Television, film and books have shown queer characters in a more positive light, moving from sidekicks or punchlines into nuanced protagonists with complex lives. In recent times and some parts of the world, as public opinion of queerness changed and communities made strides in legal recognition and rights, the queer stories available have also changed. Queer representation in media has a long, thorny history for most of the 20th century, queer characters were portrayed as villains and loners, and their lives were tragic as a sort of moral instruction.
So I didn’t expect episode 3 to tell such a positive story, or as positive a story as “The Last of Us” universe can allow. You don’t need to tell me things are bad out here. At the risk of being crass: I’m a queer trans man, myself. But this diversity, to me, ultimately points back to nothing but nihilism: queer people exist in these worlds because we exist in the real world, and they suffer because everyone suffers. It just takes every opportunity to show them, over and over, and decides that counts as saying something about them.” The games’s characters are admirably diverse a queer storyline in the 2013 game was undoubtedly a leap forward for the medium at the time, and 2014′s “Left Behind” DLC and “The Last of Us Part 2” featured queer and trans storylines that expand video game narratives.
As I wrote in my review of 2020′s “The Last of Us Part 2,” co-creator Neil Druckmann’s work “doesn’t relish in its gory deaths or emotional suffering. I was surprised to find a storyline like this in “The Last of Us.” I have to admit that my view of the games isn’t positive - they are beautiful and emotional, but for me, they always come back to brutality and despair in a way I find simplistic.
0 kommentar(er)
