As a gay man myself, I say "eh, whatever."

This is a game about murder and power-grabs and more murder.

But if they were to do this, the way I'd like to see it is if they revealed this about an existing character through an offhand comment or gesture. Make it incidental and treat it like no big deal.

Don't make a new character just to make him/her gay and make that their main selling point. It's inorganic and too forced, and I'd personally resent it.

Hoo boy.

First of all, there is a place in fighting games, and in all fiction, for gay characters--just as there is is a place for ethnic or religious or whatever other kind of minorities. That's a given. People don't get pissy about Nightwolf because they "just added him because he was Native American." Even if they did, so what? Diversity of origin/experience/perspective is always interesting in a work of fiction. The quality of the inclusion of the minority character depends on the quality of the writing, not the identity of the character.

If there's an element of people falling in love or having romantic attachments, there's a place for gay characters to exist and be talked about as gay people. That happens in MK. It's happened a bunch of times. No one gets moody when the straight characters do it, and no one accused NRS of writing that into the story "just to have straight characters in it."

Many people say that including queer characters would read as gimmickry. Sorry 'bout it. Can't stop you from feeling that way, but I can say that for me, to have a queer character in MK would give me a character to identify with more personally in a way that I don't with the others. I read that as a good thing. (And no, I don't mean to tell the other gay people on MKO how they're supposed to feel about it, but I do wave to you all happily because I didn't know there were so many of us here.)

Having queer characters in a work of fiction isn't necessarily a "political statement." Or, more accurately, it is a political statement, but only to the same extent that having a work of fiction completely without queer people is also a political statement. The latter is much subtler and harder to notice, and rarely intentional, but it still broadcasts a message about what kinds of people belong where and what kinds of people are worth writing about.

The fact that MK is a fighting game is a very specific and kind of awkward form of storytelling doesn't change my opinion. There's a story. People fall in love in it. Cool.

*sigh* fine I'll bight

Let's just make Jax gay and be done with it.

Or make it Ermac. The thing is a combination of millions of Edenian souls I doubt all of them were playing for team Hetro.

I would prefer MK handle homosexuality with more grace then most fighters *looks over at street fighter and it's cast of stereotypical characters*

But I do have one question...when would this ever come up? When would there ever be a time where it would be necessary to clarify if a character was gay or not in Mortal Kombat?

Hell there has hardly ever been time to say "hey Liu and Kitana totally had a thing" and just now we are getting the implication that Sonya and Johnny had any kind of relationship beyond simple battle comrades and that's just through the appearance of their daughter and we still don't even know the story behind that.

There's a way to introduce more character preferences where it's done right. This thread however, basically came off as "there's homophobic people in the world and we have to throw gay guys in just to piss them off." I honestly wouldn't mind if a new character is gay or a recurring is one, however, there's a way to throw it to the public without making it gimmicky and not making it just for the sake if having a gay character as well as not trying to piss people off.

But to make a character gay just to piss off a group of people, no. I don't care how you view homophobic people, throwing stuff like this to make a point make is certainly not how you go. That's ridiculous and it's not needed.

Honestly, I still don't think things like this really needs to be necessary to throw in for a character, even if it's just to identify more with the character. Not that I think it's dumb, I just don't think it's necessary. Of course that's my opinion, anyone can agree with it or disagree.

Hmm, i am going to respectfully give a counterpoint. The way I see it is that the majority, rather 100% of the characters are relatable to everyone and anyone no matter what their race or sexual orientation is. Because each character is a hollow box. A short fantastical representation of something that doesn't exist.

If we feel like relating to a hell spawn spectre resurrected for sweet vengeance, so be it. If you want to imagine scorpion as a gay spectre so be it. I personally like to think of him as an asexual badass who could care less about sex of any kind, straight or not. Same goes for every single character.

Now johnny seems like the most borderline inappropriate character for this issue. BUT his character when you look closely is just a representation of a Hollywood douchbag, And if you choose.. you can relate to him. I personally can't stand him for his ludeness.

No thanks. Keep politics and Mortal Kombat separate.

I'm into Mortal Kombat to kill enemies and destroy them bit by bloody bit.... ...and maybe enjoy the story if it isn't jacked up (that's another thread entirely). It makes no matter to me what sexual orientation the characters are, and I'm going to kill them regardless. It doesn't flesh out the characters in a meaningful way to me.

Mortal Kombat has always been about violence and death. (Yes, I realize this is a drastic oversimplification of the story.) Having a gay character just to have a gay character is an agenda and politicizing a game where politics doesn't belong. This game has never been about the sexual orientation of the fighters and should never be.

It's a large game world out there. Don't hijack a franchise for politics. Make your own franchise.

This topic is just freaking stupid. I don't know what else to say.

Adding gay character in the game, because his orientation is part of his "identity / story / background" is a one thing. Adding gay character just to check out another item on the "to do" list is not exactly right way to handle it. It reduces importance of the gay character from being a full character like everyone else to the mere gimmick, which on the inside could be rather empty. It's not to say such character can't be later developed into something more, but in my opinion, creator's intention also does matter. It's a respect thing, if you want. And as the writer myself, I don't like to create "token" characters just to fill roles and purposes. There should be something more, some substance, idea, e.t.c.


