Most people reading this are likely aware of the controversy spinning around the Obsidian RPG “Pillars of Eternity.” The short version of it is that Kickstarter backers were allowed to submit their own poetry to be put into the game, and unfortunately one piece of backer poetry had a pretty disgusting subject matter dealing with the “trans panic” trope. Personally, I have no personal stake in the game, but nonetheless I was very sad to see such unfortunate humor scar the face of such a big game.
That sadly isn’t the end of my
issues with this controversy though. Eventually Obsidian came out to help mend the
controversy, telling us it was a mistake and they’d fix it. To be honest, I
didn’t have much faith in this. It’s great that they even acknowledged the
pleas to a fix, which sadly doesn’t happen often. Usually the cycle stops on
deaf ears.
I saw many people tell me and all the
other trans gamers that “Obsidian is smart. I have confidence they’ll do the
right thing.” People, particularly naïve cis people, seemed extremely
optimistic that for once a developer would fix such a gross issue.
Of course… I sadly knew better.
I’m no prophet or psychic, I’ve just
unfortunately been here before. When Obsidian came out with their fix, it was
to sadly no surprise that they didn’t fix anything. To be honest they made
things probably worse. The new poem colored our “tragic” poet in an even more
sympathetic light. He was misread. Those horrible trans people misunderstood
his words and took his head for it. We’re not only perverts, now we’re an angry
mob and murderers.
Like I said, zero surprise to me. We’ve
been here before. There’s a cycle around transphobic controversy. It starts
with a joke, then we find the joke, we ask for a change. Sometimes we get
forced away or sometimes they give us grand claims to correct themselves. That
rarely happens sadly. Usually instead they give a false apology and try to
excuse their joke. They make themselves the victim, and us an angry mob of scary
queer people. It’s a cycle that happens countless times, and trust me, will
happen again soon enough.
I can’t help but just feel defeated
by this prophecy I see playing out over and over again. Each time we are given
false hope, “This time things will be different.” No, they rarely are. Stop
TELLING me things will be different when I know better than you do everything
will happen again. No one learns from this. All that happens is a cycle of
trans people being exploited and crushed.
It’s hard for me to close with some
grand plan to fix this. The best I can hope for is that people read this and
notice the pattern and just remind everyone not to get their hopes up. This
problem could be remedied with more trans people working on these works.
Certainly if there were trans people in charge of okaying what poems are
acceptable or not this would never happen. Also, those involved in fixing the
situation, Obsidian in this case, could at the very least try and educate
themselves on trans issues. I don’t see that happening though. We’ll just
perpetuate the same ignorance, ignore the trans voices (you know the ones who
are ACTUALLY effected by this and know better), and all this will play out
again like a wheel of pain.
Oh wait that’s right… I’m a trans
voice too. And this piece will never reach your ears.
