Is there a place for sex in IF?
chi...@fred.aurora.edu
Im working on a game that, while not pornographic, would certainly
be PG-13 or R rated. Im also attempting to stay away from the
cheesy(admittedly it was inspired cheese ;) ) type descriptions of
LGOP. Is there much interest in this sort of thing, or am I basically
doing this for myself?
Chidder
Matthew Daly
I don't see why not. The other model in I-F is Softporn Adventure
which was the all-text precursor to Leisure Suit Larry in the Land
of the Lounge Lizards. (I think that the puzzles were all the same
and the only difference was that LSL1 was graphic where SA was
text.)
Given that the medium has abandoned treasure hunts in favor of more
diverse goals as the purpose of most games, I don't see where seducing
a MOTAS would be surprising. Whether or not it is in poor taste is
all up to you, of course.
-Matthew, scripting a game for 1997.
--
Matthew Daly I don't buy everything I read ... I haven't
da...@ppd.kodak.com even read everything I've bought.
My opinions are not necessarily those of my employer, of course.
mab...@pipeline.com
>Im working on a game that, while not pornographic, would certainly
>be PG-13 or R rated. Im also attempting to stay away from the
>cheesy(admittedly it was inspired cheese ;) ) type descriptions of
>LGOP. Is there much interest in this sort of thing, or am I basically
>doing this for myself?
>
>Chidder
Yes, I agree with Daly; sounds interesting. I think it might work better as
a narrative addition (IF needs more narrative playfulness, don't you
think?) than as the, y'know, amusing-but-somewhat-tiresome Leisure Suit
Larry fuck-and-get-a-point game philosophy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[upon entering film mogul D.B. Darling's enormous fish-shaped water-filled
room]
"Max," he boomed, "obnoxiously happy to see you. Come on over."
"You want I should walk on water?" I queried.
"Ixnay on the isecrackway," Leon growled. "Just smile and swim."
-Maria Kalman
Susan
>>I'm working on a game that, while not pornographic, would certainly
>>be PG-13 or R rated. I'm also attempting to stay away from the
>>LGOP. Is there much interest in this sort of thing, or am I basically
>>doing this for myself?
>Yes, I agree with Daly; sounds interesting. I think it might work better as
>a narrative addition (IF needs more narrative playfulness, don't you
>think?) than as the, y'know, amusing-but-somewhat-tiresome Leisure Suit
>Larry fuck-and-get-a-point game philosophy.
Woo-Hoo! Sex! Have you played Meretzky's Spellcasting series?
But Steve is good (humorous) at it. Will you be wet or dry? Give it
a try.
* Susan * <Sus...@ix.netcom.com>
Andrew Plotkin
>>I'm working on a game that, while not pornographic, would certainly
>>be PG-13 or R rated. I'm also attempting to stay away from the
>>cheesy(admittedly it was inspired cheese ;) ) type descriptions of
>>LGOP. Is there much interest in this sort of thing, or am I basically
>>doing this for myself?
Every other artistic medium in the universe has accepted that sex can be
part of a story, without being pornography. I think IF can cope.
(Not that there's anything wrong with pornography either. :)
Go for it.
--Z
(PS: Yeah, every medium. I have the examples for Saturday-morning-style
cartoons and comic books ready. And puppetry. And Claymation....)
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Brad O`Donnell
Andrew Plotkin wrote:
> (PS: Yeah, every medium. I have the examples for Saturday-morning-style
> cartoons and comic books ready. And puppetry. And Claymation....)
> --
Must be canadian Claymation...
Brad O'Donnell
Michael C. Martin
chi...@fred.aurora.edu wrote:
>
> Im working on a game that, while not pornographic, would certainly
> be PG-13 or R rated. Im also attempting to stay away from the
> cheesy(admittedly it was inspired cheese ;) ) type descriptions of
> LGOP. Is there much interest in this sort of thing, or am I basically
> doing this for myself?
>
I think there is a place in IF for anything which is new and refreshing,
and done in somewhat good taste. Part of what makes IF exciting is all
the new tricks and ideas the authors come up with for their games.
Tastefully done sex in IF would be pretty nifty if done right! You'd
probably also want to somehow get the sex of the player and accomodate
for both a male and female (how about homosexual???) player.
Mike
Andrew Plotkin
Czech, actually. I was thinking of Jan Svankmeyer's "Darkness, Light,
Darkness." Not exactly sex, but as close as I could think of quickly.
--Z
Nulldogma
> I think there is a place in IF for anything which is new and refreshing,
> and done in somewhat good taste. Part of what makes IF exciting is all
> the new tricks and ideas the authors come up with for their games.
> Tastefully done sex in IF would be pretty nifty if done right! You'd
> probably also want to somehow get the sex of the player and accomodate
> for both a male and female (how about homosexual???) player.
Or make the gender and orientation of the main character (as opposed to
the player) clear at the beginning. Hopefully, players of other
genders/orientations won't be turned off by this ... no pun intended.
Neil
---------------------------------------------------------
Neil deMause ne...@echonyc.com
http://www.echonyc.com/~wham/neild.html
---------------------------------------------------------
Industrial Strength
Andrew Plotkin (erky...@netcom.com) enlightened us with:
> Every other artistic medium in the universe has accepted that sex can be
> part of a story, without being pornography. I think IF can cope.
[snip]
> (PS: Yeah, every medium. I have the examples for Saturday-morning-style
> cartoons and comic books ready. And puppetry. And Claymation....)
MPEG! MPEG!
--Liza, thinking of ways to, erm, further the appeal of the i-f CD.
--
ge...@retina.net http://fovea.retina.net/~gecko/
MSTie #69957 A maze of twisty little web pages, all alike.
Cardinal Teulbachs
erky...@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin) wrote:
>Every other artistic medium in the universe has accepted that sex can be
>part of a story, without being pornography.
Yes, and every other artistic medium has turned to shit, too. Animals
have no understanding of art.
>I think IF can cope.
Whatever that means.
>(Not that there's anything wrong with pornography either. :)
And who would dare to suggest otherwise?
>Go for it.
Why is this person even seeking corporate approval? He has the
compiler, he has his story--such as it may be--to tell; why is he not
simply writing it?
>(PS: Yeah, every medium. I have the examples for Saturday-morning-style
>cartoons and comic books ready. And puppetry. And Claymation....)
Juvenalia abounds. It's fairly amusing that what is touted as a matter
of "sophistication" and "mature thinking" has such as these to aspire
to.
--Cardinal T
I mean, what the hell kind of villain thwarts the hero's
progress with soup cans in the kitchen pantry?
--Russ Bryan
Cardinal, I follow up your post in the hopes that some
day I too will be quoted in your sig.
--Matthew Amster-Burton
Hey! This isn't what I said! What'd you do with my
quote?
--Bonni Mierzejewska
Greg Ewing
Sex is a part of life, so I don't see why there
shouldn't be just as much of a place for it in
fiction of any sort as there is for anything
else.
Greg
bout...@razor.wcc.govt.nz
But how would you implement it?
Seems to me there's two ways you could go about this. First, as somebody noted,
the 'additional material' way - at certain points of the game you are given an
lengthy prose description of whatever - a la Legend Lives. Which is fine, but
not really that groundbreaking.
Second, and possibly more twistedly, you could code the physical body into
numerous objects and have them interact in interesting ways, defining a number
of strange new verbs in the process. Kind of puts a new meaning to 'containers'
and 'supporters'. Obviously, certain sequences of object manipulation would be
more successful than others (man, does that sound clinical) but that's life.
I'd do it myself, but for some strange reason, I have never been able to write
even a simple sex scene (not even in my novel, which was almost totally about
related subjects) without lampooning the subject mercilessly. The closest I got
was a list of brand names culled from an issue of cosmopolitan, which, when
read aloud, sounded almost like a beast with two backs.
-Giles
Den of Iniquity
I sometimes wonder if there's a place for sex in life...
--
Den (the Casanova of Asexuality)
Is there a place for a discussion of pornography vs erotica in IF newsgroup?
;)
chi...@fred.aurora.edu
Been looking over the previous responses to my posts and I want to ask
another question:
Does it really bother people to play a character of the opposite
Gender? I enjoyed Christminister, and was able to identify with the
character well, even though she was female.
In SHOPPING, the game I am writing, while your gender isnt stated, the
point of the game is to get your girlfriend out of the dressing room
after waiting for her for an hour. Sounds simple, but Itll take you
through uncharted reasons of time and space, into dreamland, to meet
several famous fictional characters. Youll discover why Sheers
salespeople are always so cheerful, and what Veronica(Victoria's older
and kinkier)'s secret really is...
If I get enough feedback, in release two Ill make it so you can choose
your gender, but for at least the first release that the way it is
(mainly cause till I learn inform I dont think I have the talent to
implement it)
Chidder
Carl Muckenhoupt
chi...@fred.aurora.edu writes:
>Been looking over the previous responses to my posts and I want to ask
>another question:
> Does it really bother people to play a character of the opposite
>Gender? I enjoyed Christminister, and was able to identify with the
>character well, even though she was female.
I've always wondered about this question. It seems to get asked
whenever someone writes a game with a female protagonist. (Not
when someone writes a game with an explicitly male protagonist,
but that's the start of a whole different debate...)
The answer is, pretty consistently, no, it doesn't bother us in the
least. Why should it? We're always playing games with characters
that are things we're not. I'm not an adventurer or a spaceman.
I'm not the Valley King's greatest warrior or a member of the
Meldrew family. I'm not even a Harvard student, and they actually
exist. And yet I've played and enjoyed games about all these things.
So why shouldn't I enjoy a game about a woman?
I think the question is largely based on a misconception: that
adventure games are fundamentally based on wish-fulfillment - that
they are escapist fantasies that let us be the people we want to be.
By implication, then, for a man to enjoy playing a female character
is for that man to enjoy fantasizing about being a woman. This
makes people uncomfortable in a way that a man fantasizing about
being a spaceman does not. However, it is also completely wrong.
Let me see if I can explain why.
Basically, there are two kinds of protagonist: those with traits,
and those without. Colossal Cave, Zork, and most of Scott Adams'
games have the latter sort. There really isn't a character at all -
there's just a command line through which the player interacts with
the simulated environment. Clearly, in this case, it is impossible
to fantasize about being the protagonist, because there is no
protagonist to fantasize about (although it is still possible to
fantasize about being in the world of the game.)
In games where the protagonist has traits, on the other hand,
there is a clear separation between the player and the character,
despite the second-person text. When I play "The Path to Fortune",
for example, I don't really feel like I am Aerin. I identify with
him, but no more than I would if he were the main character in a
novel. He is not a mere tool by which I enter his world. He bears
traits that make him a part of that world - a part over which I
exert direct control, to be sure, but still fundamentally in a
different world than myself. Thus, he is not me. It doesn't take
much to establish this separation, either - the moment a game
mentions my skill at plumbing, or describes a location called "Your
House" that doesn't look like my house at all, it's clear that this
character called "you" is someone other than me. Even if I happen to
possess the traits of the protagonist - say, the game mentions my skill
at programming and contains a location that describes my house pretty
well - the effect is the same. The hero is a fictional character that,
coincidentally, happens to share some traits with me.
The analogy of the novel is rather telling, in fact. When has the sex
of the protagonist of a novel prevented anyone from enjoying it?
Incedentally, you may wonder how a game like Jigsaw fits into this
analysis. Individual response seems to vary. By concealing the name
and sex of the protagonist, it allows one to project oneself into the
fiction. However, for my part, I found that the small amount of
pre-game histroy we got was enough to establish White in my mind as a
part of his world. (The invitation clearly established that he had
been around before the start of the game.)
--
Carl Muckenhoupt | Text Adventures are not dead!
b...@tiac.net | Read rec.[arts|games].int-fiction to see
http://www.tiac.net/users/baf | what you're missing!
Jon Conrad
<chi...@fred.aurora.edu> wrote:
> Does it really bother people to play a character of the opposite
>Gender?
Not at all. I'd like to see even more games get away from the "Default
= Male" philosophy.
But: After gazillions of these games, I am getting a bit tired of
playing someone of a different orientation (protagonists in IF are
invariably straight, I'm not). Granted, in the majority of games this
never comes up, and that's fine. But even LGOP assumed that once your
gender was established, so was your gender-of-interest. JIGSAW looked
promising, and I was getting into that angle of it, but one episode near
the end did establish that you and Black are of different genders.
I'm not trying to reform every IF story in existence, but it would be
nice to encounter a scenario someday that allowed for same-sex
interest.
Jon Alan Conrad
Andrew Plotkin
Cardinal Teulbachs (card...@earthlink.net) wrote:
> erky...@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin) wrote:
> >Every other artistic medium in the universe has accepted that sex can be
> >part of a story, without being pornography.
>
> Yes, and every other artistic medium has turned to shit, too. Animals
> have no understanding of art.
Let me guess. There's a Hockey Puck of Grump being passed around this
newsgroup. This week, you've got it.
Pbththtpb.
> >(PS: Yeah, every medium. I have the examples for Saturday-morning-style
> >cartoons and comic books ready. And puppetry. And Claymation....)
> Juvenalia abounds. It's fairly amusing that what is touted as a matter
> of "sophistication" and "mature thinking" has such as these to aspire
> to.
Yeah, whatever. Go watch some Svankmeyer.
Damien P. Neil
In article <501d8d$s...@copland.udel.edu>,
Jon Conrad <con...@copland.udel.edu> wrote:
><chi...@fred.aurora.edu> wrote:
>> Does it really bother people to play a character of the opposite
>>Gender?
>
>Not at all. I'd like to see even more games get away from the "Default
>= Male" philosophy.
Actually, I find it quite enjoyable to play games with female protagonists.
_Plundered Hearts_ was very fun, and I entertained myself through much of
_Curses_ by picturing the protagonist as my grandmother when she was in
her 30s. (Her personality fit into the game quite well.)
>I'm not trying to reform every IF story in existence, but it would be
>nice to encounter a scenario someday that allowed for same-sex
>interest.
Write something! :> I'd certainly love to see it.
