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

Male-as-neutral-default in fiction, the hit 500 page thread coming soon to a forum near you!

Wow! I found this thread fairly late I suppose. Eroticburrito, I am encouraged that you brought up this topic. It shows that you're willing to ask question where others may have taken it for granted - and that's pretty cool.

It'd actually make some sense for the other factions as well.

The Inquisitors are religious, and most religions cling to a time where women were stuck at home and all that, and since these guys aren't exactly going for the Buddhist ideology of peace for all, it's safe to assume that it's a Christian-esque religion, only with robots instead of zombies.

The Synchronus you could say, although it'd a little bit of a stretch, that they share similar ideals to the Inquisitors, only even more machine-based, they preferred the time of industrialization, men working in factories, etc.
Only instead of men it'd be robots.

And the Revenants, since they wish to be reunited with the progenitors, well, that could mean anything.
For all we know the progenitors might be male-dominated, and if so, it'd stand to reason that the Revenants would share the same ideals.

Star Control 2 started out with very thin conceptualization "they just want to enslave us" with its villains. But actually over the course of the game the motivations grew more understandable eventually reaching a point where it was easy to realise why the Ur'quan participated in what in their eyes was a good vs good conflict without being less extreme and understandably objectionable from the point of the hero(es) (the captain and humanity).

This is actually another path where you serve the weird parts first and then make it relatable. But the basic elements are still the same, there need to be things that are/radical stand out and elements that make sense.

So it's possible to start from alien flat characters and end in a rich story. It too had "precursors", mysterious absent species that many species saw in different light and not much information was available.

Part of what makes ur'quan ur'quan is their genetic memory making their history very salient to them. a traumatic event (to put it lightly) made them re-evaluate risks of contact with unknown life-forms. Something very similar could be going on with commanders only having their side of the story intact in their cores. There could be argument that in order to be able to view another sentient as an enemy you need to villify them. Supposedly you need to start at a superficial description as this will form the misinformed basis on how each faction appears to the outsiders.

It seems also that one of the factions seems to be motivated by (a slighty more permissive version of) The Eternal Doctrine. I have seen some good story being made from similar ingredients. However what we now have is consistent with a very pessimistic evaluation of what is to come.

ships even though they arent a lifeform with gender are reffered to as she .. personaly i couldnt care less be it robots or cars etc.

Next upcoming thread: Why do commanders think and talk in English?

english is spacelanguage man ... dont you watch stargate ?.... no trek universal translator needed

Read my post through again. The foundation is the setting and the ability to generate big ideas about stuff. That's all that qualifies it to be potentially good science fiction.

Everything that comes after, like the faction reveals, are pretty extraneous to that.

Not sure what tropes you refer to, but you just seemed to imply that all of the most influential science fiction is dull and trite, so good work.


Why do people believe in a God? There is no proof in either direction. They don't purge everyone just because, they purge all those that will not practice their religion. Religious intolerance is a commonly reoccurring theme throughout history. It's prevalent today, with religious extremists. It's prevalent in the last century. Brush up on your history.

Genocidal Robot wants to maintain a peace. They are also exterminating the evolutionary inferior biologicals who are competing with them for resources, and have the capability to initialise aggression towards them. No difference between that and human control of pests. Or human control of terrorism. Or human control of pirates. Or human control of communism.

Considering how petty the differences are between Protestantism and Catholicism, and the violence that that has inspired in countries such as Ireland, I would think a war where one faction is hunting god to kill it, and the other is hunting god to benefit from the finding, would be the most logical reason to wage war. It's not even religious extremism, it's a fundamental difference in philosophy and world view.

Religion has been used for humankind for generations as an excuse for social injustice, ignorance and intolerance, yes, as an excuse to act as an irrational zealot too, It's also been used as a tool with positive benefits.

I agree that it needs a lot of work, as so far we only have 2 factions. Those who will live in the same world as their god, and those who believe they are above it.

Spoilers - that's the main plot line of Sanctus.

