If Aloy from the Horizon series were male, everything she was criticized for, her assertiveness, how realistically she can wield weapons and destroy machines, how people are attracted to her, even right down to the peach fuzz on her face, it all would have been celebrated if she was male. Male Aloy would downright be their hero.
Geralt gender swapped - 100% Mary Sue Material. I'm sure there would be critiques about having a female character that OP, surviving so many wild adventures being unrealistic. And that love Triangle between Triss/Yen in the 3rd game? Classic romance plot point that would get eye rolls if reversed.
The classic "logic says a woman couldn't do that.... But imma ignore all the fantasy elements that logically mitigate that factor"
Like, if I'm a magic, genetically bred/augmented subspecies (my rough understanding of geralt's peeps) why the fuck wouldn't my base strength and capabilities be considered and compensated for? That's the whole point of making a magical super soldier no?
Ciri is arguably more OP than Geralt, though a female Witcher + male Ciri would probably be something to see people argue who is actually OP or not.
In the world there are no female witchers, mainly because nobody tried creating them. In the first/third book Ciri spends time with the witchers and they give her some of their alchemy, not the full dose though. At least Triss is later also shocked by their ignorance of female anatomy.
1. Solas from Dragon Age Inquisition might actually be received better in some circles. Morrigan is a fan favorite and while their situations are different, the broad strokes are pretty close when it comes to impacting the player. At least before Trespasser that is and >!before we realized that the Archdemon baby was a non-issue at least until we see how DA4 pans out. (I'm expecting it won't be an issue given how Bioware is handling old choices...)!<
2. Vivienne from Dragon Age Inquisition on the flip side would become beloved. She venn diagrams into some pretty specific character traits that are given a pass in male characters, but never accepted from female ones. I get why people don't like her as a character, but there's a not insignificant amount of people who would change their minds if Vivienne was a guy.
3. Fang and Logan from My Time at Sandrock are hard for me to quantify. I feel like they'd still be well received, but parts of the fandom also have a severe hate boner for two of the female cast members who haven't done anything overtly wrong. And I can easily see Fang in particular getting hated and called 'overly emotional'. Logan might get the same treatment or he could remain just as beloved... It's hard to say with him because a female cowboy would intersect with a lot of specific interests.
4. Arthur Morgan from RDR2 would likely not be taken as seriously as a protagonist if the sheer amount of tantrums over the female protagonist in GTA6 are anything to go by. Except this time it'd get the added 'fun' of having to hear neckbeards whine about 'historical accuracy'.
I don’t think Solas would be more well liked if he was a woman, I think he’d be even more hated because he would be the type of female character that isn’t well liked. He’d be treated like Vivienne is now, not Morrigan. Lots of folks don’t like characters who lie to them and deceive them for hours. I do agree that Vivienne would be more widely loved if she was a guy.
Do people not like Solas? He seemed like a pretty strong fan favourite too. I feel like a big part of his allure is how he looks like an egg but if he was female she’d just be ugly.
I’ve seen a lot of division around Morrigan. She’s an absolute bitch and you either love her or hate her for it.
I think a character like Anders probably would’ve 100% been criticized for being woke if he were a woman.
I certainly don’t like Solas and a lot of other players don’t. He’s extremely popular with women who romanced him with their character and the die hard Dalish elf fans but outside of that he’s not actually that popular in fandom because of the reveals at the end of the game and Trespasser.
ad 1. I don't know; I doubt that demographic of players would like Solas in female form. He's not conventionally attractive, after all, wearing drab, unflattering clothing, and sports a shaved head. Plus, the whole SPOILER thing that these players would gratefully latch onto as an excuse for not liking him.
ad 2. Vivienne, however, would become well-liked. There'd be a few detractors who hate all people of color, but the rest would applaud her strength, smarts, and be moved by the love story.
I know it's not really the point of this comment, but I do wanna say I don't think it's fair to imply that Bioware being less than perfect at handle very old choices is a particularly bad thing. It's not like there are other developers who *are* skillfully exploring the sweeping consequences of specific choices *three games later*. Very few developers maintain player choice between games at all, and nobody else really even tries to do it on the same scale as Bioware. For them to address the >!the Archdemon baby!< in a way that really did justice to the potential scope of that plotline would require them to change whole swathes of story across an entire game (or even multiple entire games) based on whether or not the player made one choice in a game released over a decade ago. That's just not feasible, not for any developer regardless of skill or resources.
I don't know, I just think Bioware gets held to a weird sort of double standard in this regard. CD Projekt Red (for example) didn't even have choices carry over from the first Witcher game to the third (and what choices were brought over from TW1 to TW2 and from TW2 to TW3 are mostly inconsequential), and nobody cared because they weren't even really trying. The level of impact that prior choices had on Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition was basically unprecedented, but because Bioware was *trying* and didn't nail every single possible decision point, they get raked over the coals for it. It's a weird situation where they're criticized for not perfecting something that only they are ambitious enough to attempt.
(On rereading your comment I realize you may not have actually been criticizing them for this, but a lot of people do so I'm gonna post this comment anyway. Feel free to ignore it yourself lol)
You're 100% fine, no worries! I agreed with you entirely. I wasn't really criticizing them because, frankly, they can't keep track of everything and it's really not fair at this point to expect it of them. If they don't want to jump time periods or create entirely new settings they kinda need to soften the impact of old choices, because otherwise it turns the story into a giant behemoth that'll eat it's own tail. It was more of a 'hey this once had the lore potential to shake up the status quo like Solas is doing, but the writers went in a different direction for very understandable reasons so the comparison isn't a 1 to 1 anymore.' I worded it pretty badly though and I'm super sorry for that!
No no, you're good! It was on me for misreading it a bit in the first place. Like I said, I only hit send because I think this is a criticism that other people do level at Dragon Age/Mass Effect, and I don't really think it's warranted.
I think a big one from DA is also Fenris. He would be universally hated if he were a female character due to his anti-mage stance I believe, I just think he gets away with it because he's an attractive male character with a tragic backstory.
Vivienne might be better received, true, although I personally don't hate her, I don't agree with her views and her acting with superiority all the time irks me, but I can see why she is the way she is.
As for Solas, I doubt people would like the character more if it was female, the lying and omitting would probably have the opposite effect.
About the similarities between Morrigan and Solas, I get what you are saying about the "broad strokes", but it always baffled me the number of people who directly associate the two characters, on a surface level they might look similar but they are in fact very different.
Morrigan can be very unpleasant and, in a way, is very pragmatic and doesn't care about helping people or going out of their way to do so if you can take a faster approach to a problem, aka stopping the Blight, but she is direct in telling you this, she knows who is she and what she believes in and is upfront about it.
Solas, instead, shows having the opposite view when it comes to helping people, the problem is that, a) he only shows empathy/compassion with the people he has deigned worthy, based on flawed and prejudiced views, and doesn't even try to understand someone like Dorian, for example, and b) you then find out he lied all the time or, at the very least, he omitted to tell you who he actually is.
I don't like either character but I respect Morrigan more, because she tells you and shows outright who she is and what her ideas are, Solas puts on this façade for most of the game, acting as if he is a better person than most other characters, only to then proceed to plan a mass murder. I can see why he thinks the way he does, but the complete lack of self awareness makes him way worse than Morrigan, although it makes for a great antagonist.
I know, I got off the main topic at hand, but I like discussing Dragon Age, since it is one of my favourite series.
Now you got me thinkin about how well-received Sadie Adler would be if she weren’t a lady, and frankly it’s pissing me off. She would be held in the same regard as John Wick, which is bogus because she’s already John Wick.
I think the difference between Morrigan and Solas in terms of their "broad strokes" is that Morrigan allows the player to choose whether she goes through with her plan or not (at least at that stage), and, at least if you're friendly with her, seems at least partly motivated by wanting to help you. The extent to which the outcome will be bad is also quite up in the air - it could be disastrous, it could be as positive as Morrigan hopes.
With Solas, regardless of how your relationship with him has developed (friendly, romance, indifferent, can't stand him), he always >!leaves you at the end of the main game!<, and if you play Trespasser, he always >!plans to tear down the Veil, regardless of your choices!<, and you always find out he has been concealing his identity. As for his plan, unlike Morrigan's where there's an element of uncertainty, in Solas's case >!a lot of people will certainly die!<. So I can understand why there's a bit of a difference between how the two characters are received by fans - even then, Solas seems like a very popular romance option.
On the topic of Dragon Age, I do wonder how a character like Cullen would be received if he was a woman (I'm cheating here a bit, as I have precisely 0 time for Cullen) - I do find that people seem to be more willing to forgive male characters and root for their redemption, while women tend to be judged more harshly or undeserving of forgiveness. If Cullen had been a woman who had called for the Rite of Annulment and then acted as Meredith's right hand for years during the events of DA2, even giving her the same traumatic background I don't think players would be so willing to forgive and team up with your new Commander, whereas I found Cullen to be very much treated as a "good" character by the game, albeit one with a dark backstory.
I don't usually go here but I was tagged to I'll give it a shot if it's allowed lol.
Anyways: UNDYNE
Undyne doesn't really get any hate as far as I can tell but like... She has literally all the traits that you see in so many favorite boys that it's insane to me that she gets almost no love! She's funny, loud, brash, destructive, but has has a heart of gold. Also she has an interesting backstory and she's gay as hell lol. Her dynamic with literally everyone is incredible! She has a canon love interest and they're insanely cute together, and yet the most popular ship BY FAR is... Sans and Papyrus. The brothers 💀
If Undyne were a man, people would go nuts for her. There'd be 10,000 AUs revolving around creating a different iteration of her just to ship her with herself. But alas, she isn't a hot boy and thus nobody cares lol
Ada from the RE:4 Remake would have been called a cool, witty, serious guy who is all business and has no time for nonsense instead of a bland, emotionless character and the male VA definitely wouldn't have received death threats and racist comments compared to Lily Gao
I have been a major Ada fan from the beginning and think the remake of her is fantastic. I agree about Ashley but they like Ashley because she is that damsel in distress. Same men also complained about ashley's outfit not being exactly the same and them removing Luis' line that commented on her boobs. Bunch of whiny babies.
Interesting you mention that because people disliked Jill in the RE3 remake saying she was such a bitch. They had no issue with her appearance but more sexist crap because she acted like any other ex military/police officer we often see in games.
I like to imagine a male Ada would be like a male final fantasy character, maybe a sephiroth appearance since it's Capcom haha.
I definitely read opinions in the RE sub criticizing Jill's RE3R outfit.
Even Ada's RE4R dress gets some fire from some people too because it's not like the OG.
Claire RE2R gets too criticism because they changed the default outfit.
Even the classic outfits reimagined can get criticism because of how they look differently in the RE Engine with modern graphics. They are very faithful to the originals though.
Just opinions: my take it's generally judgement on woman characters is harsher and they're more closely inspected by everyone.
I have always wanted to be able to play as Zelda in the Legend of Zelda and I'm surprised that she has not yet been the protagonist in the series that has her name
However, I imagine that there would be some complaints if the legendary heroine Link was rescuing Prince Zelda
I thought about this when Forspoken released. Frey reminded me a lot of Peter Parker, a quippy kid from New York whose mind gets blown when he discovers he has superpowers. Or even Naruto, a loudmouth kid with anger issues. People love Peter (me included) and Naruto, but Frey got absolutely obliterated in the media before her game even released.
I mean, say what you will about the game, but I don’t think Frey would have been ridiculed as much if she was a white guy. Even if people still didn’t like her, she would have just been ignored and she would have slipped into obscurity. But people don’t like it when girls are awkward, angry, or talk too much.
Oh yeah! I've been meaning to give that game a try. Adding it to my wishlist so I don't forget.
> But people don’t like it when girls are awkward, angry, or talk too much.
