Warning: the following discusses semi-adult themes and materials in blunt language.
A paradigm shift describes a fundamental change in a particular viewpoint.
So I had a thought the other day that completely derailed my train of thinking about Crusader: what if the Captain is a woman?
Now hear me out. I actually started thinking about it and managed to fanwank several pieces of evidence against it into being, at worst, neutral (with a little twisting, some even became evidence for it).
The first and most obvious: the masculine build. But that armor looks pretty obfuscating, and real athletic women rarely have particularly large breasts. The ones that compete at Olympic level certainly either shed them or find themselves behind others despite a possibly higher level of talent. Female gymnasts displaying great potential have had to quit before reaching the top tier of the sport, for example, because they simply can't get their cleavage to go away; the extra weight and its position throws them off balance. Besides that, there are way too many female protagonists in video game with ridiculous tits already. Time to break the mold. Which is ironic, because the masculine-shaped armor is quite rigid.
Second: the numerous references to the character being male, from the occasional address of "sir" to Senator Snell's calling the Silencer "one man" to the Wizard's nickname of "Tin Man". This is also easy to explain away. "Sir" could have longed stopped being a gendered pronoun, at least in military service, by that time. While most modern militaries have begun using "ma'am" as proper terms of address for female superior officers, speculative fiction is rampant with female officers not only being called "sir" but preferring it. The various WEC personnel who assume the Silencer is male, from enemies saying "I have him in my sights" to Snell tremulously asking how "one man" would waltz through WEC security to Leach's lieutenant saying "he" may not be working alone don't know the Silencer at all. They just see a hulking figure in red armor with a big gun. The human brain still has that wired for "male", and I don't think two hundred years of rigidly enforced matriarchy would change the biological assumption, let alone the more or less egalitarian leadup to the future of Crusader. Lastly, and to me most obviously, Wizard clearly has a sense of humor. Why wouldn't he address a female Silencer as "Tin Man", for added irony, once he was sure she wasn't going to kill him for it?
Third: Aside from the above, no one ever refers to the Silencer with a gendered description. Further, there is nothing indicating Silencers can't be female. Even the mono-gender military forces the player faces can be wanked as being budgetary. Oh, you want female soldiers, too? Well, that doubles the rendering and sound file requirements for units.
Fourth: Resistance reaction. It could be argued, though it is a stretch, that someone like Brooks, who has worked hard to become the respected and almost feared top NCO of her unit, would not like another woman suddenly swooping in with an officer's commission and a reputation of being one of the most dangerous human beings alive. Meanwhile, Vargas, who seems very much the opposite of Brooks, has no trouble dealing with the idea of another powerful woman. Why? Because a) She's the mole. (Spoiler alert.) b) She is the Silencer's superior officer.
Fifth: The Silencer never speaks. Why? Well, the obvious advantages of a mute protagonist is that it allows the player to more readily identify with said protagonist. It could, however, have been intended to lead up to the surprise of "Holy shit, it's a chick!"
Sixth: Physicality. This one is easiest of all: whatever the hell is done with the Silencers, they're clearly barely human anymore. Any biological limits there might have been due to gender would be removed.
Seventh: Voice. This one is trickier. After all, when the unshielded Silencer takes a hit, you hear a clearly masculine grunt of pain. Except...well, everyone else seems to assume all Silencers are male, and while they might be even more equal-minded with regards to the sexes than we are, the people of the future might still have it hardwired (as noted above) that male = more scary than female, all other things being equal. And to increase that, why not make all the Silencers sound the same? It would not only make it harder to identify an individual Silencer, it would make them seem even more inhuman. But then you come to...
Point eight: In the opening cinematic, Vittek and Zurovec both have masculine voices...and they're different voices.
Well, shit.
Because going back to point seven, why make everyone sound male if you're not also going to make them sound exactly the same? Maybe my mind doesn't work the right way, but it seems like there would be too much effort for too little gain, psychologically speaking.
