You tell 'em, Shepard

[trinityvixen]

Penny Arcade is occasionally impenetrable to me because despite loving video games, I don't actually play that many. Today's strip, though, was about Mass Effect, a game with which I am so intimately familiar, we are common law spouses in 16 countries. Still, I needed to read the run-down on why this was suddenly a thing to figure out why this comic is even more awesome than previous thought.

I had heard some while ago that BioWare is making a stab at true parity for their games by offering, for the first time, a version of Mass Effect (in this case, the third game) where the cover has a female Shepard on it. (If you call her "FemShep," I kill you. Fuck you, she's not a brand of Shepard. She is Shepard. If you start in with the FemShep bullshit, you better be modifying male Shepard to ButtfuckuglyShep.) Apparently, there is a Facebook poll where you can vote on which Shepard you want to be the archetype female Shepard, since there hasn't been one on a cover before from which to take the basic female avatar.

Except...there has been? There is definitely a default female Shepard, and I'm sure that, despite changing scars and hair color, most of my female Shepards have been largely unchanged from this default. Why not just put her on the cover? Whatever, people are reeeeeeeally pissed that a blonde Shepard is/was leading (with Penny Arcade commenting on it, I'm sure those numbers will change). I don't get why she's automatically dumber-looking/less feminist-looking (buh?) for being blonde. I think she looks pretty fucking badass, actually. She looks goddamn dangerous with that glower, which, whatever the skin-tone politics of these options are, does come across more easily in a picture with a paler skinned avatar. Not that Shepard 2 doesn't look like one serious motherfucker. (She's a demon, you guys. HER EYES. DO NOT LOOK AT THEM.) But Shepard 5 actually looks like she's been through a sweaty firefight, which, okay, I can see how that may sex her up a little to some, but to me it mostly looks like she's walked through the fire and her hair's a mess as it should be. The others are all too clean-cut, unruffled to be really soldier-y.

As far as girly-girl stupid looks ago, I think the model for Shepard 6 is the wors. She looks like Snow White, and a less badass Disney Princess has never graced this world. Shepard 4 looks like she was kicked out of an emo band, with her pouty lips and hair covering one eye. Shepard 1 is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Her precious pixie cut makes her look like you could snap her neck like a chicken's. If anything undercuts Shepard's goddamned dangerous, no nonsense reputation, it's a haircut that last looked good on Twiggy.

So I appreciate Penny Arcade's take. Because precious haircut or hair color shade synonymous with dumb, Shepard is a mean motherfucker. End of story.

Comments

[equustel.livejournal.com]

Mass Effect, a game with which I am so intimately familiar, we are common law spouses in 16 countries.

This is wonderful.

Seriously though, I'm with you on the consternation over blonde-Shepard. She looks fierce! And as a blonde myself, I am always looking for new ways to rescue our kind from the vapid-and-useless stereotype. GO BLONDE SHEP. *waves flag*

That said, I also love Shep 2 (the redhead).

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Aesthetically, I don't actually mind emo-Shepard 4. I like the darker skin and pouty lips, it's just that they're so wrong for an ass-kicker like Shepard. That hair? People think the blonde hair would get in the way? Try seeing through strategically placed bangs!

Blonde Shepard is badass. Aside from Pixie-Shepard, they're all badass. The decision to make this an issue is, as Penny Arcade points out, complete bollocks.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

That comic leaves me with a single question:

Why *can't* we punch people who annoy us in Mass Effect by this point?

It doesn't have to be at Fallout levels (where you can use your sneak skill to drop live grenades in *anyone's* pants), but surely there's a middle ground?

[cubby-t-bear.livejournal.com]

In real life, it's possible to put a satisfactory conclusion completely out of reach without killing yourself. If this happened in a video game, people would complain that they are being strung along. Letting you randomly kill people you dislike in conversation is very disruptive to plotting a world where you can always come back and win :)

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

Is why I suggested a middle ground. We can't all be Bethesda.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Why *can't* we punch people who annoy us in Mass Effect by this point?

You can! In Mass Effect 2, if you play renegade Shepard, you can full-on interrupt a dude's speechifying by killing the motherfucker. Even when I was Paragon!Shepard I itched to pull the trigger on that one (literally, since the interrupt function is an XBOX trigger button). I don't think you can manage to get much more than that into the game without closing off the future events. Since people don't spend $60 on a game that will tell them to go back to the beginning like some Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-Novel, I doubt it can go farther than that.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

That's too much though. You should be able to punch someone so they run away.

