I will say, as an archaeologist character, Venture is eerily well-designed in that they look and act exactly like every single queer archaeology student I met during my anthro degree.
its always that nb drow twink with purplish skin, pink eyes and white hair with a tint of blue for me. tho they always need to have a dick too, since they are definitely gonna be the top. except for karlach maybe. karlach could top me- i mean the drow twink.
Apparently you gotta wear purple to be non binary. On another note, this is probably my own experience but someone lmk if I’m not alone. Purple for some reason has always been associated with the LGBTQIA+ community since my childhood. Like not my brain cognitively connecting the two but people telling me that purple is a sign that someone is gay. Purple is my favorite color tho
@@maddiemcnugget1076 I mean, purple often mean non-binaryness in pride flags Annnnddd, I guess purple was most often used on villains in disney movies before cgi lol Idk And I guess it’s a pretty glamorous colour associated with royalty?? And that’s stereotypically associated with gay people?? I really have no idea tho, my words are a guess
Shoutout to Testament from Guilty Gear, i think they're a good example of an nb character design that prioritizes a unified, personality-fitting aesthetic over a perfect balance of gender signifiers.
agreed. love their design soooo much. it feels like the design truly understands the non-binary label deeper than the superficial androgyny of other nb characters
I commented in another reply, but I somewhat disagree. They were very nicely androgynous to slightly masc in previous games. But decided to go to one side completely and be hyper femme. I've heard people be gross about this and say "she's basically a girl tee hee" and repeat the rhetoric of old "trap" jokes from the 2000s. I wish they kept Testament with their old physique bc I've never seen it for agender characters. Btw, they're agender, not nb
@@MsMvsc I mean, agender is under the nonbinary umbrella so I don't think as a general descriptor that nonbinary would be wrong. Agender is just more specific if anything.
the most frustrating thing about enby representation is that an enby really CAN look like anything, but to an audience of mostly binary people, it takes a very specific look and design aesthetic before they'd "accept" that character to actually be non-binary. So it often ends up a lose-lose game where you either have a narrow pool of design elements to define non-binary characters that a playerbase will accept as non-binary, or you break away from those "molds" to have more varied non-binary designs, at the expense of the playerbase at large not regarding them as non-binary and just defaulting to calling them a man or a woman. Unfortunately devs and designers tend to lean towards the former option, which just serves to underrepresent enbies like myself who don't present androgynously. In my opinion, the most effective way to challenge this approach would be to just create larger pools of enby characters of varied design choices, and reshape people's perception of enbies through mass exposure. Sadly that means it's a bit of a waiting game for such characters to actually BE created and released, but its gotta start somewhere
Honestly as someone who has seen how nonbinary characters are treated, it literally doesn't matter. You can make your character look like anything and people will still misgender them (see: Fl4k).
Or try not to care too much about the biases of others. I mean, if the canon is a character is non-binary, there's simply no excuse. No matter how hard one would scream otherwise. In the end, people always go for nicely fleshed out characters rather than bland tropes.
I wrote my comment before I read yours bestie but you explain my point of view about this so well. I wholly agree with what you said. We really need more non-androgynous rep.
Shit, even with the examples presented, Venture, I see a lot of people refer to them using she / her, either out of ignorance or malicious intent. And the former group can derive their understanding of the character from the latter group. At what point does an audience's collective interpretation of the character "override" the official one? If everybody agrees that a character is gay as hell and treat them as such in the fandom, does that not effectively, make them so within the realms of this collective zeitgeist? It's certainly a gamble, especially nowadays, when the very validity of enbies, as an identity, is yet to reach a nigh universal acceptance. One thing I've actually thought about was the idea of incorporating that kind of representation maybe not necessarily through individual characters but through character creation systems. After all, what could best communicate a complex approach to self-identification and presentation other than leaving that choice up to the player? It's this superposition where they can be everything or nothing and beyond all at once and, through that, get across the idea of non-conformity in a truly free way. Or, y'know, maybe it's just my own experience and desire for more options to make silly little dudes and still have them be acknowledged for who they are.
One interesting aspect of non binary characters is how some non explicit nonbinary characters are treated. A lot of the times people just chooses a gender for them (rimuru in that slime isekai anime) or say things like “[character]’s gender is [character]!” while treating explicitly nonbinary characters with more bigoted comments. People treat Frisk/Kris from Undertale/Deltarune as nonbinary a lot of the times even when they dont realize it (me at first)because they don’t dont get advertise as such in official media. We know they are nonbinary because they are referred to with only they/them or neutral labels and wears clothes from everywhere on the gender spectrum. On the other hand, Venture who is advertised as explicitly nonbinary is treated with much more hostility even though in story or gameplay they arent shouting “im nonbinary!” at the top of their lungs either. People don’t care about their impact in game, just how they’re advertised. You could say this is a result of different player bases and it definitely is, but people generally werent being bigots towards Frisk/Kris especially when Undertale had a larger audience. Often i get the same treatment as a somewhat androgynous presenting nonbinary person, where they most of the time just chooses a set of pronouns for me. Since I’m someone who doesnt care for pronouns and uses any, I dont bother pointing out the fact that I’m nonbinary and in such dont get treated with hostility even if i know they hold bigoted views. I dont know what the point im trying to make is, but it’s just an interesting thing i see often in media that is reflected IRL. Great video btw, i really enjoyed watching it!
I think it’s a funny coincidence that both if the games released an nb character around the same time. And what makes it even better is that they’re both still so different in personality and style. Not just some stereotypical nb person/character. To me that very much makes me feel like they actually cared about bringing this type of representation and not just to “please” the lgbtq community
It's really funny to think that maybe both games knew they has an nb character in the works and decided to release them at the same time to share the backlash
@@Slykie There was depending on what circles you looked in. Even now there are people who can’t accept it. Near venture’s release I had someone in voice chat rant about how blizzard should stop focusing on “making characters gay” or more recently I’ve found people typing transphobic things in text chat simply because someone is playing venture
i do wish you would have touched on an issue i personally have with nb representation in media and games recently is that it seems to heavily skew towards AFAB/slightly femme presenting characters, mostly due to that being the easiest for the average person to comprehend. which makes sense, it seems like there are more afab people irl who are comfortable with being queer due to societal pressures, as it's hard for amab/masc people to be outwardly queer, or to even think about whether they're queer or not. nothing wrong with being a femme presenting nb OBVIOUSLY, and i love clove for example but if every nb character that gets designed is going to be afab i feel like they're kind of tiptoeing around instead of actually experimenting with more interesting representations of gender. bloodhound is sick though. great vid as always :D
Honestly though it does seem incredibly prevalent. I think it's connected to the age-old notion that it's fine for a woman to wear masculine clothing or act slightly masculine, meanwhile it's seen as an immediate sign of homosexuality if a man so much as paints his nails; therefor it's more """palatable""" for an nb character to be afab and wear masculine clothing than it would be for an nb character to be amab and wear even SLIGHTLY feminine clothing; something that would inevitably lead to people just calling them a "femboy".
Yeah that bothers me. As an example, in Guilty Gear, Testament is agender and has always been very adrogynous with slight leaning towards masc (they're AMAB). I always appreciated that, but unfortunately in Strive (the newest game) they ramped up the femininity to the extreme. I love their design, but am sad they changed their physique to be as appealing to straight audiences, esp coomers. You're right that femme leaning nb characters are always viewed as the "safest" route and we need more masc leaning rep too.
@MsMvsc real I thought I was the only one. At the time they sticked out in an already sparse group of characters. Now they kinda blend in. Still love them tho
I can already feel the low-key seething rage from viv as he started creeping up a sasha sprite while talking about enigmatic enby characters 🤣🤣 Considering how he made a whole section about them in the inescapable video
My first thought when they revealed Venture was that a lot of their design was also driven by a desire to reduce obvious labeling and for better or worse one of the best ways to do that is to aim for a neutral middle ground on the quote unquote spectrum. Venture is a mix and match of masculine and feminine traits specifically so no obnoxious commenters can be "right" about them. I think this is also why they expressly didn't tell us anything about their personal history, we don't know what Venture was assigned at birth and even their real name, Sloan Cameron is literally two unisex names just to drive the point home. Their character is drenched in ambiguity so that there are no obvious signs a hater could point to in order to go "AHA! They're an X! I've solved the puzzle! I've exposed the TRUTH!". Everything from their clothing, their style and their purposely androgynous voice is meant to not give LGBT-phobes anything to latch onto. You must accept their identity or you just don't have an argument. This is obviously quite limiting in terms of character design, but that more reflects where culture is at more than it does anything on the part of the designers. And for the record, I think they made it work, they always do, T4 are kind of masters at this sort of thing. But it's kind of a one time trick, you know, if they start making more NB characters with this exact ethos, that's gonna create a stereotype that might not be appreciated. But for now, given all the challenges, I think they nailed it.
It reminds me of aro and ace rep. People just dont know how to interct with those concepts because they are seen as basic human things. Trying tp make characters that are defined by a lack of something, rather than a substitition is a pretty difficult thing for most creators to understand.
And then it gets even more difficult when any sort of ace rep is either just fully sexless or just stiff and robotic. As an aro-ace more than down to sleep with anyone, it'd be pleasant to see sex positive ace rep for once. Though to get to that level of nuanced sub-representation we need actually good ace rep first.
@@shakirashipslied9721 Trying to explain that having libido and being sexually attracted to people are two separate things is like trying to explain quantum physics to a molerat.
if they do make a canon ace character, i swear to god if they’re non human or have a deadpan personality i will be disappointed. I’m sick of the stereotype that ace people are emotionless in general
This video was a really fun watch as an enby who does a lot of gender-related self-reflection. I'm so glad you pointed out that gender neutral does not necessarily make something nonbinary! One of the main issues with explaining non-binary identity to people is that even the word itself is about what we AREN'T and not what we ARE and that can be incredibly freeing but also incredibly difficult for people to understand if they haven't given gender much thought beyond the binary. So while it makes sense for people to automatically jump to the conclusion that nonbinary = androgyny, gender neutrality, and lack of gendered identifiers I'm genuinely happy more people are talking about how this is not the case. I think this standard oftentimes even stifiles other enbies and makes them wonder if it's ok to be feminine or masculine to a hyper degree (hyperfeminine enby who went through an androgynous era here) when the whole point is to just not gaf!! Great video!!
yes, agreed !! when i first started exploring my gender, i was like "oh shoot, i should buy some masculine clothing, huh?" only to find that i hated all of it lol. i'm just always going to be hyper feminine because that's the kind of style and silhouette that i like, and i think that's fine. i was finally able to convince myself of that when i thought, "okay, a man wearing a dress is still a man, so why can't *i* just be a man/enby wearing a dress?"
yeah people see nonbinary as like a third category when the whole idea of being nonbinary is that we do not exist inside the binary. it's like people see us going "there's more to gender than two rigid categories" and they just go "oh so there are three rigid categories!" like...
You nailed the difficulties in depicting nonbinary appearances in media, the example of explaining colors to someone who sees in a different spectrum really clarifies it further. You didn't touch on this that much, but, another problem that makes it really hard for those that can't see in a broader spectrum, are the character's voices. I can't say for sure for fl4k and Bloodhound, but from my experience, people identify and place alot of gender signifiers in the other enbies' voices. I believe that the majority of their misgendering (when not on purpose/or some other reason) comes from that (Definitely Clove)? When their voices are the tiniest smidge higher or lower, they automatically place them on either end of their gender spectrum. anyway i love your videos :3
yes! this is a huge thing. when apex legends first released, i noticed whenever bloodhound was misgendered, it was mostly using he/him pronouns, because their voice was a deeper, yet still an undoubtedly androgynous voice. if anything, i felt like a much larger population of players were respecting their canon pronouns than they are now. however a few years into the games lifespan, an animated short showing a prepubescent bloodhound released and their voice was a lot higher pitched… because they were a child. but after that short had cemented itself in the community i noticed an exponential amount of people misgendering bloodhound with she/her pronouns. it was soooo odd to witness in real time because watching the transphobic language around misgendering bloodhound felt like people grasping at straws to make bloodhound a girl because they couldn’t comprehend a truly androgynous character.
Definitely. I specifically use Venture for reference, because having a deeper voice would likely shift perception of them a lot, rather than people assuming they're AFAB or using she/her pronouns.
