It’s the Year of Our Lord 2019 and storytelling is still important. In some cases the stories are the same, like the age-old tale of good triumphing over evil, but they’re being delivered in increasingly more novel ways. Comics are drawn and fan fiction is written and YouTube sketches are filmed, and sometimes the collaborators aren’t even in the same city, let alone country. In other cases the stories, while nothing new, are finally being given the opportunity to be told. The idea of finding yourself isn’t an original one, but the narrative of coming out as gay or lesbian or transgender or any other identity has only recently found a foothold in popular media.

Storytelling and identity are crucial building blocks to our culture, and both are heavily intertwined (as are all things, these days) with the internet (it would be remiss of me not to mention that I chose to do so in a podcast I co-hosted). This is certainly as true for a multi-award-winning online first-person shooter as it is for a series of books that wrapped up a dozen years ago. The Overwatch and Harry Potter universes are like ours in that they are populated by a myriad of different characters, some straight and some LGBT+, but I want to delve into how the similarities, and ultimately the differences, of their respective coming out stories (in both cases the term “coming out” feels accurate, as none of the characters discussed were initially introduced as being anything other than straight).

“Yer a Gay Man, Dumbledore”

Before touching on her approach to revealing one of her characters’ sexual orientations, it’s worth making note of how the billionaire author has reentered our collective conversation. Two years ago a BuzzFeed writer was one of the first to report on a shocking revelation found on Pottermore, a site Rowling created for her legion of fans to learn more about the Wizarding World. Most people online will have come across this by now, but the page in question was about the Chamber of Secrets, and explained that wizards once vanished their excrement in lieu of using toilets. It resulted in one of my favourite Tumblr posts:

The user has since deleted their blog, so no direct link, sorry!

This caused a minor hubbub and then faded away, as all news does. Fast-forward to exactly a week ago, when the Pottermore Twitter page decided to unearth this particular trivia tidbit to an internet that had somehow managed to survive the hellscape that 2018 wrought.

Among the many, many “Tweetus Deletus” gifs was one response that both roasts this (very bad) piece of worldbuilding and helps set us back on topic:

Van Arendonk is clearly addressing the stomach-turning topic at hand, but this was far from the first time that the author had chosen to elaborate on her universe after the Harry Potter series had wrapped up. A decade before the original “Chamber Pot of Secrets” debacle Rowling announced during a Q&A at Carnegie Hall that she “always thought Dumbledore was gay.” She went on to explain that the character had fallen in love with wizard Hitler-stand-in Grindelwald, which turned out about as well as you would expect. At the time of this writing that remains the full extent of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore’s coming out.

This isn’t to say that there haven’t been opportunities to depict him as having been actively romantically involved with other men. Last November’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald featured both the genocidal sorcerer and school headmaster as young (by comparison) men, with many fans assuming this was the time period that Rowling had been referring to.

Dumbledore and Grindelwald as (actually) young men.

The screenshot above is from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, not from the aforementioned Fantastic Beasts sequel. As many fans have noted, the two wizards actually share no scenes with one another. If only they had taken Jude Law, the actor portraying him, at face value when he said several months prior to the film’s release that: “(they’re) not going to reveal everything all at once.” Potterheads would discover that this meant no references, explicit or otherwise, to his being attracted to men. Currently the film series’ is slated for release on November 20, 2020.

“We’re All LGBT+ Now”

This past Monday lore-starved Overwatch fans were surprised by the delivery of “Bastet”, a short story penned by lead writer Michael Chu that progressed the game’s treacle-slow narrative, the kind of rare occasion that results in the generation of dozens of “i owe you my life” memes. Although it focused on 60-year-old Egyptian sniper Ana Amari, what really set the internet ablaze was a conversation she has with her fellow vigilante-in-hiding Jack Morrison, AKA Soldier: 76.

Illustration by Arnold Tsang.

After finding a photograph that he’s been keeping all of these years, she brings up the young man he has his arm around, asking about what could have been.

“Vincent deserved a happier life than the one I could give him.” Jack sighed. “We both knew that I could never put anything above my duty. Everything I fought for was to protect people like him… That’s the sacrifice I made.”

“Relationships don’t work out so well for us, do they?” Ana said, unconsciously running her thumb over where her wedding ring used to be.

Given an earlier passage that highlights his inability to convince Ana that he’s pleased about Vincent’s present marital status (happily married), it doesn’t take much to arrive at the conclusion that he’s gay, or at the very least was romantically involved with a man. Some might read them as simply being very good friends, which, I mean, c’mon.

While this may seem like the dictionary definition of storytelling, this falls more in line with Rowling’s approach when Chu, after waiting a few hours for people to have read the story, took to Twitter to respond to what is very likely a deluge of tweets demanding confirmation:

Faithful readers (I’m “back”, did you miss me?) will remember when I briefly mentioned a similar coming out story in December 2016, touching on an Overwatch comic called “Reflections” which featured face-of-the-game Tracer kissing another woman named Emily. As he did earlier this week Chu once again came forward on Twitter to clarify for fans who might have been confused about their relationship.

In addition to that, a Blizzard representative provided a statement to IGN, which has to at least be on par with comments made on the head writer’s personal (his bio says: “Opinions are my own. Unreliable narrator.”) Twitter account.

