never knew I never wanted to see until I saw it, and that was definitely at the top of that list.
Ok, yes i wrote that not in a good way but it seems you missed my point. My point was that me being friendly was taken as me wanting to bang. That happens irl and it happens in this game. Just because this happens irl does not mean i have to enjoy them ingame. I simply hate awkward situations and while i might be able to dodge them irl i can dodge them in my games which would not make me an anyphobe. There were 4 Characters that hit on me and only one romance i was interested in. Indeed i have felt the same level of awkwardness no matter the sex of the character i rejected.
No, I understood what you said. The point I was making was that while many people are perfectly ok shrugging off women they don’t want to partner with, they get all icky and upset when it comes to shrugging off a man they don’t want to partner with.
Like in your post you specifically singled out Gale. Yet here you are kind of ret-conning that to “4 characters that hit on you.” But when you commented your initial complaint it was just Gale. It was just the gay one.
That’s what I’m talking about when I say subconscious prejudice/homophobia. I’m not putting you on the same level as the mod maker or some rabid homophobe who’s out there trying to take rights away. But I am asking you to examine your reaction and consider if maybe there was something more to it then just “I don’t wanna bang this person.” Why specifically the sympathy for people who don’t like Gale coming on to them vs people who don’t want space-lizard-with-tits or daddy’s princess coming on to them? That’s all.
There have been multiple times that I’ve been friendly with women and they’ll randomly blurt out “I have a boyfriend/husband/partner”. This is a universal feeling, and it makes the game all the more realistic that it includes that. Unfortunately it had to happen with a gay character so people are able to toe the line of homophobia and say that they just didn’t like the rejection.
I would be fine with a mod that simply removed the harsh rejection. It’s not great for queer exposure and empathy building, but I wouldn’t call that outright homophobia. It’s lightyears ahead of turning the gay woman into a man.
I dunno Yogi, seems hypocritical to champion inclusively in gaming on one hand and tell folks they are probably playing the wrong game for wanting to avoid a specific feature in it.
I fully agree that mod sites should not tolerate bigoted mods. But saying someone should avoid playing a game they enjoy just because there is a specifically uncomfortable social interaction for them, when it could be modded out had the same energy as the folks saying the Sekiro easy mode mod shouldn’t exist.
Should they remove the “feminist Nerevarine” mod from Morrowind as well because there is sexism in the game, just because some folks still want to play it but not be forced to personally engage in sexist behavior? Should they remove the “Spiders are Wolves” mod in Skyrim? Should people not play games they only enjoy modded? If so, Bethesda is in big trouble…
This issue isn’t really about equality, it’s about exposure and building empathy. The more people are exposed to the plight that queer people face every day, the more likely they are to build an empathetic connection to them, to care about queer issues, to see it through their eyes, and to understand and support them through it.
I am all for exposure, and building empathy. I do think representation is extremely important. And I greatly appreciate you sharing your point of view with me. I hadn’t considered that to the extent I should have. And I whole heartedly agree that greater exposure to the situations being discussed would lead to a more ideal society.
My only point was that if they want to mod out the awkward conversations where they have to turn down their friends advances, regardless of the characters sex, gender, or orientation, and that is the only road bump preventing them from fully enjoying one of the best RPG’s, then I think it’s okay that they get to enjoy their game. They didn’t strike me as being bigoted, they didn’t ask for LGBTQ+ representation to be removed from the game, they just felt bad about hurting their friends feelings. That to me already shows a fair amount of empathy.
And if such a mod (again, not the bigoted mod the post is about, but the hypothetical mod being discussed in this comment thread that “allows you to have less awkward methods of not engaging in relationships with characters you are not romantically interested in so as to avoid feeling bad about turning down your friends”) is the difference between them playing the game or not, then wouldn’t also be fair to say they are getting more exposure just by being able to play the game?
If you feel that wanting to avoid hurting your friends feelings in a game through mods would cause a significant blow to society developing empathy for and getting exposure to LGBTQ+ issues, while we do have a difference of opinion on that line, I still respect the battle you are choosing to champion and say more power to you. Good luck fighting the good fight.
Eeey Boo Boo, if you complain about sword combat in dark souls, it was-a probably not dark souls’ fault and you should-a probably find a different game
I could mod the combat out of dark souls too. But if youre doing that, you should just go play a game that has the things you want in it and doesnt have the things youre not looking for.
Its a dnd simulation, and dnd is a lot of social roleplay of awkward moments and scenes. I totally get if thats not your bag, but typically when half of a game isnt your bag you just pass on it.
lol. Don’t get me wrong, I see your point (fwiw, I did not mod sword combat out of Dark Souls, or difficult role playing decisions out of my RPG’s). But I just don’t think someone else doing so in a non-bigoted way is that big of a deal. Especially when they made it clear that they just don’t want to hurt their in game friends feelings, regardless of their sex, gender, or orientation. And if that is the only little road bump to them enjoying what is one of the best RPG’s I’ve ever played, then I say I would rather have them not miss the game.
Where did I say it was a big deal? I said they should probs not play a game thats 50% the things they hate
The social decisions is why its the best rpg youve played. The romance and party interactions is all bg3 players talk about. If youre modding that out? You probably are playing it cause its popular, and should just go play something you dont need to cut in half to have fun with.
It’s funny how much this comment mirrors the experience of LGBT people left and right. Do you think it’s not awkward for a lesbian to “have to straight up reject” their male “friends” who come on to them? Or gay men and their female “friends”, or asexuals and literally anyone.
I sure cant judge whether rejection by the same sex is worse but that has little to do with that i dont like to have to reject people so why would i lile it when a game i enjoy, with characters that i care about simulate these unpleasent parts of life. Its like saying a game that induces diarreah is just simulating real life (i know this is a very bad comparrison).
I dont care about the sex of the person i reject, i simply hate letting people i care about down. And i dont like this part about the game, shame on me.
I certainly don’t mean to shame you for what seems to be a desire to play the game without being propositioned for sex at all. That seems to me to be a completely different thing than wanting to remove a particular sexuality from the game but leaving others intact.
Maybe having to go through that hardship of rejecting someone because you’re just not into something fundamental and unchangeable about them such as their gender representation will make you have empathy and understanding for queer people and the struggle they face daily where only about 1 in 10 people they’re attracted to will be attracted back.
Exposure to queer media helps build understanding and empathy. Erasing it erodes that understanding and empathy.
If you’re looking for games that have nothing that might make you uncomfortable, those games do exist, but Baldur’s Gate is not one of them.
For a lot of people, directly tackling elements of life that are uncomfortable or actively unpleasant is what can make a game, movie, or whatever else high quality art. Schindler’s List is explicitly about one of the most horrendous chapters in all of human history, and it’s also one of the greatest movies ever made. Being uncomfortable isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I don’t see how this is any different than when straight characters in a game hit on you and you have to reject them. Why does the sexuality or gender of the person change anything when it comes to rejection? You’re either into them or you aren’t. Make a mod that eliminates awkward rejection moments across the board.
