Stereotypes in Reborn?

[J-Awesome_One]

 

4 minutes ago, Jess said:

Which she didn't use to save that Oshawott for some weird reason!

I guess it is solely to make ladders, not bridges as well. xD

Well I mean the ice could have broke & the Oshawott could have been dropped into the toxic water! & we can't have that!

[Amethyst]

Yep. It's imbalanced. Part of it is circumstance. Some of it in how they're portrayed is because of my own fault. For instance Bennett and Blake weren't really as douchey online as they are in-game. As a contrasting point, Julia was kind of a chaos queen online to the point of getting members wrapped up in her relationship drama. But for the game, I slotted them into various roles. I'm definitely guilty of creating the imbalance in how they're portrayed myself. 

Sorry about that.

 

As one person said, I wasn't really aware of the pattern at the time I was planning the game out (and keep in mind that was like, 2012). And back then like, to be honest, I had kind of a misandrist streak. It's not like I was going out of my way to hurt guys or anything but I certainly didn't like them, and sometimes it bled through. This was such a case. In fact it's been kind of a running "joke" among some of my friends that I wouldn't make a positive male character if my life depended on it. That said, I do feel strongly that I've leveled out with that since then. 

 

Just because I added a non-binary character doesn't mean I'm not sexist. That absolves me of nothing. One good step doesn't erase past mistakes. Moreover, I'm not perfect. And nobody is-- even just with sexism. Or that's my opinion at least. I think it's next to impossible to really 100% truly not have any preconceptions about gender and race and such. But rather than not having any, what's important is that we challenge the problems they create and minimize or solve the negative effects there-from. 

In the case of how males and females are represented in Reborn, I failed to do that. The contrast is a problem. I will learn from it for future writing. 

 

 

As a final note, in regards to the number of important males vs females in the game without regard to their conduct, it's true that there are significantly more female characters. This is a large part of the aforementioned circumstance, and while I might not deliberately do it again... given how male-dominated video games have historically been, I'm not really concerned about this. People could stand to get used to a few (non harem/VN) games with female majority in return tbh...

[Chase]

Alright, Ame, I can't let you escape without giving younger Ame a challenge based on that post-............and giving her a break in another area.

 

Firstly, if younger Ame was/still is going to assert that male characters are a common facet in the gaming industry (not contesting that, they certainly are) - then one would think that writing male characters wouldn't be too hard. Especially because men are genuinely treated like white knights/gods/war heroes/etc in most of the gaming industry, in comparison to dainty, damsel-esque, often-relegated-to-sidekick females. I can certainly see that writing men without flaws is hardly entertaining because of this - but it's not like it should be really difficult for any developer, misandrist, otherwise, or even potentially full-blown femi-Nazi, to find source material. This leads me to believe the "positivity" of a male character in Reborn is hardly the problem, and that the community "joking" about it is a little off base (even though knowing you it probably would cause a chuckle). CAL for example, is one of my favorite characters in Reborn because of his tragic epic hero turnabout - while Fern is actually a surprisingly welcome call-back to a certain Pokémon professor's grandson we had a budding rivalry with when we first started playing and thus atones for his negative presence by "feeling" like a proper rival character. Zero is a FANTASTIC character (@Ama where you at idk what your forum name is now :CCC) 

 

Long story short there - there is and always has been plenty of games with great gentlemen for you to draw inspiration from - if even actual dude-bros in real life are actually garbage. However, this didn't actually cause you to write all of your male characters in Reborn poorly. Except making most of your male antagonists not only mere antagonists but subservient to a female crime boss so they can take TWO "L"s. Maybe that counts.

 

The "real" problem Reborn "might" have is merely the disparity in numbers. The creepy old guy outside of Celadon Gym back in Kanto would love Reborn because - as he so aptly puts it - "It's full of women!".

 

I miss arguing with you, sometimes.

 

Edit: changed a certain homosexual always-game-and-cheerful rival into a purposely misunderstood male character who is better than Victoria hoped to deserve anyway. Shots fired.

