Thalyssra doesn’t have to like one or the other – the B in LGBT exists for a reason!
She can have had a “deeper” history with Elisande and now have the romance with Lor’themar, neither contradicts the other.
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This is also true yes! 
And I’m all for this as well, but it would have been nice to have the other part also a bit more showcased(or told) to not just leave it to vauge interpretations!
Anduin wants to bang draenei and dwarf ladies in the novels.
Now if they’d just confirm his attraction to Wrathion we’d have a B.
I always imagined the Nightborne would have had an extremely fluid interpretation of sexuality anyway, as they come across as a people who indulge their feelings and don’t really pay attention to stuff like how it’s labelled or whatnot. So in their society they just have relationships with people they click with and share common ground with and it’s as simple as that.
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How -any- character isnt shown to swoon over Wrathion with how he looks now since 8.3 is beyond me.
most of the cases I have seen were paragraphs starting with “x is Gay/Lesbian/Genderfluid.” at the top of their personality description or on their Currently page between their HP numbers and theme song or art link
Its just as jarring as writing that your character is the breeding bull of Exodar tbh
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Absolutely, people would and do fetishise LGBT people - the old adage of the straight man finding lesbians ‘hot’ still applies, and there is a lot of that with the more recent fetishes of trans men and women.
In the earlier days of gaming when it was a lot more male-dominated than it is nowadays, it was rampant - so I do understand the instinct to think of someone openly displaying their sexuality or gender identity as such a fetishist. It’s just a harmful instinct we should fight against, and focus on the real issue - not that queer people exist, but that often straight people hurtfully objectify them.
It’s a part of it, absolutely. It’s a scapegoat all the same, though, because it levels the blame entirely on a foreign government when the problem is that capitalism values profit over justice.
All characters are bisexual unless explicitly stated otherwise. Every single one.
I will not be taking questions at this time.
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Looking at racial leaders alone where’s there NO mention of any attraction prior (or stuff like kids, which although it doesn’t rule it out it makes it a reasonable assumption)
Mekkatorque
Tess Greymane
Yrel, Maraad
Captain Fareeya
Shandris (I don’t think there’s any mention here), ditto for Maiev
Baine
Geya’rah
Zekhan/Rokhan/Talanji
Lillian Voss (okay, but undead so…)
Gazlowe
So there’s plenty of characters where such could just “crop up” as an additional fact about their character that doesn’t contradict anything, although that said, contradictions aren’t necessarily the end, because there’s always B.
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All of these are really good examples yeah, and it would be fun to see some of this come to fruition in any way 
Brief-side tangent from WoW, I really liked how this was essentially the approach to characters in Dragon Age 2(DA:I similliar but a little less). Stardew Valley also runs on this, with every single dateable character being just datable for anyone(either as just bi, or gay depending on your own character gender, or straight)
So I like this mentality for WoW too, very nice!
And as usual, everyone gets 
for a bit cus of the usual issue with me.
Alas some people bleed their OOC into RP, all you can do is report and call it out.
If someone’s going to take offence OOC to something my character does IC maybe RP isn’t the thing for them. Or, they should separate themselves from the scenario… and walk away.
And I’m saying this with an LGBTQ background - I am a bisexual woman. So is Ninmi. My OOC does not dictate what my character does IC. I understand for some people it might, but then, I avoid RPing with people who are like that, and not just for LGBTQ, for anything. If someone is going to take IC/OOC that heavily they are not worth my time.
As an example, I’ve RP’d, a long time ago, a Sin’dorei woman who was very proud, haughty, and VERY much against ‘polluting the bloodlines’. She was against same sex relationships, but do you want to know what she was also against? Any Sin’dorei relationships that were also with dating another race that wasn’t a Sin’dorei. Alright, alright, now we’re talking about fantasy races, so surely that can’t be racism, right? After all it’s in a fantasy. Racism is racism. But the thing is, nobody will take offence to it, because these races simply do not exist in real life.
If we’re going to start putting boundaries on what you can and cannot RP because it might offend someone IRL then only ever RP ‘the good guy’ and be prepared to change your character 24/7, or something they do might offend someone. You RP a drug addled maniac? You can’t anymore, someone had a bad experience in a drug den IRL, and they’re now having a panic attack. You RP a flirty old man? You can’t do that. The young woman behind your screen is starting to suffer because they, once, had a bad experience and your character looks exactly like the one they had a bad experience with. You’re RPing a character with a mental illness (depression, anxiety, hell, maybe they’re an addled war veteran with PTSD)? Nope. You can’t do that, either. The reason for that one should be obvious.
I think the question is where to draw the line, and where to keep it. For me, personally? I just won’t RP with people who are the kinds of people to take OOC into IC in such a heavy way that it pollutes their character to employ such sick fantasies. I’d rather that, then try to put rules on what is and isn’t okay to RP.