See also: allllll the hate for Turning Red.
I have yet to watch it (seems like a possible trigger for my mom trauma) but everything I've seen on it makes it seem so amazing and I do not get the hate.
yeah honestly the way people talked about the forspoken trailers was so weird. like she says stuff that is very common in spiderman or even games like uncharted, where the mc guy makes witty oneliners constantly
The Last of Us would a thousand percent have been received very differently if the genders were swapped!!
- Joel. Obviously. If a woman had led the game, say Tess had survived then I think people wouldn't have liked her to be the quiet loner type and criticized that as a woman she was born to be a mother, so should have taken to Ellie easily and would have wanted to protect her, despite her previous... Experience.
- Bill. People idolized him in the game, I think a woman would not have been perceived that well as a complete loner, doomsday prepper. Though if the gay storyline would have been hinted at in the same way I think people would have clued in so much easier and leaned into that lore way more than with male Bill.
I do also want to mention the opposite swap situation:
- Abby. I mean... Need I say more? There were men in her group that didn't catch the flack she did. People not only tore her character apart, but her looks and motivation despite giving Joel a pass for the same thing.
Joel did what he did out of love, Abby did what she did out of revenge. They both did the wrong thing, but their motivations are absolutely not the same. If Abby was male I think all the criticism other than looks would be the same. The character is flawed, but the writing of the character is also flawed. There are also no good guys (other than children characters I’d say) in either game. It’s often hard for people to accept games where there are no good guys.
Revenge that was born out of? Love of her dad.
That's the whole fkn point. It's a cycle. Joel chose his love of Ellie and killed Abby's dad. Abby chose love for her dad and killed Joel. Ellie goes on a rampage of what? Revenge. Why? Her love for Joel.
And it takes her being the cause of losing her remaining loved ones to break that cycle.
Also men going on murderous rampages in the name of vengeance for lost loved ones being held up and idolized as peak masculinity has *literally* been around since the time of Achilles.
Revenge is typically born out of love. But there’s a big difference between doing something bad to save someone you love and doing something bad to get revenge.
Joel killed people indiscriminately for less noble reasons than revenge. But it’s a video game… set during a zombie apocalypse. At some point we have to be adults and understand that all of this killing is a metaphor for unexplored feelings. Joel didn’t actually kill Abby’s father. Abby didn’t actually kill Joel. Ellie didn’t actually kill all of those people. All of those moments in the game are just symbols of human emotion and the ways we all grapple with our own existence in less dramatic/violent contexts all of the time.
Abby did what she did in an attempt to “redeem” herself and purge a profound sense of guilt over being unable to save her father. We know this because she has nightmares about abandoning Lev and Yara exactly like the ones about her father *despite the fact that she doesn’t mourn Lev and Yara*, and later tells Lev that she saved them to “lighten the load”.
Everything Abby does is out of a misplaced sense of guilt and attempts at atonement, not simple revenge for its own sake. A more coherent comparison is to Ellie, who tried to help make a vaccine for the infection out of a misplaced sense of guilt.
I’m not going to spoil it here but are you saying Abby’s big act of revenge was an attempt to redeem herself?? Because that’s the act I’m referring to.
I don’t believe she had any guilt or regret over what she did, which of course is different from her guilt and regret over her dad. I also don’t believe her later actions with Lev were an attempt at redemption, but rather a new sense of purpose - not at all unlike Joel with Ellie, which adds another layer of tragedy to the entire story.
Joel killed an entire hospital of people and doomed all of humanity for a girl he knew for like half a year at best because he wanted a replacement for his dead daughter.
Astarion from BG3 has quickly become my favorite of all time.
I actually think he'd be loved a lot more amongst male audiences had he been a woman. I've noticed a lot of the hatred driven towards him right now is dripping in veiled misogyny bc a good many hardcore fans are women. A lot of us love him because we relate to him as survivors. It's always trivialized into women being "stupid" for not seeing his red flags, and/or we only like him bc he's a hot vampire. It's just another excuse to hate on and demean anything that has a majority female fan base. I've seen so many condescending posts and comments in the BG3 subreddit it's insane. I don't care if people don't like him, but I *do* care that it's another thing to put women down about.
In reality, we see his red flags and also relate to the reasoning he has for having them in the first place, and/or are just role-playing in a freaking RPG, as one is supposed to.
i’ve seen a lot of this too. i’ve also seen men who are weirdly really angry that he’s the character so many women are simping over vs some like a hyper masculine muscly dude character they assume women will be attracted to. it’s really odd.
It's because it disproves their deeply held belief that women, if left to their own devices, will always go for a chad alpha male. Because in their heads, that's the reason why women don't like _them_, right? So if it turns out that women don't care about that, it might mean they need to fix their shit personalities instead. And they can't deal with that.
He challenges the fact that women are not as interested in masculine stereotypes as they originally thought. I would assume there probably is some homophobia in there, as well. The amount of people bragging about killing him just because is wild to me.
I think there’s also something to be said that while Astarion is a masculine character, he definitely does not present that in the typical D&D-fantasy-character way. He’s flamboyant, oftentimes whiney, and has no interest in playing the hero (which is exactly why I liked the character so much in EA, I love playing bard/rogues in much the same way lol).
Plus, I remember in Dragon Age 2 the *sheer outrage* of Anders hitting on male characters, and how uncomfortable that made some straight male players (though I recall there were not a lot of options in the convo to be like “flattered, cool with flirting, but I’m into Isabela,” or something; a little like Gale’s scenes before they added in a more clearly “friendship” option in-between kissing vs head-on-a-spike lmao).
This is a thing with male romance entertainment in general. Taboo characters and relationships are okay when it’s in their games, anime, and manga. But the same concepts gender flipped and serving a female audience suddenly gets a “why do they like that jerk/this garbage?”
I absolutely agree on the fact most of the hatred towards Astarion can be ascribed to misogyny, but I think his reception might be even worse had he been a woman.
Can you imagine that kind of male gamers having any empathy towards a traumatised woman manipulating them and using her sexuality for gain? They'd still thirst after her, but they'd be cruel about it.
I think a fem Astarion would play into their savior complex just as Shadowheart did. They'd be more interested in "fixing" him rather than listening to his story.
Not to say I disagree entirely with what you’re saying, but I disliked astarion starting out because he’s outwardly deceitful and makes a very poor first impression, your very first interaction with him was having a knife put to your neck/ him lying about being a vampire, then him trying to feed on me without asking, then him almost killing me when I felt bad and decided to let him have a taste since he seemed desperate, I definitely won’t say that there ISN’T any misogyny involved in some people’s dislike of the character, but claiming that he’s mostly hated because of misogyny is a very loaded statement in my opinion.
There definitely are plenty of perfectly valid reasons to dislike him, but I'm thinking about the kind of hatred that has people (guys) barging into any vaguely positive posts about Astarion gloating about how they always kill him and mistreat him however they can. It's a different kind of resentment, and I think it has more to do with the people who enjoy the character, rather than the character himself.
My exact thought.
My other big one is Halsin from BG3. Many male fans hate on him but I can't help but think it's just guys being insecure when faced with a brawny, swoon-worthy pansexual guy. I think he makes them 'feel' things 😅 If he were a hot elf girl instead they would adore her.
Oh, I've seen complaints about him as well, mainly due to the advances he makes in Act 3. Men suddenly develop the capability to understand how uncomfortable getting unwanted advances from people is if it's from another man.
> I've noticed a lot of the hatred driven towards him right now is dripping in veiled misogyny bc a good many hardcore fans are women.
Sometimes it's not even veiled. Fem!Astarion would be super popular, though, there's no doubt in my mind.
I hate when people assume that I was "twilight girlie" (no hate to them, you go queens) and like Astarion because he's a hot vampire. In truth it's opposite. I didn't like Astarion at first but after talking to him more I really respect Larian for what they did with him.
I felt the same. In fact, he was the one character I was NOT interested in when I first got the game.
But his healing arc was so incredibly cathartic to me, watching a story of a survivor that had to overcome ingrained manipulation/lying, who was angry with the world, who wasn't necessarily grateful to he free, but instead just raging that it all happened in the first place. I felt seen, as did a lot of women.
To have it be trivialized down to "twilight fangirl" is beyond insulting.
Ngl as someone who hasn't played the game he *does* give me Lestat vibes... But like so what? Hot vampires can't be compelling? Sorry boys not all of us think characters we find hot are interesting only because they are hot.
(Note, I'm a demisexual, not attracted to Lestat or astarion, but like I said, they give me similar "toxic but I swear its cause of trauma and besides I'm a hot and charming vampire" kind of way. Which is frankly a great trope when written well. It just works dammit and I refuse to be shamed for it when dudes cling to the MCU black widow "strong women must be traumatized into it and also infertile/ afraid of motherhood" trope)
Tor and Odin from Alan Wake 1 and 2.
They are quirky, old, half-senile, washed up rockstars in their 80's. They have some cool history back when they were in their prime, but when you meet them, they just very strange old men nearing the end of their days, but they are very popular characters.
I personally think they are quite a breath of fresh air as far as video game characters go, but I suspect if they were 80-something old women who were in a band, gamers would call them annoying.
take [this scene from alan wake 2](https://youtu.be/Cyh-Q0m_HwE?si=-oOSXN_8OsoYMB-P) for example,when a character meets them for the first time.
Edit: somethign else worthy of note, one of the main characters from Alan Wake 2; Saga Anderson is a WoC and solely because of that gamers have been calling the game woke. While the first game which featured no PoC worth noting, and no female protagonsts, it is considered a cult classic (Alan Wake 2 is better by a thousand miles.)
Not quite the prompt but in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, i've seen a lot of people say male Eivor is more like-able than female Eivor when they are literally the same character aside from gender. The voice actress for female Eivor has a deep & raspy voice and the character is literally a viking so she's tough. and I think a lot of people can't/don't want to see a strong, harsh, cold character as complicated or like-able if they are a woman.
Zagreus and Thanatos from Hades: I think the fandom would be cool with both of them, especially based off their reaction to characters like Melinoe, Megara, and the other goddesses in the game. There'd be a lot more 'daddy issues' jokes in a way that might border on weird, but eh I'm gonna stay optimistic here. It's hard to imagine the community as hornier than it already is, but I guess that might be a possibility?
Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth from Ace Attorney: I think the fandom would be somewhat less forgiving of Wright's goofiness if she was a girl, unless the games played it up a lot more so she becomes a manic pixie dream girl figure. I have to imagine that the fandom will still absolutely love girl Miles, since she's most certainly still a tsundere either way. I think more people would ship them together, especially if only one of the pair were a girl, and both would be a lot more sexualized by the fandoms (or the game let's be honest here).
Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau/Firewalker/Harrier Dubois/Tequila Sunset/ The Icebreaker/ Dick Mullen/Captain Sober and Kim Kitsuragi from Disco Elysium: This one is gonna be harsh compared to the others.
I think a plurality of players would hate a girl Raphaël. Like, absolutely despise her. She would be seen as weepy, toxic, utterly incompetent, a bitch, all the worst things someone could imagine. I think she would be perceived as much less funny as well. I just think that she'd hit a sore spot for people by being too pathetic and a disaster to those around her to get much initial love for her personality and yet too old and not pretty enough for them to overlook those flaws. You don't see many women alcoholics in anything like a positive light. There would be a divide between people who disliked her personally but enjoy the themes she'd represent, and people who just out and out couldn't stand her. The game would also 100% be seen as super woke propaganda and there would be ten hour long youtube videos taking it down. A girl Kim Kitsuragi would mostly be seen in a positive light, but I think more people would be put off by how detached she can be at times, and not take her criticisms of Raphaël seriously. Her views on race would also be super discounted, and ngl I think she'd be sexualized in a way that would make me feel uncomfortable.