- Damien
Dan Shiovitz
In article <baf.84...@max.tiac.net>,
Carl Muckenhoupt <b...@max.tiac.net> wrote:
>chi...@fred.aurora.edu writes:
>
>>Been looking over the previous responses to my posts and I want to ask
>>another question:
>
>>character well, even though she was female.
>Basically, there are two kinds of protagonist: those with traits,
>and those without. Colossal Cave, Zork, and most of Scott Adams'
>games have the latter sort. There really isn't a character at all -
>there's just a command line through which the player interacts with
>the simulated environment. Clearly, in this case, it is impossible
>In games where the protagonist has traits, on the other hand,
>there is a clear separation between the player and the character,
>despite the second-person text. When I play "The Path to Fortune",
>for example, I don't really feel like I am Aerin. I identify with
>him, but no more than I would if he were the main character in a
This was a good article and I agreed with most of it, but I must
disagree that it's a binary division between the two types of
protagonists. At least for me, it's more of a spectrum. Clearly,
things like Zork and Adventure are at one end, where the main character
is completely nebulous. I haven't really seen any games at the other
end, probably because we just don't have the technology to make a
totally "real person" in the game. Everything else falls somewhere in
the middle, like Aerin, who has various friends, a job, a love interest,
etc, but not any real personality besides what the player gives him.
I don't know about anyone else, but I think when a game causes an
emotional reaction from me, it's not because I feel the consequences
directly, but because I feel bad for making the main chacter do it
(for instance the boy and the pipe in _So Far_), or because I feel bad
that this thing happened to the main character. This suggests that the
best way to make the game more real and moving to the player is not to
increase their identification with the protagonist (by asking for their
gender or the like), but to emphasize the protagonist's reality by
not only having those traits preset, but having them be defined and making
a difference in the world.
Well, this isn't completely true, I guess. One of the things that struck
me about _So Far_ was the incredible loneliness of certain areas (the
autumn world, the silent world). I don't think I was feeling "gee, the
protagonist is a really lonely guy, wandering around all these empty
places", I was feeling "gee, this is really lonely here".
Am I resonating with anyone here? (Actually, I get the sinking feeling
I'm just restating the obvious about characters .. oh well.)
>Carl Muckenhoupt | Text Adventures are not dead!
>http://www.tiac.net/users/baf | what you're missing!
--
dan shiovitz scy...@u.washington.edu sh...@cs.washington.edu
slightly lost author/programmer in a world of more creative or more sensible
people ... remember to speak up for freedom because no one else will do it
for you: use it or lose it ... carpe diem -- be proactive.
my web site: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~scythe/home.html some ok stuff.
Russell Wain Glasser
>> Does it really bother people to play a character of the opposite
>>Gender? I enjoyed Christminister, and was able to identify with the
>>character well, even though she was female.
>The answer is, pretty consistently, no, it doesn't bother us in the
>least. Why should it? We're always playing games with characters
>that are things we're not. I'm not an adventurer or a spaceman.
>I'm not the Valley King's greatest warrior or a member of the
>Meldrew family. I'm not even a Harvard student, and they actually
>exist. And yet I've played and enjoyed games about all these things.
>So why shouldn't I enjoy a game about a woman?
Carl, couldn't agree with you more. When you come right down to
it, playing a game is not really about "being" in the situation, any
more than reading a good book or watching a movie is. What makes the
interaction fun is that you can PROJECT yourself into the title
character just enough to control their actions. You don't have to
really believe that you ARE a beautiful woman lusting after a pirate
ship captain, or a famous detective. Nevertheless, I always take
vicarious pleasure from a novel when the main character is triumphant;
and that is only heightened by the interactive aspect of adventure
games.
I think a good case study is Arnold Schwarzenegger's movie, "Total
Recall". The premise of the movie (well, one of them anyway) is this:
"Yes, it would be fun to take a vacation in an exotic land. But it
would be even MORE fun to take a vacation in an exotic land and become
a different person. You will no longer be the same boring construction
worker that you are in real life, but an exciting and glamorous secret
agent." I think that's what all adventures strive to accomplish:
making you assume an identity which is NOT yourself.
The best games are those which are good at immersing you in the
environment of a totally far-out character who has nothing to do with
you. Like A Mind Forever Voyaging, which IMHO is the greatest text
adventure ever. The reason I enjoyed it so much was because I could so
easily slip into the identity of someone who was so very unlike me. I
could really feel like I had become PRISM, but at the same time, PRISM
had his (its) own identity, its own family and history and upbringing,
and all of these shaped the experience of the story just as much as my
own actions did.
Actually, I like a game which establishes your identity more than
one which plunks you in a situation with no explanation. One of the
few things I disliked about Myst was the total lack of orientation or
motivation regarding who you are and how you got there.
We don't take things out of context in real life. Everything we do
is shaped by our past experiences and our personal desires. And since
everyone has different experiences, a game which only mirrors the
player as the main character has the fundamental shortcoming of not
seeing the player's background. By giving the player a different
character to project instead, you build motivation and draw them into
the story more easily.
Russell
Mike Phillips
On 28 Aug 1996 14:19:47 -0400, Damien P. Neil <ne...@vccsouth-09.its.rpi.edu> wrote:
>In article <501d8d$s...@copland.udel.edu>,
>Jon Conrad <con...@copland.udel.edu> wrote:
>><chi...@fred.aurora.edu> wrote:
>>>Gender?
>>
>>= Male" philosophy.
>
>Actually, I find it quite enjoyable to play games with female protagonists.
>_Plundered Hearts_ was very fun, and I entertained myself through much of
>_Curses_ by picturing the protagonist as my grandmother when she was in
>her 30s. (Her personality fit into the game quite well.)
I didn't stretch my imagination much in Curses, just played myself
(around whom it worked quite well, right until stuff started getting
accomplished, which proved it *was* fantasy :-) )
I finally had the chance to play through Plundered Hearts and enjoyed
it tremendously :-) Maybe someone can write another one ;-) (Not me,
I can't write like that!)
I also really enjoyed Christminster, both because Christabel was interesting
to play, and it was a nifty story.
This is not to say I didn't enjoy other games, nor that either PH or
Christminster were enjoyable only for their gender decisions, but
it contributed to their appeal (IMO). In a poorly-done game along those
lines, I suspect it would backfire.
Mike Phillips, mi...@lawlib.wm.edu
aul...@koala.scott.net
In article <501d8d$s...@copland.udel.edu>,
>(protagonists in IF are invariably straight...
How is it you've determined this, given your own words...
>Granted, in the majority of games this never comes up, and that's fine.
If it never comes up, it seems to me that in, say, Enchanter, you can
be any combination of gender and orientation. At least in Suspended?
Of course, Sherlock and Plundered Hearts don't leave you much choice.
That is all,
Joe
Neil K. Guy
aul...@koala.scott.net wrote:
: If it never comes up, it seems to me that in, say, Enchanter, you can
: be any combination of gender and orientation. At least in Suspended?
I'd say that the vast majority of games I've looked at assume a male
character, or a male voice. They may not specifically say outright that
you're a boy or a girl, but they're written from a pretty male
perspective. Given that they're nearly all written by men I feel that's
hardly surprising. But, as a lot of feminists argue, much literature
assumes that male characteristics are "neutral" but that female
characteristics are "other". Likewise they assume heterosexuality is
neutral.
- Neil K.
Andrew Plotkin
Jon Conrad (con...@copland.udel.edu) wrote:
> But: After gazillions of these games, I am getting a bit tired of
> playing someone of a different orientation (protagonists in IF are
> invariably straight, I'm not). Granted, in the majority of games this
> never comes up, and that's fine. But even LGOP assumed that once your
> gender was established, so was your gender-of-interest. JIGSAW looked
> promising, and I was getting into that angle of it, but one episode near
> the end did establish that you and Black are of different genders.
I'm curious which episode you meant. I went all the way through Jigsaw
and never got jarred out of the "ambiguous" mode. I never saw anything
which specified either gender, separately or relative to each other.
(Except for a couple of parser bugs, which may have been fixed by now.)
Dylan O'Donnell
[keeping quotation as Jigsaw quasi-spoiler buffer]
erky...@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin) wrote:
>Jon Conrad (con...@copland.udel.edu) wrote:
>> But: After gazillions of these games, I am getting a bit tired of
>> playing someone of a different orientation (protagonists in IF are
>> invariably straight, I'm not). Granted, in the majority of games this
>> never comes up, and that's fine. But even LGOP assumed that once your
>> gender was established, so was your gender-of-interest. JIGSAW looked
>> promising, and I was getting into that angle of it, but one episode near
>> the end did establish that you and Black are of different genders.
>
>I'm curious which episode you meant. I went all the way through Jigsaw
>and never got jarred out of the "ambiguous" mode. I never saw anything
>which specified either gender, separately or relative to each other.
I seem to remember that in the Suez chapter, you had a passport showing you and
Black as a honeymoon couple (though which was which wasn't specified). The 1950s
weren't particularly liberal on this kind of thing.
Hmm. Maybe I should go back and replay Jigsaw, to check. What a hardship :-)
--
Dylan O'Donnell (dyl...@demon.net)
Demon Internet Ltd, Southend slave deck annexe
http://www.vy.com/psmith.html
Aka Psmith (elsewhere). Badger? *urf*
Laurel Halbany
Den of Iniquity <dms...@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>Is there a place for a discussion of pornography vs erotica in IF newsgroup?
>;)
Sure. I read erotica. You read sexually explicit material. S/he reads
pornography. :*
----------------------------------------------------------
Laurel Halbany
myt...@agora.rdrop.com
http://www.rdrop.com/users/mythago/
Laurel Halbany
chi...@fred.aurora.edu wrote:
> If I get enough feedback, in release two Ill make it so you can choose
>your gender, but for at least the first release that the way it is
>(mainly cause till I learn inform I dont think I have the talent to
>implement it)
Well, if you're a male you probably can't just walk back into the
dressing rooms.
JlB1925
>Hmmm... Perhaps not only the player's gender but that
>of all characters in the game should be user-selectable...
Well, I'd love a game that allowed me to play God...
---
Liam Burke
I do not in any way represent Punahou Academy, its employees or its giant
flying wombats, and anything I may say or do that directly contradicts
this is merely the product of one of my many warped minds.
Greg Ewing
chi...@fred.aurora.edu wrote:
>
> Does it really bother people to play a character of the opposite
> Gender?
Usually in IF I don't think of myself as playing the role
of another person, but as being there myself. If the player
character's gender were specified as different from mine,
I would have to modify this attitude somewhat, but I
don't think it would be impossible.
In traditional fiction, I don't have any trouble sympathising
with a main character of the other gender, so I'm sure I
would be able to do the same in IF. I'd just have to think
of my role as more that of a scriptwriter or active
observer than a direct participant.
So I don't think there's anything wrong with fixing the
main character's gender. Just make it clear at the outset,
so the player doesn't have to switch gears part way through.
(Could be embarrassing if you suddenly discovered you had
a lover of the opposite gender to the one you were
imagining :-)
It occurs to me that this might be a good place for the
idea of non-first-person prose that was discussed a while
ago, e.g the prompt would be "What should Mary do next?"
and the responses would be "Mary opens her handbag"
instead of "You open your handbag" etc.
But that could be a lot of work to implement, and might
annoy some players who would prefer the usual first-person
viewpoint. Probably it should be an option - even more
work! Don't bother with it unless you're feeling
particularly innovative.
Greg
Greg Ewing
Jon Conrad wrote:
>
> I'm not trying to reform every IF story in existence, but it would be
> nice to encounter a scenario someday that allowed for same-sex
> interest.
Hmmm... Perhaps not only the player's gender but that
of all characters in the game should be user-selectable...
> look
George is here, looking appraisingly at Alexandria.
Robin is fuming jealously.
> set gender of George to female
Georgina is here, looking appraisingly at Robin.
Alexandria is fuming jealously.
> set preference of Georgina to female
Georgina is here, looking appraisingly at Alexandria.
Robin is shaking his head in bewilderment.
Greg
Den of Iniquity
On Mon, 2 Sep 1996, Laurel Halbany wrote:
> Den of Iniquity <dms...@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> >Is there a place for a discussion of pornography vs erotica in IF newsgroup?
> >;)
>
> Sure. I read erotica. You read sexually explicit material. S/he reads
> pornography. :* ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Whatever gave you that idea? Lies. Scurrilous rumours. No foundation in
real fact! O:-)
--
Iniquity? (Currently reading The War of the Worlds by HG Wells. Forget ID4.)
John Ruschmeyer
In article <50es1s$e...@hermes.rdrop.com>,
Laurel Halbany <myt...@agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
>chi...@fred.aurora.edu wrote:
>
>> If I get enough feedback, in release two Ill make it so you can choose
>>your gender, but for at least the first release that the way it is
>>(mainly cause till I learn inform I dont think I have the talent to
>>implement it)
>
>Well, if you're a male you probably can't just walk back into the
>dressing rooms.
True... though it does lead to some possible directions for the puzzles:
- Bribing/luring/incapacitating the guard
- Transvestitism
- Accessing the fitting room via an attached stockroom or
restocking area (and the problems involved in accessing it)
Each of which has someinteresting sexual/erotic possibilities. For example,
if you require the player to get past the guard via transvestitism, do you
make him "passable" enough that he has to fend off advances by the guard?
In the stockroom scenario, do you allow voyeurism? What sort of detail
do you go into? (A personal preference here- if you go into detail about
various other customers, please avoid childish Al Bundy-like references
to fat ladies squeezing into girdles. (Not that some of us don't like a
good description of an ample woman, if done tastefully. :-))
<<<John>>>
--
John Ruschmeyer jrus...@csc.com
Computer Sciences Corp.
Eatontown, NJ 07724 908-542-8383
Matthew Daly
myt...@agora.rdrop.com (Laurel Halbany) writes:
>chi...@fred.aurora.edu wrote:
>
>> If I get enough feedback, in release two Ill make it so you can choose
>>your gender, but for at least the first release that the way it is
>>(mainly cause till I learn inform I dont think I have the talent to
>>implement it)
>
>Well, if you're a male you probably can't just walk back into the
>dressing rooms.
And if you're a woman you can't look at your watch and "tsk" loudly
to get her to hurry up... Oh yes, lots of potential here.
