The worst fictional portrayals of women that I’ve seen always look like the (male) author was trying too hard to write what they think a woman would be like. They try to stick in what they’d consider feminine interests, feminine emotions, and end up less with a character and more with a collection of clichés. While people of different genders will have different experiences, w’ere not fundamentally alien to one another, so don’t try to push a character to be more or less gender conforming. Treat them equally.
I’ve seen also a lot of writers who feel too hesitant to even try writing characters of different identities, including gender. But this just reinforces the idea that we’re fundamentally different, sets up barries between us, and reduces representation.
For that matter, writing a CoG also makes this a lot easier… the player is controlling their character’s perspective, so the player gets to decide what their character’s gender means to them
But writing “characters first, gender later” usually has the writer default to male, thus losing so much cultural, societal and social impact that differs between genders and how these genders develop.
I’m not saying each gender is wildly different, but there are things such as in-jokes, peer pressure, matters involving family, different reactions to strong emotions, etc.
Personally, I’ve found that a lot of that has to do with our own society’s assumptions and gender roles. I’ve gotten criticism before for “writing female characters like male ones” because I put them in narrative roles and archetypes which are traditionally male ones.
My opinion on writing for inclusivity should be well-enough known by now (power fantasies should be as inclusive as possible; non-power fantasies should do whatever works to serve the story, so long as you can divorce your setting’s bigotries from your person as the author), but “inclusivity” in the case of a power fantasy also means being set in a society which doesn’t set different expectations for accidents of birth like assigned gender or ethnicity (class is a grey area, since most power fantasy settings allow the player the luxury of social mobility).
Simply put, in a world where you have a truly gender-equal society, the cultural foundation for a lot of those injokes, pressures, emotional responses, and family obligations wouldn’t exist.
I take your point, but I nonetheless feel that there is quite a bit more problem in writing gender first, character later. Certainly, depending on the setting someone’s writing in, it would be important to consider the impact of someone’s gender on life experiences, which would inform the writing about them as would the rest of their experiences.
However, one of the othet dangers of male-as-default (in addition to a scarcity of female characters outside of female-defined roles) is the idea that males represent humanity in general, and that therefore females are other. That in order to write a female character, one must constantly keep her gender in mind, whereas a male character can just be. I have seen female characters defined by their femalehood in a way that male characters aren’t. The same applies to any other disenfranchised group.
All this talk makes me miss “the Myrmidon” again, where the world despite being a gender and sexual utopia is still a dystopic class-based hellhole (at the start).
And of course we have our own @Havenstone’s excellent world where gender and sexual equality, while theoretically a cherished principles are not adhered to in practice when it comes to the lower castes and classes who enjoy considerably less sexual freedoms due to a perverse perceived “social need” to get them to breed as much as possible.
I guess there are some character types where you would need to be aware of how their gender would affect them. For example, a very commanding, ruthless boss-figure is going to be seen differently if she’s a woman, by the reader as well as possibly in-universe, as those traits are seen more negatively for women. Which is not at all to say you shouldn’t write women like that, of course.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about: in a power fantasy, a commanding, pragmatic figure should be seen the same, regardless of gender, not only because it shows that the setting is gender-equal in practice, but also to show female players that yes, she can choose to play that kind of person if she wanted, and not get the unflattering comments and resentment she’d get in the real world.
Oh exactly, but unfortunately treating her the same in the text does not mean that the reader may not have a more negative reaction to her than they would the exact same male character. (This in terms of an NPC rather than a main/player character)
True, but it’s not necessarily the author’s job to cater specifically to the category of people who would do that, as compared to the category of people who’d see that sort of character as a role model and an ideal regarding how our world should see them.
It becomes a creative decision, and my opinion falls clearly on one side, and not the other.
If a game did include an option to dislike a female boss because of her gender, the boss probably would treat a female MC different than a male MC because a female worker should understand gender discrimination and that form of self-discrimination would be weird.
But, then again, as @Cataphrak said, that option is really not necessary. The MC shouldn’t be made to automatically love the NPC, but giving a paragraph description of a NPC and then immediately asking if I love/hate them always makes me choose the neutral option because I don’t know them.
As for writing different gendered NPCs that have to have a static-ish personality, think of people you know or popular people in media. Clementine is a child and a female from the Walking Dead Game who everyone loves even though (or because) she seems so mature and competent, but the other child characters like Duck and Sara are different and unique which makes each person seem different and more real.
I think I didn’t say what I was trying to very clearly. I wasn’t saying that a player should be given the opportunity to discriminate based on the gender of an NPC. I meant more that in a world where there isn’t perfect gender parity, one difference between the female and male versions of this same boss character would be that the woman would probably be aware of and have to deal with the ‘bitch’ stereotype, and so when writing her you might need to think about how that had affected her.
Admittedly not the best example, but I was trying to think of a situation where a character’s gender might affect them in a way you’d need to think of when writing.
I might be wrong, but is what you is what you are trying to say that our perception as readers also affects the character?
So a stern, ruthless, stoic woman is an ice-queen at best, but mostly a b-word in the eyes of the readers. While a man with the same characteristic is no-nonsense at worst, but cool at best?
Or to take a reverse gendered example. A non-active, passive female victim is normal an worthy of the readers/watchers sympathy automaticaly, while an non-action, passive guy have to have something else going for him for the readers to feel sympathic towards his plight?
And perceptions like that (Often contradictionary depending on genre, or expected audience) influence how we write characters, because they influence how they are percieved?
Yes. Definitely this. Our perception of a character does affect them. One of the aspects I loved about Choice of Romance was how I liked Torres a lot better as a female character. I felt rather sorry for her, in a way that I didn’t when he was male. I’ve also a fondness for the Queen over the King.
I loved that in The Lost Heir I could pick! I liked our fighter companion as always female. Not for romance purposes, but just because I liked her that way a lot. She didn’t feel like the same character when I set her as male. I didn’t like the guy as much.
Yes, exactly! And yeah the damsel-in-distress trope is a good example; would people just accept a woman in that role but feel like it needs more justification if it’s a man?
@FairyGodfeather: I felt the same way about Black Magic in Heroes Rise; that even though the writing was identical they felt slightly different. I think it’s partly because Black Magic is kind of a Femme Fatale type, which you don’t often see as a guy.
I really don’t like Black Magic as a woman, because she does fall into all those classic femme fatale stereotypes. I think the character is wonderfully subversive as a man though.
Don’t remember me those crap erotica nobels . Alpha male force girl treats her like shit but she is a good pet for him ever if she doesn’t like that crap… Because he is her man… ALL THAT IS BULLSHIT AND DIRECTLY A WAY TO TRY PERPETUATE THE IDEA MEN RULE WOMEN HAS TO BE THEIR SLAVE AND CARETAKER OF BABIES. Same storytelling that present gays as some sort or vicious creatures or passive female sustitutes… I hate all that genre. Oh… and don’t forget the EVERY WOMAN IS A SECRET LESBIAN DESIRING TO HAVE A TREESOME WITH YOU…
All is made for a certain audience, hentai rape games had a great audience, nasty yaoi had a great audience. Same some racist stuff That doesn’t make them desirable. I am tired of the I make my character white man heterosexual and machist because that’s what it sells.