It’s a matter of targeting. There are ways to address the change you’d like to see that aren’t this focused, give granular control, and permit players to form an experience of their own. It’s not just about the mod they made, it’s about the mod they could have made but didn’t, and that reveals a prejudice.
Because it actually is 100% homophobia, even when it’s unintentional. A bit of introspection as to why it bothers people or why they defend it with “I can see why some people…” would do wonders to highlight peoples’ subconscious prejudices.
Sure. Somehow i only had to reject one of my female companions and that felt shitty too even though i wasnt that big of a friend. Must be my homophobia kicking in.
The other commenter has it 100% right. You had to reject the female companion too, but you only complained about the male one. It wasn’t a problem when you had to reject a girl coming after you, but when you had to reject a guy coming after you, you wished for some game mechanism to disable that kind of interaction. So yes, it’s a form of subconscious homophobia. Look, I’m not calling you a bigot or anything like that, but I am calling you out on having some subconscious prejudice. We all have it somewhere or another. The key is that when you’re called out on it you should recognize it and correct it, rather than get defensive about it.
The point the others are trying to make is that you (and others) don’t feel the need to have a mod to deactivate females coming on to you. But you (and others) do need one for males coming on to you? This is the entire point. That two equal people doing the same thing but the reactions are so harshly different that people need to change the Game, just because one person is male and the other female.
Ohh yes a mod that eliminates all awkward rejection moments would have been exactly what i want. In the end i want to say that this game has been nothing but awesome even though it forced me to disappoint my companions from time to time.
Having to go through that hardship of rejecting someone because you’re just not into something fundamental and unchangeable about them such as their gender representation will make people learn to have empathy and understanding for queer people and the struggle they face daily where only about 1 in 10 people they’re attracted to will be attracted back.
Exposure to queer media helps build understanding and empathy. Erasing it erodes that understanding and empathy.
You still have the privilege of hitting on 90% of people you’re attracted to IRL or in games reciprocating your advances, so it’s not really that big a deal to have 1 interaction end in rejection.
‘You mean censoring gay stuff isn’t the same as adding gay stuff?,’ asks deeply confused troll, in increasingly high tones of voice.
This author is explicitly a bigot. They’re not shy. That kind of obvious diet-Nazi bullshit is why Nexus removes garbage like this, and doesn’t lose any sleep over it.
Both cases are effectively identical, so framing one as “censoring” and the other as “adding” strikes me as grossly disingenuous. They are either both adding or both “censoring.”
And this gets to the crux of my point…it they are both effectively identical, labelling one as the action only bigots would do and the other perfectly fine, seemingly almost completely regardless of intent in either case, requires serious levels of mental gymnastics, like framing identical things as completely opposite.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the mod maker is openly bigoted and that’s more than enough to justify the removal of this mod. But the idea that someone would want the characters to reflect them in the game doesn’t make one a bigot, which is major reason why I support the push to make game characters more inclusive, so more people do get that.
But labelling some people bigots and others not for the same action, based solely on their sexual orientation, seems like going backwards to me. It should obviously be done on intent.
‘Don’t get me wrong, this guy’s an outright Nazi, but what if people were just calling names for a bunch of reasons I’m about to pull from my ass?’
I have negative respect for that ‘juuust becaaaaaause’ horseshit. It’s bad faith and it’s insulting. Absolutely fucking no-one is being labeled “based solely on their sexual orientation,” and you goddamn well know it. No shit role-playing your real-life choices “doesn’t make one a bigot,” but fortunately, that’s a fantasy, sourced from the vicinity of your pelvis.
You lot always fixate on the mechanism. Like purchase and theft are interchangeable because either way you walk off with a thing you found. As if saying “removing gay stuff is censorship” must be judged in a veil of perfect ignorance, devoid of all history, context, implication, or inference. As if you’re not fully aware there is no shortage of heterosexuality in media, and an order of magnitude less gay. As if you can’t figure out how having slightly less of that overwhelming supermajority is different from seeing that minority erased.
They’re not. Context matters. If i say you can’t back up on a highway, that doesn’t mean you can’t back up into a parking spot. Straight people have never been an oppressed minority, there’s nothing hateful about fantasizing about your favorite white character being black like you or something. There is a hateful history behind wishing all black characters were removed from a game.
If the intent has hate, it’s hateful. If there is no intent to be hateful, it’s not hateful. Hate require intent. You can’t be hateful if you don’t hate anyone, and you can be hateful regardless of whether or not you’re part of a traditionally oppressed group.
What you are arguing is that some actions, based on historical context, are more acceptable than others. Something that I tend to agree with, to a limited extent.
But if two people are doing the same exact thing for the same exact reason, and you are labelling on a bigot and the other perfectly acceptable based on their sexuality, its more likely youre the bigot. Although, really, I think youre just confused about an extremely touchy and complicated subject that doesn’t have easy answers.
But if two people are doing the same exact thing for the same exact reason
Sure, if we’re talking about small children innocently changing characters to be more like them, that’s a totally fair argument. But the context here is a publicly homophobic modder working for weeks to create a full mod to erase gay characters.
I’m talking about intent, and people have pointed out that the intent of the creator was hateful, so the creator is a bigot. But the top level comment that I responded to was a pretty blanket statement that any changing of a character (gay to straight or black to white) was bigoted “plain and simple.”
I’m disagreeing with that premise, not that the modder is a bigot.
Nah, because as straight people we’ve never actually faced any hardship because of our orientation. Maybe if the idea that straight people shouldn’t exist, if one of the major political parties in my country wanted to legalize electrocuting us for being straight, if most of the major religions said we should be tortured to death, if there were people seriously debating about whether we should be allowed to marry someone of the opposite sex, I’d say that mod would be bigoted
So intent has nothing to do with it? One is a bigot based solely on the relative hardship two communities have faced. If in gay and want to play a character that reflects my sexuality, I’m not a bigot for making it happen. But if I’m straight and want to play a character that represents my sexuality, and I make that happen, I’m a bigot?
But if I’m straight and want to play a character that represents my sexuality, and I make that happen, I’m a bigot?
Of course not. That’s not what happened here, and is irrelevant. Nobody would care about a mod that makes otherwise unromanceable characters romanceable. This mod changed two NPCs for no reason other than the creator doesn’t like seeing gay people.
You understand there’s a difference between someone making a character gay because they like seeing gay characters, and someone making a character straight because they don’t like seeing gay characters, right?
Irrelevant to what happened, but not irrelevant to what the poster I was responding to was talking about.
You understand there’s a difference between someone making a character gay because they like seeing gay characters, and someone making a character straight because they don’t like seeing gay characters, right?
