Male Villains

[asdaf2]

So, I've gotten to past the 8th gym in the game so far. I've really enjoyed the gameplay aspect and the story is good.
Saying this something that has been annoying me persistently is that every villain bar one or two has been
an older male.

I started noticing how there is a persistent, older men trying to capture torture the young damsels.
The diversity of characters and orientations is very refreshing, but I am wondering if I was the only one who
noticed there is a painfully obviously homogeneity in the villains. Its getting to the stage that its pretty
annoying, I'm currently in the 7th street area and I decided to make this thread after one of the characters
commented on how it wasn't nice being around all these creepy men. There is a pretty obvious trend of
men=creepy/evil/bad, women=noble/quirky/oppressed. Just wondering if anyone else noticed.

Before anyone jumps down my throat on that. Having gay/non gendered characters makes no difference to myself,
but it is painful to see one segment of people lumped as evil, while everyone else gets to have a variety of roles.

[Xiri]

I see this is your first post here. Before anything else, welcome to Reborn and feel free to introduce yourself in the Grand Hall!

As for your thoughts - yeah I did notice that too. But I guess the fact that the leader of the evil organisation being female kind of makes it up for the heavily male dominated evilness.

[ShadowStar]

Yeah I agree with Xiri. Welcome by way!

[asdaf2]

Hi everyone,

I may go make a post in the introduction thread now. Thank you for the warm welcomes.

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. I did notice that the main team meteor leader is female. Surely though

there should be a general spreading of the evilness so to say. Even small changes like making the character who
sells the poor caged pokemon not a dude. Small things like that can go a long way to not sending a very clear message.

[primrose]

pretty much what Xiri said. ^^

although i also have to point out, some of the women on the pc's side aren't exactly perfect angels. for instance, both Saphira and Titania will not hesitate to kill anyone who gets in their way and have been shown on-screen as murderers. i don't think you can exactly label that as under 'quirky' or 'noble', since 'standard morality' doesn't approve of murder one bit, especially when you have other options (which, honestly, both Saphira and Titania did on at least one occasion). Charlotte also takes after her sister some, judging by an explanation she gives to the pc on a certain story path, although she hasn't been killing on-screen yet. likely the only reason this is being accepted is because these ruthless characters are, at the moment, on the same side as you and committing these acts against what is believed to be the 'greater evil'. so perhaps you could call it justified, but if either Saphira or Titania believed they had a good reason, i don't think they would hesitate in killing anyone. they're not morally good characters, strictly speaking, they simply work in their own interests; which just happen to coincide with yours at the moment.

[asdaf2]

Those are some excellent points you made. I hadn't considered it so much in the way of the choices the characters made as who is
aligned as good guys/bad guys.

I guess the point I was making was it would be nice to have the same depth and variety you pointed out, in the male characters,
not just bad/evil. Obviously no one wants flat good/evil characters. Maybe there is more of that as the game progresses I guess!

[BIGJRA]

Interesting point; although the only four meteor elderly male admins I can really think of are Sigmund, Sirius, Solaris, and El. Like was mentioned earlier, there are a few notable evil female villains/anti-heroes, and honestly there are even likable male villains cough Taka cough.

[primrose]

I guess the point I was making was it would be nice to have the same depth and variety you pointed out, in the male characters,

not just bad/evil. Obviously no one wants flat good/evil characters. Maybe there is more of that as the game progresses I guess!

don't worry, you'll get more development on the 'evil male characters' later down the line, especially in the most recently released content. :] not going to state what the developments are specifically, but...

you'll find out that Taka and Solaris, specifically, are more than just 'ambiguous bad guy + dude with the ridiculously high-lvl garchomp'. heck, even Fern gets more development, which seems crazy since he's the annoying swag jockey.

edit: just to add on, i forgot ZEL (the 'multiple-personality guy'), who will also get development soon if you're only at 7th street atm.

Edited June 8, 2015 by phoenix_fire

[Foamy]

Having a larger quantity of male antagonists doesn't necessarily represent Ame's opinion regarding men and women. I think you might be jumping to that conclusion.

[Mint_Spaghetti]

Phoenix, don't forget:

Corey and Sigmund as well as some of the grunt duos

[asdaf2]

Having a larger quantity of male antagonists doesn't necessarily represent Ame's opinion regarding men and women. I think you might be jumping to that conclusion.

I don't know who made the game or their opinions etc... I merely was observing what I had seen in the game so far. As phoenix_fire pointed out, there is more complexity to it

as the game develops, which is nice.

[primrose]

Phoenix, don't forget:

Corey and Sigmund as well as some of the grunt duos

this person's already at 7th street, so Corey and Sigmund have pretty much been done already, up to the current release at least (and imo, they don't have much to be sympathetic about). Simon and Tara are also filled in -- unless, of course, Simon was never talked to in the Tanzan base, which is possible. but yes, Aster and Eclipse will definitely be getting development soon.

[Mint_Spaghetti]

this person's already at 7th street, so Corey and Sigmund have pretty much been done already, up to the current release at least (and imo, they don't have much to be sympathetic about). Simon and Tara are also filled in -- unless, of course, Simon was never talked to in the Tanzan base, which is possible. but yes, Aster and Eclipse will definitely be getting development soon.

You read Corey's diary? I was like oh shit.

[primrose]

You read Corey's diary? I was like oh shit.

actually yes, i did, but i forgot about it until now. uvu whoops. it does add development, yes, but imo it still doesn't make Corey much more sympathetic.

for asdaf, you can read Corey's diary by retrieving the silver card from where his skuntank is and using it in his gym. that's all i'm saying about it; you can find threads that talk about where his skuntank is by using the search feature, but it won't be available to you until past agate circus.