 

Edit: Misidentified a city in Kanto.

[RhythmMelody]

8 hours ago, Jess said:

True. Is there an age limit after which you become a criminal? 

I'm also annoyed, as @FairFamily said, that Cain can Slime Surf on a Muk (wtf, my Muk was defective and couldn't do this), he can use his Nidoking to break Agate's gate (wtf, my Nidoking was defective too and couldn't do this) and Saphira's been constantly using the "Metal bar-door tear" HM with his Dragonite at Tanzan Mountain, which I presume is a Steel type HM we will get at lvl. 100.

 

Also, some more crossroads and choices implemented for the player would decrease the feeling of helplessness I felt when I saw them making stupid decisions. But I understand that scripting it is VERY troublesome and time-consuming, as it includes coding separate paths.

Regardless, it is much, much better in character development and story than all of the original games and most (if not all) of the fangames. So, props to the developing team, and mostly Ame for that.

 

Actually I'm not annoyed by that at all. I rather think its great, because it's exactly what people could do with their pokemon in the anime. Sure, surfing on a muk might be a bit stretching it, given its bodies density, but tearing down gates with Pokemon, killing baddies with your Pokemon-sword or creating staircases out of Ice is exactly what Pokemon can do, but don't do at all in the games in generel. Which is why I really like that we are able to interact with the field by breaking crystals, freezing water or defog rooms full of steam.

 

Pretty much as it is, but that is what people always wish for. I thinks its just not possible to create a game where a player has more or less total freedom of choice, leading to seperate paths. Still, Ame sure as hell did the best job anyone could have asked for. Point made.

[Jess]

4 hours ago, RhythmMelody said:

 

Actually I'm not annoyed by that at all. I rather think its great, because it's exactly what people could do with their pokemon in the anime. Sure, surfing on a muk might be a bit stretching it, given its bodies density, but tearing down gates with Pokemon, killing baddies with your Pokemon-sword or creating staircases out of Ice is exactly what Pokemon can do, but don't do at all in the games in generel. Which is why I really like that we are able to interact with the field by breaking crystals, freezing water or defog rooms full of steam.

 

Pretty much as it is, but that is what people always wish for. I thinks its just not possible to create a game where a player has more or less total freedom of choice, leading to seperate paths. Still, Ame sure as hell did the best job anyone could have asked for. Point made.

I'm not annoyed by it, you misunderstood me. I'm annoyed that we don't have, say, custom HMs so that we can use that stuff too. I'd love to surf on a Muk, make Ice ladders and similar stuff. Hell, the Ice ladder could serve as Rock Climb!

 

I'd just like a smarter version of MC, even with dialog and many choices.

[ZEL]

12 hours ago, Chase said:

Zero is a FANTASTIC character (@Ama where you at idk what your forum name is now :CCC) 

 

Yes hi I'm here \o Leave it to you to remind me how sad I am :c Zero is an incredible character and I have a lot of feelings about his history and character development. Unfortunately, I don't think the game will be touching on it. There are many characters deemed more important, and we have a lot of plot going on as it is. There is no way to squeeze in everything, and ultimately this specific character's story wouldn't add enough to the overall story to justify putting it in this already very long game. I am not a fan of how his arc goes in the game, but it's understandable it was done this way. ...and actually I'm not even sure how much info Ice shared with Ame. Oops. In the light of people pointing out the lack of good or redeemable male characters, he would have made a great example of the latter, though. Though I think that he wouldn't be fulfilling Jess' criteria here either; Zero canonically ultimately goes from jerk to 'jerk with a heart of gold' - he certainly learns some lessons, but he doesn't miraculously turn friendly. (PS I'm on mobile and suffering, excise the dozen edits and possible remaining typos)

Edited August 1, 2017 by ZEL

[Egzample]

After Ame's explanation, now I understand - but during my first playthrough I felt the lack of something as early as near the first gym and then it hit me in the orphanage - the lack of strong, masculine character at all, not only a positive one. It came through my head, why all the male characters we meet are girly, so it wasn't even about the balance between amount of guys and girls. The only truly strong, 'regular' (not being a fused mutant, or a demon of questionable sex, or a kid), memorable male characters are Solaris and maybe Arclight. No offense, but back then in orphanage, when I wasn't even on forums, my thought was like 'gee, the creators here either hate men, or are heavily brainwashed by pathological feminists'. 