Absolutely. You are hitting my point here: intent. If someone is gay and changes it because they don’t want to see straight people, that’s bigoted too. If someone makes the character straight because they like seeing straight characters, that’s not bigoted.
I get that the mod maker is actually a bigot, in not challenging that. I’m challenging the claim that by switching from gay to straight makes you a bigot.
To those that are saying they don’t see a problem with this mod. Let me put it to you this way. Instead of a mod that turned one gay woman into a straight man what if it turned one black character into a white character?
There literally was a mod like that in Stardew Valley that turned Demetrius into a white character, and it was rightfully deleted from Nexus mods. If someone has that much of a problem with a character being a different race, sex, gender, or sexual identity then they’re clearly bigoted no matter what they say to the contrary.
It’s gay erasure, and it’s bigotry, plain and simple.
The best thing about mods is that they only effect the person playing with them. I really don’t get the upset over it. Oh, no, someone else might play a version of this game with less gay (or whatever else offends you). I just can’t bring myself to have the energy to be angry about how other people have modded their game when it only effects them.
You can still play the mod! It’s not outlawed or anything. It’s just that Nexus didn’t want it on their website. He can easily distribute that Mod elsewhere. It was Nexus’s choise and they choose to get rid of it.
Which is kind of unfair tbh. It’s the same issue with how Facebook and other social media is controlling exposure to influence politics. I pretty well loathe how some platforms are essentially the only avenue for their purpose, like YouTube.
It doesn’t seem like people really consider the fallout of removing the opposition’s voice either. If we can’t hear the stupid people screaming, we’re not gonna know how stupid they are.
Forcing people to host speech they don’t want to is far more draconian than not doing so.
You’d probably be more than a little annoyed if I put a swastika sign on your front yard and then told you that you were infringing on my right to free speech when you went to go remove it.
I don’t think the government views video game mod hosts as so fundamental to a healthy society that they require strong limitations on their own freedom of speech, but you’re welcome to call up your representative and start a campaign for the ability to force Nexus to host Nazis if it’s truly important to you.
I quit playing League of Legends when they made Groovy Zilean look like a crackhead because the CCP hates drug culture. Every form of media is training your kids.
Your “freeze peach” only has to do with your government. You keep pointing out corporations aren’t people as if that had anything to do with this topic, but until you start paying taxes and owning land through Facebook, it’s a non-sequitur.
I’m not claiming that the law governs this under free speech. I simply think that free speech is worthless if it’s only in places that go ignored.
If a company is thousands of people, what is private about it? A thousand people can’t keep your secrets. FFS, Facebook is overtly selling access to them. The only ownership of Facebook is through stocks which just means the rich get to decide and the poor don’t.
People actually sell houses and shit on Facebook though. Not sure if that can be used as a reason to regulate them or not. For one, it’s a pretty easy way to discriminate against minorities without directly implicating themselves.
But Facebook is the one deciding I should see my conservative relatives bitch about being silenced. If I had my way I would never hear my uncle’s take on whether trans women are women, an issue which he apparently holds so close to his heart that he can’t go ten seconds without posting about it
You can, quite easily, unsub from your uncle so he doesn’t show up in your feed. He’ll still be your Facebook friend and won’t even know you aren’t seeing his drivel anymore. You can do this. Facebook doesn’t need to be the arbiter of morality.
It’s ok if you block them for you. It’s not ok if Facebook blocks them for you without your input. It’s especially not ok when they do that in mass to control the political landscape.
I very strongly believe that filters should not be imposed on people, but rather be privately curated.
Suit yourself. You won’t beat the big money people at their own game with the same tactics and less resources. You’re gonna have to figure out how communications outlets need to be regulated or they’ll be used against all of us to control image.
So much ‘both sides’ nonsense disappears, when you figure out reasons come first.
Nexus blocking bigotry is good, because fuck bigotry. Facebook promoting bigotry is bad, because… fuck bigotry. The fact both actions involve the same mechanism does not matter. If you can’t comprehend a judgement of intent and outcomes, and have to grapple with events in terms of blind actions devoid of context, ask one of your fellow space aliens to explain how humans work.
No, they effect everyone. By publishing the mod, the creator told the world exactly how they feel about this subject. If it were the case as you put it, then they’d just create the mod and use it solely for themselves and not tell anyone. It’s still despicable, but at least they aren’t going to hurt anyone as no-one can stumble across it. Instead, they made a choice and the backlash they’ve received is a consequence of that choice.
Also it’s very tiring for minorities to constantly exist in a hostile world. Imagine knowing that every place you go to has at least someone outright decrying your existence.
Cis straight people generally can’t fathom how it actually feels to exist in a place where the idea that you shouldn’t exist is a popular one. Some douchebag is gonna act like some psycho on the internet saying “kill all straights” is somehow equivalent to one of the major political parties literally platforming on your nonexistence.
I’m queer and I actually thought lemmy was better than reddit up until now. It’s almost impossible to find a fucking site where I’m not going to have to see assholes who want me shot, silenced or hurt in some other way. It’s exhausting seeing the same shit all the time. It happened when spider man had a mod removed for removing pride flags, it happens when every time a game has a single background gay character, it happened when two women kissed in the last jedi. The same fucking screeching over and over because a minority of the population isn’t straight and exists.
So if it made all the good guys white and all the bad guys black we shouldn’t be concerned? And if it replaced the dialogue to include racial slurs, no big deal? Why should anyone have an issue with hateful content circulating online?
Because rejecting hateful content and making it fringe and inaccessible is for the good of everyone. Exposure to race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation based issues makes everyone more aware and empathetic of the issues that other people face, and that’s a good thing.
And yes, both of those mod ideas you proposed would be just as bad or worse than this one and should also be deleted from Nexus mods.
So if it made all the good guys white and all the bad guys black we shouldn’t be concerned?
…and what if it did the reverse? Or eliminated all members of a given race or sex from the game/changed them to a different sex or race?
I’m just going to stand by my original position - someone creating and using a mod only effects themselves and others choosing to use the mod. The fact that other people are using a mod you don’t approve of has no impact on you, and if this mod existing hadn’t got a Vice article most of the folks in this thread upset about it would simply have never known it existed at all, because they’re unlikely to go looking for such a mod.
No need for what ifs. Stardew Valley has a very popular and well done mod called Diverse Stardew Valley. Changes nearly all (or all maybe, I’m not sure) the population to minorities or otherwise generally marginalized types.
To those that are saying they don’t see a problem with this mod. Let me put it to you this way. Instead of a mod that turned one gay woman into a straight man what if it turned one black character into a white character?
There literally was a mod like that in Stardew Valley that turned Demetrius into a white character, and it was rightfully deleted from Nexus mods. If someone has that much of a problem with a character being a different race, sex, gender, or sexual identity then they’re clearly bigoted no matter what they say to the contrary.