@@dylanbranam8535 I feel disappointed in myself cus I didn't know bloodhound was non-binary until this video, I don't read alot of lore or keep up with socials for most games but the fact I just assumed makes me sad at myself. representation is rare enough I guess I kinda stopped looking :
In general, I really like Venture as nonbinary representation, but there is something about them that I feel does fall into the pitfalls of making a nonbinary character. From presentation to voice lines, Venture feels young, to the point I thought they were a teenager. It feels like that in an effort to make them more androgynous, Venture's designers, whether inadvertently or intentionally, gave them a personality that teeters into childish territory. I certainly don't think that's a bad thing nor do I think it makes for bad nonbinary representation, but it does ring the "Let's keep an eye on this" bell in my head. Like young and flighty nonbinary characters might become cliche real fast.
i think it already is a bit cliche or stereotypical 😬 like to imagine a nonbinary character and immediately think of a short haired feminine and quirky teenager/young adult feels like it perpetuates somewhat harmful stereotypes
Venture feels like an understanding of a non-binary person based entirely around a specific type of online personality of this kinda cloying cultivated innocence, which imo a lot of the times is just a symptom of the overwhelming digital alienation and a specific real fear of not finding relationships where they can be "comprehended" and fully accepted that a lot of young nb people experience, tied to very particular circumstances and regions of the world. I've seen a lot of english-speaking social media feeds of timid 16-year olds that sound like venture, I haven't met more than a single nb person in my transfem life who sounds or acts like them
venture is the literal most reletable character ever because there are no trans masc characters in games and especially no FEMININE trans mascs. so them just being very androgynous, but feeling bit femme and bit masc and the same time is very much what my gender identity feels like as trans masc. my relationship with the non-binary label is very complicated, because ive shifted from binary gender to non-binary to "dunno man im a trans guy in the way i should actually be trans femme"
tbf those "childish" traits are them being very autistic/adhd coded which is also a sterotype of us (a sterotype that is based on true percentages, many autistic and adhd/add ppl do percieve the world and therfor gender differently thats why its so common for autist/adhd/add ppl to percieve there own gender identity outside of the gender normatvity and binary -also speaking from my own experience as a nb person with adhd and autistic "traits")
When I saw this video title I honestly teared up, I've felt like non-binary people have been left behind by a lot of the community but it's great to see acknowledgement that we're still here
Yeah, as a trans woman, I feel like there has been SOOO much attention on trans women specifically when it comes to the conversations surrounding gender. Like, trans women are the general populace fixation on any GNC person. It always makes me happy to see any trans man or nb rep/discussion
@@CardboardBones Yeah, I love trans women characters added into the game. But I love when the first Trans Character added is an Enby or Trans Man because I brings up to the table a whole new demographic of people who can relate and open up the discussion about gender and Trans in gaming and media for the betterment of the future characters.
I feel like an obvious part of the Venture discourse has been missed here, and that’s the fact that nonbinary representation is overwhelmingly white, thin and anglophonic. When people refer to Venture as ‘following stereotypes’, they are almost exclusively talking about the most visible versions of these - ie white nb ppl. Venture being Mexican-Canadian, seemingly of Mestizo heritage specifically, bulky-built and bilingual is a huge deal. When people dismiss them as ‘a theyfab stereotype’ based on.. their voice? I guess? It completely glosses over how genuinely groundbreaking (haha..) it is for a mainstream franchise to include these details.
Loved this video! As a non-binary, specifically agender, person I liked how you basically spent most of the video explaining that in order to make a non-binary character and better understand non-binary people one has to detach themselves from the gender binary in the first place. AKA if you are making a non-binary character, do not view them through a binary lens. Also that non-binary is a broad identity, and thus can look like many different things. Overall, great video!
Hermes in Stray Gods is canonically nonbinary trans-masculine, and voiced by NB actor Erika Ishii which is even better. And it was a brilliant choice for them. But it's also relatively easy to miss. They're just quietly referred to with they/them pronouns by everyone in the cast, as well as Grace's journal. It's not a big deal, there's no declaring of pronouns. It's just there. And an optional conversation: I'm the God of messengers, bay-bee! Travelers, doorways, any kind of transition really. The old Hermes said the transition part made even more sense for me. Which is, y'know, extra cool, right? It's so thematically awesome and I love them, and they're starring in the upcoming DLC.
I just wanna take a second to talk about valorants kayo rq. So hes a robot that goes by he/him pro nouns. He has no genetials or genetics so he has no sex, but he does have consciousness and therefore identifyes with a gender. Theres a theory that his conciousness is the mind of a character who died pre valorant but that foesnt really matter for this since it isnt confirmed and doesn't change the situation much at all. I wanna mention this because people were up in arms about clove being nonbinary, misgendring them, and just being all around assholes. But like, where is this with kayo? Shouldnt people use they/them or it/its for hum since hes a robot without a sex since theyre so willing to do it with clove? When kayo released i didnt realize he had pronouns, so going off of the fact that hes a robot i was using they them until someone corrected me. It really shows the stupidity of a philosophy when those who hold it cant follow their own rules, people are so willing to misgender a game character who is supposed to be a person but wont do it for the robot, they dont even think twice.
HELL YEAH A VIVEROS VIDEO SPECIFICALLY FOR US. 100%. Everything you said. It's *so* important for people to not mistake nonbinary as solely being gender neutral OR the "most" gender, they're both nonbinary, but not all that enby encompasses. Notably, agender is also enby and that has a larger media representation history (usually as a non-human but still humanoid individual), but it feels relatively rare to see agender humans in media, for many possible reasons we are not experienced enough to understand. Enbies and how people interact with pronouns can be really interesting, an example that stuck with us was someone specifically choosing to use specifically dehumanizing pronouns because they're dehumanizing (in this context it/its, though obviously this isn't the only reason people choose it/its as pronouns). Default to masculinity is an asshole. If you aren't feminine enough, you're masculine. If you aren't masculine enough, you're feminine. If you tell someone your pronouns are they/them right after they misgender you as a female, they'll just go "oh sorry he". On the terms of representation... Venture and Clove launching at the same time is the *perfect* outcome in our opinion. They're both nonbinary, but they're enby in different ways, and the fact that they both exist at the same time in a similar context means people will be able to at least internalize the idea that enby can be tons of different things. On the front of agender people, Guilty Gear is a goated series and Daisuke Ishiwatari is a goat, Testament is agender and nonbinary so the representation is there (even if gears aren't technically people but they are essentially people in terms of presentation most of the time it doesn't matter). It's impossible to make one enby rep, but the fact that nonbinary people are getting more representation at all is GREAT because it allows enby characters to exist in a larger design space. Even if Clove or Venture both aren't perfect enby reps, that would only be an issue if either one of them was the ONLY enby rep. But they aren't. Speaking from experience it's easy to know you're enby and still think of yourself in the binary, on our front the... revelation we'll call it came from developing Plurality but before that it was hard to grapple with the identity of "being devoid of masculinity and femininity" when it seemed that literally nobody wanted to even conceive of us not being masculine not feminine. It's wild. Thankfully, everything's good now.
We use it/its pronouns.....be careful how you word things please. They're only dehumanizing when used without consent. He, she, and they are dehumanizing to us. It is inherently about perspective.
@@ItsAllNunya oh, sorry we didn't mean it in specifically a derogatory way, it's just a perspective we've observed and it was the specific wording other people used ("I use it/its because it's dehumanizing", specifically in the context where someone didn't like the idea of using it/its for that person because it felt dehumanizing). We didn't mean to imply that it was the only reason someone would use it/its.
@@ItsAllNunya we've edited the comment so it isn't as potentially misleading. In hindsight it's pretty easy to get the wrong idea so thanks for telling us about this!
love this video, 10/10. i like how the solution to the problem is basically “idk, maybe just design more NB characters if you’re worried about good representation”. also, i can’t remember if you’ve said wether you’re autistic or not, but seeing that you did justice to the NB community without being a part of it, i would love to see you do a similar video on autistic representation in video games. especially if you want to discuss how BLATANTLY AUTISTIC CODED venture is. i can grasp why blizzard doesn’t want to put the autism label on a character they didn’t explicitly create as being autistic, but holy cow, venture is peak autism representation to the point that i cried while gushing about it to my partner. there are absolutely autistic people who are similar to the canonically autistic Symmetra and i don’t want to invalidate that, but we NEVER get to see “feral special interest rock eating” autism rep that Venture is to me, and there are a ton of the “everything must be orderly and perfect in my world that i design with my genius (:” characters that Sym represents that only encompass a very stereotypical and narrow view of “acceptable” autistic people
@@mokkecandy_5406 I have actually seen NB used as shorthand for nonbinary for the past decade at least (it's actually where the term enby came from, that's what it sounded like when people were saying NB rather than writing it), and I've personally never seen it used to mean non-black, though since both terms share the letters I can definitely understand it being used there as well. I think it's best to just learn to differentiate based on context here, rather than trying to stop one or the other group from using their shorthand.
Not like there's a big overlap between us on the neurodivergent spectrum and us on the enby spectrum anyways, hehe ^_^ (Just in case tone comes across poorly: there is a big overlap c: )
I am surprised to see that no one mentioned Kris from Deltarune here yet. I like them a lot, I think their design was done really well although it does kind of rely on the mysterious and enigmatic trope if you think about it
Still yet to watch the video but before I wanna add that I think Apex has the best trans representation in any big video game thus far. First they had Bloodhound and were the first to have a nonbinary character just... be. They dont really talk about how Bloodhound is nonbinary and I like that tbh, they're just a hunter rather than a nonbinary hunter. Apex is also the first big game that Im aware of that has the blls to introduce a binary trans character in Catalyst and I will forever love them for that. Catalyst herself does reference being trans a little but only in passing (has a few equippable voice lines about it and an intro line makes a little reference to it). Alike Bloodhound, it feels like shes a character more than just representation. Like how Bloodhound is a hunter before being nonbinary, Catalyst is a witch before being trans and most of her character references that more than anything, though being trans is still a big part of her identity. Anyways big up Apex Legends it's lgbtq+ representation is great
Sasha is funny because they were *almost* good rep. Sombra 0.5 would’ve been neat, especially since they were clearly one of the more important people on the island. It just felt like the writers did a terrible job at actually making them NB, because it wasn’t more than “oooh they’re mysterious~~~”, as you said. Anyway, Setsu Gnosia is a great NB character. And it’s never even actually given focus, with their asexuality being brought up more often (it comes up once). They’re allowed to just…be.
As someone who's gender queer but presents as 100% feminine and is perceived by others as just a woman, I love this video and thank you so much for talking about something that's been swimming in my head for years lol.
My favorite part about nb rep in video games is watching the transphobes in the community desperately try to figure out whether said nb character is amab or afab
My go to analogy for being non-binary is if you have a spectrum from plant to animal and you want to figure out where a mushroom is on that. It has similarities to both ends, but it’s neither. It usually helps.
Gnosia has better enby representation because instead of 1 character, it has 2! And also the original translator was so stupid they mixed “transgender” and “pansexual” creating the funniest scene of all time
Hi just wanna point out that that translation mistake was not simply the translator being stupid. The original Japanese actually did use an odd word choice for the enby option, something that could also be read as pan. The translator had originally mistaken which the character was using, and later went back and fixed it everywhere else in the game, only missing this one line. (Which just happened to be the funniest one lol. "Panification" surgery just makes me think "turning into bread"!) I'm one of the people who originally tweeted about the funny mistake when it first happened, and the translator was EXTREMELY kind and respectful about it. He contacted me and other enby folks for feedback on how to change both this and other lines in the game that were accidentally offensive. And the corrected translation then went forward to be used for the steam port so all currently available versions of the game are free of this issue. Hope this response didn't come off as nitpicky, I just wanted to make sure I spread the word. The translator is very supportive of enby fans and he fixed his mistake super fast, I wish more translators were like that.
Also Gnosis is fuckin awesome and HELL YEAH thank you for mentioning it!! Always a great day when more people play Gnosia!! Setsu is awesome and Raqio is funny as hell and they're both enby icons for all eternity!
This video made me realize just how naturally decoupled I am from the concept of gender in my character design. When I am drawing a character, their gender is usually one of the last things I come up with, and more often I don’t even give them a gender, I just decide what pronouns they use and call it a day.
As a nonbinary person who wants to make characters (that includes nonbinary characters), this helped me a bit to understand what goes into making characters beyond their physical design. Learning how they interact and understand the world around them (as well as how others interact with and understand them) is a crucial factor in designing. To my understanding, the way to make an nb character is to (ironically enough) not think too much about their gender when designing them. But moreso the things mentioned before.