“Tracer is a lesbian on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. As in real life, having variety in our characters and their identities and backgrounds helps create a richer and deeper overall fictional universe. From the beginning, we’ve wanted the universe of Overwatch to feel welcoming and inclusive, and to reflect the diversity of our players around the world. As with any aspect of our characters’ backgrounds, their sexuality is just one part of what makes our heroes who they are.”

The narrative of Overwatch deserves a multi-part series of blog posts in and of itself given the varying opinions on the rate, method, and quality of its delivery, but all I’ll say right now is that there is no readily apparent progressing story within the game itself. Gameplay consists primarily of six-player teams going head-to-head to (violently) accomplish objectives, and both heroes and villains can be chosen regardless of whether or not they would ever canonically team up. There is a seasonal event which thus far has provided a way of playing through past missions, but as far as “current events” that take place in Overwatch‘s present nothing currently exists.

That said, there are details within the game that provide evidence of both Soldier: 76 and Tracer’s respective same-sex relationships.

The Soldier: 76 spray “Jack and Vincent” and the Tracer spray “Emily”

As seen above, there are sprays unique to each character which depict significant others, both past and present. When playing on the King’s Row (London, where “Reflections” partially takes place) map Tracer has the chance to utter one of several voice lines, one in particular being “Wonder if I have time to visit Emily? … No, better stay focused…” Another has her responding to an invitation from another character asking about her and her girlfriend.

It’s a far cry from seeing these relationships play out in-game, or have any kind of significant impact, but these acknowledgements are there.

When Did It Happen? (And a Lot More How)

Without having seen any evidence to the contrary, both J.K. Rowling and Michael Chu are straight, as both have spouses of the opposite sex (the latter was married just last October). To be clear, I firmly believe that anyone can write for any character (the time and effort and sensitivity needed varies). It does bear mentioning, however, that their personal orientations mean that neither are writing their respective stories from a place of personal experience. I should also state that I’m choosing to think the best of them.

In other words, I have no intention of entertaining the idea that either writer, to use a few buzzwords, lazily shoehorned in LGBT+ characters into their work in order to pander to the SJWs (my thoughts on that last word here). The alternative is to consider their intentions to be pure, which begs the question of what their intentions were, exactly.

A straightforward response would be that they’re simply providing backstory, fleshing out characters that their respective fanbases already know and love. The differences to highlight would be the way that Harry Potter and Overwatch told, and continues to tell, their stories, as well as when these characters came out relative to their creation.

Dumbledore, as portrayed by Richard Harris in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Albus Dumbledore was first introduced in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (the Sorcerer’s Stone in the US) over 20 years ago in 1997. The film adaptation of that book was released in 2001, with sequels and corresponding movies dropping in subsequent years. With Pottermore still a twinkle in Rowling’s eye (limited registration began in 2011), books and film were the author’s primary means of crafting her universe.

To simplify things, Dumbledore was “born” in 1997 and “came out” in 2007. This event also took place 91 days after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the septilogy, was published. At that point there were still three films left to be made, with the seventh being split into two parts, though none followed up on the knowledge that Rowling had shared.

As far as its timeline is concerned, the Overwatch beta, open to a limited few in order to test the game before its wide release, began on October 27, 2015. The game was officially released on May 24, 2016. Tracer “came out” in December 2016 and Soldier: 76 did the same just this month (January 2019).

As mentioned, and for better or for worse, there is no currently existing, consistent, effective in-game storytelling in Overwatch. That said, the game’s narrative has, since its announcement at Blizzcon 2014, taken the form of cinematics (as seen below), comics, and most recently, with “Bastet”, short stories.

Overwatch also launched with a website that provides for each hero, in addition to their abilities and difficulty level, a short bio (here’s Symmetra’s, one of my personal favourites). From the beginning the team behind the first-person shooter has taken a multimedia approach to worldbuilding, though admittedly not on a schedule that many appreciate. As an online game Overwatch also continues to be patched with content (typically in the form of new maps and heroes) and as such has no easily discernible “end date.” This is a story that continues to be told.

Both Harry Potter and Overwatch are reigning champions in their own right, having amassed awards, accolades, and millions of faithful fans. A number of those fans identify as being LGBT+, or haven’t yet. They have family members or loved ones who are members of the LGBT+ community, or who don’t yet know any at all, possibly even as a personal choice. The point is that queer stories matter and have always mattered. The fact that these two fanbases are able to see gay characters in beloved media is a very special thing.

How those characters come to be, however, is another matter entirely. In Rowling’s Wizarding World coming out is magical. Words are spoken and changes occur, but not all of them can be perceived by the eyes of the untrained and ordinary. In Overwatch coming out is the future. It’s both imminent and right now and, to paraphrase a scientist cautioning a young genetically enhanced gorilla, not accepting people at face value and daring to see yourselves reflected in them.

Bettenridge’s law of headlines dictates that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” In the case of whether or not J.R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth is a fantasy land that has space for people of colour, it’s unfortunately not that simple.

The full title for the television series taking place in the same universe as the critically acclaimed The Lord of the Rings was announced just this past month, with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power acting as a prequel set thousands of years before the original trilogy of films. Soon after followed 23 individual posters featuring the hands of different characters, a startling development for those who hadn’t been closely following casting news for the show.

