the penises never touched for the entirety of the playthrough

Nono, it's only gay if the balls touch. So sayeth the internet.

It's the exact same thing as right-wing weirdos associating the term "feminist" strictly with with the most extreme, fundamentalist, fringe elements of the movement, "feminazis" if you will, that went way over the equality hill and ended up in "all men are bad, m'kay" forest.

The fact that public media often reinforces that view does not help.

In short: the game is woke, because it showcases a gay romance with historical accuracy. Vavra thinks it's not woke, because it doesn't allow the player character to be a black lesbian with "them" pronouns.

They constantly cry about ThE wOkE aGeNdA when you can select pronouns that LITERALLY have 0 impact on gaming, but apparently including WoKe content in the actual game is ok if you're on their side.

I don't like that those 'woke' settings don't have any impact in historic games. Because that 'woke-washes' history.

That was one of my gripes with Hogwarts Legacy. The wizarding world in Victorian times where certainly not egalitarian when it came to race or sexual identity. And if they where, it should be explained why they are so different from the muggle world at that time.

Sounds like he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

Dan Vavra is simply a king of dickheads, and cannot pass a single oportunity to show everyone.

Its not good, because you are now playing into the toxic norms that already exist. So its ok if straight stuff is upfront, but gay stuff has to be optional? This is completely pathetic and I will never support this, this team or game.

Dude is doing so much mental gymnastics to make himself sound superior. Again, it is really pathetic.

Yes, that is not what the word "originally" meant, yes it is ~~partially~~ completely the result of right wing propaganda, yes "political correctness" and "sjw" have similar issues

Fixed it for you.

It is a common conservative tactic, taking the language of something meant to improve the lives of minorities in some way and turning it into a negative thing. As you said, they did it with "politically correct" in the 90s, "social justice warrior" in the late 2000s, "woke" in the 2010s, and are currently working on "DEI." It's how they control the narrative and normalize their hatred. And it's why Tim Walz calling them "weird" was so effective and why they got so upset by it - and why I'll never forgive the Democrats for muzzling him when we finally had a weapon to fight back against this insidious colonialism of language.

The fact that you believe that there's a middle ground where the definition isn't an attack on minorities means that they've succeeded in shifting the Overton Window and you've become used to the hatred yourself. Every single one of those terms that you mentioned was redefined for the sole purpose of being used to attack anybody who dared to openly talk about being a minority or exist as a minority.

The "woke" are as real as the "blue haired girls with pronouns SJW getting off the 'Down With CIS' bus and assaulting people" of 15 years ago, and the token representation that you're talking about is what's known as "rainbow capitalism," not "woke."

"Self-righteous, superficial, performative, and preachy" are the exact words used to describe a gay man daring to exist in public or talk about being gay in any way and not hide away like Section 28 and Don't Ask, Don't Tell are still in effect. That's what "woke" means when used under the new definition: a minority dared to openly behave like a minority in public and not be ashamed of it.

So what should be the word we use for “media that depicts positive social ideologies?” Apparently “woke” includes the definition “while being super preachy about it.”

Of course, in that split, it’s also common people will call something “preachy” when a gay guy is there, and doesn’t even waste the viewer’s time. It happened to that horrible conservative animated show, as well.

In a lot of places, not just far-right assholes, the word "woke" has taken on the role of terms like "social justice warrior" and "political correctness" - i.e. in describing a self-righteous, superficial, performative and preachy kind of style.

LOL no, "woke" is anything that acknowledges LGBT+ individuals exist and have a right to live their lives as they want is woke. These fucking snowflakes cry about being asked to pick fucking pronouns, even when there is 0 impact on the game.

Crying 'woke' instantly tells me all I need to know about someone. The same goes for people who try to pretend it's about preaching a message instead of acknowledging these people can and do exist.

What the man seems to me to be trying to say is that their goal was to do a medieval gay romance in a way that was not preachy or superficial – is that not good? Isn't there a bit too much token representation and pinkwashing going on?

And you're parroting the message loud and clear. Acknowledging their existence is always tOkEn RePrEsEnTaTiOn

Now now, don't be getting all reasonable. This is the internet after all!

If he was trying to say that, he would've said that. "I think the reason why our game succeeded in portraying a gay relationship in medieval times, when it was definitely not as widely accepted as it is today, was because we took that fact into account and developed the story around it, so it made sense while still representing a group that existed throughout all history." != "We still pander to the gays for free sales but not like those woke guys."

The guy has always been a piece of shit so I’m glad more people are learning this.

The first KCD faced criticism for having exclusively white characters in it, and Vávra saying that was historically accurate (spoiler: people from Africa and Asia were in the Roman Empire at that time; generally as merchants or slaves). Vávra supported gamergate, and has always been vocally "anti woke".

There was a surge in purchases of KCD2 when Vávra claimed Dragon Age Veilguard failed solely because of involving "gender politics" in the game, which gives you a pretty good idea of a large portion of the gamerbase for the KCD games.

You've made a good choice in not supporting this dipshit.

Something something dragon age something something concord.

Sprinkle in some pointless complaints about The Last Jedi and you have a full chud comment.

It's worth mentioning that this sort of thinking gets really close to "there are good ones and bad ones" in some people's minds. IMO there's a lot of representation for the "non-normal" queers because they are the most vulnerable and because it needs to be clear that it's a package deal. People don't get to draw the line in places like "gays are okay but trans people are icky", and unofficially supporting mindsets like that would legitimize disgust-based morality.

