It is an unfortunate fact of British life that whilst we strive to eradicate many of the unsavoury aspects of our national psyche such as xenophobia and institutionalised racism we still feel well within our rights, as a nation, to mock homosexuality. Kelvin Mackenzie famously used the headline ‘Eastbenders!’ on the front cover of The Sun and it has been used twice since. Offensive and barely newsworthy - yes, but unfortunately this is the biggest selling newspaper in our fair land so we have no choice but to put up with it.

Here at the Rodent we’re tremendously open minded about this sort of thing though and thought it might be a cracking idea to introduce to you a list of possible gay characters from the world of games. They aren’t all leaping about proclaiming their gayness, for the most part they go about their business with ‘nothing to declare’.

Decide for yourselves:

Ryo Hazuki

He’s plucked the eyebrows. You can tell.

The evidence is stacked in favour of Ryo being the most prominent gay video game character of our time. Ryo’s quest for revenge coincided with a personal ‘awakening’ inside the lad. Major side effects of this awakening meant ignoring his young girlfriend Nozomi, trawling the town late at night looking for sailors and getting increasingly sweaty with his ‘friend’ Mayasuki in the dojo. Ryo really is the poster boy for homosexual games characters. He takes crap from no-one (least of all his girlfriend), is driven to succeed and loves nothing more than getting into a tangle in seedy underground bars. Oh, and he’s plucked his eyebrows. You can tell.

Zangief

Hot new fashions down the village

Zangiefs sexuality has always been a topic for heated discussion in Russian sauna’s. Clear indications appear not only in his open dislike of women, but in his upbringing. Training is always tough, but even more so in Siberia, where only the cream of human strength can survive, resulting in a complete lack of women. As we all know, men have needs, and the only people available that Zangief could exercise with were butch men and polar bears. Further hints of his gayness have been dropped throughout his career, eagle eyed gamers would have noticed that he keeps a picture of Vega, the long haired Spanish gay icon, stuck to his mirror.

However, the path of love never runs smoothly, despite being in awe of his greatest Wrestling Rival, Mike Hagger, Zangief has never met him in person. They have a love that is forbidden, a love that dare not say its name and the only way they can indicate their love for one another is by copying each others signature wrestling moves.

Paul Phoenix

Leather + Cops = George Michael. He’s also leaning like that to cover up his boner.

Paul is classic gay. Just classic. Consider the evidence. Late 40’s single male, lot of attention paid to haircut and a constant need to ‘beef up’. His vanity also extends to a well buffed motorcycle and Paul loves nothing more than hanging around in the dojo. Each of these in itself is hardly damning, but combine all of them with Paul’s ‘Blue Oyster Bar’ fashion sense and we have one tough gay. It also turns out that Paul has a bit of a thing for wrestling bears. It seems we may be cracking the computer game character code ‘bear wrestling = gay’. Of course Paul won’t admit this. Just the same way Tom Cruise won’t, but we know and we accept the lie because just like Tom, Paul is a really loveable gay. I mean guy.

Isabella Valentine/Ivy

Metaphorically surrounded by cock.

From Namco’s other fighting game comes the brutal beauty Isabella Valentine or Ivy as is her preferred lesbian nomenclature. Much like Paul she is single and ‘mature’ - she also has some Amazonian height and quite a range in dominatrix gear. However, Ivy is no fan of men, particularly that filthy pirate and absentee father figure Cervantes. Instead Ivy has built a sort of replacement for men in her weapon the living ‘Ivy blade or ‘Valentine’ as it is now known. More phallic than a host of HR Giger’s extraterrestrials this is the weapon that provides Ivy with all the companionship she needs except that is for her regular rumbles with Taki. Both women are lonely. Both are ‘a bit feisty’. I’ll leave the rest up to you.

Mario & Luigi

The look of surprise as The Sun photographer pounces is unmistakeable.

I can hear the cries of derision from around the land already. "How dare they! Innocent avatars of childlike mirth tarred with the brush of bumchummery!" Let’s just remain calm for a moment though. Allow your minds to drift back to Rock Hudson, Sal Mineo, James Dean, Alf Garnett etc. Major icons leading a double life. Mario and Luigi are not brothers, that is clearly their stage name (progressing from the early cabaret name of ‘The Mario Brothers’). Their lives are intertwined through a different kind of love - moustachioed man contact. Notice the evidence of the stereotyped butch/bitch dynamic developing. Mario’s clearly overly aggressive and impatient nature in securing the sham relationship with Madam Peach resulted in a number of successful solo outings. Luigi, on the other hand, just minced around a big empty house shrieking like a twelve year old schoolgirl and wailing his lost love’s name in desperation (in the name of decency we won’t read into the use of a vacuum cleaner as a weapon). One recent outing has seen Mario display a bizarre obsession with watersports. It is also widely suspected in the village that Mario is the sole decision maker on the stage wear of our two prize homosexual hombres. Peaked caps and peek-a-boo flap dungarees? Surely the final fluffy nail in the camp coffin?

So what have we learned? Nothing really. Gays are warranted in being nervous - they feel forced into hiding (like Mazza up there) because of the pressures of society and the press being so homophobic. Gays are sometimes double hard bastards, in the case of the above list more often than not. And most of all, deep down, we all love gays.

But not in a touching and rubbing way.

Obviously.

June 2006

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