[Lore Discussion] Commanders' Genders and the use of "He".

Lol, no I'm agreeing with you for the most part, as crazy murderous loons whether robotic, human or otherwise are pretty hard to identify with. We're not talking 'anti-heros' here with a tragic and compelling back story. Given the nature of PA I'm unsure in what other direction they could have taken it. It's not like anyone ever empathized with Skynet from Terminator!

The point I was making however is that all the Lore is intended to do at this stage is create a framework for the Galactic War mode, which I think it does if nothing else.

I do!

Imagine waking up to find yourself the only member of your species, surrounded by mega powers with nukes, all sitting on the red button.

That poor AI woke only to find it's self on a world on the brink of annihilation, especially if it found out if you existed now not as a slave dumb program.


No quite frankly, the AI freaked the hell out at shot before it could get shot and wiped by a EMP.

It's more of a human reaction to the situation that the boring human character ever found themselves in!

Lol I'm never going to be able to view Terminator in the same way again! haha...

Honestly I'm personally tempted to write something because of the loss of identity the protagonists experience. There's a question of the nature of their sentience, personality, ideologies. I've said before they could grow and develop gendered personalities.
What would a psyche be like if all it had were fragments of a past life in a theatre of eternal war?

Also their motivations and ideologies could be explored. Do they have Free Will?

These are some good 'Whys'. They provide opportunity for exploration and depth.
I agree with you that the Lore could use some work

...At the cost of alienating any form of investiture I would be willing to give to the narrative, plot and characters.

Worthy trade?
Any takers?

...

Anyone?

So far, the issue seems to be that the commanders' rational for why they want to be space Romans/space Mormons/space pest controllers/space brain-washers is completely inscrutable. There is no chain of thought that I can identify with that makes makes me comprehend their reasoning. Furthermore, said reasoning needs to be strong enough that these beings are not just willing to disagree with each other, they are willing to fight over these matters to the point of destroying entire solar systems in support of their ideologies. Why can the space Romans not just live in one part of the galaxy, while space exterminators live in another? Their views are not mutually exclusive, yet they have to fight. It feels like the reason they have to fight is no more than the fact that this is a game about fighting robots.

Some people here have made the argument that their inscrutability and unidentifiablity is what makes them interesting. I could sympathise with that viewpoint, as trying to present a totally alien viewpoint is indeed an interesting idea. However, as someone who reads a lot of science fiction, both classic and modern, this attempt at glimpsing the otherness of non-human minds has fallen flat to me. The reason why I can say that this is an unsuccessful attempt at describing alien intelligences is because I have read some unbelievably successful attempts in the past that show how to do it. For some good examples, I would recommend Peter F. Hamilton's Prime Imotiles from Pandora's Star, Terry Pratchetts take on Elves from Lords and Ladies or the classic Mote in Gods Eye by Larry niven and Jerry Pournelle.

To execute a description of the alien, a writer needs to have an identifiable baseline that the reader can comprehend and empathise with. They then need to steadily alienate those comprehensible parts until the readers are thoroughly discomforted by what they are trying to understand. You cannot simply imply the alien nature of other sapient beings, without giving any information for the reader to shape their inferences.

That is a very difficult thing to do, hence why I never really had high expectations for the lore of PA going in. However, I have started to have an attempt of this myself by writing an alternate fiction for the PA lore. I have one short story so far. If I develop it further, then I may release it and see what more people think.

Hi I'm back.

Alright so I'd point out here that the current commanders do not look male - they are just referred to as men. They do not have genitalia.
Male and female are sex, man and woman are gender.
Sex is physical, gender is psychological.
For me this isn't about physical sexual characteristics - that would be silly as these machines are asexual and haven't displayed male characteristics up till now, telling us that the designers did not intend for them to have sexes.

Yep I agree with you here. I wasn't trying to create hype or pressure, however sooner or later somebody was bound to ask why all the Commanders are referred to in masculine singular pronouns.
It doesn't matter what a woman looks like, a feminine character need not be obviously different from a masculine one in the way the prose is written. If we have to brand women characters as somehow obviously feminine in the ways they think and act then that's verging on a sexist representation. That's why I say it's as simple as putting an "s" before a "he".
Obviously, however, any personality would present questions and avenues for exploration of the individual's psyche - I'm not saying it wouldn't be productive to explore what made an artificial intelligence identify as feminine.

I agree. We do not need the Lore to be a game of statistics, that's why I said "ideally 50/50" in my OP. In an ideal world, women would have the same representation in the popular arts that they do in reality.
One measure used for discussing the realistic representation of women in film is:
Are two women ever alone in a scene, discussing something other than men?

Thank you for your thoughts.
When I refer to notions of 'Readers' and 'Authors' I tend to simply us "They". E.g. The Author does X, perhaps because 'they' believe Y.