ObSheesh: Just a joke, 'kay?
-Matthew
--
Matthew Daly I don't buy everything I read ... I haven't
da...@ppd.kodak.com even read everything I've bought.
My opinions are not necessarily those of my employer, of course.
aul...@koala.scott.net
Once at a literary conference I heard a presentation about how movies and
television never have real, convincing, true female characters. Women are
always potrayed as characters that are defined by their relationships (or
lack of them) to men.
I asked the presenter how this idea applied to TV shows, movies, or plays
that have NO male characters. Her answer was defensive and unhelpful, but
I later was able to supply my own answer. Take "Steel Magnolias" for lack
of a better example to wit. I mean the play. The women are defined by their
relationships to the implied offstage male characters.
(Stick around, I'm gonna tie this in to IF in a minute.)
For several weeks I looked for a counterexample (i.e. an independent
female character) without success. I've decided that it is true. The
arts and media have no real female characters. I've also decided that
the reason why is not really problem with the creators (as the presenter
at the conference believed) but with society. Society is sexist, and we
DON'T KNOW HOW to make or perceive a real, true, independent female character.
So the answer is not that the characters of an all woman cast are defined
by the implied male characters. The answer is that ALL female characters are
defined by how they relate to the men IN THE AUDIENCE, or more generally,
the men in society. The women in the audience perceive the same definitions
because the men have been defining things for so long, they can impose those
definitions -- or the habit of using them -- onto them.
(Hold on, IF tie in coming really soon!)
Now, so no-one gets too confused about what I'm saying, let me explain a
few things. I am a feminist. I am also sexist -- because society teaches
me to be in a million subtle and subliminal ways. I believe the above
statements about female characters to be true not because we choose to
define the characters this way (and certainly not that the women CHOOSE to
let the men define them), but becuase we have been doing it this way for
several thousand years, and so far we have not LEARNED TO PERCEIVE women
on the screen or stage as independent characters. Since a vicious cycle
is in play here (how can you make an independent character if noone can
perceive one, and the reverse) I don't know a solution except to wait,
be aware of the problem, and try personally to break the habits of
perception.
(IF tie in now)
Now, applying this to above statement and subject, I find that I'm not
sure if the problem lies in the author or the audience. That is, does the
game assume it will have a male player, or does the player assume that
the game is written in a male voice? Do we impose the "male characteristics"
onto the neutral? Are we, as an IF audience, at this point in time and
society, capable of seeing things in a way that is not tainted by the male-
dominant expectations we learn from our environment?
My inclination is to say -- "both, player assumes, yes, no."
All on very deep, low, nearly inaccessible levels.
If you feel excluded or ignored by games that were designed to be gender
and orientation neutral, perhaps you should look inside and find out if
there is something there preventing you from PERCIEVING the game as
being inclusive the way it was intended to be. What could have been
written differently to make the game more neutral anyway? Is there any
way to meet the criteria?
Please -- if nothing else -- remember that I am not placing fault on
any one person, so don't get mad at me for suggesting the problem may
lie in the receiver as well as the maker. I think this is a VERY deep issue
that goes as far down as the basic workings of our brains. I also find
it fascinating.
That is all,
Joe
chi...@fred.aurora.edu
> chi...@fred.aurora.edu wrote:
>
> > If I get enough feedback, in release two Ill make it so you can choose
> >your gender, but for at least the first release that the way it is
> >(mainly cause till I learn inform I dont think I have the talent to
> >implement it)
>
> Well, if you're a male you probably can't just walk back into the
> dressing rooms.
>
Chidder
Matthew Daly
In article <50g17g$a...@newsbf02.news.aol.com> jlb...@aol.com (JlB1925) writes:
>Well, I'd love a game that allowed me to play God...
Try Inform. :-)
Jon Conrad
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
>Jon Conrad (con...@copland.udel.edu) wrote:
[in connection with other than hetero as a default assumption in IF]
>> JIGSAW looked
>> promising, and I was getting into that angle of it, but one episode near
>> the end did establish that you and Black are of different genders.
>I'm curious which episode you meant. I went all the way through Jigsaw
>and never got jarred out of the "ambiguous" mode. I never saw anything
>which specified either gender, separately or relative to each other.
SPOILER ALERT:
In the Egypt chapter, in the barge:
An old black board-bound British passport. While it is, naturally,
Property of Her Britannic Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and is to be
returned to her Secretary of State at the earliest opportunity, it is
more specifically the passport of Mr and Mrs J. P. Swithin. Mr Swithin
gives his occupation as "engineer".
The photographs are very poor indeed, but bear a passing resemblance to
Black and yourself.
---
To me (and my friend who was playing independently), this implied
different sexes for Black and me. If we're traveling, or intended to
pass, as husband and wife (neither of us in disguise), that seemed to
settle it. If the passport would have identified our bodies in the
event of an "accident," then the medical examination would have had to
match too.
Jon Alan Conrad
bout...@razor.wcc.govt.nz
In article <50es1q$e...@hermes.rdrop.com>, myt...@agora.rdrop.com (Laurel Halbany) writes:
>Den of Iniquity <dms...@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>>Is there a place for a discussion of pornography vs erotica in IF newsgroup?
>>;)
>
>Sure. I read erotica. You read sexually explicit material. S/he reads
>pornography. :*
Under the cicumstances, I'm more than a little concerned about that last
emoticon.
-Giles
Steven Howard
>Once at a literary conference I heard a presentation about how movies and
>television never have real, convincing, true female characters. Women are
>always potrayed as characters that are defined by their relationships (or
>lack of them) to men.
>
>I asked the presenter how this idea applied to TV shows, movies, or plays
>that have NO male characters. Her answer was defensive and unhelpful, but
>I later was able to supply my own answer. Take "Steel Magnolias" for lack
>of a better example to wit. I mean the play. The women are defined by their
>relationships to the implied offstage male characters.
This is an interesting assertion, but it's not falsifiable. The only conceivable
counterexample would be a female character who has no relationship with any
male character NOR a lack of such a relationship. Clearly, this is a
contradiction.
This also means you can't find a male counterexample, either. All male
characters are defined by their relationships (or lack thereof) to (possibly
implied) women. Characters of either gender are defined in part by their
relationships to other characters. Sure, Ophelia is defined by her
relationship with Hamlet, but no more than Hamlet is defined by his
relationship with Gertrude.
========
Steven Howard
bl...@ibm.net
What's a nice word for "euphemism"?
Laurel Halbany
dyl...@demon.net (Dylan O'Donnell) wrote:
>I seem to remember that in the Suez chapter, you had a passport showing you and
>Black as a honeymoon couple (though which was which wasn't specified). The 1950s
>weren't particularly liberal on this kind of thing.
If you could fake being married at all, you could certainly fake being
an opposite-sex couple...
aul...@koala.scott.net
In article <50lbvn$1c...@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net>,
Steven Howard <bl...@ibm.net> wrote:
>In <50i1ro$n...@koala.scott.net>, aul...@koala.scott.net writes:
[original material deleted]
>This is an interesting assertioni, but it's not falsifiable. The only conceivable
>counterexample would be a female character who has no relationship with any
>male character NOR a lack of such a relationship. Clearly, this is a
>contradiction.
Wrong. You misunderstand my point. The counterexample is a female character
that exists on her own and is NOT DEFINED by her relationships with men (in
the show or in society). The point is that this has never been achieved.
A parallel concept illustrates why shows that try to depict a non-sexist
society (e.g. Star Trek) inevitably fail. We are an inherently sexist
society, and we have no concept of how a true non-sexist society would
function. You can't blame those shows for their failure any more than you
can blame a director or writer or actor for failing to create an
independent female character. We'll have to change our basic thinking
patterns before these things are even possible.
>This also means you can't find a male counterexample, either. All male
>characters are defined by their relationships (or lack thereof) to (possibly
>implied) women. Characters of either gender are defined in part by their
>relationships to other characters. Sure, Ophelia is defined by her
>relationship with Hamlet, but no more than Hamlet is defined by his
>relationship with Gertrude.
No counterexample is needed for a man. Thousands and thousands of male
characters exist independent of the female characters. Hamlet's character
is IN NO WAY defined by his relationship to Gertrude (or Ophelia). It's
ironic that the example you gave is one I likely would have chosen to
illustrate MY point. Perhaps we misunderstand each other's idea of what
defining a character means. I hope this clears up my meaning: Many, many
male characters exist, period. Female characters exist only in relationship
to some man somewhere.
I have learned since my original posting that this concept has surfaced in
feminist literature and has been called the "male gaze." The camera -- or
eye in live performance -- is not "neutral" as it should be, but instead
is "male" and casts its "male gaze" on the female characters. This is true
even if the people in control of the camera -- or eye -- are women! Quite
a dilemma for anyone trying to write, direct, or play a real woman.
To reiterate the last post, and keep this thread tied to IF, I'd like to
restate my previous thoughts with my new terminology. I think that we
apply a "male gaze" to IF, and that's why the characters we play, unless
stated otherwise, "feel" male. To tie this way back to the origin of this
branch of the thread, I also think we apply a "straight gaze" and the
characters feel straight, even when no reference is made to the character's
orientation.
Now THAT'S a long way to go to make a point, no?
That is all,
Joe
Donald Scott Macron
aul...@koala.scott.net wrote:
: No counterexample is needed for a man. Thousands and thousands of male
: characters exist independent of the female characters. Hamlet's character
: is IN NO WAY defined by his relationship to Gertrude (or Ophelia). It's
: ironic that the example you gave is one I likely would have chosen to
: illustrate MY point. Perhaps we misunderstand each other's idea of what
: defining a character means. I hope this clears up my meaning: Many, many
: male characters exist, period. Female characters exist only in relationship
: to some man somewhere.
This is the most sexist, baseless line of tripe I have ever encountered
on a NG, bar none. Congratulations. Perhaps (I hope) this is a troll.
Dan Shiovitz
In article <50ni8u$i...@koala.scott.net>, <aul...@koala.scott.net> wrote:
>In article <50lbvn$1c...@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net>,
>Steven Howard <bl...@ibm.net> wrote:
>>In <50i1ro$n...@koala.scott.net>, aul...@koala.scott.net writes:
>[original material deleted]
>>This is an interesting assertioni, but it's not falsifiable. The only conceivable
>>counterexample would be a female character who has no relationship with any
>>male character NOR a lack of such a relationship. Clearly, this is a
>>contradiction.
>
>Wrong. You misunderstand my point. The counterexample is a female character
>that exists on her own and is NOT DEFINED by her relationships with men (in
>the show or in society). The point is that this has never been achieved.
That is, one that has no relationships with men? As there are very few
books, let alone movies, that have all-female worlds (not just casts), I
doubt you'll find any. But then, I doubt you'd find very many for males
either.
[..]
>>This also means you can't find a male counterexample, either. All male
>>characters are defined by their relationships (or lack thereof) to (possibly
>>implied) women. Characters of either gender are defined in part by their
>>relationships to other characters. Sure, Ophelia is defined by her
>>relationship with Hamlet, but no more than Hamlet is defined by his
>>relationship with Gertrude.
>
>No counterexample is needed for a man. Thousands and thousands of male
>characters exist independent of the female characters. Hamlet's character
>is IN NO WAY defined by his relationship to Gertrude (or Ophelia). It's
I think if you choose to misunderstand (either willfully or out of
ignorance) a character like Hamlet, then it's no wonder you think he
exists independantly. It would be entirely possible to argue that
his mother's remarriage is *central* to his character, thoughts, and
behavior at the opening of the play.
[..]
>I have learned since my original posting that this concept has surfaced in
>feminist literature and has been called the "male gaze." The camera -- or
>eye in live performance -- is not "neutral" as it should be, but instead
>is "male" and casts its "male gaze" on the female characters. This is true
>even if the people in control of the camera -- or eye -- are women! Quite
>a dilemma for anyone trying to write, direct, or play a real woman.
Yes indeed. Everyone is mind-controlled by the patriarchy to such an
extent that they not only are unaware of the mind control, but they are
unable to think of an alternative way of existance, and thus we are
doomed to stay like this forever. Quite a dilemma indeed.
>To reiterate the last post, and keep this thread tied to IF, I'd like to
>restate my previous thoughts with my new terminology. I think that we
>apply a "male gaze" to IF, and that's why the characters we play, unless
>stated otherwise, "feel" male. To tie this way back to the origin of this
>branch of the thread, I also think we apply a "straight gaze" and the
>characters feel straight, even when no reference is made to the character's
>orientation.
Define a "straight gaze" without making references to sexuality. How do
straights look at Picassos? How do straights listen to Mozart? How do
straights smell roses? Explain how this differs from the way that
someone with a "homosexual gaze" would perform the same actions.
(To summarize this, I think you confuse/conflate our tendancy to assume
unknown people are average with an assertion that we are unable to do
otherwise.)
>Now THAT'S a long way to go to make a point, no?
Yes. As this is fairly off-topic for the group and would be better
discussed in alt.feminism or another more general gender discussion group,
I'll finish up quickly. I find your words here *incredibly* patronizing
and ignorant of your subject matter. Furthermore, I think what you've said
does nothing to promote real equality of any sort, and does much to promote
stereotypes which I, at least, find odious. As a postscript, I would agree
with your first point that I have never seen a female character who is
not defined at least partially by a relationship with a male, but add that
the same is true is reverse.
>That is all,
>
>Joe
Den of Iniquity
I've been reading assertions about this 'male-gaze' stuff and the
inability of women to have character in the absence of interaction with
males... Heavy stuff, and from what (little ;) I understand, I disagree.
Certainly, the society we live in does indeed currently have a tendency
towards maleness, towards heterosexuality, where I live towards the
Caucasian, and if a character is presented with none of this kind of
information whatsoever I will default towards thinking of that person as
being like me - reasonably intelligent young single straight white male
with no obvious disability. (Lucky me!)
However I believe that as soon as enough detailed information is provided,
these preconceptions are suspended. Further I believe that every person,
male or female, has a character which can be illustrated by the sum of
every interaction they have with _every_ other person, male _or_ female.