As briefly discussed in my first post this year, there’s nothing more emblematic of our present-day culture than division and polarization. With every announcement decisions must be made and opinions cemented, dictating what side of any particular issue you find yourself on. To say that the same is true for the existence of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, [and] People of Colour) in a historically lily-white franchise is putting it lightly. The following tweet made by the amusingly named (at the time of this writing) “guy online” highlights the conflict accordingly:

Knowing this is the case and having these camps laid out in such stark contrast makes it awkward for me to admit that I’ve found myself in a place where I’m also side-eyeing production for casting actors of colour in various roles, a sentiment that on the surface places me in some admittedly unpleasant company. Let me explain-Almost as a baseline, I’m generally quite pleased when I see that BIPOC talent being given opportunities in film or television, especially when those roles veer outside of the stereotypes that the entertainment industry has often placed them. On one level I’m genuinely happy for actors like Sir Lenny Henry, a Black British man who will be portraying a Harfoot, a precursor of the Hobbits most of us are familiar with. There’s even textual evidence to suggest that this is accurate to the source material, as the prologue of The Lord of the Rings cites that this breed was “browner of skin than other hobbits.”

At this point I almost hesitate to keep writing, as heading over to YouTube to grab a link for you to watch the trailer for the upcoming series is a sickening reminder of the kind of company I absolutely do not want to keep:

The “content” seen above is, to keep with my general rule not to use profanity in these posts, hot garbage. It’s designed to draw clicks by further enraging those who are already angry about the casting, a melange of racists and misogynists and others. The thing is, I think, or am at least hopeful, that it’s possible to promote and desire diversity and representation in media while still wanting it to be done well.

I want to believe that it’s possible to be excited for Puerto Rican actor Ismael Cruz Córdova landing a star role in a high-profile project while still feeling uncomfortable that he’s playing the elf Arondir (as seen on the right). It was a feeling I brought to a group of BIPOC friends who likewise want to see more faces like ours on screens both large and small.

An initial response that cropped up a few times was that this smacks of Hollywood virtue signalling. To put it another way, those in the entertainment industry are all too aware of the largely Caucasian landscape they’ve created and would like to make amends. A particular point that I couldn’t get out of my head was that The Lord of the Rings, and Middle-earth as a universe and franchise, is not “for” some people.

My initial reaction was to balk at such a strong statement. Doesn’t art (good art, and I tend to lump Tolkien’s writing beneath this umbrella) have the ability to transcend barriers and appeal to almost any person of any race, colour, or creed? After mulling it over for several hours I struck on the fact maybe the idea isn’t so much that The Lord of the Rings as an entity doesn’t have room within its fanbase for BIPOC audiences but that it doesn’t have room for BIPOC on-screen talent. Middle-earth has historically not been a place for actors who aren’t white.

It feels almost regressive to bring up questions of a fictional world’s internal logic, yet again feeling as if we’re veering disturbingly close to a certain kind of rage-bait rhetoric, but I think the point still stands. If Amazon is creating a series that’s meant to be a prequel of sorts to Peter Jackson’s films then why don’t those works contain any BIPOC actors? (Without heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics, of course.)

It feels like retroactively diversifying a world that has already firmly established itself in our public consciousness as being almost exclusively Caucasian, in part due to Tolkien pulling so much inspiration from northern European literature and in part due to Hollywood being much paler both in front of and behind the camera in the late ’90s and early ’00s compared to today. Notice I wrote “almost exclusively white,” which finally allows me to personally answer the question posed by the title of this blog post-

The Lord of the Rings and Middle-earth already include people of colour

It’s just that they’re villains. To be more specific, the Haradrim and the Easterlings are both groups of Men who sided with Sauron during the War of the Ring during the Third Age (in other words, they allied with The Dark Lord AKA The One Enemy AKA Big Satan Analogue).

The former, also known as Southrons, are described in The Two Towers (according to Wikipedia, since I couldn’t find a copy to search through on Google Books): “as having ‘brown’ skin, with black plaits of hair braided with gold.” They hailed from a land south of Gondor and Mordor. Peter Jackson and co. decided to base the Haradrim in the corresponding film on 12th century Saracens, as seen below.

The “wild Easterlings” are Men who were corrupted by Sauron and who originally lived in the far east of Middle-earth. Tolkien described them, and this is a big oof, as “slant-eyed.” A number of regiments make a very brief appearance during The Return of the King, and looked like this:

To set aside any inkling of conversation about whether Tolkien himself was a racist, and there’s plenty of evidence to support either side of that debate, I want to acknowledge that both of these groups are strongly othered and not afforded the depth that Elves, Dwarves, and even Orcs are (the latter, at the bare minimum, had dialogue in the novels). The author never got around to developing languages for either group as he did the aforementioned races, and precious few are even named.

Not to belabour my point, Black and brown people exist in Middle-earth, and they have from almost the very beginning! If the creative minds behind The Rings of Power wanted to feature actors of colour, which I want to recognize as laudable in its own right, they had options! The reason they decided not to is because it wouldn’t be easy.

That’s not to say that that producing a series that cost upwards of $100 million is “easy,” but let me put it another way. If you want to introduce a Black character in your Lord of the Rings show which one is easier: creating a new character from a group of people who don’t have a single spoken line of English across all six Peter Jackson films OR creating a new character that’s a Black Dwarven princess.