I love the "How do you conceptualize that under the spectrum?" question because I've seen a *lot* of attempts to visually represent gender (graphs, diagrams, etc.), and they always end up being a good look into how the person who made it conceptualizes gender, as opposed to actually helpful guides to understanding the range of gender😂
With regards to character design, I can see how it can be complicated, because gender identity (to simplify a little) has more to do with a person's own sense of self, while a character's design is necessarily focused on what's externally visible. The "correct" answer would be that a non-binary character could look like anything, but the binary view of gender *is* prevalent in society. Overall, I'm glad that efforts are being made, and I hope to see more variety in non-binary characters as we move forward.
for me as an nb i think you're completely right in that the character design should fit the characterization instead of trying to convince people of the character's nonbinaryness. because tbh if someone isn't going to acknowledge a character as nonbinary, no matter how much you try to make it neutral, people will still pick a binary gender for them. i hear people refer to venture as "she" and bloodhound as "he" all the time. the latter is probably related to how men are treated as the default when gender and sex are totally unknown but that's a conversation for another time
Enby representation is such a difficult concept and I'm glad someone has taken the time to discuss the issues faced in designing an enby character. Something I have found interesting is the assumption that Venture is AFAB, which is completely unconfirmed. Actually looking at them, the biggest flags suggesting being AFAB are the eyeliner and lighter voice (and maybe the hair). Other than that, there could be plenty of reason to assume they are AMAB, but almost everyone assumes AFAB including the transphobes using she/her pronouns. This brings up the problem of social biases again though, because what can you even do? Broader audiences thinking in binary terms will always be the biggest obstruction because any femininity means woman almost instantly. AFAB enbies presenting with fem features is somehow fine while the thought of AMAB enbies wearing eyeliner is simply not considered. This is only one of many things, but it's the one that's frustrated me most recently. Thank you again for bringing this topic up and opening a forum for these issues to be discussed.
I think the key take away here is to never make a 1 dimensional character. You should never make a character where their adjectives or labels are their entire definition, they shouldnt just be "trans black hacker" or "Hispanic/Native enby assassin" or even "cishet white dude", we all have aspects that change how we present ourselves. if a character was bullied as a child, they can become a shy wallflower as an adult, or maybe they become so much larger than life so their secrets cant be used against them again, or maybe they become radically anti-bullying and turn themselves into the mom-friend who goes out of their way to make sure everyone is doing good and having a fun time. No one aspect could or should ever define anyone, we're all just a collection of traits. Personally, i have a real weird relationship with my own identity. Im bisexual, but I've only ever been in publicly committed relationships with women due to my own internalized homophobia from before i got married. I'm biracial, but was ostracized from both the black and white kids in school due to my 'tism, and never knew extended family past my siblings and parents so i was never included into either culture. Im non-binary, but almost entirely presenting as masc and am still comfortable enough to go by he or him. Most days i feel like im forcing myself into an environment that i dont belong, im not REALLY queer, cuz all the men ive been with were one night stands. I'm not REALLY enby because only my closest friends know that i prefer they/them. I'm not REALLY black because i didn't grow up with black media or black friends or a black family. But i am still all of those things, and someone else with my exact same description could have had a completely different version of life, which would then reflect in how they present themselves, in how they dress or wear their hair, or how they talk. None of us are boxed in by our labels and adjectives, so then why would the characters we're making be?
You'll also often encounter the fact that masc traits are seen as pervasively more dominant. Like if you designed a character that's fem in hairstyles, clothing and colour scheme but gave them a beard, they will just be seen as a man in a dress most of the time, simply due to how we're taught to view feminine traits as inferior and not defining.
Once again I'll say that Floofty from Bugsnax is my favorite nb rep in any game. Floofty is the insane unhinged muppet we all need. Being non binary myself it was really cool to have a nb character who was far from a perfect person but still wasn't treated any different from any of the other characters. Also, shout out to testament from Guilty Gear! I haven't played the game but God damn do I get gender envy from them.
Great Video! I noticed a pattern in people who accidentally use non-They pronouns for Venture, and it just happened that the pronoun they would use matched their own. And I found that interesting (of course, they corrected it when reminded, as one does with error). I wondered if that meant Venture was the "absence of gender NB," and I think your video answered that succinctly. I appreciate your efforts here; I have many NB friends who feel seen with recent developments such as FFXIV's Zero and OW2's Venture. Good stuff.
language also plays a part in this. i’m brazilian and i’ve seen most english speaking people refer to venture as she and portuguese speakers refer to venture as he (their voice in the dub is similar to the original so i don’t think it’s making a difference)
An example of nonbinary character I think is very well done is Testament from the Guilty Gear franchise. Testament was originally AMAB with a more feminine clothing set, and eventually came out as non-binary in their story. Their earlier designs had more masculine phyical features, with more feminine outfit options, but as the series progressed and the character evolved, they shifted to a more feminine/neutral physical appearance and much more "blended" clothing options, sporting a cravat and a top hat in their newest redesign in Guilty Gear Strive. But that's not why I think they're good NB representation, and neither is the more "what even is this outfit" aspect of their design. Rather, it's because of the "implication" that Strive has in the lore: since the last game, pretty much every character has been focusing on themselves and actively striving (hah) to be themselves more. This is obviously reflected in our beloved Brisket in a very direct way, how she finally figured out she is a woman, but most of the other characters also show this in their own way.And so does Testament, though in a lot more subtle way: not only have they slowly evolved into "the Testament aesthetic", but we get to see a list of the "things they like" that they've been working on. And by god does that list make it feel like Testament is just * vibin * at this point in their life: - in their original appearance the only listed "slaughter" and "playing with children", two already... very separate things one would hope lol - in their second appearance, we see a new hobby show up: "thinking". This is actually believed inthe community to be self-reflection about their own self, given that in the original appearance they were a mind-controlled puppet of the villains while in this new entry they are independent. - in their Strive appearance that list is... like 50+ entries lmao - including but not limited to "fashion magazines", "DIY woodworking", "liquor (but they don't drink)", "occult trinkets", "scrapbooks", "painting", "mahjong", "baking", "wrestling", and my personal favourite "building plastic model (especially of mecha robots)". There's traditionally feminine hobbies, traditionally masculine ones, and others that are just kind of out of nowhere. Testament does not give a flying fuck about gender. Testament is Testament. Testament is doing whatever they want in life, and by god do I respect the fuck out of that.
So like, Personally I Love that Clove and Venture are non-binary representation. But a majority of the representation we get is Mid/distastful. This is because we lack Masc representation. Like you said there is no one way to be Non-binary which is 100% true from Feeling in the middle to being Apagender. The issue with character representation is that they are set on the default of Femme and or Androgynous Non-binary characters. Non-binary people are Trans people so how they experience their presentation can be presented in as many ways as there are stars in the sky. But current Enby representation is seen as a negative type of Girl+ where society sees either you as androgynous or as Femme because they perceive Nonbinary as being a Girl DLC. You can make a Hyper Femme character who is non-binary but like I said prior being Non-binary is a Trans character. So a Major factor of how they present should be tied to their story. Like if you make a Non-binary character who was "assigned Male at birth" a hyper-femme character with a semi-feminine body or feminine model. The story can include the character's love for femininity but not having the desire to be a girl, and or seeing the world through a lens of I want to present in a way where I will be taken as a girl from face value to decenter and remove the association of man being since that was the box they were forced to in their upbringing so they hyper glam themselves and take estrogen. We can have Femme body type characters who look Masculine, And Masculine characters who have masculine body types and features. But it really is down to how gender plays an effect (mainly negative) in their life to create the space where the Non-binary character is validated in their gender, and isn't hitting some diversity status. When It comes to Non-binary characters. They really force the "Write the Story First, design later" because once you can grant a reasoning to why the character presents the way they do and it can be positive with gender, negative with gender but like you stated, it really has no limits because to exist out of the binary. Especially when back to the Androgynous aspect of how people may want to create enby characters, yes there are Androgynous enbies, but if people try and make Enbies Andro as the "Gender indicators" it perpetuaties the concept that to get Enbies' Gender correct, we owe society androgyny.
as someone who is non binary, one of my absolute favorite NB characters in media is Testament from Guilty Gear a character who was localized as both male and female and constantly flip flopping before finally landing on Non Binary as of their recent appearance and having that be shown not just through their design being ambiguous but also focusing more on their unique personality compared to the rest of the cast and their individualism in how they act as opposed to a list of predetermined “non binary traits” speaks much more to the NB experience (at least in my opinion)
Being non-binary is like being an anti-stereotype for me. I like to be someone that can choose to look however I want, wether I’m fem or masc I do know many enbys that are incredibly fem and assigned birth a girl or incredibly masc and assigned birth a boy. What is great about Venture is blizzard can make them look both fem and masc through skins so I got a lot to look forward to in the future!
Enby here. It's nice to see someone talking about how wild it is that so much of how we see the world/engage with gender/sexuality is from the perspective of the binary. Happy pride~
Thanks for the video! I personally really liked the NB rep in Gnosia (Setsu and Raqio are great!) and in Caligula Effect 2. While in Gnosia NB characters just exist wonderfully, Caligula Effect 2 makes you experience a main character's journey of discovering their gender (NB, Agender etc. are terms that are appear in dialog).
This is honestly a really insightful discussion of what gender means to a character and specific challenges that arise with nonbinary characters--seeing a cisgender person doing this level of analysis into the topic of gender and actually addressing the nuance and wide range of nonbinary experience is pretty rare and is honestly heartwarming to see. I myself am trans and nonbinary, and it has been difficult to find the way in which I am happiest presenting myself, as I wish to be seen as more feminine but my personal taste often swings towards more gender neutral or at times masculine presentation. This experience is of course far from universal and is deeply personal to me, and no nonbinary people I know share the same experience--it really is important to understand this idea, that nonbinary is not just a 3rd bulletpoint on the spectrum of male to female but is instead an umbrella term that encompasses everything within and outside of the spectrum. Two people can have totally different experiences, use different pronouns, and present differently, while still both identifying as nonbinary, because it's a blanket term rather than a specific point like 'male' or 'female'. Sorry for the long ramble, honestly just really like the video and have a lot of thoughts I wanted to get out
I think this adds a lot of sections to figuring out a character. Not just Race, Species, Class, Religion, Sex, Gender, etc...but Why. What does this mean to them? There's a lot of characters currently that may not have an answer, or even understand the Gender question, that are on the binary scale. I think that's the crutch you spoke of. Race for example. A lot of white people don't think about it. To the point they may refer to white as "normal" or "default" with no ill intent or prejudice. It just was never questioned, even if they have the forethought to try to be conscious of minorities and the discrimination towards them. And then you get those that would answer "Superiority"... As a mixed person, this has been a major point of thought of where I fit, what I count as, and what's safe to say. Appalachian, African American, and Native American, but I look Middle Eastern or Hispanic. Idk if I could sum it down into one field on a form, it's far too deep. I think this is the same kind of thing. Gender Fluidity for me means I'm a guy, or I have to fight through the dysphoria if any when I'm not so trauma about being bullied for looking like a girl pops up. I have some skirts, have long hair, and occasionally paint my nails. I also carry gum, because if I'm not male, and if I'm feeling dysphoric, it helps and I need it urgently, but otherwise it sits in my bag, within reach but untouched, for at least 360 days a year. But most of my OCs, unless it's a self-insert, the Gender and Sex can all be filled in with one letter, either a M or a F. And then we move on to the rest of the design. One cannot do that with nonbinary characters and bake it work, and maybe I shouldn't with binary characters either, unless that's part of the character. Lots of food for thought. And I didn't expect the genderfluid section to be so long, yet feel so shallow. I think I have questions about myself now...
A trick I was taught for figuring these things out was to choose a characters gender last. Smooth out the visual design, what they'll do, their story, if its a game then their kit. Then, at the very end, add that final choice onto it. People really can look like anything, there is no one right choice for any character presentation. It simplifies the process, and also helps to break stereotypes. And it doesn't just apply to non-binary characters. Using the same approach for all characters opens up a range of variety and helps to break down the strict binary stereotypes we see.