And any good, full depictions of people's characters whether in plays, film
or i-f, should be (and are, IMO) illustrated in aspects of their
interactions with both genders.
Which brings us to the beholder - a tight, closed set of presuppositions
in the mind of a person can change the way they see something - if you
believe strongly that all women are evil, you can see evidence for it in any
portrayal of a female character, whether staged or in real life. So I
think that if you can't see any evidence that a female's character has
been shaped in any way by other women, that could be as much in the way
you see things as in the performance of actors (whether real people,
performers on a stage or digistised NPC's).
Or maybe I'm being blinded by my own set of tight, closed preconceptions. ;)
(I know it's not an impossibility...)
--
Den (getting out the thick skin again...)
Matthew T. Russotto
In article <322B78...@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>,
It's much easier than that:
> look
Leslie is here, looking appraisingly at Alex
Robin is fuming jealously.
> set gender of Leslie to female
Leslie is here, looking appraisingly at Alex
Robin is fuming jealously.
> set preference of Leslie to female
Leslie is here, looking appraisingly at Alex
Robin is fuming jealously.
Pat, Francis, Leslie, Alex, Teddy, George, Mike, Phil, Ronnie -- what other
names do you need?
--
Matthew T. Russotto russ...@pond.com russ...@his.com
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue."
Trevor Barrie
Greg Ewing <gr...@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>It occurs to me that this might be a good place for the
>idea of non-first-person prose that was discussed a while
>ago, e.g the prompt would be "What should Mary do next?"
>and the responses would be "Mary opens her handbag"
>instead of "You open your handbag" etc.
>But that could be a lot of work to implement,
No, I don't think it would be. In TADS, I believe you could handle this by
changing the pronouns associated with the "Me" object and modifying the
prompt; I'm sure it would be equally easy with Inform.
George Caswell
On 6 Sep 1996, Donald Scott Macron wrote:
> aul...@koala.scott.net wrote:
>
> : No counterexample is needed for a man. Thousands and thousands of male
> : characters exist independent of the female characters. Hamlet's character
> : is IN NO WAY defined by his relationship to Gertrude (or Ophelia). It's
> : ironic that the example you gave is one I likely would have chosen to
> : illustrate MY point. Perhaps we misunderstand each other's idea of what
> : defining a character means. I hope this clears up my meaning: Many, many
> : male characters exist, period. Female characters exist only in relationship
> : to some man somewhere.
>
> This is the most sexist, baseless line of tripe I have ever encountered
> on a NG, bar none. Congratulations. Perhaps (I hope) this is a troll.
>
If he means it's not -often- that a female character is defined
independantly, I'd tend to agree, in a lot of cases, they aren't. If he
means it's not -possible-, I would say only because it is sometimes
considered an irregularity or simply is handled badly by the author...
(and so isn't accepted...)
....T...I...M...B...U...K...T...U... ____________________________________
.________________ _/>_ _______......[George Caswell, CS '99. 4 more info ]
<___ ___________// __/<___ /......[ http://www.wpi.edu/~timbuktu ]
...//.<>._____..<_ >./ ____/.......[ Member LnL+SOMA, sometimes artist, ]
..//./>./ /.__/ /./ <___________.[writer, builder. Sysadmin of adamant]
.//.</.</</</.<_ _/.<_____________/.[____________________________________]
</.............</...................
Laurel Halbany
Den of Iniquity <dms...@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>However I believe that as soon as enough detailed information is provided,
>these preconceptions are suspended.
<scratches head> I'm not sure what you mean. If you're saying that as
soon as the game says "You're a woman," then you stop assuming the
character is male--well, that's kind of obvious, isn't it?
If by 'preconception' you mean assumptions about what characteristics
people have--for example, if you assume your character is female when
told "you're timid"--I would disagree. Did you catch the discussion
about Black's gender when _Jigsaw_ first appeared? It was interesting
to see insistence that Black *must* be male because Black tries to
kill people, acts aggressively, etc.
aul...@koala.scott.net
Dear Mr. of Iniquity,
Thank you for an intelligent, thought-provoking reply. I shall try to
clarify a point or two about my statements, then, with your permission,
let this thing die.
In article <Pine.SGI.3.91.960906...@tower.york.ac.uk>,
Den of Iniquity <dms...@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>I've been reading assertions about this 'male-gaze' stuff and the
>inability of women to have character in the absence of interaction with
>males... Heavy stuff, and from what (little ;) I understand, I disagree.
Not assertions, really, as in statements of truth, but a theory I know
of and my hypotheses and propositions to add to it. It is, indeed, very
heavy and deep, and an opposing viewpoint is easy to understand.
>Certainly, the society we live in does indeed currently have a tendency
>towards maleness, towards heterosexuality, where I live towards the
>Caucasian, and if a character is presented with none of this kind of
>information whatsoever I will default towards thinking of that person as
>being like me - reasonably intelligent young single straight white male
>with no obvious disability. (Lucky me!)
Yes. These statements run parallel to the conclusions I drew in order to
apply the theory to how we perceive our player characters in IF, why they
feel male and (as someone said) straight.
>However I believe that as soon as enough detailed information is provided,
>these preconceptions are suspended.
(The IF hypothesis I posed was about situations that LACK that information.
What happens then?)
>Further I believe that every person,
>male or female, has a character which can be illustrated by the sum of
>every interaction they have with _every_ other person, male _or_ female.
>And any good, full depictions of people's characters whether in plays, film
>or i-f, should be (and are, IMO) illustrated in aspects of their
>interactions with both genders.
These are very good and valid points, and actually, I agree. It's not really
about how the character is _illustrated_ that I'm talking about though. It's
the deepest kernel of who the character is, what she represents at the
deepest level if we dig deep enough. The theory states, and I believe, that
somehow many male characters can be reduced to basic concepts that don't
necessarily involve women at all, but that all female characters can be
reduced to basic concepts which break down further to concepts that
inherently involve men. Remember that I proposed earlier that it all comes down
to the men in society, not in the show, and that our perceptual habits are
relevant. Try it with a few characters. Even if you disagree, you can see what
I mean, at any rate.
>Which brings us to the beholder - a tight, closed set of presuppositions
>in the mind of a person can change the way they see something - if you
>believe strongly that all women are evil, you can see evidence for it in any
>portrayal of a female character, whether staged or in real life. So I
>think that if you can't see any evidence that a female's character has
>been shaped in any way by other women, that could be as much in the way
>you see things as in the performance of actors (whether real people,
>performers on a stage or digistised NPC's).
I'm assuming you mean "you" in the general sense here, not "you" in the
ME sense. I surely don't think all women are evil, or that no female
character can be shaped by another female character. However, I agree that
it could be quite as much in the way I see things as it is a with anything
else. I've said I think the issue is not only that we have trouble
representing real independent women, but also that we (I and some other
feminists I know, at least) might not really know how to recognize her if
they managed to.
>Or maybe I'm being blinded by my own set of tight, closed preconceptions. ;)
>(I know it's not an impossibility...)
What I've read about brains lately suggests that way down inside, all we have
are concepts something like your "tight, closed preconceptions", and clever
ways to relate them to one another. So I don't think we're in as much
disagreement, after all. I buy the theory, you may not. That doesn't bother
me a bit.
That is all,
Joe
aul...@koala.scott.net
In article <50o51p$l...@nntp4.u.washington.edu>,
Dan Shiovitz <scy...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>In article <50ni8u$i...@koala.scott.net>, <aul...@koala.scott.net> wrote:
>>You misunderstand my point. The counterexample is a female character
>>that exists on her own and is NOT DEFINED by her relationships with men (in
>>the show or in society). The point is that this has never been achieved.
>
>That is, one that has no relationships with men? As there are very few
>books, let alone movies, that have all-female worlds (not just casts), I
>doubt you'll find any. But then, I doubt you'd find very many for males
>either.
This is the same thing the guy said before I said, "You misunderstand my
point." Clearly then, it's not my point. I'm not talking about she exists
as in she lives in a place and either a man lives there or not, I'm talking
about a character who FEELS real, who simply IS, without having to be seen
through some male's eyes. Is that clear? Wait, don't answer that.
>I think if you choose to misunderstand (either willfully or out of
>ignorance) a character like Hamlet, then it's no wonder you think he
>exists independantly.
Naturally, you have no way of knowing what I know about Hamlet.
Perhaps you simply misunderstand the way I was speaking about him.
A VAST oversimplification of the theory I'm talking about is:
Who is Hamlet? ... He's this guy in this play...
Who is Gertrude? ... She's Hamlet's mother...
Who is Ophelia? ... She's Hamlet's...
Actually the whole thing is a bad example -- not one I chose, anyway.
Don't reply to that.
>Yes indeed. Everyone is mind-controlled by the patriarchy to such an
>extent that they not only are unaware of the mind control, but they are
>unable to think of an alternative way of existance, and thus we are
>doomed to stay like this forever. Quite a dilemma indeed.
Umm, is this sarcasm? Whatever it is, it would qualify as an Oliver Stone
version of the theory I'm talking about. Tone down the conspiratorial
overtones and erase the hopelessness, and you'll be close the point.
>Define a "straight gaze" without making references to sexuality. How do
>straights look at Picassos? How do straights listen to Mozart? How do
>straights smell roses? Explain how this differs from the way that
>someone with a "homosexual gaze" would perform the same actions.
I'm sure I don't get that bit. I haven't defined "male gaze" without
reference to gender, nor in relation to paintings, music, and nature.
Why should this be needed to discuss a "straight gaze"? Also, I have
not suggested that a "homosexual gaze" exists, so there is no comparison
or contrast to be made. Are you sure you've seen all of my posts about
this? Or that you have the requisite logical, forensic, and abstraction
abilities to discuss them constructively?
>(To summarize this, I think you confuse/conflate our tendancy to assume
>unknown people are average with an assertion that we are unable to do
>otherwise.)
That's actually pretty close to point, but for completely different reasons
than you said it. I've been reading alot about the inner workings of our brains
lately...
>>Now THAT'S a long way to go to make a point, no?
>
>Yes. As this is fairly off-topic for the group and would be better
>discussed in alt.feminism or another more general gender discussion group,
Thanks for the tip. I found it quite on-topic, based on the branch point
of this thread. I'll agree that NOW it isn't. So don't reply.
>I'll finish up quickly. I find your words here *incredibly* patronizing
>and ignorant of your subject matter.
I'm not sure how you can accuse me of ignorance, when YOU don't understand
what I'M saying. Do you even know what my subject matter is, yet? As for
patronization, whatever of it was perceived was not intended. Chalk it up
to an all text medium. I'm going to give up any discussion of anything that's
not black and white, yes/no, scientific fact. I should have learned that years
ago. Try to talk about an interesting and thought provoking theory, and BAM!
Don't reply.
That is all,
Joe -- restricting all r.a.i.f posts to Inform syntax issues only.
aul...@koala.scott.net
In article <50o1qk$5...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
Donald Scott Macron <dma...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>This is the most sexist, baseless line of tripe I have ever encountered
>on a NG, bar none. Congratulations. Perhaps (I hope) this is a troll.
And I did it without even trying!
I'm going to suppose that you received a later post before the original on
this theory, and simply jumped in before you knew what was going on.
Otherwise it's that you are not listening or cannot comprehend (or that I
cannot explain, but I'm REALLY trying -- are you?).
It's a FEMINIST theory, based on a presentation at a conference I attended
and lengthy discussions I had with a friend. We are actually quite the
liberal feminists.
That is all,
Joe -- SHEESH!
Andrew Plotkin
aul...@koala.scott.net wrote:
> >This is the most sexist, baseless line of tripe I have ever encountered
> It's a FEMINIST theory, based on a presentation at a conference I attended
> and lengthy discussions I had with a friend. We are actually quite the
> liberal feminists.
You speak as if calling oneself a feminist protects one from being
either sexist or baseless.
I comment upon the generality, not upon the particular argument you
posted earlier.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
JlB1925
>Don't reply
Hmm. This is a new way to win an argument. When someone replies to you,
restate your position loudly and clearly and tell them the subject is
closed. Sounds like my parents, who never had good reasons for anything
either...
---
Liam Burke
I do not in any way represent Punahou Academy, its employees or its giant
flying wombats, and anything I may say or do that directly contradicts
JlB1925
>It occurs to me that this might be a good place for the
>idea of non-first-person prose that was discussed a while
>ago, e.g the prompt would be "What should Mary do next?"
>and the responses would be "Mary opens her handbag"
>instead of "You open your handbag" etc.
>But that could be a lot of work to implement,
and I wouldn't have very much fun. Reminds me of those really long
prompts in Witness at the beginning. This prose says "Done," "Taken,"
"Dropped," etc. It's expert mode. I wouldn't want to play a game with
excess comments on my every action.
Roger Giner-Sorolla
I'm reminded of something Samuel R. Delany, one of my all-time favorite
writers, said about an even more traditionally male-centric paraliterary
genre -- science fiction.
To paraphrase (I think you can find the exact quote in his essay
collection _The Jewel-Hinged Jaw_), he said that the real challenge in
creating believable and independent female characters, for a male writer,
was to make the relationships between female characters important and
interesting.
In other words, connecting all female characters to males alone
runs the risk of making them functionally mere female archetypes (wise
mother, seductive lover, loyal chick-sidekick, femme fatale) no matter how
courageous or individualized the well-meaning writer tries to make them.
An interesting functional criterion, at least. But can we find an IF game
with more than one important female character?
Roger Giner-Sorolla University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
rs...@virginia.edu Dept. of Psychology (Social)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Good Times" is a real virus. But it doesn't infect computers.
Francis Irving
On 6 Sep 1996 02:21:08 GMT, dma...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Donald Scott
Macron) wrote:
>aul...@koala.scott.net wrote:
>
>> Female characters exist only in relationship to some man somewhere.
>
>This is the most sexist, baseless line of tripe I have ever encountered
>on a NG, bar none. Congratulations. Perhaps (I hope) this is a troll.
Don't jump to conclusions.
Aultman's assertion was about female _characters_, and certainly not
about women in general.
S/he is implying that stories are sexist. Even that IF is sexist.
Perhaps s/he is being sexist by interpreting stories such that female
characters exist only in relationship to some man. Anyone who already
sees the world like that would see it like that in stories.
