Originally Posted by
Sammael
You know what this is about? Who people identify with and have an affinity for. I remember seeing a gay themed movie awhile back that had a gay and straight guy as the main protagonists. Towards the end of the movie the gay friend died and in the director commentary there was a split reaction. Most people were fine with the movie and the plot, but most gay people were not. They identified more with the gay character and saw that as the person they were along the journey for. So it hit harder when the character they were more invested in was snuffed out.
This applies in comics and tv shows and movies. I favor the characters that have more flashy powers. In Xmen I liked storm more than wolverine or cyclops and even gambit, because I thought her power was way cooler and more impressive. This will obviously not scale to everyone, we are getting into the nature of preference and how that impacts perceptions of the same show. But for me, since I like seeing magic and telekinetic mental powers, losing those on the team was a much bigger hit, just like gay viewers losing the gay character while most of the straight watchers were like who cares, I'm good!
I imagine the people who love the wolverines of the world and favor the punching and kicking and mma extreme over tk powers or magic characters did not bat as much of an eye at the loss as I did.
That is one of the virtues of games, these intersections of preference and identity don't have to be zero sum, people can choose what they prefer. It's also why it's generally a good thing that media tries to expand the types of characters and identities that are depicted, since more people with a broader range of preferences get something that appeals to them. (conversely, when people who are used to getting most media content depicted in a way that caters to their preferences have more stuff show up that is designed to cater to other groups, this causes a great deal of bitterness in a lot of people [see a large chunk of the reaction to star trek discovery])
I'm just salty that what appealed more to me was just gutted like a throwaway star trek red shirt.