So basically the way I’m understanding it is there is no way to create a non binary character effectively, as if you use mixed male and female identifiers then it doesn’t accurately represent non binary people, but if you use more identifiers from one gender then they don’t appear as non binary unless the game outright tells it to you? The video was well made but idk if it actually addressed what the title was asking, as the answer just seemed to be “non binary is not being associated to a gender so there is no right or wrong way to design a non binary character”
Something that I think adds to the whole issue, is the confusion (or even rejection) that many people have regarding the idea of gender at all. How many people see a binary trans as "I would rather be a boy/girl then what I physically am" really muddles the ability to understand what a binary trans person then is. If people can't understand the internal nature of having a trans identity, binary or nonbinary, how do they understand recognizing one? If they can't recognize one, how do they then write one? I think that, unfortunately, this whole discussion is innately seated, to a degree, on activism to trans people's validity, because we can't really communicate the fiction if people are screaming about the reality. As, people for some reason are pretty hung up on the idea of fictional gender nonconforming existing because they think gender is fake/ideological IRL, despite playing games with laser guns and dragons...) I don't intend for this to go into the validity of gender identity, what I'm trying to say is the matter of being able to parse, sorry if I failed in the regard
as a very fem presenting nonbinary person this video made me tear up a little im not even gonna lie, thank u so much for making this video :3 i rlly hope more people educate themselves on this and begin to talk about it more ^^
As a writer I've always asked myself what does it mean to be non binary and can I explore the concept in a fun way? I just always found the absense of traditional binary perception fascinating. So since I wanted to avoid falling into stereotypes and personal biases I did my best to understand how a non binary character should be written and designed by asking my enby friends about it directly. Here's a quick summary of what I heard, being non binary is more of a mindset than something outwardly tangable, there aren't any particular rules in design, the only real limitation I was given is to not make the design skew too much too one extreme, by which they meant don't just have a character that in all metrics seems feminine or masculine just be non binary as it would seem odd to them. Which is fair in my opinion, but most people characters aren't just one thing, so I kinda obsessed over that point where I also fell into this mindset of have the character feel like they could be either binary gender... which since then I've tried to not be my explicit goal. Essentially what I've been trying to achieve is just have them be a character that happens to be non binary for whatever personal reason. That way they aren't just defined by being enby and instead are a real person that also is enby, so now I can explore the concept and have them be a character that fits the story. Another thing I wanted to quickly bring up since it might be interesting to listen to, in the social bubble me and that friend were, the concept of non binary was sorta normalized in a way. This meant we were exposed to other enbies in the community as well as characters presented as non binary. What I noticed however was that enby characters felt more like token characters, they exist just to be representation, which at least to my friend and also me after discussing it with them felt monotone and like those characters lacked depth. So during our talk we discussed how to avoid that and the answer we agreed on was make them a real person as a character, so I said mostly offhandedly, what about negative traits or flaws? A big thing we noticed in those token characters is that they felt devoid of depth and we seemed to agree that lack of negative traits or flaws is a significant problem with those characters. My personal philosophy with characters is that just like people nobody is a perfect saint who can't do wrong. Which led to us discussing the concept of an enby antagonist and to some this will either sound stupid like, why can't you just do that, while to others it might seem like I wanted to represent them intentionally in a bad light. And this devide is my concern, my friend agreed it'd be a neat idea since they always love villain characters in stories and while I too like the charm and novelty of the idea, I'm on the fence with it. Currently I decided I'm gonna go through with the idea but I will balance it out, by them being not an antagonist because they are specifically non binary and by having a different enby character that fulfills a more neutral positive role in the story. But for those that have read this long comment, what do you think, enby antagonist yea or nah?
It’s simple. You just remove their binaries. Give them a basic binary-removal operation. Jokes aside, I LOVE this 💕 Ahhhhhh. I hope you never stop tackling topics like this. You speak so confidently and clearly on it. And- AND- now I get to have something to listen to while I’m at the gym. Perfect timing. Win-win.
As an nonbinary artist, a lot of the time when trying to create an enby character is trying to replace gender with another thing completely different, because most people won't be able to tell gender if the thing they are looking at only gives them star vibes
I think a big things to pay attention to is the difference of how venture and Clove (Clive, clover. Clitoris? Idfk the name) were portrayed as enby characters, with venture their identity was known from the getgo and explicitly stated. But Clove (I know I’m fucking the name up I don’t play valorant) was introduced as a female and then retconned as enby BECAUSE of a business model from riot. You could say the same for venture but then again the creators weren’t as aggressive with flaunting the fact that the character was enby but more so viewing it as something that just so happens to be part of the character.
I am not NB, but based on what I've witnessed in terms of queer representation in media, I think another problem that makes people hesitate when designing NB characters involves story impact. In theory, gender or pronouns could almost be defined as a "Biography Trait." If your story's setting is more progressive, then like blood type or birth date, a character's gender could be inconsequential to where you could change it without affecting the story aside from niche cases. In many stories, the only time being NB comes up is when dealing with story beats that are overused to the point of being trite: "Who am I?" "They don't accept me for who I am." "But I have to fit the mould!" Even when "gender-related hardships" aren't a narrative focal point for a character, some such event may still come up as the writer's attempt at making a "more authentic" NB experience. See, for example, Sacha's gender only really coming up when subjected to Gio's bigotry. Furthermore, gender only getting brought up or explored when referencing struggle or trauma isn't appealing. It's very limiting from a narrative standpoint and potentially uncomfortable or upsetting for your queer consumer base. I could be way off base, and if I am, please correct me. But I think your final point of "Just make a character and then make them NB" is closer to the correct Occam's Razor method of creating a greater variety of good characters who happen to be They/Themers.
Wonderful video, I got a lil anxious seeing the thumbnail of the video because I remembered you weren't non binary but you absolutely blew it out of the park with this:) I think my favorite non binary rep in a game rn is avery from scarlet hollow, who's clothing style you could interpret as pretty masculine along with their body yet their identity is never questioned in the narrative and its just accepted "yeah thats what an non binary person can look like" even if they aren't completely androgynous. Idk I'm a non binary person who dresses pretty fem alot of the time and it's just nice to see a character who dresses like a certain gender not have their actual gender identity questioned or diminished
I'm a huge fan of when a character's design doesn't always correlate with their gender identity in obvious ways, in the same way that you can't tell a real person's gender by just looking at them.
One trend that I've noticed in a lot of these comments is that, well, there is no unifying trend of what constitutes "good" or "bad" enbie rep! But what there does seems to be some agreement on is that it's all valid, there's just room for so much more. I think it really highlights that the issue of representation is still, well, a lack of it in general. We just, straight up, need more enbie characters and gay characters and lesbian characters and gnc characters and queer characters and so on and so forth. But with how these sorts of live service titles specifically work, that kind of approach may not be easily achievable since, well, you'd have to think of how and when to introduce all these new characters. The League community had been in their own bubble of resentment towards the new champion designs for years. First, it was too much "Disney characters", then too much "edgelords", then too much "shirtless dudes", then too much "same face girls", etc. Diversity is something that's both craved and, paradoxically, feared in large parts of these communities because changes always imply, at least for some period of time, a new vector. "Please, don't release this hyperfemme popstar character because I've been wanting a new badass monster dude for a year now" It turns character releases into a competition with "winners" and "losers". So, Overwatch, Valorant, League, Apex, etc. both feel the most suited - due to their ability to stay relevant and continuously grow along with community feedback, and the least suited - due to the set precedent of appealing to everyone at once all of the time, at the same time.
As an enby, I just want to say your statement of "the problem" did a fantastic job of accurately depicting my own experience. "What does it mean to be non-binary" is sort of like asking "what does it mean to not be color blind" , I can say "oh I can see more colors than you" or I can say "I have more receptors in my eyes than you do" but none of that explains any part of what it's like to SEE those colors and all of it implies that one persons sight is "better" and anothers is "worse" when in reality there's evolutionary benefits to both and the biological diversity is a net positive for the human race. I just see different colors than you do. As for character designs that I find validating, most of the "trying too hard to be enby" designs feel more like a Halloween costume than representation. For example, if I was in overwatch world I would be dressing for function not representation, but in a video game form and function can operate completely independently. I personally would rather more gender bendy options for the cast at large, and I love how games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Forza Horizon 5 allow you to just pick the "they them" pronouns and then pick any combination of parts and outfits. And in Overwatch specifically (which I do play quite a bit) I feel significantly more akin to Zenyatta than I do Venture, but I also am totally thankful that they've added an explicitly non-binary character even if the delivery was kinda meh.
I'm really impressed at the nuance you were able to show in this video. As a nonbinary trans woman, I feel like the main problem that plagues NB representation is that most of these characters were probably designed mostly by cis people. I think queer and specifically nonbinary people are more easily able to conceptualize what being nonbinary looks like without being reductive. I've seen cis people try to put nonbinary back onto the gender binary as if the entire point of the identity isn't escaping it. You can see this with trends like the tik tok "they thems" stuff where a lot of these videos were placing a reductive stereotype onto NB identity. (typically this stereotype takes the place of a clearly AFAB, white, skinny, conventionally attractive person) I don't think these two latest characters from Valorant and Overwatch are bad, but I hope we see some representation for more boundary breaking explorations of what nonbinary characters can look like. I think we might just need to look towards queer artists to be the people to do that.
This video has really helped bring to attention how difficult it is to depict non-binary characters and how there isn’t a strong archetype to associate with these characters.
I am happily non-binary , although , I also happen to be AFAB and have a more feminine presenting voice and appearance , despite seeing myself as androgynous . It's hard for me to feel "real" with my identity , which makes the lack of actual human characters who choose to identify as non-binary because that's who they are as people instead of "Ooh mystery person" a lot harder for me , because it just gives me an extra sense of not feeling human , like I don't belong . I definitely relate to a character like Venture appearance wise , although Venture is definitely a more idealized version of myself LOL and I am happy about the newer representation !! I hope to see more representation in the future , esp more feminine/masculine presenting enbies like myself !! Just because you express yourself that leans towards a specific binary [ or sometimes not exactly by choice in my case ] doesn't make you any less non-binary !! I feel like this is also where the mystery aspect in some NB characters comes from , because the "ideal" NB person wouldn't give you any hints of being male or female , making them a "mystery" , and to be honest , I strive for that too !! But it's not the case for everyone , as said in this video , there isn't a "right" way to be non-binary , or even just a few right ways , you can be non-binary however you see fit !! Which does make creating characters harder , so I ABSOLUTELY commend representation of enby folk in almost any capacity !! Since it is still "new" to a lot of people , so tackling it in media may seem daunting at first . This video really made me smile , you are incredibly respectful and goes over this topic extremely thoroughly !!
I'm non-binary, and my personal thoughts for making NB characters is to just approach it simply. Characters to FL4K are a great way to introduce the public to the idea of a NB character because it can open an avenue to explore how they perceive themselves compared to the world. I personally enjoy that because a nonhuman character could feel like they don't fit, and express the struggle with that, and it's something I personally struggled with. Personally, I like seeing characters who happen to be NB but less NB characters if that makes sense. This has happened with TV and movies with gay characters for example, that being their defining or only character trait, being gay. While that is a part of us, to the general public it is a very small part of who we are relative to them. I think the hardest part of designing NB characters is that there is no stereotype to use. We're all so dynamic and have such a vast display of our identity that it's just not possible to have an easy access character design like they have with Lifeweaver. I personally present more masculine and even let people still refer to me by he/him pronouns even though I much prefer they/them. With me personally it's truly a preference but it's not that way with everyone. Some people hate being called he or she and want to only be referred to as they, and that is totally valid and so is my expression of gender identity or lack thereof. This is getting rambly, so I'll get to my point. To design NB characters, design people. As in, design personality traits, start with who they are rather than what they look like. For example, who is Venture? They're a tough little goober who likes to save artefacts from the ancient world and happens to be NB. Characters like that are great for representation because they aren't reduced to just being something but aren't only their gender identity. Essentially, design on personality. Who they are, what they do, like Bloodhound. Small note for you Viveros, dunno if you misspoke but Bloodhound isn't a robot. They're flesh and blood, bonafide human.
