RPGs and the Unseen

[cygna_hime]

No, I don't mean ghosts. I mean: women not polished up and packaged for the consumption of straight men. I mean: queer characters at all. I mean: anyone over thirty, but especially women.

I got angry and hurt last night thinking about how many of the things I love don't seem to love me back. How many of the JRPGs I love, where you fight god and form a family, relegate their female characters to male characters' love interests if they exist at all (looking at you, Final Fantasy XV). How many games and shows don't have a single queer character, or if they do it's as a cruel joke. How the Good-Natured Pervert (or, if you're not feeling charitable, Chronic Sexual Harasser) character is a fixture. How my friend keeps telling me to watch Gurren Lagann, but the first episode I watched was constantly talking about "being a man" in a way that felt like being hit in the face with a No Girls Allowed sign. How everyone says the Persona series is great, but I've also sat in on endless conversations about Atlus's treatment of women and constant flight from anything resembling queerness.

So I am now accepting two things:

1) Recommendations for things in the JRPG vein that will make me feel Seen; and

2) Suggestions for elements to put in an RPG of my own. I have RPG Maker and no artistic skill. I cannot be stopped.

Comments

[kawaiigami]

I can only offer sympathy and join you in fist shaking, unfortunately, since I'm not as familiar with games and game making. Japanese culture brings with it some pretty messed up ideas about gender, relations between genders, and what it means to be a man/woman. It's a shame, since those mess up some really good shows and games.

(can we punt the Chronic Sexual Harrasser together?)

[cygna_hime]

Genderrrrrr! *shakes fists at sky*

And just, like, a lot of unnecessarily gendered-masculine language. Maybe instead of talking about becoming a man we could talk about becoming an adult? Like, just sometimes? Also, in American/Western culture "becoming a woman" is so...completely different and constantly sexualized.

I don't want to blame Japanese culture in specific, necessarily, because goodness knows it's not like American culture doesn't have plenty of Ideas that we could do without. But it's true that what I've as it were been taught about Japanese gender culture via media is Not Great a lot of the time.

(*punts him so hard*)