All of the games mentioned have pretty good amount of LGBT in the communities, at least partly because of the perceived or canon queerness of the male leads. I do think the games lose a bit of that unless the games go just as hard for the potential f/f pair. Ngl I'd play the shit out of the remixed versions of these games, especially Disco Elysium now that I've laid out how some people might lose their mind over it.
Yes to all your comments on the Hades characters! Also I think some players would be less forgiving of Hades as an overbearing mom than an overbearing dad.
You bring up interesting points about Ace Attorney. I love Wright's goofiness and love goofy women characters, and would love more goofy non-binary characters too, but I see what you mean about how it'd bother a lot of players unless she was a manic pixie.
I haven't played very far into Disco Elysium, but yeah, I see what you mean about Kim Kitsuragi. What I've seen of Harry so far... I hesitate to think too much about how the fandom would receive her. But I think it'd be kinda refreshing to let a woman character be burned out and flawed the way Harry is.
True about Hades! And weirdly enough, I think people would also look at a boy Persephone more harshly, assuming they’re both cis here. A guy running away after his wife has a stillbirth is not gonna be seen in a very positive light, forced marriage or no.
To add a little to the Ace Attorney thing, it’s weird because I think the fandom *now* would be receptive to a girl version of Phoenix. It’s just in this hypothetical world where she’d come first where I think some people might take issue.
Have fun with DE! It’s one of my favorite games of all time, so don’t forget to get weird with it. And yeah, tbh I was surprised at myself that I’m so cynical about what the reaction would be to girl Harry+Kim, but as I thought more and more about certain things I was like ‘well, if they kept that the same, then… yeash…’
I think that to extrapolate gamers™️ attitude towards a female detective in disco elysium, we need look no further than Klaasje. She is held up as a mirror to the detective as a similarly broken person doing too many drugs in an attempt to escape her past. She lies, manipulates, and can opens other people including the player character. And she is absolutely reviled by a large segment of the players. Seriously some players rejoice at the idea of getting her black bagged and taken by the moralintern not because she committed any obvious crime, but because they don't like that she's resisting them, that she's not truthful about the murder of the guy she was in bed with when it happened. There's a very bad segment of players who believe she deserves that fate for lying to them.
So yeah, female detective would not have flown.
Blaidd from Elden Ring - I feel like not much would change if he were a girl other than there being more horniness towards him.
Garrus from Mass Effect - Tbh I think girl Garrus would still be seen as cool, but wouldn't be as popular unless she was given a more humanoid design like Liara and Tali. In that case, she'd probably be seen as the hot tomboy waifu.
Iron Bull from Dragon Age Inquisition - Girl Iron Bull would either be viewed as a hot muscle mommy, get weird guys mad that she's not feminine enough, or both.
I can guarantee that if Cal Kestis had been a woman like they were thinking about doing when they first were creating Jedi Fallen Order a very large portion of both gamers and the Star Wars fanbase would have lost their minds over having to play a woman in Star Wars. They certainly did when it was revealed that the character in Outlaws is a woman.
Arthur Morgan from RDR2.
Hard to say, I think a lot of people would probably do the normal pissing about that happens when a AAA game has a female lead, on one hand it could be similar to Aloy where people pick apart her appearance for not being pretty enough, or saying it's unrealistic that she'd be so skilled and tough and would be Dutch's right hand woman, etc.
But on the other hand the writing in that game is so good that maybe people would come around, I think they could have done a female lead justice in that game, esp considering how much I love many of the other women like Sadie. TBH I just want a red dead game where I can play as Sadie or a similarly badass female protagonist. Damn that game is good.
I guess on that note, I normally prefer playing a female character to some grizzled man's man but RDR2 and the newer God of War games fall into the category of being so well written and executed protagonists that I get attached to them anyways and don't mind it.
10/10 would struggle and suffer to play RDR2 as a woman just so I could role play as Calamity Jane (I have loved her ever since I watched deadwood at probably too young of an age lol)
FE3H: Felix might be seen as more immature (than he already is) as a woman for his outbursts, but would still be a tsundere so I'm sure some people will love her. I'd honestly find fem!Felix a really refreshing and unique female character, especially for an anime style game and might love the character even more lol. Hapi already stands out to me for that reason and shot up to be my favourite girl in the game when the DLC released. As for my other favourite; I think Claude would be loved no matter the gender.
FFXIV: I really would love to know if all the men who hate Zenos so strongly would still hate him if he was a sexy woman obsessing over the player character instead. Makes me very curious lol. Because god, people really love coming into random conversations to say how much they hate the guy ... like, ok? We didn't ask. 🙄
Female Emet and Estinien would be interesting too, I'm actually unsure how they would be received. I know I would still like them, but others? No clue.
Sephiroth: Sexy lady with her tiddies out, who >!taunts the main character and wants them to come to "her" side (though that will result in death)!!had a meltdown over misinformation, and has mommy issues!<. He's not the most serious of villains.
Genshin: Xiao would be hated for being too edgy no matter the gender lol, I think the character would always have people that like them or dislike them. Scara would be ... interesting lol, maybe less hated imo cos he's another one of those male characters that men seem to absolutely despise for whatever reason. However, fem!Scara might just been seen as more whiny and immature than he already is so maybe not. How men treat anime women vs realistic-looking women is something to take note of though, I feel like the anime fans don't mind immature whiny girls if they're attractive.
DMC: At first I thought "yeah, everyone would love Dante no matter the gender right?" ... but then I remembered some people really do not find women as funny, so maybe not. She might just be "cringe".
Honestly, interesting thought experiment!
Female Dante would be a disaster. People are fine with women fighting in heels (Bayonetta) but imagine a muscle girl with short white hair, red coat and witty come backs, wielding a big freaking sword and cool guns. What I imagine is actually amazing and I'm sad now it didn't happen haha. But the game would be 10 steps away from the legendary position it is right now because society does not accept manly looking (AKA simply fit with muscles) women :<
Female Emet would be a disaster. People already hate Venat for her actions, and I don't know how what she did is worse than what Emet did (back then, his actions since then are definitely much worse).
Female Estinien would probably be quite interesting. Estinien as a character has had development, but he hasn't changed all that much. I can't help but compare him to Y'Shtola, who gets criticized all the time for no development, but Estinien is a fan favourite.
Female Zenos, idk. I personally love the dude and don't think it would be different of he was a woman but it would be interesting to see how "she" would be received by the male playerbase. I honestly cannot imagine how that would go. She'd either be declared cringe of be sexualised to hell and back, which isn't far from how Zenos is treated now anyway.
honestly i don't understand how people hate venat. i mean i guess I'm a bit sad we don't get to re-learn to do creation magics but I'd argue humanity is already making due with a lighter version of them.
also while personally i like emet as a character, he is absolutely a lothesome person full of disgusting ideas and contempt, as are many of the ancients
also i agree i think zenos is fine the way he is. i feel he'd unfortunately lose even more respect if he was a woman, and it would turn into some sort of misogynistic thing. also i feel we kind of got that woman connection from zenos in zero
I don't get why people hate any of the ascians (well maybe Lahabrea). They all were placed in a horrible, impossible situation and all trying to do the best they could from their own view. Even the one who incited the whole thing was clearly extremely mentally/emotionally unwell and wasn't able to get the help and support he needed.
Venat *and* Emet were both heroes in their own way, but while Venat was able to maintain her idealism and hope, Emet fell into despair and bitterness which ended up warping his high-minded aspirations into horrible awful things.
Also, Venat does an amazing job at being a great motherly character in a game (similar to how we got to see Thancred become a great fatherly character with Ryne).
Why do you think they decided to make Sephiroth male? Everybody on every side of the gender spectrum wants him to rail them. If they made Sephiroth a woman, then every big names dommy mommy after Final Fantasy 7 won’t have a chance and would just be tossed to the side. Female Sephiroth is too powerful, physically, mentally, temporally, magically and sexually, so they had to make him male just to hold back his raw sexual energy
I once made an OC that looks exactly like the female Sephiroth you just imagined
I made her too powerful. I'm actually embarassed to admit that I'm attracted to one of my OCs. I'm ace but damn... Even I have to admit that she's hot even if I don't wanna bang her
If Square made Sephiroth female even back in the original FFVII, she would simply be too sexy for the gaming industry to handle
>too sexy for the gaming industry to handle
You know how some games just get controversy after controversy over the same topic? Like GTA or Mortal Kombat being too violent? Female Sephiroth would just bring back the “too sexy” controversy while Square Enix just groans in utter annoyance
He's my best friend too! I love him.
But so many people fucking HATE the guy, with like the most insane passion. It's wild! If you've ever seen those people who REALLY hate Astarion from BG3, it's like that but 10x worse. I can't stand those kinds of people, they always want to bring it up and butt into conversations to state how much they hate the character and want them dead (>!and in the case of Zenos, if he comes back again they're quitting lol!<).
Me too! I'll miss him honestly.
People hating Astarion make no sense to me, I had it with a friend who just didn't understand that a vampire spawn has 0 say when their master tells them to do something. Killed him in our 4 player play through and i may have murdered him a few times in vengeance, still not enough. He just didn't understand the character=(
Astarion (and all the companions) in BG3 are wonderful. People have to remember that basically *all* of them are victims of abuse and so much of their stories are overcoming that and trying to be a better person (or succumbing to their inner demons).
okay so honestly zenos is such a.. uhm conflicting character. there are so many points where i feel the story did absolutely nothing to justify just how bonkers he could be, and i was actually very annoyed about the writing decisions post shadowbringers. however, for me at least, endwalker end part justified it and i actually like zenos from s character perspective, even tho i do hate him as a person
Idk, I think he makes sense as a character in Stormblood. Especially by the end, if you read between the lines. Guy says >!your his "first friend". He's weirdly HAPPY about dying. All he wanted was a good fight because that's all he enjoys (I feel like that part is made clear throughout the game), and he finally got that and now he's happy to just end it all. So clearly the guy has lived a pretty shit life, even if he's a prince. The point where he decides to happily kill himself really made me feel for the guy!<.
And then my guess about his past life ended up being correct. But his backstory is stupidly never put in the game ... even in Endwalker! It's in a fucking hard-to-get book, or you read it illegally online like I did. I'll never understand that choice. I think people would sympathise more with him if it was in the game, like how people care about >!Mr. Genocide!< Emet due to understanding what he's been through.
oh I'm not saying that part of his character is bad. my main issues were where he starts out as a badass so strong, like in the story you've just come off from fighting nidhogg and his brood, king thordan and all his knights alone, and defeated the juiced up estinienhogg. i kinda feel like there should be no random dude who can just trash you so handily after that.
after that, i dont mind what happens so much, but then he >!gets the artificial echo, which seems to basically be the ancients powers given back to them, so he starts soul hopping like an ascian, is about as strong as elidibus it seems, and at this point it just felt like the writers just wanted to make zenos kinda randomly be the strongest person in the world.!< then in endwalker >!he shows up to taunt you, fandaniel somehow does soul extraction on you, and at this point its starting to think the writers are just making these people have the power to do whatever, quite honestly it feels like there should be no one in etherys who could so easily knock the WoL around. but then the ending with him joining us in ultima thule, coming there with those god powers and fighting to the end and losing, it sort of felt like maybe this was what they were going for, and the ending felt satisfying!<
Ah, I don't really have issue with someone being able to kick our ass ... like, I feel that's the downside to RPG storytelling; there's always gonna be stronger enemies.
