375 réponses à ce sujet

[nrobbiec]

There were female Elcor in Hamlet and Blasto.

[dversion]

David7204 wrote...

Okay, first of all, complaining about storytellers doing this is hypocritical, since all of you do it in a thousand different ways every day. We all do it. It's not the job of storytellers to babysit society into 'bettering itself.' It's their job to tell meaningful and interesting stories.

Secondly, I would never say that males and females are not perceived the same. Because they aren't. But is demanding that any differences be eradicated going to get you anywhere, even if it were possible? It's easy to say how bad something is on a forum, but you might well expect and depend on this trope a lot more than you think.

I'm... not sure what you're argueing here.
I'm saying that including female genders improves the universe. I wouldn't even mind if females are subjicated in one race (although that trope gets reaaaally boring.)

what I'm saying is that we don't get a full picture of these races without the female side and that 'males' being the default gender of every race is biased writing.

[IC-07]

Let's count how many women there is in the game. Maybe it will please the OP and complaints will go away, who knows?

[RedBeardJim]

David7204 wrote...

Okay, first of all, complaining about storytellers doing this is hypocritical, since all of you do it in a thousand different ways every day. We all do it. It's not the job of storytellers to babysit society into 'bettering itself.' It's their job to tell meaningful and interesting stories.

Does doing the one somehow preclude the other?

[IC-07]

dversion wrote...

David7204 wrote...

Okay, first of all, complaining about storytellers doing this is hypocritical, since all of you do it in a thousand different ways every day. We all do it. It's not the job of storytellers to babysit society into 'bettering itself.' It's their job to tell meaningful and interesting stories.

Secondly, I would never say that males and females are not perceived the same. Because they aren't. But is demanding that any differences be eradicated going to get you anywhere, even if it were possible? It's easy to say how bad something is on a forum, but you might well expect and depend on this trope a lot more than you think.

I'm... not sure what you're argueing here.
I'm saying that including female genders improves the universe. I wouldn't even mind if females are subjicated in one race (although that trope gets reaaaally boring.)

what I'm saying is that we don't get a full picture of these races without the female side and that 'males' being the default gender of every race is biased writing.

Like duhhhh, who would want to see a game full of men? Games without the beautiful part of humanity would be a waste.

Edit: Or the beautiful part of any other race

Modifié par IC-07, 11 mars 2013 - 09:52 .

[dversion]

IC-07 wrote...

Let's count how many women there is in the game. Maybe it will please the OP and complaints will go away, who knows?

I like the female characters just fine, the character writing isn't the issue.

[David7204]

Yes. Fine. Females are nice. I'm sure nobody would have a problem with female batarians or whatever.

The issue I have here is basically saying 'Bias is bad, equality is good, and unless you agree it's bad writing.' It's not anything close to that simple.

I think having male and female characters in truly 'equal' roles with 'equal' characteristics would bother people a lot more than they think it would.

Modifié par David7204, 11 mars 2013 - 09:56 .

[IC-07]

David7204 wrote...

Yes. Fine. Females are nice. I'm sure nobody would have a problem with female batarians or whatever.

The issue I have here is basically saying 'Bias is bad, equality is good, and unless you agree it's bad writing.' It's not anything close to that simple.

Trust me, common sense will be dumped into a trashcan. ONLYEQUALITYEVERYTHINGELSEISBADYOUSEXIST. We are doomed 

[nrobbiec]

IC-07 wrote...

Like duhhhh, who would want to see a game full of men? Games without the beautiful part of humanity would be a waste.

Edit: Or the beautiful part of any other race

Unless you don't find women beautiful...

[dversion]

David7204 wrote...

Yes. Fine. Females are nice. I'm sure nobody would have a problem with female batarians or whatever.

The issue I have here is basically saying 'Bias is bad, equality is good, and unless you agree it's bad writing.' It's not anything close to that simple.

I like a good, well defined world. The great thing about Mass Effect is that while borrowing concepts and ideas from other sci-fi universes it managed to create, practically from scratch, it's own universe. Not an easy task by any measure, however it's still incomplete by a large margin.  Having only half of each race really represented by men (because men, for whatever reason are the default and women can be dealt with later, and the females are mostly strippers) is sort of an odd male-centric way of representing your view-points of this galactic utopian vision.

Modifié par dversion, 11 mars 2013 - 10:01 .

[RedBeardJim]

David7204 wrote...

