Flyte
Administrator
Posts: 671
9/17/2013
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Alexis got interviewed by Autostraddle. It's interesting, and may or may not contain access codes.
I'm glad the 'er, sir...' thing won't be in Sunless Sea. While no doubt well meant, I've always found it a little sad that Fallen Londoners react with that sort of discomfort, and it's jarring in a game which otherwise suggests that less import is attached to a person's gender than to their attitude to pastries. Also, it's lovely to see that FL's approach to gender has inspired a bunch of people to comment gleefully. (From an earlier post: 'i live in veilgarden too we should queer the whole block'.) More games should do this.
That said, I do think Alexis is maybe a little cavalier about what you lose by treating gender and orientation as basically irrelevant (historical accuracy, 'texture'), but maybe that's just because he's speaking in the context of the type of writing Failbetter mostly do, which operates at an unusual level of abstraction, somewhere between the level of a traditional RPG or adventure game and the level of a simulation. I don't think you could invert the genders of the cast of The Walking Dead and get plausible characters, or even the same plot -- and Omid and Christa, for example, who gently subvert certain stereotypes, would be far less interesting.
Anyway, it's a good interview. If anyone's interested in gender issues in games generally, I recommend Anita Sarkeesian's Feminist Frequency.
Also, I wish to confess that for the longest time, I thought Alexis was female.
edited by Flyte on 9/17/2013
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Zeedee
Posts: 276
9/17/2013
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I enjoyed both articles. There's vast enthusiasm in the comments.
I also mistook Alexis as a woman at first. I was mildly disappointed to discover he was, in fact, not a tigress lady adorned with a velvet fez hat. It's uncertain whether I expected too much or too little.
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Please do not send me monstrous invitations tinged with the inks of the undernight or Boxed Cats. (I rotate my Starveling list, so it might take me a while to reach your name. I haven't forgotten anyone!)
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Joy Phillip
Posts: 177
9/18/2013
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Just for the record, I always thought of Alexis as male. Don't know why, but I did.
As for gender neutrality, it's a blessing to me. The reason? I'm a transwoman myself. Given a choice in games, I always play females and I love it. The option to play someone who is just neutral is wonderful, and it adds a dimension of play to the whole process that's fantastic.
As for "throwing away a layer", I don't see that in any level. I mean, you have animated corpses from the sea, what are effectively squid and octopi walking around and talking to you, tigers on their hind legs and putting humans in cages, and devils. To have a Londoner thing it's odd to have a genetic male in a beautiful frock with some cosmetics on in the face of THAT... well, it strikes me as the lesser of many MANY evils.
I sometimes do want to be able to create my own and upload my own cameo, but what I have available is good enough.
And the "er, sir" thing... having been on the RL end of this, it's not so much their discomfort as trying to find some way to address someone who presents as neither male nor female. I mean, you can't say "So... it, can I have your name please?" in a polite conversation. There aren't any gender neutral pronouns (unlike now when there is zie and zir and so on) at the time, and since London tends to be courteous no matter how odd, not knowing how to address someone is going to cause trips over the tongue and bobbles. I guess that Alexis may be able to add in gender neutral pronouns and change that bit of code, but I don't see it happening really.
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Profile: http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Joy~Phillip
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babelfishwars
Administrator
Posts: 1152
9/17/2013
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Alexis Kennedy wrote:
EDIT: I understand some folk think I'm a girl even after seeing the video. I guess the captions are fairly subtle. :-)
edited by Alexis on 9/17/2013
You will always be a beautiful girl to me.
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Mars, God of Fish; Leaning Tower of Fish
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Diptych
Administrator
Posts: 3493
9/18/2013
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You've just reminded me how I got into Fallen London in the first place! It was passed along a grapevine of friends of unconventional genders, precisely because of its inclusiveness, and, naturally, when it reached me, it pushed all of my buttons to the point that I'm still madly into it all these years later.
(The pronouns thing is tricky, isn't it? There's the singular 'they', which isn't exactly incorrect, but it usually refers to someone unknown, someone hypothetical - not someone definite and actual who happens to exist in a linguistic gap. Perhaps one of the Neathy authorities - the Illuminated College, or a respected Nocturnal poet, or perhaps even Mr Pages - should pronounce upon the issue. "Thon" is period-appropriate and suitably resonant, for instance!
(Do we know that the tigers walk on two legs? I always assumed that they were padding around on their four massive paws as usual, and just happened to be talking and wearing hats and smoking hashish at the same time.)
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Sir Frederick, the Libertarian Esotericist. Lord Hubris, the Bloody Baron.
Juniper Brown, the Ill-Fated Orphan. Esther Ellis-Hall, the Fashionable Fabian.