It’s gay erasure, and it’s bigotry, plain and simple.
The creator of the mod actually wanted to do just that. He wanted to turn Wyll white, erase all LGBT references, and make Mizhena a trans person who regretted their decision and detransitioned.
Imagine being that insecure
Eesh. Bet we all can guess who that modder voted for :(
Geert Wilders?
If they’re Dutch: likely.
Wow. Also like that last one is just why, you can pretend we don’t exist without this shit
I have no problem with a mod that changes someone’s sexual orientation, someone’s race, someone’s species, or just plain removes or adds new characters. Why would I care how someone else is playing a game?
Neither do they have a right to a platform, hence, deleted off of the platform.
Exactly this. Play the game you want, but that shit shouldn’t be platformed.
It’s honestly surprising to me the bigots haven’t set up their own mod hosting site. They’ve done it for everything else when they’ve been told that they’re asshats.
It’s free to host a mod on github. Mods like this and the pride flag remover for Spooderman are just trolls seeking attention and outrage, so they have to make sure to be very visible and find-able. Nexus has no obligation to host those files and if the modders actually wanted to play the game with the changes (and enable others to do so) it’s totally possible to do that without Nexus. They upload to Nexus (which has a clear policy against this) so that they get exposure when “journalism” reports their mod being deleted (since talking about this is free Engagement™)
You don’t have to care. No one does. No one is blocking this from working.
It’s just not being listed on Nexus.
Moreover this mod wasn’t giving options to players to choose how they wanted to play, it was changing very specific things and advertising it. Nexus doesn’t care to let them use their platform to advertise a mod made for a very specific audience of really shitty people.
This is patently false because if no one cares, it wouldn’t have been removed. It was only removed because enough people cared and spoke up about it. Even just reading this thread makes it clear that plenty of people care about it.
This comment would mean anything if they had said “no one cares,” but what they said was “no one has to care”
I’m an idiot who can’t read. Potentially… I see they edited their post.
I feel like there’s a smidge of ambiguity in the phrase
Which could parse to
or
I actually don’t think it is ambiguous. “You don’t have to care” implies that some might, but it doesn’t matter. “No one does” is clearly reinforcing that point, rather than making a new point which contradicts the first part of the first point.
Not if you read cardfully, but it is easy to gloss over. I’d give them a pass, especially since changing your opinion when presented with different information isn’t nearly common enough.
Yeah I already admitted I’m an idiot that can’t read, assuming they didn’t edit this part of their post.
Literally the only care that mattered in this situation is the admin(s) at Nexus mods, and they didn’t have to even care that much. The thing could be removed with about 5 minutes of work, if that. Nexus has shown that they will not platform bigotry, and this is them following through on that once again. Other people’s opinions didn’t even matter.
It really depends, but in general if you feel that lgbt characters or black characters hinder your enjoyment of the game enough to bother modding them away or different then it speaks about who you are in a way that tells me that I dislike you
rugged individualism is not the path to a functioning society. in any society worth living in there are certain views that cannot be tolerated. the kind of bigotry expressed by the mod creator is one of those views that cannot be tolerated.
deleted by creator
Because their target is to reduce diversity
Removed by mod
And they can, and if Nexus has a problem with hosting homophobic mods, they should be able to not host them
Removed by mod
I can absolutely understand these people being outraged when someone releases a mod that exists solely to erase them the same way they’d been erased from western media since western media was a thing.
Removed by mod
Ignoring racism and bigotry has literally never worked, outside of maintaining personal delusions. The more comfortable people are in their hatred, the more bold they become in acting on it. Slavery and genocide happen for a reason, and it’s in part because people don’t take that shit seriously until it’s too late.
Ignoring it makes it seem like it’s okay. Calling out bigotry is how we show people that it isn’t acceptable.
I’m tired of being quiet about hateful content. I’ll call it out and hope they get their nexus account banned if they keep it up. I’d rather review bomb it in force to show the public opinion.
Right? This is entirely opt-in. Who cares how other people are playing out their fantasies at home? I literally don’t care if someone else is racist or homophobic as long as they’re not pushing that shit on kids, employment prospects, housing decision, or whatever.
Nobody is preventing them to play their games how they want.
Nexus just doesn’t want to have those mods on their platform.
They can just find some other platform to host those mods if they want. Or keep them to themselves.
My point isn’t about them. My point is about you and media companies deciding who gets a platform and then acting like the people you silence are the ones oppressing and censoring. I’m not a Republican. I’m gay AF. I simply loathe double standards and hate seeing Facebook decide who gets heard.
This is a stupid take. You’re tired of the people who own and use a platform controlling that platform to represent their morals? If you want a platform to host bigotry, you should make one. They often do so well. Just because someone has something to stupid say doesn’t mean others have to tolerate it in their home or place of business.
Nexus mods is doing the bigotry through their removal here. Look in the mirror. Companies are not people.
Have fun with the political landscape being controlled by billionaires. If it’s ok for us, it’s ok for them. Nobody is gonna stop them with hypocrisy and less money.
Nexusmods are doing what they believe is the right thing to attain the highest profit, it’s no more complex than that.
The people in charge voted on where the line in the sand should be (to simplify the corporate process somewhat) and homophobia, they decided, should be on the wrong side. They figure that inclusivity, rather than bigotry, is the way to more customers. (I mean, duh.)
They are entitled to do just that, as the modder is to mod the game how he sees fit.
It is not bigotry to be intolerant of the intolerant, that pathetic argument has been dead since before you were born.
It’s fascinating watching how quickly my side has forgotten the state and corporate censorship of the 2000s. I don’t enjoy defending rightoids but I remember being on the losing side and I’d rather be principled now than on the backfoot again when the pendulum swings back.
Truth and fairness take a back seat to profits. Got it.
It’s not intolerant to offer an alternative game experience for those who might choose it. You’re so lost in the juice that you’re ok with doing things the wrong way so long as it supports your side.
My problem here is that the same mechanism that entities Nexus mods to do this is the one that lets Facebook give Trump a win. You’re all blind to that though because you think this random guy is hurting gays or whatever with a game option that’s not imposed on anyone.
You can’t see the forest for the trees.
So private platform and private parties shouldn’t have the right to moderate and regulate their own spaces?
Platforms with near-monopoly level control of public discussion should be considered part of the public forum. This weird libertarianism from “lefties” deeply concerns me.
A public forum, I assume paid for and maintained by the taxes of the public?
Nobody made you open up a social space to the public, and nobody is making you keep it open. Also I want you to explain how you can reconcile being on the left but also supporting corporate rights over those of individual humans?
Major media outlets and companies should not be considered private platforms. Anyone can sign up and post while they use their money and influence to decide who gets heard. This is a problem, and I’m pretty ticked off about how people don’t seem to mind when it’s in their favor. Double standards are bad, no matter which side.
