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DO NOT TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT THE NEW BOOK CHAPTER RELEASE... but... I am genuinely being so serious rn and I need patience. I need you all to hold my hand while you explain this to me...
Who the hell is Elysian?
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Something I always think about when debates about queer rep in cr come up that I donât see talked about often is something Iâve come to refer to as âgay resources and resource allocation.â And no matter how I try to describe it when it comes up I can never really encompass what I mean, so hereâs my one big old try at explaining it. I am truly not trying to discourse with people, I just want to explain my feelings on all this finally.
So, letâs start with, what the fuck do I mean? Basically, dnd live shows arenât actually set up the best for queer rep in some ways, logistically speaking. They donât have as much resources and those resources they have to allocate. And what the fuck do I mean by that? Well:
PCs are your main source of rep, but there are only so many PCs, 7 every 3/4ish years for cr in particular. And besides that, you have NPCs, which are numerous, but usually interactions with them are so surface level or unrelated to their sexuality or gender that it almost never comes up unless they use they/them or neopronouns, or are actively flirting in a visibly queer way/in a visibly queer relationship. So in short, thereâs only so many people with so many sexualities to go around. And if someone isn't comfortable with something, like how Travis wasnât comfortable doing romance in C1 (tho I guess you could argue that Grog was aromantic from that angle), they shouldnât be forced to do that and that takes another piece off of the gay board. Resources and resource allocation, basically.
And then thereâs the issue of, well, characters being run by singular person. Usually when someone chooses to make a queer character in a TV show/book/movie whatever, they have resources. They have the time to rewrite and rewrite, to get other queer people and sensitivity consultants to help (and yes Iâm pretty sure cr does have a sensitivity consultant but itâs not completely relevant to my point), do test screenings, etc. They often donât because they donât care, but they have the opportunity.
But CR has none of that because theyâre literally live. Even if the show isnât broadcasted live, it is completely unedited (besides gags and goofs for the ad read) and they canât reshoot something. Itâs a continuous, completely improvised, fully live story. That can be very scary Iâm sure, because you have to do your rep 100% right at all times or youâll get trashed online. What if youâre portraying an identity that isnât yours? You wanna do it right, but thatâs very hard when it comes down to Just You and you actually care. Even if you arenât doing something wrong youâll get trashed online.
Also this isnât me excusing mistakes theyâve made representing queer people, itâs not me giving them a free pass. But Iâve heard people tear the cast to shreds for stupid, inane, unnecessary things, in the most bizarre way possible. Like, look at all the shit Liam has gone through with two bisexual characters.Â
And the live format also means that opportunities to do rep are harder. If you write a book, you can engineer the perfect scenario for someone to come out. But when you do a live play show, things have to come up naturally, and that sometimes just doesnât happen. Look at Caduceus. He was aroace, and in my opinion played very well and very consistently throughout the entire show. Hell, a lot of ace people identified him as being ace from the beginning. But the actual conformation, the âcoming outâ, was waaaay after he was introduced. It wasnât that they were hiding it, it just didnât come up in a way that made sense. And itâs even harder for NPCs.
Now letâs look at romances themselves. With NPCs itâs easier, look at Kima and Allura or how in EXU it was confirmed that Gilmore has a husband. But PC romance not only takes a long time, but is complicated as fuck. The emotions you feel while playing dnd are real, even if they arenât applicable to you the person. So developing a romance takes a lot of time and energy and can be very messy, especially when itâs getting torn apart on the internet. Not to mention if there isnât anyone in the party you can romance (but want to), or how hard NPC romances are. Once again, less resources.
And this isnât just in CR. In one of the home games I play a huge percentage of the players are queer in some way, including our DM. But we have all these same resource and resource allocation issues, though they arenât really issues in our case because we arenât setting out to do rep. PC romances are rare, and NPC romances even rarer, and although there are plenty of enbies in both party and NPCs, actual sexualities rarely come up because they just arenât applicable. The only time thats come up a lot in my experience was in games designed for romance.Â
And this isnât even touching on how CR1 wasnât set up for live-streaming and purposeful diversity, it was originally a home game, etc.
So now we look at what all this means. Well, I donât have a big conclusion. I still think queer rep is hugely important and cr should continue to work to include it, like theyâve done in the past. I think actual fuck ups in rep should be discussed. But I think some parts of the fandom need to keep in mind all of this when discussing queer rep, because the debates can get really bad faith at times when this stuff isnât considered.
