- Joined
- Jan 24, 2023
Long autism ahead, that I'm glad I can share on here without being hunted for sport.
When I learned this, it just hit me how fake the whole concept of non-binary is even within the context of a hyperstylized game with living objects and fantasy creatures. Seam could have been read as either male or female, because the archetype kind of fits various types of fantasy characters. Seam is like a recluse wizard without a hat, or some sort of babushkat witch, either works.
Maybe it's because I see the whole non-binary thing as something young people would do, thus being kind of generous by ignoring that Kris is referred to as "they", even though I personally always see him as a teenage guy, you can even probably recall some boy from your class looking and acting like him. And this thing is an old cat-like toy. Sure, a toy, so by definition it's sexless, logically it would be more appropriate to refer to a sentient object with neutral pronouns, more so than to a human, but still, applying this logic feels forced and really fake, and an entity that is clearly an elderly creature being "non-binary" just doesn't sit right. That's just not how character design works.
Technically the whole dark world is "non-binary" in a sense that these are objects, or at the very least, creatures that clearly don't reproduce the way mammals do. Huge ton of characters from the dark world may swap their pronouns, their designs are wacky and vague enough to be read as either masculine or feminine, with elements of non-conformity to assumed gender to be brushed off as fantasy, joke, wackiness, or anything else. I can imagine Ralsei being either a boy or girl. Rudinns or Hathys can be either too, and other similar NPCs. Their overall design just works. All of them are sexless, but presenting them as anything other than male or female, regardless of how conforming to the gender they are, will always feel fake and retarded. Like with snails, almost everyone knows they're hermaphrodites, but it would be retarded to make an anthro snail character to be an intersex (with exception of that serving a major point for the story) themlet. When things are humanized, they're usually applied gender, because gendered experience is a huge part of being a human. There's no "non-binary" experience, let one the one that can be naturally integrated into the story without sounding out of place, even within an imaginary setting. That's just bad character design. Or intentional catering/blurring the lines between source material and fanfiction/assorted transformative works and parodies that by definition allow these freedoms. It's tacky.
For fucks sake, even having a character that looks like a man/woman but says they're "actually a woman/man" for comical effect, like Queen being a (drag) Queen, because she looks so comically feminine/borderline AGPish and is voiced by Toby, would have been even better than having any non-binary characters at all. Although, maybe not, these types of jokes won't fly with current political climate for both sides. The idea of making a character that looks like one age/sex group but is in reality something else for the sake of random joke or carefully selected juxtaposition can't really work anymore, and not within a woke setting full of these characters anyway. Besides, something of this sorts seem to have already happened...
Aka troon pride content with Lanino and Elnina. Which is really tiresome at this point. I really like them and they seemed like one of those rare happy straight couples with them being annoyed by polyamory on top of that is a cherry on top, but fandom basically sees them as spicy t4t straights. Were their names intentionally picked as Lanino and Elnina?