But by his/her later post, where s/he says s/he is feminist, I suspect
that this is not the case.
-Z wrote
> You speak as if calling oneself a feminist protects one from being
> either sexist or baseless.
Come on, Andrew! Calling yourself feminist, if you are feminist,
certainly stops you being sexist _against_ women.
Francis.
Nulldogma
> An interesting functional criterion, at least. But can we > find an IF
game with more than one important female
> character?
Well, I'm working on one. If it were to be the first of its kind (I can't
think of any others offhand), it'd be a pretty sad commentary on the state
of the genre.
> Roger Giner-Sorolla University of Virginia,
> Charlottesville, VA
> rs...@virginia.edu Dept. of Psychology (Social)
Hey, that's not in New York...
Neil
---------------------------------------------------------
Neil deMause ne...@echonyc.com
http://www.echonyc.com/~wham/neild.html
---------------------------------------------------------
Francis Irving
On 6 Sep 1996 12:13:01 -0400, russ...@wanda.vf.pond.com (Matthew T.
Russotto) wrote:
>> look
>
>Leslie is here, looking appraisingly at Alex
>Robin is fuming jealously.
>
>> set gender of Leslie to female
>
>Leslie is here, looking appraisingly at Alex
>Robin is fuming jealously.
>
>> set preference of Leslie to female
>
>Leslie is here, looking appraisingly at Alex
>Robin is fuming jealously.
>
>Pat, Francis, Leslie, Alex, Teddy, George, Mike, Phil, Ronnie -- what other
>names do you need?
Hey, does that mean you don't know what gender I am?
Actually you can tell by the last vowel.
Francis.
Roger Giner-Sorolla
On 10 Sep 1996, Nulldogma wrote:
> > An interesting functional criterion, at least. But can we > find an IF
> game with more than one important female
> > character?
>
> Well, I'm working on one. If it were to be the first of its kind (I can't
> think of any others offhand), it'd be a pretty sad commentary on the state
> of the genre.
Of course, today I remembered Brendon Wyber's "Theatre."
>
> > Roger Giner-Sorolla University of Virginia,
> > Charlottesville, VA
> > rs...@virginia.edu Dept. of Psychology (Social)
>
> Hey, that's not in New York...
Nope. I got my Ph. D. and now I'm doing a post-doc in more placid, if
duller, surroundings. And all I have is that darn game to remind me.
-- Roger
Rhodri James
francis...@vegauk.co.uk (Francis Irving) wrote:
> -Z wrote
>> You speak as if calling oneself a feminist protects one from being
>> either sexist or baseless.
> Come on, Andrew! Calling yourself feminist, if you are feminist,
> certainly stops you being sexist _against_ women.
Not necessarily. And anyway, that's not what Andrew was saying; please
read the plot more carefully or you'll miss the vital clues :-)
Anyway, what Aultman and co have discovered is a specific case of the
general rule that everyone in a piece of fiction is defined by their
relationship(s) to the protagonist. Thus Ophelia is indeed defined by her
relationship to Hamlet, and the daughters to King Lear. Usually there is
only one protagonist, but a sprawling enough story can have more; Babylon 5
for instance appears to have two (sequential) protagonists, although claims
could be made for three.
Are all protagonists male? No. A majority are, or more properly were,
since fiction is something of a reflection of the society we live in. But
counterexamles that spring to mind are C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry, C.J.
Cherryh's Pyanfar Chanur (and Ari-whose-surname-escapes-me in Cyteen),
Peter Ho/eg's Smilla Jorgensen... I could start flipping through books to
name more examples, but that should be quite enough to start with.
--
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeeste herder to the masses
If you don't know who I work for, you can't misattribute my words to them
... Intel Outside
Carl Muckenhoupt
Roger Giner-Sorolla <gi...@xp.psych.nyu.edu> writes:
>On 10 Sep 1996, Nulldogma wrote:
>> > An interesting functional criterion, at least. But can we > find an IF
>> game with more than one important female
>> > character?
>>
>> Well, I'm working on one. If it were to be the first of its kind (I can't
>> think of any others offhand), it'd be a pretty sad commentary on the state
>> of the genre.
>Of course, today I remembered Brendon Wyber's "Theatre."
Off the top of my head:
Wishbringer
Deadline (?)
Suspect
Moonmist
LGOP, although I wouldn't use it as the primary example
Wishbringer is probably the best example. Both the main good guy
and the main bad guy are women, and neither is defined in terms of
her relationship to men.
Of course, most games don't have two important female characters
because they don't have two important characters. Many don't
have any characters at all.
(If we accept graphic adventures, Roberta Williams has done several
games that qualify.)
--
Carl Muckenhoupt | Text Adventures are not dead!
b...@tiac.net | Read rec.[arts|games].int-fiction to see
http://www.tiac.net/users/baf | what you're missing!
Steven Howard
In <Pine.SUN.3.91.960910...@xp.psych.nyu.edu>, Roger Giner-Sorolla <gi...@xp.psych.nyu.edu> writes:
>An interesting functional criterion, at least. But can we find an IF game
>with more than one important female character?
The first one that leaps to mind is "Deadline," which by my count has
three important female characters.
Den of Iniquity
On Mon, 9 Sep 1996, Laurel Halbany wrote:
> Den of Iniquity <dms...@york.ac.uk> wrote:
> >However I believe that as soon as enough detailed information is provided,
> >these preconceptions are suspended.
> soon as the game says "You're a woman," then you stop assuming the
> character is male--well, that's kind of obvious, isn't it?
Yep, that's what I mean but I'm talking about the much more general
situation now, not just gender. Yes, it is rather obvious; I got stuck in
a these-are-my-opinions flowery language mode and I don't think "I
believe" was quite what I wanted (I don't take time to proof-read my
postings thoroughly I'm afraid ;). But the intended emphasis of the
postings is not so much the 'you stop assuming' but the 'character is
male' bit.
The way my imagination works, and I assume in most imaginative minds which
society tells us are healthy (a subjective view if ever there was one), I
_require_ sexual characters to have a gender; if no gender is provided
then I am forced to assume one or the other. Generally I go along with
male. Force of habit, I know, and that could be changed with effort, I
think. If sexuality has no relevance whatsoever then it becomes less
important to me to establish a gender. Preconceptions, as I mean them in
this case, are just default values. I don't think it is sexist to have
invariable preconceptions. The fact that society is geared up to make
specific default values, OTOH, is - but I think that is becoming less and
less true.
(Much of my own waffle snipped before it ever hits the newsgroup... ;)
> If by 'preconception' you mean assumptions about what characteristics
> people have--for example, if you assume your character is female when
> told "you're timid"--I would disagree.
So would I. (On the contrary - "you're timid" would reinforce my
preconception that 'I' am shy and cautious but no more. Actually, it
might lend a tiny bit of weight to the 'I am male' preconception... ;)
> Did you catch the discussion
> about Black's gender when _Jigsaw_ first appeared? It was interesting
> to see insistence that Black *must* be male because Black tries to
> kill people, acts aggressively, etc.
Hee hee. No, that was before my time - it sounds delightfully
close-mindedly amusing. In a stupid sort of way. People spend too much
time being fooled by statistics. Of course if it wasn't for
preconceptions, authors of all fictional forms would have a lot more
trouble surprising the reader with cunning plot twists. (Let me stress
that 'surprising gender revelation' is but a tiny part of what I mean.)
--
Den
Matthew Russotto
In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.960910...@xp.psych.nyu.edu> Roger Giner-Sorolla <gi...@xp.psych.nyu.edu> writes:
}
}I'm reminded of something Samuel R. Delany, one of my all-time favorite
}writers, said about an even more traditionally male-centric paraliterary
}genre -- science fiction.
}
}To paraphrase (I think you can find the exact quote in his essay
}collection _The Jewel-Hinged Jaw_), he said that the real challenge in
}creating believable and independent female characters, for a male writer,
}was to make the relationships between female characters important and
}interesting.
And if you do, how to avoid switching off your entire male audience.
"Danger, Danger, it's the Fried Green Steel Magnolias of Interactive
Fiction. Must switch to hack-n-slash game as antidote, or turn into a
mere shell of a man, reduced to watching Lifetime cable!" :-)
Rhodri James
aul...@koala.scott.net wrote:
> Wrong. You misunderstand my point. The counterexample is a female
> character that exists on her own and is NOT DEFINED by her relationships
> with men (in the show or in society). The point is that this has never
> been achieved.
Nonsense. Any book with a female protagonist can do this. Again, I cite
the counterexamples of Ariane Emory (Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh), Pyanfur Chanur
(Cherryh again), Jirel of Joiry (C.L. Moore), Smilla Jorgensen (Miss
Smilla's Feeling For Snow, Peter Ho/eg), practically anything by Joanna
Russ, Capt. Katherine Janeway, most of Jane Austen's work... I can't be
bothered to actually go looking for examples so you'll have to be content
with that list. Alternatively explain to me in what way Hamlet is not
defined by his relationship to Ophelia but <suitable counterexample> is
defined by her relationship to <Ophelia-equivalent>.
--
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeeste herder to the masses
If you don't know who I work for, you can't misattribute my words to them
... but that's a herring of a different colour
Neil K. Guy
Matthew Russotto (russ...@ariel.ct.picker.com) wrote:
: In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.960910...@xp.psych.nyu.edu> Roger Giner-Sorolla <gi...@xp.psych.nyu.edu> writes:
: }To paraphrase (I think you can find the exact quote in his essay
: }collection _The Jewel-Hinged Jaw_), he said that the real challenge in
: }creating believable and independent female characters, for a male writer,
: }was to make the relationships between female characters important and
: }interesting.
: And if you do, how to avoid switching off your entire male audience.
Hey! *Entire* male audience? You're making some big assumptions there!
> braaaaaaaaap! < (reaching for another beer, feet on the table)
- Neil K.
--
the Vancouver CommunityNet * http://www.vcn.bc.ca/
(formerly the Vancouver Regional FreeNet)
Neil K. Guy * n...@vcn.bc.ca * Vice president & Webmeister
Nulldogma
> : And if you do, how to avoid switching off your entire
> male audience.
>
> Hey! *Entire* male audience? You're making some big
> assumptions there!
No kidding. And anyway, given the number of games that seem intent on
turning off their whole female audience, I think reducing your audience to
just half the world's population wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Nulldogma
Phyllis902 wrote:
> What bothers (or more honestly, bores) me more than any of these
> things you guys are so worried about upsetting us with is this
> ugly trend towards bland, politically-correct subject matter and
> characters.
>
> I would be far more interested in playing games that express one
> person's points of veiw than in playing games that try so hard to be
> inoffensive and fair that they end up not saying anything at all.
What games are you talking about? Or do you just mean that having
characters of ambiguous gender is somehow "politically correct"? (Well,
okay, it is in MacWesleyan, but that's intentional.)
Jigsaw is absolutely a game that tries to "express one person's point of
view" -- and messing with people's notions of gender is part of it.
(Though by no means all.) Jeez, Graham wrote an entire essay in XYZZYNews
about the philosophy behind Jigsaw, already.
So please elaborate on this "ugly trend" you see.
Neil K. Guy
Phyllis902 (phyll...@aol.com) wrote:
: I would be far more interested in playing games that express one
: person's points of veiw than in playing games that try so hard to be
: inoffensive and fair that they end up not saying anything at all.
That's nice, and good for you. Has anyone here been advocating
inoffensive boring games?
Phyllis902
null...@aol.com (Nulldogma) wrote:
>
>[Lost the attribution here]
>
>> : And if you do, how to avoid switching off your entire
>> : male audience.
>
>given the number of games that seem intent on
>turning off their whole female audience [...]
What bothers (or more honestly, bores) me more than any of these
things you guys are so worried about upsetting us with is this
ugly trend towards bland, politically-correct subject matter and
characters.
I would be far more interested in playing games that express one
person's points of veiw than in playing games that try so hard to be
inoffensive and fair that they end up not saying anything at all.
I originally posted the following in r.g.i-f, and someone suggested that
it
might be of more interest to the people over here. This is the thread that
seems most related to what I was talking about, so I'm going to stick it
here
and let you all decide if it's something you want to talk about.
Dave Gatewood <Dave.G...@wgserv.athensnet.com> wrote [about Jigsaw]:
> There are places in the game where you discover that
> both characters are male.
Yeah, but I suspect those were oversights. Actually, both the protagonist
and
the antagonist are androgynous and asexual.
This bugs me more than any possible combination of
male/female/hermaphrodite and heterosexual/homosexual/bisexual.
Is there anyone else out there who would like to see more games with a
specific player character, or am I all alone on this?
Film, fiction and (the more recent) role-playing games all have
protagonists with very specific personalities and roles. Unfortunately,
they all seem to do a much better job of creating characters that the
audience/players can sympathize with than text-adventure games.
While I think that most of us care about people in general, I also think
that most of us care more about specific people. It doesn't look like you
can create a lot of dramatic tension over "Joe Everyman," who doesn't have
any particular traits.
A large part of storytelling has to do with the audience discovering
what the characters are like. If you eliminate the main character
from the story, you probably won't have much story left.
I don't buy into the argument that the player character is left undefined
so that the player can project himself into the role without distractions.
I usually discover, within the first few moves of the game, that what I
would do in that situation isn't allowed. That shatters my suspension of
disbelief. Now, if it wasn't allowed because it would be out of character,
that would be fine. IF would be like any other form of fiction -- the
audience gets to learn about the characters.
This post has gotten pretty long. I'll stop now.
Bye,
Phyllis
(http://members.aol.com/phyllis902/critical.html)
George Caswell
On Sun, 15 Sep 1996, Rhodri James wrote:
> aul...@koala.scott.net wrote:
>
> > Wrong. You misunderstand my point. The counterexample is a female
> > character that exists on her own and is NOT DEFINED by her relationships
> > with men (in the show or in society). The point is that this has never
> > been achieved.