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While normally I would agree, because I think taking offence to a character being abrasive, or rude, or any other manner of negative traits is usually a silly thing to do and frankly reeks of over-investment/self-inserting onto a character, something like sexuality and sexual orientation are subjects that hit very close to home. People roleplaying gay characters could very well be doing so online because their real life simply does not allow them to. And as a bisexual woman, you should absolutely respect members of the LGBT+ community who don’t necessarily have the option of being themselves in a real-life environment.
I’ve adressed this previously, and I think this is generally okay. It’s not so much ‘homophobic’ as it is being duty-bound and following ideals. As this character, you don’t hate gay people, you don’t hate same-sex relationships, but you do see them as detrimental to the goal of keeping the bloodline going - and that, is an acceptable, fleshed-out character flaw in my opinion.
I’ll address all of these by saying that all of them can be done well with tact. While yes, in niche cases, these scenarios would cause upset, I would make the arguement that they are nowhere near as commonplace or widely-applicable as homophobic behaviour is. This isn’t to say that they’re invalid points, or that people couldn’t be upset by them, they absolutely could be, and I’d argue that roleplaying such things publiclly is rather unwise, but I think the likelihood of such is greatly reduced compared to homophobic behaviours felt by the LGBT+ community.
I do not think that everyone needs to roleplay some morally pure protagonist with no agenda beyond being wholesome and uplifting. That is not the point of this thread. I am all for villainous characters with nefarious intent. But when that villainy starts striking close to home for many people of our community, and potentially shows that evil not just within the character, but potentially the person playing the character, mostly in instances where slurs, prejudices, and real-world view points come in, then I think it’s the right call to say we shouldn’t do it.
Edit: My spelling and grammar is terrible today, my apologies.
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phew, good thing the Discrimination Understander has logged in
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My general question, not towards anybody in particular or just homophobia is, why would you deliberatly choose to RP a trait, or thing, in a public setting(not talking about rp with friends here or something), that you know for a fact might push some people’s buttons or upset someone?
I guess I don’t really see RP as some sort of statement or realistic re-enactment of harsh realities, but a thing that is done as a hobby for fun to relax and enjoy a collective storytelling.
A really good point was made earlier too that things like openly expressed homophobia is actually against the ToU/CoC for WoW in general, so just because we are roleplaying doesnt change that at all, we’re still meant to abide by the chat rules. So just…don’t do it?
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Maybe a bit late to drop in after 300+ comments but hey.
Sexuality in RP, as with anything else really, it just comes down to how you use it. If you want your character to be homosexual because you find it more natural for you to create such a character then go right ahead. But the same way you shouldn’t make a dark skinned character just to spam the N-word, you shouldn’t make a homosexual character to spam your innapropriate fantasies in Goldshire and whatnot.
Maybe I’m oversimplifying, but in a 12+ game and with the general themes WoW is approaching, sexuality has, quite obviously, very little impact in RP.
I will say one more thing. If you know you’re going to drop some very rude comment to someone IC (even for a very good IC reason), maybe drop them an OOC whisper before. It can go a long way, trust me.
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Not sure what is so hard to understand about this topic. Pretty sure this is also about people being against LGBT stuff OOCly as well as ICly. Because those people exist in AD, sadly. It’s just a very edgy concept to RP and I’m not sure why anyone, out of all the concepts and creative things one can possibly RP as, someone has to RP as ''gays bad".
Regarding racism, it’s an entirely different topic in WoW - as it’s something that actually exists and has been showed countless and countless times over. Night Elves hate Orcs, Humans hate Orcs, Orcs hate everything, Dwarves hate ach laddie, dem filthy rotters. Just generalizing here, but you get my point. It’s a completely different thing compared to just outright getting mad at, and hating on LGBT for no reason, whether that is ICly or OOCly.
Also, going back to the whole discussion regarding people expressing their sexuality and lust bars in their TRP, I normally don’t care that much, however, it is usually pretty obvious when someone is just an ERP fiend and those people get a one way ticket to ignore-land, regardless whether they are straight, bi or gay. Just because someone might act a bit flamboyant doesn’t always mean they immediately want to hop into a Garrison with you.
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“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
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Wholly agreed. I’m not advocating for gay characters to be able to behave in lustful fashions, because I’m no advocate of straight characters acting in that manner either. I will say that it’s a damned shame that the topic of ERP comes up so much in the conversation of LGBT+ roleplay, however, because I do feel it’s perpetuating the stigma that gay people are inherently lustful, and I think that’s simply not the case. If you really want to come down to it, technically I guess I’m not advocating for ‘homosexuality’ as much as I am ‘homoromanticism’, but I digress.
Also biromanticism, panromanticism, aromanticism. There’s more to LGBT than just the G, of course.
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Damn, Terry is an Alliance boy. Respect. 
Well… that’s broadly what we’ve agreed between ourselves here. We already know that homophobia/transphobia/various other brands of bigotry are banned on World of Warcraft – we’re not debating what you can/cannot roleplay, because Blizzard themselves have already given us the answer.
I wanted to say that the difference between a character who isn’t portrayed as interested in sex/relationships and one who is aromantic or asexual is subtle but incredibly important, but I couldn’t find a good fit for it
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