[ShadowStar]

Yeah the Diary is a cool read. I definitely recommend reading it.

[asdaf2]

Haha, I almost want to read all these spoilers to see what people are saying but I don't want to ruin the story.

[Mint_Spaghetti]

Haha, I almost want to read all these spoilers to see what people are saying but I don't want to ruin the story.

Don't read them, it's worth the wait.

[primrose]

Haha, I almost want to read all these spoilers to see what people are saying but I don't want to ruin the story.

we're not actually spoiler-heavy so feel free to do so. :] we're just naming names and some sidequests in particular, no real details. you can find those out yourself.

[ShadowStar]

Yeah it's just a few extra things. It was just safer to put spoiler than to not.

[Amethyst]

Having a larger quantity of male antagonists doesn't necessarily represent Ame's opinion regarding men and women. I think you might be jumping to that conclusion.

I mean, I'll be the first person to admit that I do have some latent bias against males. It's something I'm working on, and I certainly have no intention for that to manifest in my games especially in a way that reflects poorly on men as a whole. But, acknowledging that I do hold that bias, I can't 100% guarantee it doesn't play some part.

However, in defense of that regarding the original topic, one also has to consider the conditions in which this game was made.

None of these characters were written to be game characters. Sigmund, Corey and Elias were all gym leaders from our league who were antagonized by other leaders, Saphira, Heather and Luna. We had our share of drama, and since this game was created as a reflection of the events of the online league, that naturally had to be included.

Now, when formatting those events into a game, there was the question of who's side should we take? Maybe we could have sided with Sigmund, for instance, and portrayed Heather's as actually just crazy and so we needed to wrangle her in. But, in order for that to be an effective plot point in the game, the player has to sympathize with the good Doctor. However, I already knew from the online league that Dr. Connal was not very effective at winning sympathy. Neither were any of those men. Thus, it felt most effective to make them antagonists for the game story.

Sirius and Solaris were characters provided to me by Will; I asked him for a few Meteor admins, and worked with whatever he gave me. I can't speak much to his choices for them.

Regarding NPCs, I am quite interested in that. There are a lot of segments where, I acknowledge, we are not as gender-equal as we should be. For instance, the entire cast of cultists, orderlies and researches, are all male. That's not especially effective.

However, I am less concerned about the people in 7th street being primarily male. This is mainly because I do not believe many girls would be entirely comfortable venturing down to a den of debauchery like that. And there are a few: Craudburry flaunts her money in defense, the Oddishweed lady is facing the danger for the sake of her husband, a doxy here and there, a couple punks, one of whom is implied to be under the protection of her boyfriend, and one who's just too far gone on level-ups to give a fuck... so on. These are the kinds of girls I imagine would feel okay going down to that place.

I did not see a female Pokemon dealer doing a good business-- not because she would be incapable, but because if their urban society is anything like ours, and it is implied to be, all it would take is one of the gangs deciding she's an easy target, to raid her shop and put her out of business. You'll notice the Pokemon Dealer has one of the beefier male sprites. He doesn't seem, to me, like the type of guy a group of rogues would target.

If you disagree with that thinking, I'm interested to hear why.

[asdaf2]

Thanks for the very in depth post. I take it you are the developer of Reborn.

If thats the case I'd like to say well done on making such an expansive and imersive world.

In regards to the story, I haven't finished yet and have been informed that over the course of the coming chapters there
are developments that round out some of the antagonists. I really was observing on what I had seen so far.

It is very much the same in regards to everything else I pointed out. I do genuinely think that in regards to the npcs
like the cultists and such, there should be more balance as there is in the official games so to speak.

When I referred to 7th street, it was mainly as that was the actual piece of dialogue that kind of clicked the thought in my head.
Not really as a special area that needs more work. I referred to the dealer as mainly a hypothetical I could think of of the top
of my head, as it was the last thing I used in the game prior to posting. The only thing I would disagree with is that one single
dealer could not a gang stop, should they choose to attack him, regardless of his beefiness , that sort of thing is a numerical
matter, many>1. I can understand your sentiment in that, in a criminal world, women would be at a huge disadvantage, so it does make

sense for that particular zone.

I would personally like to not have to rescue the girls in the story as much though, but having been more careful to read dialogue recently,
I can see the pros and cons of every writing decision, if that makes sense.

[Gaunt]

Interesting topic

Now i agree with Ame on the first part of her post (Leaders&Admins) but not so much on the second because i once met a girl that could actually break me in half with relative ease and i'm pretty big myself, a girl like that is perfectly capable of dispatching some thugs so she would do just fine as a dealer.

About the "criminal population" being almost entirely male: i think a little more diversity would be nice (idk maybe change one of the gang leaders to female?) because while it's true that most criminals are male female prisons exist for a reason.

[Mimmu]

just want to point out how ZEL isn't exactly male and still is one of the higher up members of meteor. :x

[Deleted User]

Lin appears to be the lone exception.

[Helia]

I thought those cultists were men and women with such heavy robes no one could distinguish if they were male or female.

I actually only noticed the big amount of female Leaders, with out of (I counted) 21 currently known (former) leaders, 14 are female, 2 non binary and 5 males. This includes Corey, Kiki, and Cain.

Now, males being set as the strong villains and females as strong kickass queens does shift some, but I see it blends in great with the Yin Yang principle, having a lot of Female, light, good, characters with some males in it and Male, dark, bad characters with some females in it balances it out quite nicely so you won't hear me complain