New Beginnings & She Who Must Not Be Named

A new season of the LFG (LGBT+ Family & Games) Community Podcast is here! We have changed EVERYTHING for the better. You can now join our live recording sessions every Saturday at 7PM Eastern and lend your voice to the community. In this episode we talk about various LGBT+ topics including drag show bans and don't say gay bills along with the new games coming out. We also take a look at the controversy surrounding She Who Must Not Be Named (J.K. Rowling) and the new Hogwarts Legacy game that has broken records upon release despite backlash from the community.

Chapters

• 0:00 A New Start
• 2:26 Evil Cat
• 4:11 LGBT+ News
• 5:39 Drag Show Bans
• 13:09 Don't Say Gay
• 18:41 Bill to Allow Bullying Trans
• 21:34 LGBT+ Stats
• 24:33 New Game Releases
• 28:31 Hogwarts Legacy Part 1
• 36:37 Fortnite Lawsuit
• 39:11 Merch Shop Plug
• 39:55 Destiny 2 Expansion
• 44:02 Hogwarts Legacy Part 2
• 48:30 Ghost Appears and Turns on a Fan Light
• 49:16 Hogwarts Legacy Part 2 Continued
• 1:00:11 Civil Disobedience & Where We Came From
• 1:07:06 Wrap Up and Show Updates

Transcript

0:02

Hello and welcome to the LGBT Family Games Community podcast. My name is James and today I am joined by Ross, who is with us. Hi. Hey, Ross. And we're actually starting back up a new season, so everything is completely different now. This is season three, episode one, and we're going to change the way we do this podcast. So before we had like a stationary panel of, you know, two or three people that would come in and we do a recording session and we talk about things and that would be it. But now we're going to change things to where everybody in the community can join in to this podcast because it was supposed to be a community podcast from the beginning. So now we'll have recording sessions every Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern, hopefully every Saturday. And anybody from the community can join in and watch the recording session. And if you want to chime in on a particular topic, you can actually call in live to that podcast recording once we finish our recording session, probably take a few days and we'll distributed everything out to like Spotify and Apple Music, all the, all the podcast places. And then after probably about a week or so, it'll hit YouTube. We will be archiving all the old episodes soon to where they're only available for our Patreon supporters and people that are premium members in the LG Discord. So if you do want that kind of special access, make sure to support us on Patreon or become a premium number on Discord. But after two years, we're back. I think it's been like two years. A lot has happened since then, at least in my life. You might notice that the room behind me, if you're watching on YouTube, is completely different. And that's because I sold my old house and moved. Yeah, I mean, like I said, a lot has happened. Roswell. I mean, what's going on in your world? How are things? Things are all right. I've been very busy before. You start working on a new place, right? Yeah. I am currently working on a production called Gaslight, and it's based off the 1948 film of the same name. Okay. It kind of gives you the idea of what it's about. It's about a husband who has been gaslighting his wife in this house because there's some treasure in the house that he's trying to find, and he's using her money to pay for the house so he can find this treasure. So you're saying I need to look around my house for treasure? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm going to start breaking down walls. Except it's more likely that simple. Is the one gaslighting you? The cat? My cats. He's. He's. It's true. He's. He's really funny. He actually. He's very quiet, and he sticks. Sticks to the self. Right? Like he's. He's all on his lonesome. He. He spends a lot of time out on our patio now because we actually have like one of those screened in patios and he loves it out there. That's where he spends 90% of his time. But every once in a while he decides that he wants attention or he wants his food fulfilled. And so he becomes the most vocal cat I've ever had or ever seen. He will meow incessantly until you give him the time of day, Right? So I can hear him like. Like I'll be, like, working in the morning or something. And if he decides he wants attention that day, I will hear it from upstairs in my office when he's like, downstairs across the whole house. Oh, my God. And he's like, Can give me love right now. Pay attention to me. I need attention. Stop what you're doing. The world revolves around me. Hello, humans. But he's too lazy to come and find you. Yeah, Or, you know, like he doesn't know where we're at, so he'll meow. And I'll be like, I'm over here, and then I'll just see him kind of, like, peek his head around the corner. Hey, all future James here I was in the middle of editing this section of the podcast, and I had to record what my cat decided to do. Check it out. Decide to come visit and talk to me. Yeah. What's wrong? What do you want to know? Your dad does it all. So other things. There's been a lot in the news lately, and part of the reason why I wanted to get the podcast back up and running actually came about right when the United States Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade, because that was a very concerning decision on the court's part in relation to LGBT rights, because it was a Supreme Court decision that granted same sex couples the privilege and the right to marry in the United States. So and it was based on that that decision was based on the precedent that was set by Roe v Wade in relation to privacy. So it's all of that to say that there's a lot going on right now in LGBT circles. There are hundreds and hundreds of bills that are circulating in the United States alone that are trying to kind of encroach on LGBT rights. So what better way to kind of address that than to talk about it and bring awareness to those types of things? So that's part of the reason why the podcast is coming back and we will want to spend some time every week talking about, you know, what's going on for LGBT people. It's going on the gay world. How's the Jagan agenda going for us? That was a joke. Exactly. That was a joke. I'm trying to be funny here. You got to give me something now. Okay? Got it. I didn't. I didn't pick up on it. I guess I'm just kidding. So first topic is in Tennessee. It is now. Hey, Xavier, Nice to see you. If you if you find and by the way, like I said, guys, this is a live podcast. So people can call in or jump into our chat at any time. If you're in the audience, you're able to hit the column button. If you do so, it will allow us to accept you to talk to you about any particular subject. It is a limited amount of time that it runs, so just make sure it's a topic that you want to talk about. We'll bring in. We can record that part and then we'll go back to to business as usual. But the first subject happened in Tennessee is now the first state in the U.S. to ban drag shows the language doesn't necessarily explicitly ban drag, shows it severely limits track shows to the point where I believe it becomes impractical to