[murcrow]

I'm kind surprised you guys are caring so much about the lack of a certain gender in the game. I totally hate political correctess and sjw but this game should be the perfect example on how to make a progressive game right. While she did have the bias in the beggining it never became about ideology and it was more about being a good game. Having more woman main characters should not even be a point to be brough up, since i'm pretty sure none of the critics ever complained about "lack of woman" in other games.

Edited August 8, 2017 by murcrow
typo

[Egzample]

You see, it is totally not about ideology, 50/50 parity, etc., as it was mentioned in this thread many times - it is about the general view and the impression this game briefly gives. It is about the 'screenwriting' and design - if the soundtrack, or any other element, is misplaced in a movie, most of the people notice that something is not right here, and here we got the same case - many people feel that simply the design of male characters in the game is not the best, or it simply sucks, there is some imbalance in it, and that's why this topic is brought up, it has nothing to do with personal beliefs - especially that Ame explained above why it is so, and she indeed might have subconsciously made it not really in the intended way.

 

There is no need to see political correctness or anything here, really -

5 hours ago, murcrow said:

I totally hate political correctess and sjw but

Mate, you care too much about it. And explain to me please what is an 'progressive' game.

[murcrow]

My point is more towards the double standard that I believe some of the critics have. As I mentioned, i`m pretty sure lots of the people upset about it never felt this way when it is the other way around, fewer woman eg, and are doing it here

 

5 hours ago, example said:

 

Mate, you care too much about it. And explain to me please what is an 'progressive' game.

I don`t really care as long as it does not affect the game, there are plenty of games that add totally out of place characters just to reach a "quota". As i said, i love the game and it is done right.

All tough i do have a problem of how the gym leaders are basically all over the place and never at their gym, you know in case someone else would want a badge lol

[Alistair]

I find the relative female majority in Reborn rather refreshing. As Ame very rightly mentioned, games with an extensive cast have often been male-dominated (outside of the 'harem' genre which obviously isn't kind to females), so it doesn't hurt to have the opposite trend for a change. Tbh, a few years ago I wouldn't have cared as much. But now I appreciate seeing many women with believable, fully developed personalities in a game, instead of the cardboard silhouettes presented as characters that we're usually served. Because that's how real life is. You're not always going to find yourself in groups of people with mostly male individuals as paragons of virtue and strength, or even as interesting people at all.

 

A big part of what makes Reborn's story and characters believable and compelling is how it's based off real people and events. So what if the real-life Reborn League had many girls in it? That's just fine, the game's overall quality obviously won't decrease because of this. Moreover, just because the male characters in the game aren't heroes in shining armor doesn't mean they're not great at what they do. Cal is interesting thanks to his quest for redemption; Fern, Blake, Corey, Sigmund, Zero and Solaris are all fantastic antagonists; Cain, Noel and Radomus are awesome. So you see, it's really not as if we were facing a shortage of cool dudes either, Blake being the coolest of all (huehuehue). Ame may have subconsciously had trouble writing positive males at some point, yet I never felt sexism was an issue anywhere in this game. And I've played Reborn quite a lot by now, so if there were any real problem with this, I think I would have noticed =p

 

TL;DR the game is choke-full of great characters, female and male. I personally think Ame did a good job at writing them and if any hint if misandrism bled through, I honestly haven't felt it. Reborn neither tries to have perfect parity nor be a 'sjw dream'. It just feels right and real.

[Jess]

Allow me to point out that my initial point wasn't the fact that females are more than males in Reborn. I'm perfectly OK with that, I am not walking around everywhere I go counting to get "equality" in numbers.

