Now if Dragon Age were about nothing but the homosexual experience and not a broader fantasy world, maybe Amistad Maupin would be the go-to guy. But as is — looks to me more like Orson Scott Card (one of the most decorated modern fantasy writers) is slumming to write any video game graphic-novelization.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/02/bioware-locking-down-gay-friendly-forum-topics-again.ars?utm_source=microblogging&utm_medium=arstch&utm_term=Main%20Account&utm_campaign=microblogging

I remembered the But I Digress columns about his friend Andy and the way they were both treated in high school because Andy was gay. David was bleating about how we should show how open minded and tolerant we are by buying the game despite Card’s views, but if you look at Card’s views he isn’t interested in giving any “Leftists” a goddamn inch, so why should we?

I DID end up buying the game when it was on sale, and quite frankly, David’s script was lacking anyway.

And I’m buying I Am Iron Man this week, so boycott over.

Which, I’m sorry, is utter bullshit. It stops being a personal view the moment he uses the platform afforded to him–by working on projects like DA–to espouses not only those views, but the active persecution of a huge segment of society.

This isn’t a political issue, it’s a human rights issue. If Card had taken similar stands on other human rights issues, he wouldn’t be let within ten feet of a big IP like this.

I don’t disagree with this out of hand – professional writers should be able to write from a variety of perspectives. But it just seems odd that someone whose made such pronounced anti-gay statements in the past would WANT to work on this kind of property. It’s like Dave Sim announced that he was going to do a comic book adaptation of Jeanette Winterston – an interesting enough choice, based on talent alone, but given his view of women, one can’t help but wonder that certain core elements would be at risk of being stripped out in order to make it palatable for him to work on.

“As for how anyone feels about Orson Scott Card’s personal views, they’re not very relevant to the work at hand unless it’s being used as a platform for those views (which it is not). If someone really feels that the politics of a writer and their creative endeavours can’t be seperated, that’s up to them, but eliminating anyone from being eligible to work on a creative project simply because someone might find their personal views objectionable isn’t something we’re prepared to do.”

oh dear

Card was involved in a game called Shadow Complex (which Dan mentions) which generated a similarly negative reaction in the “games press”– where he was defended vocally (and I thought, quite lamely) by Peter David. See,e.g., http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24627.

The Tone Argument (found under “Silencing Tactics”):
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument

Your “you can do better” refrain also comes off as enormously patronizing. Again, I’m sure that nothing you’ve written was intended to aggravate, belittle, or otherwise invalidate my or others’ feelings on this issue, but I gotta tell you, you’re doing a hell of a job.

- Christopher

Isn’t the bold insensitivity, or surprising lack of oversight, of selecting an apparently notorious anti-gay proponent to write the comic adaptation of a gay-friendly property, newsworthy (or at least commentary-worthy) in and of itself? (Personally, I don’t know enough about Dragon Age to say one way or the other.)

Either way, for those for whom this is an issue, I can’t think of a more appropriate response than sharing your displeasure, however tersely, with other potential readers. What more is required?

It’s not a very effective mode of response against me, either. You can do better. I doubt I’m part of any problem, but if I am, I’d like not to be and deserve to be hammered until I’m not. I hope that it doesn’t take time away from a better response to the original issue, but that’s your prerogative, too.

Welcome to being part of the problem.

And of course I’m looking into the matter myself and will consider any number of responses, including editorial. Thank you for the suggestion, though.

In general I think the gaming audience and media isn’t the most sensitive to gay issues, so I don’t think the news has turned into a shitstorm, though it’s not too late to start one ;)

I also think that it could be simply that Bioware and/or EA were totally unaware of OSC’s homophobic rants, and IDW was clueless to the gay characters in the game, EA could have just given them a basic outline of the game, setting and storyline…is the comic going to use characters from the game, or be an original story set in the Dragon Age universe?

As far as the fuck-you goes, I don’t know sometimes the simplest response is the best, since reasoning with someone is a futile exercise

Seriously, I’d love to have something better to write up.

And yeah, yeah, fuck me, too. Still: is this it?