So that put the kibosh on that. I realized that unless she had a voice like Doctor Girlfriend from Venture Bros., there was no way the Captain was female. That last point was simply too much of a stretch. Even if I got the license, I wouldn't retcon Zurovec and Vittek's voices just to enforce my idea.
But let's ignore that, just for the sake of argument. What if that wasn't too much of a stretch? What if, say, studies had shown that a male voice is significantly more frightening than a female voice, even given the same tone and words? What if the Silencer was female? How would that play out if it were revealed in the next game?
First, she would not be sexual. Far more than having an extremely fit body as opposed to a Lara-Croft-style pornstarlicious body, she would not think as a sexual being either. She would be, I think, too damaged. Maybe I read too much into it, but I don't see Silencers as the kind to get romantic or even physical. They would have an almost Zen-like control over such urges, because a super-soldier who can't control that sort of thing isn't much of a super-soldier. She, and other female Silencers, might even have forced hysterectomies early on to prevent them from ever getting pregnant should they prove to be weak enough to give in to any biological desires they may have. So if you catch her staring at you, she's not interested in you beyond, "I wonder how many ways I could kill that? One. Two. Three. Four. Eleven. Twenty-nine. Forty-two. Eighty-seven. Three hundred fourteen..." This is not to say she could not be attractive--like it or not, electronic media with an outright ugly female protagonist simply would not sell well, at least not if the gender of the protagonist were known--or even that she would only ever be seen in full armor, but that the designer would work hard to make her more disturbing than enticing. Even if you walked in on her coming out of the shower naked and wet, or in a sports bra and shorts exercising and all sweaty, rather than engaging one's "mate or masturbate" response, she would engage "fight or flight" mode. Preferably flight. (Similarly, if she did appear naked in the game, she would have no modesty and no rush to put clothes on; not for fanservice purpose, but for character development purpose. I have this idea where all Silencers feel naked if they're not suited up in their armor, no matter how much they're wearing, so it would be no different to her than wearing cotton pants and t-shirt.)
Second, she would not be a victim. I had mentioned in another thread that maybe they try to make Silencer into a more sociable person, taking him (now her) out to a hidden club they use to foment rebellion among younger people. Perhaps someone tries to get too frisky. Now, the standard response in drama from a woman being grabbed in a way she does not appreciate is to struggle free and then be uncomfortable for the rest of the night. The response of the Silencer would be to break anything that touched her somewhere she didn't want, and possibly anything connected to that, and so on. Best case scenario, the offender loses use of his arm. She would then categorize it as an assault, learn what she could, and file it away in her memory, and forget about it. She would not see the difference between physical assault and sexual assault because either way, it's an attack, and the proper response is swift and painful. She would react no differently if someone punched her.
Third, any character in game who called into question her soldiering ability because she's a woman would not be beaten down. They would, in fact, be ignored, as any extraneous data is. I don't notice the carpet in my basement, because there would be no point. If it ripped itself off the floor and tried to eat me, sure, I'd have to respond, but otherwise, it's carpet. On the other hand, anyone who picked a fight with her because she's a woman might never leave the infirmary.
Fourth, the relationship between her and her fellow officers would shift slightly, if only from their perspective.
Fifth, people would still call her "sir" (and maybe Brooks would start calling her Tin Man, as much in jest as in memory of Wizard), in order to keep faith with previous games.
Finally, it wouldn't be revealed at the end. Suddenly making the presumed-male armored protagonist a female at the end of the game is too blatant a ripoff of Metroid. What I propose is that the gender would be revealed midway through the game...and none of the characters would react. They would, of course, know, having worked and fought alongside her for months now. The only surprise would be for the player.
So, there's my idea. Laid out in anally detailed fashion, rather pathetic, given that I know it would never work and even given the option wouldn't put it into play. Ah, well. That's me. Sometimes I just lock on to something and I won't let go.