The creatives, and I use that term mockingly, at Amazon had the opportunity to delve into Tolkien’s text and invent and explore and expand on what’s there and I think it’s beyond optimistic to assume they gave the Haradrim or Easterlings even a second thought. After all, why try to add nuance and three-dimensionality to races that are portrayed solely as corrupted and evil across Lord of the Rings media?

Lindsey Weber, executive producer of the series, told Vanity Fair that: “It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like.” The truth is that Middle-earth, much like our own regular Earth, contains people and cultures who have been frequently depicted as cliched and foreign to the point of barely being seen as human at all. The Rings of Power was a chance for them to show the Easterlings before Sauron, the Haradrim as their own empire and nation unique from the Rohirrim or the Dúnedain of Gondor. But they didn’t. People of colour have canonically always belonged in Middle-earth, but whether or not they receive the spotlight has a depressingly obvious answer.

I’ve never been ashamed to openly admit that I’m a Christian (or that I was a virgin, for that matter, way back in 2011 when I still updated this blog on the reg). That being said, the truth is that I spend precious little time in faith-related spaces on the internet. I might pause mid-scroll when I spot an interesting thread from /r/christianity, but the majority of my engagement with religious writing online comes from Facebook, where a friend will share a link to a Relevant article or a rebuttal from a Professor of Theology at Wheaton College to a write-up on how his school has become too “woke.” But that wasn’t always the case. There was a point in time, almost exactly six years ago, when the faith-related internet content I read and enjoyed was of a decidedly different bent.

The Babylon Bee, March 17, 2016

The Babylon Bee was launched on March 1st, 2016, and by all accounts was something believers never even knew we wanted: a Christian version of The Onion. In its early days we were treated, and I write this with complete seriousness, to such satiric bangers as “Worship Leader Caught In Infinite Loop Between Bridge And Chorus” and “Witty Church Sign Sparks Revival.” These were articles clearly written with the kind of inside baseball that is so integral to comedy, deftly lampooning the life experiences of countless Christians. And, just like The Onion, The Babylon Bee was an immediate hit on platforms like Facebook, where the headline alone is enough to sell the joke.

As the years went by, however, I noticed that not only were fewer members of my various circles linking to the site, but those that were yielded stories that were less and less focused on (sorry about the alliteration) critiquing contemporary Christian culture and more and more focused on…politics.

To be clear, it’s important to note that it’s generally impossible to be apolitical. Sitting down to eat in a restaurant may seem wholly innocuous, until we consider what it once meant to do so while Black in the United States. Marriage is a commonplace, run-of-the-mill union between a man and a woman, but when it isn’t is seen as something else entirely. Even admitting to being a practicing member of an organized religion as I did in the opening line to this post can be hugely divisive depending on the context. All of that is to say that The Babylon Bee was always political, as much as anything is or can be. What actually happened, as you probably guessed from the screenshot above, is that the Bee took a hard-line stance in aligning itself with the American political right.

The how is quite straightforward, and to avoid simply regurgitating its History section on Wikipedia, boils down to this: founder Adam Ford sold the The Babylon Bee to present owner and CEO Seth Dillon in early 2018.¹ The marked shift in content took place not too long afterwards.

I’m well aware that referring to this as “The Greatest Loss in Online Christendom” is a tall order, but it genuinely makes me feel sad. Countless websites from Cracked to ComicsAlliance are mere shadows of their former selves, and I’ve mourned many of them, but it’s so much more than just The Babylon Bee churning out content that doesn’t appeal to yours truly. It’s that the site went from producing funny, relatable, good Christian satire to…not doing that.

The Babylon Bee Identifies As Not Funny…

Full disclosure, but while I’d been meaning to write this post for a little over a year now, what led to me actually setting fingers to keys were two recent catalysts, the first of which was an episode of Some More News titled “Why Is Conservative Comedy So… Not Very Good”-

-specifically the section starting at 1:01:48, the title of which I stole for my heading above. Host Cody Johnston dives into the site repeatedly returning to a singular “joke” which, if you haven’t guessed from the name, is focused on trans people and gender identity. Here’s owner and CEO Seth Dillon proving that very fact, and I genuinely have no idea whether or not he’s even aware of this.

I mean, come on.

Setting aside the Bee’s obsession with harping about gender, there’s an illuminating interview on The Atlantic with the site’s editor in chief Kyle Mann that helps spotlight their ethos when it comes to comedy.

Green: You guys wrote an article in January 2020 that was shared roughly 3 million times, claiming that Democrats called for the American flag to be flown at half-staff when the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in an American strike.

What makes this funny? I know that’s the worst question to ask somebody who writes jokes.

Mann: It’s funny because General Soleimani died and then they called for flags to be flown at half-mast. Get it?

Green: But that’s what I’m saying. Besides just saying the joke again, what makes it funny?

Mann: Do you want me to explain the joke to you? Because the joke is that General Soleimani died and Democrats were sad.

If you don’t know why that’s funny, then you’re not the audience for the joke. The funniest part is that it got fact-checked because it was so believable that Democrats would do that. That’s a real honor.

