Mental Complex: An RPG-maker Horror Game

[Leet]

But gender is practically meaningless. It's a non-detail. It doesn't affect characterization at all unless your characterization is gender stereotypes.

[ano0maly]

I just don't see why being ambiguous about things is a better option than not being ambiguous and taking the extra step to specify some details, big or small, like the prime inspirational examples on the OP have done.

I'm just going to stop here because this constant arguing is accomplishing nothing other than souring the moods of those involved in the arguments, like every other time something like this happened. I was pretty excited about this concept when cats suggested it, but when I see arguing in circles over every point, I'm getting a bad feeling that this will head towards disaster similar to VN. At some point we need to settle on something and just live with it.

Look, the game's not going to be perfect, and it won't satisfy everyone in every way. It's going to contain faults and rely on particular influences and have its own identity. If we overextend ourselves trying to create a perfect and balanced work, we'll be exhausting ourselves on the brainstorming without being able to get to the actual work.

[Leet]

Except not defining a gender is an extra step above defining a gender. It is giving the extra detail. It is doing something more. You're treating it as laziness when it's the exact opposite. Just because you have this weird borderline-harmful (actually, just plain harmful) view on writing characters that don't conform to gender binary doesn't mean that it can't be really really easily done.

What about actual nonbinary people? As in, not "ambiguous", actual nonbinary people? They don't have an "ambiguous" gender, or are androygynous, they just aren't male or female. Do they not have "characterization"? Are they "undetailed" people?

I almost want to press for a distinctly and specifically nonbinary option now, with the main motivation of proving how fucked up it is that you people seem to think somebody being defined as male or female is the most important part of characterization.

However, all of this is excruciatingly irrelevant because androgynous is the victor of the poll.

[raekuul]

People correcting me about where the game is actually taking place.

Huh. I wonder how I got the idea that it was going to be a mental institution. My bad.

Still would like to know about when and where it takes place. You'll find less homosexuality in the open country cities (Cincinnati, St Louis, etc) than you will in the coastal cities (L.A., Chicago, etc), and the earlier it is the less open the characters would be willing to be just from the fact that the culture isn't as accepting of them as it is now.

Debate on how to do an androgynous protagonist

Do you use 3rd person pronouns when speaking directly to someone?

As has been said before, androgynous =/= ambiguous. With that said, I lean toward ambiguity if only so that we can have indirect interactions act like a sort of rorschach's blot when referring to Sam. Perhaps Sam's the kind of person that revels in it, or doesn't bother to correct anyone out of a sense of inevitability (or perhaps it takes place before the concept of nonbinary gender became widely accepted as perfectly fine?)

EDIT: And another thing, the use of singular They has been actively discouraged in American Schools as recently as 2008 (when I graduated), so it's not surprising that people aren't using it yet.

[sedron]

I have to be to work in half an hour, otherwise I'd be writing an essay-like response right now. I just wanted to respond to one thing really quickly.

Look, here's the deal.

There is a poll.

Androgynous is winning the poll. It has consistently been winning the poll.

First off, it wasn't winning at first. The scores, Male-Female-Androgynous, were something like 0-5-1 at first. Later that day it went to 1-5-6, and it stayed that way because nobody voted after that (and the poll has been closed for a while.)

In addition, I saw nothing in the thread to back those numbers up. A few people mentioned wanting a female player character, but nothing came up for androgynous. Barely any discussion came up for gender at all, despite that being what we were trying to figure out.

In addition to all of that, we don't know who voted for what. This is a problem because I don't particularly want a bunch of random people who aren't going to be putting time and effort into making this a reality having more pull than people who have expressed interest. Having brought this up to Cats via PM, we discussed some sort of middle ground since the vote was so close anyway (as she described in her post,) and we decided to play it by ear.

I brought it up because I wanted to get more discussion rolling. That, and concerns like this came up.

EDIT: And another thing, the use of singular They has been actively discouraged in American Schools as recently as 2008 (when I graduated), so it's not surprising that people aren't using it yet.

Hence, I decided to ask for your opinions on the matter.

A) Is androgynous actually the more popular option among people interested in developing this game?

B) Are there problems with that option, due to societal influences, that would make writing for such a character harder than necessary?

If the answers are yes and no, perfect, we can move on.

Ultimately, this is a small project a couple of random people on an obscure forum are working on. Much, much larger groups than us have held polls and then questioned the results (Mountain Dew's naming contest, for a great example.) We can absolutely do the same if it leads to a better game and a better time making that game. Again, if people are cool with the androgynous option, we can go with it (clearly Cats is fine with it.)

Crap, I'm going to be really late for work. I tried not writing an essay. =/ I'll respond more when I'm back.

[ano0maly]

Clearing up some things:

I was understanding androgynous as, based on the poll choices, "having an appearance that doesn't fit either of the above". And the impression I got from the discussion between Leet and sedron in the previous page was that there was going to be a notion of "intentionally unknown or left out". My objection is your insistence that we have to make the protagonist androgynous, despite my pointing out repeatedly examples in the very OP games that did fine without doing that. It seems that you care more about the "irrelevant gender" than some of us here.

