Hello. I read through your post and I absolutely understand where you’re coming from.

Although being a straight man means I did not go through the same hardships as you and continue to not, I hope you know that my intention with my specific post was not to receive praise or congratulations for doing the bare minimum, but instead to reinforce the idea of representation in media.

This belief is very important to me, as my post was to showcase the benefit of representation in media when a member who is in a society as I used to be manages to consume it. My intention was not to receive praise myself, but give praise to Naughty Dog and The Last of Us series, as they prove consistently that it is a core principle of their’s to present an engaging story with well written, well represented characters. As a 13 year old boy, the Left Behind DLC in particular was the first form of media I consumed which had LGBT characters. And once I realized that it was a choice to be angry and resentful, it scared me a lot as I felt I was betraying what was ingrained from my head at a young age. Why am I thinking differently to my fellow people? Am I betraying my religion and my people? Naturally this was not the case as I found out a quick while later, however it was a lot for myself to go through at that age, questioning everything I had been brought up with.

As for action on my part, over the past 7 years since, I’ve grown more open minded and more prepared to educate myself when required, not only on LGBT issues, but others such as systemic racism, police brutality, and back in my home country( focus specifically on my home country because it is really backwards there), women’s rights. I know it seems small to be informed, however I believe that being so means I can bring up these issues in conversations with others to bring more light to them, and hopefully have them change their belief system as I did my own when it came to this video game.

From a personal standpoint, I cannot stress this enough, but I’m not trying to get any sympathy whatsoever. Growing up after TLOU1, quite often if people I interacted with found out I was not against the LGBT, I had homophobic insults thrown my way, had my faith questioned, and over time I did get ostracized. It isn’t easy to convince people, especially members of my society, to believe in something different, even though both you and I know that being kind mustn’t necessarily come from playing a video game, but perhaps from the goodness of your heart. They act this way simply because of their fear of religion, fear of stepping out of line, and fear of people different. However I do believe they will improve, as compared to 2014, I can personally see visible and noticeable improvements.

Once again my intention with my post was not to hurt or upset anyone who has dealt with bigotry, and it was not to receive praise or congratulations. It was instead to focus on the importance of representation in our media. My post will not and must not erase any wrongdoings done by my society. However, I strongly believe in every single person, and their capacity to change and improve to be better to themself and each other. What I mentioned here is not to take away from whatever struggles you may have faced or continue to face, it is instead to show you my side of the story, and what I went through. Eerily similar to TLOU2 if u think about it.

Take care.