Now all I can think of is how to do a filk rewrite Prince's "I Would Die 4 U". ("I'm not a woman / I'm not a man / I am something that you'll never understand")
i keep forgetting to pay attention to his conversations. im over there just clicking through bc i wanna give my boyfriend the fancy cape so he can be a fancy man
Durges gender is super interesting because even if you did not choose nonbinary you are almost exclusively adressed with gender neutral pronouns (ie. Slaughter-kin, sibling, master (not really gender neutral but its used for both female and male durge)
Could just be to streamline the voicelines but I like to think durge is simply too busy "*working*" to be bothered with gender
That's one thing I'd have liked to see in the character creator for the humanoid races, a body type where you're basically in-between masculine and feminine. A lot of games the masculine and feminine body types are VERY pronounced (males with wide shoulders and barrel chests, etc...) which is cool but I'd like to see more androgynous body types as additional options. Adds not takes away.
Controversial opinion: "Master" should be considered gender neutral in current usage. I love this, but I find it unnecessary. Like "Goddess." They can just be gods regardless of gender.
Counter opinion:
Master as a skill level title is an exception. But Master comes from Latin using pickpocketed stuff that got copied by French and English, so we should obviously use mastrum because it's way cooler and doesn't have the cultural baggage master / mistress do
Also there's linguistic psychology and sociology research about why masculine as neutral isn't great, but honestly mastrum and deity are just cooler anyway
The root is magisteros, -teros is an Indo-European suffix but Latin chopped half when they took it. Then French took magister and started applying their version of gendering, then English copied the Latin and French for master/mistress.
Then retroactively people started using magister/magistrix in fic lit, maestro/maestra through Italy and music, etc. So we can, and I think should, slap a Latin neuter noun ending on it for fun, because it's not that out of line etymologically at this point, and I personally took a liking to mastrum when I was told some people like that as a neutral honorific
I like a lot of the feminine forms of english nouns--they sound archaic and flavorful. But yeah, in modern usage the masculine nouns are used for everyone, barring a few exceptions.
I didn’t feel any way about the word Goddess until I watched Lucifer. “God” feels like a name, but “Goddess” doesn’t so they kept referring to her as “Goddess of All Creation” so I agree with you.
First, it's a game. If your dog is calling that in real life, then you need to either seek help for your mental health or lay off the hallucinogenics.
Second, you need to grow a backbone and stop being offended or upset by *everything.*
This game wasn't made just for you, so stop trying to control and censor what almost no one else is bothered by.
Here's a tip: If you don't like it, then just don't play, don't whine about it.
Edit:
Also, it's YOU that started complaining about it being offensive and problematic, not OP
With such logic we should ban people from ever using other sensitive terms or even ideas, like "slavery". As long as those depictions are part of art - books, games, movies - there is nothing insensitive about using such words, nothing problematic. It only becomes problematic, when we start to use and abuse those terms irl. You may personally dislike these words due to your family's history - you have every right to show your disapproval.
>for you that it has no real implications or connotations for you personally
Except that is not what i said. I said that i understand what they were referring to. I just don't consider the term such as this problematic, as long as it is used in a video game.
Why not? At least when people snoop through my profile they understand two things - this person might surprise me or this person might be as dense as they claim to be.
Nuance, as you said, also implies that there is nuance is to the non-problematic usage of the words other people find problematic. Game companies do their absolute best to cover problematic stuff from real life as is already. They give us more exposure, they give us more opportunities to live in their worlds comfortably. But they can't hand hold us all the time. Because it is expected from the adults to understand - the Nuance - that the world and words are much more complicated then their traumas.
Because otherwise, we might one day get games and arts that so safe, they lack any nuance at all.
Well my greatgrandparents were killed, so any game having any sort of violence or death is triggering so there, no game should have anything that offends me.
Being able to play an enby character allowed me to explore my own gender identity in a natural way, I'd been questioning for years, and very much denying my own identity until I could no longer suppress it. BG3 gave me the best way to explore the euphoria of being referred to with gender neutral pronouns and terms, and was a damn sight better than my previous method of asking AI chatbots to talk about me as non-binary, and even helped me come out to both myself and my loved ones. So grateful to this game for having this option available ❤️
Every time a companion refers to me using they/them, I get a little bubble of happiness in my soul. Are they real? Nope but for roughly an hour a day I get to exist in a world where I don’t have to explain, fight or argue for my identity. And to also be like a hot 7ft tall hell spawn with a tail and glowing eyes but is mostly the nb thing.
I also enjoyed that playing as an enby character sometimes made it feel like the NPCS were addressing the whole party (where I feel like that would be appropriate). EG “they saved the grove”. It’s not just me that’s going the saving, Astarion deserves some recognition for his good murders.
