NPC gender identity in TiTS

[Sicaa]

The real question is why he made Aliss a male in the first place.

To make it a little different? To introduce a race where tits doesn't immediately equate as female? Lots of possible reasons really.


So, I don't know whether the author wrote the codex entry on Ovir and he simply wanted to make a race that's a little different, or he drew from what was already there, but the Appearance section says the following (paraphrasing):


Children look identical and can only be differentiated by medical sexing, till they reach adulthood. Many communities who frown on that procedure therefore treat all children the same, and let them choose their gender roles on their own once they reach adulthood.


From this we can assume that gender might simply not be a big thing to Aliss, and a large section of Ovir, at all (as I said before, its just a technicality). The author states Aliss' gender to introduce the race and make you aware of this difference, then continues to treat her like a female because that's a resonable assumption of her gender from a human (or any of the avaliable starting races) standpoint, and leaves it at that not makind a big deal of it.

 

[Longbow]

To make it a little different? To introduce a race where tits doesn't immediately equate as female? Lots of possible reasons really.


So, I don't know whether the author wrote the codex entry on Ovir and he simply wanted to make a race that's a little different, or he drew from what was already there, but the Appearance section says the following (paraphrasing):


Children look identical and can only be differentiated by medical sexing, till they reach adulthood. Many communities who frown on that procedure therefore treat all children the same, and let them choose their gender roles on their own once they reach adulthood.


From this we can assume that gender might simply not be a big thing to Aliss, and a large section of Ovir, at all (as I said before, its just a technicality). The author states Aliss' gender to introduce the race and make you aware of this difference, then continues to treat her like a female because that's a resonable assumption of her gender from a human (or any of the avaliable starting races) standpoint, and leaves it at that not makind a big deal of it.

Interesting. I admit, I did not catch that part of the codex entry, as I was more concerned with the 'Society' section of that particular entry. Beyond this, though, I maintain that none of this is properly conveyed in the game itself, least of all through Aliss' own dialogue. The game doesn't even expect you to know what Ovir are when you first meet Aliss, much less know about intricate Ovir social dynamics.


From a design angle I still question the point of deliberately invoking the male sex, but using female pronouns with no further explanation or justification. I see the design purpose behind referring to aliens that are obviously designed to look female as "she", regardless of their strange, alien sexes. Simplifying pronouns makes sense, but having pronouns directly contradict an alien's stated sex for little apparent reason is, I think, a poor decision.


"Male" and "female" mean something rather specific to most people, I would imagine, and I think writers may be underestimating exactly how much they mean when they just toss them in and ignore them like with Aliss and the Nyreans. I understand that it's to help players more readily connect with aliens and their strange biology, but using "male" to describe something that isn't male or meant to even be thought of as male (and vice versa) is a design decision that has problems.

 

[Ashley]

I only wanted to have a go at conveying how an ordinary dude might react to a passing trans. It feels tough that this gets picked on whilst the ovir stuff - and it should be obvious why they're all "she"s and "her"s, it has absolutely nothing to do with thought given to how an alien culture might perceive gender - gets handwaved.

Hi! Let me apologize, then. I didn't mean to offend, and I enjoy a lot of your scenes! (Domme Sera is niiice.) But the part that made me cringe is that you hit the "conveying how an 'ordinary dude' might react" too much on the head (although I'm not sure how "ordinary" it is, anymore; in the past, absolutely, but the past couple years, I haven't dealt with guys talking to me that kind of way), without a chance to respond to it. I totally got that you were going for that, and you hit it out of the park, but that combined with no ability to protest him repeatedly calling you a guy is exactly what made it hard to read. I've lived that! It's not fun. >_>


I handwave the Ovir stuff, perhaps unfairly so (but I want to give the benefit of the doubt, especially somewhere where a lot of people are probably going to be mad at me for bringing it up in the first place), because it's not my viewpoint character's not being misgendered with no chance to respond to it. It feels like it'd be out of line for me to suggest that those NPCs "should" protest being misgendered (when gender's been written as a nebulous concept to their species in the first place), but if it's my character, then I feel more justified in saying that.


Again, though, I didn't mean to offend or suggest that you're a bad writer. Just nervous posting here for the first time over something like this, and wanted to "prove I'm not just here to complain" by mentioning how I'm not finding fault with this subject everywhere, but then remembered "well, there was that one scene that made me wince."

 

[Third]

Just jumping in here! Lots of questions and issues raised here, so I hope I can answer some questions.


Firstly, yes, Aliss does use she/her pronouns. Ovir don't have multiple pronouns in their languages, and because they all look feminine, she/her pronouns are used in translation. If that's not enough, Aliss also grew up on a predominantly human colony, where she grew up before reaching sexual maturation (as you'll note above, the ovir's sex isn't easily determinable until puberty and adulthood), enjoyed predominantly "female" activities (at least by modern standards, I like to think futuristic societies won't associate certain activities with genders), enjoyed sewing dresses, had mostly female friends. All her life she would have been called "she/her".


So yes, she prefers the she/her pronouns. I can't speak to the preferences of the Ovir dancer, as she was written by Zeikfried (who also kindly helped me write the Ovir codex), but I can imagine her reasons being similar.


Hope that helps. If there's anymore questions or if I can help clarify anything, let me know.


