Help with designing/writing an androgynous character...

Basically I'm working on a game and I want to give the Player Character an Ambiguous Gender (my plan is to flip a coin at some point in the development process so I can reveal their gender at the end of the game in a sort of Shout-Out to Metroid, but otherwise I want it to be a sort of inversion of Purely Aesthetic Gender). The main reason for this is to make them easier for the player to emphasise with, so just covering them in gender concealing clothing isn't an option (I'm definatly not a good enough writer or artist to make someone identify with a suit of armour and a helmet).

Narrative won't be a problem (since most of the story will come from their (first person) comments and Apocalyptic Logs), but I haven't really got much experience with androgynous characters (I've never written or tried to draw one and the only two that I'm familiar with from existing fiction are Kino from Kinos Journey and Chrona from Soul Eater).

Quick Plot Summery (feel free to comment on this too): The game is set roughly 100 years after The End of the World as We Know It took place 20 Minutes into the Future. Humanity has rebuilt and technology has already been (roughly) restored to a similar state to the late 90's/early 2000's, however artifacts recovered from the old world's ruins are still much more powerful than anything that's being mass produced. These ruins are extremely dangerous, needing years of planning and co-operation between nations to send salvage teams (and military escorts) in. The Player Character has become stranded in them[[note]]I'm still working out their backstory, so I don't know the exact reason yet.]] and must find a way back to civilisation using whatever technology they can salvage while possibly learning more about what caused the end of the last one (several causes of which are apparent at first) and overcoming their own flaws (as protagonists are wont to do).

What I "know" about the character so far (as with the plot summery, feel free to point out anything that might work better);

• They have a light-ish build, since I want to re-enforce the "stranded and pretty much doomed" image, (I don't want to go too far and making them a complete inversion of A Space Marine Is You either).
• They won't be a silent protagonist, but they won't be voiced either.
• Their clothing needs to have some sort of eyewear/eye protection; I'll admit I'm a fan of giving characters goggles for no reason so there's a bit of Author Appeal going on, but one of the game's upgradable pieces of equipment includes a HUD of some sort, so there's a reason. Other than that, anything that fits the setting goes (other gear will consist of things they clip on or strap over it).

So to summerise; Does anyone have any advice for designing their appearence/outfit and on how to write their dialogue (while I can use The All-Concealing "I", I've been told it's possible to get a vague idea of someone's gender from their writing, so I wouldn't want to stamp my own on it).

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Some kind of sleek jacket with a high collar, like some sort of track jacket◊, would make it easy to conceal their body, while still looking slim and fairly like a 'normal everday' outfit. There have been some studies done into how men and women speak (or really, write; if I remember the studies properly, they were about writing) and you could look at those to try to degender your writing.

You'd have to work against somewhat of a default assumption of maleness, so it might be a good idea to toss in some hints toward masculinity and some hints toward femininity to make the androgyny more clear.

Before I say anything else here, I need to tell you that if you're trying to outright prevent readers from ever Wild Mass Guessing about the character's gender, or forming personal opinions... give up now. I'm more or less a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-gender-essentialist, and I still tend to think of androgynous characters as belonging to one gender or another more often than not, although not always because of anything about the character.

@Kotep: Thanks. I'll see if I can find anything about those studies.

@nrjxll: Oh, I'm definatly not trying to do that (as I said, I intend to give them a gender which will be revealed, without fanfare, I just don't want it to matter much). As anyone on TVT should know, trying to prevent any sort of WMG is an excercise in futility. I really just want the player to be able to identify with the character more regardless of their own gender/sex, so people forming their own opinions is exactly what I want.

edited 19th Aug '12 9:23:35 AM by Bisected8

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Ah. Things like wanting to "degender" your writing sort of gave me the impression that you were trying to prevent speculation - there's no obvious difference between male and female character voice, so wanting to try and avoid writing in either really seems like the kind of thing designed to prevent guesses.

Nope, just avoid giving too many clues. I want the player to guess (or better yet, assume).

Also, has anyone got any suggestions for a first name (I've already got ideas for a surname)? There's loads of gender neutral ones, they all seem to be "biased" either way.

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Would referring to them by only their last name be a possibility here?

Questions: What art style and what tech level does this game use? There's a big difference between NES sprites, PS 1 polygons, and current gen anything in terms of how much information you receive about the character.

Did the apocalypse affect the weather in any way?

I personally like the hoodie + jacket combo- looks "normal/everyday" and conceals the character believably. Making the jacket heavier *

or making it one size too big *

see Lindsay from Freaks And Geeks or that one chick from that one movie I can't remember the name of- she spent the whole film in an oversized biker jacket

can further conceal body details.

Alternately, you could have one of the first relics they find be armor- if theres any sort of health system already it doesn't need a gameplay function (it can be the handwave for the health mechanic), and it'll obscure body details.

Below the torso; cargo pants, loose fit jeans, and khakis are all unisex and reasonably fashionable. Belts, gun holsters or wallet chains can all obscure the hips without being out of place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJPfTr_4mEk

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Joshua_Graham%27s_armor

The outfit should play into their backstory, those are just what sprung to my mind.

Also I second what Kotep said, to a degree; masculinity is definitely the default assumption, so clues that are associated with one or the other gender would need to pop up periodically. Animations spring to mind, particularly walking/running ones. I'm not an expert on the matter so I wouldn't know where to start in that regard though...

edited 21st Aug '12 3:33:45 AM by CleverPun

"The only way to truly waste an idea is to shove it where it doesn't belong."

@Yamii Denryuu: That might work, but there'll probably be some points where that isn't an option (flashbacks, memories, etc).