How is it that Mann, who at the time had been writing for the online publication for going on five years, was unable to break down the humour in the content he’s responsible for? Although humour is subjective, it’s also structured. Satire in particular largely requires one of four elements: Exaggeration, incongruity, reversal, and parody. I ended up cutting a line here where I wrote “While I’m not saying that the Bee’s editor in chief is required to have an in-depth knowledge of the nuances of comedy writing,” because after further consideration realized I absolutely am. Heading a humour publication fundamentally requires you to be able to explain a joke, and the reticence or inability to do so is telling.

…Or Relatable…

This point is short and sweet, but what happened to the headlines about churchgoing tween boys trying to impress their peers by carrying multiple chairs under each arm? A brief look at the front page for March 31st, 2022 yields headlines about new programming on CNN+ and a dig at President Biden-

-and scrolling further down reveals yet another dig at Biden, a blatant advertisement for their own subscription service, a story on iPhones autocorrecting every word to “gay”, yet another one of their relentless slams of AOC and, blessedly, a headline on how a father with the stomach flu felt like he was literally dying. That’s relatable content, folks.

One out of seven ain’t bad, but given how general it is, that’s the perfect segue into my final point-

…Or Really All That Christian

The Babylon Bee refers to itself on its About page as “Your Trusted Source for Christian News Satire,” but what is inherently Christian about implying that Fauci is a liar (“Fauci Wins Oscar For Best Dramatic Performance”)? On average only one of the six to eight daily news stories published by the Bee have anything at all to do with the Bible or church or Christianity in general so the description feels generous at best.

Part of what made The Babylon Bee really sing in its heyday wasn’t just jokes about how the rear pews are the most popular, but takedowns of shameful figures within Christianity, even catching ire for mocking prosperity gospel Jan Crouch on the day she died. Now to be fair, just three days ago the site returned to that well when it gleefully jumped aboard the bandwagon that so many other online outlets have in ghoulishly riffing on the altercation at the 94th Academy Awards (as seen on the right), but these moments are painfully few and far between.

It’s increasingly saddening and frustrating as the rare glimmers of the Bee’s former self are really, genuinely biting. One fake news story in particular (“Baptist Church Sings ‘Don We Now Our Straight Apparel’) handily pokes fun at the very Christian tendency to see Satanic or ungodly influence peeking out from behind every corner and our consequent overboard reactions. I was absolutely delighted by this video they produced-

-to the point that I chose to break my self-imposed rule to not link to any of their content so you could see it for yourselves. It riffs on a number of topics in rapid succession, from the homogeneity of Christian women’s sartorial choices to their tendency to fall for multi-level marketing schemes, and does so flawlessly.

It works partly for the same reason that Sarah Z’s videos on the Tumblr and fandom do, because they were there at the time and are deeply familiar with the subject matter (Sarah is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns). That idea is echoed by founder Adam Ford when he answered why satire is important in an interview with Christianity Today (emphasis added):

It’s important to look at what we’re doing, to “examine ourselves.” Satire acts like an overhead projector, taking something that people usually ignore and projecting it up on the wall for everyone to see. It forces us to look at things we wouldn’t normally look at and makes us ask if we’re okay with them. And sometimes it just makes us laugh. That’s all healthy …

There is so much more that I could write about The Babylon Bee. I could go in depth covering the secondary catalyst to my writing this: the publication’s Twitter account being banned from posting for a transphobic article it shared.

The “joke” in this case was naming United States Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, a transgender woman, as “Man of the Year.” Dillon’s refusal to delete the offending tweet means that while the page is back up, they are unable to post anything new.

Speaking of Twitter, I could go on about how Dillon and Mann use their personal accounts to rail against the COVID-19 vaccine and how that has in turn leaked into many of The Babylon Bee’s stories. Or spent more time delving into how gross it feels to have the site be backed by My Patriot Supply, with a special act-now deal for emergency food supplies, while contributing to an atmosphere of fear and distrust of the government. Or I could have written about whether or not, in the current age of misinformation, the Bee is even capable of creating decent satire at all.

All of this is worth reading more about, especially the latter, given just how much discourse has taken place regarding fact-checking resources and The Babylon Bee. Some have argued (correctly, for what it’s worth) that overzealousness in marking such headlines as “CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News Before Publication” as fake news does more harm than good, but there’s also the sobering truth that there are readers who are unable to discern fact from fiction (you’ll have to click through the images on the tweet to see the responses).

There is a lot to say about The Babylon Bee, but instead I’ll end on this: The Babylon Bee used to be good, and then it stopped. It’s not even that it ceased updating like other outlets, which would have been a mercy. The online publication adjusting course away from relatable jabs at Christian culture and toward content that only heightens the increased polarization of our world is a tragedy. Instead of “[examining] ourselves,” as Ford wanted, that energy is projected outwards in a way that further others those that many of us already find little common ground with. Instead of bringing Christians together to laugh it furthers divides within the body of Christ.

As Susan Campbell, a former newspaper editor and lecturer at the University of New Haven, shared in the Forbes article on the Bee’s Twitter ban:

“We need more satire, but I question the motive of The Babylon Bee. It seems to have a lot of stories that make fun of the transgender community.”

1. I haven’t done footnotes in a while, but it’s worth noting that Wikipedia and the article it references (which I also linked to above) are wrong when they states that the sale took place “in late 2018.” The earliest archived copy of the post made by Adam Ford that states “I sold The Babylon Bee about a month ago” is from May 23rd, 2018. If you’re into editing wikis then have at it, but I don’t care enough to.