>
> Nonsense. Any book with a female protagonist can do this. Again, I cite
> the counterexamples of Ariane Emory (Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh), Pyanfur Chanur
> (Cherryh again), Jirel of Joiry (C.L. Moore), Smilla Jorgensen (Miss
> Smilla's Feeling For Snow, Peter Ho/eg), practically anything by Joanna
> Russ, Capt. Katherine Janeway, most of Jane Austen's work... I can't be
Uhhh... Capt. Katherine Janeway? You do a disservice to 'the fairer
sex'... Janeway is an example of a female character defined on her own
(her husband is defined in mention only, and in terms of her)... but
because the series is so bad, the acting so terrible sometimes and the
character so annoying.....
(Besides, it's -Kathryn-)
> bothered to actually go looking for examples so you'll have to be content
> with that list. Alternatively explain to me in what way Hamlet is not
> defined by his relationship to Ophelia but <suitable counterexample> is
> defined by her relationship to <Ophelia-equivalent>.
huh?
Phyllis902
null...@aol.com (Nulldogma)wrote:
>
>What games are you talking about? Or do you just mean that having
>characters of ambiguous gender is somehow "politically correct"?
Yes, I do mean that having androgynous characters is politically correct.
I don't know what your definition of political correctness is, but mine
has to do with the debasement of language and the reluctance to speak your
mind out of the mistaken assumption that any generalization about any
group of people is, somehow, a malicious thing.
Like it or not, all of us, men and women, have roles that we are expected
to play, and those roles do effect who we become. Ignoring those roles by
eliminating sexuality in the player character does constitute a debasement
of our language (in a very trivial sense here, by eliminating words like
he and she) and (most importantly) a reluctance to speak your mind by
excluding any reactions the non-player characters would have to the player
character based on what sex (or what the perceived sexual orientation) of
the player character is. You can't write about REAL people without writing
about their gender, roles and attitudes. And any attempt to do so is a
form of (self-imposed, perhaps) censorship.
My point was, that if authors are writing games about characters who have
no gender, and no gender-based roles, because it is just too tough to
write something about a specific person, then that is one thing (though
not, in my opinion, a very good thing). But, if authors are writing about
characters that have no gender because they are afraid of offending
someone of the opposite sex, by "leaving him out of the story," they are
doing their audience a big disservice by implying that those people are
unable to sympathize with, or care about, someone of the opposite sex. And
yes, that DOES offend
me, and that is part of the "ugly trend" I was talking about. (I didn't
play text-adventure games in the '80s, so I don't know whether or not this
has been going on for as long as text-adventure games have been around,
but even if it has, it is still ugly.)
Phyllis
Phyllis902
null...@aol.com (Nulldogma)wrote:
>
>Jigsaw is absolutely a game that tries to "express one person's point of
>view" -- and messing with people's notions of gender is part of it.
>(Though by no means all.) Jeez, Graham wrote an entire essay in XYZZYNews
>about the philosophy behind Jigsaw, already.
If Graham Nelson felt that he had to write an essay to explain what he was
trying to say IN Jigsaw, then he clearly felt that he wasn't able to
express his point of view WITH Jigsaw. And I apologize for bringing Jigsaw
into this discussion. I think it is a respectable game. It was just the
worst example of a story about non-people that I could think of, and, as I
mentioned before, it was in response to a thread on another news group
that someone suggested would be better off here.
But since it is a part of this discussion now, I think the fact that
people have spent so much time trying to figure out what sex the
characters are just makes my point for me. People do want to know about
the player character. And someone's sexuality is a big part of who he is.
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying it is the MOST important part about
him, but it is, nevertheless, very important.
After all, haven't homosexuals fought a long and humiliating battle to be
able to "come out of the closet" and stop hiding "who they were?" Don't
stories about people who must hide their gender to achieve some goal
emphasise how dehumanizing it is when you can't allow other people to
identify you by your gender?
>So please elaborate on this "ugly trend" you see.
I think I have, but to elaborate further, I read a thread (this one, I
think) about how all women are all helpless victims of a viciously sexist
society, and about how there is really no way to write anything that isn't
sexist. Apparently, the solution to this is to write about people who have
no gender, no attitudes and no gender-based roles. I disagree. I would
much rather play a "sexist" game about real people than play a
"politically correct" game about no one at all.
Phyllis
Nulldogma
Phyllis wrote:
> Yes, I do mean that having androgynous characters is politically
correct.
> I don't know what your definition of political correctness is, but mine
> has to do with the debasement of language and the reluctance to speak
your
> mind out of the mistaken assumption that any generalization about any
> group of people is, somehow, a malicious thing.
>
Okay, if you think that no character can be complete for you without
knowing their gender (does that go for race as well? eye color? or is
there something special about gender?), then you're entitled to your
opinion. But you might just want to consider that it may be the author's
*intention* to write a character whose gender isn't known to the reader,
or isn't important to the story.
Why writing such a story is "censorship," but demeaning all such stories
as "politically correct" isn't, is one of those things about p.c.-bashers
I've never been to understand. Too bad George Orwell doesn't read this
group...
Phyllis902
null...@aol.com (Nulldogma) wrote:
>
>Okay, if you think that no character can be complete for you without
>knowing their gender (does that go for race as well? eye color? or is
Well, yes, I do think there is something pretty special about sex. As far
as the other things go ...
Please don't tell me that you don't think your appearance, like your
height, weight, attractiveness, skin color, eye color and hair color, or,
for that matter, the way you dress, has nothing to do with the way other
people react to you.
Notice that I'm not saying that these things, or the fact that the roles
we play often have to do with our gender, are necessarily good (or
necessarily bad), I only said that they exist, and that if you want
realistic characters (and I don't know that you do) you have to take those
things into account.
I am also not advocating the use of some sort of meticulous "character
biography" in text-adventure games. Just the relevant stuff, please. I
just think that it is unlikely that any story that concerns a significant
amount of the player character's time would have absolutely nothing to do
with his gender identity. I think the fact that so many people noticed,
and talked about, this absence of gender in Jigsaw proves my point.
How many people wondered what sex the character in Undo was? Did you
mention it? No, and nobody missed it either. In "game time" Undo probably
only took fifteen minutes or less. Unless your story was about sex,
nothing like that would be likely to come up. But, if I remember
correctly, Jigsaw took several weeks of "game time." Of course something
like your gender-role, (or for that matter, your professional experiences)
would come up.
>But you might just want to consider that it may be the author's
>*intention* to write a character whose gender isn't known to the reader,
>or isn't important to the story.
Didn't I say that I thought it was Graham Nelson's intention to create
androgynous characters? Perhaps you didn't understand me. I don't deny Mr.
Nelson's right to write however he wants to write. ;-) All I said was that
I thought that particular aspect of his game was distracting and
ineffective.
You may, and I suspect that you do, disagree with me. That's okay.
(As long as your desire to keep from offending me doesn't keep you from
telling me that you disagree.)
Phyllis
Nulldogma
> (As long as your desire to keep from offending me doesn't > keep you
from telling me that you disagree.)
No, but my desire to keep this thread from dragging out any longer almost
did.
Neil
> BEAT DEAD HORSE
The dead horse rears its head abruptly and looks you in the eye. (As best
as it can, being dead.) "Just had to have the last word, didn't you?" it
says.
Andrew Plotkin
Phyllis902 (phyll...@aol.com) wrote:
> But since it is a part of this discussion now, I think the fact that
> people have spent so much time trying to figure out what sex the
> characters are just makes my point for me. People do want to know about
> the player character. And someone's sexuality is a big part of who he is.
> Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying it is the MOST important part about
> him, but it is, nevertheless, very important.
Yes; but if I write a game which does not mention the player's gender, I
am not necessarily saying that it is *un*important. In fact, even if I
explicitly cloak the character's genders (which is what I felt Jigsaw
did), I'm not necessarily saying that they are unimportant.
There are many reasons to do such a thing.
> After all, haven't homosexuals fought a long and humiliating battle to be
> able to "come out of the closet" and stop hiding "who they were?" Don't
> stories about people who must hide their gender to achieve some goal
> emphasise how dehumanizing it is when you can't allow other people to
> identify you by your gender?
People who must hide their gender? I didn't find this to be a theme in
Jigsaw, or in any other IF game that comes to mind.
It may be helpful if I explain that, in the story of Jigsaw as I saw it,
White and Black *did* have genders. But I do not know what they were.
> I think I have, but to elaborate further, I read a thread (this one, I
> think) about how all women are all helpless victims of a viciously sexist
> society, and about how there is really no way to write anything that isn't
> sexist. Apparently, the solution to this is to write about people who have
> no gender, no attitudes and no gender-based roles.
You're looking way too narrowly. Not every ambiguous-gendered game is
trying to solve *that problem* -- the very existence of that problem
seems to be a minority opinion. Second, I don't think anyone's saying
there is a single "*the* solution".
Carl Muckenhoupt
phyll...@aol.com (Phyllis902) writes:
>(I didn't
>play text-adventure games in the '80s, so I don't know whether or not this
>has been going on for as long as text-adventure games have been around,
>but even if it has, it is still ugly.)
Okay. History lesson time.
The earliest text adventures didn't specify ANYTHING about the player
character. This is basically because they weren't seen as stories.
Specifying the sex of the protagonist in "Adventureland" would be as
absurd as specifying the sex of the protagonist in tic-tac-toe.
There wasn't even really a player character; there was just an empty
spot in the game for the player to step into, like the driver's seat
of a car.
By the 1980's, we had plot, and therefore characters, but the tradition
of making the player character a void continued. This was not out of
a sense of inclusiveness or "political correctness". It was simply
because, by then, that's how it was done.
As time went on, we gradually got two types of game: those with
player characters with definite traits, and those without. Graphic
adventures post-King's Quest (ca. 1984) pretty much universally
adopted the former route, for the obvious reason that it's hard to
be both traitless and visible on-screen. The success of Myst has
reversed this trend, however. Text adventures have actually mostly
stayed in the latter camp - frequently, all you know is that
you're a detective or whatever. There are notable exceptions, of
course, and numerous grey areas, but few text adventures even tell
you the protagonist's name. (Witness last year's contest entries -
I don't think there's a single named protagonist in the lot.)
Why is this? I think most game authors have played games with
well-defined main characters, and I think most will agree that it
does not interfere with identification. I can only put it down
to a sense of tradition, combined with the lazy streak endemic to
programmers. Ultimately, though, it isn't a matter of hiding
genders. It's a matter of whether the protagonist is a character
in the game world or simply an avatar of the player.
(None of this applies to Jigsaw, of course. Graham Nelson
*was* simply hiding genders, and he hardly did it out of
laziness.)
Dan Shiovitz
In article <51mi70$9...@milo.vcn.bc.ca>, Neil K. Guy <n...@vcn.bc.ca> wrote:
>Phyllis902 (phyll...@aol.com) wrote:
>
>: I would be far more interested in playing games that express one
>: person's points of veiw than in playing games that try so hard to be
>: inoffensive and fair that they end up not saying anything at all.
>
>inoffensive boring games?
Politeness: an Interactive inoffensive boring game
You are in a gray, formless void.
> LOOK
I'm sorry, that verb might offend someone who is visually challenged.
> GET ALL
I'm sorry, there's nothing here to take. Besides, you make the assumption
you're the sort of person who might like to take whatever isn't here anyway,
which would go against our goal of a totally gender-neutral persona.
> CURSE
Such language! Besides, _Curses_ is neither inoffensive nor boring (and
quite shockingly English) and thus has no place here.
> QUIT
I'm sorry, that might offend people who haven't started playing this game
and so wouldn't be able to quit.
[..and so on]
> - Neil K.
--
dan shiovitz scy...@u.washington.edu sh...@cs.washington.edu
slightly lost author/programmer in a world of more creative or more sensible
people ... remember to speak up for freedom because no one else will do it
for you: use it or lose it ... carpe diem -- be proactive.
my web site: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~scythe/home.html some ok stuff.
Neil K. Guy
Phyllis902 (phyll...@aol.com) wrote:
: Yes, I do mean that having androgynous characters is politically correct.
: I don't know what your definition of political correctness is, but mine
: has to do with the debasement of language and the reluctance to speak your
: mind out of the mistaken assumption that any generalization about any
: group of people is, somehow, a malicious thing.
Hm. You know, it seems to me that in your witchhunt against this alleged
principle of political correctness you're getting very angry about
something that bothers you, and attributing what may well be inaccurate
causes to the source of your irritation.
Most games don't seem to specify much real information about the
character played by the player, yes. And one piece of information usually
omitted is the character's gender. Other commonly omitted facts are the
character's age and the character's racial/ethnic background, two
factors that I notice have been absent from this discussion. Now I don't
know for sure, since I haven't asked every game author out there, but I
strongly suspect that they don't tell you the character's sex for one of
two reasons. Either they don't think it's of any importance to their
glorified puzzle game, or they expect the player to step into the
character's shoes and see the world from his or her own point of view.
Generally, I bet the latter reason is most common. That's supposed to be
*you* out there, solving the mystery or fighting the monster or figuring
out the family curse. So you (the player) go in there as a man or a woman
and see the world from your own point of view. The author of the game
makes no judgements about who you are, any more than a novelist expects
the reader to be of one particular sex. And what has this to do with
worrying about offending people? As far as I can tell, nothing.
A handful of games don't take this approach. I'm writing one that
doesn't, for instance. In my game you play a female character, who has a
definite history and life story. Some of the elements of my backstory
that the player discovers along the way may well bother some people.
If fact, I'm sure I'll be accused of writing a politically correct story
by having a female protagonist and not a male one. Or I'll be accused of
writing a politically correct story by specifying the character's sex.
Can't win either way. And frankly, I don't care. As far as I'm concerned
the term "political correctness" is a bullshit term that gets thrown at
*everything*, because then you don't have to argue your point. If you
don't like something and can't construct a coherent argument against it,
just label it "politically correct." And, like calling someone a
"communist" in the McCarthy era, the object of your dislike is then
automatically branded as contemptible with the minimum of effort.