Yes. Fine. Females are nice. I'm sure nobody would have a problem with female batarians or whatever.

The issue I have here is basically saying 'Bias is bad, equality is good, and unless you agree it's bad writing.' It's not anything close to that simple.

I think having male and female characters in truly 'equal' roles with 'equal' characteristics would bother people a lot more than they think it would.

Considering that the OP was talking about male and female characters of the various races being *present*, and said nothing about "equal roles with equal characteristics", you seem to be arguing against a strawman.

You seem to do that a lot.

[IC-07]

dversion wrote...

David7204 wrote...

Yes. Fine. Females are nice. I'm sure nobody would have a problem with female batarians or whatever.

The issue I have here is basically saying 'Bias is bad, equality is good, and unless you agree it's bad writing.' It's not anything close to that simple.

I like a good, well defined world. The great thing about Mass Effect is that while borrowing concepts and ideas from other sci-fi universes it managed to create, practically from scratch, it's own universe. Not an easy task by any measure, however it's still incomplete by a large margi.  Having only half of each race really represented by men (because men, for whatever reason are the default and women can be dealt with later, and the females are mostly strippers) is sort of an odd male-centric way of representing your view-points of this galactic utopian vision.

You don't like men, do you?

[David7204]

That wasn't in response to the original post. It was in response to several people saying that the norm of 'male default' is sexist and needs to be removed.

[ThatDancingTurian]

dversion wrote...

I honestly can't believe it took until the third game's DLC to have a turian female.

It's sort of a strong patriarchal view of the galaxy when the male version is the default representative of a species.
Not only that, but that bias really makes the universe of Mass Effect feel much smaller when only one sex of a species is represented.

I understand this was a limit on disc space but considering that the next gen optical discs should be much larger than the Xbox dvd I really don't see the reason females of every major race are not represented.

I agree with you OP, but I'm just so beaten down trying to argue this subject. They just don't care. We've been talking about this since the first game, and it took them that long. That tells you how much they care.

The turians were always the most glaring to me, because they came up with (okay, somewhat cheap) lore reasons for the others, but they insisted turian society was the most equal-gendered of all societies. And yet... no women anywhere.

[The Night Mammoth]

David7204 wrote...

That wasn't in response to the original post. It was in response to several people saying that the norm of 'male default' is sexist and needs to be removed.

It is, and does. 

Malicious or not, intentional or not, it's still sexist and deserves to be changed.

[dversion]

David7204 wrote...

That wasn't in response to the original post. It was in response to several people saying that the norm of 'male default' is sexist and needs to be removed.

It's an inherently sexist way of looking at the world. The same as "white" is the default would be considered racist. It's an easy thing to fall into when writing especially in fantasy writing you see it a lot. You make this fantasy world not based in anything in reality and everyone is white men. It's not that I want to change Tolkien or anything, it's just that if you're going to make a new fantasy world, you may want to be unique and not fall into the same tropes as everyone before you. It gets boring.

[Riot Inducer]

Half of the supposed sexism is just technical limitations. In ME1 we only see one gender of every other race since they were quite literally creating an entire galaxy from scratch, hell they didn't even have time to finish the Batarians by launch of ME1, they were a piece of concept art in the codex until Bring Down the Sky.

In ME2 we get male quarians because several missions focus heavily on them and visit their home so there was good story reason to show them. Every other race was pretty well explained away save batarians, vorcha and several other minor races (most of which are barely encountered in ME2)

By ME3 we have female Salarians and Krogan as well though both don't have much in the way of sexual dimorphism, but that's what happens with a lot of species on earth so it makes sense (I wish more fantasy races didn't have so much dimorphism tbh). That said I agree that female turians really should have been included in ME3 from the beginning considering that we go to Palaven.

Honestly don't expect a great deal of modeling effort to be invested in creating two genders of a race we only encounter a handful of times. It's almost never meant to be an exclusion but just a simple logistical sacrifice you have to make on a game of this scope.

[David7204]

If you mean 'sexist' as in 'perceiving men and women differently,' than yes, it's sexist.

Men and women are different. They are. If absolutely nothing else, I'm attracted to women and not to men. That alone is enough to make a huge difference, and I would be repulsed at the idea of that changing. Yes, there are some perceptions that are harmful and many that might subside eventually, but plenty won't.

Modifié par David7204, 11 mars 2013 - 10:14 .