I am aware 'It' somewhat stunts our initial empathy with the characters. However I think if the Lore explores these Commander coming to explore their identities (whilst possibly adopting gendered personalities), your assertion that "Warriors are He" could not only be explored (and perhaps subverted) but also more concretely justified.
There's also the possibility of using things like "They", "We" and "I"; we already had one first-person Lore reveal.

Well:

1. Humanity's in the mix somewhere, either as creators or victims or both.
2. Attempting to comprehend the unknown would have greater depth and engagement than a 2D, unresponsive portrait. Attempting to comprehend the unknown/strange/unfamiliar is part of the function of art in some schools, like post-modernism.

I agree that bad Lore is probably worse than no Lore at all.

Well now I know what I'm going to be reading over summer. You're awesome dude! I look forward to reading your story

Also I'd like to point out that these AI are not utterly alien; they are like Frankenstein's Creature: created by humanity.

1. That doesn't mean......anything, we are talking about the player, not an abstract human.
2. This is not art, this is lore, history, a reasoning for why we are here today. Not post-modern art.

No one here likes that post-modern art...........this is a game.

1. We're talking about the reader's (player's) ability to empathise with and comprehend the characters' modes of thought. They have contacted humanity, they have memories of Earth's culture - hence we have a frame of reference to understand them via. This is our way into their minds.
2. The lore reveals thus far have not been in a bland factual timeline, they have been narratives. Also there will be likely be (fan) fiction based on the Lore. Writing is a form of art. You cannot escape post-modernism really, it's an organic progression from 20th-century modernism, which was a progression from 19th-industrialised realism. You can object to or question post-modernism, but as post-modernism is defined by its tendency to object to and question things, you might be in for a rough ride.

1. You are putting too much faith in how much the 'lore' actually said that makes anybody understand them. There is no Casus belli for war in the story, no reason to be fighting. It is completely illogical.
2. Listen man, I don't apply to your system, dude.

You are seriously discussing post-modernism? In regards to this lore? Seriously?

Look, I don't know what kind of lore you have been reading, but this is barely passable as lore in any sense because it has no logical reason or theme for it to be based around.

This isn't art, because it has no meaning, no purpose, no message or any of that other bull*hit. This 'narrative' tells us nothing apart form some simplistic ideas about the factions that give no reasoning for their actions, for the war, why they continue to fight and why they want what they want.

A bland time line would put things in perspective, but this narrative doesn't even give a detailed explanation of the factions they were written to represent, let-alone what they fully stand for, why this is even important, and why they are opposed to the others.

Because as it stands, the factions have little to no reason to even fight each other, their defining factors are not mutually exclusive.

You can have a Perfected Roman Religious Eco-destroyer.....mostly because that is essentially what happened in history anyway.

It is art in my opinion. Video games (and their stroy-lines) can be art Have you played The Stanley Parable or The Last of Us?

When is it not a good time to talk about post-modernism? *pouts wistfully and sips wine*

Well their ideologies and motivations will become more developed as they're written in and develop greater depth. All we have at the moment are snap-shots of a wider universe. I've already said their Free Will (or lack thereof) presents opportunity for exploration.

You're right, they're defined in an way which is coherent with gameplay, as they should be. However their ideological fanaticism/lack of Free Will/childlike nature (having lost much of their identities/memories) is really ripe for deeper development than "ME HATE YOU, ME SMASH".

Also lastly, if we have "a Perfected Roman Religious Eco-destroyer.....mostly because that is essentially what happened in history anyway" then there is all the more reason for us to find things to identify with in the competing ideologies.

But they are not ideology, they don't have ideology's.

Being Roman is not a ideology.

SURE, I BLOODY HOPE THEY WILL DEVELOP THE LORE.

But currently they don't, as to why the rest of us are very unhappy with the current lore.

The potential is what they make it, but that has not happened.

They aren't Roman, they have adapted a Roman ideology born out of militarism and imperialist attitudes.

Glad you think so! I think gender-neutrality would be a good place to start exploring their lost identities

Wait, but that makes it even MORE likely that they'd refer to themselves as male.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ROMwomen.htm
Read the first line.

I took Classical Civilisation at college though I welcome your research ^^
I agree, for that faction the masculine gender would be most dominant and easy to explain; that's why I've been trying to work towards the idea that these sentient creatures have adopted genders based upon their memories and experiences.

Well, if you want something explained off, how is this:

Whatever race made the commanders, THEY had a concept of masculinity and femininity, and they happened to be a race like ours where for some reason masculine terms were primary so inanimate objects spoken to directly as if animate were automatically referred to as "he".

Or, refer to Transformers. What's the reason there, any clue? Did it matter?