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Gosh that’s a posh title!

I’ve been rather pushed for time lately, as I’ve been whinging, so the balance between production and consumption has shifted too far towards production. I’ve spoken before about what I perceive as being problematic in letting the act of creation consume you utterly – in short, I think it’s bad manners to give it but not to take it. So to speak.

I’ve tried a few things but they haven’t stuck. I played through the introduction of Wyrin’s Dark Avenger and I thought it was charming, as there’s something quite infectious about its enthusiasm and its complete lack of self-irony. I do intend to go back to it but explicit influence mechanics bring me out in hives, and after about five minutes of being a moralistic doormat my awesome fiery hellsteed o’doom was so pissed off with me that I got depressed and couldn’t bring myself to continue. I think I shall start again being more vengeful. Well I want My Little Hellpony to like me. I also had a look at Seraphimsage’s Nihil, which is a module, “based on the concept of Nihilism” (woffles). It was beautifully executed and also quite original, but I couldn’t past the fact my character sounded like a 19 year philosophy undergraduate. He says things like “I concur” in cold blood. Jesus, man, just say “yes” like a normal person. Also I romped around merrily eating my companions when I think I was perhaps … not … meant to romp around merrily eating my companions. Ho to the hum.

I’ve also been listening pretty obsessively to the NWN Podcast, which I think is fabulous. I’m incredibly grateful it’s still going actually because it keeps me going, and being able to gorge myself on a hefty back catalogue did amazing things for my NWN enthusiasm. I have to say, though, I do really miss Michelle. Without her it can sound a bit Boy’s Club, and she was really damn good at conducting interviews, which I think is probably one of those under-appreciated skills. She seemed to have a genuine knack of putting people at their ease, and bringing the best out of them, and she always effortlessly retained the balance between being a person, not a robot reading a list of pre-prepared questions, and giving the subject space to shine. Wah! Now I miss her even more. My favourite interview, I think, is Episode 42, with Fabien Cerutti, the dude who did The Bastard of Kosigan, which I have actually played! But I also enjoyed Domi Sotto, who did Bishop’s Romance for the OC, which I haven’t played, but the interview offered such a different perspective on the game, the importance of romance in cRPGs and the modding community.

Anyway, anyway, long story short, there’s also an interview, not one of Michelle’s if I recall correctly, with some members of the fan community surrounding A Dance With Rogues. This remains one of NWN1’s most popular modules – I think because it’s extremely well done but also because it was (apparently) written by a woman and attempts to in some way provide a more female-centric NWN experience. I don’t want to climb on some kind of soapbox here but I think one of the inherent problems with the notionally non-gendered PC (i.e. you can pick) is that it defaults to male. I’m vaguely thinking that For My Next Trick I might attempt to write a module for a specifically female protagonist. At which I will probably fail, even assuming I get there. One thing at a time, one thing at a time. But, yeah, the current project has a male protagonist, which I know is likely to be irritating, or even a deal-breaker, to some players, but I don’t think you get anywhere by enforcing an equality-of-experience that simply doesn’t exist, in life or fiction.

But, yeah, A Dance with Rogues, is a thief-specific module that casts you in the role of a princess. Your family are murdered by some invading bad guys, and you have to flee the palace, and make your way in the world. Like I say, it’s really well done, the design and the scripting and all that malarkey, are excellent, and the writing is considerably above-par, with significant attention paid to characterization and roleplaying options. Equally, playing a module in which you’re explicitly a woman – rather than just optionally a woman – does change the whole experience. It’s not just that you spend a lot of time collecting various pretty dresses, but it does saturate through the whole module in more important ways, in the ways that the setting, and characters in the setting, react to you.

This is … I guess … interesting.

Except in practice it means that most of the characters, including some of the female ones, want to bonk you.

Now I know that this is fantasy and Valine, in just about the only extant interview with her that exists, does say:

I wanted to have a game world where many of the NPCs were absolutely mad about my character (well, more or less!) and where all those bawdy things that I had in my head could actually happen (and not just be hinted at).

And I guess that’s entirely fair enough. She goes, on, however to say:

I enjoy sexuality and sex, and I fail to see what’s supposed to be evil about them.

Which irritates me because it attempts to set the boundaries of discussion about the adult sexuality present in A Dance with Rogues, by essentially implying if you don’t like it, it’s only because you’re a prude who thinks sexuality and sex are evil.

I, err, I’m afraid I don’t like the sexual content of A Dance with Rogues. And it’s not because I’m a prude, it’s because its depiction troubles me, and the perhaps unconscious blurring of the line between sexual desire and sexual violence gives me the squicks. I know it’s largely optional and I also know it’s not my fantasy, and probably not meant to be my fantasy.

