Hey Riot, You Should Make This League of Legends Character Gay Already

So argues Todd Harper in a open letter to Riot Games about the League of Legends champion, Taric. Rumor is, Taric might be gay.

Consider that Taric loves gems, he has moves called stuff like ‘dazzle,’ his voice clips go from sultry to flamboyant (listen to that clip above by LeagueVoices), and even Taric’s background info plays with the assumption that he might be gay. It reads:

His neat and stylish appearance combined with his shiny bejeweled armor and weapons have rapidly made him a celebrity champion of the League of Legends. Valoran’s media, for some reason, has taken a great interest in his personal life. While open about his life as a champion and gracious in all things, Taric is tight-lipped about his life outside the League and prefers his privacy.

Here’s a possible skin that Taric can wear:

Dem pink legwarmers.

For Todd, there’s a problem with what he calls “wink-and-a-nod” characters—which is what Taric is.

It’s like they want all the benefits of having a gay character – which usually amount to “Look! A gay character!” while pointing vigorously – but without having to actually own up and say: “Yeah, we put a gay character in our game. Want to fight about it?”

Todd goes on to say that there’s an element about queer identity where your sexuality is hush-hush, but where everyone still ‘knows.’ Kind of like, when a person comes to accept their sexual orientation, and they make it public, and everyone responds ‘no duh, we already knew! It was obvious!’

So having a character play into that sort of thing is sad—not to mention easy, as Todd says. But all of that could change. Right now, many characters are getting upgrades with new art, animations, and voice samples. Taric could be one of these revamped characters—he could finally come out.

Todd fears that Riot hasn’t done it yet because of the potential fan backlash, except it so happens that Taric is well-loved thanks to how great of a support he is. Taric is used regularly at high level play—it’s not likely that players will stop using him just because he’s gay. Especially not if an assumption about Taric’s queerness already exists. If people were going to react too strongly to it, we’d have already seen it.

You can read Todd’s full letter here.

So, how about it, Riot? Why not make the ‘obviously gay’ character openly gay already?

An Open Letter to Riot Games [Chaotic Blue]