Mass Effect, Gender Roles, and Me
Sep. 12th, 2008 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joiedecombatStill hooked on Mass Effect, yes. I've been dabbling with a male Shepard to see how I like it, and although I'm not very far in yet, I have to say that I much prefer female!Shepard so far.
Why is that?
Part of it is that, frankly, I just like Jennifer Hale's voice acting better than Mark Meer's. She's got a strong, appealing voice, and while they're reading essentially the same lines, she tends to sell them better. So that's part of it.
The most obvious answer is that I'm female so female Shepard is easier for me to identify with. Ordinarily I don't think I'd believe that - I play more male characters than female ones right now, and there are plenty of fandoms in which I identify more with the male characters than the female ones. It's characterization that causes me to identify with a character or not.
But there might be something to it in this case, because Shepard's baseline characterization is the same whichever gender you play as. Given a choice between two characters who are written exactly the same, I probably would identify with the female one more. (Maybe. Fandom is full of female fans who, given the choice between a female character and a male one with similar characterization, will embrace the male character and bash the female one viciously. Fandom's weird. But I like to think I'm better than that.)
This is the thing, though: male!Shepard and female!Shepard are written exactly the same. Aside from (half of) the romantic subplot, their lines are the same, and (with exactly one exception outside of the romantic subplot) the other characters treat them the same way. And it's not that Shepard is just a cipher for the player to impose his or her own personality onto, either; the various choices made throughout the game affect her characterization, but she's got a consistent baseline personality onto which those choices are just building.
This makes female!Shepard that very rare beast, a female character whose gender is completely irrelevant. If she's female, it has no influence on her characterization. She's not Representing Her Gender - and because she can be played as male, no one can argue that she should be taken as a representation of her gender, either. She's not a Woman Space Marine, she's a space marine action hero who happens to be a woman.
I find that cool.
One can, of course, say that this is because Shepard's role was written as that of a male character and female!Shepard was just grafted onto it. This is, admittedly, almost certainly true. I don't think it really matters, though, because female!Shepard is just as convincing a character as male!Shepard is - maybe even moreso, thanks to Jennifer Hale's voice acting. She doesn't come across as a Male Character Recast As A Woman; she's perfectly believable as a female character, just one who's too busy being a space marine and saving the galaxy to bother much with girl stuff.
It's even better when you get into the Shepard/Kaidan romantic subplot, because that turns it into a full-fledged gender role reversal. Even at her nicest, most sensitive warrior-therapist Paragon characterization, Shepard is unquestionably the aggressor in the relationship: she is the tougher, more motivated and action-oriented one, compared to Kaidan's more reserved and straight-laced characterization. (And he likes it that way: "I prefer adventurous women.") She is the one who makes the moves. Depending on the player's choices, she can actually physically save his ass at least twice.
I love this kind of thing; the role reversal pleases me greatly. And it can't even be chalked up entirely to being written as male first, since the romantic subplot with Kaidan is only available to a female Shepard.
Now if we could just get more roles like female!Shepard actually written for female characters instead of An Adventurer Is You, that would make me really happy.
Why is that?
Part of it is that, frankly, I just like Jennifer Hale's voice acting better than Mark Meer's. She's got a strong, appealing voice, and while they're reading essentially the same lines, she tends to sell them better. So that's part of it.
The most obvious answer is that I'm female so female Shepard is easier for me to identify with. Ordinarily I don't think I'd believe that - I play more male characters than female ones right now, and there are plenty of fandoms in which I identify more with the male characters than the female ones. It's characterization that causes me to identify with a character or not.
But there might be something to it in this case, because Shepard's baseline characterization is the same whichever gender you play as. Given a choice between two characters who are written exactly the same, I probably would identify with the female one more. (Maybe. Fandom is full of female fans who, given the choice between a female character and a male one with similar characterization, will embrace the male character and bash the female one viciously. Fandom's weird. But I like to think I'm better than that.)
This is the thing, though: male!Shepard and female!Shepard are written exactly the same. Aside from (half of) the romantic subplot, their lines are the same, and (with exactly one exception outside of the romantic subplot) the other characters treat them the same way. And it's not that Shepard is just a cipher for the player to impose his or her own personality onto, either; the various choices made throughout the game affect her characterization, but she's got a consistent baseline personality onto which those choices are just building.
This makes female!Shepard that very rare beast, a female character whose gender is completely irrelevant. If she's female, it has no influence on her characterization. She's not Representing Her Gender - and because she can be played as male, no one can argue that she should be taken as a representation of her gender, either. She's not a Woman Space Marine, she's a space marine action hero who happens to be a woman.
I find that cool.
One can, of course, say that this is because Shepard's role was written as that of a male character and female!Shepard was just grafted onto it. This is, admittedly, almost certainly true. I don't think it really matters, though, because female!Shepard is just as convincing a character as male!Shepard is - maybe even moreso, thanks to Jennifer Hale's voice acting. She doesn't come across as a Male Character Recast As A Woman; she's perfectly believable as a female character, just one who's too busy being a space marine and saving the galaxy to bother much with girl stuff.
It's even better when you get into the Shepard/Kaidan romantic subplot, because that turns it into a full-fledged gender role reversal. Even at her nicest, most sensitive warrior-therapist Paragon characterization, Shepard is unquestionably the aggressor in the relationship: she is the tougher, more motivated and action-oriented one, compared to Kaidan's more reserved and straight-laced characterization. (And he likes it that way: "I prefer adventurous women.") She is the one who makes the moves. Depending on the player's choices, she can actually physically save his ass at least twice.
I love this kind of thing; the role reversal pleases me greatly. And it can't even be chalked up entirely to being written as male first, since the romantic subplot with Kaidan is only available to a female Shepard.
Now if we could just get more roles like female!Shepard actually written for female characters instead of An Adventurer Is You, that would make me really happy.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-12 06:09 pm (UTC)Anyhow, yes. It irks me that we have this sort of thing, we have Ripley (who basically had the same process), they're sympathetic and believable...and yet writers and producers keep shoving estrogen-based characters down our throats.
Growing up female has probably had an influence on me, sure. So has being a writer, a pagan, a gamer, a white person, a short person, Californian, carnivorous, and so on. There are a billion factors that make up a person, and sex is *one*--and a pretty irrelevant one in a lot of settings. Honestly, I can think of maybe three where it's not fundamentally meaningless: if I'm on my period (which is not, contrary to what certain stupid soppy women think, a Definitive Feminine Experience and My Connection to the Goddess, but rather a minor and far-too-frequent inconvenience), if I'm pregnant, and if I'm dating. All three are physical rather than emotional: the first two are things I have to deal with, while, in the third, my sex and preference means I'm looking for straight dudes. No more.
At work, or when I'm shooting zombies, or pretty much any other time in my life? Not a factor.
/rant.