No one needs a billion dollars, no one person needs that much money, starts the viral TikTok song by Chaz Cardigan. It’s a fairly straightforward thesis, and even though the original video has since been taken down, the sound persists and has been used by countless other users, with videos like the one I linked to collectively garnering millions of views. Backing up that initial point, the lyrics continue:

A billion is a thousand million,
That’s twenty-one thousand years of work
At minimum wage to make that money
To hoard like you deserve it.
No one makes a billion dollars
Without exploiting workers.

Although this earworm exists as evidence that a platform predominantly skewed toward Gen Z is cool with vilifying the ultrawealthy, the sobering truth remains that as a culture we worship billionaires. It’s not just people who go far out of their way to simp for Elon Musk, either-

-it’s the constant media attention paid to those who make more in a single day than most of us are able to in an entire year. To be absurdly rich, at least in North America, is to achieve celebrity status, and the news cycle reacts accordingly. While the lavish praise heaped at the feet of such icons as Warren Buffett can often feel like it borders on infatuation, things truly cross that line when we consider the genre of billionaire romance. The name really says it all: the category exists to portray fictional billionaires as the desirable objects of readers’ affections.

Earlier this month Lydia Kiesling of The New York Times wrote an excellent piece covering the dangers of the rags-to-riches narrative, especially as it pertains to billionaires. Her work doesn’t spend much time on damning facts like how Bill Gates’ mother working with the CEO of IBM was a definite contributing factor to his absurd financial success, but instead draws our obsession with the story all the way back to Ragged Dick, an 1868 bildungsroman that follows the meteoric rise of a young teenage bootblack. After discussing the merits of memoirs written by the uberwealthy, she notes that “The only kind of book for which ‘billionaire’ is an explicit category is the romance novel.”

Kiesling smartly highlights pop culture phenomenon Fifty Shades of Grey as “[playing] an outsize role in the destructive, hypercapitalist consolidation of Amazon’s algorithm-based book business.” It’s no mystery that E.L. James’s blockbuster book left an indelible mark on publishing, but the reality is that the genre existed long before the rejigged Twilight fanfiction was published in 2011. Romance titles that contain the term (ex. The _____ and the Billionaire) can be found as far back as 2008 and earlier, and Alison Doherty over at BookRiot plainly states the reason for its popularity:

We live in a capitalist society. And money—especially the idea of being so rich that you don’t even have to think about money—is sexy. There, I said it.

A quick glance at Amazon reveals just how large the market is for books that star a hero (that’s romance parlance for the male lead) whose net worth is ten digits or more.

At the time of this writing One Bossy Proposal, as seen above, is #8 in the Kindle store. Brutal Vows and Baby for the Bosshole are #12 and #14, respectively. Their presence shouldn’t be terribly surprising given that, according to Glamor, the billion dollar romance industry’s novels “consistently out-perform all other genres.” Even with that in mind, it’s notable that billionaire romance appears so high on the list, even beating out other books underneath the larger romance umbrella.

In exploring the narrative of how people are able to catapult themselves out of poverty, Kiesling arrives at the conclusion that the truth mirrored in billionaire romance is that the actual rags-to-riches tales are only made possible by an existing affluent benefactor. The easiest way to go from nobody to somebody is for a man of means to take you along for the ride. Though I don’t disagree with her, what I’m more interested in is the sustainability of the genre. Given the state of the world we live in, how much longer can we continue to frame billionaires as ethical, moral individuals, let alone acceptable romantic partners?

If you’ve been following current events to even the scantest degree you may know that Elon Musk recently put in a bid of $44 billion dollars to buy Twitter. You may also be aware of the fact that in late October of last year the SpaceX founder also promised to donate 2% of his wealth to “solve world hunger” provided that the UN World Food Programme could outline a solution-

-to which WFP director David Beasley responded with a plan to use the amount to “avert famine in 2022.” While Musk did end up donating $5.74 billion to an unnamed charity, the aforementioned organization released a statement announcing that they did not end up receiving a cheque for any amount. The offer to purchase the social media platform being over seven times the cost of helping to save countless human lives was not lost on many.

Just so that I’m not harping on the “African American” entrepreneur, it’s worth calling attention to such antics as Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos thanking employees for paying for his suborbital space flight. The same employees who were provided with a tiny booth on the warehouse floor in which to engage in “Mindful Practice” instead of, you know, better wages and mental health benefits. How about billionaire #16 Jim Walton, whose father founded Walmart, where as of 2019 the average full-time hourly worker only makes around $25K/year. These two incidences are just drops in a bucket overflowing with news stories about the gross imbalances present between those at the bottom and those at the very top. No one makes a billion dollars / Without exploiting workers.

The most shocking news to me in researching this post is that according to Nielsen’s Romance Book Buyer Report in 2015, the average romance book buyer was getting younger, with an average age of 42. The Romance Writers of America commissioned their own study in 2017, where they found that the age of the average romance reader was 35-39 years old. That same study revealed that frequent readers skewed even younger than that. That said, what’s the younger generation’s impressions of billionaire romance?