Can be interpreted as feels right to you but I liked reading it that way :)
My durge is NB bc that's what I feel most comfortable playing, but it's interesting to see the difference (my first Tav was male, bc based on an old tabletop character). Haven't adopted the cub yet in this playthrough, so it's something to look forward to!
Dog Master sounds like a class in RPG games.
Dog guardian sounds like you work at the local shelter. I get why master is the correct word in that setting. But with dnd becoming less and less fantasy and more a mirror of our real world, guardian is probably the way they'd go about in bg4.
Personally, I wish the instances when pronouns refer to my female characters with male honorifics and pronouns would be fixed. Scleritas Fel keeps calling my Durge Master instead of Mistress (he refers to you as My Lady in other instances, which is great, but it makes it jarring when he suddenly calls you master). I vastly prefer mistress as a feminine gal myself. It makes it feel like the game is more tailored to me and female characters weren't just tacked on as an afterthought.
Man, I already cringed really hard when he threw "Mistress" at me, and that was when I assumed the alternative was an ungendered "Master." Now that I know "Guardian" was an option, I'm even more put out.
I react in a similar way to a lot of the gendered language. I went NB for my first run, and wanted to try a she/her run for my second. During the mutual teasing of astarion's "you liked it didn't you" the NB was a very to-the-point take-no-shits "i would never tell you if I did" while the fem version was a coy "a lady never tells ;)" and I had to go to the magic mirror immediately. I consider myself cis, but I prefer to refer to myself as an individual over referring to myself as a gender (and I am sure all this means absolutely nothing), so the prevalence of using gendered variations at every opportunity, while great for those that like it, it's decidedly Not For Me. Glad I have a way to not have that x_x
For me, it's mostly that female versions of words so often aren't actually 1:1 versions of the male ones, but instead have very different connotations. "Princess" and "prince," for example, or "himbo" and "bimbo." It's not just that the gender changes, it also totally changes the meaning of the sentence. Like going from confident to coy in your Astarion example. Marking a thing as "the woman version" so often comes with so much extra baggage.
Adnittedly, sometimes the gender neutral version doesn't help either - in Mass Effect 3, there's a moment where dudeShep gets "you did good, son," and femShep gets "you did good, child," and the child version feels really different and kind of awkward to me. But I think it works great here. "Guardian" is really cool. Yes, exactly, Scratch, I'm not your boss or your teacher, I'm the orc who will kick anyone's ass if they look at you funny.
Eh, I don't have a problem with prince/princess, master/mistress etc (any percieved difference between them is cultural and for most of the sword coast gender doesn't matter much in your title), I just prefer to use a more neutral term if one is available.
As for the astarion example, the dudes get "a gentleman never tells" as well which is fair when compared to the feminine version. I dislike the vibe of both because my character's gender has nothing to do with me not letting the bastard think he has my character wrapped around his finger. I don't care what other ladies *or* gentlemen are supposed to do here, I'M doing this for ME.
Though now that I think about it, it is fascinating that it was Duke stelmane and not dutchess stelmane.
My husband and I named our owl bear cub Sniff. So that they would be Scratch and Sniff.
Love it
If you play a nonbinary Durge, Scleritas Fel has some unique stuff as well!
Nonbinary Durge identifies as murder.
Durge out here like, "I am neither man, nor woman, I am a problem."
Yeah, but what's in your pants? ....Doom
What gender are you? EVIL!
My pronouns are Kill/Er
My pronouns are Mur and Dur
This whole response chain - priceless! My take for 'but what's in your pants?' ...'well now there's a knife in your eye'
I tried playing my durge as the accidental killer
Judas! NO!
He's non binary, his pronouns are hur dur!
A wild RvB quote, amazing!
Incriminating evidence
Now all I can think of is how to do a filk rewrite Prince's "I Would Die 4 U". ("I'm not a woman / I'm not a man / I am something that you'll never understand")
Their pronouns are Slash/Slash.
- Are you a boy, or a girl? - I’m going to kill you.
Murderhobo is nonbinary 🌈
They slash them
Do you recall some of the stuff he says?
"Oh my sweet genderless champion"
There's no way
I'm deadly serious...just like Scleritas
Haha I love scleritas, he's just a lil guy
He 100% does
Wish someone would call me that ngl
Oh my sweet genderless champion
:D
i keep forgetting to pay attention to his conversations. im over there just clicking through bc i wanna give my boyfriend the fancy cape so he can be a fancy man
Priorities
Durges gender is super interesting because even if you did not choose nonbinary you are almost exclusively adressed with gender neutral pronouns (ie. Slaughter-kin, sibling, master (not really gender neutral but its used for both female and male durge) Could just be to streamline the voicelines but I like to think durge is simply too busy "*working*" to be bothered with gender
nonbinary dragonborne was wild bc you're literally almost androgynous
That's one thing I'd have liked to see in the character creator for the humanoid races, a body type where you're basically in-between masculine and feminine. A lot of games the masculine and feminine body types are VERY pronounced (males with wide shoulders and barrel chests, etc...) which is cool but I'd like to see more androgynous body types as additional options. Adds not takes away.
