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Philippe
Aug 9, 2013

(she/her)
Oh yes. Bumbles and Stumbles is a delightful combo.

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Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
I've only watched the low chaos Emily run so far, but the developers of this game confirmed that it was deliberate that Wyman's gender is never specified. They intended Emily to be a bisexual character, but felt it was impossible to have that come up organically in the course of the game. Wyman, who may be a man or may be a woman, was their solution.

Dareon
Apr 6, 2009

by vyelkin

Cythereal posted:

I've only watched the low chaos Emily run so far, but the developers of this game confirmed that it was deliberate that Wyman's gender is never specified. They intended Emily to be a bisexual character, but felt it was impossible to have that come up organically in the course of the game. Wyman, who may be a man or may be a woman, was their solution.

It may just be my heteronormal upbringing speaking, but I always assumed from tone and word choice in their letters that Wyman was a man. Still, I appreciate the intent the developers had, and applaud their decision not to have Emily flirting with everything on two legs, which tends to be the way designers convey bisexuality.

Dareon fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Feb 18, 2018

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Dareon posted:

It may just be my heteronormal upbringing speaking, but I always assumed from tone and word choice in their letters that Wyman was a man. Still, I appreciate the intent the designers had, and applaud their decision not to have Emily flirting with everything on two legs, which tends to be the way designers convey bisexuality.

Fair, I suppose, but to me I don't give the game any points for theoretically having an LGBT protagonist when it's done this lazily and ambiguously.

Does not help that Wyman is referred to as a man in some foreign language translations of the game, from what I've read.

SS-Kumei
Sep 1, 2012
Personally I think it's nice that it is ambiguous, in whatever minor way it is. There's bigger fish to throw at hapless civilians, so why should it come up?

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

SS-Kumei posted:

Personally I think it's nice that it is ambiguous, in whatever minor way it is. There's bigger fish to throw at hapless civilians, so why should it come up?

It's just a personal irritant to me - I long for more and better LGBT representation in games who aren't stereotypes or villains, and this strikes me as an exceptionally half-assed way to do it.

Still, fun videos to watch of a game I doubt I'll ever buy or play, much like the LP of the first Dishonored.

skoolmunkee
Jun 27, 2004

Tell your friends we're coming for them

I think the name “Wyman” at surface level implies male, because of the -man. But then if you just look at the word, it also kind of says “woman” so I dunno. It probably would have made their point better if they had chosen a more common unisex name like Kelsey or something.

If you haven’t seen/played dishonoured 2 yet, Meagan is also outright LGBT though it doesn’t emerge til near the end. It was nice playing the DLC as a queer woman of colour.

EponymousMrYar
Jan 4, 2015

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

skoolmunkee posted:

I think the name “Wyman” at surface level implies male, because of the -man. But then if you just look at the word, it also kind of says “woman” so I dunno. It probably would have made their point better if they had chosen a more common unisex name like Kelsey or something.

It can also read as 'why man' to imply the question too.

Alex is probably one of the best unisex names out there for sheer unpredictability though.
'oh you're a -xandra not a -xander.'

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

EponymousMrYar posted:

Alex is probably one of the best unisex names out there for sheer unpredictability though.
'oh you're a -xandra not a -xander.'

Sam also works very well - I've seen it short for Samuel, Samantha, Samara, and Samirah.


skoolmunkee posted:

If you haven’t seen/played dishonoured 2 yet, Meagan is also outright LGBT though it doesn’t emerge til near the end. It was nice playing the DLC as a queer woman of colour.

Yeah, and I also know there's a few more LGBT characters in this game - including Delilah.

I was personally just disappointed that they made Emily bisexual in the game in the most deniable way possible. And I've read that in some foreign language translations of the game, including French and Italian, Wyman is outright stated to be a man.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
The last point is more the language’s fault than the translation’s. French and Italian are super sexist languages that makes the ambiguity a lot harder/close to impossible to pull off

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

Whenever they add LGBT characters who are practically exclusively women I always get suspicious it's just for the creepy lesbian fetishism.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Poil posted:

Whenever they add LGBT characters who are practically exclusively women I always get suspicious it's just for the creepy lesbian fetishism.