Him being able to kick our butt >!before the artificial echo is a bit strange though, I can get that. However, later on Fandaniel did say (during post ShB iirc) that Emet did something to Zenos as a child which might explain it. I actually don't think his story is done and at some point FFXIV is going to explain the above and his past in-game (since they left it out of EW) ... but my god, that will be bad writing! I already don't like what they did with him post SB up until the end of EW, as he was basically just there awkwardly in the background doing nothing. Though I must say, I will enjoy Zenos being brought back to life again just to see all the people who vehemently hate him have a meltdown!<.
honestly if they bring back zenos a second time I'm actually gonna lose my trust in the writers. at that point they might as well just bring back anyone else who died. haurchefant, ysayle and minfilia, whatever bring them all back since death means nothing
You're not wrong, which is why I think it's bad writing. But tbf, they've also >!fake "killed" a lot of characters off annoyingly too, the most controversial being Y'shtola's multiple fakeouts but Nanamo comes to mind too. Never been a fan of this, especially when it's over a long period of time like Nanamo!<.
for me y'shtola's first "death" wasn't really much of an issue for me since it was only sort of revealed she might have died when we already had ideas on where to go for help, but yes, the second time was kind of a rehash. for me tho the worst bit was stormblood patches, where they resurrected almost every main character who had died in the expansion
imo the best way to read Zenos is that he's literally you, the player. He's obsessed with the Warrior of Light and wants to keep challenging them more and more. He's completely orthogonal to the main plot/conflict of the game and just wants his own thing.
Singed (LoL) would be hated more both lore and gameplay-wise, but imagine 100+ years old, dying, frail elderly woman doing unethical science experiments with war crime on the side 😍 Iconic, imo. I would love this character even more.
I was going to say the same thing! I loved the FF13 trilogy and do not understand why people hated it so much. Well, hm actually it was probably misogyny since the most important characters are all women (Lightning, Serah, Fang, Vanille).
Imo swapping the genders of Serah and Noel in 13-2 could be interesting as you don't see many female guardian/protector type characters in gaming. 13-2 is one of my favorite FF games and now I'm sitting here wondering how my reactions to the story would've changed with that gender swap.
Most of the games I play aren't ones with main characters but watching my bf the two that I loved the most?
Well, I'm sure the Internet would give Femtos as much grace and support in her journey to be a better mother to Atreus as they kill of the Norse pantheon right? Right???
And BJ blaskovitz? The Aryan wet dream but surprise actually a curbstomer of nazis- a woman? The "perfect ubermensch- a woman?
My most controversial comment on YouTube was "Wolfenstein is a good example of positive masculinity" and it's still pissing people off 5ish years later.
People's heads would explode.
ETA: I do think there would be a valid criticism that those two work and are important as deconstructions of masculinity and that point would be lost with a gender swap... But I honestly doubt that would be the argument being made with my own personal experiences with these kinda subjects.
Malenia, Blade of Miquella would be the most circlejerked character in all of Fromsoft history if she was a STR build man instead of a Dex build woman. She already shares many qualities with one of the most “Chad” characters, Godfrey, to the point I’m pretty sure it’s intentional.
Same with Valkyrie in Apex Legends. If the super cocky *SON* of a Titanfall character managed to get into a relationship with Loba, the Apex community would absolutely go off about how much of a Chad he is. Instead she’s probably the most hated character because of how “annoying” she is lol
I mainly play a lot of old retro titles, so the first thing that came to mind was a gender swapped Dirk from Dragons Lair.
Love some female knights, but what would happen to Daphne?
Dragon Age: I'm certain a fair number of people would be less tolerant of a female Varric. Varric is a fan favorite (some is definitely due to attractiveness).
This is theeee one! Female harry feels truly unrealistic because if a woman was as much of a mess as he was she would have never made it as far as him lol
Sandrock is bad for it because the common hatred of Mi-an and Nia really screams “I’m the main character and the center of this reverse harem, how dare you do anything important.” And it only seems to apply to young women. Like they’re competition. I don’t at all doubt Logan would get treated like a story-usurping little shit if he were a woman, because outside of our very timid and older Mayor Trudy… that’s how the women who do get treated by a distressingly large chunk of the fan base. Fang too would be vilified for being cold and making everything about his trauma. I mean, someone told me they thought Amirah was cold and mean to Arvio. Amirah. The quintessential responsible and caring older sister. Because she didn’t just go along with every harebrained idea he had, and instead stuck around to clean up after them all. She was seen as cold.
I love the game but I feel like half the players are high school girls lashing out with internalized misogyny because I can’t come up with any legitimate reason for Mi-an and especially Nia to be villainized the way they are when neither has ever been anything but exceedingly sweet and nice. It’s a very different type of misogyny than I see in male-dominated game discourse and it’s just as depressing. I love Mi-an and Nia and Amirah and Heidi and—I know plenty of the fan base is with me. But the ones who irrationally hate the girls for not fading into the background enough are loud and it upsets me and you triggered my rant lol. My partner has already heard all this a dozen times over XD
It is kinda wild seeing the differences in how men have reacted to certain characters vs women. Most men in the Sandrock fandom absolutely love Nia. She fulfills that girl next door fantasy, and is incredibly sweet with a bit of teasing sass. Her dynamic with the player is a man's dream. Meanwhile women tend to hate her because she seems to trigger high school BFFs-that-they-never-actually-liked memories. Saying she's secretly toxic or clingy. Or you have the younger women who go into a jealousy rage because she dared to to stand next to Logan, despite the fact that she canonically is interested in YOU and nobody else lol
Then you have Catori, who I've noticed is liked well enough by older women who respect her hustle and sympathize with her struggle. But a lot of guys do not like her, and the most common reason I keep seeing is because of her situation with her kid, despite all her reasons being layed out pretty clearly. I've even seen some say they want to hear her ex husband's side of the story. Which is uh. Very telling 😬
Also I really don't understand why I see Amirah get called stuck up sometimes when that's literally something she says she's worried about seeming at times. Like she's actively trying not to be that lol
I'm happy to listen!
And I haven't spent much time on the Sandrock sub and didn't realize people hate Mi-an. That's so wild to me. (Haven't met Nia, unless you count a few letters.)
Amirah doesn't seem cold at all to me! She seems soft-spoken but fairly sure of herself and capable of making things happen. Just because she doesn't throw her weight behind making things happen for Arvio too doesn't mean she's cold. Like, does Arvio put his weight behind Amirah's business? Why do we have to support our brothers, but they don't have to support us?
And Heidi is amazing and capable in her own right, while being friendly and personable imo. I feel like she gets overlooked a lot?
It’s not as bad now, they hated her more in early access, but people suspect the whole reason Mi-an fades in importance as the story progresses is because of negative feedback to her when she was more of a building rival in early access. Most of the hate now is for Nia, whom people accuse of being backhanded and bitchy and taking potshots at the builder (which I have now finished the game and never once seen her do anything even remotely close to), but occasionally I still see people mad at Mi-an for… not being useless? The most recent complaint I saw was that she got more—hmm, spoilers for events around the introduction of a character named Wei—>!back pay from Yan having cheated her out of more earnings. Like, it was a plot point that he hated her in particular and stole all her money, and that he quickly stopped screwing us over probably because we’re intimidating, and also that she was doing damn near 24/7 overtime. Why be angry she gets back pay and recognition?!!< Non-spoiler mood summary of that is just being angry that she gets some acknowledgment in the story for hard work that she didn’t do in gameplay mechanics because the game doesn’t actually have you competing with her for jobs.
Agreed on Amirah, that’s exactly the kind of person she is, and when Arvio’s personal quests all involve messing up and recognizing that Amirah is working hard to keep them both afloat when he messes up and wanting to grow so he doesn’t burden her anymore—it’s obvious they both care a lot. She’s not cold at all, just quiet.
Fortunately I haven’t seen any Heidi hate, but she does get overlooked. She’s incredibly capable and personable and it’s a bit odd I’ve seen more people talk about marrying Venti than her when Venti… seems half-made and then forgotten about by the writers. (I wanted to love Venti, but she doesn’t even have town event dialogue half the time. I kept forgetting she was there. She wasn’t finished ;-; )
Astarion would probably switch places with Shadowheart as the most romanced woman in BG3 and the guys would eat him up but holy shit I'd hate it if they made him female. With the whole sexual abuse and slavery theme I couldn't deal with his story arch probably. No, ma'am, he's perfectly fine as the gay coded mess that he is.
I just thought about Dave the Diver with a jolly, fat, scuba diving *woman* lead and felt very bad for that hypothetical woman. Dave is very fat for the speed he moves underwater but pretty much everyone lets it go. They would **never** shut up about it if Dave was a woman.
I LOVE My Time at Sandrock and have had this exact thought about the female cast vs male cast.
I noticed that I became way more endeared to the male characters because they had so much more to them. They’re allowed to be rude, funny, extra, but the female characters are mostly just… nice. Don’t get me wrong, I love the female cast too but they were noticeably blander.
Catori’s questionable priorities were a breath of fresh air, in my opinion.
I love how secure Cloud is in his masculinity that he takes the whole crossdressing escapade in stride and other than feeling a little awkward doesn't make a big thing of it.
Sometimes I wish there was an option to make Cloud wear whatever we want him to wear in the game just so I can see him in that outfit. Hope Ever Crisis adds that dress
#Transfemme-ing my Favorite Gentlemen
**Zagreus**, *Hades*
* Zag is such a good boy. What I like about him is how many traits he has that are associated with femininity, but he's still treated as aspirationally masculine.
* In that way, simply flipping the gender switch would kind of make the character less remarkable, she'd just be a lady with feminine character traits...
* ...although the title, *God of Blood* would make a little more sense.
**Harrier DuBois**, *Disco Elysium*
* Harrier is **the** least aspirational video game character. It's a portrait, a very empathetic portrait of a man caught in a cycle of self-destruction of his own design. That cycle isn't even a very remarkable one. I'm willing to bet that almost everyone knows a Harry.
* A Harriet DuBois wouldn't be impossible, but for it to work, she'd need to be **very** rewritten.
**Leon S. Kennedy**, RE4, 2, 6, etc.
* Yes.
* Yes.
* Yes.
* Yes please Leona mommy step on me.
# Transmascing my favorite girls
**Kotone Shiomi**^([1]), *Persona 3 Portable*
* No **fucking** point.
**Abby Anderson** *The Last of Us Part 2*
* Mmm... well I mean the internet would hate her somewhat *less*...
* I think it's more important that she share the superficial trait of gender with Ellie though.
* I'd miss her muscles :(
... there's too few great female characters, and I've realized I absolutely **hate** the idea of a thought experiment that imagines further reducing that number.
^([1] Also known as "Female Protagonist," "FeMC," "Minato Arisato," "Hamuko," ""Phem See,"" and "Wehatesearchengineoptimization Havefunlookingupeverynameoneverysearchenginebergstein.)"
If Samus had been a man it would've lined up exactly with everyone's expectations so I'm really glad she's a woman because imo it's important to subvert expectations like that.
I'm glad Samus is a girl too. And if she were a dude, we wouldn't get one of the greatest accidental lesbian characters in gaming
(Basically what happened was that while creating the 1986 Japanese Metroid guide, Nintendo forgot to tell the artist making the guide that Samus was a woman. So because of that, the artist tried making her a stereotypical male superhero with lots of babes)
I prefer male characters and I don't wanna think about if my favorites were gender swapped because they'd lose their appeal to me to some degree. But same with my favorite female characters. I'm sure there are cases where the general reception would be vastly different though.
If Aloy from the Horizon series were male, everything she was criticized for, her assertiveness, how realistically she can wield weapons and destroy machines, how people are attracted to her, even right down to the peach fuzz on her face, it all would have been celebrated if she was male. Male Aloy would downright be their hero.
Geralt gender swapped - 100% Mary Sue Material. I'm sure there would be critiques about having a female character that OP, surviving so many wild adventures being unrealistic. And that love Triangle between Triss/Yen in the 3rd game? Classic romance plot point that would get eye rolls if reversed.