The lore does need a lot of work, that's undeniable. But we have a fairly solid foundation from the setting and the basic premise. I do believe that the factions need to be redefined.

No. Brush up on your knowledge.

Most ABRAHAMIC religions cling to that time, however Catholicism venerates Mary. Most classical religions have a female deity. Most pagan religions have female deities. Hinduism have female deities. Buddhism teaches that women should be respected.

That's actually very interesting. Most of those are definitely related to a lack of representation of women in some field/activity leading to their marginalization, which can and definitely does feed into a negative feedback loop. The fact that women's sleeping bags are considered a 'non-standard' seems very strange, and a lacking representation of women's sports is a clear example as well.
Some of the supposedly gender-neutral products however, such as the paint tray and bike helmet are gender neutral, and they have a re-branded pink version regardless. Especially with the paint tray, I wonder why a "women's" model (which is just a pink version of the tool) would even be produced.
I've seen products like that around, and I'm sure everyone else has as well, so I have to wonder; are pink versions of gender neutral products marketed as "women's" really such an effective marketing strategy that they warrant re-branding a product? Is calling the pink version of a bicycle helmet a "girl's" helmet really going to help sell it? It's already pink, if someone likes pink, they'll buy the pink one anyway.

I disagree. Y'know why? Because we've already had every single one of these factions before... in the same game!

• Osiris and his Revenants are essentially Q AI + Seraphim xenophobia. None of the Cybran-human angle... just Q AI.

• Metrarch the Machinist is ... well really he's a combination of extreme Seraphim xenophobia and more extreme Seraphim xenophobia.

• Nemicus is a note for note rehash of Princess Burke (with none of the human motivation nor the politicking of the Aeon Illuminate,) + Seraphim xenophobia.

• And Invictus of Legonis Machina... well that's just President C. Allen Riley II with a paint job... + just a dash of Seraphim xenophobia sprinkled on top.

But, do you know what SupCom's original 3 factions had that none of Planetary Annihilation's Soulless gas pumps have? Human motivation and reasons to fight that I can understand.

You can claim that the PA foundation is a strong as you like Kiwi. I disagree, but I'll allow you to claim it. Do you know why I'll allow you to claim it though? Because it, for better or worse, feels like SupCom's original 3 factions (+1 that was a cardboard cutout, xenophobic alien race) with all the good parts taken away and rampant xenophobia and zealotry allowed to take the place of those good parts. Essentially PA is a story about 4 slightly different shades of cardboard cutout, xenophobic alien race.

Strip away every shred of interest I have from the SupCom factions and you end up with PA's Soulless gas pumps and their followers.

As I mentioned before, there is still room for improvement in PA's lore. Uber have left it wide open. You are coming at this having played both Sup Com games- and gone through their story which was unfolded piece by piece through the campaigns. That type of story telling does have a way of bringing the story to life a whole lot more.

I agree with you the current Lore isn't very compelling- however I'm willing to reserve judgement until it is properly fleshed out as all we have right now is a very broad overview. I'd imagine you could break down almost all war stories, and present it poorly and manage to flatten all the soul out of it. I mean take Star Wars- the overview written like PA would be:

Faction 1: The Empire, they want to unite the galaxy and will crush all that oppose them.

Faction 2: The Rebels: They want to free the galaxy, and will destroy anyone who stands in their way.

Technically those 2 statements are correct, however they miss everything that makes the story so good. I kinda think that's what's happened with the PA lore- I think there could be a really good story lurking behind it all.

For crying out loud. Read my posts word for word.


The TLDR version of my posts is it has a good foundation because it has a setting through which those big ideas can be introduced. And the commanders can be developed so that they are a metaphor for humanity, while being secure in the fact that this is a possible future, not the only future.

If you are really such a literary critic you will notice the total lack of details in my post this far.


Everything else hasn't even factored into discussion of the foundation. Everything else has been the current details of the lore.

I am not, nor have I been, defending the current details of the lore as excellent scifi. But I think you are underselling it because you have decided that the robots are (your own personal preconceptions here). It's limited and there is potential, but that potential isn't being delivered on. Plus there are really only two factions, not four.