- Neil K. Guy
Carl Muckenhoupt
n...@vcn.bc.ca (Neil K. Guy) writes:
>Phyllis902 (phyll...@aol.com) wrote:
> Most games don't seem to specify much real information about the
>character played by the player, yes. And one piece of information usually
>omitted is the character's gender. Other commonly omitted facts are the
>character's age and the character's racial/ethnic background, two
>factors that I notice have been absent from this discussion. Now I don't
>know for sure, since I haven't asked every game author out there, but I
>strongly suspect that they don't tell you the character's sex for one of
>two reasons. Either they don't think it's of any importance to their
>glorified puzzle game, or they expect the player to step into the
>character's shoes and see the world from his or her own point of view.
> Generally, I bet the latter reason is most common. That's supposed to be
>*you* out there, solving the mystery or fighting the monster or figuring
>out the family curse. So you (the player) go in there as a man or a woman
>and see the world from your own point of view. The author of the game
>makes no judgements about who you are, any more than a novelist expects
>the reader to be of one particular sex. And what has this to do with
>worrying about offending people? As far as I can tell, nothing.
The thing is, games are *not* told from the player's point of view.
Like any other form of fiction, they represent the author's point of
view, disguised by filtering it through the eyes of the protagonist.
Adventure games are part simulation, part prose (or part novel, part
crossword puzzle), and there's no such thing as completely objective
prose. Even by choosing what to focus on, what to model as objects and
what to leave as scenery or not mention at all, the author is imposing
a point of view on the player's experience. As Phyllis pointed out,
a game can fail to represent the player simply by not implementing
some action that the player finds natural.
The one thing this whole discussion has done for me is convince me of
the futility of the convention of the traitless protagonist.
Russ Bryan
Phyllis902 wrote:
> Please don't tell me that you don't think your appearance, like your
> height, weight, attractiveness, skin color, eye color and hair color, or,
> for that matter, the way you dress, has nothing to do with the way other
> people react to you.
Just as a side note -- although these many characteristics do not belong
in EVERY game you write, you should define these characteristics for
every CHARCTER you write. This is almost standard in fiction, where
some authors will sit down and write a description and pre-history for
every character
they create. Even if these aren't included in the game itself, you as
author should know them all.
> I am also not advocating the use of some sort of meticulous "character
> biography" in text-adventure games. Just the relevant stuff, please. I
> just think that it is unlikely that any story that concerns a significant
> amount of the player character's time would have absolutely nothing to do
> with his gender identity. I think the fact that so many people noticed,
> and talked about, this absence of gender in Jigsaw proves my point.
Well, there's also the fact that Graham wrote a seven page article in
XYZZY news concerning this issue, as well as mentioning it in the game
itself. If we didn't talk about this, we would be a rather inattentive
audience.
> Didn't I say that I thought it was Graham Nelson's intention to create
> androgynous characters? Perhaps you didn't understand me. I don't deny Mr.
> Nelson's right to write however he wants to write. ;-) All I said was that
> I thought that particular aspect of his game was distracting and
> ineffective.
I never looked at my character as androgynous, and I don't consider that
to be Graham's intention. What Jigsaw attempted to do was to allow any
player to sit down and become the main character. This meant that each
individual player could assume Black to be of a sexually compatible
gender, but for the player neither Black nor the protagonist are
androgynous. Straight women or gay men would find that Black was male,
while straight men and gay women would find that she was female. When I
played the game, I was male and Black was female. I imagine that
bisexual players would probably be a little lost in this case, and might
have to see Black as androgynous, but you can't please everybody. Some
have mentioned the uniform on Stalin's train as proof that you must be
male, but having seen Yentl I have to disagree ;-). The photograph at
Suez may present a problem for gay players, so I have to guess that
Graham did not have this possibility in mind while writing the story.
On the whole, though, I think Graham's intentions were sound, and as
effective as possible.
> You may, and I suspect that you do, disagree with me. That's okay.
>
> (As long as your desire to keep from offending me doesn't keep you from
> telling me that you disagree.)
Oh, I'm gonna like you. ;-)
-- Russ
Neil K. Guy
Carl Muckenhoupt (b...@max.tiac.net) wrote:
: The thing is, games are *not* told from the player's point of view.
: Like any other form of fiction, they represent the author's point of
: view, disguised by filtering it through the eyes of the protagonist.
On the whole, true enough. But doesn't this get into that dangerous area
of what the author intends to do, whether the author actually has any
conscious intentions and what the author does regardless of whatever
intentions he or she may have? :) I agree that pure objectivity is an
illusion or self-deception, but nevertheless I think that most game
authors who have considered the point opt to write simulations in which
the player is expected to step into the proverbial shoes of the
character. And no, I don't think that approach really works either.
- Neil K.
--
the Vancouver CommunityNet * http://www.vcn.bc.ca/
(formerly the Vancouver Regional FreeNet)
Andrew Plotkin
Carl Muckenhoupt (b...@max.tiac.net) wrote:
> Text adventures have actually mostly
> stayed in the latter camp - frequently, all you know is that
> you're a detective or whatever. There are notable exceptions, of
> course, and numerous grey areas, but few text adventures even tell
> you the protagonist's name. (Witness last year's contest entries -
> I don't think there's a single named protagonist in the lot.)
For the sake of contentiousness (and because it's true), I will admit that
the protagonist in "A Change in the Weather" had a name. Because it was
me. In a particular situation I was in about a year and a half ago (just
before I wrote "Weather".)
One might say that the protagonsit had well-defined traits, and the point
of the game was to find out what they were.
Russell Wain Glasser
In <51nbfg$q...@newsbf02.news.aol.com> phyll...@aol.com (Phyllis902)
writes:
>height, weight, attractiveness, skin color, eye color and hair color, or,
>for that matter, the way you dress, has nothing to do with the way other
>people react to you.
>
>we play often have to do with our gender, are necessarily good (or
>necessarily bad), I only said that they exist, and that if you want
>realistic characters (and I don't know that you do) you have to take those
>things into account.
Okay, I'm tired of passively reading this thread, so I'm going to take
a flying leap into the fray and land on your side.
I want to ignore all this blather about political correctness, because
using the word PC either pro OR con has always irritated the hell out of
me. But I think what we're talking about here goes way beyond stereotypes
of male and female oppression and into the realm of simple good writing.
Let me give you an example to illustrate my point.
Back around 1984, when I was ten and first getting heavily into Zork
games, I was also reading those old Zork Choose Your Own Adventures by
Meretzky. (Anyone remember those? Bivotar and Juranda? Kindly old Uncle
Whatsisname? Just about every wrong choice would lead Our Heroes to their
deaths?)
Anyway, I showed those books to my mom, and she read one for about ten
minutes and commented, "These books just aren't well written." I asked her
what she meant, and she pointed out a scene where they first met the Uncle.
It said something really corny like "His nice smile and kind eyes convince
them that he must really be their Uncle." My mom said, "'Nice smile'?
'Kind eyes?' Not one word about what he looks like, or what in particular
he does that strikes them as kind. No descriptive language at all."
This sent me back checking out a bunch of other Choose Your Own
Adventures and interactive fiction, and it was hard not to admit that she
had a point. One major shortcoming in participative literature in general
is that it rarely takes any time to develop any particular person; instead
we just dump an unidentified player character into an unfamiliar
environment and expect them to *want* to solve a bunch of puzzles. (To my
mind, Myst has always been the foremost offender of this mentality. Its
saving grace is that the puzzles are smart and the pictures are cool.)
See, at the heart it doesn't have anything to do with sexism, or with
male and female roles in society; it has everything to do with inhibiting
good descriptive prose by being reluctant to explain what their characters
look like, how they are likely to behave, and why.
Let's get one thing clear: the player character in a computer game is
NOT "me." No matter how hard IF authors may try, they can't make me become
a character that they have written, ESPECIALLY not by making the
character totally nondescript. Because I am not nondescript myself. I
can't be the person in this game, because not many 22-year-old computer
science majors go spelunking in caves or flying around on magic
carpets. But that doesn't matter to me. All I want is to be involved
in the story, and I'm happy to experience the story through the eyes of
a real character.
Again, not a sexist thing. By all means, let's see more good
female characters! Bring on the Plundered Hearts and the
Christminsters! And let's see more good male characters too. And
let's see really weird characters that we love but can never be, like
Perry Simm in his imaginary world. (Ironically, I related more to
PRISM in AMFV than to any other character in any game I've every
played.)
...Don't get me wrong, I loved Jigsaw. The characters, sexless
though they may have been, occasionally showed some pretty well-defined
behaviors and motivations. What I favor is knowing this person whose
head I'm supposed to be inside.
Russell
Matthew Russotto
In article <51p4t7$7...@dfw-ixnews7.ix.netcom.com> rgla...@ix.netcom.com(Russell Wain Glasser) writes:
} Again, not a sexist thing. By all means, let's see more good
}female characters! Bring on the Plundered Hearts and the
}Christminsters! And let's see more good male characters too. And
}let's see really weird characters that we love but can never be, like
}Perry Simm in his imaginary world. (Ironically, I related more to
}PRISM in AMFV than to any other character in any game I've every
}played.)
Perhaps there's a reason for that. Or, in the immortal words of Barclay:
"Computer, end program".
Kenneth Albanowski
In article <51mt4f$j...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
Phyllis902 <phyll...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>Like it or not, all of us, men and women, have roles that we are expected
>about REAL people without writing about their gender, roles and attitudes.
>And any attempt to do so is a form of (self-imposed, perhaps) censorship.
Perhaps the author is trying for something different then "not offending".
Consider that the power of traditional text adventures is in the
_under_statement. Do you decry Zork because the descriptions of the rooms
don't include rough measurements, or because some particular rock formations
aren't described? Part of the art of writing fiction (interactive and
otherwise) is leaving out detail so that the reader can fill it in with
their own imagination and experience, creating a result that is deeper then
would be possible if everything were explicit. "Immersion" is the desired
result.
>But, if authors are writing about characters that have no gender because
>they are afraid of offending someone of the opposite sex, by "leaving him
>out of the story,"
I'm quite sure the issue was not one of avoiding offense (and indeed that is
a rather deplorable motive to assign to an author,) but was the experiment
of making the characters ambiguous, so that the reader can view them in any
way they feel comfortable with, which undoubtedly will include points of
view that neither you nor I would immediately consider.
> they are doing their audience a big disservice by implying that those
>people are unable to sympathize with, or care about, someone of the
>opposite sex.
How did you come up with this notion? I fail to see how it can be derived
from Jigsaw -- you say yourself that the roles are ambiguous. How does that
state _anything_ about how one class of people feels about another?
I can derive the exact opposite, in fact: by leaving the roles ambiguous,
the reader is free to view Black and White _not_ as "myself and someone I
care for of the sex opposite to my own", but instead as "myself and someone
who is/was/should be my lover/lifemate/friend". Absolutely no statement
whatsoever is being made about gender classes. The reader is free to apply
their own standards, _whatever they may be_. By removing the restrictions of
gender on the characters, restrictions on the reader are also lifted. If a
higher number of readers can achieve deeper immersion in the story, is not
some purpose served?
>And yes, that DOES offend me, and that is part of the "ugly trend" I was
>talking about.
From my viewpoint, it seems that you have derived the offense solely from
your own viewpoint, and not from the work in question.
You say:
> You can't write about REAL people without writing about their gender,
>roles and attitudes.
Certainly people in the real world have all of those attributes. But are you
sure that they are all directly correlated? Even if you are sure, are you
sure that others are sure? That's the key issue here.
Could you not write about roles and attitudes, and let gender fill itself
in? Could you not even write solely about actions and behaviours, and leave
all the rest to the reader?
And why stop at gender? If leaving out gender is poor and "unoffensive"
writing, then can't the same be said about skin color, eye color, hair
color, bodily piercings, weight, family income, and any other number of
things? All of these undoubtedly have impacts on a person's roles and
addititudes, to various degrees. But are all necessary to understand a
character? And doesn't the use of such characteristics run the risk of
invoking a stereotype in the mind of the reader, instead of the author's
words? Is the author, by leaving these things out, making _any_ sort of
comment about the ignored traits and those who share them? Is the lack of
comment always an implicit statement of disregard, dislike, and dismissal?
Have you considered some "classic" writing, like The_Lord_of_the_Rings? Does
knowing the actual gender (never mind the sex) of the Ents and their
Entwives really tell you anything about their roles and attitudes?
The Elves are perhaps better characterized by their genders, which would
seem to indicate that the more human a characters is, the more strongly
gender affects it, but consider the Dwarves; Perhaps the most human of the
lot, gender is a completely closed subject, never brought up except in the
de facto use of the masculine gender. Is Pratchetts' solution to this so
damaging?
As a last example (and a rather poorer one as I have not read any of
Tolkien's work past TH and LOTR) look at Tom Bombadil and his wife (whose
name escapes me): from my viewpoint and interpretation of the story, they
are both elemental forces (literally), and thus not necesarily male and
female in any normal sense of the words. The shape they have is only a
reflection of the shape people have come to think they should have. The
application of gender might indeed hinder understanding of their actual
roles and attitudes.
--
Kenneth Albanowski (kja...@kjahds.com)
John Baker
In <51p4t7$7...@dfw-ixnews7.ix.netcom.com>
rgla...@ix.netcom.com(Russell Wain Glasser) writes:
> Let's get one thing clear: the player character in a computer game
>is NOT "me." No matter how hard IF authors may try, they can't make
>me become a character that they have written, ESPECIALLY not by making
>the character totally nondescript. Because I am not nondescript
>myself. I can't be the person in this game, because not many
>22-year-old computer science majors go spelunking in caves or flying
>around on magic carpets.
As long as one other thing is clear: that this is a matter of
preference. I *always* envision myself as the protagonist, regardless
of how fantastic the situation is. If forced to stretch myself, I can
even imagine myself to be female (or if some of the other ideas
mentioned in this thread come to fruition, to be gay). I just can't
play games where the protagonist is a complete jerk (I was unable to
get interested in Infidel after reading the intro).
Of course, I also go spelunking in caves (and would fly on magic
carpets if they existed). :)
--
John Baker - http://www.netcom.com/~baker-j
**I boycott all businesses that send me unsolicited email advertisments**
"Honey, I never drive faster than I can see, and besides,
it's all in the reflexes." - Jack Burton
Richard G Clegg
: > Wrong. You misunderstand my point. The counterexample is a female
: > character that exists on her own and is NOT DEFINED by her relationships
: > with men (in the show or in society). The point is that this has never
: > been achieved.