I think you might have misheard me, I didn’t call Bloodhound non-human afaik. I mentioned Bloodhound and then brought up Fl4k as a character with a similar aesthetic who is non-human, but I know Bloodhound is a human.
some of my favorite NB characters come from Hunt Showdown-- the Viper, Sofia, and Iron Bark are all NB and present in very different ways, with viper and iron bark being more masc while sofia is more fem
I really appreciated Venture's release. As a non-binary transmasculine dude, it was the first canonically trans character in a game I consistently played. I also really live how upbeat they are, it helps me stay positive. I also have adhd so i appreciate their hyperfixation on archeology. :] It does feel absolutely upsetting that they got pretty cast aside in terms of cosmetics, with the least amount of release cosmetics of any overwatch 2 hero. Mauga also got pretty cast aside. It sucks because i really enjoy these characters.
I know im responding after pride and a while after this vid came out, but as a trans person i genuinely appreciate how you call out weird freaks who sexualize and hate us, far too few people outright support us and even less say that kind of thing, I know you have done this before but thank you
Maybe it's just because I'm not an overwatch player/i barely interact with the community, but the amount of toxicity from the community directed towards clove is crazy to me, in a way that makes me question riot's choices in character design. Pre-release, I was so hyped for the release, given that my dad's scottish and that i identified as nb for a significant portion of my life. Don't get me wrong, I love Clove's design and their kit, but as valorant's first foray into a trans/gender non-conforming character... I think they could've done better. Of course, as you said, not all nb people and androgynous, and that okay! I know nbs like Clove irl, who mostly present in a feminine manner. What we have to consider is that Valorant is catering to a GRAND majority cisgender audience, and they should've thunk about how they'll perceive the character. When I see clove, i just see a younger nb person with a feminine presentation, voice, and body type. When the average player sees Clove, they just think they're a girl and completely ignore the pronouns used for them. I rarely get team mates who don't use she/her on Clove in callouts. It doesn't help that Clove --accidentally or not-- falls in the stereotype of corporations thinking non-binary just means ''woman lite''. I think, for a first nb character in game, Overwatch did a great job with Venture, even if my way of measuring is that they are misgendered as being male AND female in hate comments I see on social media lol. In a transphobe's eyes, Clove is absolutely a female. Venture is just a point of confusion for them, of not knowing where to point their finger.
personally, i love venture and bloodhound being androgynous and clove being less androgynous because its a lot of representation for the entire spectrum (plus i like to imagine clove being immortal has smth to do with them feeling like they dont fit in a binary ^^)
Loved this video because its interesting to see a perspective on enby representation in regards to shooter games. I was wowed by the "way too many enby characters are robots in heavy clothing" part because I hadn't seen much of that in the genres I'm more familiar with. (VNs, JRPGs and monster catching games) I've found that "enby equals non human" is still annoyingly common in all genres, but ij the ones I play theres more of a tendancy to have them be scantily clad/neutral outfits (for aliens) or not have clothes at all if theyre a robot (or inorganic creatures like golems) So its interesting how a robot in baggy clothes would be refreshing and new to me, while its overused in other games. Its fascinating too how even within the genres I like, theres a lot of variation on cliche enby tropes. The thing about colour in particular! Purple feels like its the default go-to for a lot of western VNs and modern JRPGs, while I noticed a huuuuuge amount of green in older jrpgs around the 90s and 2000s. That colour's also the biggest enby shorthand in pokenon fangames and I wonder if its just a coincidence or they were inspired bt those games? Ive also found that while "enby = has to always be androgenous and covered up" is common in actual defined characters, when it comes to customiseable protagonist it's ENDLESSLY ANNOYING to only have "looks exactly like cis" as an option. Most VNs and JRPGs with an option just still have Two Binary Bodies, two very stereotypically gendered voices, and all you can do is pick a third pronoun. And pokemon fangames annoy me so much cos they tend to have a new design for the enby option and its.. still just exactly the same as the binary. Pokemon Reborn has two whole new designs for enby options, and theyre just a heavy femme and heavy masc option. Pokemon Uranium only has one design for an enby option and they STILL look 99% masculine, just with a ponytail on top. Basically, I find it frustrating that we both have "enby must always look androgenous" and "enby can NEVER look androgenous" as dumb tropes in different genres of game. And I completely agree that we just need more variety of nonbinary characters in general instead of this weird "we're trying to make a statement on what All Enbies Look Like". Also I find it extremely funny in retrospect that some of the earliest enby characters in gaming are ironically more varied visually because none of these tropes had been established yet. Quina in FF9 is honestly an icon! Nobody had decided enby characters all have to be skinny and young yet, so we get an 80 year old freaky kabuki monster battle chef who stabs dragons with a 5ft tall spork. I think it works best to to it this way, just design them like anyone else, pick a look that suits their personality instead of getting too hung up on One Way To Be Enby. Like lol, we're breaking out of the binary, of course theres gonna be infinite more options out there! It aint just a trinary! 😂
I haven't watched the vid yet but I have to say, as an enby that looks like someone's teenage brother, I wish there were more characters that looked more average-enby, instead of the over the top designs that are so common.
As someone who is nonbinary, Venture was nice to see. Too often media portrays nonbinary characters as inherently 'woman lite'(tm) which is an annoying stereotype. (And it places a target on femme aligned AFAB nonbinary people, which sucks.) Venture reads as neutral if not trans-masc presenting nonbinary. Venture also embraces thier body via choosing to not fix a chipped tooth in a world where people can get prosthetic arms. It's nice to see a nonbinary character celebrate thier body through design that feels authentic and not just a stereotype. Venture wears a large jacket bc of archeology which doesn't read the same as the general stereotype due to it making sense for the career. Can't say I like the jacket itself tho lmafo the odd nonsensical cuts of the jacket layers don't make much sense. But Venture got summer sports sprays that showed them without a jacket, and it seems that Venture didn't get top surgery. So idk, Venture to me isn't bad for a nonbinary character. Venture is the first human nonbinary character, but we also have Lynx (they/them) and Nameless (very gender punk, agender, and rejects the concept of omnic unit number, omnic caste, and names) but those are nonbinary omnics. Then again, all omnics basically awoke as agender then chose thier gender and pronouns later... Aurora was a woman omnic, declassified confirmed she chose she/her pronouns and modeled herself after her creators, Mina Liao. In a recent voice interaction, Ramattra explained to Echo that Null Sector represents omnics rejecting humanity's assigned roles/numbers, and with Nameless being one of Ramattra's closest friends and a founding member of Null Sector + Ramattra is the leader of Null Sector + Ramattra's androgynous design (arguably he is similar to Reaper's gender expression), Ramattra is now also coded as nonbinary, too!
I was so excited to see how ventures legendary skins would look since it’s overwatch’s first NB character and then they came with zero and I was so disappointed.
make a character where gender is ambiguous but is ultimately not important to the character themselves. the only one ive personally seen done well is venture and they can be seen as both male and female and female depending on the situation but it ultimately doesnt matter because venture is goofball.
i’m so glad this video popped up in my feed as a nonbinary person. most nonbinary rep in games has disappointed me, but the best i’ve seen has been from indie games. i hope as time goes on we can both see more enby characters in mainstream games, and see fans of those games actually respect these characters
In the end, there are not a lot of games that have multiple nb representation. They become "the nb character" kinda like in the 2000' and before when in a group in a tv show there were "the girl character ". It is a beginning but the fact that there is only one limit what can be shown, what a nb is or can be and what the writers can do with it. If you are interested Gnosia is a great visual novel type game with 2 nb characters that are presenting pretty differently.
I think the big distinction here is that while other identities are POSITIVELY defined (i.e. defined by the things that they ARE), non-binary identities are NEGATIVELY defined (i.e. defined by what they AREN'T). This means that coding and signifiers that the author uses to define the character's qualities, while the typical route, is actually COUNTERPRODUCTIVE when depicting non binary identities. My experience of being nonbinary has been mostly retrospective - realizing that I engage in gendered behaviours, but that I do so because each individual one resonates with me in isolation, rather than having some internal 'compass' of gender. Which is to say, my experience has had gendered expression be INCIDENTAL to self expression, rather than DRIVING self expression. And that sense of apathy for/lack of understanding of 'gender' as a concept and vague set of rules, means that there's no direct interface between my internal identity and what other people perceive as my gendered expression. On the one hand, the idea of a character picking aspects of their expression completely without thought to their gendered connotations WOULD be effective representation, but it would be extremely difficult to actually COMMUNICATE in design or media, without just outright expositing that information in sledgehammer prose.
Thank you so much for the representation! I'm so tired of seeing and hearing people say "oh venture sounds like a girl so she's a girl" I hope all of them see this video and learn to know better
my friend's nonbinary, and when Clover and Venture dropped at nearly the same time they were so hyped for it :D in game, they love Clover but find Venture incredibly annoying tho LMFAO
What a well done video!! I appreciated how much you took into account the anecdotal experiences from non binary people in your circle when researching for this video. There's just so much nuance when it comes to gender identity across the board, but especially for enby's. Props to ya :D!!
venture is awesome bc bigots online cant decide which way to misgender them LOL in all seriousness, as an agender person myself who does tend to present fairly masculine, i really liked how you talked about nb identites as colors that others can't see. that's genuinely how it feels and i havent heard it described so succinctly before something that does concern me a lot about nb characters that are very heavily presented as masculine or feminine (such as clove) is that im certain corporations will do that only so they can make the char cisgender in regions where queerness is shunned or illegal. clove, specifically, is a cisgender woman in the chinese version of valorant, and it's very unfortunate. at the end of the day, corporations are corporations and they exist to make money, so these more "plausibly cis" nb chars feel like a way for the corporations to have their cake and eat it too :/
Personally i don’t see a problem with slapping the non binary label on a character that was designed one way or the other, but with more subtle details i think make the difference, for me as a non binary person i see myself as masculine and live life as pretty much a dude but my ID and everything is non binary
You said what I wanted to at the end of the video, but hopefully I can still contribute something: the problem isn't non-binary characters being hard to design or conceptualise. The problem is that in any and all stages of development, from concept to finalising to marketing, the idea of binary gender is so ubiquitous that how they're perceived will almost certainly become tainted by it. The truth is that non-binary character design could be anything and everything. But paradoxically, by losing the restriction of gender, many people are suddenly confronted with how much of the world they perceive through that lens. It's hard to intentionally design a character that reflects a different worldview to yours. It's infinitely harder when it's basically everywhere and you can't escape it. Non-binary is not a third, singular gender identity, but can encompass everything that's not strictly 100% "male" or 100% "female". To design a non-binary character is usually quite simple; or at least, uses a principle that can be applied to designing any character with a trait you can't easily identify with: just a design a *character* . No matter how much it will affect the final result, gender identity is only one aspect of what should be a well-rounded character. Designing with an idea or purpose that's not just "well they're [insert adjective here], so..." goes a long way into designing someone that isn't defined by that identity, or at least not some outlandish caricature of it. Go with what feels right for the character, make sure most of your design choices go beyond "they're the [adjective] character", and they will generally be better off for it.
I have a weird relationship with identification with character. (I'll use overwatch as an example) I can say that I'm a old masculine gay man, but still I feel represented a lot more by Zarya, Roadhog and Reinhardt than soldier 76 that match perfectly with my description. Well, those three, like me, are big characters and for some reason, that physical trait is the one that makes me bond with them. The point that I want to make is, there's so many ways that people proceive themself as that you can't even reach the ideas without the individual experiences of people.
Enby here, specifically agendered, meaning I reject the spectrum itself. Just to give some context. Two points. First is more to show biases, I honestly thought Venture was just meant to be a girl until told they are non-binary. Not saying this is evidence of poor design but to say even us who are non-binary still kneejerk assign a gender to someone. The other thing is one good way to show non-binary in a character, which is very hard in video games, is to show variety. A big aspect of being non-binary is not being tied to masculine nor feminine looks. I'm fine in a skirt or a suit. I embrace being non-binary because I am free to mix and match based purely on my personal preferences. You can show a non-binary as masculine and still convey they aren't just by having them not always be in masculine trappings. This is a nightmare with video games since there is a default and people will assume that default is their identity. Though its honestly one of the best ways because their is something universal amongst us. Dealing with people saying we can't like/wear/do because it doesn't fit the binary gender we were assigned.
Thank you, this video has been very informative, it makes me look at the concept of NB very differently, I thought of it as something more as gender neutral, when in reality it’s just outside of the set of the gender binary, which makes it really hard to explore because it’s like trying to navigate somewhere without a map, but in a way there’s a sort of freedom knowing you could be anywhere. I just wish you mentioned Testament from Guilty Gear Strive, but we can’t have it all I guess
I will say, as an archaeologist character, Venture is eerily well-designed in that they look and act exactly like every single queer archaeology student I met during my anthro degree.