It was the fact that almost all Reborn women are all either clever and courageous (e.g. Florinia, Charlotte), or sweet and nice (e.g Shelly, Anna) or simply badass, while almost all men are simple-minded, POWAH-approaching everything, or just on the other side of the law.

 

Numbers was never the issue. About numbers I agree with @Alistair and Ame that it is refreshing, based on how many male-majority video games we have. But the treatment towards women and men in Reborn characters is a bit annoying for my liking. However, this is subjective. I got annoyed by it after replaying Reborn for the 4th time. Someone might like this actually. It is perfectly normal. We can't all share the same opinions. It just felt a bit off to me, so I thought I'd share my opinion.

 

Now, if this is enough to characterise me as a SJW, then I'm sorry but you are wrong, I'm no such thing @murcrow  

Edited August 9, 2017 by Jess

[BillyBob]

I feel similar to the way Alistair does on this subject. While it is a valid criticism, the lack of strong male characters never really made me uncomfortable. I actually didn't even realize it until reading this thread. I usually look at characters on an individual basis (and while it probably sounds unrealistic, usually dont really take gender into account.) That being said, I still feel like there are plenty of great male characters in this game. Like right off the bat you have Cain, someone who always makes me smile when he has screen time (except for when he sings.) On top of guys like Arc, Cal, and Taka, not to mention the best character ever fight me Radomus, I really can't personally complain about the male characters in this game. And honestly, whats wrong with having the stoic defender be a female for a change?

 

In the end, I can totally see where this complaint is coming from by a sheer numbers calculation. And I can definitely see that many of the Female characters in this are good while many of the men are working for team meteor (even though by far the most evil entity in this entire game is female). But I feel like maybe we are reading way too far into this. Most of the characters in this game were written based on real people, after all. I feel like absolute parity is impossible without specifically ensuring it. And that really isn't what we should be encouraging. We shouldn't be hamstringing writers by forcing them to have certain roles fulfilled by both genders. Otherwise you end up with characters that don't need to exist simply to ensure parity. The characters in this game are each great individually, and I don't think there is anything wrong with leaving it at that.

 

By the way, does no one remember aster? Or Simon? Like those two guys and their reactions to the events of their side stories hit me right in the feels ;-; 

[ZEL]

1 hour ago, BillyBob said:

(even though by far the most evil entity in this entire game is female)

Finally someone acknowledges Terra for what she is

[Alistair]

1 hour ago, BillyBob said:

 

By the way, does no one remember aster? Or Simon? Like those two guys and their reactions to the events of their side stories hit me right in the feels ;-; 

Oh, Aster, how could I miss you T.T

He and Eclipse had some funny moments. He's easily forgotten, sadly (as evidenced by my complete lack of mentioning him, lol) and he's yet another Meteor guy, but he's necessary to humanize the usually faceless Meteor grunts. Simon and Tara do that too. Honestly this game has such an extensive cast of nicely written characters that it really feels like a bustling little world of its own. 

[Dreamy]

I'm not going to weigh in on the main gender/stereotype discussion here (though I don't think there's an issue really) but I will briefly share some thoughts on the whole HM and NPC's using pokemon outside of battle thing.

 

In many games, Story, Gameplay and Logic are tied together in a way that means often for some areas to shine, others have to suffer, or one will struggle due to the restrictions of another. this is often especially prevalent with pokemon due to the fact that with the world built the way it is for its stories and gameplay, the inherrant logic of pokemon worlds is somewhat flawed and full of holes when you try to heavily investigate or try to flesh things out as much as a real world.

