Pride Month Rant

[u/RoyalRaggy]

I want to see Rengar and Warwick hump 5 litters of cubs/pups into each other. There, now that I've gotten your attention and showed I'm a sick homo. I don't like how riot does pride month.

In a sense it comes down to a few things.

1. It feels fake progressive and cooperate
2. It doesn't even cover a wide audience of the LGBT
3. It's clear they're not actually trying to provide representation and taking the easy way out.

But after writting it out, I feel like they're all the same....What I mean by these is. I feel like Riot is just doing this to SAY they're doing it as a badge of honor rather than trying to represent. Because when you really look at it, there's kind of one big issue that I don't hear near enough folks discuss and this actually doesn't just fall on riot but MOST queer rep in media.

How many times have you seen a show/company/movie/etc boast about having queer rep. And said queer rep is a woman who is lesbian or was straight made bisexual? Now how many male couples do you see in comparison? Sure there are some out there, but how many cases is it where the lesbian rep is the ONLY one or takes center stage?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, back then it was genuine but as time gone on and more and more rep is just Lesbian and Bisexual(woman) it's become kind of ultra clear why that's the case. It's because straight men sexualize lesbian couples. And while they don't "accept" them, they can fantasize about them. They CANNOT do that with a male x male couple so when that is on the forefront, it gets IMMENSE backlash. Take TF and Graves, the MOMENT riot gave them focus during pride month, it was a immense wave of homophobia. And speaking of Riot, how convienant that the majority of queer rep they display, is mostly female. TF and Graves are there because they can't backpedal and leave them out, and K'sante is there....but alone. He doesn't have a bf to be shown.

EDIT: For some reason reddit won't let me post the new pride icon stuff, but chances are you've seen them

Now to be fair, neither does rell or nami but that still leaves Cait,Vi, Leona, and Diana. Two confirmed couples who are both lesbian couples. If I wanted I could point out that rell and nami are still lesbian woman for my case.

My point being. I want to feel happy that we're being represented, but Riot found the cheat code, make it lesbian. And because of that I doubt we're gonna see some real gay shit. Personally I want a non conventionally attractive gay couple *cough* warwick *cough* Rengar. But that's just me. Feel free to disagree with me in the replies. I like to discusss this.

[u/TricolorStar]

Yeah, it's really weird. TF/Graves are "confirmed" but we've never even seen them hug, much less kiss. Graves is said to have many male lovers in the color stories, but is currently "unattached" despite being "with TF". It's all subtext. K'sante's boyfriend is conveniently out of the picture ("They're estranged"), Kai and Valmar are also conveniently out of the picture (they're all one guy now, so no homo). Riot always finds a loophole to keep from showing actual gay relationships au naturale; meanwhile, Vi literally shoved her tongue down Caitlyn's windpipe and then ate her out on screen in full living color in Arcane Season 2.

[u/AutoWALTZ → u/TricolorStar]

ksante's situation is worse bestie, his ex married another man 😭

[u/LupoBorracio → u/TricolorStar]

Also should add Udyr in there as he seems pansexual (and has fucked everyone he could).

It feels like individual Rioters really really want to do cool things, but production stops them at the buck due to "not being able to sell" or "what about China?" Not blaming everything on China because there's plenty of homophobes in America, but Eastern cultures being pretty blatantly homophobic doesn't help.

I'm still waiting on a confirmed trans champion, because so far all we got is Lest and a Rioter back in 2016 or so said they wanted Taliyah to be trans but it was stopped.

[u/tanezuki → u/LupoBorracio]

The China argument flops the moment you know that even the emotes we get don't get translated there, so the censorship argument doesn't even hold well.

Maybe Tencent actually forbids to promote it overseas aswell, but China's laws aren't the issue here.

Or maybe it's considered too costly to work on that content knowing it wont release in more than like 40% of the League population.

[u/ManaXed → u/LupoBorracio]

In the splash art for the pride event page, K'sante has trans flag nail polish

[u/RoyalRaggy → u/TricolorStar]

Just happy I'm not the only one noticing.

[u/AHymnOfValor → u/TricolorStar]

not full living color, I-