People need to learn the lesson that others inherently deserve rights and respect regardless of their own personal feelings, otherwise we're just going to be fighting this battle over and over again for each minority group.

I'll respond because it seems like you're trying

Most guys have in mind with some gay twink trying to Hit on any guys they can.

I'm not sure how common this mental image is, but try to get it out of your head. The fact is there are some people who just want to have lots of sex with lots of people, some of these people happen to be straight, some happen to be gay, some happen to be guys, and some happen to be gals and some happen to be anywhere in-between any of the above. And that's okay, because different people are different and who cares what happens between consenting adults? And you know what else is okay? Some people don't want to have sex with anyone, some people only want to have sex with certain people, and some people are anywhere in between.

Most gay people are just normal regular everyday people with just a different preference in people that Theyd Date

All. All gay people are just people. Sexual interest is a spectrum, some people are only interested in other people of the same gender, some people are only interested in people of the opposite gender, and some people are somewhere in between, maybe mostly-straight or mostly-gay. And that's okay no matter where on that spectrum you fall.

On top of that both romantic interest and ones own gender are spectrums as well. These spectrums can have very different settings from each other and that's okay too. On the subject of gender, people have a physical and a mental gender, and sometimes those don't match. That's okay too (y'know as in it's okay to have that problem and be working to align the two in whatever way that makes them happy)

Most cis people totally envision either some annoying gay twink or a drag queen

First of all, don't use that slur. Full stop.

Secondly, drag is not a gender nor a sexuality nor a sexual or romantic interest. People who do drag are just people who do drag. They can be anywhere on the various spectrums I already outlined.

I have a feeling though that nowadays regarding representation, people that are pro gay & lgbtq do not really help at educating unaware cis people

They are trying to educate unaware cis/straight people, its just between algorithms, echo chambers and those who wish to eliminate everyone who isn't white straight cis, there's plenty of corners its not reaching.

This is not a failure of gay people, and this isn't any one gay person's job to educate the world. This is the world trying to pretend that gay people don't exist, when in fact they do exist and have existed for as long as gender and sexuality have existed

The reason we have pride is because we are in the first time in human history when anyone who isn't cis, straight, etc. isn't forced to ignore or suppress those feelings but can actually go be exactly who they want to be and be with whoever they want to be. Even now, as kids start to realize there's something different about them, they're first led to believe it's because there's something wrong with them. This might last a short time, this might last a lifetime, but pride is about squashing those self-doubt demons and shouting out to the world "I AM WHO I AM AND YOU WILL DEAL WITH IT!"

The importance of representation is in helping put the image in people's heads that it's okay to be different and that you don't have to be a white cis straight male to do certain things. Whether it's Mr Rogers sharing a pool with a black actor on a hot day, or Lt Uhura being played by a black woman in Star Trek, or Kora kissing Asami in Legend of Kora, or anything else, it's about showing and helping people know that they can be who they want to be and they can be happy about it. Media drives a sense of normalcy, so what's normal in media becomes normal in society. If it's normal for gay people to exist in media, people will see it as normal for gay people to exist in society.

Now, more on topic, Kingdom Come Deliverence is in a weird spot because it sets out to be the most realistic representation of a specific period and place in medieval history as possible. In the medieval period (and for most of history for that matter) people didn't really have an individual identity, so the idea of gay or straight people didn't really exist. They were however extremely sexist and mostly considered whoever did the penetrating to be powerful and whoever is being penetrated to be weak (and there's some hilarious historical texts where people are just generally confused about what to think of lesbians because there's no penetrating going on so did anything actually happen?) so CK:D in being an accurate period piece happens to place itself right in the crossroads of this culture war, as it presumably depicts gayness as many conservatives would prefer, something to be hidden away and ignored and maybe prosecuted if it gets too inconvenient for them, but CK:D depicts it this way not as a handout to conservatives but as an accurate depiction of history without commentary.

So TL;DR: gay people are people and different people are different and that's okay

The game has a gay romance option, which is something that you can unlock over the course of the game with the right dialogue options and is fairly tastefully done. The game is very intent on being a 1403 simulator and the characters are all written with that in mind, but it's nice that the game recognises that gay people would have existed regardless of the cultural attitudes at the time.

I think his comments refer to the implementation of the romance in the way that it doesn't feel like it was put there so the studio could boast about how progressive they are.

In the first game everyone is assumed to be straight, and your character receives a stat boost from having sex, which sometimes happens in the story, but mostly will happen at "bathhouses", i.e. with prostitutes.

The exclusively female bathhouses, and the stat boost, persist in the second game, but there is an option relatively early in the game for your (male) character to start a gay romance with an important, recurring character.

I didn't follow through with that, but I was very pleasantly surprised to see it - both characters are sort of supposed to be womanizers, but it makes sense in the context of the story that they could discover feelings for eachother. It's up to you whether your character has a childhood sweetheart feminine love interest at home or not (from the previous game), but other than this relatively unimportant detail (beyond the roleplaying of it), the gay romance appears to be arguably the most significant romance in the game.

All that said, the game director who speaks is an asshole. Given that, I was pleasantly surprised at how "woke" KCD2 actually is. Guess he might has a different idea of "woke" than the rest of us, e.g. more "female ghost busters movie", less "gay representation".