(As an aside, when it comes to other characters, I always figured the pronouns the author uses would be considered the "proper" ones. The author, after all, has more insight into the character than we do. Deliberately using different pronouns, when you've already been given some, always seemed kind of weird.)

 

[Nonesuch]

So yes, she prefers the she/her pronouns. I can't speak to the preferences of the Ovir dancer, as she was written by Zeikfried (who also kindly helped me write the Ovir codex), but I can imagine her reasons being similar.

Zeik is a she these days...?

*snip*

There's no need to apologise. Your opinion about those scenes is perfectly valid, probably more valid than mine. Something that often comes up is that players get frustrated about the fact NPCs don't notice that their perceived gender doesn't match up with their sex, which is the big hook of the trap fetish. In the TiTS universe we can presume gender/sexual identity is extremely fluid so this can be handwaved easily, however I designed Geoff to be inexperienced and from a slightly sheltered background so I could at least have a shot at "noticing" a sexually male female gendered PC. It's constructive to hear that from your perspective how it was written was too real or a bit offensive.

 

[Third]

Zeik is a she these days...?

Oh no I meant the Ovir dancer, sorry for the confusion.

 

[Nik_van_Rijn]

Well, for once my decidedly non-progressive cultural background helped me avoid misunderstanding. I automatically parsed Aliss' " BTW, I'm a male" as the statement her sex in the context of the lecture on Ovir sexual dimorphism that she was giving you.


@Nonesuch


 Was there any particular reasons for not giving PC a way to clarify the situation and not play into 'coy trap' angle? It seems logical to me that the PC would anticipate Geoff's reaction to some extent based on what he says about his background and how he says it.


 For what it's worth, Geoff's reaction to 'SUDDENLY a trap' seemed very mild to me. He gets on board with the situation as a whole pretty much instantly, he doesn't misgender PC after the initial confusion, he doesn't blame PC, he is genuinely apologetic for not making the encounter pleasurable for his partner. All in all, he is a very good kid, and the fact that it doesn't prevent some of the things he says because of his ignorance being genuinely hurtful for some people makes me a sad panda.


@Savin


It still doesn't seem right to me to bunch all the universally feminine looking, titied races together, at least from the lore standpoint. Races like Ovir (who don't care too much about gender) or races like Rahn (who don't have any sort of sexual dimorphism) should have quire different outlook on gender pronouns than races like Nyrea, where sexual dimorphism is prominent, one gender is dominant and gender roles are strict as fuck. There are also kaithrits, who do have terran-like pronouns despite being all feminine.


Translator bots' error and/or races in question just deciding to roll with stupid aliens not picking up minute details of their language is a better way to handwave this whole thing IMHO.

 

[Etis]

It still doesn't seem right to me to bunch all the universally feminine looking, tit races together, at least from the lore standpoint. Races like Ovir (who don't care too much about gender) or races like Rahn (who don't have any sort of sexual dimorphism) should have quire different outlook on gender pronouns than races like Nyrea, where sexual dimorphism is prominent, one gender is dominant and gender roles strict af. There are also kaithrits, who do have terran-like pronouns despite being all feminine.

Not even all modern human languages have grammatical gender.

 

[Nik_van_Rijn]

Not even all modern human languages have grammatical gender.

Would you kindly name one, that would also belong to a culture with prominent gender roles?

 

[Etis]

Would you kindly name one, that would also belong to a culture with prominent gender roles?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_type_of_grammatical_genders


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_genderless_languages

 

[Krynh]

It's interesting how while Japanese has no gender pronouns it does have male and female speech. 

 

[Ashley]

There's no need to apologise. Your opinion about those scenes is perfectly valid, probably more valid than mine. Something that often comes up is that players get frustrated about the fact NPCs don't notice that their perceived gender doesn't match up with their sex, which is the big hook of the trap fetish. In the TiTS universe we can presume gender/sexual identity is extremely fluid so this can be handwaved easily, however I designed Geoff to be inexperienced and from a slightly sheltered background so I could at least have a shot at "noticing" a sexually male female gendered PC. It's constructive to hear that from your perspective how it was written was too real or a bit offensive.

I wouldn't go as far as "offensive." Just, like, I'd feel better about it if there was a chance to respond in a way that added "You assure Geoff you're a woman, and just have a little something extra," or something like that. Nothing that'd break up the flow of the scene. Just something that lets you decide whether to roll with the "trap" fetish stuff, or to clarify you identify as a woman. Even a chance just to roll your eyes at Geoff and shut him up with a kiss or something would be better than nothing. Otherwise, it just kinda reminds me of my first encounters with men trying to hook up with me while misgendering me, back when I wasn't confident enough to say anything about it and just kinda let the bad feelings stew as they kept doing it.


Ultimately I wouldn't want any scene meant to appeal to people with "sissy"/"trap" fetishes to get the shaft! And content for female-identified Captain Steeles who have dicks without being hermaphrodites is a good thing, in my book! It's just the lack of an option to be like "Nope, I'm a girl! Now shut up and fuck me!" that rubbed me wrong.


Thanks for being receptive to my opinion. I'm still sorry for how critical it must sound, though. ;;

 

[Noob Salad]

It's interesting how while Japanese has no gender pronouns it does have male and female speech. 

Kare and Kanojo although they're not usually used in the same way as in English. There's also ways of saying "that guy" and "this guy" and stuff like that, but I digress.