Male Villains

[ShadowStar]

I thought those cultists were men and women with such heavy robes no one could distinguish if they were male or female.

I actually only noticed the big amount of female Leaders, with out of (I counted) 21 currently known (former) leaders, 14 are female, 2 non binary and 5 males. This includes Corey, Kiki, and Cain.

Now, males being set as the strong villains and females as strong kickass queens does shift some, but I see it blends in great with the Yin Yang principle, having a lot of Female, light, good, characters with some males in it and Male, dark, bad characters with some females in it balances it out quite nicely so you won't hear me complain

The the Tin-Yang principle is a good way to look at it.

[99 Losses]

Post Contains Spoilers!

In earlier episodes I noticed a significant theme was protagonistic women against males with their stereotypical male flaws. For example, the orphanage sisters vs the doctor represented women against dominant and violent men, Kiki and Victoria vs. Cal represented women against seemingly admirable but later backstabbing men, and Luna vs Bennett represented women vs creepy men. These flaws of violence, betrayal, and creepiness can obviously apply to all individuals, but I did notice in reborn they were represented solely by men.

However, this view that Reborn was basically a girls v boys conflict for me collapsed in recent episodes, particularly e14, where Cal became a pretty awesome male protagonist and Terra betrayed the group. I'm super hoping in future episodes we also get to see Hardy, who along with Cal is one of the very few male protags, kick some butt like his sister did. Hardy to me is like an anti-fern because while he is confident and tough he is super chill and nice, so I'm really hoping to see more of him.

[Foamy]

I mean, I'll be the first person to admit that I do have some latent bias against males.

As a male, I'll be the first person to admit that your latent bias is entirely founded. We men are total butts.

[ShadowStar]

As a male, I'll be the first person to admit that your latent bias is entirely founded. We men are total butts.

I would have to say I agree. :/

[Helia]

As a male, I'll be the first person to admit that your latent bias is entirely founded. We men are total butts.

Yes. All the yes. PREACH. It's just true. Men are pigs.

[Gaunt]

Yes. All the yes. PREACH. It's just true. Men are pigs.

I find this offensive, can we please stop generalizing?

[Helia]

I find this offensive, can we please stop generalizing?

Maybe I should have mentioned that I too, am male.

Don't let the name, avatar or signature fool you (the signature actually is a man as well)

[Gaunt]

Maybe I should have mentioned that I too, am male.

Don't let the name, avatar or signature fool you (the signature actually is a man as well)

And how does that change what you said? Except including yourself i mean. Or your intent was to be sarcastic? If so i did not get it...

[Abyssreaper99]

We're getting off topic here a bit so let's get back to the purpose of this topic.

Lin makes up for the lack of female villains for all I'm concerned considering how cool and power hungry she is. I feel that most of the male villains are cool apart from El, Sirius and Fern (if you class him as a villain). The character development is good though so it's easy to find the villains cool, lame, etc.

[Foamy]

Oh man, I can't wait to encounter Lin again. I wanna learn more about her.

I find this offensive, can we please stop generalizing?

It's just males admitting that they, as a gender/biological sex/whatever, have shortcomings. That's hardly a generalization to get offended by.

[Gaunt]

It's just males admitting that they, as a gender/biological sex/whatever, have shortcomings. That's hardly a generalization to get offended by.

Well no it's ONE male calling ALL the males in the entire world "pigs" not only it's offensive (i do not like being called a pig but hey maybe that's just me) it is a derogative and sexist generalization btw i would be totally fine with him saying that SOME (heck even if he said MOST) males behave themselves like that and have those shortcomings, sadly it is not the case which is why i got offended (yeah yeah i complain too much and take it too seriously i know but that's just how i am).

[helix]

I mean, I'll be the first person to admit that I do have some latent bias against males. It's something I'm working on, and I certainly have no intention for that to manifest in my games especially in a way that reflects poorly on men as a whole. But, acknowledging that I do hold that bias, I can't 100% guarantee it doesn't play some part.

However, in defense of that regarding the original topic, one also has to consider the conditions in which this game was made.

None of these characters were written to be game characters. Sigmund, Corey and Elias were all gym leaders from our league who were antagonized by other leaders, Saphira, Heather and Luna. We had our share of drama, and since this game was created as a reflection of the events of the online league, that naturally had to be included.

Now, when formatting those events into a game, there was the question of who's side should we take? Maybe we could have sided with Sigmund, for instance, and portrayed Heather's as actually just crazy and so we needed to wrangle her in. But, in order for that to be an effective plot point in the game, the player has to sympathize with the good Doctor. However, I already knew from the online league that Dr. Connal was not very effective at winning sympathy. Neither were any of those men. Thus, it felt most effective to make them antagonists for the game story.

