So if you haven't heard by now, the recent short story by Michael Chu, Lead Writer of Overwatch, has announced that Soldier 76 is homosexual. I posted this on r/unpopularopinion, but I'm posting it here as well just in case it gets deleted or whatever.
I have nothing against people being gay, but this decision felt so forced.
When the Tracer thing happened a long while ago, it felt natural in a way. Having the cover character be lesbian was huge, of course, but it still felt like it suited Tracer as a character. It does not suit Soldier: 76 or anything about his character so far, because it does not add to his character in any significant way. Tracer, on the other hand, sure - she's the title character, she's young and has something worth fighting for - in her eyes, people like her girlfriend are the reason "the world could always use more heroes". At least that's the way I see it.
Jack Morrison is a hardened veteran, a super-soldier, and a man who is thirsty for revenge. What drives Jack Morrison is his desire to seek revenge for the fall of Overwatch, and destroying Talon as an organization. The fact that Morrison is gay is irrelevant, and feels entirely shoehorned in, in a lackluster attempt to get people talking about Overwatch again. I guess in that sense, it worked, right?
Now it sucks to even be annoyed about this. Overwatch as a community was already unhappy with the way things were going. The game is a toxic mess competitively, it suffers from a lack of content via copy-paste, and communication from the Developers about the game's biggest issues are non-existent. Now we have this? Something that's going to split the community even further? Something that makes a rift in the playerbase over something that's literally meaningless.
What I hate most about this is that people don't seem to have the right to dislike a decision to make a character gay. If you criticize the decision to make Soldier 76 in anyway, you are berated and labeled as a "homophobe" by the rabid base of casual Tumblr-worthy folk who follow Overwatch. I outright dislike the decision, but that does not make me a homo-hater in any shape or form. Why can't people just see that?
I've seen people say that "context" or "build-up" isn't needed in this situation. Which is true, but... if you don't need context, and you don't need representation, then what's the point of making Jack Morrison gay for seemingly no other reason that needing to shoehorn in someone as LGBT because your Lead Writer is a Twilight-esque fanfiction writer, who shouldn't have the job in the first place since he's so incompetent at actually putting out lore anyway.
Seriously, can we fire Michael Chu already? I mean, really, this is the first time he writes lore in months, and it's a short story that divides the community? He's gotta go.
I apologize to you all if I rambled on a bit. I'll stop before I ramble on anymore. Thank you for giving me a chance to express myself, because this is an issue that has annoyed me, personally.
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