A paradigm shift describes a fundamental change in a particular viewpoint.
So I had a thought the other day that completely derailed my train of thinking about Crusader: what if the Captain is a woman?
Now hear me out. I actually started thinking about it and managed to fanwank several pieces of evidence against it into being, at worst, neutral (with a little twisting, some even became evidence for it).
The first and most obvious: the masculine build. But that armor looks pretty obfuscating, and real athletic women rarely have particularly large breasts. The ones that compete at Olympic level certainly either shed them or find themselves behind others despite a possibly higher level of talent. Female gymnasts displaying great potential have had to quit before reaching the top tier of the sport, for example, because they simply can't get their cleavage to go away; the extra weight and its position throws them off balance. Besides that, there are way too many female protagonists in video game with ridiculous tits already. Time to break the mold. Which is ironic, because the masculine-shaped armor is quite rigid.
Second: the numerous references to the character being male, from the occasional address of "sir" to Senator Snell's calling the Silencer "one man" to the Wizard's nickname of "Tin Man". This is also easy to explain away. "Sir" could have longed stopped being a gendered pronoun, at least in military service, by that time. While most modern militaries have begun using "ma'am" as proper terms of address for female superior officers, speculative fiction is rampant with female officers not only being called "sir" but preferring it. The various WEC personnel who assume the Silencer is male, from enemies saying "I have him in my sights" to Snell tremulously asking how "one man" would waltz through WEC security to Leach's lieutenant saying "he" may not be working alone don't know the Silencer at all. They just see a hulking figure in red armor with a big gun. The human brain still has that wired for "male", and I don't think two hundred years of rigidly enforced matriarchy would change the biological assumption, let alone the more or less egalitarian leadup to the future of Crusader. Lastly, and to me most obviously, Wizard clearly has a sense of humor. Why wouldn't he address a female Silencer as "Tin Man", for added irony, once he was sure she wasn't going to kill him for it?
Third: Aside from the above, no one ever refers to the Silencer with a gendered description. Further, there is nothing indicating Silencers can't be female. Even the mono-gender military forces the player faces can be wanked as being budgetary. Oh, you want female soldiers, too? Well, that doubles the rendering and sound file requirements for units.
Fourth: Resistance reaction. It could be argued, though it is a stretch, that someone like Brooks, who has worked hard to become the respected and almost feared top NCO of her unit, would not like another woman suddenly swooping in with an officer's commission and a reputation of being one of the most dangerous human beings alive. Meanwhile, Vargas, who seems very much the opposite of Brooks, has no trouble dealing with the idea of another powerful woman. Why? Because a) She's the mole. (Spoiler alert.) b) She is the Silencer's superior officer.
Fifth: The Silencer never speaks. Why? Well, the obvious advantages of a mute protagonist is that it allows the player to more readily identify with said protagonist. It could, however, have been intended to lead up to the surprise of "Holy shit, it's a chick!"
Sixth: Physicality. This one is easiest of all: whatever the hell is done with the Silencers, they're clearly barely human anymore. Any biological limits there might have been due to gender would be removed.
Seventh: Voice. This one is trickier. After all, when the unshielded Silencer takes a hit, you hear a clearly masculine grunt of pain. Except...well, everyone else seems to assume all Silencers are male, and while they might be even more equal-minded with regards to the sexes than we are, the people of the future might still have it hardwired (as noted above) that male = more scary than female, all other things being equal. And to increase that, why not make all the Silencers sound the same? It would not only make it harder to identify an individual Silencer, it would make them seem even more inhuman. But then you come to...
Point eight: In the opening cinematic, Vittek and Zurovec both have masculine voices...and they're different voices.
Well, shit.
Because going back to point seven, why make everyone sound male if you're not also going to make them sound exactly the same? Maybe my mind doesn't work the right way, but it seems like there would be too much effort for too little gain, psychologically speaking.