It's also seen as safer in the West - it's different in some places like Japan, where media portrayal of male LGBT characters is much more common because it's seen as safer there.

In Western media, the thing I've noticed and had other people agree with is, portraying LGBT women is considerably more common. Portraying LGBT relationships and treating them seriously is much more a thing with LGBT men. LGBT men may be less common than LGBT women in Western media, but serious relationships (that are treated respectfully and seriously) between LGBT men are far more common than comparable relationships for LGBT women. Dishonored 2 is no exception as I understand it - the LGBT male character is treated much more respectfully than any of the women except Meagan.

And either way, LGBT characters in media get killed at alarming rates. It's also traditionally been a common way to make a villain even more transgressive against norms, like Delilah here in this game.


Sorry, bit of a personal rant there. I'll stop.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

I found it interesting. :)

Bruceski
Aug 21, 2007

The tools of a hero mean nothing without a solid core.

Coolguye posted:

The last point is more the language’s fault than the translation’s. French and Italian are super sexist languages that makes the ambiguity a lot harder/close to impossible to pull off

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/that39s-how-it-happened

White Coke
May 29, 2015

Cythereal posted:

It's also seen as safer in the West - it's different in some places like Japan, where media portrayal of male LGBT characters is much more common because it's seen as safer there.

In Western media, the thing I've noticed and had other people agree with is, portraying LGBT women is considerably more common. Portraying LGBT relationships and treating them seriously is much more a thing with LGBT men. LGBT men may be less common than LGBT women in Western media, but serious relationships (that are treated respectfully and seriously) between LGBT men are far more common than comparable relationships for LGBT women. Dishonored 2 is no exception as I understand it - the LGBT male character is treated much more respectfully than any of the women except Meagan.

And either way, LGBT characters in media get killed at alarming rates. It's also traditionally been a common way to make a villain even more transgressive against norms, like Delilah here in this game.


Sorry, bit of a personal rant there. I'll stop.

Poil posted:

I found it interesting. :)

Me too. It also seems like a lot of games use bisexual characters to get around having homosexual relationships, often when the player gets to romance NPCs.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

White Coke posted:

Me too. It also seems like a lot of games use bisexual characters to get around having homosexual relationships, often when the player gets to romance NPCs.

What's probably the most common in games is for developers to say "X character is bisexual/gay, but there's no reason it would come up in game. But s/he totally is if you buy this book/read this webcomic!" This is the approach I see taken with Emily, or for another example Tracer from Overwatch. While this often does genuinely make sense, I also don't really give this approach credit for LGBT protagonists in games because there's no evidence of it in the game. Or for a literary example, Dumbledore from Harry Potter.

Another common version is to have games where you can play as a male or female character, but a character (usually female) shows romantic interest in the PC regardless and there's no change if the player selects the female PC option. This is Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force and that sci-fi Call of Duty spinoff that got knocked in the head and woke up thinking it was Deus Ex. This is also an approach commonly seen in MMOs when an NPC (almost invariably female) flirts with the player character regardless of race or gender.

There are sound narrative reasons to have bisexual characters in lieu of homosexual characters. Bisexual people absolutely exist, of course, and to be fair it often does save some resources if many or most of the romance lines are the same for both genders so two different sets of lines don't have to be written and voice acted. However, this often also results in bisexual characters who never mention the gender or pronouns of the PC at all and thus are often seen - rightfully - as painfully gender-neutral and unrealistic (this is an approach that's plagued Bioware's last few outings) when many bisexual people do treat partners differently based on their gender - usually in the sense of being attracted to different things.