[dversion]

Riot Inducer wrote...

Half of the supposed sexism is just technical limitations. In ME1 we only see one gender of every other race since they were quite literally creating an entire galaxy from scratch, hell they didn't even have time to finish the Batarians by launch of ME1, they were a piece of concept art in the codex until Bring Down the Sky.

In ME2 we get male quarians because several missions focus heavily on them and visit their home so there was good story reason to show them. Every other race was pretty well explained away save batarians, vorcha and several other minor races (most of which are barely encountered in ME2)

By ME3 we have female Salarians and Krogan as well though both don't have much in the way of sexual dimorphism, but that's what happens with a lot of species on earth so it makes sense (I wish more fantasy races didn't have so much dimorphism tbh). That said I agree that female turians really should have been included in ME3 from the beginning considering that we go to Palaven.

Honestly don't expect a great deal of modeling effort to be invested in creating two genders of a race we only encounter a handful of times. It's almost never meant to be an exclusion but just a simple logistical sacrifice you have to make on a game of this scope.

I understand this fact. I think it just shows the writer's bias when they only do males for every race out there. Now that they have most races covered I would hope they would concentrate on filling in the blanks. And if they don't have time to do that then at least not make males the default for every single race we run into.

[dversion]

David7204 wrote...

If you mean 'sexist' as in 'perceiving men and women differently,' than yes, it's sexist.

Men and women are different. They are. If absolutely nothing else, I'm attracted to women and not to men. That alone is enough to make a huge difference, and I would be repulsed at the idea of that changing. Yes, there are some perceptions that are harmful and many that might subside eventually, but plenty won't.

You're absoloutley missing the point here.

No one asked you to view men and women as clones grey gelatinous blobs who are equal in every way. However there are sexist ways of perceiving men and women that writers should be aware of. For instance if you perceive men to be the default normal way a person is and women as a sort of afterthought, that is sexist.

[lolerk53]

[**image spam removed by mod**]

Modifié par RaenImrahl, 12 mars 2013 - 02:51 .

[David7204]

What is the point here? Because I'm not seeing any reasoning why this is inherently bad other than 'male default is sexist and sexist is bad.'

Hence my post, explaining why 'sexism' is natural, justified, and in any case innate. And which I'm not sure was understood, given that 'sexist' is still being used as an insult.

Modifié par David7204, 11 mars 2013 - 10:22 .

[RedBeardJim]

dversion wrote...

David7204 wrote...

If you mean 'sexist' as in 'perceiving men and women differently,' than yes, it's sexist.

Men and women are different. They are. If absolutely nothing else, I'm attracted to women and not to men. That alone is enough to make a huge difference, and I would be repulsed at the idea of that changing. Yes, there are some perceptions that are harmful and many that might subside eventually, but plenty won't.

You're absoloutley missing the point here.

No one asked you to view men and women as clones grey gelatinous blobs who are equal in every way. However there are sexist ways of perceiving men and women that writers should be aware of. For instance if you perceive men to be the default normal way a person is and women as a sort of afterthought, that is sexist.

+1

[Goljana]

Humans - Both male and female are represented
Turians - Both male and female are represented
Asari - all female to the appearance
Salarian - Both male and female are represented, mostly male but the females looks mostly the same as the male tbh.
Vorcha - Only males are represented
Krogan - Both males and females are represented, again, females looks kinda the same and is mostly covered in their clothing.
Quarian - Both male and female are represented
Batarian - Only males are represented but for lore reasons since the females are not allowed to leave the batarian homeworld.
Drell - Only males are represented, probly cuz drells are so rare, you only see like 2 of em in sp.
Hanar - honestly, would you be able to tell the difference?
Volus - Only males are represented, dunno if i wanna see those females tbh
Elcor - Again, dunno if we would be able to tell the difference
Geth - well they could make sexbots i guess but, what would be the point

Yeah Mass Effect is kinda tuned towards males inhabitation-wise. But apart from drell and batarian i think we have seen all the females that are worth showing. In my opinion atleast.

[dversion]

David7204 wrote...

What is the point here? Because I'm not seeing any reasoning why this is inherently bad other than 'male default is sexist and sexist is bad.'

Hence my post, explaining why 'sexism' is natural, justified, and in any case innate.

Because my arguement was that it weakens the universe and gets boring when you only interact with male characters.

I'm not going to get into your personal feelings on why you feel like sexism is justified.