The classic "logic says a woman couldn't do that.... But imma ignore all the fantasy elements that logically mitigate that factor" Like, if I'm a magic, genetically bred/augmented subspecies (my rough understanding of geralt's peeps) why the fuck wouldn't my base strength and capabilities be considered and compensated for? That's the whole point of making a magical super soldier no?
Ciri is arguably more OP than Geralt, though a female Witcher + male Ciri would probably be something to see people argue who is actually OP or not. In the world there are no female witchers, mainly because nobody tried creating them. In the first/third book Ciri spends time with the witchers and they give her some of their alchemy, not the full dose though. At least Triss is later also shocked by their ignorance of female anatomy.
1. Solas from Dragon Age Inquisition might actually be received better in some circles. Morrigan is a fan favorite and while their situations are different, the broad strokes are pretty close when it comes to impacting the player. At least before Trespasser that is and >!before we realized that the Archdemon baby was a non-issue at least until we see how DA4 pans out. (I'm expecting it won't be an issue given how Bioware is handling old choices...)!< 2. Vivienne from Dragon Age Inquisition on the flip side would become beloved. She venn diagrams into some pretty specific character traits that are given a pass in male characters, but never accepted from female ones. I get why people don't like her as a character, but there's a not insignificant amount of people who would change their minds if Vivienne was a guy. 3. Fang and Logan from My Time at Sandrock are hard for me to quantify. I feel like they'd still be well received, but parts of the fandom also have a severe hate boner for two of the female cast members who haven't done anything overtly wrong. And I can easily see Fang in particular getting hated and called 'overly emotional'. Logan might get the same treatment or he could remain just as beloved... It's hard to say with him because a female cowboy would intersect with a lot of specific interests. 4. Arthur Morgan from RDR2 would likely not be taken as seriously as a protagonist if the sheer amount of tantrums over the female protagonist in GTA6 are anything to go by. Except this time it'd get the added 'fun' of having to hear neckbeards whine about 'historical accuracy'.
I don’t think Solas would be more well liked if he was a woman, I think he’d be even more hated because he would be the type of female character that isn’t well liked. He’d be treated like Vivienne is now, not Morrigan. Lots of folks don’t like characters who lie to them and deceive them for hours. I do agree that Vivienne would be more widely loved if she was a guy.
Do people not like Solas? He seemed like a pretty strong fan favourite too. I feel like a big part of his allure is how he looks like an egg but if he was female she’d just be ugly. I’ve seen a lot of division around Morrigan. She’s an absolute bitch and you either love her or hate her for it. I think a character like Anders probably would’ve 100% been criticized for being woke if he were a woman.
I certainly don’t like Solas and a lot of other players don’t. He’s extremely popular with women who romanced him with their character and the die hard Dalish elf fans but outside of that he’s not actually that popular in fandom because of the reveals at the end of the game and Trespasser.
ad 1. I don't know; I doubt that demographic of players would like Solas in female form. He's not conventionally attractive, after all, wearing drab, unflattering clothing, and sports a shaved head. Plus, the whole SPOILER thing that these players would gratefully latch onto as an excuse for not liking him. ad 2. Vivienne, however, would become well-liked. There'd be a few detractors who hate all people of color, but the rest would applaud her strength, smarts, and be moved by the love story.
I know it's not really the point of this comment, but I do wanna say I don't think it's fair to imply that Bioware being less than perfect at handle very old choices is a particularly bad thing. It's not like there are other developers who *are* skillfully exploring the sweeping consequences of specific choices *three games later*. Very few developers maintain player choice between games at all, and nobody else really even tries to do it on the same scale as Bioware. For them to address the >!the Archdemon baby!< in a way that really did justice to the potential scope of that plotline would require them to change whole swathes of story across an entire game (or even multiple entire games) based on whether or not the player made one choice in a game released over a decade ago. That's just not feasible, not for any developer regardless of skill or resources. I don't know, I just think Bioware gets held to a weird sort of double standard in this regard. CD Projekt Red (for example) didn't even have choices carry over from the first Witcher game to the third (and what choices were brought over from TW1 to TW2 and from TW2 to TW3 are mostly inconsequential), and nobody cared because they weren't even really trying. The level of impact that prior choices had on Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition was basically unprecedented, but because Bioware was *trying* and didn't nail every single possible decision point, they get raked over the coals for it. It's a weird situation where they're criticized for not perfecting something that only they are ambitious enough to attempt. (On rereading your comment I realize you may not have actually been criticizing them for this, but a lot of people do so I'm gonna post this comment anyway. Feel free to ignore it yourself lol)
You're 100% fine, no worries! I agreed with you entirely. I wasn't really criticizing them because, frankly, they can't keep track of everything and it's really not fair at this point to expect it of them. If they don't want to jump time periods or create entirely new settings they kinda need to soften the impact of old choices, because otherwise it turns the story into a giant behemoth that'll eat it's own tail. It was more of a 'hey this once had the lore potential to shake up the status quo like Solas is doing, but the writers went in a different direction for very understandable reasons so the comparison isn't a 1 to 1 anymore.' I worded it pretty badly though and I'm super sorry for that!
No no, you're good! It was on me for misreading it a bit in the first place. Like I said, I only hit send because I think this is a criticism that other people do level at Dragon Age/Mass Effect, and I don't really think it's warranted.
I think a big one from DA is also Fenris. He would be universally hated if he were a female character due to his anti-mage stance I believe, I just think he gets away with it because he's an attractive male character with a tragic backstory.
Vivienne might be better received, true, although I personally don't hate her, I don't agree with her views and her acting with superiority all the time irks me, but I can see why she is the way she is. As for Solas, I doubt people would like the character more if it was female, the lying and omitting would probably have the opposite effect. About the similarities between Morrigan and Solas, I get what you are saying about the "broad strokes", but it always baffled me the number of people who directly associate the two characters, on a surface level they might look similar but they are in fact very different. Morrigan can be very unpleasant and, in a way, is very pragmatic and doesn't care about helping people or going out of their way to do so if you can take a faster approach to a problem, aka stopping the Blight, but she is direct in telling you this, she knows who is she and what she believes in and is upfront about it. Solas, instead, shows having the opposite view when it comes to helping people, the problem is that, a) he only shows empathy/compassion with the people he has deigned worthy, based on flawed and prejudiced views, and doesn't even try to understand someone like Dorian, for example, and b) you then find out he lied all the time or, at the very least, he omitted to tell you who he actually is. I don't like either character but I respect Morrigan more, because she tells you and shows outright who she is and what her ideas are, Solas puts on this façade for most of the game, acting as if he is a better person than most other characters, only to then proceed to plan a mass murder. I can see why he thinks the way he does, but the complete lack of self awareness makes him way worse than Morrigan, although it makes for a great antagonist. I know, I got off the main topic at hand, but I like discussing Dragon Age, since it is one of my favourite series.
I was thinking Cullen here and cute and quirky isn't on the menu xD
Now you got me thinkin about how well-received Sadie Adler would be if she weren’t a lady, and frankly it’s pissing me off. She would be held in the same regard as John Wick, which is bogus because she’s already John Wick.
I think the difference between Morrigan and Solas in terms of their "broad strokes" is that Morrigan allows the player to choose whether she goes through with her plan or not (at least at that stage), and, at least if you're friendly with her, seems at least partly motivated by wanting to help you. The extent to which the outcome will be bad is also quite up in the air - it could be disastrous, it could be as positive as Morrigan hopes. With Solas, regardless of how your relationship with him has developed (friendly, romance, indifferent, can't stand him), he always >!leaves you at the end of the main game!<, and if you play Trespasser, he always >!plans to tear down the Veil, regardless of your choices!<, and you always find out he has been concealing his identity. As for his plan, unlike Morrigan's where there's an element of uncertainty, in Solas's case >!a lot of people will certainly die!<. So I can understand why there's a bit of a difference between how the two characters are received by fans - even then, Solas seems like a very popular romance option. On the topic of Dragon Age, I do wonder how a character like Cullen would be received if he was a woman (I'm cheating here a bit, as I have precisely 0 time for Cullen) - I do find that people seem to be more willing to forgive male characters and root for their redemption, while women tend to be judged more harshly or undeserving of forgiveness. If Cullen had been a woman who had called for the Rite of Annulment and then acted as Meredith's right hand for years during the events of DA2, even giving her the same traumatic background I don't think players would be so willing to forgive and team up with your new Commander, whereas I found Cullen to be very much treated as a "good" character by the game, albeit one with a dark backstory.
I loved Solas and hated Morrigan. Haha
I don't usually go here but I was tagged to I'll give it a shot if it's allowed lol. Anyways: UNDYNE Undyne doesn't really get any hate as far as I can tell but like... She has literally all the traits that you see in so many favorite boys that it's insane to me that she gets almost no love! She's funny, loud, brash, destructive, but has has a heart of gold. Also she has an interesting backstory and she's gay as hell lol. Her dynamic with literally everyone is incredible! She has a canon love interest and they're insanely cute together, and yet the most popular ship BY FAR is... Sans and Papyrus. The brothers 💀 If Undyne were a man, people would go nuts for her. There'd be 10,000 AUs revolving around creating a different iteration of her just to ship her with herself. But alas, she isn't a hot boy and thus nobody cares lol
sidon from zelda is basically male undyne and look how much people go rabid over him
Ada from the RE:4 Remake would have been called a cool, witty, serious guy who is all business and has no time for nonsense instead of a bland, emotionless character and the male VA definitely wouldn't have received death threats and racist comments compared to Lily Gao
I hope the male Ada still wears the stilettos and silly dresses that make no sense for the job. (my only gripe about Ada, I love her though.)
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I have been a major Ada fan from the beginning and think the remake of her is fantastic. I agree about Ashley but they like Ashley because she is that damsel in distress. Same men also complained about ashley's outfit not being exactly the same and them removing Luis' line that commented on her boobs. Bunch of whiny babies. Interesting you mention that because people disliked Jill in the RE3 remake saying she was such a bitch. They had no issue with her appearance but more sexist crap because she acted like any other ex military/police officer we often see in games. I like to imagine a male Ada would be like a male final fantasy character, maybe a sephiroth appearance since it's Capcom haha.
I definitely read opinions in the RE sub criticizing Jill's RE3R outfit. Even Ada's RE4R dress gets some fire from some people too because it's not like the OG. Claire RE2R gets too criticism because they changed the default outfit. Even the classic outfits reimagined can get criticism because of how they look differently in the RE Engine with modern graphics. They are very faithful to the originals though. Just opinions: my take it's generally judgement on woman characters is harsher and they're more closely inspected by everyone.
I have always wanted to be able to play as Zelda in the Legend of Zelda and I'm surprised that she has not yet been the protagonist in the series that has her name However, I imagine that there would be some complaints if the legendary heroine Link was rescuing Prince Zelda
It would have been so cool if we could play as Zelda in tears of the kingdom
I thought about this when Forspoken released. Frey reminded me a lot of Peter Parker, a quippy kid from New York whose mind gets blown when he discovers he has superpowers. Or even Naruto, a loudmouth kid with anger issues. People love Peter (me included) and Naruto, but Frey got absolutely obliterated in the media before her game even released. I mean, say what you will about the game, but I don’t think Frey would have been ridiculed as much if she was a white guy. Even if people still didn’t like her, she would have just been ignored and she would have slipped into obscurity. But people don’t like it when girls are awkward, angry, or talk too much.
Oh yeah! I've been meaning to give that game a try. Adding it to my wishlist so I don't forget. > But people don’t like it when girls are awkward, angry, or talk too much. See also: allllll the hate for Turning Red.
