November 20th, 2006
That's possibly a bit ambitious as titles go, but it's something that I've been thinking about. My buddy Kameron is pretty good at dinging me when I make stupid gender assumptions or play into the classic stereotypes without really thinking about it, and I've had and seen some very good conversations at The Hathor Legacy and the Feminist Gamers livejournal. Because I'm on Mass Effect relatively late in the project -- well, very late in the project -- it's not my place to comment on the feminist ideas explored in the main game.
However, with the dinky little subplots, I've got the curious freedom of tinyness. The plots are supposed to take a day to write, an hour to script, and five minutes to play, and I'm always moving on to the next one. Because these are talking and conversation plots, I'm dealing with social issues some of the time, and I will occasionally get little flashes of "Hey, Kameron would suggest that I do this," or "The Hathor folks would probably complain if I did that." So I try to futz with things to create, if not completely feminist plots -- because a real study of feminism through a plot is going to be longer than the subplots I'm working on -- at least plots that won't make my friend Kameron roll her eyes at the gender stereotypes.
We'll see how it goes.
So like I said, we'll see. Two little five-minute plots, with the help of my kick-ass editor and the shoulder-angels of all the feminists I know. They may not be feminist subplots, but I'm hoping that, if nothing else, they aren't egregiously unfeminist.