host a drag show. Basically, the language of the law read it, kind of lumped in drag shows with cabaret performances. And the the law was amended by adding the following language as a new subsection. It is an offense for a person to engage in adult cabaret performance on public property or in a location where adult carriage from its can be viewed by a person who is not an adult. Notwithstanding, this subsection expressly preempts any ordinance, regulation, restriction or license that was lawfully adopted or issued by a political subdivision prior to the effective date, blah blah blah blah blah. But anyway, the language that specifically applies to drag shows or even some people are, some people are implying that this might apply to trans people. I'm not sure that that would uphold in court, but it's Tennessee, so I can certainly understand the concerns. But the specific language for drag performers or a male or female impersonators provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest, and prurient is basically a sexually charged interest. Oh, interesting. Okay. I guess my question would be, when it comes to that, would that include theatrical works as well? Because there's many big works that have drag queens to do things like back bingo. So actually one of the things that was cited was Shakespeare, right? Because Shakespearean theater performances, traditionally when they started out, had cross-dressing. So this law, as it is currently written, could technically preclude those types of performances from happening. Interesting. That's now and questionable decision this this prurient word. Right like that that actually is let's pull up that word. So the definition of prurient having or encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters. So it says male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest. How do you prove how do you define something that encourages an excessive interest in sexual matters? That becomes the the gray area. So a comedian. So another example that somebody gave was like a trans comedian. So a trans comedian performing in adult venues. Does that fall under this category or in a venue, a comedian performing in a venue where it might not exclusively be for adults? So like at a conference where technically kids could be present, right? So that's why these types of laws are coming out left and right by the hundreds, which like in some ways the community brought it on themselves. But in other ways, it's as you said, it's the it's the language that they're using isn't specific, Correct? It's very broad. I can understand concerns about public performances and shared spaces that would be of questionable taste. Is it challenges is not all drag performance is overly sexualized. There is a good portion of drag performances that are very sexualized, but not all of them are that way. Some of them are just at face value, like comedic or lighthearted and just for the sake of fun. Yeah, others are problematic. So I feel like this very broad language is being put in place to, you know, address a very small subsection of things that are causing concern. And the the other comment that I would make is similar things have been happening in Florida where they there might be like a drag brunch or something at a bar where kids are can be allowed, but with parental guardians present. So if if a parent decides to bring their child to that, can you really say that the parent doesn't have the right to do what they want with their child when it's not really your child? I mean, I guess it comes down to if that was the problem, then for those performances, just put a sign off system or something like that. So they agreed to their kids being there. There's a there's a hypocrisy here, right, Because the people that are trying to push banning these things aren't seeing the other side of this where they're imposing their views on somebody else. Right. So they're saying that these types of things impose somebody's views on them or on somebody, but their views are also being imposed. So I do wish that we could get to the point where as a society, you know, if it's not physically harming somebody, if it doesn't affect you, it shouldn't be an issue. That's my $0.02 on the matter. I think that we're probably going to see a lot more of these types of bans happen throughout the United States. Unfortunately, I don't always believe that. Like like I don't I don't view drag as representing all of LGBT. Yeah, I do think that drag shows they do have a place in the community. I mean, that's it's a tradition that has happened in the community and so I don't view them as a bad thing. I do think that some performers take things too far, but I also think that that's on those particular performers. And when we start grouping everybody together, that that's an issue. Yeah, and I think that, yeah, that's 100% an issue. And I've been to drag shows quite a few in the last year actually, and most of the time it's like an easy like it's like the normal stuff, but then you'll always have that one or two people who take it that far. Sometimes it's funny, but a lot of time it's just like, what was the point of this? Yeah, no, I like I said, I agree. I think there's some performers that that really go too far. One way. Yeah, exactly. And I think we have to we have to remember as LGBT individuals that we are still a minority. We have to keep that in mind and that we operate inside of a more conservative society. So drag in and of itself is already pushing the boundaries of that limit. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't question those limits sometimes. I absolutely think we should. But we have to understand that when you push too hard, you're going to receive some pushback. Yeah, exactly. So in other news, I think this was Utah. See how Utah. So the don't say gay bill. I don't know how much you know about that. I don't know a lot about it. So basically in Florida, it was the first state to do this. I believe in Florida, they passed a bill that basically said in there, there are a lot of things to it, but primarily in kindergarten to, I believe, third grade, we weren't supposed to be able to talk about sexuality, sexual orientation or gender identity. Oh, okay. I see. Which I kind of I can understand parents not wanting to have those discussions with their kids at that age. That's a that's a pretty young age. Yeah. There were a lot of other things that came along with that bill. And teachers were expected to inform parents if there student came to them and said something about being gay or another sexuality other than heterosexual. And that was probably the most problematic part of the bill, right? In my opinion. You know, I don't well, I understand that parents may want to know that information. The problem is, is not all parents will treat that kid the same way and some kids will be put in a really bad place because of that. So it causes some kids to withdraw and not share with a teacher or a trusted staff member when you know maybe their parents aren't as accepting. Yeah, they just need a place to vent. So that was a big concern in Florida. But anyway, Utah was trying to pass the exact same bill as