FYI, I didn't even vote in the poll when I saw it opened, because I didn't really care. The only reason I felt compelled to step in was because I felt that this argument going in circles between the two was doing harm and not good, and sedron (who is officially second-in-command) asked someone else to contribute to the conversation, which is why I and TheFinalSentinel said something.

But maybe I should stop walking into other people's arguing and making it my own.

As for why we're still talking about this after the poll, it's because cats asked for opinions after the poll was already over. Instead of sticking to poll results, she just stated her personal preference and asked for those of others, with "all in favor?". The poll is being poorly conducted/enforced.

[Sorel]

Heh, I was the only one who voted for male protagonist? Oh well, seems like female protagonists are rare out there anyways... but androgynous? Eh, I don't know... it sounds kinda rude to call someone "they", now would it?

[TheFinalSentinel]

The only reason I felt compelled to step in was because I felt that this argument going in circles between the two was doing harm and not good, and sedron (who is officially second-in-command) asked someone else to contribute to the conversation, which is why I and TheFinalSentinel said something.

This.
I didn't even notice the poll open, nor do I really care. These arguments are getting us nowhere, and I feet like Leet is bordering on insult and placing words in our mouths. Might want to watch where you direct some of those words.
All in all, can we just decide on something and drop it already?

[dr_vblschrf]

So the way I see it here we have a few options:

• Female (unambiguously)
  Nonbinary (A catch-all term for a variety of different identities outside of the male-female binary)
  Androgynous (Of one gender or not, but looking like they could be either/both; appearance/presentation is key)

Nonbinary can mean a lot: genderfluid, no gender at all, etc. "Genderless" was the definition I was thinking of when I voted for androgynous, and that's still my preference.

As far as writing a nonbinary person goes there's a lot to take into consideration, but the biggest ones here are the "not defining character" issue and the pronoun issue. I don't think the pronoun thing needs to be a problem here if we're playing as the protagonist since the other characters would simply call them by their name or by the second-person "you". I personally have four friends and acquaintances who identify as nonbinary, and all of them use "they/them" as their pronouns, each for their own reasons. It sounds weird in English to those who haven't really run across it much, but it doesn't take much to get used to it since singular they has been in use for a pretty long time. As far as not defining character, I don't agree with that. Nonbinary (or androgynous, for that matter) could be a purely aesthetic choice, or it could go a long way with defining character; for example, if the final area was an exploration of the protagonist's psyche, then this could be a major theme with their area's story or design. I could think of more opportunities to use that to define character without swallowing up the story in a gender debate, but I'm going to leave that discussion to another time and wrap this up.

Would writing a female character be simpler? Yes, we're all used to it. Would writing a nonbinary or androgynous character be hard, or more trouble than it's worth? I don't think it would, but that's my opinion. Either way, I don't think it'll define the work - that'll be based off its plot if the writing's strong enough, and with this many people concerned about it I think we're in good hands.

The key is we need to decide and move on with this. It's an important thing but what's more important will be the story, and it doesn't look like we'll get much work on that done until this is decided.

[raekuul]

it sounds kinda rude to call someone "they", now would it?

Incidentally, this is a perfect example of what I'm getting at - I know for a fact that German genders everything and a fair chunk of beginning to learn it is remembering which goes with what, and I'm pretty sure it still has the unspoken (ha) rule of "No neutral people words." As English grammatically evolved out of the Germanic languages, we still have the stigma despite not having a gendered equivalent of "The", and it looks as though most languages evolved using the Trigender system of Male|Female|Not A Person.

EDIT: To further explain, the words for the concepts we're arguing over only came into existence recently - the past 150 years or so. Up until the culture recognized a need for the words, the litmus test for gender went like this:

Is it human?
NO -> Not A Person
YES -> Does it have a penis?
YES -> Male
NO -> Female

[Leet]

Heh, I was the only one who coted for male protagonist? Oh well, seems like female protagonists are rare out there anyways... but androgynous? Eh, I don't know... it sounds kinda rude to call someone "they", now would it?

No.

I feet like Leet is bordering on insult

I am completely incredulous at some of the absolutely ridiculous viewpoints expressed in this thread regarding writing - or more accurately, not writing - an androgynous character, some of which are quite harmful in a broader context. I will not accept this.

[Sorel]

You explained the reason very good, raekuul. A+ for you.

It's just the fact that in germany, we wouldn't refer to someone as "das" (which would be "they" in english) since the word isn't rather polite if you talk to someone. I kinda get the same vibes from "they".

EDIT: Also, can we maybe do a second poll? But this time, not as a poll, but as posts? That way we could check that only people who are involved with the project can decide.

[Leet]

Oh, I suppose that your language background probably would affect your view on the word, then.

But naw, as I explained earlier, in English, the singular they has been in use since the 14th century. It was only in recent centuries that anybody started to think it was incorrect, for what reasons I don't know but they can't have been good. The fact that its replacement tended to be "he" is awfully telling, though.