Sirius and Solaris were characters provided to me by Will; I asked him for a few Meteor admins, and worked with whatever he gave me. I can't speak much to his choices for them.

Regarding NPCs, I am quite interested in that. There are a lot of segments where, I acknowledge, we are not as gender-equal as we should be. For instance, the entire cast of cultists, orderlies and researches, are all male. That's not especially effective.

However, I am less concerned about the people in 7th street being primarily male. This is mainly because I do not believe many girls would be entirely comfortable venturing down to a den of debauchery like that. And there are a few: Craudburry flaunts her money in defense, the Oddishweed lady is facing the danger for the sake of her husband, a doxy here and there, a couple punks, one of whom is implied to be under the protection of her boyfriend, and one who's just too far gone on level-ups to give a fuck... so on. These are the kinds of girls I imagine would feel okay going down to that place.

I did not see a female Pokemon dealer doing a good business-- not because she would be incapable, but because if their urban society is anything like ours, and it is implied to be, all it would take is one of the gangs deciding she's an easy target, to raid her shop and put her out of business. You'll notice the Pokemon Dealer has one of the beefier male sprites. He doesn't seem, to me, like the type of guy a group of rogues would target.

If you disagree with that thinking, I'm interested to hear why.

the way the story works plays into alot of emotions and gender-bias actually works for the story in the earlier scenes: you want to be the hero and the white knight and the whole damn region is a damsel in distress.

the one thing about it though is if a female character shows she has fallen like terra: it causes the characters who know them to rethink everything. plus taka has shown some reservation in every fight, eclipse has shown doubt and most of all fern has shown instability.

at the end of the day the reader can translate the story however they can but in the end the writer only knows the way it will end.

also, as someone who tries to write i know past experiences will judge one's work....so at your own pace and we as the fans will just keep devouring the art as it comes our way

[Jaromir]

This is an issue I didn't think about until I red this topic.

What induced me to think about it was "why did someone started to talk about it". The answer is: through the game, more or less 80% of important characters that are portrayed as "evil" are male.

Now, I know one shouldn't generalize when it comes to gender stereotypes. Reborn has a really complex story, and nothing is completely black or white. As the plot progreses, we get to know characters motives and backgrounds. Therefore, there's no such thing as an evil gender and good gender.

It's just that until we get to know about Lin, all Meteor admins and traitor gym leaders (dr Connal included) were guys. ZEL in body only but still. While the girls, while not weak at all, had to be saved by PC.

If one think about it, it does feel a bit off.

But if one thinks about it more, this "gender difference" is just a coincidence. Ame already said that the gym leaders were antagonized already from the League era. As for Meteors, when counting the characters I realized that we have an ideal 50/50 when it come to important characters (not counting PC, Adrienn and Shade). Before the Meteors were created, there was just more girls then guys in the league, so I think it was just to create some balance.

Soooo, after thinking about it and writing it down, I came to the conclusion that there's no gender bias in reborn.

Besides that, some female orderlies and cultists would be nice.

[ZEL]

I'm another one of the crowd who didn't really think about it so far, gotta admit that.

Ever since learning that many of the characters are based on real people, I just figured that the high number of female characters could be explained that way, but I haven't looked at it in contrast to the mostly-male villain cast before.

More female villains would indeed have been nice; I mean, Lin seems pretty cool as a head honcho so far.

But thinking about it, Lin is the only high-profile female Meteor member who is portrayed as unambigulously evil/made-to-be-disliked so far.

Eve gets significantly less villainous with the backstory reveal, and Lumi has never been portrayed as a villain anyway.

So besides Lin, the Meteors do lack some despicable, non-male leadership.

Same goes for the orderlies and cultists, though with those, they generally don't have all that many important characters to offer, besides their respective leaders.

I didn't see female characters being any more portrayed as damsels in distress than males, however.

It only looks that way because the ratio of female to male is higher.

We did have to save Cain and Noel, two of the guys on our team, and we get assistance from the girls just as much as we save them.

Currently, Aya is the one in need of saving, but she only got into that situation because she saved the PC from Sirius, and if she hadn't done that and Sirius subsequently decided to take her captive, then both she and the player would have ended up like Eclipse.

[Rabbna]

I honestly dont know but i think theres a female cultist in the place el kidnaps luna

Edited June 13, 2015 by Rabbna