Florida, but the lawmaker who sponsored the bill actually made some changes after listening to feedback from the community. And they removed the specific language that identified sexual orientation and gender identity. And so instead, the bill reads that they won't talk about sexuality from kindergarten to third grade, which I think is perfect. Yeah, if we could have more of those types of discussions where we just talk about realistic expectations. So like, you know, we don't we don't need to be talking about these subjects with kids in third grade now and younger. Like it's not appropriate. That's fine. I'm completely on board with that. I do think it's also appropriate to keep that very general. Like we don't even just talking about heterosexual couples in those situations either. Like what's the there's no point that kids don't care about this. I didn't care about skin. Yeah, I think that's a good fix to that problem or the problem that it sounds like was with the original bill. I think there is some concern. I mean, they shouldn't be being taught about it in school. I think that's perfectly fine, but they should be being taught about anything before that point, to be honest with you. And I know that there was some concerns here. For example, last year or maybe two years ago now, they tried to pass some legislation in which teachers had to be open with parents about whether or not their kid was part of a GSA or Gay-Straight Alliance. For anyone who doesn't know what that means or if their kid had spoken about being a part of the LGBTQ community that it was, they wanted to put it into law that the teacher legally had to tell a parent about that which where it was very controversial at the time. And it didn't go through for obvious reasons because that in a lot of ways goes against kids privacy. Well, that's a concern, right, Because so kids privacy, it's a it's a tricky subject because on one hand, it's important for the parents to be involved in the kid's life. Right. Like that is an important thing. But it's challenging when it comes to this particular type of subject. And I can understand I can understand both sides, right? Like a parent can understand a parent saying, well, if you know about this, shouldn't I know about this? I can kind of understand that. But I can also understand how it's problematic because not all parents are understanding. Yeah. And sometimes with this particular issue, right. Like if you come out as gay and you have parents that really do not accept that you could end up on the street. Right. That that is concerning. I think the big problem was that it was the rebelled. The idea of it was that a teacher who it may not have anything to do with that, like it could be they could be your math teacher, for example. And if they had been told something, they legally, even though had nothing to do with what they taught, this student would have to tell your parents, which is I think that was the problem. It was the way that the like the original this it was the way the bill was written. It just made no sense. Yeah. And that's exactly how it's written in Florida. Right. So and I think we're going to see a lot more of this. Yeah. By the way, which is not great. But. Well, and speaking of so I feel like the title of this article was a little misleading. I feel like sometimes these new news articles and stuff, like they they take it to an extreme to, to draw you in. So obviously I clicked on this because it says Iowa tables Built to Allow Bullying Bullying of trans students amid LGBTQ education crackdown. So the quote unquote bill to allow bullying students prohibits school districts and charter schools from disciplining employees, contractors or students. If they misgender you use the quote unquote, legal name of the trans student or staff member. So I understand why they're saying Bill to bully trans students, but I also think that that takes a little extreme. I'd have to read the bill itself. I have not read this bill, but, you know, this is just another example of, you know, legislation that's out there like this stuff is coming. Yeah, in a big way. I think they had 321 bills. So this is one of 21 bills targeting LGBT people proposed by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. Okay. Okay. So 23 in Iowa alone, I know there's over 300 different bills floating around in the United States right now. And all of this was set off by the Roe versus Wade situation, a lot of it. So, yeah, there are more than 340 bills attacking the LGBTQ community, particularly transphobia, having been proposed in state legislatures in 2023. So there's always been like there's always been these legal battles. I pick last year there are around 250 bills, but 340 right now is a lot that is, and a lot of them do go by the wayside. But once one catches on, so like the Florida quote unquote, don't say gay bill, once something like that catches on, it gets adopted by other states. Right. Usually very quickly. Yeah. If one state can do it, then you know what's to stop them from doing it. They don't want to be the first. Yeah, most don't want to be the first. But you know, they'll or you know, they may not have the language down yet and you know, if they see one that works in another state, they're like, okay, well, we're going to try that. Yeah, I think unfortunately, we're we're kind of in for a rough ride for the next couple of years. So I think Roe v Wade going away definitely opened more of a floodgate, emboldened people to push back on some of the more kind of liberal ideals that are in the court system right now and legislation. Right. So we'll see where things land. Yeah, right. And another reason why some of these bills are coming up is because if one of these bills comes up and then it gets challenged and it gets brought to the Supreme Court, whether the Supreme Court can make a ruling that undermines protections for same sex marriage. But anyway, that aside, there are new stats out on being LGBT, which I thought were interesting. So I had always thought that it was like 5% of the like the US population that identified as LGBT. Apparently now it's 7.2% of US adults Americans identify as being part of LGBT, which is crazy. Yeah, like before I came out, it was it was way last. It was like 3.5%. It would have been probably a few years before that. So Right. If had been 2.5% back then. But yeah, fun fact, most people in the LGBT acronym identify as bisexual. I'm actually not surprised about that. That that makes a lot of sense. I mean, logically it makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I think about it that way at first, but yeah, logically it makes sense. And that accounts for 4.2% of all US adults. 