Wednesday 7 October 2009

Gender: queer.

Damn, damn, damn.

I've squandered my way through £30 this weekend buying and re-exchanging games.

The first game in this saga was Prototype, for the Xbox 360. The purchase was a bit of a blow-out as I'd wanted it since it came out, but after I'd spent a few unsatisfying hours running up buildings, and jumping really really high, I realised I just wanted someone to tell me how the game ended instead of finding out for myself. [Wait a moment, did i just subconsciously review a game? No. No, I couldn't have. Hm.]

Normally, I'd just sit it somewhere out of sight where it could wait for my fickle game-moods to swing back to a state of being interested, but I know money will be tight real soon (thanks, moving out!), so I thought I'd like to spend the money on something I know I'd enjoy. So I hovered around for 30 minutes in GameStation, drifting listlessly between Ghostbusters, Fuel, Blue Dragon (I came to xb360 gaming late, and have the privilege of thinking older games are still fun and fresh), The Darkness, Fuel again, Saints Row, Saints Row 2, the one with the cowboys, Fuel for the third time, and back to the bargain wall once more.

I plumped, in the end, for Fable II and a collection of umd videos for mam, who by the way is really loving her beautiful, slimline psp.

But here's the crux, the basic, central, or critical point or feature, of this blogpost (and mighty blogworthy I thought it, too - full of pseudo-angst stemming from the pseudo-world of my budding digital-media neuroses):

Do i make my Fable II character a girl or a boy?

Most games default to a boy character (aha! the notable exceptions: tomb raider, fighting games involving jiggly boobs, urban chaos, resident evil), so I reckon I'm not alone in the Girl Gamer World by being entirely, 100% comfortable playing as a laddo in a platforming, running-jumping-climbing-Eddie-Izzard-quotes sort of environment. But as far as rpgs go, I feel I need to look to my inner self to balance out the issue of "with which gender do i identify strongestly?":

- I'm not a boy
- but if there's a heterosexual love interest in the game, I will be moderately more involved if it's a girlfriend
- I'm more used to identifying as a more masculine presence in The Real World
- I can't shake that weird feeling that stems from playing Streets Of Rage as a child, where playing as the woman was faster
- boy characters are often cooler, and make me less intimidated physically in The Real World
- it would be awesome if I could be a girl character who is some sort of Matrix version of me (because all lesbians secretly long to look like Trinity, or that blonde girl who died, in the Matrix, apologies for the spoilers to all people reading this from 1998)
- but then, I would be more vulnerable to people seeing my Self as i wished to see me - thus, a boy character is a better disguise for my real Self (as People are not to be Trusted and should be Shunned and sometimes Beaten when appropriate)

of course, i think we all know what the real issue is here.

I have too much time on my hands to think about stuff like this.