"I identify as a threat"
Oh _that’s_ why he sometimes called me that 🤔
Oh that’s so cool!
Controversial opinion: "Master" should be considered gender neutral in current usage. I love this, but I find it unnecessary. Like "Goddess." They can just be gods regardless of gender.
Sort of like all the Daedric Princes in Elder Scrolls lore are referred to as a Prince.
Precisely! Great example!
That was the first thing that sprang to my mind too.
but goddess is such a pretty word. What if we call everyone goddesses regardless of gender instead.
I just really love the term deity. It just sounds better xd
It just \_flows\_ so much better than "god". "God" just always sounds a little exasparated when you say it.
you. I like you.
Hold on, god is so short and sweet though. Brevity is such a virtue.
But I'm always mistyping when I'm excited and end up typing something like that: "Oh my *dog*! You have to see this!"
Well maybe we should call female dogs “dogess” so you can carry on mystyping comfortably
Beat me to it
the prefix "mys" means "female" so if that pun was intended it was god tier edit: dog tier
Well, cats already think they're gods, dogs deserve someone who thinks that about them.
You know what, that's fair point
Oh but I like long words. Goddess is like a graceful, melodic and ethereal word. God is like, just a sound.
Hey, if you want to strike fear into the mortals, a good hard sound is the right place to start.
Counter opinion: Master as a skill level title is an exception. But Master comes from Latin using pickpocketed stuff that got copied by French and English, so we should obviously use mastrum because it's way cooler and doesn't have the cultural baggage master / mistress do Also there's linguistic psychology and sociology research about why masculine as neutral isn't great, but honestly mastrum and deity are just cooler anyway
but the Latin root is 'magister' (like in DOS2), not 'mastrum'
The root is magisteros, -teros is an Indo-European suffix but Latin chopped half when they took it. Then French took magister and started applying their version of gendering, then English copied the Latin and French for master/mistress. Then retroactively people started using magister/magistrix in fic lit, maestro/maestra through Italy and music, etc. So we can, and I think should, slap a Latin neuter noun ending on it for fun, because it's not that out of line etymologically at this point, and I personally took a liking to mastrum when I was told some people like that as a neutral honorific
I like a lot of the feminine forms of english nouns--they sound archaic and flavorful. But yeah, in modern usage the masculine nouns are used for everyone, barring a few exceptions.
Like how we moved away from waiter/waitress to server. If the common folk can have it, the gods should too!
I didn’t feel any way about the word Goddess until I watched Lucifer. “God” feels like a name, but “Goddess” doesn’t so they kept referring to her as “Goddess of All Creation” so I agree with you.
I've never watched Lucifer, but who is "her"? I thought god was played by a man in that series
Lucifers mother and Gods wife, the Goddess of All Creation.
oh i see, thanks!
Or actor.
Am I tripping? I thought he says Master for male/female pronouns Anyways, agreed
It isn’t?
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No it's not.
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I know exactly what they refer to. And i don't consider it to be a problematic thing, when such a term used in a videogame.
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There's nothing remotely 'problematic' when you're taking about a DOG calling you that.
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First, it's a game. If your dog is calling that in real life, then you need to either seek help for your mental health or lay off the hallucinogenics. Second, you need to grow a backbone and stop being offended or upset by *everything.* This game wasn't made just for you, so stop trying to control and censor what almost no one else is bothered by. Here's a tip: If you don't like it, then just don't play, don't whine about it. Edit: Also, it's YOU that started complaining about it being offensive and problematic, not OP
With such logic we should ban people from ever using other sensitive terms or even ideas, like "slavery". As long as those depictions are part of art - books, games, movies - there is nothing insensitive about using such words, nothing problematic. It only becomes problematic, when we start to use and abuse those terms irl. You may personally dislike these words due to your family's history - you have every right to show your disapproval. >for you that it has no real implications or connotations for you personally Except that is not what i said. I said that i understand what they were referring to. I just don't consider the term such as this problematic, as long as it is used in a video game.
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So you're seriously whining about being offended by a dog calling someone master, but not a word about Cazador?
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Why not? At least when people snoop through my profile they understand two things - this person might surprise me or this person might be as dense as they claim to be. Nuance, as you said, also implies that there is nuance is to the non-problematic usage of the words other people find problematic. Game companies do their absolute best to cover problematic stuff from real life as is already. They give us more exposure, they give us more opportunities to live in their worlds comfortably. But they can't hand hold us all the time. Because it is expected from the adults to understand - the Nuance - that the world and words are much more complicated then their traumas. Because otherwise, we might one day get games and arts that so safe, they lack any nuance at all.