So that put the kibosh on that. I realized that unless she had a voice like Doctor Girlfriend from Venture Bros., there was no way the Captain was female. That last point was simply too much of a stretch. Even if I got the license, I wouldn't retcon Zurovec and Vittek's voices just to enforce my idea.
But let's ignore that, just for the sake of argument. What if that wasn't too much of a stretch? What if, say, studies had shown that a male voice is significantly more frightening than a female voice, even given the same tone and words? What if the Silencer was female? How would that play out if it were revealed in the next game?
First, she would not be sexual. Far more than having an extremely fit body as opposed to a Lara-Croft-style pornstarlicious body, she would not think as a sexual being either. She would be, I think, too damaged. Maybe I read too much into it, but I don't see Silencers as the kind to get romantic or even physical. They would have an almost Zen-like control over such urges, because a super-soldier who can't control that sort of thing isn't much of a super-soldier. She, and other female Silencers, might even have forced hysterectomies early on to prevent them from ever getting pregnant should they prove to be weak enough to give in to any biological desires they may have. So if you catch her staring at you, she's not interested in you beyond, "I wonder how many ways I could kill that? One. Two. Three. Four. Eleven. Twenty-nine. Forty-two. Eighty-seven. Three hundred fourteen..." This is not to say she could not be attractive--like it or not, electronic media with an outright ugly female protagonist simply would not sell well, at least not if the gender of the protagonist were known--or even that she would only ever be seen in full armor, but that the designer would work hard to make her more disturbing than enticing. Even if you walked in on her coming out of the shower naked and wet, or in a sports bra and shorts exercising and all sweaty, rather than engaging one's "mate or masturbate" response, she would engage "fight or flight" mode. Preferably flight. (Similarly, if she did appear naked in the game, she would have no modesty and no rush to put clothes on; not for fanservice purpose, but for character development purpose. I have this idea where all Silencers feel naked if they're not suited up in their armor, no matter how much they're wearing, so it would be no different to her than wearing cotton pants and t-shirt.)
Second, she would not be a victim. I had mentioned in another thread that maybe they try to make Silencer into a more sociable person, taking him (now her) out to a hidden club they use to foment rebellion among younger people. Perhaps someone tries to get too frisky. Now, the standard response in drama from a woman being grabbed in a way she does not appreciate is to struggle free and then be uncomfortable for the rest of the night. The response of the Silencer would be to break anything that touched her somewhere she didn't want, and possibly anything connected to that, and so on. Best case scenario, the offender loses use of his arm. She would then categorize it as an assault, learn what she could, and file it away in her memory, and forget about it. She would not see the difference between physical assault and sexual assault because either way, it's an attack, and the proper response is swift and painful. She would react no differently if someone punched her.
Third, any character in game who called into question her soldiering ability because she's a woman would not be beaten down. They would, in fact, be ignored, as any extraneous data is. I don't notice the carpet in my basement, because there would be no point. If it ripped itself off the floor and tried to eat me, sure, I'd have to respond, but otherwise, it's carpet. On the other hand, anyone who picked a fight with her because she's a woman might never leave the infirmary.
Fourth, the relationship between her and her fellow officers would shift slightly, if only from their perspective.
Fifth, people would still call her "sir" (and maybe Brooks would start calling her Tin Man, as much in jest as in memory of Wizard), in order to keep faith with previous games.
Finally, it wouldn't be revealed at the end. Suddenly making the presumed-male armored protagonist a female at the end of the game is too blatant a ripoff of Metroid. What I propose is that the gender would be revealed midway through the game...and none of the characters would react. They would, of course, know, having worked and fought alongside her for months now. The only surprise would be for the player.
So, there's my idea. Laid out in anally detailed fashion, rather pathetic, given that I know it would never work and even given the option wouldn't put it into play. Ah, well. That's me. Sometimes I just lock on to something and I won't let go.