It's so true, best enby rep so far
unfortunately i dated that person. they looked the EXACT same.
Meanwhile, you have me deciding to play a nonbinary character in Baldur's Gate, staring at the screen for 10 minutes and deciding "ah yes. Purple."
its always that nb drow twink with purplish skin, pink eyes and white hair with a tint of blue for me. tho they always need to have a dick too, since they are definitely gonna be the top. except for karlach maybe. karlach could top me- i mean the drow twink.
When in doubt, purple it out
Apparently you gotta wear purple to be non binary.
On another note, this is probably my own experience but someone lmk if I’m not alone. Purple for some reason has always been associated with the LGBTQIA+ community since my childhood. Like not my brain cognitively connecting the two but people telling me that purple is a sign that someone is gay. Purple is my favorite color tho
@@maddiemcnugget1076 I mean, purple often mean non-binaryness in pride flags
Annnnddd, I guess purple was most often used on villains in disney movies before cgi lol
Idk
And I guess it’s a pretty glamorous colour associated with royalty?? And that’s stereotypically associated with gay people??
I really have no idea tho, my words are a guess
Shoutout to Testament from Guilty Gear, i think they're a good example of an nb character design that prioritizes a unified, personality-fitting aesthetic over a perfect balance of gender signifiers.
agreed. love their design soooo much. it feels like the design truly understands the non-binary label deeper than the superficial androgyny of other nb characters
I commented in another reply, but I somewhat disagree. They were very nicely androgynous to slightly masc in previous games. But decided to go to one side completely and be hyper femme. I've heard people be gross about this and say "she's basically a girl tee hee" and repeat the rhetoric of old "trap" jokes from the 2000s. I wish they kept Testament with their old physique bc I've never seen it for agender characters. Btw, they're agender, not nb
@@MsMvsc I mean, agender is under the nonbinary umbrella so I don't think as a general descriptor that nonbinary would be wrong. Agender is just more specific if anything.
@@Vivi.20.
Fair enough, I just thought it's important to specify. And I stand my previous points.
"They're androgynous. In fact, they've transcended human existence, just like me." Is probably the most amazing way to confirm a character is nb
the most frustrating thing about enby representation is that an enby really CAN look like anything, but to an audience of mostly binary people, it takes a very specific look and design aesthetic before they'd "accept" that character to actually be non-binary. So it often ends up a lose-lose game where you either have a narrow pool of design elements to define non-binary characters that a playerbase will accept as non-binary, or you break away from those "molds" to have more varied non-binary designs, at the expense of the playerbase at large not regarding them as non-binary and just defaulting to calling them a man or a woman.
Unfortunately devs and designers tend to lean towards the former option, which just serves to underrepresent enbies like myself who don't present androgynously. In my opinion, the most effective way to challenge this approach would be to just create larger pools of enby characters of varied design choices, and reshape people's perception of enbies through mass exposure. Sadly that means it's a bit of a waiting game for such characters to actually BE created and released, but its gotta start somewhere
Honestly as someone who has seen how nonbinary characters are treated, it literally doesn't matter. You can make your character look like anything and people will still misgender them (see: Fl4k).
Or try not to care too much about the biases of others. I mean, if the canon is a character is non-binary, there's simply no excuse. No matter how hard one would scream otherwise. In the end, people always go for nicely fleshed out characters rather than bland tropes.
I wrote my comment before I read yours bestie but you explain my point of view about this so well. I wholly agree with what you said. We really need more non-androgynous rep.
Shit, even with the examples presented, Venture, I see a lot of people refer to them using she / her, either out of ignorance or malicious intent.
And the former group can derive their understanding of the character from the latter group.
At what point does an audience's collective interpretation of the character "override" the official one? If everybody agrees that a character is gay as hell and treat them as such in the fandom, does that not effectively, make them so within the realms of this collective zeitgeist?
It's certainly a gamble, especially nowadays, when the very validity of enbies, as an identity, is yet to reach a nigh universal acceptance.
One thing I've actually thought about was the idea of incorporating that kind of representation maybe not necessarily through individual characters but through character creation systems.
After all, what could best communicate a complex approach to self-identification and presentation other than leaving that choice up to the player? It's this superposition where they can be everything or nothing and beyond all at once and, through that, get across the idea of non-conformity in a truly free way.
Or, y'know, maybe it's just my own experience and desire for more options to make silly little dudes and still have them be acknowledged for who they are.
As someone who presents more masculine but also deals with issues with my gender identity I feel this a lot
One interesting aspect of non binary characters is how some non explicit nonbinary characters are treated. A lot of the times people just chooses a gender for them (rimuru in that slime isekai anime) or say things like “[character]’s gender is [character]!” while treating explicitly nonbinary characters with more bigoted comments.
People treat Frisk/Kris from Undertale/Deltarune as nonbinary a lot of the times even when they dont realize it (me at first)because they don’t dont get advertise as such in official media. We know they are nonbinary because they are referred to with only they/them or neutral labels and wears clothes from everywhere on the gender spectrum. On the other hand, Venture who is advertised as explicitly nonbinary is treated with much more hostility even though in story or gameplay they arent shouting “im nonbinary!” at the top of their lungs either. People don’t care about their impact in game, just how they’re advertised. You could say this is a result of different player bases and it definitely is, but people generally werent being bigots towards Frisk/Kris especially when Undertale had a larger audience.
Often i get the same treatment as a somewhat androgynous presenting nonbinary person, where they most of the time just chooses a set of pronouns for me. Since I’m someone who doesnt care for pronouns and uses any, I dont bother pointing out the fact that I’m nonbinary and in such dont get treated with hostility even if i know they hold bigoted views. I dont know what the point im trying to make is, but it’s just an interesting thing i see often in media that is reflected IRL.
Great video btw, i really enjoyed watching it!
I think it’s a funny coincidence that both if the games released an nb character around the same time. And what makes it even better is that they’re both still so different in personality and style. Not just some stereotypical nb person/character. To me that very much makes me feel like they actually cared about bringing this type of representation and not just to “please” the lgbtq community
It's really funny to think that maybe both games knew they has an nb character in the works and decided to release them at the same time to share the backlash
And yet venture almost definitely ate cloves pet rock
@@airplanes_aren.t_real was there much backlash with venture? I saw a lot with clove but I’m not as deep in the overwatch scene
@@Slykie There was depending on what circles you looked in. Even now there are people who can’t accept it. Near venture’s release I had someone in voice chat rant about how blizzard should stop focusing on “making characters gay” or more recently I’ve found people typing transphobic things in text chat simply because someone is playing venture
i do wish you would have touched on an issue i personally have with nb representation in media and games recently is that it seems to heavily skew towards AFAB/slightly femme presenting characters, mostly due to that being the easiest for the average person to comprehend. which makes sense, it seems like there are more afab people irl who are comfortable with being queer due to societal pressures, as it's hard for amab/masc people to be outwardly queer, or to even think about whether they're queer or not.
nothing wrong with being a femme presenting nb OBVIOUSLY, and i love clove for example but if every nb character that gets designed is going to be afab i feel like they're kind of tiptoeing around instead of actually experimenting with more interesting representations of gender.
bloodhound is sick though.
great vid as always :D
I'd love a gorgeous nb character with a beard 🙏🙏
Honestly though it does seem incredibly prevalent. I think it's connected to the age-old notion that it's fine for a woman to wear masculine clothing or act slightly masculine, meanwhile it's seen as an immediate sign of homosexuality if a man so much as paints his nails; therefor it's more """palatable""" for an nb character to be afab and wear masculine clothing than it would be for an nb character to be amab and wear even SLIGHTLY feminine clothing; something that would inevitably lead to people just calling them a "femboy".
Pyro tf2
Yeah that bothers me. As an example, in Guilty Gear, Testament is agender and has always been very adrogynous with slight leaning towards masc (they're AMAB). I always appreciated that, but unfortunately in Strive (the newest game) they ramped up the femininity to the extreme. I love their design, but am sad they changed their physique to be as appealing to straight audiences, esp coomers. You're right that femme leaning nb characters are always viewed as the "safest" route and we need more masc leaning rep too.
@MsMvsc real I thought I was the only one. At the time they sticked out in an already sparse group of characters. Now they kinda blend in. Still love them tho
I can already feel the low-key seething rage from viv as he started creeping up a sasha sprite while talking about enigmatic enby characters 🤣🤣
Considering how he made a whole section about them in the inescapable video
Bro has some *thoughts*
My first thought when they revealed Venture was that a lot of their design was also driven by a desire to reduce obvious labeling and for better or worse one of the best ways to do that is to aim for a neutral middle ground on the quote unquote spectrum. Venture is a mix and match of masculine and feminine traits specifically so no obnoxious commenters can be "right" about them.
I think this is also why they expressly didn't tell us anything about their personal history, we don't know what Venture was assigned at birth and even their real name, Sloan Cameron is literally two unisex names just to drive the point home. Their character is drenched in ambiguity so that there are no obvious signs a hater could point to in order to go "AHA! They're an X! I've solved the puzzle! I've exposed the TRUTH!". Everything from their clothing, their style and their purposely androgynous voice is meant to not give LGBT-phobes anything to latch onto. You must accept their identity or you just don't have an argument.
This is obviously quite limiting in terms of character design, but that more reflects where culture is at more than it does anything on the part of the designers. And for the record, I think they made it work, they always do, T4 are kind of masters at this sort of thing. But it's kind of a one time trick, you know, if they start making more NB characters with this exact ethos, that's gonna create a stereotype that might not be appreciated.
But for now, given all the challenges, I think they nailed it.
It reminds me of aro and ace rep. People just dont know how to interct with those concepts because they are seen as basic human things. Trying tp make characters that are defined by a lack of something, rather than a substitition is a pretty difficult thing for most creators to understand.
it's crazy how many sex positive things in general subtlety dehumanised ace people....
And then it gets even more difficult when any sort of ace rep is either just fully sexless or just stiff and robotic. As an aro-ace more than down to sleep with anyone, it'd be pleasant to see sex positive ace rep for once. Though to get to that level of nuanced sub-representation we need actually good ace rep first.
i still hc moira as aro ace
@@shakirashipslied9721 Trying to explain that having libido and being sexually attracted to people are two separate things is like trying to explain quantum physics to a molerat.
if they do make a canon ace character, i swear to god if they’re non human or have a deadpan personality i will be disappointed. I’m sick of the stereotype that ace people are emotionless in general
This video was a really fun watch as an enby who does a lot of gender-related self-reflection. I'm so glad you pointed out that gender neutral does not necessarily make something nonbinary! One of the main issues with explaining non-binary identity to people is that even the word itself is about what we AREN'T and not what we ARE and that can be incredibly freeing but also incredibly difficult for people to understand if they haven't given gender much thought beyond the binary. So while it makes sense for people to automatically jump to the conclusion that nonbinary = androgyny, gender neutrality, and lack of gendered identifiers I'm genuinely happy more people are talking about how this is not the case.
I think this standard oftentimes even stifiles other enbies and makes them wonder if it's ok to be feminine or masculine to a hyper degree (hyperfeminine enby who went through an androgynous era here) when the whole point is to just not gaf!! Great video!!
yes, agreed !! when i first started exploring my gender, i was like "oh shoot, i should buy some masculine clothing, huh?" only to find that i hated all of it lol. i'm just always going to be hyper feminine because that's the kind of style and silhouette that i like, and i think that's fine. i was finally able to convince myself of that when i thought, "okay, a man wearing a dress is still a man, so why can't *i* just be a man/enby wearing a dress?"
yeah people see nonbinary as like a third category when the whole idea of being nonbinary is that we do not exist inside the binary. it's like people see us going "there's more to gender than two rigid categories" and they just go "oh so there are three rigid categories!" like...
You nailed the difficulties in depicting nonbinary appearances in media, the example of explaining colors to someone who sees in a different spectrum really clarifies it further. You didn't touch on this that much, but, another problem that makes it really hard for those that can't see in a broader spectrum, are the character's voices.