Finally, and this is purely personal speculation, I think there's a certain trend of game developers wanting to make female NPCs always "available" to the player. The young, lonely, nerdy male demographic may not be the biggest demographic in video games nowadays, but they are an extremely vocal one. Most games, and especially RPGs, have some element of wish fulfillment fantasy to them. This is often why the PC in many games is something of a blank slate or entirely mute/personality-less, to allow the player to inject themselves into the role and character. And to be blunt, the promise of sex and/or romance is often a major selling point to the lonely nerdy male demographic and I think one reason developers are reluctant to make female characters explicitly homosexual is because that character is saying to this particular demographic "I will never want your dick." There's a whole can of worms you could open from there if you wish about the rarity of female protagonists (especially games where your PC is only allowed to be a woman) and male love interests, and so on and so forth.

One other factor in making explicit LGBT characters in modern media unusual, though, is more prosaic: many countries like Russia have strict laws against depicting homosexuality, and homosexuality is still controversial even in many places where it's legal. Russia banned the official webcomic that revealed Tracer from Overwatch to be a lesbian, for example. I think this is why the campy gay male villain and vampy domineering lesbian villain, plus trans-like depictions (Ursula in The Little Mermaid was visually based on a famous drag queen of the time) are still relatively common: their homosexuality is part of how the villains are transgressive and evil, and can be punished.

And, well, even with all that said openly queer characters die a lot in modern media. It's a well documented phenomena that if you're a gay character in television or a movie, you're incredibly likely to die or worse. This is a problem even today, witness Star Trek: Discovery gleefully killing one of the married gay couple just recently.

This is also, I think, where part of the phenomenon of shipping comes in with regards to people thinking/wishing characters never shown to be queer are in fact queer of some description. Leaving aside the shipping that's purely about wanking to fictional characters, I think a lot of LGBT people - and even some straight people who are sensitive to the LGBT community - wish there was more and better-quality representation in the media, and so take matters into their own hands.


So, LGBT characters in Dishonored 2. We have Emily who is in theory bisexual but it's never hinted at in the game unless you're playing the game in a language that isn't very gendered and notice that Wyman's gender is never specified (assuming you even notice and read Wyman's letter(s) in the first place). We have Delilah and her lover, who are evil lesbians and as we've seen Delilah is very much the domineering vamp. We have Meagan. And we have, from what I've read, a gay guy coming up who's actually a pretty decent person and treated respectfully. See my prior comments about how LGBT men and women are treated differently.

Cythereal fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Feb 19, 2018

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Hey I just liked that you're canonically a lesbian if you play the female main character in Black Ops 3. And it's not just out of laziness, because you can accuse that game's plot of a lot of things but laziness isn't one :v:

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

The Iron Rose posted:

Hey I just liked that you're canonically a lesbian if you play the female main character in Black Ops 3. And it's not just out of laziness, because you can accuse that game's plot of a lot of things but laziness isn't one :v:

Given the reveal at the end that your character was living a male character's memories, I took it to mean that romance never actually involved the PC and it was the devs going "Don't worry male gamers, neither woman was really a lesbian, she was just inserting herself into the guy's memories!"

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010

If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

SS-Kumei posted:

This would make Corvo's half of the story "The Adventures of Bumbles and Stumbles" and that makes it somehow more magical. I second this.

:stare:

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Cythereal posted:

Given the reveal at the end that your character was living a male character's memories, I took it to mean that romance never actually involved the PC and it was the devs going "Don't worry male gamers, neither woman was really a lesbian, she was just inserting herself into the guy's memories!"

Oh sure, but the message I got from that was completely different and positive, purely because I saw and identified with the characters differently. Undeniable that that's how male gamers perceive it though.

Fuuka Ayase
Apr 25, 2017

Literally Hitler
Romances in games were always weird for me regardless. I do not genuinely know this other person no matter how hard the game tries to pretend otherwise, and they come off as awkward and stilted even at the best of times. I don't know if the concept of it meshes cleanly with the fact you are directly controlling this avatar. Even if the character is prewritten, it is you who controls it. That changes a lot of context and makes things more personal than they are probably intended. Which ironically makes romances feel too hollow for me to care about.

Beyond the mildly diverting effort of, 'let me figure out what arcane combination of awkward things no real people say to eachother and would drive away an actual person lets me kissu this character," of course.