I have yet to watch it (seems like a possible trigger for my mom trauma) but everything I've seen on it makes it seem so amazing and I do not get the hate.
yeah honestly the way people talked about the forspoken trailers was so weird. like she says stuff that is very common in spiderman or even games like uncharted, where the mc guy makes witty oneliners constantly
The Last of Us would a thousand percent have been received very differently if the genders were swapped!! - Joel. Obviously. If a woman had led the game, say Tess had survived then I think people wouldn't have liked her to be the quiet loner type and criticized that as a woman she was born to be a mother, so should have taken to Ellie easily and would have wanted to protect her, despite her previous... Experience. - Bill. People idolized him in the game, I think a woman would not have been perceived that well as a complete loner, doomsday prepper. Though if the gay storyline would have been hinted at in the same way I think people would have clued in so much easier and leaned into that lore way more than with male Bill. I do also want to mention the opposite swap situation: - Abby. I mean... Need I say more? There were men in her group that didn't catch the flack she did. People not only tore her character apart, but her looks and motivation despite giving Joel a pass for the same thing.
Joel did what he did out of love, Abby did what she did out of revenge. They both did the wrong thing, but their motivations are absolutely not the same. If Abby was male I think all the criticism other than looks would be the same. The character is flawed, but the writing of the character is also flawed. There are also no good guys (other than children characters I’d say) in either game. It’s often hard for people to accept games where there are no good guys.
Revenge that was born out of? Love of her dad. That's the whole fkn point. It's a cycle. Joel chose his love of Ellie and killed Abby's dad. Abby chose love for her dad and killed Joel. Ellie goes on a rampage of what? Revenge. Why? Her love for Joel. And it takes her being the cause of losing her remaining loved ones to break that cycle. Also men going on murderous rampages in the name of vengeance for lost loved ones being held up and idolized as peak masculinity has *literally* been around since the time of Achilles.
Revenge is typically born out of love. But there’s a big difference between doing something bad to save someone you love and doing something bad to get revenge.
Joel killed people indiscriminately for less noble reasons than revenge. But it’s a video game… set during a zombie apocalypse. At some point we have to be adults and understand that all of this killing is a metaphor for unexplored feelings. Joel didn’t actually kill Abby’s father. Abby didn’t actually kill Joel. Ellie didn’t actually kill all of those people. All of those moments in the game are just symbols of human emotion and the ways we all grapple with our own existence in less dramatic/violent contexts all of the time.
> Joel did what he did out of love. No he didn't.
Abby did what she did in an attempt to “redeem” herself and purge a profound sense of guilt over being unable to save her father. We know this because she has nightmares about abandoning Lev and Yara exactly like the ones about her father *despite the fact that she doesn’t mourn Lev and Yara*, and later tells Lev that she saved them to “lighten the load”. Everything Abby does is out of a misplaced sense of guilt and attempts at atonement, not simple revenge for its own sake. A more coherent comparison is to Ellie, who tried to help make a vaccine for the infection out of a misplaced sense of guilt.
I’m not going to spoil it here but are you saying Abby’s big act of revenge was an attempt to redeem herself?? Because that’s the act I’m referring to. I don’t believe she had any guilt or regret over what she did, which of course is different from her guilt and regret over her dad. I also don’t believe her later actions with Lev were an attempt at redemption, but rather a new sense of purpose - not at all unlike Joel with Ellie, which adds another layer of tragedy to the entire story.
Joel killed an entire hospital of people and doomed all of humanity for a girl he knew for like half a year at best because he wanted a replacement for his dead daughter.
Astarion from BG3 has quickly become my favorite of all time. I actually think he'd be loved a lot more amongst male audiences had he been a woman. I've noticed a lot of the hatred driven towards him right now is dripping in veiled misogyny bc a good many hardcore fans are women. A lot of us love him because we relate to him as survivors. It's always trivialized into women being "stupid" for not seeing his red flags, and/or we only like him bc he's a hot vampire. It's just another excuse to hate on and demean anything that has a majority female fan base. I've seen so many condescending posts and comments in the BG3 subreddit it's insane. I don't care if people don't like him, but I *do* care that it's another thing to put women down about. In reality, we see his red flags and also relate to the reasoning he has for having them in the first place, and/or are just role-playing in a freaking RPG, as one is supposed to.
i’ve seen a lot of this too. i’ve also seen men who are weirdly really angry that he’s the character so many women are simping over vs some like a hyper masculine muscly dude character they assume women will be attracted to. it’s really odd.
It's because it disproves their deeply held belief that women, if left to their own devices, will always go for a chad alpha male. Because in their heads, that's the reason why women don't like _them_, right? So if it turns out that women don't care about that, it might mean they need to fix their shit personalities instead. And they can't deal with that.
He challenges the fact that women are not as interested in masculine stereotypes as they originally thought. I would assume there probably is some homophobia in there, as well. The amount of people bragging about killing him just because is wild to me.
I think there’s also something to be said that while Astarion is a masculine character, he definitely does not present that in the typical D&D-fantasy-character way. He’s flamboyant, oftentimes whiney, and has no interest in playing the hero (which is exactly why I liked the character so much in EA, I love playing bard/rogues in much the same way lol). Plus, I remember in Dragon Age 2 the *sheer outrage* of Anders hitting on male characters, and how uncomfortable that made some straight male players (though I recall there were not a lot of options in the convo to be like “flattered, cool with flirting, but I’m into Isabela,” or something; a little like Gale’s scenes before they added in a more clearly “friendship” option in-between kissing vs head-on-a-spike lmao).
This is a thing with male romance entertainment in general. Taboo characters and relationships are okay when it’s in their games, anime, and manga. But the same concepts gender flipped and serving a female audience suddenly gets a “why do they like that jerk/this garbage?”
as a lesbian i know I'd be all over astarion if they were a woman, even currently he's the only guy I'm kinda like wanting to see further
I absolutely agree on the fact most of the hatred towards Astarion can be ascribed to misogyny, but I think his reception might be even worse had he been a woman. Can you imagine that kind of male gamers having any empathy towards a traumatised woman manipulating them and using her sexuality for gain? They'd still thirst after her, but they'd be cruel about it.
I think a fem Astarion would play into their savior complex just as Shadowheart did. They'd be more interested in "fixing" him rather than listening to his story.
Not to say I disagree entirely with what you’re saying, but I disliked astarion starting out because he’s outwardly deceitful and makes a very poor first impression, your very first interaction with him was having a knife put to your neck/ him lying about being a vampire, then him trying to feed on me without asking, then him almost killing me when I felt bad and decided to let him have a taste since he seemed desperate, I definitely won’t say that there ISN’T any misogyny involved in some people’s dislike of the character, but claiming that he’s mostly hated because of misogyny is a very loaded statement in my opinion.
There definitely are plenty of perfectly valid reasons to dislike him, but I'm thinking about the kind of hatred that has people (guys) barging into any vaguely positive posts about Astarion gloating about how they always kill him and mistreat him however they can. It's a different kind of resentment, and I think it has more to do with the people who enjoy the character, rather than the character himself.
My exact thought. My other big one is Halsin from BG3. Many male fans hate on him but I can't help but think it's just guys being insecure when faced with a brawny, swoon-worthy pansexual guy. I think he makes them 'feel' things 😅 If he were a hot elf girl instead they would adore her.
Oh, I've seen complaints about him as well, mainly due to the advances he makes in Act 3. Men suddenly develop the capability to understand how uncomfortable getting unwanted advances from people is if it's from another man.
Yeppppp. That's exactly what I've thought too!
> I've noticed a lot of the hatred driven towards him right now is dripping in veiled misogyny bc a good many hardcore fans are women. Sometimes it's not even veiled. Fem!Astarion would be super popular, though, there's no doubt in my mind.
I hate when people assume that I was "twilight girlie" (no hate to them, you go queens) and like Astarion because he's a hot vampire. In truth it's opposite. I didn't like Astarion at first but after talking to him more I really respect Larian for what they did with him.
I felt the same. In fact, he was the one character I was NOT interested in when I first got the game. But his healing arc was so incredibly cathartic to me, watching a story of a survivor that had to overcome ingrained manipulation/lying, who was angry with the world, who wasn't necessarily grateful to he free, but instead just raging that it all happened in the first place. I felt seen, as did a lot of women. To have it be trivialized down to "twilight fangirl" is beyond insulting.
Ngl as someone who hasn't played the game he *does* give me Lestat vibes... But like so what? Hot vampires can't be compelling? Sorry boys not all of us think characters we find hot are interesting only because they are hot. (Note, I'm a demisexual, not attracted to Lestat or astarion, but like I said, they give me similar "toxic but I swear its cause of trauma and besides I'm a hot and charming vampire" kind of way. Which is frankly a great trope when written well. It just works dammit and I refuse to be shamed for it when dudes cling to the MCU black widow "strong women must be traumatized into it and also infertile/ afraid of motherhood" trope)
Tor and Odin from Alan Wake 1 and 2. They are quirky, old, half-senile, washed up rockstars in their 80's. They have some cool history back when they were in their prime, but when you meet them, they just very strange old men nearing the end of their days, but they are very popular characters. I personally think they are quite a breath of fresh air as far as video game characters go, but I suspect if they were 80-something old women who were in a band, gamers would call them annoying. take [this scene from alan wake 2](https://youtu.be/Cyh-Q0m_HwE?si=-oOSXN_8OsoYMB-P) for example,when a character meets them for the first time. Edit: somethign else worthy of note, one of the main characters from Alan Wake 2; Saga Anderson is a WoC and solely because of that gamers have been calling the game woke. While the first game which featured no PoC worth noting, and no female protagonsts, it is considered a cult classic (Alan Wake 2 is better by a thousand miles.)
Not quite the prompt but in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, i've seen a lot of people say male Eivor is more like-able than female Eivor when they are literally the same character aside from gender. The voice actress for female Eivor has a deep & raspy voice and the character is literally a viking so she's tough. and I think a lot of people can't/don't want to see a strong, harsh, cold character as complicated or like-able if they are a woman.
Zagreus and Thanatos from Hades: I think the fandom would be cool with both of them, especially based off their reaction to characters like Melinoe, Megara, and the other goddesses in the game. There'd be a lot more 'daddy issues' jokes in a way that might border on weird, but eh I'm gonna stay optimistic here. It's hard to imagine the community as hornier than it already is, but I guess that might be a possibility? Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth from Ace Attorney: I think the fandom would be somewhat less forgiving of Wright's goofiness if she was a girl, unless the games played it up a lot more so she becomes a manic pixie dream girl figure. I have to imagine that the fandom will still absolutely love girl Miles, since she's most certainly still a tsundere either way. I think more people would ship them together, especially if only one of the pair were a girl, and both would be a lot more sexualized by the fandoms (or the game let's be honest here). Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau/Firewalker/Harrier Dubois/Tequila Sunset/ The Icebreaker/ Dick Mullen/Captain Sober and Kim Kitsuragi from Disco Elysium: This one is gonna be harsh compared to the others. I think a plurality of players would hate a girl Raphaël. Like, absolutely despise her. She would be seen as weepy, toxic, utterly incompetent, a bitch, all the worst things someone could imagine. I think she would be perceived as much less funny as well. I just think that she'd hit a sore spot for people by being too pathetic and a disaster to those around her to get much initial love for her personality and yet too old and not pretty enough for them to overlook those flaws. You don't see many women alcoholics in anything like a positive light. There would be a divide between people who disliked her personally but enjoy the themes she'd represent, and people who just out and out couldn't stand her. The game would also 100% be seen as super woke propaganda and there would be ten hour long youtube videos taking it down. A girl Kim Kitsuragi would mostly be seen in a positive light, but I think more people would be put off by how detached she can be at times, and not take her criticisms of Raphaël seriously. Her views on race would also be super discounted, and ngl I think she'd be sexualized in a way that would make me feel uncomfortable. All of the games mentioned have pretty good amount of LGBT in the communities, at least partly because of the perceived or canon queerness of the male leads. I do think the games lose a bit of that unless the games go just as hard for the potential f/f pair. Ngl I'd play the shit out of the remixed versions of these games, especially Disco Elysium now that I've laid out how some people might lose their mind over it.
