justicedisapproves:

fluidfyre:

elenilote:

thegamingmuse:

(aka, I suck at titles.)

It is very rare in games that female characters are given the respect they deserve. Too often, they are relegated to certain roles, or kept within certain boundaries, while male characters are almost unrestricted. Free to be warriors and heroes, scientists and businessmen, explorers and lovers, male characters are given the ability to be anything. The same cannot be said for female characters.

When it comes to simply examining female vs. male characters in games, the disparities are clear.

I can look at Silent Hill and see the series has had one female main character, and six male main characters. I can look at the Final Fantasy series and see that, for the most part, female characters are mages and magic users, while male characters are swordsmen or spearmen or thieves or gun users or a multitude of other classes. And I can look at the statistics and see that, in Game Informer’s 200^th issue, out of the 200 games they named their favorites about forty of them had female main characters. That’s not even a third.

There are some characters who manage to exist as powerful female heroes in this exclusive video game reality we all live in. Characters like Heather from Silent Hill, or Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII, or Faith from Mirror’s Edge. These are all strong females, to be sure.

But then there’s Shepard.

You’d be hard pressed to find a female character like Female Shepard in the rest of the gaming universe. Even in other Bioware games, which have strong female protagonists, the level of respect, autonomy, and power given to Shepard is almost unmatched. There’s so much to love in Female Shepard, and I’m going to break it all down in the following.

First, it’s the power.

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YES TO ALL OF THIS

This is an amazing article on Fem-Shep. It made me all a-flutter with how much I adore and love her. Fem-Shep! The ONE TRUE SHEP!

PS. Mental image of fem-Shep carrying Garrus bridal style now. Love it.

YES

Although I will admit that there are some things about the game which put me off, e.g. “The game constantly reminds the player through story and dialogue that Shepard is the most power and most capable leader the galaxy has got.” Why is it necessary to show the rest of the galaxy as being incompetent? Setting up Shepard as a lone-wolf Cassandra was amongst the things that I liked least in ME2 (others: the Collectors, human exceptionalism, Shep’s death and resurrection, the near total side-lining of the geth story). 

Thinking of: 

When the Collector base is about to blow and Shepard is almost left behind, she is not rescued – she jumps through space and makes it to her ship. When she is drugged by the Batarian on Omega, she is not saved by her teammates, male or female, nor is she avenged by them. She wakes up, goes back to Omega, and deals with the bastard herself. That was a narrative moment which easily could have been turned into a ‘helpless Shepard’ story, but it didn’t. She was drugged, she woke up, she took care of it. End of story.

Shepard dies, her body is recovered and eventually turned over to a human extremist terrorist organisation that she spent a good deal of ME finding out is horrid (just a smidgen), and they in turn resurrect her against her will, along with a few upgrades to which she did not get to agree. Working for/with Cerberus at first feels like repayment for their saving her, and the player is never truly given the choice to walk away from them (thereby receiving a CRITICAL MISSION FAILURE message), or questions their actions further, or react to it at all, really. 

She is quite capable of carrying Garrus bridal style, thank you.

Thanks in no small part to those Cerberus upgrades, no doubt. (I AM GOING TO BE LAUGHING OVER THIS MENTAL IMAGE FOR DAYS. HE WOULD BE SO FLUSTERED.)

Shepard is not my favourite female character from a video game (none have yet to surpass The Longest Journey’s April Ryan), and there’s a lot that I dislike about Mass Effect, but in general: oh goodness yes to almost all of this. It’s terribly empowering to play as femshep, and I cannot think of a stronger female character. 

THE LONGEST JOURNEY’S APRIL RYAN. HEY HEY SHE IS ALSO MY FAVOURITE. Probably my favourite game character ever, male or female.