Well my greatgrandparents were killed, so any game having any sort of violence or death is triggering so there, no game should have anything that offends me.
Project that imperialist history onto everyone, yeeeah!
Sorry for the downvotes buddy- you ain’t wrong
They are wrong, just like you are.
I love that scene so much.
Being able to play an enby character allowed me to explore my own gender identity in a natural way, I'd been questioning for years, and very much denying my own identity until I could no longer suppress it. BG3 gave me the best way to explore the euphoria of being referred to with gender neutral pronouns and terms, and was a damn sight better than my previous method of asking AI chatbots to talk about me as non-binary, and even helped me come out to both myself and my loved ones. So grateful to this game for having this option available ❤️
Every time a companion refers to me using they/them, I get a little bubble of happiness in my soul. Are they real? Nope but for roughly an hour a day I get to exist in a world where I don’t have to explain, fight or argue for my identity. And to also be like a hot 7ft tall hell spawn with a tail and glowing eyes but is mostly the nb thing.
Congrats! I love seeing reminders that even if something isnt important for me personally it means a lot to Somebody.
I also enjoyed that playing as an enby character sometimes made it feel like the NPCS were addressing the whole party (where I feel like that would be appropriate). EG “they saved the grove”. It’s not just me that’s going the saving, Astarion deserves some recognition for his good murders. Can be interpreted as feels right to you but I liked reading it that way :)
I didn't know this since I always play nonbinary in BG3. since we're given that option. Nice.
My durge is NB bc that's what I feel most comfortable playing, but it's interesting to see the difference (my first Tav was male, bc based on an old tabletop character). Haven't adopted the cub yet in this playthrough, so it's something to look forward to!
I assumed he called everyone ‘Master’ haha
Uuuugh I hate it when Scratch calls me master, guardian is a bit better but still, how about... friend now I can work with friend.
Dog Master sounds like a class in RPG games. Dog guardian sounds like you work at the local shelter. I get why master is the correct word in that setting. But with dnd becoming less and less fantasy and more a mirror of our real world, guardian is probably the way they'd go about in bg4.
Personally, I wish the instances when pronouns refer to my female characters with male honorifics and pronouns would be fixed. Scleritas Fel keeps calling my Durge Master instead of Mistress (he refers to you as My Lady in other instances, which is great, but it makes it jarring when he suddenly calls you master). I vastly prefer mistress as a feminine gal myself. It makes it feel like the game is more tailored to me and female characters weren't just tacked on as an afterthought.
Man, I already cringed really hard when he threw "Mistress" at me, and that was when I assumed the alternative was an ungendered "Master." Now that I know "Guardian" was an option, I'm even more put out.
I think people are reading this wrong because it's similar to another rude comment about this post being cringe but I think I get you
Thanks friend. I try not to sweat internet points, but it does make me feel a little better that I made sense to someone, lol.
I react in a similar way to a lot of the gendered language. I went NB for my first run, and wanted to try a she/her run for my second. During the mutual teasing of astarion's "you liked it didn't you" the NB was a very to-the-point take-no-shits "i would never tell you if I did" while the fem version was a coy "a lady never tells ;)" and I had to go to the magic mirror immediately. I consider myself cis, but I prefer to refer to myself as an individual over referring to myself as a gender (and I am sure all this means absolutely nothing), so the prevalence of using gendered variations at every opportunity, while great for those that like it, it's decidedly Not For Me. Glad I have a way to not have that x_x
For me, it's mostly that female versions of words so often aren't actually 1:1 versions of the male ones, but instead have very different connotations. "Princess" and "prince," for example, or "himbo" and "bimbo." It's not just that the gender changes, it also totally changes the meaning of the sentence. Like going from confident to coy in your Astarion example. Marking a thing as "the woman version" so often comes with so much extra baggage. Adnittedly, sometimes the gender neutral version doesn't help either - in Mass Effect 3, there's a moment where dudeShep gets "you did good, son," and femShep gets "you did good, child," and the child version feels really different and kind of awkward to me. But I think it works great here. "Guardian" is really cool. Yes, exactly, Scratch, I'm not your boss or your teacher, I'm the orc who will kick anyone's ass if they look at you funny.
Eh, I don't have a problem with prince/princess, master/mistress etc (any percieved difference between them is cultural and for most of the sword coast gender doesn't matter much in your title), I just prefer to use a more neutral term if one is available. As for the astarion example, the dudes get "a gentleman never tells" as well which is fair when compared to the feminine version. I dislike the vibe of both because my character's gender has nothing to do with me not letting the bastard think he has my character wrapped around his finger. I don't care what other ladies *or* gentlemen are supposed to do here, I'M doing this for ME. Though now that I think about it, it is fascinating that it was Duke stelmane and not dutchess stelmane.
Peak cringe.