I can't say for sure for fl4k and Bloodhound, but from my experience, people identify and place alot of gender signifiers in the other enbies' voices. I believe that the majority of their misgendering (when not on purpose/or some other reason) comes from that (Definitely Clove)? When their voices are the tiniest smidge higher or lower, they automatically place them on either end of their gender spectrum.
anyway i love your videos :3
yes! this is a huge thing. when apex legends first released, i noticed whenever bloodhound was misgendered, it was mostly using he/him pronouns, because their voice was a deeper, yet still an undoubtedly androgynous voice. if anything, i felt like a much larger population of players were respecting their canon pronouns than they are now.
however a few years into the games lifespan, an animated short showing a prepubescent bloodhound released and their voice was a lot higher pitched… because they were a child. but after that short had cemented itself in the community i noticed an exponential amount of people misgendering bloodhound with she/her pronouns.
it was soooo odd to witness in real time because watching the transphobic language around misgendering bloodhound felt like people grasping at straws to make bloodhound a girl because they couldn’t comprehend a truly androgynous character.
Definitely. I specifically use Venture for reference, because having a deeper voice would likely shift perception of them a lot, rather than people assuming they're AFAB or using she/her pronouns.
@@dylanbranam8535 I feel disappointed in myself cus I didn't know bloodhound was non-binary until this video, I don't read alot of lore or keep up with socials for most games but the fact I just assumed makes me sad at myself. representation is rare enough I guess I kinda stopped looking :
i like the guilty gear solution: run testament's voice through such a heavy filter that it's borderline unintelligible
In general, I really like Venture as nonbinary representation, but there is something about them that I feel does fall into the pitfalls of making a nonbinary character. From presentation to voice lines, Venture feels young, to the point I thought they were a teenager. It feels like that in an effort to make them more androgynous, Venture's designers, whether inadvertently or intentionally, gave them a personality that teeters into childish territory. I certainly don't think that's a bad thing nor do I think it makes for bad nonbinary representation, but it does ring the "Let's keep an eye on this" bell in my head. Like young and flighty nonbinary characters might become cliche real fast.
i think it already is a bit cliche or stereotypical 😬 like to imagine a nonbinary character and immediately think of a short haired feminine and quirky teenager/young adult feels like it perpetuates somewhat harmful stereotypes
Venture feels like an understanding of a non-binary person based entirely around a specific type of online personality of this kinda cloying cultivated innocence, which imo a lot of the times is just a symptom of the overwhelming digital alienation and a specific real fear of not finding relationships where they can be "comprehended" and fully accepted that a lot of young nb people experience, tied to very particular circumstances and regions of the world. I've seen a lot of english-speaking social media feeds of timid 16-year olds that sound like venture, I haven't met more than a single nb person in my transfem life who sounds or acts like them
@@dylanbranam8535 its not that bad
venture is the literal most reletable character ever because there are no trans masc characters in games and especially no FEMININE trans mascs. so them just being very androgynous, but feeling bit femme and bit masc and the same time is very much what my gender identity feels like as trans masc. my relationship with the non-binary label is very complicated, because ive shifted from binary gender to non-binary to "dunno man im a trans guy in the way i should actually be trans femme"
tbf those "childish" traits are them being very autistic/adhd coded which is also a sterotype of us (a sterotype that is based on true percentages, many autistic and adhd/add ppl do percieve the world and therfor gender differently thats why its so common for autist/adhd/add ppl to percieve there own gender identity outside of the gender normatvity and binary -also speaking from my own experience as a nb person with adhd and autistic "traits")
When I saw this video title I honestly teared up, I've felt like non-binary people have been left behind by a lot of the community but it's great to see acknowledgement that we're still here
Same here ;-;
Yeah, as a trans woman, I feel like there has been SOOO much attention on trans women specifically when it comes to the conversations surrounding gender. Like, trans women are the general populace fixation on any GNC person. It always makes me happy to see any trans man or nb rep/discussion
@@CardboardBones Yeah, I love trans women characters added into the game. But I love when the first Trans Character added is an Enby or Trans Man because I brings up to the table a whole new demographic of people who can relate and open up the discussion about gender and Trans in gaming and media for the betterment of the future characters.
I feel like an obvious part of the Venture discourse has been missed here, and that’s the fact that nonbinary representation is overwhelmingly white, thin and anglophonic. When people refer to Venture as ‘following stereotypes’, they are almost exclusively talking about the most visible versions of these - ie white nb ppl.
Venture being Mexican-Canadian, seemingly of Mestizo heritage specifically, bulky-built and bilingual is a huge deal. When people dismiss them as ‘a theyfab stereotype’ based on.. their voice? I guess? It completely glosses over how genuinely groundbreaking (haha..) it is for a mainstream franchise to include these details.
Non-binary here cheering for the allyship of this video. Means a lot.
Loved this video! As a non-binary, specifically agender, person I liked how you basically spent most of the video explaining that in order to make a non-binary character and better understand non-binary people one has to detach themselves from the gender binary in the first place. AKA if you are making a non-binary character, do not view them through a binary lens. Also that non-binary is a broad identity, and thus can look like many different things. Overall, great video!
Hermes in Stray Gods is canonically nonbinary trans-masculine, and voiced by NB actor Erika Ishii which is even better. And it was a brilliant choice for them. But it's also relatively easy to miss. They're just quietly referred to with they/them pronouns by everyone in the cast, as well as Grace's journal. It's not a big deal, there's no declaring of pronouns. It's just there. And an optional conversation:
I'm the God of messengers, bay-bee! Travelers, doorways, any kind of transition really. The old Hermes said the transition part made even more sense for me. Which is, y'know, extra cool, right?
It's so thematically awesome and I love them, and they're starring in the upcoming DLC.
how are they nonbinary and masculine
Thank you for taking time this Pride month to focus on a group that needs more discussion and representation in the industry. Very neatarino!
I just wanna take a second to talk about valorants kayo rq. So hes a robot that goes by he/him pro nouns. He has no genetials or genetics so he has no sex, but he does have consciousness and therefore identifyes with a gender. Theres a theory that his conciousness is the mind of a character who died pre valorant but that foesnt really matter for this since it isnt confirmed and doesn't change the situation much at all.
I wanna mention this because people were up in arms about clove being nonbinary, misgendring them, and just being all around assholes. But like, where is this with kayo? Shouldnt people use they/them or it/its for hum since hes a robot without a sex since theyre so willing to do it with clove? When kayo released i didnt realize he had pronouns, so going off of the fact that hes a robot i was using they them until someone corrected me.
It really shows the stupidity of a philosophy when those who hold it cant follow their own rules, people are so willing to misgender a game character who is supposed to be a person but wont do it for the robot, they dont even think twice.
HELL YEAH A VIVEROS VIDEO SPECIFICALLY FOR US.
100%. Everything you said. It's *so* important for people to not mistake nonbinary as solely being gender neutral OR the "most" gender, they're both nonbinary, but not all that enby encompasses.
Notably, agender is also enby and that has a larger media representation history (usually as a non-human but still humanoid individual), but it feels relatively rare to see agender humans in media, for many possible reasons we are not experienced enough to understand.
Enbies and how people interact with pronouns can be really interesting, an example that stuck with us was someone specifically choosing to use specifically dehumanizing pronouns because they're dehumanizing (in this context it/its, though obviously this isn't the only reason people choose it/its as pronouns).
Default to masculinity is an asshole. If you aren't feminine enough, you're masculine. If you aren't masculine enough, you're feminine. If you tell someone your pronouns are they/them right after they misgender you as a female, they'll just go "oh sorry he".
On the terms of representation... Venture and Clove launching at the same time is the *perfect* outcome in our opinion. They're both nonbinary, but they're enby in different ways, and the fact that they both exist at the same time in a similar context means people will be able to at least internalize the idea that enby can be tons of different things.
On the front of agender people, Guilty Gear is a goated series and Daisuke Ishiwatari is a goat, Testament is agender and nonbinary so the representation is there (even if gears aren't technically people but they are essentially people in terms of presentation most of the time it doesn't matter).
It's impossible to make one enby rep, but the fact that nonbinary people are getting more representation at all is GREAT because it allows enby characters to exist in a larger design space. Even if Clove or Venture both aren't perfect enby reps, that would only be an issue if either one of them was the ONLY enby rep. But they aren't. Speaking from experience it's easy to know you're enby and still think of yourself in the binary, on our front the... revelation we'll call it came from developing Plurality but before that it was hard to grapple with the identity of "being devoid of masculinity and femininity" when it seemed that literally nobody wanted to even conceive of us not being masculine not feminine. It's wild. Thankfully, everything's good now.
We use it/its pronouns.....be careful how you word things please. They're only dehumanizing when used without consent. He, she, and they are dehumanizing to us. It is inherently about perspective.
@@ItsAllNunya oh, sorry we didn't mean it in specifically a derogatory way, it's just a perspective we've observed and it was the specific wording other people used ("I use it/its because it's dehumanizing", specifically in the context where someone didn't like the idea of using it/its for that person because it felt dehumanizing). We didn't mean to imply that it was the only reason someone would use it/its.
@@ItsAllNunya we've edited the comment so it isn't as potentially misleading. In hindsight it's pretty easy to get the wrong idea so thanks for telling us about this!
love this video, 10/10. i like how the solution to the problem is basically “idk, maybe just design more NB characters if you’re worried about good representation”.
also, i can’t remember if you’ve said wether you’re autistic or not, but seeing that you did justice to the NB community without being a part of it, i would love to see you do a similar video on autistic representation in video games. especially if you want to discuss how BLATANTLY AUTISTIC CODED venture is. i can grasp why blizzard doesn’t want to put the autism label on a character they didn’t explicitly create as being autistic, but holy cow, venture is peak autism representation to the point that i cried while gushing about it to my partner. there are absolutely autistic people who are similar to the canonically autistic Symmetra and i don’t want to invalidate that, but we NEVER get to see “feral special interest rock eating” autism rep that Venture is to me, and there are a ton of the “everything must be orderly and perfect in my world that i design with my genius (:” characters that Sym represents that only encompass a very stereotypical and narrow view of “acceptable” autistic people
sorry I know this is a small point but NB as an acronym stands for non-black. could you use enby or non-binary instead?
@@mokkecandy_5406 I have actually seen NB used as shorthand for nonbinary for the past decade at least (it's actually where the term enby came from, that's what it sounded like when people were saying NB rather than writing it), and I've personally never seen it used to mean non-black, though since both terms share the letters I can definitely understand it being used there as well. I think it's best to just learn to differentiate based on context here, rather than trying to stop one or the other group from using their shorthand.
@mokkecandy_5406 acronyms can mean multiple things. Like OTP could mean one trick pony or one true pairing and both meanings are equally real
Not like there's a big overlap between us on the neurodivergent spectrum and us on the enby spectrum anyways, hehe ^_^
(Just in case tone comes across poorly: there is a big overlap c: )
I am surprised to see that no one mentioned Kris from Deltarune here yet. I like them a lot, I think their design was done really well although it does kind of rely on the mysterious and enigmatic trope if you think about it
Still yet to watch the video but before I wanna add that I think Apex has the best trans representation in any big video game thus far. First they had Bloodhound and were the first to have a nonbinary character just... be. They dont really talk about how Bloodhound is nonbinary and I like that tbh, they're just a hunter rather than a nonbinary hunter.
Apex is also the first big game that Im aware of that has the blls to introduce a binary trans character in Catalyst and I will forever love them for that. Catalyst herself does reference being trans a little but only in passing (has a few equippable voice lines about it and an intro line makes a little reference to it). Alike Bloodhound, it feels like shes a character more than just representation. Like how Bloodhound is a hunter before being nonbinary, Catalyst is a witch before being trans and most of her character references that more than anything, though being trans is still a big part of her identity.
Anyways big up Apex Legends it's lgbtq+ representation is great
I really love how apex just has queer characters. Like they exist and the queer part about them is there and open but not the biggest part
Sasha is funny because they were *almost* good rep. Sombra 0.5 would’ve been neat, especially since they were clearly one of the more important people on the island. It just felt like the writers did a terrible job at actually making them NB, because it wasn’t more than “oooh they’re mysterious~~~”, as you said.
Anyway, Setsu Gnosia is a great NB character. And it’s never even actually given focus, with their asexuality being brought up more often (it comes up once). They’re allowed to just…be.
As someone who's gender queer but presents as 100% feminine and is perceived by others as just a woman, I love this video and thank you so much for talking about something that's been swimming in my head for years lol.
My favorite part about nb rep in video games is watching the transphobes in the community desperately try to figure out whether said nb character is amab or afab
My go to analogy for being non-binary is if you have a spectrum from plant to animal and you want to figure out where a mushroom is on that. It has similarities to both ends, but it’s neither. It usually helps.
