by StormKnight
Not to mention it's completely off-topic for this thread.
From the original post:
I sure hope there will be enough "girl characters" to make them all three happy.
And there was then more discussion on this topic. Hence why I thought it was relevant to post here.
Have you considered the possibility that you are just reading too much into this?
Yes, which is why I then listed exactly the reasons I saw for this, which I think are pretty solid.
So, if we were rescuing a male rat in the aforementioned scenario, should I be insulted because it is portraying males (male rats?) as inferior?
As I said, this is a bad method for introducing any PC character. Your argument is a bit of straw-man, since a rat in this context wouldn't be a PC.
However, as a male, you have hundreds of thousands of examples of capable and competent male characters, and in any given situation you likely have numerous immediate examples of other men who aren't in needing to be rescued. One man who needs to be rescued does not make much of a statement compared to numerous other examples. However, when the woman who needs to be rescued, there are significantly fewer capable female character comparisons to make, and likely few or none in the immediate game.
This is a common complaint among writers who haven't thought things through very well. "How common you're picking on my my female character for being 'weak', when I have lots of male characters who are 'weak' to?" It's because the writer has ONE female character, who therefore winds up being the representative of her entire gender. It's no problem when a useless or helpless woman shows up in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because there's enough variety of female characters to show her as an individual, not as a representation of her gender.
Though, overall, I think helpless men who need to be rescued are still fairly rare in the fantasy/adventure genre.
And yes, sometimes things have different meanings to different genders based on societal standards. When was the last time you heard about a boy in high school committing suicide for being given grief about having fooled around too much?
PS And regarding stat penalties, it's common game balance to give ranged or healer classes some sort of stat penalty.
First, I notice you are focusing on what even I admitted was the weakest and most minor part of my complaint.
Second, where is that common game balance? Why would a "healer" or "ranged attacker" be automatically inferior to other classes? That's not game balance at all, by definition. A ranged attacker may have limitations to overcome the advantage of ranged attacks, but those should work out to a balanced character overall.
As for your "of course women should get a penalty, they aren't as good"...I think that speaks volumes for itself.