What League of Legends taught me about the Zoosexual Experience
League of Legends.
Zoosexuality.
To some, those two things may seem like they have very little in common. But what if I told you that wasn't actually the case. Here's the thing, dear readers. As someone who's got a foot in both camps, that couldn't be farther from the truth. You see, by truly understanding the game of League of Legends, you can actually come to mostly understand the zoosexuality experience as well. So much of what I know about being a zoosexual today could be easily explained by teaching someone how to play League. Today, I plan on laying the groundwork so that when new zoos ask what this whole zoosexuality thing is all about, you can link them to the LoL downloader and say "Why don't you find out for yourself?".
Also, for reference, I'm going to be writing this article as neutrally between League and Zoophiles as possible, so that both camps can understand what I'm talking about. That way, you can share this article with both your zoosexual and League of Legends friends!
First of all, let's talk about social persecution. The overarching feeling that there's a good chance that everyone hates you because of who you are. A fear of coming out to your friends and family, or worse, that they might find out on their own? League of Legends taught me what it is to face hate for something even when people don't know you. Here's the thing, when I'm meeting strangers, there's two things that I would absolutely never in a million years bring up out of the blue. The fact that I'm zoosexual, and the fact that I'm Diamond 1 in Solo Queue. Both of those things would bring the conversation to a screeching halt, and garner you awkward stares and possibly even outright disgust. There's always a chance that the person you're talking to might be a league player / zoosexual themselves, or at least an ally to some degree, but the risk is just too high. You see, there's a social stigma around zoosexuality. If you're a zoo, you're some kind of monster that abuses animals. Obviously this isn't true, but because of social perception, that's what people believe. Similarly, if you're a high rank in League of Legends, people assume you have no life, that you're arrogant, toxic, and just generally un-fun to be around. This is also not true. Both camps are misunderstood. At the end of the day, zoosexuality is about love, and League of Legends is a game meant to have fun with. And I hope one day, both can help society realize that.
Speaking of people judging you, here's another example. League is a multiplayer only competitive game. Each game, one team will win, and one team will lose. And unfortunately, sometimes you're going to be on the losing side. It doesn't matter how good you are, or how well you do, sometimes that's just how it goes. Sometimes your team composition is bad, sometimes the enemy is just way better than you, sometimes you just play badly. It happens. League taught me that you can't win every game. And this is true with zoosexuality as well. You can be an amazing zoo, who's great at talking, and really understand how to convey that zoos are well meaning to people, but sometimes if you come out to your friends, it's not going to go well. There's no way to make it so that every time you tell someone you're a zoo, they respond positively. All we can really do is hope that when we click "Start Game", or when we have that conversation with our loved ones, that things go well. You can only control yourself, some of it is just up to the universe. That's not to say you shouldn't practice at all. There are things you can do to try and make sure you win that game. You can research builds, understand good matchups, figure out what picks are strong in the meta right now. Just like before you come out to someone there are steps you can take to try and sus out what their reaction might be. And then it's all down to execution. The thing is, even though you might not win every time, as zoos and/or League players, it's not like we can just stop. We want to try again, it's a part of who we are.
Did you know not every zoo is a perfect being? For instance, I'm awful at transitions! But, just because someone isn't perfect doesn't mean that they aren't still worth working with. Especially when you're both trying to achieve a common goal. League of Legends and zoosexuality are both team games. League taught me how to work with strangers. I'll be honest, I don't love every single zoo that I know. Some of them I don't really like at all. But, sometimes those people are still actively fighting the same fight that I am. The end goal is to explode the nexus, or to change society's minds about zoosexuality. Deciding to bicker with someone just because they missed smite, or because they put out a tweet I didn't like doesn't help our goal at all. Even if they do actually do something bad, so long as their intentions are good, sometimes it's better to just help them learn and move on, as opposed to letting them feel bad about it. And if there's someone you really don't like, who really gets on your nerves, it's always better to just mute and forget. Even if they start is, and they're the ones harassing you, there's nothing to be gained from turning it into a worse problem. Be the bigger person, and remember what you're here for.
Speaking of teamwork, League also taught me that some people just want to be angry. In league, when you win ranked games you get "lp" that works towards increasing your rank. The goal of playing ranked is to get the best rank possible, which you do by winning games. Any action that isn't towards that goal is at best pointless, and at worst actively against you. Which is why it's so astounding to me that so many people choose to do things like spam ping their team mates, get toxic in chat, or give up playing the game as soon as one thing goes wrong. The same can be said for antis. You would assume that all antis are doing what they do because they believe in animal rights and honestly believe that zoos are harmful to animals. And to that end, they would want to do anything that could help animals. This however isn't the case. Most antis tend to be more focused on what makes them feel good in the moment, even if that's just being a bully. Your broken mental top laner says "lmao thanks for the loss Rito" at three minutes when you get flashed Blitz hooked for the same reason antis send you DMs telling you to kill yourself. They no longer care about the actual goal, they feel like they've lost control of the situation and are turning to anger because that's better than just (in their mind) slowly losing.
