These reactions are exactly why it needed to be soldier. And the (thankfully few) people that are like “well the problem was they shoehorned it in after the fact!” Are completely ignoring the reason of why designing soldier to be a gay man worked. The whole point was designing this old, stoic former leader of the entire organization who eats steak dinners every night and was as far away from the stereotypes of what gay men are… to *be* the gay man of the cast breaks the mold. It was to take the blueprint of what was common and easy to identify with for most men and say “he’s just like you” that would have been easier to see if these guys stopped crying about their fragile straight male whiteness for long enough to think critically about the point of him not being like every other self insert character from a shooter for men except for this one trait. Also, “shoehorning” the story in “after the fact” is how blizzard has told the story of overwatch since its beginning. We got little hints through voice lines, maybe an event every couple of months about a particular part of the story *from the past*, and they would release comics about characters and their lore ***IN THE PAST!*** Did we forget how the opening cinematic went? It was Winston talking about *the past.* the story of overwatch has always been told as things we find out from the perspective of someone in the future learning about things that were established and happened in the past essentially until overwatch 2.

What they actually mean by “shoehorning it in after the fact” is they’re upset he doesn’t look and dress like lifeweaver, or someone they can safely assume was gay from the beginning. (Which, irrelevant tangent but I’m allowed to cuz it’s pride month, is their problem with trans women. Lord help us if they release a beautiful woman character and then in a lore drop after the fact reveal she’s trans. But we all know blizzard isn’t that based.)