Stephen9001
Oct 28, 2013
Personally, I'm not entirely sure what the huge deal with "representation" is. I mean, I'm autistic, and I don't particularly care that you don't see many autistic heroes or anything. Surely all that should matter is that they're well written characters, how exactly does stuff like saying "this character is totally gay/bi" like with Emily's Wyman situation, improve things in anyway, unless you actually make it a relevant part of their character? A lot of attempts at "representation" just seem like a kind of pandering and attempt to win diversity points to me. Like it seem like a lot of the time it seems like "by the way, this character is non heterosexual, please praise us for being inclusive" and with no actual importance to the fact, just a weird attempt to gain approval, like with declaring Dumbledore to be gay. What exactly is the point of JK Rowling saying Dumbledore is gay? It doesn't really impact his character insofar as I can tell, and just looks like at attempt to win approval with the people who like such declarations, for some reason. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that I don't understand why it's treated as so important and as an amazing thing.


I mean:

skoolmunkee posted:

If you haven't seen/played dishonoured 2 yet, Meagan is also outright LGBT though it doesn't emerge til near the end. It was nice playing the DLC as a queer woman of colour.

This sort of thing thoroughly confuses me. How exactly does playing a queer woman of colour enhance your enjoyment of the game? Surely all that should matter is that they're a well made character, how does skin tone and sexuality inherently improve that? When I play Tomb Raider I don't care that the character I'm playing is a women, when I play Kingdom Come Deliverance I don't care the character is a man (or that Middle ages Bohemia doesn't have black people), I care about the character for who they are, their skills and their struggles.

I mean, don't get me wrong, in an RPG where you get to make a character, and choose what they're like, I can understand wanting them to be able to be bi or homosexual, but I don't understand the people who somehow derive joy from playing as a "queer woman of colour" for example. Surely that should be secondary to everything else about her? Does her sexuality impact her character in any way? I liked Dorian from DA:I because he was a witty rebellious noble, him being gay didn't make me like him more, his issues with his father about his homosexuality and how he dealt with them did. It's the difference between an arbitrary trait and actual personality. The difference between "btw, this character is gay" and "this character is gay, and here's how that fact impacts them in this world".

I'm not saying having LGBT characters is a bad thing, just that the seemingly arbitrary demand for them baffles me.

I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.

skoolmunkee
Jun 27, 2004

Tell your friends we're coming for them

Stephen9001 posted:

This sort of thing thoroughly confuses me. How exactly does playing a queer woman of colour enhance your enjoyment of the game? Surely all that should matter is that they're a well made character, how does skin tone and sexuality inherently improve that? When I play Tomb Raider I don't care that the character I'm playing is a women, when I play Kingdom Come Deliverance I don't care the character is a man (or that Middle ages Bohemia doesn't have black people), I care about the character for who they are, their skills and their struggles.

There is a huge and nuanced discussion about this, the word you hear most is "representation." From my own (limited, as a white hetero lady) perspective, constantly being asked to play as a developed character who is 90% of the time a white dude just gets old. I'm not a white dude, it's harder for me to empathize with a white dude, so it's harder for me to get fully into the game. It never feels like 'me,' it always feels like 'them.' So there's a basic 'inability to identify with the protagonist' aspect. Wouldn't you get tired of being made to play as a gay black woman 90% of the time?

There are all kinds of well-written characters. It's about whose stories get told and how. Many times, when thoughtfullly consuming media, a change of skin color or sexual orientation or whatever can change one's perception of that character's journey. Or sometimes it changes the story and character massively and has more of a real-life reflection of the issues minorities face. People who are interested in representation (even if they aren't the ones being represented) want to widen their experiences and empathize with others, either as a 'thought experiment' or as a fully developed narrative. Makers of media have an opportunity to "force" (or at least enable, in the case of character customization) that perspective on players, and under-represented groups would like some equality and for others to consider their realities.

quote:

I mean, don't get me wrong, in an RPG where you get to make a character, and choose what they're like, I can understand wanting them to be able to be bi or homosexual, but I don't understand the people who somehow derive joy from playing as a "queer woman of colour" for example. Surely that should be secondary to everything else about her? Does her sexuality impact her character in any way? I liked Dorian from DA:I because he was a witty rebellious noble, him being gay didn't make me like him more, his issues with his father about his homosexuality and how he dealt with them did. It's the difference between an arbitrary trait and actual personality. The difference between "btw, this character is gay" and "this character is gay, and here's how that fact impacts them in this world".