Do you think Facebook should get to control which posts rise up and which fall with their analytics around election time? Me neither. Sometimes you gotta put up with some ugly if you don’t want people silenced for their perspective. I don’t want an echo chamber.
Really? Now I’m curious, how do you imagine that?
I assume the company still pays for the platform, hosting, development, etc. Since it’s public, are they now subsidised by taxes?
Who moderates the platforms then? Are is it all just unmoderated?
Will companies get compansated for lost revenue?
I genuinely curious how you imagine this working.
Yeah, because it’s theirs. They own it.
If I let everyone into my house for a party, doesn’t mean I lose the right to kick people out.
I’m okay with an echo chamber if it means I don’t have to put up with CP and jihadi execution footage in my cute cat feed.
I assume it would be no problem for you.
I’m only coming from the standpoint of how dangerous it is for a mass media outlet to control who has a voice. I don’t know how we can articulate this fairly and would like help for that, but I’m not gonna find help in a sea of people who just wanna take sides and ignore the means.
Why should anyone get to own the only effective avenues of communication? Communication is what determines how the world works.
CP is illegal obviously, and jihad doesn’t make sense in the cute cats category the way ‘straight only game mod’ makes sense in the ‘game mod’ category.
this is a libertarian fever dream. the nature of prejudice is that it does affect other people.
Did you literally just use quote notation except change my words? Go fuck yourself.
You should want to make racists uncomfortable when they do a racism, and bigots uncomfortable when they do a bigotry. It’s part of the hidden contract to living in a nice society. Stand up for others who are affected even if you are not. Shit is not cool, and you should care that your brothers and sisters are being marginalized.
Well there’s never anything wrong with customizing a single player game, I fully support Nexus banning whatever they see fit, especially on these grounds. They have no duty to platform content they rightfully see as reprehensible
so many of the replies read like entries to a libertarian contest. and in traditional fashion it seems they forgot to actually read your comment. it’s nice to see a post that understands why the mod is a problem and explains it well, even if so many in the replies seem unable to grasp it.
‘the mod is a problem’.
Only if you give a fuck, which is far too prevalent in the world. Could be swapping men for women, blacks for whites, whites for blacks and whatever other combination, the real question is, why do you care who thinks what?
I’m truly for all free expression, the world is too concerned with every fucking thing these days, it’s an illness.
you’re acting like things can’t harm people if they don’t care about them. this is not the case.
because people’s thoughts influence their actions
Not to shit on you (well maybe as little) but the guy has a point.
You want them to not care. Doesn’t that go both ways? If some edgy straight horny teen wants more straight tiddies and less gay in his game, who the fuck cares?
Cause let’s be honest, that’s what we’re talking about here. Teens and desperate 30 year olds.
And don’t you think what you imply is scary?
And with that I mean : “people’s thoughts influence their actions”
I fucking hope so.
And who are you to tell them what is right and what is wrong?
no. not everything goes both ways. some things are bad, and should not be tolerated.
no i don’t, what about it do you find scary?
just so we’re clear, the context of this statement is me saying “i care about people having racist/homophobic thoughts because people’s thoughts influence their actions”. so, again just to be clear, the “what” that is being discussed is “racism/homophobia”.
in context, your reply reads “i fucking hope so, who are you to tell them racism/homophobia is right or wrong?”.
Well, when the mod author specifically says it’s to reduce diversity as the goal of the mod I think we all have a chance to point out that is insensitive and comes from a place of hatred. Hatred is wrong. Let the people speak against it and let the website host what it wants. I care enough to spend two min to leave a comment here, but I’m not gonna be a reaction youtuber about it.
You know how in the US they aim to remove everything about racism, black history and rewrite native history in many states? This is one front of bigotry. Another one is to remove the visibility in arts and culture. One angle is to remove and supress works created by people from minorities. The other is to remove minority characters from works of fiction.
And at the end of that culture war, when the “ideal” mainstream society is created in the heads it is creates in the real world by persecution of the excluded minorities.
And while the modder has the right to mod how he sees fit, it is perfectly justified for the platform to not help him distribute it. And in such it is different from mods turning mainstream characters into minority characters because it has no negative consequences for peopledown the line.
No free expression, only mods that turn everyone into lgbt+ are allowed And only turn all whiteys into blackeys And all men into women
And all these mods are preinstalled, and no other modifications of any kind are allowed You can’t even change your hardware
Hell, I’ve seen accusations that the author of this mod made literally that exact mod for BG3 that “fixed” Wyll and his father by turning them white. Shit’s disgusting.
There are mods for other games (might be for BG3 but I haven’t had time to dig into modding yet) that replace white characters with those of other races, why aren’t those controversial? Also it’s a single player game. Imagine if you were painting an altered version of a Salvador Dali and someone slaps it off your easel because they find your adding dick tentacles everywhere offensive.
I would say so too but my problem was not my best buddies being gay in general or even flirting with me but the awkwardness of having to straight up reject them. It is not bad to have this as a second hand experience in a game but i can see how people do not like it. I suffered through the awkward feeling of telling Gale off but i wish there was a more clear friendship route to begin with. Again, i dont mind flirting or my friend being homosexual and attracted to me. I just wish i could give hints that this is one sided like i would irl. Not sure in what way the mod did it and i see why it might be taken down but also its not like this mod will vanish because of it.
This happens in real life too, though.
And the dialog gives you the options to turn him down, just like in real like you’d have a “dialog option” to turn down a gay person who hits on you. And in real life, it’s awkward just like it is in game.
All sorts of uncomfortable things happen in the game. Friends die. Children get murdered. Girls get kidnapped and used as baby incubators. Gnomes are forced into slavery. A hobgoblin fucks a ogre in a barn. As much as people don’t want to experience those things in real life, you don’t see mods deleting them. Yet people can’t seem to figure out that making a special case for the gayness is quite actually gay erasure. They’re fine with countless uncomfortable things, buy a bisexual character giving them eyes is too icky to handle??
People need to grow up and stop making excuses for homophobia that they wouldn’t make for anything else.
…I was legit trying to forget that ever
happened. There are some things I never knew I never wanted to see until I saw it, and that was definitely at the top of that list.
Ok, yes i wrote that not in a good way but it seems you missed my point. My point was that me being friendly was taken as me wanting to bang. That happens irl and it happens in this game. Just because this happens irl does not mean i have to enjoy them ingame. I simply hate awkward situations and while i might be able to dodge them irl i can dodge them in my games which would not make me an anyphobe. There were 4 Characters that hit on me and only one romance i was interested in. Indeed i have felt the same level of awkwardness no matter the sex of the character i rejected.
No, I understood what you said. The point I was making was that while many people are perfectly ok shrugging off women they don’t want to partner with, they get all icky and upset when it comes to shrugging off a man they don’t want to partner with.