[raekuul]

But naw, as I explained earlier, in English, the singular they has been in use since the 14th century. It was only in recent centuries that anybody started to think it was incorrect, for what reasons I don't know but they can't have been good. The fact that its replacement tended to be "he" is awfully telling, though.

That puts it shortly before the Tudor period, probably right after the Black Plague broke the stranglehold of Feudalism and the seeds of the Enlightenment in England took root. Removing singular They altogether probably comes out of the Victorian era (I want to say the same timeframe that Formal Thou merged with Familiar You) but I'd need to research it more to say with certainty. (Remember, American culture was heavily influenced by Victorian values)

[sedron]

I'm going to talk with Cats later to decide how to handle the protagonist's gender and other things from here on out. For now, I think enough has been said about the subject and we can move onto something else.

Dr_vblschrf brought up a very good point earlier.

As far as not defining character, I don't agree with that. Nonbinary (or androgynous, for that matter) could be a purely aesthetic choice, or it could go a long way with defining character; for example, if the final area was an exploration of the protagonist's psyche, then this could be a major theme with their area's story or design. I could think of more opportunities to use that to define character without swallowing up the story in a gender debate, but I'm going to leave that discussion to another time and wrap this up.

Maybe trying to decide their gender before even deciding who they are as a character was the wrong way to go about it.

I'd like to see some discussion on who our protagonist is. If you feel so inclined to give a full concept for the character (this could include name, gender, what problems and adversities they've faced, personality, so on and so forth,) that would be great. This will be important for plot reasons and for designing their mindscape.

In addition, it would be great to see some more concept art, like Grey V's (which, by the way, is very nice and I'm sorry I didn't say something about it sooner.)

So, yeah. Let's take a collective deep breath and move on for now?

[cats-on-ice]

Okay I'm going to purposefully skip the argument posts here for a second to give my own opinion.

I of course think an androgynous protag would be fine, but I have to think about our audience, and our audience would be like a majority of the population: confused by the notion of androgyny. Thus I do think that the protagonist should be a women. This would prevent the issue of pronouns from drawing more attention than the game itself. For example even I'll get caught up in a show and be distracted wondering if a character is male or female (which really doesn't matter but I can't really help it)
I know this is extremely shallow leet, and I'm sorry. I'm just trying to think from the point of view of someone like maybe my classmates who disregard anything besides binary gender.

[cats-on-ice]

Also I feel the need to apologize. I'll be getting home rather late during the week, so please bear with me for not being able to address an issue while it's going on.

[cats-on-ice]

Sorry for triple posting.


We're going to start up a skype group for real time discussions about the game. Please quote this post if you're interested, and add your skype name if I haven't already added you.

[Leet]

> skype

well in that case, i cant discuss about this project anymore. good luck with it i gues

[cats-on-ice]

> skype

well in that case, i cant discuss about this project anymore. good luck with it i gues

because of the gender issue or because of skype?

[dr_vblschrf]

I am completely incredulous at some of the absolutely ridiculous viewpoints expressed in this thread regarding writing - or more accurately, not writing - an androgynous character, some of which are quite harmful in a broader context. I will not accept this.

which is why i posted what i did. i'm with you on this one, some of the things in this thread sounded just plain dismissive and rude, and while i may still be kinda new to this community one of the reasons i like it so much is that i know we're better than that.

in light of that, i still really want to see this project happen and be awesome. and as for how to move past this i think sedron raised a good solution:

I'd like to see some discussion on who our protagonist is. If you feel so inclined to give a full concept for the character (this could include name, gender, what problems and adversities they've faced, personality, so on and so forth,) that would be great. This will be important for plot reasons and for designing their mindscape.

i think this is probably the best idea. let's see some character profiles, and pick the best one (or combinations thereof) for the project. i'll try to come up with one myself but between work and MaGL X2 this, i'm sure, will take some time.

Please quote this post if you're interested, and add your skype name if I haven't already added you.

boop.

i'm typically online from around 9:00pm-1:00am pacific time, sometimes in the mornings too.

> skype

well in that case, i cant discuss about this project anymore. good luck with it i gues

well, if skype's the issue, you may miss out on the real-time aspect of the discussions but i'm sure someone can post summaries of the chats when they come to a consensus.

[Leet]

> skype

well in that case, i cant discuss about this project anymore. good luck with it i gues

because of the gender issue or because of skype?

i specifically indicated skype so there wouldnt be any confusion :s

[cats-on-ice]

> skype

well in that case, i cant discuss about this project anymore. good luck with it i gues

because of the gender issue or because of skype?

i specifically indicated skype so there wouldnt be any confusion :s

Fun fact: I am incredulously poor at making the most basic of connections

But not all discussions will take place in skype. We'll be sure to keep you, as well as anyone else uninterested, involved just as much as the skypers.

[qazcake]

I think i have already added you cats so thats not a problem.

[Sorel]

I haven't checked in the last few hours, but could it be (if you created an own group for the discussions) that you forgot to add me?