4.2%. Oh, my God. Okay, so 58.2% of LGBT adults, but 4.2% of all US adults. Crazy. Honestly. Absolutely crazy. Yep. And actually, that trend has changed, right? So like earlier generations, a lot of people identified as either gay or lesbian, you know, within LGBT. But as time has progressed, it's gone way up rates for the bisexual identification. So yeah, certainly getting, you know, good thing to know that there's more representation for bisexuality because a lot of people, you know like there's the the whole thing with like bi erasure where people say, oh you're not bi or just Yeah that's one of the or curious been through that since they've been through that. Yeah. So no I mean this is encouraging. This, you know means that people are recognizing that a lot more. Yeah. Which is fantastic. I think it's, there's more and more people coming out every day. I think every year the percentage of people coming out goes up as well. Correct. And actually there were statistics on that as well. So Generation Z, 19.7% switch are only consider yourself to be so Gen Z has the highest percentage of LGBT representation, 19.7%. Millennials are 11.2%. Generation X 3.3%. Baby Boomers 2.7 in the Silent Generation 1.7. I mean 2.7 is still pretty high considering that's baby boomers. So yeah, no, I mean, considering that generation, that is a very yeah, I would say, but I can certainly understand Gen Z does seem to be a little bit more liberal in its, you know, sexuality identification and things like that. I think yeah, I think Gen Z tends to be a little bit more liberal in their outlooks in general. And I think I think it's just because of the time that we've lived in Dane I guess I fallen as a millennial. Okay, Well, on to video games because that was a lot of talk about LGBT stuff. Yeah, nearly pieces. I didn't see anything like really jumping off the page except for an expansion for Destiny two, which I mean, we have a destiny two player in the chat. If they wish to talk about this, they can. Me too. Yeah. If they're still here, it's Xavier. Want to call in about this? I feel. I feel like we're on. Like what is, like a talk show where they're like, Do you want another talk show? Like, what is It was like an infomercial. They call into this number. Oh, like QVC or something? Yeah, something like that. Yeah. And call him now. Mm hmm. So talk to us now about this, this wonderful idea or like, call in your votes. This is not American Idol. I'm not singing, dammit. How dare you know all these other games? Like, I don't know anything about these other ones. Scars above Lucy Dreaming, void Terrarium, Horus and Phantom Brigade. Those are all the ones that are coming out on the 28th. Right. I know nothing about. No, I haven't even heard of them, honestly. Although there's been a lot of things that have been like people are talking about. I'm like, I didn't even see this announced originally. I'm still waiting for a Final Fantasy nine remake. They did seven. I want nine desperately. Yeah. I wonder if they are going to do something like that. They been making a lot of them, haven't they? They did a remaster of the game, but I don't know if they'll actually remake that game because when it was release fun fact, it was released at a very bad time. It was still a PlayStation one game that was released after the PlayStation two came out. I see. So the sales were not great for that game because a lot of people, like they had already moved on to the PlayStation two. And even though the PlayStation two was backwards compatible, you could play that game on the PlayStation two. Yeah, they didn't want to get that game because they wanted a PlayStation two game instead of a PlayStation one game. I see. Which is it's really sad because it's one of the best stories that are out there for Final Fantasy. And it has like the most plays on Steam out of all the the Final Fantasy franchise right now, like, like it has a lot of downloads on Steam and stuff. But the problem is, is the sales when it originally came out and like through the lifespan of the entire game have been lower right. I don't know exactly how that works, but. Well, I mean, of course that sales are going to go down considering the time it came out. But they should look at the statistics of people playing the game over how much sales they made, because there's a lot of games that didn't sell very well originally, but they rereleased the game ten years later or they remade the game ten years later and it did way better. I think it would do phenomenally well. I mean, obviously I talked to like my little circle of people, my circle friends, but I do think that it's a game that would do really, really well. Yeah, I mean, I don't know a lot about Final Fantasy, but I know lots of people who play, including yourself. And so I think there's definitely the player community there to support it. Oh, for sure. Apparently Xavier tried to call in and then it didn't work. Try again. Try again. Xavier Maybe it's just like weird things you can't request. I might have missed it out. You have to, like, accept something. Yeah, of course. Of course you do. Yeah. I didn't see it pop up, though. Usually I see a pop up. So, I mean, the other game, obviously, that recently came out that has broken records and, you know, I understand is very controversial in the LGBT community. Is Hogwarts legacy? Mm hmm. Yeah. Because it has absolutely destroyed records. Mm hmm. Obviously, J.K. Rowling has made some very controversial remarks. I do believe that a lot of those remarks are made and some ignorance. I can understand where J.K. Rowling is coming from. Yeah, objectively, like I can take myself out of my having my bubble. Yeah, yeah, my my perspective. I can take myself out of that perspective and put myself in J.K. Rowling's shoes and understand what they're talking about and where their concerns might be. I do think a lot of those concerns are out of ignorance. Yeah, 100%. And just not knowing, not knowing and understanding trans people. Yeah. And I think the problem with a lot of the things to do with her is that she I think it was like one time she said something, it wouldn't be a problem, it would be controversial and like she would have a backlash and things. But I think the problem is it's that she has had controversial opinions several times in the past and has used her position to speak those opinions and obviously hasn't learned from those mistakes of the past. And I think that was the big problem here, was it was just the final straw in the coffin. Does that make sense potentially? I do know that there's a podcast and I am going to listen to this to try to find, you know, to to hear her her side of the story. But she is doing an exclusive podcast related to this particular subject. All right. So I'm I'm going to wait and listen to that and, you know, make make some judgments from from that. I don't know when that's releasing. I wanted to say it was at the end of this month. So if you wouldn't mind sharing that with me as well, that be great. It's called the Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, a new podcast out Tuesday. That was three days ago. Okay. I will write that down. So I believe it should be on this next Tuesday. So, yes, it's challenging because, you know, obviously there's there's a lot of people in the LGBT, the LGBTQ community that do or have loved that particular franchise in the past. Yeah, they've grown up with it. I know. I grew up with it. You know, my mom used to read me the books when I was a kid, and then I started reading them on my own as I grew up as they were coming out. So it is challenging because there are people that love that story. The idea