We don’t have to take the widespread reach of Chaz Cardigan’s ditty alone as proof that Zoomers are growing increasingly disenchanted by the (mostly) men and women who are worth more than the GDP of some countries. According to the Pew Research Center 50% of those ages 18-29 believe that billionaires are a bad thing for the United States. Only 11% thought they were a benefit. Given that The Avengers came out in 2008, it’s interesting to consider that Tony Stark’s iconic self-description might not be as well-received today as it was back then-

The bad rap surrounding their heroes may not be entirely lost on romance authors, with Kiesling highlighting that even Christian Grey of the 50 Shades trilogy truly desired to help the less fortunate. She posits that more than just lauding the already prosperous, billionaire romance serves to whitewash those in the highest tax bracket:

Ultimately, these books are rehabilitory projects for billionaires, laundering their exploitative politics and recasting them as mildly edgy sex — not to mention putting hot young faces on a class of men that is in reality mostly approaching or past retirement age, for an audience of women who often have far less economic power.

Countless billionaire romances will have their dashing, moneyed leading men as the heads of charitable foundations, building schools or using their wealth to clothe and feed the poor. At the end of the day, however, no matter their myriad good deeds, they remain billionaires. They continue to hold on to such a vast amount of wealth that, it would take 31,629 years, give or take a few months, to earn it with a minimum wage job. That’s after I redid the math with the current District of Columbia minimum wage of $15.20/hour. That’s thirty-one thousand years of work still fits the meter, I’m happy to say.

Oh, it’s also worth noting that billionaires in real life use charitable donations as a means to avoid paying the taxes that they should.

From what I know about Gen Z, I can’t see them falling for these attempts to make the ultrarich out to be sympathetic figures, and that’s not even taking into account the fact that so many such heroes are positioned as broody, closed-off alpha males (Zoomers are also more in tune with issues mental health). With each additional headline detailing the growing net worth of those who already have so much more than they could ever need, it’s hard enough to believe that the older readers won’t also begin to develop a sour taste in their mouths when confronted with yet another steely-eyed oil baron or media magnate.

In a world where inequality is only ever growing I don’t think it’s possible to continue to view the people who can change the world for the better and choose not to as heroes or heroines or even good people. Whether or not romance publishers will clue into that is another story entirely.

DISCLAIMER: I have been employed by Harlequin Enterprises ULC for the past four years, and for professional reasons have opted not to include any work published by my employer, or any of its subsidiaries, in this post.

Stormgate is, to use the developers’ own words, a “next-generation” RTS game that is currently in the Early Access stage of its release. For those who aren’t in the know, real-time strategy emphasizes building bases and commanding an army of various units, and Frost Giant Studios counts among its number some of those responsible for such hallmarks of the genre as StarCraft II and Warcraft III. While the “sci-fi and fantasy” setting clearly cribs ample inspiration from its predecessors, recent developments beg the question of when the Human Vanguard faction is supposed to exist in relation to the initial invasion by the demonic Infernal Host. To ask it plainly, is Stormgate set in a postapocalyptic world?

The most obvious place to find our answer would be the official site’s homepage, which I’ve already cited above (all following emphasis has been added): 

These resilient soldiers have harnessed futuristic technology to rebuild their civilization after surviving an Infernal Host invasion – a devastating near-extinction event.

The Vanguard’s own faction page:

The Vanguard was formed to serve as humanity’s last bastion of defense with Earth on the brink of extinction. Representing the greatest scientific minds, toughest soldiers, and most brilliant strategists from around the world, the Vanguard stands resolute against the invading Infernal Host.

And, finally, the Media Kit page, which explicitly presents the setting:

The story takes place hundreds of years in Earth’s future, in an all-new post-apocalyptic game setting where science fiction and fantasy collide.

So why the confusion? While much hay has been made about the game’s art style, many detractors have pointed specifically toward the Vanguard’s general aesthetic as being too shiny and polished in light of their position as “humanity’s last bastion of defense” after a “near-extinction event.” It would seem that the present visuals don’t actually match up with this postapocalyptic setting, but digging further into Frost Giant’s other posts it appears that fans are being told two distinct things.

This interview with lead game designer Kevin “Monk” Dong, released June 11th, 2023, includes the following answer to the question “What makes Stormgate Human Units unique compared to Warcraft/Starcraft?” (condensed for clarity, emphasis added):

“First of all, about the setting, all of Stormgate takes place in a post-postapocalyptic world. So after the apocalypse, after the initial apocalypse, things have kind of calmed down, but then this second apocalypse occurs. So it’s an earthbound world where things are kind of settled down right now even though something terrible has happened in the past.”

This is contradicted by an article on VentureBeat published two days earlier in which CEO and production director Tim Morten shares:

“We’re going to join the story at a point where mankind is starting to figure things out. So it’s a hopeful time. It’s not meant to be a dark and grim post-apocalyptic story. It is meant to be brighter, and more full of hope. But at the same time, there are stakes. The story that we’re telling is certainly filled with scary monsters and moments of uncertain future but we do want to maintain that sense of optimism and hope.”

It’s clear that Morten is referring to Stormgate as a postapocalyptic narrative, but one that skews more optimistic, perhaps more akin to something like Overwatch which takes place on the other side of a robotic uprising. Though his answer is in turn contradicted by a post to the game’s official subreddit by communications director Gerald Villoria (underlined emphasis mine) on December 31st, 2023: 

Please remember that we’re not making StarCraft III or Warcraft IV. We’re making Stormgate—a spiritual successor, but one with its own story and an artistic vision that differs from previous games. We will continue moving towards that artistic vision because we believe it is a great fit for the game we are creating.