Then you should have to deal with the consequences of them not liking you.

"I need you to open this door for me that has the plot device behind it."
"...no."
"Why not?"
"Because YOU PUNCHED ME IN THE FACE!"
"...can I make it up to you?"
*new quest*

I figure, if Fallout can grenade-in-the-pants almost every character, major or minor, without totally wrecking the plot, Mass Effect can do it with minor characters who don't matter.

[cubby-t-bear.livejournal.com]

There's a reporter you can punch. It's pretty neat :)

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

The interrupts are awesome :)
Shoot dude during speech, blow up gas pipe, shoot mech while scouting it, punch reporter in face....

There's a reason I'm "Paragade" as they call it :D

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I kept jumping at those things because FLASHING LIGHT! PUSH BUTTON! is kind of ingrained in me from other video games where that's how you finish combos on bosses. I had to keep going back and undoing that because I always play through first as an absolute Paragon. But there were some times where I was like, "Man, if I weren't psychotically determined to be good, you would SO be getting an ass-kicking right now." I think I did, though, keep punching the reporter. She deserved it.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

I think the blonde Shepard looks like a dude.

In any case, none of them stand out to me, and I'm always going to be seriously bothered that she has breast-shaped armor. COME ON. That's like the nipple bat-suit.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I'm telling you, that's where she stores the grenades.

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

I'll take a look at the poll when I'm not at work :)

Amusing timing though, since I'm currently replaying ME1 with a female Shepard, with plans to go through #2 and #3 with her since, well, the male Shepard voice acting in #2 is distinctly sub-par compared to the female.

I altered the appearance of my male Shep in #1, played through 1 & 2, and promptly forgot that that was not the default (I created a pretty standard, clean-cut marine looking character).
When I then loaded up a new save on #2 and spotted the default male, my reaction was pretty much "Who the fuck is the space bum they've swapped Shepard with??"

So yeah, give me the default female Shep face as the cannon option and I'll be damned happy!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Male Shepard is so ugly I cannot look at the screen. I have tried, LORD KNOWS I HAVE TRIED, to make him look not ugly. I have spent hours crafting a male Shepard because I want to play through all the options romantically and there's just some you can't get to without him. But he is so unattractive, it's like, "Really? Really Tali/Jack/Chief/Samara? You'd hit that?"

Whereas you have to try to make female Shepard unattractive. I'm shallow enough to admit that if I'm spending forever with this character, they should not offend my eyes. Male Shepard is an offense to god. The only one that looks at all okay is the default and he doesn't look that okay.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

I have yet to play #2 (*shakes fist at Gamefly*), but I'm considering switching to the female version of Shepard because everyone keeps saying Jennifer Hale stepped it up and knocked it out of the park so freakin' hard.

[cubby-t-bear.livejournal.com]

Darn it, now you're tempting me to play through ME2 again. With a female lead this time.

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Five isn't bad (though it's likely not art-engine compatible), #6 looks like a Lucy-Liu wannabe, #4 for some reason reminds me of a Mechwarrior pilot.
All of them though make the mistake of going the "We must look like the hell referred to in the proverbs, we must have a glare that strips paint and eyes that stare into the pits of Hades" route.
Seriously, there is nothing wrong with the default female Shepard in game as it is. It fits the rendering, actually looks female (unlike at least one of the ones on the facebook page) and means that, you know, people have some continuity between box art and game?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I agree with you! We have a default Shepard in male and female! Why not use them both! Also, your attempt to be democratic with letting people vote on female Shepard, but not male Shepard, means you still flirt with sexism! Nobody wins!

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

Well, except for the people who voted for #5. Technically, I'm pretty sure they win. :P

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Um. As far as I know, FemShep comes from the fandom porn memes, in which the counterpart is called MShep. It's for requesting porn of your preferred pairing.

Though I admit I prefer Dragon Age 2, in which you can just call them by their entirely different first names.

Also? I really liked the winning FemShep at the time I looked. She looked marginally like my Shepard!

ALSO: answer the email I sent you about water park happenings!