You're right that the impact of Dorian's sexuality on his story is much greater than Meagan's. I enjoyed playing as her simply because it gave me a different experience. Her race had absolutely nothing to do with the story, and her sexuality only a little- the point was that she is clinging to the only good and positive thing she's had in her life even though it is long gone. It could have been a lot of things! But having it be a lesbian relationship while she was young, that it had such a formative impact on her, that she tries to use that person as a moral compass, is very thoughtful. It is meaningful to the people who need that connection and recognition. If it doesn't mean anything to you, cool, you enjoyed the game anyway.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

skoolmunkee posted:

There is a huge and nuanced discussion about this, the word you hear most is "representation." From my own (limited, as a white hetero lady) perspective, constantly being asked to play as a developed character who is 90% of the time a white dude just gets old. I'm not a white dude, it's harder for me to empathize with a white dude, so it's harder for me to get fully into the game. It never feels like 'me,' it always feels like 'them.' So there's a basic 'inability to identify with the protagonist' aspect. Wouldn't you get tired of being made to play as a gay black woman 90% of the time?

There are all kinds of well-written characters. It's about whose stories get told and how. Many times, when thoughtfullly consuming media, a change of skin color or sexual orientation or whatever can change one's perception of that character's journey. Or sometimes it changes the story and character massively and has more of a real-life reflection of the issues minorities face. People who are interested in representation (even if they aren't the ones being represented) want to widen their experiences and empathize with others, either as a 'thought experiment' or as a fully developed narrative. Makers of media have an opportunity to "force" (or at least enable, in the case of character customization) that perspective on players, and under-represented groups would like some equality and for others to consider their realities.

Another common thing is that many people want to play or see media about people like them. And let's face it: the default protagonist in Western media, be it in a video game or movie or television show, is a white, heterosexual man. There's a certain message in that, intentional or not, about what kind of person can do meaningful things and have meaningful things happen to them.

And for younger audiences especially, there's often an element of the role model. Part of the reason the Black Panther movie right now is such a huge deal is black people can be superheroes and save the world! This is not a common message, or portrayal. Sure you can find black heroes here and there - Luke Cage on Netflix, Black Lightning on DC's television, there's usually a black guy like Cyborg or War Machine in ensemble action movies. But Black Panther? This is a movie about black people - African people - in an unashamedly black story being portrayed as superheroes.

LGBT people are in a similar boat. I've noted before that implying a villain is queer or doesn't obey traditional gender norms is a long, long tradition in Western culture. Seeing an openly queer superhero, or video game protagonist, is very unusual, and in the world of video games it's drat near unheard of for a game to present the protagonist as gay, period. You get well known examples like Bioware's many outings where there's an option to play the protagonist as queer (or Life is Strange for a less well known example), but that's not the same thing.

I brought this up because Dishonored 2's treatment of Emily frustrates me. Yes, I appreciate the intention that this badass ninja empress is meant to be bisexual. But I don't give the game or its developers points for Emily, because it's done in the laziest, most deniable, half-assed way possible that's not the author piping up after the fact and saying "Oh if you read between the lines the character's totally gay and I will never directly refer to it in the source material."

Stephen9001
Oct 28, 2013

skoolmunkee posted:

You're right that the impact of Dorian's sexuality on his story is much greater than Meagan's. I enjoyed playing as her simply because it gave me a different experience. Her race had absolutely nothing to do with the story, and her sexuality only a little- the point was that she is clinging to the only good and positive thing she's had in her life even though it is long gone. It could have been a lot of things! But having it be a lesbian relationship while she was young, that it had such a formative impact on her, that she tries to use that person as a moral compass, is very thoughtful. It is meaningful to the people who need that connection and recognition. If it doesn't mean anything to you, cool, you enjoyed the game anyway.