That vision is meant to be post-post-apocalyptic, a hopeful future where humanity survived near-extinction and is banding together at the height of science and technology to protect our home. We believe this creates a backdrop ripe for exciting story ideas and new unit designs.

All of this came to a head with Early Access, which dropped exactly two weeks ago on July 30th. Frost Giant has since added a pop-up indicating that this stage of development “means we’re actively working on it and player feedback will help shape its future,” which is all to say that nothing seen is final. That being said, feedback is exactly what this particular wave of players shared after getting their hands on the game.

Amara, the central character of the Vanguard campaign missions.

Reactions to that initial experience were…lacklustre, to put it gently. It only took two days for an official response from Tim Morten himself, titled “Early Access Preview: Learnings and Feedback.” Notably absent from this post were direct acknowledgements of the many complaints about the first few missions of the Vanguard campaign, the first three of which were free to play. That wouldn’t materialize until over a week later on August 9th, with “Stormgate Developer Update: The Road Ahead for Campaign.” Having been posted four days ago it’s our most recent word on the game’s setting, and a clear continuation of Stormgate being presented as having two different subgenres.

There’s a particular section that deserves highlighting given our purposes, and I’m including it in full below:

Apocalyptic Unit Visuals

We’re also in the middle of concepting a new set of “war-torn” skins for each of the Vanguard units that will update their appearance to better reflect their origins as the Human Resistance. 

Once the skin’s new unit models have been completed, our plan is to look for opportunities to retroactively incorporate it into the Campaign so that it can be featured throughout each of the missions.

This should help us to establish a more rough-and-tumble vibe for the scrappy humans and align their faction more closely with the post-apocalyptic world around them.

I didn’t put any of the above text in bold because it’s all equally pertinent, and all serves to complicate things. Written up by game director and CEO Tim Campbell, these three paragraphs firmly place the Human Vanguard within a postapocalyptic context. The vision here brings the entire faction more in line with something like Mad Max, vehicles and power armour covered in rust and seemingly cobbled together from whatever resources were available. Ironically, this fully undercuts Monk’s answer as to how the Vanguard can be differentiated from the Terran faction in StarCraft, in which a certain amount of grittiness and grunginess is inherent. This doesn’t look like a humanity that has weathered an initial onslaught and “harnessed futuristic technology to rebuild their civilization”; it doesn’t appear to be a world where people are “banding together at the height of science and technology.” For a post-postapocalyptic world with a foundation of optimism the initial aesthetic for the Vanguard was perfect, even if some fans found the execution to be lacking.

But why the mixed messages, to the point where both CEOs have delivered opposing viewpoints as to where their human faction is supposed to stand? I think it all has to do with the way that Frost Giant has been developing Stormgate, with an emphasis on prospective players that extends beyond feedback all the way to several ways to crowdfund the game, one of which turns gamers into investors in the studio itself. Although it’s been said time and time again that the developers have a vision and one they’re sticking to, it’s clear that supporter feedback has had an impact. In spite of some exceptions, initial statements were largely aligned on there being a bright and shining face for Earth’s defenders, with nary a mention of “rough-and-tumble” or “scrappy.” In fact, those adjectives might be better suited for a neutral faction in the game:

Creep Camp unit designs by Samwide Dider.

So who are the Scavengers? The Vanguard are Earth’s best hope for survival. As the player-controlled human faction, they represent humanity at the height of technological prowess and scientific knowledge. But other survivors of the Infernal onslaught that nearly wiped out mankind can still be found in the wastes around the world. Nomadic tribes, some more violent than others, seek out unpopulated corners of the Earth and have reverted to barbarism and plunder. Players will encounter various bands of dangerous foes as they fight for control of territory, including the savage mechanically-enhanced Scavengers.

Notice the contrast being created here between these two representations of humanity, one “at the height of technological prowess” and the other “found in the wastes around the world.” It’s obvious that the “war-torn” skins don’t go as far as transforming the Vanguard into a similarly “savage” or “violent” group, but it’s a far cry from how they were positioned originally, and still are on the website.

I’ve read countless comments bemoaning how the Vanguard look like plastic toys and overall appear too cartoony, but this particular method of getting around those criticisms feels like a betrayal of their original artistic vision. A post-postapocalyptic faction was supposed to represent resilience and the promise of hope after near annihilation; it’s the kind of fresh idea that Frost Giant Studios purports to bring to the table in order to inject new life into what’s long been considered a dying genre. Opting for a solely postapocalyptic design sensibility that’s rustier and dirtier feels quite a lot like StarCraft, and in their own words “[they’re] not making StarCraft III.”

What appears to be a pivot away from their initial plans will elicit varying emotions in those eagerly awaiting what’s being heralded as the game taking up the RTS banner that Blizzard Entertainment has so willingly set aside. For those with an emotional (and financial) stake in its success the shift in ethos is likely a net positive, a sign that Frost Giant is listening and open to change. For others who are more concerned with Stormgate‘s narrative and the story being told in the campaign it may be a reason to pause and wonder what this means for its development; after four years the decision to change course from that firmly defined post-postapocalyptic future doesn’t suggest a high level of confidence in their initial direction. With “at least a year of active development before […] 1.0” it remains to be seen if their response was the right one.