It's not just anger either. you do end up reading League chat, there's actually some interesting comparisons to be gleaned from there as well. Specifically, how delusional people can be sometimes. People are willing to say things that are factually wrong, with no proof, and if you provide counter evidence will say you're making it up, all so that they don't have to accept any personal responsibility. For instance, if you're arguing with someone on Twitter, and they something actually certifiably provably insane, something like
"Zoophilia is awful because sex with animals hurts them! Human parts don't fit in animals!"
And you say
"Well, what about horses? Horses are much bigger than humans, so having sex with a mare should be fine right?"
Very rarely is their response going to be "Yeah, you're right, fair point." Instead, it's more likely to be
"It's not about size! It's about the fact that it's not made for humans! And besides, here's all the other things that are wrong with zoophilia!"
The thing is, nobody wants to admit they're wrong. Especially to someone they're feeling antagonistic towards. We see this a ton in League of Legends as well. Say you have a Vayne ADC that's currently 0/4 in lane at 14 minutes, and she's in all chat like
"No JG ganks lmao I guess jungle doesn't want to win the game. GG, jungle diff."
and you say
"Vayne you've died four times to a Senna Nami lane. I watched you fail flash in twice, and not back up when mid pinged roam."
Very rarely is their response going to be "Yeah you're right, fair point." Much like people trying to cope about zoosexuality, they're instead going to just shift blame and refuse to examine their own actions. When this happens, instead of trying to prove you're right, even if you are 100% right, often times it's better to just say "whatever you say", mute and move on. You're never going to convince zoophil3_hater_666 that dogs do actually love burying their bone in a human's backyard, and you're never going to convince the bronze 0/5 Lee Sin that he shouldn't be trying to invade on a Rek'Sai.
It also taught me that kills aren't the most important thing. It is SO satisfying to dunk on dumb takes on Twitter. Getting in big quote tweet battles with idiots might feel good, but is it really the best use of your time? You can play full lethality Garen and just sit in bushes waiting for unsuspecting supports to walk in so you can hit them with the counterplay button, but what is that actually achieving? Sure, you can get yourself a pretty good KDA, and maybe get a funny clip to share on Twitter, but you aren't really contributing to the team. Not to mention the fact that while you're doing that, you're missing out on farming, which is generally more valuable than one support kill. In the same way, getting a really funny response out of someone on the twentieth reply might be pretty funny, but at the end of the day if you were going to spend all that time and effort on something zoo related, it probably would have been more useful to do so on something that's going to be more impactful.
And last but not least, I want to talk about winning. What does winning even mean for both? In both situations, it's important to look at what it means to win a battle, vs winning the war. For league, every game is a battle. But your rank is the war. But here's the thing. There is no winning the war, not really. Unless you're Faker maybe. But even then, he's not number 1 on the Korean solo queue ladder, and even if he was, he wont be forever. You can't really win the war. You just hopefully win enough battles until you're in a place where you're happy. And, unfortunately, that's true with our fight as zoos as well. Every person we convince, every time we show we're right, those are battles we're winning. And in the future, when we're doing big shows, when studies come out talking about how animals do like sex, when we start changing laws and really gaining acceptance, those are also just battles. Battles that are going to feel amazing to win. But if the struggles other more mainstream queer people have faced recently have taught me anything, you can't outright win against bigotry. Or at least, we haven't found a way to yet. Who knows. Maybe in 100 years we'll totally eliminate homophobia. Nobody from that day on will ever hate the gays again. But realistically, probably not. All we can do is keep grinding, keep winning those battles again and again to prove that we're right.
Anyway, this is the worst Zooey Dot Pub article of all time. If you're a League fan who somehow clicked on this article and made it all the way to the end then wow, you're a real one for sure. If you're unsure about zoosexuality, feel free to check out some of our other articles which are generally much more coherent. And for all the zoos out there that aren't League players who made it this far, I promise that all my analogies made sense, even if you're totally lost. And hey, if you ever want to learn League, it is technically a pretty zooey game! And finally, to all the League players who are also zoos, I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into my psyche. Yes, this is the kind of thing I think about day to day. I hope you enjoyed because the target audience for this article was like 6 people.
Thanks for reading!
Article (obviously) written by Tarro (November 2023)
Find them at https://twitter.com/hereforthezoo
Questions, comments, complaints? Check out our Discord server at discord.gg/EfVTPh45RE