I am surprised your keyboard was able to withstand amount of hypocrisy while you was typing this post.

Who really cares? It's not like it's impossible for some of the characters to be gay as is. Only a few characters are actually revealed to be straight. The rest of them never show whether they're attracted to men or women because their motivations are rooted in something that's not love; vengeance, power, and eternal life, to steal from Deadly Alliance, are the typical motivations behind Mortal Kombat characters.

A gay character doesn't have to be outwardly flamboyant and flirtatious with members of the same sex. It's in Johnny's character to be flirtatious with women because he has an ego and he tends to look at everything as a joke. Like "save the world? No thanks, I'm gonna go flirt with some hot chicks!" Most characters take it seriously, so they don't act that way. And why does it have to be a Russian man? But in the idea's defense, a flamboyantly gay Russain guy named Putin prancing around in Mortal Kombat would still be less annoying to me than Ferra.

Actually this is a good point. Since society is hetero-normative we assume that any character/person that doesn't mention their sexuality is probably straight when that's not necessarily the case.

You know what? I'm on board. I've tried to picture what this character would look, sound, and play like, and I can't say I'm totally disinterested, so let's see it happen.

Ah, no new MK release is complete without a gay thread on MKO.

Anyways, no. The sexual orientation of a character doesn't matter, making that character into a walking gay pride festival would probably be a bit offensive to homosexuals and homopbobes alike.

This is by far in your top 5 worst threads.

And you're back to your former self. Alas, it was short but sweet.

It would be so incredibly forced. MK is not a platform for any sort of agenda.

Still waiting on that Bi-ethnic transotherkin Were-Vampire She-Male character

As somone who's here with the series for the mythology, the backstory and the insane gore and violence; I don't give two shits about any characters sexuality. For all we know, Cage could be a closeted bi with an ego complex and Sheeva could be Lord of the Shokan Lesbians. Doesn't matter to me what-so-ever.

Well first of all, it's surprising how many gay people are in MKO. Who would have thought lol.

On topic, I disagree with some people here saying that they need a gay character to identify with in the game. There are games that it's ok to have a gay character to identify with. MK is not one of them. God forbid that you identify with a video game character that beheads others :P

Is it not kinda weird to have a character be gay purely for the purposes of being gay? To me that'd be like saying "well, need that gay market represented so lets have one character play for Team Pink". It feels so cynical. And it doesn't just extend to homosexuality. As an Irishman, if NRS were to have a new character whose fatality was to summon leprechauns and drank a Guinness in his intro, I wouldn't be particularly happy. If NRS introduce a character with an Irish accent, grand. See the difference? One is basing a character solely around one trait, the other is a developed character who happens to have one trait

Furthermore, why do we all assume a guy would have to be gay? Why can't Jade have been lesbian-crushing on Kitana all this time? Maybe Tanya got shot down by Kitana and that's why Tanya seems determined to destroy the Edenian Royal Family?

In any case, if you want to read homosexuality into MK, you have plenty of opportunities. Maybe the real reason Frost tried to kill Sub Zero is because she came onto him but he was gay and she got angry. Maybe the reason Jax and Sonya never had a thing is because Jax had a thing for Cage.

If a character is revealed to be gay, I hope its in an offhand way. Look at the way JK Rowling revealed Dumbledore to be gay. Made it so clear that its just not that big a deal. If MK were to introduce a ludicrously camp guy who dresses in pink, calls everyone "honey" or "sweetie pie" and takes time out to proposition Cage while everyone else is trying to save the world and generally acts like Big Gay Al, it'd be a game killer for me, so fucking tawdry. If Boon mentions that some one is actually gay, cool. It's really not that big a deal.

I agree with ReptileFinally though. OP is a master in making shit threads and this is one of his absolute worst

Nope, besides everyone knows Russians are vodka drinking polar bears.

Omg did you miss the other most recent pages long gay thread? It was amazing. That's how we found out Sindel was a gay icon lol.

I think people find characters to identify with regardless of orientation. I mean there is so few minority representation is media that you kind of have to identify with someone unlike yourself unless you're a straight white guy.

MK could add an explicitly gay character for the purposes of representation but, again, it'd hardly come up.

Personally I identify with Mileena. That's why you'll usually find me in Piccadilly dressed in purple leotard

I want a gay Kombatant but I don't want him to be Russian.

I'm bisexual myself, and I don't really see the need for a gay character. If MK were an RPG or something, where the characters had decent development throughout the story then fair enough, you could include a gay character without the need for that characters sexuality to be their sole focus. But the only real way to make it obvious in a game like MK is to make them a stereotype, and that would just be more offensive.

As others have the majority of the existing characters sexualities have not been addressed, so perhaps one of them is already gay?

Hello!!...
Mortal Kombat's main villain(Shao Kahn) wears just underwear when he fights, in the gay community he is a what we would call "Leather Daddy"