All we have been given is a vague blurb for the backstory. We know that the Romans and the Religious are willing to integrate organics in their societies. So yes, if it is indeed missing the human factor then that's because the human factor hasn't been written yet.

What are your ideas on what good sci fi is, out if interest, seeing as you disagree with the loose definition that it is the genre of ideas

I stille find it ridiculous that in a world with sentient machines no proper language had been invented for referring tot robots.
We make up words on a daily basis. If "it" or "they" doesnt cut it, invent something.
For the writer its easily solved with find-replace.
Additionally nobody seems to object to it. They either dont care or object to the thread itself.

Want an itemised list of titles or just the general idea?

And by the way, I did read your post, word for word. I disagree with your conclusion that this is a "good" foundation. I consider the PA lore to be vapid and not worth the webspace it occupies.

Thank you dude
Yeah it kinda exploded almost 3k views in 2 days haha!

While I agree in the 'west' we would probably think of the Abrahamic religions as warlike, there have been lots of other religiously motivated/justified wars before.
I read that the Romans massacred Druids. Pagans persecuted Christians. The Greeks hated the Persian custom of prostrating before rulers, because they saw it as an act of worship; something only done towards Gods. The Iceni (Boadicea's) revolt in ancient Britain went and burnt down all the Roman temples. Alexander the Great justified his war as retribution for the Persians' desecration of Greek temples. There are probably much better examples which I don't know about.

This faction (more than the others) might have their own cultural assumptions which need not make logical sense to outsiders. Their AI religion is likely to be heavily modified to suit machines, it could go either way really.

I like the idea of a Machine God, possibly with the Faction Leader being its incarnation (again this has great precedent outside Abrhamic religions), and needing to become 'One' after they had been 'Nothing': 1 0 binary, geddit? ^^

So 19th Century machines wearing tophats and smacking local wildlife into oblivion using ivory canes? xD
I think it's a good parallel for inspiration, don't get me wrong. At this time there would have been lots of Imperialist attitudes knocking around. I think of any of the factions though, this lot would be gender-neutral. They hate biologic life and ways of reproducing and might mostly outright refuse gendered personalities, embracing their machine-hood.

Yep. Good justification. But...
As it 'could mean anything', why does it have to mean that all of humanity in the distant future were patriarchal? Not that I would have a problem with having a patriarchal faction - it would just need justifying eventually because it's a fairly big social development that impacts upon the ideology of the faction. Not sure this is the faction where it could be most easily justified.
I said elsewhere that total war (particularly mechanised war; WWI-WWII) usually requires both men and women to work towards the war effort. That leads to women getting better rights.

This came up earlier. Basically, they're lifeforms, not inanimate machines.

Also the reasons for the feminisation of these things is a bit dodgy.

With cars, they're a status symbol, most who want one care primarily how they look.

With ships, the use of 'she' to refer to them pre-dates their becoming mechanised. Having a woman on-board a ship was bad luck. There weren't many women around. A guy gets lonely and develops a bond with his ship and starts calling her 'she'.

@eroticburrito
lifeform by who's definition?
they might be sentient and autonomical but they are 100 percent artificial they are not born but constructed
by whoever designed and developed them in the first place ...
yea i consider the term artificial lifeform very contradicting ...

Ooh good point.
Sentient beings?

I always think of them as the ghost in the machine, but not their body themselves that defines them.

Which makes this topic tricky, as even humans would struggle to define a gender without a body to define.

Our minds are separate from the biological machines we sit in, so how can a mind have a gender?



So in that respect, the commanders are only as much male, as they associated with their past body of flesh and blood, or a a part of their original programming that defined this for some kind of reason.

Their body's are warmachines, so they have no reason to associate with a gender and pure AI's, other then personal preference.

But a engram of a person, would likely still associate their gender with their original body.


But as ghosts in our machines, we really don't have much of a reason to associate with anything other then what we, they, choose.