Ah, I suppose I should have said I haven't played Death of the Outsider, so I didn't know those details, so I didn't know if her sexuality was actually relevant in anyway, it's just that the line "It was nice playing the DLC as a queer woman of colour." alone made it look like the mere fact she was a black lesbian somehow inherently made things better, which seemed bizarre to me.

And on the other things about representation, as I said, I'm autistic, and I don't feel a need for more autistic characters in games or film or whatever, but I see that there are people who feel differently about it than I do. I was simply stating that I don't really understand it, since I've played as characters who aren't male and been perfectly okay with it, I don't feel a need to play as a male character, unlike some of these people who apparently feel a need to play as non-hetero sexual women, but then again, I suppose you get don't really get people treating autistic people as a group, whilst, for some reason, you do seem to get people who treat Black people or LGBT people, or whatever, as groups. So I suppose I must admit that I don't understand how it feels to be such a person, but I have always thought that surely all that matters is what kind of person someone is, race and sexualtiy are irrelevant to that aren't they?

I'm sorry if I'm not explaining myself well, but my general line of thinking is this: "focus on making good characters, if they happen to be homesexual, then fine, but seemingly arbitrality forcing charcters to be homesexual for no apparent reason (as with Dumbledore) just strikes of pandering and attempts to win inclusion points", leading to my feelings on the vague attempt to make Emily bi being "really? What's the point of this? To make yourselves look good?". Then again, I'm not a writer, so I don't how well the whole "focus on making good characters, don't arbitrability make them LGBT" thing works in practice.

I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.

Stephen9001 fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Feb 19, 2018

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!


Edge of the World: Youtube Polsy

skoolmunkee
Jun 27, 2004

Tell your friends we're coming for them

Stephen9001 posted:

I'm sorry if I'm not explaining myself well, but my general line of thinking is this: "focus on making good characters, if they happen to be homesexual, then fine, but seemingly arbitrality forcing charcters to be homesexual for no apparent reason (as with Dumbledore) just strikes of pandering and attempts to win inclusion points", leading to my feelings on the vague attempt to make Emily bi being "really? What's the point of this? To make yourselves look good?". Then again, I'm not a writer, so I don't how well the whole "focus on making good characters, don't arbitrability make them LGBT" thing works in practice.

You’re explaining yourself just fine, you’ve no need to apologize. Asking the questions isn’t offensive or anything, because you’re trying to understand. I think Cythereal and I both agree with you that vague attempts at inclusion are hardly better than nothing at all, as you said, because it’s not really meaningful. We definitely all want good characters. It’s just going to take a little while before media makers as a whole take on that lots of under represented people types can make good characters too, and not just because they more or less fit into a pre determined story but because they can make things very different.

Edit: oh hey update

OK science Emily correction, I remember saying two wrong/inaccurate things in this commentary. The first one I forget! The second one was saying I didn’t get dinged for kills in chapter 1, but I did. 3 or 4 I think. So oops.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
Unrelated to LGBT issues, the video speculates what part of the world this area is based on, given that it's Corvo's home. A common theory I've seen is that this is supposed to be an Italy analogue.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
karnaca doesn't neatly fit with any european location, unlike dunwall. almost any place along the Mediterranean can work there, including large swaths of spain, greece, and cypress. there's also a bunch of places in northern africa it could potentially be.

for the purposes of the game, karnaca is used a little like the isle of Malta was in Catch-22. it's largely manufactured to provide a strong backdrop to the story - its actual culture is less important, especially as its intrigues are written with a much broader brush. old duke good, new duke bad, children sad, adults mad.

WFGuy
Feb 18, 2011

Press X to jump, then press X again!
Toilet Rascal
Skool for President of the World in Perpetuity! I didn't believe it could get better than the first episode but it somehow did.

