agentduckorico:
caustic-light:
renthony:
Not to drag up old shit, but I’m never going to stop pointing to Dream Daddy as a perfect example of queer media getting held to ridiculously high standards that straight media never is.
Dream Daddy is a good game with awesome characters and I’m never going to forgive the Internet for how many queer men it shamed out of enjoying it, or how many people pulled some, “ugh, men are gross, make it about lesbians instead” horseshit.
People treat queer men like garbage, and media for queer men is never given the opportunity to shine, ever.
Remember when it was cancelled over a special halloween ending?
Not just any Halloween ending, a scrapped, abandoned, and unfinished Halloween ending people found their datamining. That’s how utter bullshit the “cancelling” was.
It was an ending the crew was like “Yeah maybe this won’t fly” and they tried to delete as much of its code as they could. In order to get the mined version halfway-working, the individuals putting it together had to patch it quite a bit. When it was first released the DD crew stated they had never intended for it to go public, didn’t realize anyone would be able to get a halfway-working version of it going with what was left (even patched it was buggy as shit and has to be run in a seperate .exe from the Dream Daddy game and it crashed constantly), and they even apologized for what was in it when called out about it and explained, AGAIN, that they had removed it for all the reasons people were pointing out. All while also stating they did not agree to have it released and were having problems with the team who went and released it anyways. It had been scrapped so early on that parts of it couldn’t load sprites at first because they had either been deleted or never coded in so the rogue crew patched those files together more post-release. It was a mess.
Not to mention the individuals who did put it together didn’t even do it to call out the team, they’d done it because they thought this hidden content was cool. Datamining stuff was more popular than ever because this was right after Undertale and all the FUN attribute Gaster stuff was being found. It was other folks who already didn’t like the game who were taking problem and making a huge stink about this.
And can I say the ending wasn’t that bad. It didn’t demonize any of the characters of colour, it took inspiration from The Addams Family in its jokes, and the fucked up white family whose dad was a ministor were the “secret cultists” on Halloween. It was never even meant to be canon, but more akin to an April Fool’s type joke that could only be played on Halloween if I’m remembering correctly. The reason people were pissed was something about it making jokes to basement cults. It really was grasping at straws. The achievement you got from it was called “Escape From Margarita Zone” and involved some alien cthulhu plot twist for God’s sakes! When I first saw the ending I didn’t even understand why they felt the need to scrap it if not for Twitter being unhinged but it turned out some puritists here on Tumblr were just as bad! It’s so tame you can still watch people play through it on YouTube today. It’s pretty ridiculous and even has a one liner calling to the title “You’ve been living in a dream, daddy.” It’s really silly.
As usual a lot of this ridiculous criticism came after the Dream Daddy development team alluded to being accepting of asexual people and using an aroace inclusive acronym. I wonder why some folks would go digging through the code to find some bullshit after that 🤔 🙄 /s But even before that leaked, as stated above, there was a lot of homophobia surrounding gay men in particular, as well as people being pissed that a game which centered achillean relationships called Dream Daddy had trans man and nonbinary representation but not woman, cis or trans, options for the character creator… When you’re meant to be playing a dad dating other dads. That was the whole point of the game. So then a lot of transphobia aimed at trans men and masc folks started getting thrown into the critiques of this game, too.
ONE game that has a cute and silly idea meant for queer masc people and everyone blew up about it bc it wasn’t Perfect To Everyone’s standards, but of those who played it (including folks who are fem aligned as well as men who are not into men because there’s such a thing as suspension of disbelief and being able to watch the character you’re playing without it needing to literally be you) all loved it, or at least enjoyed themselves and the silly storylines each character follows. Is it the epitome of gaming? No but it is fun and it was well done for the exact concept it was meant to be. Plus you get a daughter and she is the best.
People just couldn’t handle a concept for queer folks that weren’t specifically them. A lot of the “girls rule boys drool, lesbians are better than gay men” mentalities were thrown around and it was a big problem.
Anyways even after all this drama it’s still a 9/10 on Steam so if you want to ever pick it up and play it I recommend it. I’m gonna revisit it sometime soon myself because I always have a lot of fun with it. Also the MC is not the only trans rep, there’s at least one other character who is trans and he’s great too.
Honestly this post made me revisit the game and my old posts about it, and honestly? A LOT of people, genuinely, sincerely, liked the dark ending. I was one of those! (I still am!) Back in the very early days, a lot of people were both enjoying the cute game, and also going Pepe Silva meme about the ending. It was fun! It was dark af, but also really cool! That is, I think, part of why everything blew up, because there was a lot people enjoying the horror content, and by glob did it upset people that the fandom wasn’t pure wholesomeness or whatevs.
Also, fun fact! So many people enjoyed the cult ending, that the team decided to actually add it back! Mind you, you need to get WAY out of your way to trigger it, full on Guide Dang It!, since it requires you model your Dadsona in a very specific way. Also, you get a message after that telling you the ending is messy, but since so many people liked it it can be officially accessed now. The game can both be cute & fun, AND it can have horror for the horror fans.