@Clever Pun: I'm planing to use hand-drawn/hi-res sprites (I thought about using 32-bit sprites or something, but IMO that's getting to be a bit of a cliche) with occasional text over static scenes. The apocalypse didn't affect the weather (...yet, since I'm still about 1/4 of the way through writing the story), but I'm not setting it in any specific part of the world.

I've also been working on the protagonist's back story since I made this thread too, most of it'll probably be All There in the Manual stuff though;

• [First Name needed] Coombs
  • Born 2343 AD on the 19th of December.
  • Born to a salvage expert (father) and a soldier (mother) at a research hospital that the former once worked at in a colony/country neither parent had citizenship in.
    • They met when the later served as the former's escort in one of the excursions mentioned in the OP.
    • Names; Harry Flowers (Father) and [Lt.] Alaine Coombs (Mother). Harry never liked his surname, and thus took his wife's, becoming Allen Coombs.
  • Born prematurely after an encounter with a street thug who tried to steal a salvaged pistol^note This'll be the one the player uses in the game. from Coombs' father caused their mother to go into labour. Their father was able to pull some strings despite not having citizenship and get some help from the hospital he used to do research at.
  • Discharged from hospital on February the 5th the following year, after surgery with a semi-experimental implant to prevent brain damage. This left them with unusually effective language skills (...maybe).
  • They were separated from their parents after running away at the age of 16. The game is set 2 years later (2361), and the Player Character is stranded while looking for members of their mother's military unit, hoping they can help them get back in contact.

edited 21st Aug '12 2:01:09 PM by Bisected8

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Imagine she/he/it has all sex organs removed.

If you haven't decided on a name, Adrian might work. It doesn't really come off as particularly masculine or feminine.

I like it, but it feels slightly biased towards masculine to me....

EDIT: Yeah, wikipedia and a couple of names sites have it listed as masculine and a google image search mostly turns up pictures of men.

edited 21st Aug '12 2:04:30 PM by Bisected8

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Really? When I see 'Adrian' I think of a female.

Gave them our reactions, our explosions, all that was ours For graphs of passion and charts of stars...

I think of this guy.◊ Plus, I've known one or two men with the name Adrian in real life.

edited 21st Aug '12 3:52:15 PM by Ryuhza

this place needs me here

Based on 'Coombs' I'd suggest a fairly simple, probably English-ish name to fit the character. You don't went to have a character named Christopher Djeser-djeseru.

Alex, Chris and Sam spring to mind as unisex names. I also think Adrian is a little too male to work as a name.

Well, Alex is already taken by another character (basically I've got a theme going on by naming characters close to Coombs after people involved with Colossus, which is where their family name comes from).

Chris and Sam still feel too masculine to be neutral. They tend to be masculine when they're used as names in their own right and only feminine when they're acting as abbreviations of the names' feminine forms.

EDIT: They also both seemed to have failed the Google Image search test.

Does anyone have any thoughts on making up a name (as I mentioned, it's set in a society a few hundred years into the future where everything was rebuilt to some degree at least once, so it could work...)?

edited 21st Aug '12 4:45:04 PM by Bisected8

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The surname of Coombs comes off as masculine, so a gender-neutral name that comes off as leaning more towards feminine would help balance it out.

My name is darthnazgul and TV Tropes has ruined my life.

I can see where you're coming from, but would it actually work that way (any association with "Coombs" being masculine would presumably be psychological since surnames are genderless, so before following that line of thinking I'd rather see some evidence anecdotal or otherwise)?

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I can say that, at least personally speaking, I can't really see any surnames having gender associations. Certainly "Coombs" doesn't.

Eh, maybe it's just me.

My name is darthnazgul and TV Tropes has ruined my life.

I don't know if you're going to find anything better than names like Chris or Sam. You could always point out that they're nicknames, but not say whether they're for Christopher or Christina or Samuel or Samantha.

I think no matter what you're going to bump up against a sort of implicit assumption of masculinity due to the nature of the medium and of our culture in general, as games, and generally western society, tend to treat male as default, and female as something to be distinguished from the default.

edited 21st Aug '12 6:43:18 PM by Kotep

Making up a name is certainly an option, provided it doesn't end in an A, I/Y, O, or other letter that generally denotes gender in a given language.

A semi-cursory google search turned up the names Taylor, Jordan, Jaiden (or Jayden), Jessie, Harper, Hunter, Riley, Rowan, Dominique, and Dakota. The last one seems iffy to me, especially if states don't have meaning in the reformed world's map (and if you want to avoid creator provincialism then any state name would be right out anyway). Hunter seems really masculine to me, but then I don't know anyone named Hunter, male or female. My vote would go for Jessie, Jordan, or Taylor.

"The only way to truly waste an idea is to shove it where it doesn't belong."

I'll second Jordan and Taylor (especially the first, since for some reason I don't like the sound of "Taylor Coombs"), but in my experience Jessie is usually spelled Jesse when being used as a male name.

Well Taylor and Jordon both seem to generate an even number of male and female faces on a GIS. The problem is, I'm not sure I like the names (they both just feel too celebrity-ish)....

@Kotep: Well, if the player assumes that they're male/female, that's fine (the whole point of this exercise is to let them assume before it clicks that they don't know, thus emphasising how little they know about the character initially). As long as there's nothing about the character that leads them.

edited 22nd Aug '12 5:53:39 AM by Bisected8

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This website contains a list of names that seem to be gender neutral: http://www.babynames1000.com/gender-neutral/

Something it states at the bottom of the page, that the gender neutraility of a name fluctuates with time, means that you could always take a name that is definitely masculine or feminine today and actually shock everyone by showing that it has become a more neutral name in the setting of your story.