Some specific examples off the top of my head: (reborn and general)

 

Levels : this is a big one. very important for the core of pokemon gameplay, yet often causes logic to suffer greatly when it comes to relative power levels of people who you battle. Extensions of this are Level Caps and Gym Team Power, the former doesn't really make sense story or logic-wise, especially with opponents who obviously don't have any badges but match or exceed your level. simplest option here is making them fully non-canon but then they can never be mentioned in-game without breaking immersion. The latter is more just about logic/story inconsistancies regardless of which system you choose (most noticeable with julia, florina, shelly in reborn): if the leaders have separate gym and personal teams, why don't they use their strong pokemon in things like the raid on mosswater. if they just have one team, did we happen to catch them when they were weak and now that they've grown stronger, do new challengers then have to fight Julias lv60+ team to get their first badge? If someone has a consistantly working system for this, lemme know. (we won't go into gym leader rank/ordering based on this)

 

Out of Battle actions by NPCs: Reborn is more guilty of this than main games, but thats because it tells a more intricate story with more NPC interraction. This seems like logic suffering for the sake of story, and in the players case, due to the restrictions of gameplay. Example is coral pier, logic says that Amaria could've rescued oshawott in one of several ways with her pokemon, but instead we got nice interraction with Cain, Amaria and ourselves, Cain obtaining oshwott and a battle with Cain. We sacrificed logic for story. Things like saphira tearing down metal fences is a case of sacrificing logic for gameplay and story in that it gives proper progression of areas. One of the more glaring examples is that the player can't free themselves from the nuzleaf cage, which doesn't result in much story addition, and is more likely to be noticed by the player due to the wait time. this feels like a sacfice of logic for gameplay consistancy more than anything else, i.e "if we can cut/burn that, why cant we destroy XYZ?" Some of this comes down to suspension of disbelief and rule of cool, and usually if you aren't trying to be too critical and just immersing yourself in the story, its often not a big deal. 

Not saying you can't be critical of this stuff, but it's important to understand that it's nigh impossible to avoid a lot of this with the world and gameplay we have and still have a good game.

 

That's all for now, not sure if I'll revisit this or not.

[Egzample]

14 hours ago, murcrow said:

My point is more towards the double standard that I believe some of the critics have. As I mentioned, i`m pretty sure lots of the people upset about it never felt this way when it is the other way around, fewer woman eg, and are doing it here

Once again, it is not about the numbers. To put it into perspective: nobody says Tomb Raider would be better with a male main character, but female Agent 007 sounds ridicolous. Both of those ideas may have their fans, tough - de gustibus non est disputandum - but still it is a ridicolous idea, that would ruin the franchise (hello, Ghost Busters).

 

6 hours ago, Jess said:

It was the fact that almost all Reborn women are all either clever and courageous (e.g. Florinia, Charlotte), or sweet and nice (e.g Shelly, Anna) or simply badass, while almost all men are simple-minded, POWAH-approaching everything, or just on the other side of the law.

Exactly.

 

[cakeofdoom]

I disagree with your first point. I don't find there to be any really dumb male characters that just try to brute force everything (maybe except Aster?) You use Hardy as an example, but he isn't stupid, he's impulsive. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can be smart but still have a bad temper. He shows that he has a great sense of compassion and he is able to think: "hey, this new gym leader might be having a hard time because she's young and stuff, let me go help her out". Note that no other characters did this. I don't know where you got your idea that Samson is stupid from either, he seems reasonably smart, though he is old fashioned, but once again those two things are not mutually exclusive either. You also ignore the huge amount of female characters that act stupid or inconsiderate like Victoria, Serra, Heather, Kiki, Julia and Florina. That's not to say these characters are stupid, but they do stupid stuff, just like some male characters do dumb stuff without being unintelligent characters. 

 

I do however agree that there are way more good and kind female characters than male characters. Ame also agrees so it would be stupid of me not to. However I think you should judge them based on how good they are and not on whether or not they have broken the law. I don't think there is anything wrong with having a game in which there are more good women than men - as long as you make sure this doesn't happen to the point of it becoming the trend (which it might be, women are often portrayed as nicer and kinder than men). If anyone asked I wouldn't call this game especially sexist in of itself, sexism in media is almost only possible to analyze by analyzing larger samples.