of a no especially speaks to LGBT young person that's not accepted by their actual family, that has to find their own family and kind of make their way in life. Yeah. So, yeah, it is heartbreaking that this has become such a point of contention. I think the thing that bothers me the most, certainly everybody is entitled to their opinions. Everybody's entitled to not support somebody they don't agree with, right? You don't have to give your money to that person. That is fine. I think where the line starts being crossed is when we start treating each other. Members of the LGBT community poorly based on our personal decisions. Like I don't think it's right for us to say, I'm going to block this person because they decided to buy a video game. And the reason I say that, like, I know, okay, so I know the counter argument is, well, that person is now supporting somebody who they're financially supporting somebody who has made very anti LGBT comments. And so we shouldn't support that. I understand that. I completely understand that. And, you know, I have made choices to not give my money to organizations based on how they treat LGBT people. Yeah, completely get it. I think at a certain point we start doing more harm to our community when we have so much animosity towards everybody, right? We have the animosity towards the person, you know, that's that's at fault. Yeah. Like treat them poorly. Exactly. And, and I don't even I personally don't even believe treating them poorly is the answer for each. Okay, sorry. Free chuckling. Yeah. Actually, you know, the funny thing is. Okay, so I have chosen for the most part, not to support Chick-Fil-A. Andrew and I used to go to Chick-Fil-A weekly. We would go every single day or not every single day. We'd go every single Wednesday for the longest time because he would get out of work at a certain time, Chick-Fil-A would be open and they do donate a lot of money to anti LGBT groups even to this day, even after all that scandal. So yeah, we don't support them as frequently as we used to. We used to go every single week. Now it might be like when we're really tired of having McDonald's. Yeah, but the funny thing is, is there was actually a song that came out the first time the Chick-Fil-A scandal happened, which was the song's called Chow Down at Chick-Fil-A. And I would play it on here, but I, I imagine that I'll get like some kind of copyright strike or something, But it's basically I think it's three drag queens. I can't remember who who did it. I think you've shown me this before, actually, because I think we've had this conversation in the past. I think we have. Oh, my God. Yes, you have. Yes. Yes. So it was the artist was William Bell had Detox and Vicky Fox. Yeah, Detox was really funny on here. It was a really funny music video and it kind of makes the same point of what I'm saying. Like, you can still like things even though the person behind it might not be great, right? And it's okay. I can't tell you who to be. And I think in this case as well as the you have to look at it. Yeah, there are picture of things and like she was not involved with the making of this game. Yes. It is part of her universe. And so, like, of course she makes royalties off of that. But like other people made this game and so you. Yes. Are financially supporting her a little bit, but you're also financially supporting everybody who works on the product. Yeah. No. And there was a lot of misinformation coming out on Twitter. Like a lot of people were like, she's going to make all the money from this game. No, no, that is not how these things work. The the rights holder for the intellectual property will make some money. They'll make a royalty, but they will not make a majority of the money that comes from that video game. The majority of the money is going to go to the studio and the developers of the game, especially since none of the characters from the series are actually in the video game. As far as I'm aware. For the most part are not. To my knowledge. There are some common names used, but not to my knowledge. Yeah, I don't believe there was anybody directly mentioned in the game. Okay, here we go. Who be getting a call? Yep, we're getting a call in from Charlie. Oh, nice. Hi, Charlie. Are on the LGBT Family Games podcast. Welcome. Welcome. Yeah, nice to be here. I was doing some research on actually Fortnite and it's facing me. It's being sued for not being sued. Okay. Yeah. And I very unsettling, I want to say, because it makes absolutely no sense why they we why they would be suing this suing Fortnite at least. I mean I can personally understand why somebody would try to sue Fortnite. There has been a lot of questionable decisions made by what is the company that makes Fortnite epic. Epic games. Yeah, developer epic. Especially when it comes to certain things. Like if you download the Epic games or the Epic Games store it used to. I'm not sure if it still does this. They used to automatically install Fortnite, which was controversial as well, but also their player base. Sorry, what you going to say? Yeah. Yeah. No. So I'm never a fan of a company forcing me to download something. Yeah. Ever. Like I'm not okay with that at all. I hate it when that happens. I actually hate the default apps like the Xbox app on Windows. Yeah. And I don't want it. Like I didn't choose to have this on my computer. But anyway, so to to elaborate on what Jolly is saying quote, This is from the New York Times, quote, Epic games to pay 520 million over children's privacy and trickery charges. The creator of Fortnite public games violated children's privacy and duped millions of users into unwanted purchases. Federal regulators say so. This was in December of 2022. So this is pretty recent. But this is from the FTC, I believe. So On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission accused the company of illegally collecting children's personal information of harming young players by matching them with strangers on Fortnite, while enabling life communications and separately using manipulative techniques called dark patterns, tricked millions of players into making unintentional purchases and a historical deal that puts entire video game industry on notice. Epic agrees to pay a record $520 million in fines and refunds to harm. Oh, there we go. Yeah. Can I buy this for a dollar? What are you trying to buy for a dollar? Xavier, Welcome into the LGBT Family Against Committee podcast. I commend Xavier. What's. What's on sale? What's on sale? I don't know if there's any merch on sale. Yes. What's on sale? LGBT fam dawg slash shop. Wow. You actually know the URL to. I got. I got. I got to do something. We do have we do have pride flags for sale. It's true. I should get one and hang it in my office. You should that be cool. That's putting like cool lights on it too. We should tell the others against gang flags. That would be fine. So yeah, we do have a merch shop if anybody's interested. Thank you for the plug, Xavier. Mm hmm. Any time. Back to gaming. Now that we have Xavier here. Xavier, are you getting the new Destiny expansion? This Destiny two? What does it like full of events? Have you heard anything about the thing? Eventually I'm going to get it. I'm kind of a holdout. I have been with most of the expansions, and a couple of times it was the right decision. So honestly, I'm probably not going to get it right away when it gets released. I believe on the 28th. Yes, exactly. It would be very expensive. It's kind of pricey, um. How much is it okay to get the full deal? The deluxe package. It's like 100 bucks This. See, if I remember correctly. I guess the difference here is that the game itself is free to play correct effect. The the base game is free to play. So I think yeah, that's the difference between like a usual game where you would buy and DLC would come out maybe a year later, which you know, the DLC add stuff to the game. So maybe the DLC will be like 30 bucks in the original game of 60 bucks or now they since the base game is for is free, as it always has been. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure the DLC add a little bit more than the normal DLC is to do to. I'm not sure though, you would be the knowledgeable person on that party or on that subject. Like with most games of its type, with most members, you're going to get the base game for free usually, right? And you'll be able to play to a certain point. But it all kinds of d it all kinds of devolves into farming at a certain point when you don't have the DLC because the tests just get more repetitive. So they give you a little taste and then you may go to an area where you're like, Oh, I want to you know, I want to do more of this. And it says, okay, well, you can't do more of that. If you do, you need to buy the DLC. And there's a number of them for Destiny. This is just the newest one, the last one or the current one, I guess I should say, is the The Witch Queen. I believe I bought that one and I was very satisfied with that one. But I was also a holdout. So I don't know. It's kind of game. I don't know. And he's got a game in there. So you guys have all now learned that James has the ability to play certain sound effects in the recording session. Oh, wow. Oh, my. Yeah, I've been holding out. I completely forgot until you did that. And I like you. Remind me. I'm saving myself for a certain person. Well, but anyway, so yeah, we talked about we talked about Destiny two talked a little bit about the Fortnite lawsuit. I'm not surprised that I'm getting sued over that. I think a lot of people are going to get sued over Nfts in the future and understand. Yeah, because I personally think that Nfts are just a very big scam where people are basically throwing away their money. Yeah, I remember last year, I think Troy Baker, who's a huge voice actor in the gaming community, started making NFT and he got a huge backlash for it. I think he's I understand the concept. Yeah, but I think it was a small thing. It was a one thing. That's when it took off, is when it started becoming a big problem. Just out of curiosity, I have a question. Mm hmm. Sure. So about she who should not be named J.K. Rowling. Don't you wish she'll appear? No. So here's the question. And I've asked this question of other people, and no one can actually answer it. So maybe one of you can answer it for me. Maybe. And I even looked online to find out exactly what it was, What what was the straw that broke the camel's back? What was the actual pivotal point that turned everyone against her? What actually happened? What did she actually say? So I'd actually have to go back in time on her Twitter feed to find the exact quote. If I remember correctly, it was based on either political figure or somebody in a company being passed up for another person who was trans. And their commentary on it was related to that. There was a they were making a distinction between this person being trans and a woman assistant or woman having that role, that there was a difference. Yeah. And I think, you know, the challenge is that, you know, there are a lot of people that get very animated over this particular subject and I do think that the community needs to learn as a whole that, you know, number one, we're minority. We actually just talked about the statistics in the United States, 7.2 of the population, 7.2% of the population identifies as LGBT. So we're less than 10% of the US population and of that population that less than 10%, I think it was, Oh, I wish I had that up front of me. But I want to say like 60% identify as bisexual and then 17 and 17 for lesbian and gay. And, you know, the trans community accounts for a very small percentage of the very small percentage of the United States in relation to being LGBT. Yeah, but right now that portion of the population is being very vocal. And I understand why. I understand that that that portion of the population needs to be vocal because of some of the rights that they're not receiving. But I don't think that we do ourselves any favors when we become aggressive towards people. And that was kind of the point. Like we were talking about the game and I was talking about how like people were trying to cancel like members of the LGBT community of that 7.2% are trying to cancel other members of the LGBT community over a video game. And I understand the premise. I understand people pushing for others to support LGBT and not support financially people that speak out against LGBT. But if we become our own enemies, we will not survive. Yeah, exactly. Well, the whole situation with the game is preposterous. Well, I think the thing that has come out is that the biggest controversy that you have, the game wasn't actually to do with her either. It's to do with stuff within the game itself. I think people are reaching right. I think I think people will reach any point like we can make any game controversial. I agree. Real. Yeah. Well, let's be real. We can make any video game controversial. We can make Mario controversial. It's true. Yeah, 100%. I mean, white dude pummeling minorities. Mm hmm. But it's, you know, that doesn't mean that we should write. We shouldn't cross those lines. It's. I understand how people can make a correlation between certain characteristics of goblins in the game with anti Semitic drawings that have happened in the past. I can understand that correlation. But in the same regard, my fan light just turned on out of the blue. That's called in for k k It's the ghost, you know, it's it's the treasure we were talking about earlier that's revealing its location. Okay. Is there like smart bulbs and or something. Holy shit. Yeah, it has a smart switch, but I don't know. Okay. Google office fan light off. I don't know why it just suddenly turned on. That's kind of creepy. It is kind of creepy. Well, for a moment, you looked younger because I have better lighting. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we don't know. But, like, I get it. Like, I get where people are coming from, but like, at some point you're tried to stop it. We're doing a podcast, but think it's when you press the button, mute on top of it. I anyway, so at some point we just take things to work. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you're right. I mean, I do think it was a questionable decision to have your character fighting on what would be considered the bad side of a social rights situation. But I don't. I think it has been taken too far because, like, that could be compared to anything that could be compared to women's rights, like compared to LGBTQ rights in general as well. So I think you're correct. They are overreaching when it comes to trying to find something to escalate a situation framing right? So like, let's reframe it. So if if instead of goblins, the game had you just fighting humans, I think that's a good question. I think you better now. It doesn't make it I don't think it changes anything. I think it's just the situation in which it was put in because you're fighting on the side that's fighting against a group, trying to get rights that don't currently have rights. So that's as far as I'm aware. You're the one who's played the games. I have not as of yet. Oh, don't help me. Point out me also. I'm just also you might want to consider this that regarding your commentary, Ross, you obviously have like an intimate knowledge of what the game is about and etc., right? There's going to be a lot of people who don't who haven't played the game and prior to it's released, nobody really knew unless you in it. You were an enthusiast. When this was presented to me, the issue of the game and why I shouldn't support it, someone actually told me that you shouldn't support it, and here's why. I quite literally had this picture in my mind of J. K in the game Smiting Rainbow clad trolls for the for the sake of freeing biological women from the oppression, the oppression of who knows what. But the reason why I say this is because that was the impression I was given by not a player. I'm not going to buy the game. I'm not going to play the game. It's not a thing I do. I haven't even read the books. I've watched the movies and enjoyed them thoroughly. But there's a lot of people like me out there, some of us impressionable, who now if you if you're if you're unsure, you have to do this due diligence. Now, there's a work involved. Now I have to like, okay, am I going to be on the right side of history in a conversation? If I support this game, then I'm not actually going to buy. Or should I just not discuss it at all? Right? No one should be put through that kind of social drama with their friends or with people who maybe they meet and want to strike up a conversation with. I think the whole thing was handled has been handled poorly all the way around. Yeah, I think it's been handled poorly. I would agree with that. And and as we said, it's people trying to find anything they can do to hate on something. I think that's a problem today as well as like there will be even just historical games on historical media sometimes there will often happen now is that it may be telling the truth about something that may have actually happened. And I think but then you'll get backlash because it showed the truth. And I think in this case, you know, this is the game. Yeah, I think there was some questionable decisions made. You know, they're showing something that was in the history of the Harry Potter universe to start with. I believe that this goblin uprising had actually been talked about in the books previously to. Right. Also, shouldn't there be a separation, too? As James was saying, Jake, make it some royalties from this but she's not the dev for the game itself and right so yeah there's a separation that should probably occur where let's make her responsible for some bad decisions she's made regarding the community. But I have seen or heard watching the tubes, right, where people have kind of meshed it all together and pushed it in front of her. Everything you said, everything I said, all being pushed in front of her like, I don't know this woman that could care less. But what I do care about is things being what they need to be, things being honest and truthful. Because when they're not, then a lay person will make a decision based on something that might be fallacy. Yeah, right. And we don't want that. We don't want people making decisions based on lies. You're correct. And I think that's an issue. As you said, that's an issue with the situation to start with, and that's been an issue with even with other people's controversies to do with it. For example, Johnny Depp was fired from the Fantastic Beasts franchise because of his trial with Amber Heard. Oh, yes, exactly. Yet they were okay with dealing with this controversy, which was bigger to do with the writer of said series and I think that's the problem with a lot of this is why is it there's inconsistent expectations I think I don't think that's the right way to put it. But you know what I mean? So, like they fire him over something that he turned out to be in the rights on for the most part. But they are fine with continuing with this series written by somebody who has said certain things. You know, I think the hypocrisy of the entire thing. Silver lining. My boy Johnny got paid it's true he took anyway for it 100% of what he has or he got paid. Yeah. Because he had a contract for like three films. Mm hmm. Yeah. They had to pay him. It was in his contract. Yeah. So in the way he technically was, recent ones, this was what is usually a king. Before which movie was called Johnny Depp was playing a king. Yeah, I can remember what movie was called. I think it was Woody. And I do try so hard, but it's what King Was he playing it like? Remember what the movie was? I'm going to go it while you guys talk. But I guess all in all, my perspective for a lot of things, like what we were talking about there is, Oh, okay. I also think the struggle with this game as well was that unfortunately it ended up being announced pretty much around the time that the big controversy came out. Right. Like I think they were within like four months of each other. And so people started to base their opinions on information they had learned for months before that. No, I mean, Jack has has had a lot of controversy for over a year now. J.K. Rowling will frame frame their comments from a perspective of a cisgender female concerned about biological female rights. Again, it's such a it's such a sticky conversation because I know many trans people who are working towards, you know, transitioning and are respectful of cisgender females. But I have seen examples of some individuals who don't behave with the same level of decorum. Right. Right. They they don't carry themselves in a way that represents, you know, gender transition. They they kind of really just are very flippant about everything. And they're not respecting you know, they're not respecting others when they do. So, you know, it's kind of like the whole controversy with that one person. What is their name? Their name was the Dylan Mulvaney. You know, a lot of a lot of trans people find Dylan Mulvaney to be very controversial and they don't like doing Mulvaney because of comments that they've made about like, quote, normalize the bulge and other things that somewhat undermine the trans movement. Right. And make it more difficult for some people who are who are trans you know, it comes off some of the things that Dylan Mulvaney does come off as disingenuous and not respectful