Modder hits back at homophobic Skyrim players by making game significantly more queer
One Skyrim fan combated a lack of LGBTQ+ representation in the gaming community by creating a mod that turns all of Skyrim’s romanceable NPCs queer. (YouTube/LittleBigPlanet667/Bethesda)
A very dedicated Skyrim player has modified the game to make all non-playable characters (NPCs) queer.
Skyrim features dragons, vampires, mammoths and a race of cat-like people known as the Khajiit. But some people think that featuring LGBT+ people and same-sex romance options is a step too far for the fantasy game.
According to The Gamer, Skyrim has been subject to several anti-LGBT+ attacks recently with some modders trying to remove any traces of queerness from the game.
This reportedly includes erasing any mentions of queer relationships from the game’s notes and journals as well as modding out the ability to marry someone of the same sex.
Video game developer Bethesda’s Pete Hines confirmed back in 2011 that same-sex marriage with a selection of the game’s romanceable NPCs was an option.
According to CBR, the most important part of marrying the handful of romanceable NPCs – regardless what gender the Dragonborn is – is getting an Amulet of Mara and then fulfilling the requirements. Some require the player to complete quests, join a faction or just pay a small fee.
Despite some bigoted modders trying to erase LGBT+ themes from the game, one fan created a solution to combat the hate.
One player, who goes by the alias Crithion, responded to this wave of homophobia by releasing “Only Same Sex Marriage”, a mod that turns all of Skyrim’s romanceable NPCs into queer characters.
The Gamer reported the mod quickly overtook in popularity of the two homophobic mods. It reportedly had more downloads than the one that blocked same-sex marriage as well as the one that censored mentions of queer couples combined.
At the time of writing, the anti-LGBT+ mods have been removed from Nexus Mods, where the files were uploaded. Nexus Mods, a popular modding site on the internet, also removed the “Only Same Sex Marriage” mod.
Links to all of the mods on Reddit showed that the mods were potentially removed, meaning that they could no longer be downloaded and used in Skyrim. The landing pages on Nexus Mods all have the same message: “The mod you were looking for couldn’t be found.”