: Nonsense. Any book with a female protagonist can do this. Again, I cite
: {snippage} most of Jane Austen's work...
Um... errr... is this some other Jane Austen perhaps? The Jane Austen
that I read her characters were defined by their relationships to men to
a quite stomach-churning degree. (Mind you, her male characters were
pretty nauseating too).
--
Richard G. Clegg There ain't no getting round getting round
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.
email: ric...@manor.york.ac.uk Eschew Obfustication
www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html
Rhodri James
George Caswell <timb...@adamant.res.wpi.edu> wrote:
>> bothered to actually go looking for examples so you'll have to be
>> content with that list. Alternatively explain to me in what way Hamlet
>> is not defined by his relationship to Ophelia but <suitable
>> counterexample> is defined by her relationship to <Ophelia-equivalent>.
> huh?
I was trying, in my fuddled 2am state, to spike the irritating and unuseful
reply of "Oh, but they're all defined by their relationships." To give an
example, "what feature of Janeway's relationships with her crew define her
but do not similarly define Hamlet through his relationships with his
family and courtiers?"
--
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeeste herder to the masses
If you don't know who I work for, you can't misattribute my words to them
... Things that go 'spoo' in the night
Werner Punz
Sorry I'm a little bit late with my follow-up
card...@earthlink.net (Cardinal Teulbachs) wrote:
>erky...@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin) wrote:
>
>>Every other artistic medium in the universe has accepted that sex can be
>>part of a story, without being pornography.
>
>Yes, and every other artistic medium has turned to shit, too.
A little bit harsh IMHO.
Well I doubt that sex in art is the reason why there is so much trash
around. Money is it. In fact erotic-fiction well written can be really
entertaining. But you have to make a distinction. If a story is only
about sex you have a 99% chance that this story becomes pornographic.
Good erotic fiction has sex only integrated as a natural part (maybe
an important part) of the story and I see no reason why it can't be
like that in IF too.
BTW. Just a personal opinion the best erotic fiction is written by
women,because it isn't as focused on plain sex as stories written by
men. (Anais Nin is my favourite author in that field of fiction).
Werner
we...@inflab.uni-linz.ac.at
http://witiko.ifs.uni-linz.ac.at/~werpu
----------------------------------------------
Check out ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive for something
which has been forgotten years ago.
Trevor Barrie
n...@vcn.bc.ca (Neil K. Guy) wrote:
>: I would be far more interested in playing games that express one
>: person's points of veiw than in playing games that try so hard to be
>: inoffensive and fair that they end up not saying anything at all.
> That's nice, and good for you. Has anyone here been advocating
>inoffensive boring games?
Not me. If a game is going to be boring, I at least want to be offended by
it.
Laurel Halbany
phyll...@aol.com (Phyllis902) wrote:
>What bothers (or more honestly, bores) me more than any of these
>things you guys are so worried about upsetting us with is this
>ugly trend towards bland, politically-correct subject matter and
>characters.
>I would be far more interested in playing games that express one
>person's points of veiw than in playing games that try so hard to be
>inoffensive and fair that they end up not saying anything at all.
Where did you get the notion that the alternative to avoiding dumb
gender stereotypes is bland, "politically correct" (i.e., More Liberal
Than Me) subject matter?
_Jigsaw_ certainly managed to neatly avoid the gender problem without
stepping on anybody's politics, unless the thought of two same-sex
people smooching at the Summer of Love really frosts your cookies.
>Is there anyone else out there who would like to see more games with a
>specific player character, or am I all alone on this?
I like it in some games; in others I don't. _Christminster_ needed a
specific character for its genre (femaleness aside, I am probably
*nothing* like Christabel); Jigsaw was about you, the player, and so
needed to reflect androgyny.
>Film, fiction and (the more recent) role-playing games all have
>protagonists with very specific personalities and roles. Unfortunately,
>they all seem to do a much better job of creating characters that the
>audience/players can sympathize with than text-adventure games.
Nonsense. Plenty of fiction manages to create characters that appeal
to only a specific segment of the audience, or to turn off a large
part of the audience, or to alienate just about everybody.
----------------------------------------------------------
Laurel Halbany
myt...@agora.rdrop.com
http://www.rdrop.com/users/mythago/
Laurel Halbany
phyll...@aol.com (Phyllis902) wrote:
>Yes, I do mean that having androgynous characters is politically correct.
>I don't know what your definition of political correctness is, but mine
>has to do with the debasement of language and the reluctance to speak your
>mind out of the mistaken assumption that any generalization about any
>group of people is, somehow, a malicious thing.
Why do you assume that having an androgynous character must result
from fear of offending somebody?
>Like it or not, all of us, men and women, have roles that we are expected
>to play, and those roles do effect who we become. Ignoring those roles by
>eliminating sexuality in the player character does constitute a debasement
>of our language (in a very trivial sense here, by eliminating words like
>he and she) and (most importantly) a reluctance to speak your mind by
>excluding any reactions the non-player characters would have to the player
>character based on what sex (or what the perceived sexual orientation) of
>the player character is. You can't write about REAL people without writing
>about their gender, roles and attitudes. And any attempt to do so is a
>form of (self-imposed, perhaps) censorship.
Have you even *looked* at Jigsaw? I suspect not.
>My point was, that if authors are writing games about characters who have
>no gender, and no gender-based roles, because it is just too tough to
>write something about a specific person, then that is one thing (though
>not, in my opinion, a very good thing). But, if authors are writing about
>characters that have no gender because they are afraid of offending
>someone of the opposite sex, by "leaving him out of the story," they are
>doing their audience a big disservice by implying that those people are
>unable to sympathize with, or care about, someone of the opposite sex. And
>yes, that DOES offend
False dilemma, Phyllis. There can be many reasons for avoiding gender:
--It isn't relevant. (Would it matter whether Black were male or
female? Would it necessarily have changed anything Black did?)
--The central character might be You, The Player.
--The characters could be nonhuman. Is gender relevant to a robot dog?
To an AI? To an alien that does not reproduce sexually?
Laurel Halbany
phyll...@aol.com (Phyllis902) wrote:
>I am also not advocating the use of some sort of meticulous "character
>biography" in text-adventure games. Just the relevant stuff, please. I
>just think that it is unlikely that any story that concerns a significant
>amount of the player character's time would have absolutely nothing to do
>with his gender identity. I think the fact that so many people noticed,
>and talked about, this absence of gender in Jigsaw proves my point.
And you do not assume that race, or religion, or obvious physical
characteristics, are also "relevant stuff"? Doesn't it bother you when
a game doesn't specify a character's race (and off the top of my head
I can't think of one that does)?
No, _Jigsaw_ doesn't prove your point. I suggest you actually *play*
the game before you go off about it.
>How many people wondered what sex the character in Undo was? Did you
>mention it? No, and nobody missed it either. In "game time" Undo probably
>only took fifteen minutes or less. Unless your story was about sex,
>nothing like that would be likely to come up. But, if I remember
>correctly, Jigsaw took several weeks of "game time." Of course something
>like your gender-role, (or for that matter, your professional experiences)
>would come up.
Ah, but it didn't, did it? All you needed to know was
--You had an attraction to Black that was eventually reciprocated
--Other NPCs did not seem to notice that your gender, race, native
language, physical size, accent, or age existed at all.
>Didn't I say that I thought it was Graham Nelson's intention to create
>androgynous characters? Perhaps you didn't understand me. I don't deny Mr.
>Nelson's right to write however he wants to write. ;-) All I said was that
>I thought that particular aspect of his game was distracting and
>ineffective.
I disagree with you completely. I found it very refreshing that I was
able to see the central character as myself (which was Mr. Nelson's
intention, as he admitted) and to visualize Black as either male or
female. I didn't get the idea that these characters were *androgynous*
(that is, of neither gender), only that they had the potential to be
of EITHER gender.
Admiral Jota
myt...@agora.rdrop.com (Laurel Halbany) writes:
[snip]
>False dilemma, Phyllis. There can be many reasons for avoiding gender:
[snip]
>--The characters could be nonhuman. Is gender relevant to a robot dog?
>To an AI? To an alien that does not reproduce sexually?
So now do we get to debate about why the Suspended robots *do* have
gender? Y'know, I always had a crush on Iris... ;)
--
/<-= -=-=- -= Admiral Jota =- -=-=- =->\
__/><-=- http://www.tiac.net/users/jota/ =-><\__
\><-= jo...@mv.mv.com -- Finger for PGP =-></
\<-=- -= -=- -= -==- =- -=- =- -=->/
George Caswell
On Wed, 25 Sep 1996, Laurel Halbany wrote:
> --The characters could be nonhuman. Is gender relevant to a robot dog?
> To an AI? To an alien that does not reproduce sexually?
>
Slight tangeant here, but it's fairly unlikely that any human concepts
would realistically apply to anything alien... Of course the moral of
this story, and, oddly enough, the reason so many TV/movie aliens are
actually human (Esp. Star Trek-- they're all one species) is because
people can't -relate- to a thing that lacks human characteristics. Gender
is one of the lesser ones, but still significant.
....T...I...M...B...U...K...T...U... ____________________________________
.________________ _/>_ _______......[George Caswell, CS '99. 4 more info ]
<___ ___________// __/<___ /......[ http://www.wpi.edu/~timbuktu ]
...//.<>._____..<_ >./ ____/.......[ Member LnL+SOMA, sometimes artist, ]
..//./>./ /.__/ /./ <___________.[writer, builder. Sysadmin of adamant]
.//.</.</</</.<_ _/.<_____________/.[____________________________________]
</.............</...................
Avrom Faderman
I have to admit I found the lack of gender-specification of the
characters in Jigsaw a bit distracting, although not for the reason
Phyllis did at all. I'll just throw my opinion into the mix here.
Disclaimer-->First, I want to make clear that this is not a slam on
Jigsaw. I thought it was an entertaining and well-written game,
generally. It's just a description of one problem I had with it, and
why.
I recognize the intent behind not specifying the Jigsaw character's
genders--it was because the protagonist was supposed to be the player,
rather than (as in, say, Christminster, or, I gather, So Far) a
character the player is acting.
But, of course (and this gets into the domain of the thread on
2nd-person voice in IF), claiming that the character is the player is
a risky move. You have to be sure that the player can not only find
the main character interesting and fun to _pretend_ to be, you
actually have to ensure that the player can _identify_ with the
character. And that's very hard to do.
Take, since it's the example game, Jigsaw. The fact is, no matter how
good-looking Black was, I would have found it very hard to maintain
any sort of romantic interest in her. She was so damned
_annoying_--going through history, messing everything up. By the time
I was supposed to xvff ure, I was really not in the mood to--jerfgyvat
ure gb gur tebjaq naq tnttvat ure would have seemed the more
reasonable thing to do.
Now this doesn't mean I can't understand White's continuing attraction
to Black--I just can't share it. I had to ignore the fact that White
was so obviously supposed to be me, and just treat him/her as a
character I was playing (as I usually do in IF). But then the
androgyny of the characters was simply distracting, as it could no
longer serve its purpose.
Now (and this might be more apropos of the other thread) I don't
generally think this is a flaw of 2nd person narrative. I don't
think, when it's in the context of IF, that the 2nd person only
works when the reader can identify with the character. The 2nd person
is a chance to _act_, rather than simply observe. But if you regard
the 2nd person character in IF as a character you're acting, rather
than your avatar in the story universe, androgyny fulfills no function
(I can certainly act the part of a woman, or a robot for that matter),
and when it's obvious, it's distracting.
It's being obvious is important here. No one talks about (and no one
should bother talking about) the lack of gender specification in Zork,
or in Curses (it's not specified in either of those two games, is it)?
And, of course, you don't have to identify with the main character
there--I'm not the descendent of a British noble family, and actually
rooting around through the ruins of an ancient empire full of trolls
and cyclopes sounds to me a bit like an outer circle of hell. But I
think the difference is that those were adventure stories, and Jigsaw
is (largely) a love story, and we're used to seeing genders in love
stories. If they're missing, we can't help but wonder why (as
evidence for my claim, simply take the empirical fact that nobody ever
does talk about the gender of the main character in Zork or Curses).
And if there isn't an obvious answer that works (like "the character
is supposed to be you, and the author of course didn't know your
gender in advance,") the question sticks with you.
-Avrom
Laurel Halbany
av...@Turing.Stanford.EDU (Avrom Faderman) wrote:
>Now this doesn't mean I can't understand White's continuing attraction
>to Black--I just can't share it. I had to ignore the fact that White
>was so obviously supposed to be me, and just treat him/her as a
>character I was playing (as I usually do in IF). But then the
>androgyny of the characters was simply distracting, as it could no
>longer serve its purpose.
I suppose, although that would have been the case had Graham assumed
that most players are male and therefore "you" should be male and
Black female. "Why am I acting like this?!" is more of a
characterization issue than a gender issue.
I had a little trouble at first with the implication that Black is not
quite sane. After that, the "Black is doing all these things in a
cool, implacable manner and you're sort of bumbling along" replicated
the usual two-left-feet way I feel when I'm interested in a woman, so
I didn't have any trouble identifying with the attraction.
>But if you regard
>the 2nd person character in IF as a character you're acting, rather
>than your avatar in the story universe, androgyny fulfills no function
>(I can certainly act the part of a woman, or a robot for that matter),
>and when it's obvious, it's distracting.
Depends on the character and on the player. Many people get hinky if
they don't know what gender they are "supposed" to be. But there are
also lots of things about the character a game doesn't specify, and
I've yet to hear anyone complain "How am I supposed to get into
character if I don't even know what religion or race I am?!"
>But I
>think the difference is that those were adventure stories, and Jigsaw
>is (largely) a love story, and we're used to seeing genders in love
>stories. If they're missing, we can't help but wonder why (as
>evidence for my claim, simply take the empirical fact that nobody ever
>does talk about the gender of the main character in Zork or Curses).
>And if there isn't an obvious answer that works (like "the character
>is supposed to be you, and the author of course didn't know your
>gender in advance,") the question sticks with you.
I always felt that the answer was "love alters not," but there you
are.