of women to begin with. But then also not respectful to trans women. So I think it's it's a challenge because we're at a point where, you know, again, it's it's we're a minority. LGBT is a minority, right? We cannot afford as a group inclusively including trans people, we cannot afford to be bombastic towards people. Yeah, right. That's not to say that we need to, you know, lay down and take it when we're not receiving it. Right. It's not necessarily the case, but we have to understand where to draw the line. We need to carry ourselves with a much higher standard. And I think the, you know, the best example of kind of what we need to do comes from the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King. Yeah. You know, we need to civil disobedience is okay. Like you, you know, we need we need to do it with love. We can't just go and yeah, we can't be we can't be. Violent, nonviolent protest is the way when you start with violence. I don't care who you are. When you start violence, that is a negative on everybody. Yeah. And that doesn't include just physical violence. That includes violent threats. There are so many people in the LGBT community or, you know, in general that will like say you're worthless and you need to die on like Twitter. Like, I see all these messages that people send, like you're playing this this game. You know, I hope you die a painful death or something. Like, why? Why? Why are we are we treating each other that way? Yeah. You know, why are we treating others that way? How does that make us look? Makes us look like the crazy ones. Well, I think the a large part, if not the issue, a large part of the issue that is causing what you're referring to is I get the feeling that a lot of people in the community forgot how they got here and that there was help and there was tolerance and there was support and there was help and in some cases blood, sweat and tears shed by people who aren't directly a part of the community. And the reason why I think it's important not to forget that is because when people forget that, they tend to feel like they have because everything's happened in such a short amount of time. In the grand scheme of things. Right. Because it's a lot different now than it was in 1980, right? Yeah. How many years has that been there for? Eight. So it's it's different now than it was in 2005. Well, true, true. But I think when you in ten can say it's different now than it was two years ago, when you forget kind of where you minority communities or communities. How do I want to say this? People of color, I guess I could say, and they're minority communities. That's kind of like a running site. Don't forget where you come from. Don't forget how you got here. I think it's kind of a similar thing. But what's happening is a large part of the community or the community at large has forgotten that. So now that everything's kind of where it needs to be, it's better, it's more comfortable. You know, you have support even from members outside of the community. I think it's made everyone kind of complacent. And so now people are in this state where we are seizing our equality. And unfortunately, the the acting out part of it is we've seized our equality. And what it looks like looks like outside looking in is that now that we've seized our equality, we can be as douchey as the other people. We can be as douchey people who are not a part of the community, because somehow that means that that shows that we have our equality. Now. I think it's preposterous and I think that the people just forgot about the struggle. They're just enjoying the rewards. And so I'm not surprised that someone would say the things that you mentioned to James. I have heard the same thing. I've heard worse. I've seen people raked over the coals and burned in effigy for asking a question. That might have been a touchy question, but they seriously didn't know. And they were like, Well, why is this the case? That has to stop. It really does. It has to stop. And that's just my opinion. That's where I certainly agree. I think And, you know, it's it's a challenge because we are faced as the community. We're faced with a lot of a lot of bigots. I don't think we help ourselves in some in some cases with how just how pushy we are, right. Like we're pushy as a community. We push our views on to people in some ways, I think we need to adopt more understanding, more patience. It's not easy. It's not easy. But coming from and in life wasn't as hard for me as it was for for people before me and, you know, who were gay, right? Like things were more difficult in the nineties than they were in the early 2000s. But, you know, we, I don't know, we just we need a different approach. I believe. I think we need to start treating treating each other with more care. Number one, I think that we need to approach people outside the LGBT community with, with more kindness and patience and try to have conversations instead of arguments and understand that people might not agree with us. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that. And you know, that's okay. That's okay. People don't have to agree with me. I think the needs to be drawn in general in society where if if what I'm doing harms you, then that should be a problem. But if what I'm doing does not cause you direct harm, then I should be allowed to do whatever I want. Yeah, it's not it's not illegal or immoral. Yeah, exactly. Where have I heard that before? Yeah. I stole your quote, but I stole your quote. And Xavier is over here yelling, Stop it! How dare the old man voice so well, so that we're going to wrap up on that. Yeah. So that was a lot on that particular subject. But the takeaway is, number one, treat each other with kindness and respect and be patient and understanding with those outside the community and hopefully come join us on the next recording of the LGBT Family and James Comey podcast where you can join in the conversation. And if you disagree with anything that you say, you can say, So will we be sharing the unedited version of our podcast? So so this this podcast will go live, the audio version will go live on the Spotify, all the audio places within the next 24 hours. And then we will post on YouTube the full version, probably within about a week, followed by some clip versions, like how cool. I was just wondering what our patrons subscribers had access to. So patrons subscribers will have access to the archived ones because all the previous episodes of the podcast before this one are going to be archived. So Patreon supporters access to those and then your future. And then eventually we'll do like a prerelease of the video to make transfers. That sounds wonderful. I think everyone should like subscribe, subscribe to the Patreon and our Discord merch and service for all of this. You're going to be in the description of the description. Yes, Links in the description. Everything. Everyone come and see. I haven't see everybody. If you do want to join us next time, make sure to go to discord slash LGBT fam or on our website LGBT fam dot org and. You can find the discord and other things on there as well. I really hope they come. I need people to engage me.