Like in your post you specifically singled out Gale. Yet here you are kind of ret-conning that to “4 characters that hit on you.” But when you commented your initial complaint it was just Gale. It was just the gay one.
That’s what I’m talking about when I say subconscious prejudice/homophobia. I’m not putting you on the same level as the mod maker or some rabid homophobe who’s out there trying to take rights away. But I am asking you to examine your reaction and consider if maybe there was something more to it then just “I don’t wanna bang this person.” Why specifically the sympathy for people who don’t like Gale coming on to them vs people who don’t want space-lizard-with-tits or daddy’s princess coming on to them? That’s all.
There have been multiple times that I’ve been friendly with women and they’ll randomly blurt out “I have a boyfriend/husband/partner”. This is a universal feeling, and it makes the game all the more realistic that it includes that. Unfortunately it had to happen with a gay character so people are able to toe the line of homophobia and say that they just didn’t like the rejection.
I would be fine with a mod that simply removed the harsh rejection. It’s not great for queer exposure and empathy building, but I wouldn’t call that outright homophobia. It’s lightyears ahead of turning the gay woman into a man.
If you cant handle awkward social interactions in the “fantasy social interactions simulator” youre probably playing the wrong game
I dunno Yogi, seems hypocritical to champion inclusively in gaming on one hand and tell folks they are probably playing the wrong game for wanting to avoid a specific feature in it.
I fully agree that mod sites should not tolerate bigoted mods. But saying someone should avoid playing a game they enjoy just because there is a specifically uncomfortable social interaction for them, when it could be modded out had the same energy as the folks saying the Sekiro easy mode mod shouldn’t exist.
Should they remove the “feminist Nerevarine” mod from Morrowind as well because there is sexism in the game, just because some folks still want to play it but not be forced to personally engage in sexist behavior? Should they remove the “Spiders are Wolves” mod in Skyrim? Should people not play games they only enjoy modded? If so, Bethesda is in big trouble…
This issue isn’t really about equality, it’s about exposure and building empathy. The more people are exposed to the plight that queer people face every day, the more likely they are to build an empathetic connection to them, to care about queer issues, to see it through their eyes, and to understand and support them through it.
I am all for exposure, and building empathy. I do think representation is extremely important. And I greatly appreciate you sharing your point of view with me. I hadn’t considered that to the extent I should have. And I whole heartedly agree that greater exposure to the situations being discussed would lead to a more ideal society.
My only point was that if they want to mod out the awkward conversations where they have to turn down their friends advances, regardless of the characters sex, gender, or orientation, and that is the only road bump preventing them from fully enjoying one of the best RPG’s, then I think it’s okay that they get to enjoy their game. They didn’t strike me as being bigoted, they didn’t ask for LGBTQ+ representation to be removed from the game, they just felt bad about hurting their friends feelings. That to me already shows a fair amount of empathy.
And if such a mod (again, not the bigoted mod the post is about, but the hypothetical mod being discussed in this comment thread that “allows you to have less awkward methods of not engaging in relationships with characters you are not romantically interested in so as to avoid feeling bad about turning down your friends”) is the difference between them playing the game or not, then wouldn’t also be fair to say they are getting more exposure just by being able to play the game?
If you feel that wanting to avoid hurting your friends feelings in a game through mods would cause a significant blow to society developing empathy for and getting exposure to LGBTQ+ issues, while we do have a difference of opinion on that line, I still respect the battle you are choosing to champion and say more power to you. Good luck fighting the good fight.
Eeey Boo Boo, if you complain about sword combat in dark souls, it was-a probably not dark souls’ fault and you should-a probably find a different game
I could mod the combat out of dark souls too. But if youre doing that, you should just go play a game that has the things you want in it and doesnt have the things youre not looking for.
Its a dnd simulation, and dnd is a lot of social roleplay of awkward moments and scenes. I totally get if thats not your bag, but typically when half of a game isnt your bag you just pass on it.
I can safely say in my ~30 years of playing DnD I’ve never once been propositioned for gay sex.
lol. Don’t get me wrong, I see your point (fwiw, I did not mod sword combat out of Dark Souls, or difficult role playing decisions out of my RPG’s). But I just don’t think someone else doing so in a non-bigoted way is that big of a deal. Especially when they made it clear that they just don’t want to hurt their in game friends feelings, regardless of their sex, gender, or orientation. And if that is the only little road bump to them enjoying what is one of the best RPG’s I’ve ever played, then I say I would rather have them not miss the game.
Where did I say it was a big deal? I said they should probs not play a game thats 50% the things they hate
The social decisions is why its the best rpg youve played. The romance and party interactions is all bg3 players talk about. If youre modding that out? You probably are playing it cause its popular, and should just go play something you dont need to cut in half to have fun with.
That’s really not my experience with D&D. It’s fairly common to play in games without too many awkward interactions.
It’s funny how much this comment mirrors the experience of LGBT people left and right. Do you think it’s not awkward for a lesbian to “have to straight up reject” their male “friends” who come on to them? Or gay men and their female “friends”, or asexuals and literally anyone.
I sure cant judge whether rejection by the same sex is worse but that has little to do with that i dont like to have to reject people so why would i lile it when a game i enjoy, with characters that i care about simulate these unpleasent parts of life. Its like saying a game that induces diarreah is just simulating real life (i know this is a very bad comparrison). I dont care about the sex of the person i reject, i simply hate letting people i care about down. And i dont like this part about the game, shame on me.
I certainly don’t mean to shame you for what seems to be a desire to play the game without being propositioned for sex at all. That seems to me to be a completely different thing than wanting to remove a particular sexuality from the game but leaving others intact.
Maybe having to go through that hardship of rejecting someone because you’re just not into something fundamental and unchangeable about them such as their gender representation will make you have empathy and understanding for queer people and the struggle they face daily where only about 1 in 10 people they’re attracted to will be attracted back.
Exposure to queer media helps build understanding and empathy. Erasing it erodes that understanding and empathy.
If you’re looking for games that have nothing that might make you uncomfortable, those games do exist, but Baldur’s Gate is not one of them.
For a lot of people, directly tackling elements of life that are uncomfortable or actively unpleasant is what can make a game, movie, or whatever else high quality art. Schindler’s List is explicitly about one of the most horrendous chapters in all of human history, and it’s also one of the greatest movies ever made. Being uncomfortable isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I don’t disagree at all. It would be great to have a mod that could let you choose to remove the romances the player doesn’t want to deal with.
I don’t see how this is any different than when straight characters in a game hit on you and you have to reject them. Why does the sexuality or gender of the person change anything when it comes to rejection? You’re either into them or you aren’t. Make a mod that eliminates awkward rejection moments across the board.
It’s a matter of targeting. There are ways to address the change you’d like to see that aren’t this focused, give granular control, and permit players to form an experience of their own. It’s not just about the mod they made, it’s about the mod they could have made but didn’t, and that reveals a prejudice.
