Take Me To Your Breeder: Letters from an Extraterrestrial Anthropologist
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Take Me To Your Breeder: Letters from an Extraterrestrial Anthropologist
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Description
Masie (Jay Taylor) is a suburban wife trapped in her own personal hell. She's been married to her husband for two years but the spark is already gone... and the more she thinks about it, the more she wonders if it was ever there to begin with. Although Dr. Levy's calm on the outside, she doesn't like being rejected one bit. When her next patient, Sue Loman (Serena Blair), arrives, she starts to put her devious plan into action. Sue thinks highly of Dr. Levy, always so eager to please, and there's NOTHING Sue won't do for her... Cut to a public washroom. Angie is kneeling inside a closed stall, throwing up. She flushes and exits awkwardly as a co-worker enters, in gym clothes, and asks if she is ready to head to body pump. She smiles and says yes, reverting to her usual cheerful disposition, and they exit. Looking more specifically at the closed circle of sexuality in the Mass Effect series, we should consider its parent company’s use of romantic side-quests. BioWare is known for producing complex game narratives with prominent romantic side-quests. Their games have historically been queer-inclusive to varying degrees, so that the player-character can pursue a same-sex romantic relationship with a non-player-character within the game’s main plot. These side-quests include unique dialogue and voice-acting, and can subtly or significantly affect the main plot. Rather than being a singular relationship that defines the game’s story arc (as in the case of Mario and Peach), the romantic side-quest in BioWare’s games is consistently optional, defined by a choice between several potential candidates, and is supposed to enrich rather than define the player’s in-game experience. If a player so chooses, there is no need to begin any of these side-quests, effectively allowing the player to indirectly perform in-game asexuality.
Cut to several hours later. Angie comes home through the front door, still sweaty and in workout clothes. As soon as she puts down her gym bag, she begins to hear noises coming from the upstairs bedroom. She slowly creeps up the stairs, her expression falling as she realizes what she is hearing. Garrett explains in a patronizing tone that he's not feeling satisfied with their current arrangement. He wants another favor. Janice looks flabbergasted -- she's already paid him off twice, and she just colluded to get his company his second city contract at a way higher rate than market value. Garrett says yes, that's true, but that's really more to help his business, but now he's getting restless and he feels he wants to work on his personal brand, maybe even get into politics himself. He wants an endorsement from her to run for his own spot on the city council. Janice coldly says absolutely not -- she can't endorse a candidate with no political experience and dubious ties to criminal activity. It'll draw too much attention, and could be career suicide for her. Garrett tells her he thinks she's exaggerating, and feels he'd make a great candidate. He's even come up with the perfect campaign slogan, 'Make America Garrett Again' he jokes. The property manager explains that she can control the doors and thermostat, as already demonstrated, and she can also control the lights in the house. 'JOY, turn the lights off.' 'OK.' The lights turn off. Mrs. O also informs the couple that the home assistant can control most of the small appliances, such as the coffee maker and vacuum. 'Looks like I won't need a housewife after all, huh honey?' Dylan jokes as they keep moving.
Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.' The game design mediates between the societal placement of sex with aliens in the outer limits of the circle and the game designer’s choice to include it as a player option by validating alien romantic interests in specific ways. Like Liara in the original Mass Effect, the alien Tali is heavily implied to be sexually inexperienced. Tali and Liara are initially introduced as female-glossed romantic options with a focus on their youth, innocence and relatively untouched bodies. This seems to be intended to counteract the basic societal taboo against interspecies sex, balancing an outer limit characteristic with one from the charmed circle’s heart. Similarly, Thane and Garrus, both male alien heterosexual love interests who recount their heterosexual history to a female Shepard in the course of the completion of their respective romantic side-quests, are specified to be emotionally vulnerable. However, where Tali and Liara’s alien natures are downplayed by the appeal of their seeming virginity, the same effect comes about for Thane and Garrus as a result of their established heterosexual history. Thane describes how he met his late wife; Garrus describes a casual sexual encounter with a female crew member on a previous assignment. In both cases, a female Shepard is described in terms similar to the alien love interest’s previous heterosexual partner. While open to interpretation, this does seem to indicate sharp gender differences regarding what game designers felt a male Shepard and female Shepard would presumably want from alien partners. Their particular charmed circles are assumed to differ and the game adjusts its romantic offerings accordingly. It’s worth noting that Jacob, another potential love interest, also recounts his heterosexual history. The original Mass Effect’s sole queer romance is heavily annotated. Both female and male Shepards can have a romance with Liara. She is explicitly stated to be from a ‘monogendered’ race, the Asari, but she is clearly intended to be ultimately perceived as a blue woman. Liara has a female voice actor and model, and is consistently referred to by female pronouns. Additionally, the majority of Asari-partnered aliens we meet are male, reinscribing heterosexuality as the in-game standard. A lesbian relationship with Liara is literally othered by the fact that she is an alien, but the game verifies the romance’s place within the circle by focusing on romance and child-bearing. The Asari are specifically discouraged from mating with each other, placing such activity within the in-game outer limits of the circle; as we find out later, this is because children with two Asari parents have a higher likelihood of being an “Ardat-Yakshi”, a kind of Asari succubus that murders its partners through sex. At the same time, because all Asari look stereotypically female, this produces what looks like a taboo against lesbianism; if a player performs a male Shepard and romances Liara, the taboo remains in place, effectively making the compulsively heterosexual male Shepard rescue Liara from her lesbian heritage as the child of two Asari herself. SCENE OPENS on a small city council private office where a councilwoman, Janice Monroe (Angela White), is hard at work. She appears confident, and sharply dressed in a chic but no-nonsense business suit. We watch her work for several seconds from a male gaze POV, until her concentration is broken by a telephone call on her office phone. Right away, Angela clues in that Diana's giving too much control to her husband, which is why Diana's world is so bland. She needs to be able to do her own thing, express her own individuality, so that she can live a more fulfilling life. Although Diana tries to deny there's anything wrong in her relationship with her husband, she soon sees the truth: she DOES need to be her own woman!
Diana Grace is a trophy wife who was once contented with her lot in life but now having second thoughts. She brings these worries to a therapist, Angela White, in hopes of straightening herself out. It's just that, though her husband treats her well enough, life feels stagnant.This commentary aims to raise questions about the mandatory performance and privileging of particular sexual identities in videogames, first through examining the explicitly heterosexual narratives of classic game series like Super Mario and then the more narratively and performatively diverse romantic side-quests in modern RPGs. In BioWare’s Mass Effect series in particular, the romantic side-quest has progressed, with some difficulty, beyond the compulsive heterosexuality of the classic videogame. Specifically, this compulsive heterosexuality is a particular iteration of Adrienne Rich’s “compulsory heterosexuality”; the key difference between the two is that while compulsory heterosexuality is a privileged societal norm than can be refused, the compulsive heterosexuality of the classic videogame demands that the player perform a heterosexual player-character or cease playing the game altogether. The scope of choice in a videogame literalizes and ultimately closes Gayle S. Rubin’s charmed circle of sexuality, rendering what falls outside the circle impossible for the player to enact, whatever their desires or intention. Compulsive Heterosexuality & The Charmed Circle Meghan Blythe Adams is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Ontario. Her main areas of interest in game studies are player death, difficulty settings, and the submissive elements of play.
- Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
- EAN: 764486781913
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