[I should probably say at this juncture: spoilers and also potentially triggering for discussion of sexual violence]

For example, the game pretty much opens with you getting raped – there’s no way to avoid this, all you can do it set the terms of the rape as it occurs, either by struggling and weeping, or by using your body as a bargaining chip in order to escape with your life. I ended up doing the latter, and lying there cold and hostile, because I felt creepy as hell starting this story off with a rape – even though it was still a rape, obviously, because if you agree to sex you didn’t want, it’s still rape. And the whole experience is framed as rape – it’s not “oh she wants it really” sex, it’s as grim as grim can be.

Rape seems to be absolutely endemic to the female experience in fantasy settings – I don’t just mean in A Dance With Rogues, but in fantasy novels and the like, men go and fight other men, women get raped. I know it’s one of those things people “know” about the Medieval period – women got raped a lot – but it just strikes me as a weird version of historical accuracy to cling to, when nobody bats an eyelid about tossing verisimilitude out of the window when it comes to people having reasonable standards of personal hygiene, farmboys becoming kings, and peasants not dying at the age of 25.

And the thing about A Dance With Rogues is that it is very normalizing of rape – again, perhaps this is naïve of me but although I understand about rape culture, I also think that rape is not, or at least should not be, a common female experience. I know the stats are horrifically high but there is a difference between something being more common than you would like it to be, and something being normal. There’s a hilarious bit in A Dance with Rogues when they’re talking about the invasion of the castle, and Vicco says something like “they didn’t even stop to rape the women” as if this is yet further evidence that those dudes mean srs business.

I was in such a rush to get to work to day, I didn’t EVEN stop to rape a woman on my way in. Egad!

To go alongside this is a slightly weird juxtaposition of sex and violence. There’s a quest early on where you need to get a beggar’s outfit from, err, a beggar (or you can buy one from a tailor’s shop if you have the cash) and he basically offers to trade it to you for a look at your tits. If you agree to this, he then tries to get a blowjob out of you … and he’s disgusting, just ick ick icktastic.. You can also kill him and get his clothes out of him that way, or pay him (and, again, money is short supply this early in the game, unless you want to whore yourself out to sailors for it, so I genuinely couldn’t afford to pay the dude). I was reading some of the discussion (most of it several years old now) and there’s an infuriating “aaaaaah d’yu see” argument about the tits/death dichotomy, in that smug twats keep asking why is it worse to show your tits than kill somebody, and doesn’t that say something about the inherent hypocrisy in society. Aaaaaaah!

Well, uh, no. Because, despite internet debate to the contrary, boobs are not open source. It is not MORALLY BETTER to show somebody your tits than kill them because the burden of moral responsibility lies with the other party not to assume he has an automatic right to access tits if he wants to access tits. Yes, murder is a slightly extreme response but violence is not a sliding scale. Yes it’s worse to be killed than have your arm cut off, and yes it’s probably worse to be killed than it is to be raped BUT this is simply not a helpful way of considering the matter, since the only reasonable answer is always “none of the above.” And, yes, yes, I know A Dance with Rogues is set in a harsh pseudo-Medieval where everything is morally grey but too often the depicted consequences of harsh pseudo-Medieval settings are: women get raped, men are basically fine.

And the other thing that bugs me, yes, there does seem to a list, is the overlap between desire and sexual violence. I mean, Vico casually rapes you at the beginning because, I think, his lover has just been killed and he’s feeling destructive but also because he desires you. In fact, most of the people who rape, or try to rape, you throughout the module – including some of the sailors who will pay for teh sexings – seem to be doing out of genuine aesthetic appreciation for you and your hawt. Again, I know this is fantasy and Valine stated she wanted a world in which everybody was mad about you … but … but … no. Sexual violence is never about desire. It’s about power, pure and simple. And I’m not trying to say there’s anything wrong with fantasy, or even rape fantasies, it’s just that the fantasy line is too blurred here for me to be even remotely comfortable. It’s things like Vico actually being a romantic interest – and it’s not that my tiny mind is blown by the concept that somebody who commits a rape is also a human being, but falling in love with him smacks of Stockholm Syndrome.

But then there’s also the problem that I just don’t identify with the Princess at all; she is simply someone I am watching and controlling, which naturally makes me feel skeevy as hell most of the time, no matter how hard to dodge sexual encounters. However, there is just enough about A Dance With Rogues that is unusual and genuinely well done to keep me going in spite of the otherwise high Ick Factor.

Truthfully, though, I am looking forward to going back to a simpler relationship with my flaming hellsteed o’doom.