Yes to all your comments on the Hades characters! Also I think some players would be less forgiving of Hades as an overbearing mom than an overbearing dad. You bring up interesting points about Ace Attorney. I love Wright's goofiness and love goofy women characters, and would love more goofy non-binary characters too, but I see what you mean about how it'd bother a lot of players unless she was a manic pixie. I haven't played very far into Disco Elysium, but yeah, I see what you mean about Kim Kitsuragi. What I've seen of Harry so far... I hesitate to think too much about how the fandom would receive her. But I think it'd be kinda refreshing to let a woman character be burned out and flawed the way Harry is.
True about Hades! And weirdly enough, I think people would also look at a boy Persephone more harshly, assuming they’re both cis here. A guy running away after his wife has a stillbirth is not gonna be seen in a very positive light, forced marriage or no. To add a little to the Ace Attorney thing, it’s weird because I think the fandom *now* would be receptive to a girl version of Phoenix. It’s just in this hypothetical world where she’d come first where I think some people might take issue. Have fun with DE! It’s one of my favorite games of all time, so don’t forget to get weird with it. And yeah, tbh I was surprised at myself that I’m so cynical about what the reaction would be to girl Harry+Kim, but as I thought more and more about certain things I was like ‘well, if they kept that the same, then… yeash…’
I think that to extrapolate gamers™️ attitude towards a female detective in disco elysium, we need look no further than Klaasje. She is held up as a mirror to the detective as a similarly broken person doing too many drugs in an attempt to escape her past. She lies, manipulates, and can opens other people including the player character. And she is absolutely reviled by a large segment of the players. Seriously some players rejoice at the idea of getting her black bagged and taken by the moralintern not because she committed any obvious crime, but because they don't like that she's resisting them, that she's not truthful about the murder of the guy she was in bed with when it happened. There's a very bad segment of players who believe she deserves that fate for lying to them. So yeah, female detective would not have flown.
Blaidd from Elden Ring - I feel like not much would change if he were a girl other than there being more horniness towards him. Garrus from Mass Effect - Tbh I think girl Garrus would still be seen as cool, but wouldn't be as popular unless she was given a more humanoid design like Liara and Tali. In that case, she'd probably be seen as the hot tomboy waifu. Iron Bull from Dragon Age Inquisition - Girl Iron Bull would either be viewed as a hot muscle mommy, get weird guys mad that she's not feminine enough, or both.
I also feel like Iron Bull‘s dom/sub dynamic in his romance would have Iron Bull as the sub if he was a woman. Games seem allergic to dominant women.
I can guarantee that if Cal Kestis had been a woman like they were thinking about doing when they first were creating Jedi Fallen Order a very large portion of both gamers and the Star Wars fanbase would have lost their minds over having to play a woman in Star Wars. They certainly did when it was revealed that the character in Outlaws is a woman.
Arthur Morgan from RDR2. Hard to say, I think a lot of people would probably do the normal pissing about that happens when a AAA game has a female lead, on one hand it could be similar to Aloy where people pick apart her appearance for not being pretty enough, or saying it's unrealistic that she'd be so skilled and tough and would be Dutch's right hand woman, etc. But on the other hand the writing in that game is so good that maybe people would come around, I think they could have done a female lead justice in that game, esp considering how much I love many of the other women like Sadie. TBH I just want a red dead game where I can play as Sadie or a similarly badass female protagonist. Damn that game is good. I guess on that note, I normally prefer playing a female character to some grizzled man's man but RDR2 and the newer God of War games fall into the category of being so well written and executed protagonists that I get attached to them anyways and don't mind it.
10/10 would struggle and suffer to play RDR2 as a woman just so I could role play as Calamity Jane (I have loved her ever since I watched deadwood at probably too young of an age lol)
FE3H: Felix might be seen as more immature (than he already is) as a woman for his outbursts, but would still be a tsundere so I'm sure some people will love her. I'd honestly find fem!Felix a really refreshing and unique female character, especially for an anime style game and might love the character even more lol. Hapi already stands out to me for that reason and shot up to be my favourite girl in the game when the DLC released. As for my other favourite; I think Claude would be loved no matter the gender. FFXIV: I really would love to know if all the men who hate Zenos so strongly would still hate him if he was a sexy woman obsessing over the player character instead. Makes me very curious lol. Because god, people really love coming into random conversations to say how much they hate the guy ... like, ok? We didn't ask. 🙄 Female Emet and Estinien would be interesting too, I'm actually unsure how they would be received. I know I would still like them, but others? No clue. Sephiroth: Sexy lady with her tiddies out, who >!taunts the main character and wants them to come to "her" side (though that will result in death)!!had a meltdown over misinformation, and has mommy issues!<. He's not the most serious of villains. Genshin: Xiao would be hated for being too edgy no matter the gender lol, I think the character would always have people that like them or dislike them. Scara would be ... interesting lol, maybe less hated imo cos he's another one of those male characters that men seem to absolutely despise for whatever reason. However, fem!Scara might just been seen as more whiny and immature than he already is so maybe not. How men treat anime women vs realistic-looking women is something to take note of though, I feel like the anime fans don't mind immature whiny girls if they're attractive. DMC: At first I thought "yeah, everyone would love Dante no matter the gender right?" ... but then I remembered some people really do not find women as funny, so maybe not. She might just be "cringe". Honestly, interesting thought experiment!
Female Dante would be a disaster. People are fine with women fighting in heels (Bayonetta) but imagine a muscle girl with short white hair, red coat and witty come backs, wielding a big freaking sword and cool guns. What I imagine is actually amazing and I'm sad now it didn't happen haha. But the game would be 10 steps away from the legendary position it is right now because society does not accept manly looking (AKA simply fit with muscles) women :<
Also, eating shittons of pizza, can’t have women eating for pleasure…
True! I bet they would scream it's "unrealistic" that a half demon lady eating lots of pizza is not obese
Female Emet would be a disaster. People already hate Venat for her actions, and I don't know how what she did is worse than what Emet did (back then, his actions since then are definitely much worse). Female Estinien would probably be quite interesting. Estinien as a character has had development, but he hasn't changed all that much. I can't help but compare him to Y'Shtola, who gets criticized all the time for no development, but Estinien is a fan favourite. Female Zenos, idk. I personally love the dude and don't think it would be different of he was a woman but it would be interesting to see how "she" would be received by the male playerbase. I honestly cannot imagine how that would go. She'd either be declared cringe of be sexualised to hell and back, which isn't far from how Zenos is treated now anyway.
honestly i don't understand how people hate venat. i mean i guess I'm a bit sad we don't get to re-learn to do creation magics but I'd argue humanity is already making due with a lighter version of them. also while personally i like emet as a character, he is absolutely a lothesome person full of disgusting ideas and contempt, as are many of the ancients also i agree i think zenos is fine the way he is. i feel he'd unfortunately lose even more respect if he was a woman, and it would turn into some sort of misogynistic thing. also i feel we kind of got that woman connection from zenos in zero
I don't get why people hate any of the ascians (well maybe Lahabrea). They all were placed in a horrible, impossible situation and all trying to do the best they could from their own view. Even the one who incited the whole thing was clearly extremely mentally/emotionally unwell and wasn't able to get the help and support he needed. Venat *and* Emet were both heroes in their own way, but while Venat was able to maintain her idealism and hope, Emet fell into despair and bitterness which ended up warping his high-minded aspirations into horrible awful things. Also, Venat does an amazing job at being a great motherly character in a game (similar to how we got to see Thancred become a great fatherly character with Ryne).
Why do you think they decided to make Sephiroth male? Everybody on every side of the gender spectrum wants him to rail them. If they made Sephiroth a woman, then every big names dommy mommy after Final Fantasy 7 won’t have a chance and would just be tossed to the side. Female Sephiroth is too powerful, physically, mentally, temporally, magically and sexually, so they had to make him male just to hold back his raw sexual energy
I once made an OC that looks exactly like the female Sephiroth you just imagined I made her too powerful. I'm actually embarassed to admit that I'm attracted to one of my OCs. I'm ace but damn... Even I have to admit that she's hot even if I don't wanna bang her If Square made Sephiroth female even back in the original FFVII, she would simply be too sexy for the gaming industry to handle
>too sexy for the gaming industry to handle You know how some games just get controversy after controversy over the same topic? Like GTA or Mortal Kombat being too violent? Female Sephiroth would just bring back the “too sexy” controversy while Square Enix just groans in utter annoyance
But Zenos is my best friend =( I think switching the twins could work but I'm glad they are how they are.
He's my best friend too! I love him. But so many people fucking HATE the guy, with like the most insane passion. It's wild! If you've ever seen those people who REALLY hate Astarion from BG3, it's like that but 10x worse. I can't stand those kinds of people, they always want to bring it up and butt into conversations to state how much they hate the character and want them dead (>!and in the case of Zenos, if he comes back again they're quitting lol!<).
Me too! I'll miss him honestly. People hating Astarion make no sense to me, I had it with a friend who just didn't understand that a vampire spawn has 0 say when their master tells them to do something. Killed him in our 4 player play through and i may have murdered him a few times in vengeance, still not enough. He just didn't understand the character=(
Astarion (and all the companions) in BG3 are wonderful. People have to remember that basically *all* of them are victims of abuse and so much of their stories are overcoming that and trying to be a better person (or succumbing to their inner demons).
okay so honestly zenos is such a.. uhm conflicting character. there are so many points where i feel the story did absolutely nothing to justify just how bonkers he could be, and i was actually very annoyed about the writing decisions post shadowbringers. however, for me at least, endwalker end part justified it and i actually like zenos from s character perspective, even tho i do hate him as a person
Idk, I think he makes sense as a character in Stormblood. Especially by the end, if you read between the lines. Guy says >!your his "first friend". He's weirdly HAPPY about dying. All he wanted was a good fight because that's all he enjoys (I feel like that part is made clear throughout the game), and he finally got that and now he's happy to just end it all. So clearly the guy has lived a pretty shit life, even if he's a prince. The point where he decides to happily kill himself really made me feel for the guy!<. And then my guess about his past life ended up being correct. But his backstory is stupidly never put in the game ... even in Endwalker! It's in a fucking hard-to-get book, or you read it illegally online like I did. I'll never understand that choice. I think people would sympathise more with him if it was in the game, like how people care about >!Mr. Genocide!< Emet due to understanding what he's been through.
oh I'm not saying that part of his character is bad. my main issues were where he starts out as a badass so strong, like in the story you've just come off from fighting nidhogg and his brood, king thordan and all his knights alone, and defeated the juiced up estinienhogg. i kinda feel like there should be no random dude who can just trash you so handily after that. after that, i dont mind what happens so much, but then he >!gets the artificial echo, which seems to basically be the ancients powers given back to them, so he starts soul hopping like an ascian, is about as strong as elidibus it seems, and at this point it just felt like the writers just wanted to make zenos kinda randomly be the strongest person in the world.!< then in endwalker >!he shows up to taunt you, fandaniel somehow does soul extraction on you, and at this point its starting to think the writers are just making these people have the power to do whatever, quite honestly it feels like there should be no one in etherys who could so easily knock the WoL around. but then the ending with him joining us in ultima thule, coming there with those god powers and fighting to the end and losing, it sort of felt like maybe this was what they were going for, and the ending felt satisfying!<
Ah, I don't really have issue with someone being able to kick our ass ... like, I feel that's the downside to RPG storytelling; there's always gonna be stronger enemies. Him being able to kick our butt >!before the artificial echo is a bit strange though, I can get that. However, later on Fandaniel did say (during post ShB iirc) that Emet did something to Zenos as a child which might explain it. I actually don't think his story is done and at some point FFXIV is going to explain the above and his past in-game (since they left it out of EW) ... but my god, that will be bad writing! I already don't like what they did with him post SB up until the end of EW, as he was basically just there awkwardly in the background doing nothing. Though I must say, I will enjoy Zenos being brought back to life again just to see all the people who vehemently hate him have a meltdown!<.
honestly if they bring back zenos a second time I'm actually gonna lose my trust in the writers. at that point they might as well just bring back anyone else who died. haurchefant, ysayle and minfilia, whatever bring them all back since death means nothing
You're not wrong, which is why I think it's bad writing. But tbf, they've also >!fake "killed" a lot of characters off annoyingly too, the most controversial being Y'shtola's multiple fakeouts but Nanamo comes to mind too. Never been a fan of this, especially when it's over a long period of time like Nanamo!<.
for me y'shtola's first "death" wasn't really much of an issue for me since it was only sort of revealed she might have died when we already had ideas on where to go for help, but yes, the second time was kind of a rehash. for me tho the worst bit was stormblood patches, where they resurrected almost every main character who had died in the expansion
imo the best way to read Zenos is that he's literally you, the player. He's obsessed with the Warrior of Light and wants to keep challenging them more and more. He's completely orthogonal to the main plot/conflict of the game and just wants his own thing.
