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Try logging into League of Legends, and you'll soon become acquainted with ubiquitous habit of gay bashing. When things go wrong, which they so often do in online games, the torrent of poorly spelled homophobia gushes forth. You're rarely just a "n00b"; you're a "gay n00b," or, if you've been foolish enough to jump into a North American server, you're almost certainly a "faggot." This is all before you announce that you're gay and find that kind of talk offensive. That particular mistake is only made once.The more I came to identify with "gayness," the more I also became aware how de facto heteronormative single-player games are, and how their obsession with hyper-masculinity was so alienating. Maybe that's why I've always found silent or nameless protagonists the most fascinating, as it's possible to project the feminine aspects of my selfhood onto them without feeling like I would be personally offending the creators. Even when characters in games do have same-sex dalliances, it never felt representative of any sort of romance I've experienced. Shepard's masc-for-masc love affair in Mass Effect 3 was the kind of poor imitation of intimacy found in badly acted porn.
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