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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   35144 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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The Developers specifically called the main character a white straight Christian male back after KCD1's release. (apologies I couldn't find a cleaner quote source quickly)

They retconned the main characters' heterosexuality because (of the leading theory that) the new owners of Warhorse Studios, Plaion, had DEI priorities that needed to be accommodated in the game.

Definitely possible that’s the reason, but dudes fucking dudes was definitely a thing in the Middle Ages (and viewed in a very dim light), and notably it didn’t usually take the form of an exclusive sexual identity (cf Achilles and Briseis and Patroclus) so calling them “bisexual” is arguably a bit anachronistic. Maybe there was some Plaion DEI influence, but it’s also possible that they just wanted to expand the romantic options open to players.

The middle ages might be the setting for the game, but the context is 2025. It's bisexuality, because it's 2025. It's DEI, because it's 2025.

it’s also possible that they just wanted to expand the romantic options open to players.

I will believe this when I can first have gay sex, and then murder my lover is a fit of rage and shame. After all, that's at least as historically accurate as soldiers sleeping together.

I’m not sure a myth from greek antiquity is a good example of medieval sexual mores.

Among the accusations that got the templars burned, aside from sorcery, and spitting on the cross, was sodomy. The evidence, their sigil: two men on a horse. When not under torture, they maintained it represented poverty, not buttfucking. Alas, that’s recantation, and the penalty, carbonization.

Deep in the forests of central europe, above the village my family hails from, there is a castle on a hill, built by a family whose last scion was burned at the stake for sodomy in the 15th century. The documents of his trial make for interesting reading. He was a minor noble, but still relatively rich and well-connected. He would have sex with a male servant or commoner and pay for it in expensive dresses and money, then they would try to blackmail him for more, and when the demands became too pressing, he would move on to another city. This only worked a few times and didn’t end well. So fucking dudes was a thing, but a very expensive and dangerous thing.

Frederick the Great was a homosexual, and his father executed one of his lovers, ostensibly for desertion but probably to punish his son.

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