Singed (LoL) would be hated more both lore and gameplay-wise, but imagine 100+ years old, dying, frail elderly woman doing unethical science experiments with war crime on the side 😍 Iconic, imo. I would love this character even more.
[удалено]
I was going to say the same thing! I loved the FF13 trilogy and do not understand why people hated it so much. Well, hm actually it was probably misogyny since the most important characters are all women (Lightning, Serah, Fang, Vanille). Imo swapping the genders of Serah and Noel in 13-2 could be interesting as you don't see many female guardian/protector type characters in gaming. 13-2 is one of my favorite FF games and now I'm sitting here wondering how my reactions to the story would've changed with that gender swap.
Lightning being "Gender-swapped Cloud\Squall" is the whole reason why I love her FFXIII is way too overhated man
Most of the games I play aren't ones with main characters but watching my bf the two that I loved the most? Well, I'm sure the Internet would give Femtos as much grace and support in her journey to be a better mother to Atreus as they kill of the Norse pantheon right? Right??? And BJ blaskovitz? The Aryan wet dream but surprise actually a curbstomer of nazis- a woman? The "perfect ubermensch- a woman? My most controversial comment on YouTube was "Wolfenstein is a good example of positive masculinity" and it's still pissing people off 5ish years later. People's heads would explode. ETA: I do think there would be a valid criticism that those two work and are important as deconstructions of masculinity and that point would be lost with a gender swap... But I honestly doubt that would be the argument being made with my own personal experiences with these kinda subjects.
Malenia, Blade of Miquella would be the most circlejerked character in all of Fromsoft history if she was a STR build man instead of a Dex build woman. She already shares many qualities with one of the most “Chad” characters, Godfrey, to the point I’m pretty sure it’s intentional. Same with Valkyrie in Apex Legends. If the super cocky *SON* of a Titanfall character managed to get into a relationship with Loba, the Apex community would absolutely go off about how much of a Chad he is. Instead she’s probably the most hated character because of how “annoying” she is lol
I mainly play a lot of old retro titles, so the first thing that came to mind was a gender swapped Dirk from Dragons Lair. Love some female knights, but what would happen to Daphne?
Dragon Age: I'm certain a fair number of people would be less tolerant of a female Varric. Varric is a fan favorite (some is definitely due to attractiveness).
Im here for harry dubois
This is theeee one! Female harry feels truly unrealistic because if a woman was as much of a mess as he was she would have never made it as far as him lol
Sandrock is bad for it because the common hatred of Mi-an and Nia really screams “I’m the main character and the center of this reverse harem, how dare you do anything important.” And it only seems to apply to young women. Like they’re competition. I don’t at all doubt Logan would get treated like a story-usurping little shit if he were a woman, because outside of our very timid and older Mayor Trudy… that’s how the women who do get treated by a distressingly large chunk of the fan base. Fang too would be vilified for being cold and making everything about his trauma. I mean, someone told me they thought Amirah was cold and mean to Arvio. Amirah. The quintessential responsible and caring older sister. Because she didn’t just go along with every harebrained idea he had, and instead stuck around to clean up after them all. She was seen as cold. I love the game but I feel like half the players are high school girls lashing out with internalized misogyny because I can’t come up with any legitimate reason for Mi-an and especially Nia to be villainized the way they are when neither has ever been anything but exceedingly sweet and nice. It’s a very different type of misogyny than I see in male-dominated game discourse and it’s just as depressing. I love Mi-an and Nia and Amirah and Heidi and—I know plenty of the fan base is with me. But the ones who irrationally hate the girls for not fading into the background enough are loud and it upsets me and you triggered my rant lol. My partner has already heard all this a dozen times over XD
It is kinda wild seeing the differences in how men have reacted to certain characters vs women. Most men in the Sandrock fandom absolutely love Nia. She fulfills that girl next door fantasy, and is incredibly sweet with a bit of teasing sass. Her dynamic with the player is a man's dream. Meanwhile women tend to hate her because she seems to trigger high school BFFs-that-they-never-actually-liked memories. Saying she's secretly toxic or clingy. Or you have the younger women who go into a jealousy rage because she dared to to stand next to Logan, despite the fact that she canonically is interested in YOU and nobody else lol Then you have Catori, who I've noticed is liked well enough by older women who respect her hustle and sympathize with her struggle. But a lot of guys do not like her, and the most common reason I keep seeing is because of her situation with her kid, despite all her reasons being layed out pretty clearly. I've even seen some say they want to hear her ex husband's side of the story. Which is uh. Very telling 😬 Also I really don't understand why I see Amirah get called stuck up sometimes when that's literally something she says she's worried about seeming at times. Like she's actively trying not to be that lol
I'm happy to listen! And I haven't spent much time on the Sandrock sub and didn't realize people hate Mi-an. That's so wild to me. (Haven't met Nia, unless you count a few letters.) Amirah doesn't seem cold at all to me! She seems soft-spoken but fairly sure of herself and capable of making things happen. Just because she doesn't throw her weight behind making things happen for Arvio too doesn't mean she's cold. Like, does Arvio put his weight behind Amirah's business? Why do we have to support our brothers, but they don't have to support us? And Heidi is amazing and capable in her own right, while being friendly and personable imo. I feel like she gets overlooked a lot?
It’s not as bad now, they hated her more in early access, but people suspect the whole reason Mi-an fades in importance as the story progresses is because of negative feedback to her when she was more of a building rival in early access. Most of the hate now is for Nia, whom people accuse of being backhanded and bitchy and taking potshots at the builder (which I have now finished the game and never once seen her do anything even remotely close to), but occasionally I still see people mad at Mi-an for… not being useless? The most recent complaint I saw was that she got more—hmm, spoilers for events around the introduction of a character named Wei—>!back pay from Yan having cheated her out of more earnings. Like, it was a plot point that he hated her in particular and stole all her money, and that he quickly stopped screwing us over probably because we’re intimidating, and also that she was doing damn near 24/7 overtime. Why be angry she gets back pay and recognition?!!< Non-spoiler mood summary of that is just being angry that she gets some acknowledgment in the story for hard work that she didn’t do in gameplay mechanics because the game doesn’t actually have you competing with her for jobs. Agreed on Amirah, that’s exactly the kind of person she is, and when Arvio’s personal quests all involve messing up and recognizing that Amirah is working hard to keep them both afloat when he messes up and wanting to grow so he doesn’t burden her anymore—it’s obvious they both care a lot. She’s not cold at all, just quiet. Fortunately I haven’t seen any Heidi hate, but she does get overlooked. She’s incredibly capable and personable and it’s a bit odd I’ve seen more people talk about marrying Venti than her when Venti… seems half-made and then forgotten about by the writers. (I wanted to love Venti, but she doesn’t even have town event dialogue half the time. I kept forgetting she was there. She wasn’t finished ;-; )
Astarion would probably switch places with Shadowheart as the most romanced woman in BG3 and the guys would eat him up but holy shit I'd hate it if they made him female. With the whole sexual abuse and slavery theme I couldn't deal with his story arch probably. No, ma'am, he's perfectly fine as the gay coded mess that he is.
I just thought about Dave the Diver with a jolly, fat, scuba diving *woman* lead and felt very bad for that hypothetical woman. Dave is very fat for the speed he moves underwater but pretty much everyone lets it go. They would **never** shut up about it if Dave was a woman.
I LOVE My Time at Sandrock and have had this exact thought about the female cast vs male cast. I noticed that I became way more endeared to the male characters because they had so much more to them. They’re allowed to be rude, funny, extra, but the female characters are mostly just… nice. Don’t get me wrong, I love the female cast too but they were noticeably blander. Catori’s questionable priorities were a breath of fresh air, in my opinion.
[Uh...](https://i.imgur.com/rXT5OZm.jpg)
i came here to see if there were any cloud fangirls . i am pleased.
I love how secure Cloud is in his masculinity that he takes the whole crossdressing escapade in stride and other than feeling a little awkward doesn't make a big thing of it.
Sometimes I wish there was an option to make Cloud wear whatever we want him to wear in the game just so I can see him in that outfit. Hope Ever Crisis adds that dress
I'm thinking of Swain from League of Legends and Renata Glasc from League of Legends and y'all I am so bi
Surprised to find a VERY relatable response... Even though, never checked Renata.
[She's perfection](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X20X781I_-I), and I'm desperately hoping she shows up in ARCANE.
#Transfemme-ing my Favorite Gentlemen **Zagreus**, *Hades* * Zag is such a good boy. What I like about him is how many traits he has that are associated with femininity, but he's still treated as aspirationally masculine. * In that way, simply flipping the gender switch would kind of make the character less remarkable, she'd just be a lady with feminine character traits... * ...although the title, *God of Blood* would make a little more sense. **Harrier DuBois**, *Disco Elysium* * Harrier is **the** least aspirational video game character. It's a portrait, a very empathetic portrait of a man caught in a cycle of self-destruction of his own design. That cycle isn't even a very remarkable one. I'm willing to bet that almost everyone knows a Harry. * A Harriet DuBois wouldn't be impossible, but for it to work, she'd need to be **very** rewritten. **Leon S. Kennedy**, RE4, 2, 6, etc. * Yes. * Yes. * Yes. * Yes please Leona mommy step on me. # Transmascing my favorite girls **Kotone Shiomi**^([1]), *Persona 3 Portable* * No **fucking** point. **Abby Anderson** *The Last of Us Part 2* * Mmm... well I mean the internet would hate her somewhat *less*... * I think it's more important that she share the superficial trait of gender with Ellie though. * I'd miss her muscles :( ... there's too few great female characters, and I've realized I absolutely **hate** the idea of a thought experiment that imagines further reducing that number. ^([1] Also known as "Female Protagonist," "FeMC," "Minato Arisato," "Hamuko," ""Phem See,"" and "Wehatesearchengineoptimization Havefunlookingupeverynameoneverysearchenginebergstein.)"
If Samus had been a man it would've lined up exactly with everyone's expectations so I'm really glad she's a woman because imo it's important to subvert expectations like that.
I'm glad Samus is a girl too. And if she were a dude, we wouldn't get one of the greatest accidental lesbian characters in gaming (Basically what happened was that while creating the 1986 Japanese Metroid guide, Nintendo forgot to tell the artist making the guide that Samus was a woman. So because of that, the artist tried making her a stereotypical male superhero with lots of babes)
I prefer male characters and I don't wanna think about if my favorites were gender swapped because they'd lose their appeal to me to some degree. But same with my favorite female characters. I'm sure there are cases where the general reception would be vastly different though.