VKing
Apr 22, 2008
Science!Emily is loving great!
"Low chaos" is a giant misnomer, though. :science:

Vadoc
Dec 31, 2007

Guess who made waffles...


VKing posted:

Science!Emily is loving great!
"Low chaos" is a giant misnomer, though. :science:

:science:Emily lives up to her loving name and more.

Fuuka Ayase
Apr 25, 2017

Literally Hitler
Hello, yes. If the anime references keep increasing as time goes on, feel free to blame me.

NullBlack
Oct 29, 2011

I'm as confused as you are.

Vadoc
Dec 31, 2007

Guess who made waffles...


If only it was a severed leg.

Sindai
Jan 24, 2007
i want to achieve immortality through not dying
I can't believe I never once tried putting mines on physics objects.

EDIT: Wait you can put them on characters???

Sindai fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Feb 20, 2018

Bricoleur
Feb 1, 2012

Stephen9001 posted:

I'm sorry if I'm not explaining myself well, but my general line of thinking is this: "focus on making good characters, if they happen to be homesexual, then fine, but seemingly arbitrality forcing charcters to be homesexual for no apparent reason (as with Dumbledore) just strikes of pandering and attempts to win inclusion points", leading to my feelings on the vague attempt to make Emily bi being "really? What's the point of this? To make yourselves look good?". Then again, I'm not a writer, so I don't how well the whole "focus on making good characters, don't arbitrability make them LGBT" thing works in practice.
Emily being bi/gay seems rather redundant, considering she's the only hope for the royal bloodline to continue. At 25, she is already older than her mother when Jessamine became a mother. There would be pressure for her produce heirs, and for Wyman to be anything other than a dude would be a pointless waste of time. So putting Emily in some LGBT Schrodinger's cat scenario doesn't feel like a genuine attempt at having an interesting character and more about the writer/developers "feeling good" about themselves without having to do any actual effort.

Narahari
Apr 12, 2009
I wonder, having not seen more of this game than this LP so far, whether Emily's story would be considered a more-or-less proper bildungsroman. I find something rather uncomfortable about very violence heavy (and seemingly time compressed) games feeling the need to include romantic and sexual subplots (but less often the somewhat more situationally realistic non-romantic and sexual subplots where the characters just need a little relief). Does Corvo wanting a quicky in his murder quest really do anything for the story? For Emily, I feel like it would be relevant if the story is her proper coming of age, but having not seen the rest of the plot, I find it hard to believe the same story structure can be Corvo's thing and a satisfying coming-of-age for Emily. I tend to feel like the developers just want a quick, somewhat lazy shorthand of the romantic to signify an emotional connection to the story for the player, but shorthand doesn't really connect me to a story emotionally. There's a lot of tonal dissonance between murder (or sadistic non-lethality) and the kind of emotional connections I'm supposed to make with the characters. Sex and death may be a classic pairing, but it tends to be in a cyclical context and not the seeming nihilism of the Dishonored universe. Seen in that context, it makes Emily's, well, I suppose alleged is the most accurate term given the in-world evidence, bisexuality a marker of a lack of meaning rather than an actual meaning to her. If it were more developed and she formed some of her story and identity around it and it affected her actions, it would be a meaningful presence in the story. Absent real connection to the character, it feels more to me like hitting a development checkbox. I think that's what bothers me, personally, most about this type of writing. A writer wouldn't have to fix a gender for a character, certainly, but a non-fixed gender is not the same as an absent one. Though I suppose the idea of Emily being infatuated or possibly even in love with the idea of someone she doesn't know very well would be interesting as well.

I'm going to have to think it over a little more, I think, but I do wonder whether fully developed and written characters can work well with a relatively high-choice world. Initially, it seems to me that trying to avoid disclosing (or maybe even avoiding selecting) meaningful detail may, in fact, prevent the concrete moments that allow interesting interpretations of characters in a game like this.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

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pointy corpse
Jul 7, 2014

This is beautiful. Science Emily is art.

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