Maybe it’s because the story is a gay romance.
@ScarletGeisha You could have a lesbian romance story without changing too much, which would (obviously) work without a male protagonist.
@ScarletGeisha But we need a reason to necessitate a male protagonist, and a gay man romance seems the most reasonable.
@ScarletGeisha Certainly a gay man romance would necessitate a male protagonist, but equally a gay woman romance would necessitate a female one. I just don’t think it’s possible to ever justify excluding women from fictional roles. Oh well, we’ll just have to behave like decent human beings and include both options when writing our stories. I know it’s a real drag, but that’s life, sometimes.
Because, say it’s a realistic fiction in which you play as a senator or warrior in the Roman Empire. To make it a realistic fiction, the character would have to be male. And vice versa, if it’s about Anne Boleyn, can you have a male protagonist?
@Epicazeroth ‘Realism’ and ‘Fiction’ do not go together in my mind. If you make a game where you play as a senator/warrior in the Roman Empire, it would be perfectly reasonable, in my opinion, to change the Roman Empire to a fictional alternative where gender egalitarianism is in effect. Indeed, it would be unreasonable not to, from my point of view.
As for games about a real person, that is a good question. I would suggest including the possibility of playing the game in an alternate universe where the historical figure in question was the opposite sex to the real one. To be honest, I’m not personally interested in playing as pre-determined characters in that way. I’d much rather create my own protagonist.
The romance story in The Race was a straight male only path. The reason for this was that the female you fall in love with was a fictional character from a true historical place. Having a male alternative was impossible. To find out more, play as a male and sleep!!!
REALISTIC FICTION. It doesn’t matter what makes sense to you, it matters what is real. Fiction means it didn’t actually happen or there’s no proof. Realistic fiction means there’s no proof that it happened but based on the facts of the time period could.
@Epicazeroth Well, I don’t see the attraction of ‘realistic fiction’. I pretty much hate a lot of aspects of reality, so why anyone would choose to remain in a facsimile of it when they have other alternatives is beyond me.
It doesn’t matter whether you like it, there are people that do. As for a story that has no ‘clean’ female equvalent, I’m thinking of a divorced man fighting for custody of his daughter. Not only does he have to face a court system that is prejudiced to rule against him, something he’s never faced before, he’ll have the difficulty of his friends turning against him for his actions, and a daughter who’s mind he barely understands. While you can do the same story from the female perspective, the difficulties that the genders would face, and implications of the story, are very different. Also, a story where you take the role of a real person would be not quite the same if gender fliped.
On the contrary, I think that the continued pandering to priviledged groups by the media is something which should be discussed. Silence on these issues would only reinforce the status quo. If we wish to improve, we must look at things critically.
Criticism does not always equate to hate.
You know what not to be rude but can we not argue over whether or not there is a gender option because while I would love the ability to choose to be female I would hate for the creator to decide to drop this because of the argument like what happened with Vendetta: Rise of a Gangster which in its own right was a great game even without being able to choose gender.
Portraying sexism as a simple fact of history or the setting, without passing a moral judgment on the matter, is not evil or wrong. Writers don’t have a duty to write polemics or to revise history to appear more politically-correct, particularly in stories that are not children’s stories. (In fact, Choice of the Vampire does portray historical sexism in just such a way.)
I agree that the issue does need to be discussed, but that is not the same as saying that every game should be a platform for your views on the subject.
I am not calling for an abolishment of ignoring social injustice in history. There’s already enough of that in textbooks. However, textbooks and ficiton serve very different purposes. Yes, I am aware that there are many types of ficiton and that not all of them are fantasy.
Let’s define the existence of sexist institution as gendered norms. It’s alright to include those in your story, so long as you aren’t indulgent. Next, we have something called gendered tropes. These are cliches which appear in a large concentration of fiction and serve to uphold patriarchal ideals. Gendered tropes seek to justify gendered norms by potraying women as inherently weak and deserve to be governed by men. For instance I have a story set in Ming China about the Ming navy versus Japanese pirates. It was a norm that women didn’t serve in combat professions, criminal or otherwise, and say I keep that. But norms can be violated. Real women did that.
In a literary trope, we wouldn’t see women anywhere except as damsels in distress for the manly man Ming captain to save. Or the manly man pirate to have rapey fun with. Not only that, but I write nothing to suggest that these women are more than just helpless distress. How do I make Damsel not tropey? Why I can start by giving her integrity. She’s not going to take damselling as a career, she does something about it. Maybe she bides her time, knowing that the Ming navy are big on cracking down pirates, so she waits for the pirates to be ambushed. When that happens, she uses what she learnt about the pirate’s ship to flee. So norms dictate she doesn’t fight, and she doesn’t. A club to the head still hurts though. She doesn’t wait for manly man Ming captain to save her. Manly man Ming captain could be anyone else, it doesn’t matter. He’s just a condition to be met in order for her to enact her plan. There, kept norms and rejected tropes.
Or perhaps I go bolder and have a warrior woman character. No, making a woman able to fight doesn’t automatically trope-breaking, not if she still relies on the manly man hero at the end or if she’s basically “girlfriend with a sword”. Instead, I have my Pirate Woman Captain being a true scourge of the sea. She’s not afraid of guns and bullets. The men under her command are terrified of her because she’s that scary. She knows she’s powerful too, and she knows how shitty patriarchy is. She’s not going to stand for that crap, and so she lays down a rule dictating that any men committing rape will be delciously castrated. Or if that gives you castration anxiety and makes you scared of feminists more, then I’ll have her do beheadings instead. See, I worked without your norms to make something which isn’t a trope. Don’t tell me it’s unrealistic either. Look up Ching Shih.
That’s quite a wall of text there isn’t it? Well, I’ll stop now since I don’t want this thread going off-topic. If anyone wants to discuss this me, I’ll be happy to oblige. As Debbie Harry once said, “Call me, call me anytime!”
“That’s quite a wall of text there isn’t it?”
Yep.
Hey, is the original poster still around?
I’d like to hear their response!
The original poster has got to be around, having posted 4 days ago.
Oh God, I’ve just logged back in, 4 days after my last post, and I find a long debate… seriously guys, gender will not effect this story in the slightest bit, but as I said, I am more than happy to add a gender option (fake though it will be) After what happened to poor vendettas project, I think we should be a little more careful about these debates.
Anyway, thought I’d update on my progress: I am currently editing the first part of the game, but don’t expect a demo anytime soon, I like to make sure a work is near perfect before I release it.
Ok, another question I would like to put forward: does anyone think the game requires a love interest? I’ve noticed alot of the games on this site so far seem to have a romantic element to them, I don’t really want to add a love interest, if I’m honest, just because I don’t really like writing romance, and I think it would interfere with the story of the game. However, I would be willing to add one if anyone think’s it would benefit the game in some way.
It’s not necessary to have a love interest.