Honestly when I first watched it, having not played the games, I probably eye-rolled a little and thought about how recent streaming shows have been going full tryhard mode about incorporating LGBTQ characters into existing storylines, but then I learned that was how the original character was portrayed in the game and thought no more of it.
Back when the game was first released, the inclusion of so many LGBT characters was pretty avant-garde (remember this was before things like Gamergate).
I don’t doubt this helped the series gain the fanbase it has. Besides being an excellent game with a well written story and Nintendo ERD levels of technical wizardry, it gave a lot of LGBT people actual characters to connect to, out of a desperately small pool at the time
Honestly when I first watched it, having not played the games, I probably eye-rolled a little and thought about how recent streaming shows have been going full tryhard mode about incorporating LGBTQ characters into existing storylines, but then I learned that was how the original character was portrayed in the game and thought no more of it.
Back when the game was first released, the inclusion of so many LGBT characters was pretty avant-garde (remember this was before things like Gamergate).
I don’t doubt this helped the series gain the fanbase it has. Besides being an excellent game with a well written story and Nintendo ERD levels of technical wizardry, it gave a lot of LGBT people actual characters to connect to, out of a desperately small pool at the time