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airshipmedic
Posts: 50
12/30/2013
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I found the gender neutral option to be incredibly refreshing, particularly when a fair amount of my friends are transgender & it's unnecessarily difficult to navigate the real world. If video games are about escapism, this enlightened handling of gender is quite the respite. I can't think of a single other video game to offer such a solution, despite how customizable many of them seem in other ways. How many iterations of Sims go by without a single thought towards complex gender. Afterall, Sims is a game where you can be polyamorous and bisexual (which Fallen London also offers as options...assuming you never get married), i'd love to see more games handle gender as elegantly as Fallen London does.
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Pyrodinium
Posts: 639
12/30/2013
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Well in Fallen London, it pays to be as flexible as a Rubbery Man's tentacles.
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My profiles: http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Pyrodinium
(A Monster hunter on the hunt of his twin brother's killer. Overprotective dad of his twin's daughter)
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Rudolph~of~Taured
(an indeterminate person of potentially rubbery lineage)
* All social actions except photographers and loitering welcome!
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Joy Phillip
Posts: 177
9/18/2013
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Hmmmm, A MYSTERY!!! Now we must solve it!
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Profile: http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Joy~Phillip
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Early
Posts: 196
9/18/2013
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babelfishwars wrote:
Alexis Kennedy wrote:
EDIT: I understand some folk think I'm a girl even after seeing the video. I guess the captions are fairly subtle. :-)
edited by Alexis on 9/17/2013
You will always be a beautiful girl to me.
I'm going to have to stick with "tiger in a fez", myself.
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Early
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Diptych
Administrator
Posts: 3493
9/18/2013
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A few thoughts!
First: The "Sir, er, madam" routine still gets the odd giggle out of me - I like the idea that the stuffier class of Londoner still has trouble adapting to the realities of the Neath - but I am glad that Sunless Sea won't filter character portraits by gender. While I appreciate the range of ambiguous, covered-up and non-human portraits we have available, surely the whole point is that we can look like whatever we want to look like and it's still up to us what that means in terms of gender!
Second, even if we take Alexis's quote out of context, there's a difference between a game like The Walking Dead and a game like Sunless Sea. Walking Dead has a set cast of characters, with very complex pre-determined character development based on the narrow range of choices the player can make. It's a well-balanced machine, and there's not much we could change about it without upsetting the mechanisms. Sunless Sea is (from what previews we've seen) much more open-ended and about choosing our own goals. In such a game, attaching too much baggage to gender would be arbitrarily limiting certain characters' development, where in Walking Dead it would be enhancing the richness of their story.
Finally, I just want to say that I adored Omid and Christa. Favourite characters in the series after Lee and Clem. Really hope they return for season 2.
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Sir Frederick, the Libertarian Esotericist. Lord Hubris, the Bloody Baron.
Juniper Brown, the Ill-Fated Orphan. Esther Ellis-Hall, the Fashionable Fabian.
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Rook Crofton
Posts: 83
10/27/2013
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Just my two cents on the issue of gender neutral addresses: a) while I am someone who has been addressed IRL as "sir-ma'am-sir" or other unusual combinations, I found the "sir, er, ma-er, yes" address in Fallen London to be chuckle-worthy; b) I love that Sunless Sea will let you pick your terms of address, and that it will include "Citizen". If people have felt hurt after being addressed by the current gender netural address, switching to "citizen" wouldn't bother me.
Also, I would just like to say that FL's open approach to gender was and is extremely refreshing, and one of the first things to grab me when I was beginning to play.
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Rook Crofton: dreamer, antiquarian, mystic
Now a Scarlet Saint. Happy to send anyone an invite to the Temple Club.
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Riley37
Posts: 125
11/12/2013
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Not that "Citizen" carries any assumptions about class, privilege, or "us vs. them". Not until it's time to vote; do Rubbery Men vote? Are they subjects of Her Majesty? What about devils - are they entitled to equal process of law, or are they "resident aliens"? Also, does Parliament in Fallen London still govern the rest of the British Empire?
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Tommy Wi
Posts: 87
9/18/2013
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I'd like to see some better alternative for neutral gender conversation, too. What about keeping this "err.. oh yes" thing for low-level actions, but change it to something more formal when you progress up the social ladder. Surely people would know how to adress Person of Some Importance?
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Bazaar is eternally sorrowful, always weeping in form of the Lacre and the Tear.
So Bazaar demands Love Stories from its Masters. It must consume our love to endure endless grief.
Maybe that's why Bazaar ate us. Maybe that's why we are "Delicious Friends".
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* Tommy Wi & Nedemmons™, constantly grumbling and complaining over Bazaarian economy and SCIENCE! Since 2012!
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