Because it actually is 100% homophobia, even when it’s unintentional. A bit of introspection as to why it bothers people or why they defend it with “I can see why some people…” would do wonders to highlight peoples’ subconscious prejudices.
Sure. Somehow i only had to reject one of my female companions and that felt shitty too even though i wasnt that big of a friend. Must be my homophobia kicking in.
The other commenter has it 100% right. You had to reject the female companion too, but you only complained about the male one. It wasn’t a problem when you had to reject a girl coming after you, but when you had to reject a guy coming after you, you wished for some game mechanism to disable that kind of interaction. So yes, it’s a form of subconscious homophobia. Look, I’m not calling you a bigot or anything like that, but I am calling you out on having some subconscious prejudice. We all have it somewhere or another. The key is that when you’re called out on it you should recognize it and correct it, rather than get defensive about it.
The point the others are trying to make is that you (and others) don’t feel the need to have a mod to deactivate females coming on to you. But you (and others) do need one for males coming on to you? This is the entire point. That two equal people doing the same thing but the reactions are so harshly different that people need to change the Game, just because one person is male and the other female.
Ohh yes a mod that eliminates all awkward rejection moments would have been exactly what i want. In the end i want to say that this game has been nothing but awesome even though it forced me to disappoint my companions from time to time.
Having to go through that hardship of rejecting someone because you’re just not into something fundamental and unchangeable about them such as their gender representation will make people learn to have empathy and understanding for queer people and the struggle they face daily where only about 1 in 10 people they’re attracted to will be attracted back.
Exposure to queer media helps build understanding and empathy. Erasing it erodes that understanding and empathy.
You still have the privilege of hitting on 90% of people you’re attracted to IRL or in games reciprocating your advances, so it’s not really that big a deal to have 1 interaction end in rejection.
Lawl all my Stardew people are furries
I’m so gay for Dragon Abigail, I’ll get you all the delicious quartz you ever wanna eat hun uwu
If there were a mod that replaced the sex of a straight character you make them gay, would you consider someone definitely a bigot for using it?
When have straight people ever been a marginalised minority?
Being a minority isn’t a requirement for being the target of bigotry…
Probably never.
Now can you answer my question?
‘You mean censoring gay stuff isn’t the same as adding gay stuff?,’ asks deeply confused troll, in increasingly high tones of voice.
This author is explicitly a bigot. They’re not shy. That kind of obvious diet-Nazi bullshit is why Nexus removes garbage like this, and doesn’t lose any sleep over it.
Both cases are effectively identical, so framing one as “censoring” and the other as “adding” strikes me as grossly disingenuous. They are either both adding or both “censoring.”
And this gets to the crux of my point…it they are both effectively identical, labelling one as the action only bigots would do and the other perfectly fine, seemingly almost completely regardless of intent in either case, requires serious levels of mental gymnastics, like framing identical things as completely opposite.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the mod maker is openly bigoted and that’s more than enough to justify the removal of this mod. But the idea that someone would want the characters to reflect them in the game doesn’t make one a bigot, which is major reason why I support the push to make game characters more inclusive, so more people do get that.
But labelling some people bigots and others not for the same action, based solely on their sexual orientation, seems like going backwards to me. It should obviously be done on intent.
‘Don’t get me wrong, this guy’s an outright Nazi, but what if people were just calling names for a bunch of reasons I’m about to pull from my ass?’
I have negative respect for that ‘juuust becaaaaaause’ horseshit. It’s bad faith and it’s insulting. Absolutely fucking no-one is being labeled “based solely on their sexual orientation,” and you goddamn well know it. No shit role-playing your real-life choices “doesn’t make one a bigot,” but fortunately, that’s a fantasy, sourced from the vicinity of your pelvis.
You lot always fixate on the mechanism. Like purchase and theft are interchangeable because either way you walk off with a thing you found. As if saying “removing gay stuff is censorship” must be judged in a veil of perfect ignorance, devoid of all history, context, implication, or inference. As if you’re not fully aware there is no shortage of heterosexuality in media, and an order of magnitude less gay. As if you can’t figure out how having slightly less of that overwhelming supermajority is different from seeing that minority erased.
How on earth did you spin my post to say this? And then turn around and accuse me of arguing in bad faith. Wow. Lol
Lie better.
They’re not. Context matters. If i say you can’t back up on a highway, that doesn’t mean you can’t back up into a parking spot. Straight people have never been an oppressed minority, there’s nothing hateful about fantasizing about your favorite white character being black like you or something. There is a hateful history behind wishing all black characters were removed from a game.
If the intent has hate, it’s hateful. If there is no intent to be hateful, it’s not hateful. Hate require intent. You can’t be hateful if you don’t hate anyone, and you can be hateful regardless of whether or not you’re part of a traditionally oppressed group.
What you are arguing is that some actions, based on historical context, are more acceptable than others. Something that I tend to agree with, to a limited extent.
But if two people are doing the same exact thing for the same exact reason, and you are labelling on a bigot and the other perfectly acceptable based on their sexuality, its more likely youre the bigot. Although, really, I think youre just confused about an extremely touchy and complicated subject that doesn’t have easy answers.
Sure, if we’re talking about small children innocently changing characters to be more like them, that’s a totally fair argument. But the context here is a publicly homophobic modder working for weeks to create a full mod to erase gay characters.
I’m talking about intent, and people have pointed out that the intent of the creator was hateful, so the creator is a bigot. But the top level comment that I responded to was a pretty blanket statement that any changing of a character (gay to straight or black to white) was bigoted “plain and simple.”
I’m disagreeing with that premise, not that the modder is a bigot.
Nah, because as straight people we’ve never actually faced any hardship because of our orientation. Maybe if the idea that straight people shouldn’t exist, if one of the major political parties in my country wanted to legalize electrocuting us for being straight, if most of the major religions said we should be tortured to death, if there were people seriously debating about whether we should be allowed to marry someone of the opposite sex, I’d say that mod would be bigoted
So intent has nothing to do with it? One is a bigot based solely on the relative hardship two communities have faced. If in gay and want to play a character that reflects my sexuality, I’m not a bigot for making it happen. But if I’m straight and want to play a character that represents my sexuality, and I make that happen, I’m a bigot?
Of course not. That’s not what happened here, and is irrelevant. Nobody would care about a mod that makes otherwise unromanceable characters romanceable. This mod changed two NPCs for no reason other than the creator doesn’t like seeing gay people.
You understand there’s a difference between someone making a character gay because they like seeing gay characters, and someone making a character straight because they don’t like seeing gay characters, right?
Irrelevant to what happened, but not irrelevant to what the poster I was responding to was talking about.
Absolutely. You are hitting my point here: intent. If someone is gay and changes it because they don’t want to see straight people, that’s bigoted too. If someone makes the character straight because they like seeing straight characters, that’s not bigoted.
