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Oh for fuck's sake
Aug. 17th, 2011 03:54 pmCare of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
xannoside, I have discovered that the attempt to crowd-source what female Shepard of Mass Effect 3 should look like was only the first part of this asinine process.
Look, I didn't get into this in my last post on this issue, but I'm sure as shit getting into it now. This is complete bullshit. If EA hadn't been so stupid as to never put a female Shepard variant onto their covers before now, this idiocy would never have happened. Instead, their failure to think past male Shepard as their default, despite paying Jennifer Hale what must be a significant amount of money (and not enough, given how good she is) to voice female Shepard, has led to this. Instead of proceeding with no more fanfare of their own than they did when female Shepard had another female romantic partner in Mass Effect (the brou-ha-ha over that was not BioWare's doing, you'll recall; they just wrote the romance), they've decided to make a thing of it.
This is not a way to achieve gender parity. I understand what EA was thinking--"We know! People will think we're all progressive and shit when we put a chick on the cover of Mass Effect 3"--and then they failed to see that the way they're going about it undoes any good will that effort might have engendered. It's stupid, it's patronizing, and it really bothers me that there's this much bullshit going on around a game I love that has mostly avoided this bullshit in the game. The only people who give Shepard a hard time about how he/she can't get the job done are a) stupid, b) proven wrong, and c) making the assumption based on the fact that he/she is human, not that he/she is male/female. So EA should not be making a female Shepard dance to the tune of the masses. If they want a particular Shepard, they can customize her. Instead, by insisting that there be consensus, where none was asked for on male Shepard, they are saying that female Shepard is somehow different. The question of how she is different should be obvious, given this rather sexist approach to finding the female Shepard via Facebook.
The most ridiculous thing about all this is that THERE IS A DEFAULT FEMALE SHEPARD. Put her on the cover and be done with it. This is so uncomfortable and grating and, worse, unnecessary. Way to remind us that women need to have approval of the masses, EA.
xannoside, I have discovered that the attempt to crowd-source what female Shepard of Mass Effect 3 should look like was only the first part of this asinine process.Look, I didn't get into this in my last post on this issue, but I'm sure as shit getting into it now. This is complete bullshit. If EA hadn't been so stupid as to never put a female Shepard variant onto their covers before now, this idiocy would never have happened. Instead, their failure to think past male Shepard as their default, despite paying Jennifer Hale what must be a significant amount of money (and not enough, given how good she is) to voice female Shepard, has led to this. Instead of proceeding with no more fanfare of their own than they did when female Shepard had another female romantic partner in Mass Effect (the brou-ha-ha over that was not BioWare's doing, you'll recall; they just wrote the romance), they've decided to make a thing of it.
This is not a way to achieve gender parity. I understand what EA was thinking--"We know! People will think we're all progressive and shit when we put a chick on the cover of Mass Effect 3"--and then they failed to see that the way they're going about it undoes any good will that effort might have engendered. It's stupid, it's patronizing, and it really bothers me that there's this much bullshit going on around a game I love that has mostly avoided this bullshit in the game. The only people who give Shepard a hard time about how he/she can't get the job done are a) stupid, b) proven wrong, and c) making the assumption based on the fact that he/she is human, not that he/she is male/female. So EA should not be making a female Shepard dance to the tune of the masses. If they want a particular Shepard, they can customize her. Instead, by insisting that there be consensus, where none was asked for on male Shepard, they are saying that female Shepard is somehow different. The question of how she is different should be obvious, given this rather sexist approach to finding the female Shepard via Facebook.
The most ridiculous thing about all this is that THERE IS A DEFAULT FEMALE SHEPARD. Put her on the cover and be done with it. This is so uncomfortable and grating and, worse, unnecessary. Way to remind us that women need to have approval of the masses, EA.