I get that the mod maker is actually a bigot, in not challenging that. I’m challenging the claim that by switching from gay to straight makes you a bigot.
Please, I would LOVE for you to source this claim
How could I source it? I challenged an opinion with another opinion.
It’s called a “straw man argument.”
The best thing about mods is that they only effect the person playing with them. I really don’t get the upset over it. Oh, no, someone else might play a version of this game with less gay (or whatever else offends you). I just can’t bring myself to have the energy to be angry about how other people have modded their game when it only effects them.
You can still play the mod! It’s not outlawed or anything. It’s just that Nexus didn’t want it on their website. He can easily distribute that Mod elsewhere. It was Nexus’s choise and they choose to get rid of it.
As they have every right to do.
Sure, you have freedom of speech, but no, you don’t have the right to use my megaphone to say stupid shit.
Which is kind of unfair tbh. It’s the same issue with how Facebook and other social media is controlling exposure to influence politics. I pretty well loathe how some platforms are essentially the only avenue for their purpose, like YouTube.
It doesn’t seem like people really consider the fallout of removing the opposition’s voice either. If we can’t hear the stupid people screaming, we’re not gonna know how stupid they are.
Forcing people to host speech they don’t want to is far more draconian than not doing so.
You’d probably be more than a little annoyed if I put a swastika sign on your front yard and then told you that you were infringing on my right to free speech when you went to go remove it.
Companies are not people and private homes are not platforms for mass communication.
I don’t think the government views video game mod hosts as so fundamental to a healthy society that they require strong limitations on their own freedom of speech, but you’re welcome to call up your representative and start a campaign for the ability to force Nexus to host Nazis if it’s truly important to you.
I quit playing League of Legends when they made Groovy Zilean look like a crackhead because the CCP hates drug culture. Every form of media is training your kids.
Your “freeze peach” only has to do with your government. You keep pointing out corporations aren’t people as if that had anything to do with this topic, but until you start paying taxes and owning land through Facebook, it’s a non-sequitur.
I’m not claiming that the law governs this under free speech. I simply think that free speech is worthless if it’s only in places that go ignored.
If a company is thousands of people, what is private about it? A thousand people can’t keep your secrets. FFS, Facebook is overtly selling access to them. The only ownership of Facebook is through stocks which just means the rich get to decide and the poor don’t.
People actually sell houses and shit on Facebook though. Not sure if that can be used as a reason to regulate them or not. For one, it’s a pretty easy way to discriminate against minorities without directly implicating themselves.
No matter how much stupid people scream about being silenced, we never fucking stop hearing them
If you don’t hear them, how are you supposed to know they’re stupid? Monitor your own filter list rather than letting Facebook decide what you see.
But Facebook is the one deciding I should see my conservative relatives bitch about being silenced. If I had my way I would never hear my uncle’s take on whether trans women are women, an issue which he apparently holds so close to his heart that he can’t go ten seconds without posting about it
You can, quite easily, unsub from your uncle so he doesn’t show up in your feed. He’ll still be your Facebook friend and won’t even know you aren’t seeing his drivel anymore. You can do this. Facebook doesn’t need to be the arbiter of morality.
It’s ok if you block them for you. It’s not ok if Facebook blocks them for you without your input. It’s especially not ok when they do that in mass to control the political landscape.
I very strongly believe that filters should not be imposed on people, but rather be privately curated.
There are plenty platforms to host mods. You can even just set one up yourself. You don’t have a right to be hosted on exactly the one you want.
I’ve never heard of other mod platforms aside from Nexus and Steam.
My only point is that people should have equal voice volume so that huge companies like YouTube aren’t playing nanny with the population.
How about you make a popular website and then we can decide how valid your opinion that websites should be a soapbox for vocal minorities really is.
I can think of a few minorities you wouldn’t speak of the same way.
🤡
Suit yourself. You won’t beat the big money people at their own game with the same tactics and less resources. You’re gonna have to figure out how communications outlets need to be regulated or they’ll be used against all of us to control image.
Reasons matter.
So much ‘both sides’ nonsense disappears, when you figure out reasons come first.
Nexus blocking bigotry is good, because fuck bigotry. Facebook promoting bigotry is bad, because… fuck bigotry. The fact both actions involve the same mechanism does not matter. If you can’t comprehend a judgement of intent and outcomes, and have to grapple with events in terms of blind actions devoid of context, ask one of your fellow space aliens to explain how humans work.
No, they effect everyone. By publishing the mod, the creator told the world exactly how they feel about this subject. If it were the case as you put it, then they’d just create the mod and use it solely for themselves and not tell anyone. It’s still despicable, but at least they aren’t going to hurt anyone as no-one can stumble across it. Instead, they made a choice and the backlash they’ve received is a consequence of that choice.
Also it’s very tiring for minorities to constantly exist in a hostile world. Imagine knowing that every place you go to has at least someone outright decrying your existence.
Cis straight people generally can’t fathom how it actually feels to exist in a place where the idea that you shouldn’t exist is a popular one. Some douchebag is gonna act like some psycho on the internet saying “kill all straights” is somehow equivalent to one of the major political parties literally platforming on your nonexistence.
I’m queer and I actually thought lemmy was better than reddit up until now. It’s almost impossible to find a fucking site where I’m not going to have to see assholes who want me shot, silenced or hurt in some other way. It’s exhausting seeing the same shit all the time. It happened when spider man had a mod removed for removing pride flags, it happens when every time a game has a single background gay character, it happened when two women kissed in the last jedi. The same fucking screeching over and over because a minority of the population isn’t straight and exists.
So if it made all the good guys white and all the bad guys black we shouldn’t be concerned? And if it replaced the dialogue to include racial slurs, no big deal? Why should anyone have an issue with hateful content circulating online?
Because rejecting hateful content and making it fringe and inaccessible is for the good of everyone. Exposure to race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation based issues makes everyone more aware and empathetic of the issues that other people face, and that’s a good thing.
And yes, both of those mod ideas you proposed would be just as bad or worse than this one and should also be deleted from Nexus mods.
Of course we agree. I think you meant your reply for someone else.
Nexus should not host such mods.
But It’s a single player game and anyone who installs such a thing already feels that way.
…and what if it did the reverse? Or eliminated all members of a given race or sex from the game/changed them to a different sex or race?
I’m just going to stand by my original position - someone creating and using a mod only effects themselves and others choosing to use the mod. The fact that other people are using a mod you don’t approve of has no impact on you, and if this mod existing hadn’t got a Vice article most of the folks in this thread upset about it would simply have never known it existed at all, because they’re unlikely to go looking for such a mod.
No need for what ifs. Stardew Valley has a very popular and well done mod called Diverse Stardew Valley. Changes nearly all (or all maybe, I’m not sure) the population to minorities or otherwise generally marginalized types.