Gnosia has better enby representation because instead of 1 character, it has 2! And also the original translator was so stupid they mixed “transgender” and “pansexual” creating the funniest scene of all time
Hi just wanna point out that that translation mistake was not simply the translator being stupid. The original Japanese actually did use an odd word choice for the enby option, something that could also be read as pan. The translator had originally mistaken which the character was using, and later went back and fixed it everywhere else in the game, only missing this one line. (Which just happened to be the funniest one lol. "Panification" surgery just makes me think "turning into bread"!)
I'm one of the people who originally tweeted about the funny mistake when it first happened, and the translator was EXTREMELY kind and respectful about it. He contacted me and other enby folks for feedback on how to change both this and other lines in the game that were accidentally offensive. And the corrected translation then went forward to be used for the steam port so all currently available versions of the game are free of this issue.
Hope this response didn't come off as nitpicky, I just wanted to make sure I spread the word. The translator is very supportive of enby fans and he fixed his mistake super fast, I wish more translators were like that.
Also Gnosis is fuckin awesome and HELL YEAH thank you for mentioning it!! Always a great day when more people play Gnosia!!
Setsu is awesome and Raqio is funny as hell and they're both enby icons for all eternity!
@@Bunni89Oh wow I had no idea, thanks for correcting me! I think its really cool how the translator reached out to people in the community for help
@@EnderladssYeah it was one of my top ten gaming moments ever!! I felt so honoured, honestly! Instantly made me trust this translation team.
This video made me realize just how naturally decoupled I am from the concept of gender in my character design. When I am drawing a character, their gender is usually one of the last things I come up with, and more often I don’t even give them a gender, I just decide what pronouns they use and call it a day.
As a nonbinary person who wants to make characters (that includes nonbinary characters), this helped me a bit to understand what goes into making characters beyond their physical design. Learning how they interact and understand the world around them (as well as how others interact with and understand them) is a crucial factor in designing.
To my understanding, the way to make an nb character is to (ironically enough) not think too much about their gender when designing them. But moreso the things mentioned before.
I love the "How do you conceptualize that under the spectrum?" question because I've seen a *lot* of attempts to visually represent gender (graphs, diagrams, etc.), and they always end up being a good look into how the person who made it conceptualizes gender, as opposed to actually helpful guides to understanding the range of gender😂
With regards to character design, I can see how it can be complicated, because gender identity (to simplify a little) has more to do with a person's own sense of self, while a character's design is necessarily focused on what's externally visible. The "correct" answer would be that a non-binary character could look like anything, but the binary view of gender *is* prevalent in society. Overall, I'm glad that efforts are being made, and I hope to see more variety in non-binary characters as we move forward.
for me as an nb i think you're completely right in that the character design should fit the characterization instead of trying to convince people of the character's nonbinaryness. because tbh if someone isn't going to acknowledge a character as nonbinary, no matter how much you try to make it neutral, people will still pick a binary gender for them. i hear people refer to venture as "she" and bloodhound as "he" all the time. the latter is probably related to how men are treated as the default when gender and sex are totally unknown but that's a conversation for another time
Enby representation is such a difficult concept and I'm glad someone has taken the time to discuss the issues faced in designing an enby character. Something I have found interesting is the assumption that Venture is AFAB, which is completely unconfirmed. Actually looking at them, the biggest flags suggesting being AFAB are the eyeliner and lighter voice (and maybe the hair). Other than that, there could be plenty of reason to assume they are AMAB, but almost everyone assumes AFAB including the transphobes using she/her pronouns. This brings up the problem of social biases again though, because what can you even do? Broader audiences thinking in binary terms will always be the biggest obstruction because any femininity means woman almost instantly. AFAB enbies presenting with fem features is somehow fine while the thought of AMAB enbies wearing eyeliner is simply not considered. This is only one of many things, but it's the one that's frustrated me most recently. Thank you again for bringing this topic up and opening a forum for these issues to be discussed.
It's mostly because of the voice actor, I love the voice but I wish we had an enby voice actor
I think the key take away here is to never make a 1 dimensional character. You should never make a character where their adjectives or labels are their entire definition, they shouldnt just be "trans black hacker" or "Hispanic/Native enby assassin" or even "cishet white dude", we all have aspects that change how we present ourselves. if a character was bullied as a child, they can become a shy wallflower as an adult, or maybe they become so much larger than life so their secrets cant be used against them again, or maybe they become radically anti-bullying and turn themselves into the mom-friend who goes out of their way to make sure everyone is doing good and having a fun time. No one aspect could or should ever define anyone, we're all just a collection of traits.
Personally, i have a real weird relationship with my own identity. Im bisexual, but I've only ever been in publicly committed relationships with women due to my own internalized homophobia from before i got married. I'm biracial, but was ostracized from both the black and white kids in school due to my 'tism, and never knew extended family past my siblings and parents so i was never included into either culture. Im non-binary, but almost entirely presenting as masc and am still comfortable enough to go by he or him. Most days i feel like im forcing myself into an environment that i dont belong, im not REALLY queer, cuz all the men ive been with were one night stands. I'm not REALLY enby because only my closest friends know that i prefer they/them. I'm not REALLY black because i didn't grow up with black media or black friends or a black family. But i am still all of those things, and someone else with my exact same description could have had a completely different version of life, which would then reflect in how they present themselves, in how they dress or wear their hair, or how they talk. None of us are boxed in by our labels and adjectives, so then why would the characters we're making be?
You'll also often encounter the fact that masc traits are seen as pervasively more dominant.
Like if you designed a character that's fem in hairstyles, clothing and colour scheme but gave them a beard, they will just be seen as a man in a dress most of the time, simply due to how we're taught to view feminine traits as inferior and not defining.
Once again I'll say that Floofty from Bugsnax is my favorite nb rep in any game. Floofty is the insane unhinged muppet we all need. Being non binary myself it was really cool to have a nb character who was far from a perfect person but still wasn't treated any different from any of the other characters.
Also, shout out to testament from Guilty Gear! I haven't played the game but God damn do I get gender envy from them.
Great Video!
I noticed a pattern in people who accidentally use non-They pronouns for Venture, and it just happened that the pronoun they would use matched their own. And I found that interesting (of course, they corrected it when reminded, as one does with error). I wondered if that meant Venture was the "absence of gender NB," and I think your video answered that succinctly. I appreciate your efforts here; I have many NB friends who feel seen with recent developments such as FFXIV's Zero and OW2's Venture. Good stuff.
language also plays a part in this. i’m brazilian and i’ve seen most english speaking people refer to venture as she and portuguese speakers refer to venture as he (their voice in the dub is similar to the original so i don’t think it’s making a difference)
Friendly reminder: you can he hyper feminine/hyper masculine and still be non-binary. Non binary doesn’t have to look a certain way
I LOVE QUEER PEOPLE!!!!!! I LOVE YOU ALL!!! AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, YOU ALL ARE VALID!
An example of nonbinary character I think is very well done is Testament from the Guilty Gear franchise. Testament was originally AMAB with a more feminine clothing set, and eventually came out as non-binary in their story. Their earlier designs had more masculine phyical features, with more feminine outfit options, but as the series progressed and the character evolved, they shifted to a more feminine/neutral physical appearance and much more "blended" clothing options, sporting a cravat and a top hat in their newest redesign in Guilty Gear Strive. But that's not why I think they're good NB representation, and neither is the more "what even is this outfit" aspect of their design.
Rather, it's because of the "implication" that Strive has in the lore: since the last game, pretty much every character has been focusing on themselves and actively striving (hah) to be themselves more. This is obviously reflected in our beloved Brisket in a very direct way, how she finally figured out she is a woman, but most of the other characters also show this in their own way.And so does Testament, though in a lot more subtle way: not only have they slowly evolved into "the Testament aesthetic", but we get to see a list of the "things they like" that they've been working on. And by god does that list make it feel like Testament is just * vibin * at this point in their life:
- in their original appearance the only listed "slaughter" and "playing with children", two already... very separate things one would hope lol
- in their second appearance, we see a new hobby show up: "thinking". This is actually believed inthe community to be self-reflection about their own self, given that in the original appearance they were a mind-controlled puppet of the villains while in this new entry they are independent.
- in their Strive appearance that list is... like 50+ entries lmao - including but not limited to "fashion magazines", "DIY woodworking", "liquor (but they don't drink)", "occult trinkets", "scrapbooks", "painting", "mahjong", "baking", "wrestling", and my personal favourite "building plastic model (especially of mecha robots)". There's traditionally feminine hobbies, traditionally masculine ones, and others that are just kind of out of nowhere.
Testament does not give a flying fuck about gender. Testament is Testament. Testament is doing whatever they want in life, and by god do I respect the fuck out of that.
So like, Personally I Love that Clove and Venture are non-binary representation. But a majority of the representation we get is Mid/distastful. This is because we lack Masc representation. Like you said there is no one way to be Non-binary which is 100% true from Feeling in the middle to being Apagender. The issue with character representation is that they are set on the default of Femme and or Androgynous Non-binary characters. Non-binary people are Trans people so how they experience their presentation can be presented in as many ways as there are stars in the sky. But current Enby representation is seen as a negative type of Girl+ where society sees either you as androgynous or as Femme because they perceive Nonbinary as being a Girl DLC. You can make a Hyper Femme character who is non-binary but like I said prior being Non-binary is a Trans character. So a Major factor of how they present should be tied to their story. Like if you make a Non-binary character who was "assigned Male at birth" a hyper-femme character with a semi-feminine body or feminine model. The story can include the character's love for femininity but not having the desire to be a girl, and or seeing the world through a lens of I want to present in a way where I will be taken as a girl from face value to decenter and remove the association of man being since that was the box they were forced to in their upbringing so they hyper glam themselves and take estrogen. We can have Femme body type characters who look Masculine, And Masculine characters who have masculine body types and features. But it really is down to how gender plays an effect (mainly negative) in their life to create the space where the Non-binary character is validated in their gender, and isn't hitting some diversity status. When It comes to Non-binary characters. They really force the "Write the Story First, design later" because once you can grant a reasoning to why the character presents the way they do and it can be positive with gender, negative with gender but like you stated, it really has no limits because to exist out of the binary. Especially when back to the Androgynous aspect of how people may want to create enby characters, yes there are Androgynous enbies, but if people try and make Enbies Andro as the "Gender indicators" it perpetuaties the concept that to get Enbies' Gender correct, we owe society androgyny.
as someone who is non binary, one of my absolute favorite NB characters in media is Testament from Guilty Gear
a character who was localized as both male and female and constantly flip flopping before finally landing on Non Binary as of their recent appearance and having that be shown not just through their design being ambiguous but also focusing more on their unique personality compared to the rest of the cast and their individualism in how they act as opposed to a list of predetermined “non binary traits” speaks much more to the NB experience (at least in my opinion)
Being non-binary is like being an anti-stereotype for me. I like to be someone that can choose to look however I want, wether I’m fem or masc
I do know many enbys that are incredibly fem and assigned birth a girl or incredibly masc and assigned birth a boy. What is great about Venture is blizzard can make them look both fem and masc through skins so I got a lot to look forward to in the future!
Enby here. It's nice to see someone talking about how wild it is that so much of how we see the world/engage with gender/sexuality is from the perspective of the binary.
Happy pride~
as a queer person i am a weird freak about queer people in general
This is the first video release since I subscribed and I’m NB….coincidence? (Jk jk, happy pride 😆）
Thanks for the video!
I personally really liked the NB rep in Gnosia (Setsu and Raqio are great!) and in Caligula Effect 2.
While in Gnosia NB characters just exist wonderfully, Caligula Effect 2 makes you experience a main character's journey of discovering their gender (NB, Agender etc. are terms that are appear in dialog).
This is honestly a really insightful discussion of what gender means to a character and specific challenges that arise with nonbinary characters--seeing a cisgender person doing this level of analysis into the topic of gender and actually addressing the nuance and wide range of nonbinary experience is pretty rare and is honestly heartwarming to see. I myself am trans and nonbinary, and it has been difficult to find the way in which I am happiest presenting myself, as I wish to be seen as more feminine but my personal taste often swings towards more gender neutral or at times masculine presentation. This experience is of course far from universal and is deeply personal to me, and no nonbinary people I know share the same experience--it really is important to understand this idea, that nonbinary is not just a 3rd bulletpoint on the spectrum of male to female but is instead an umbrella term that encompasses everything within and outside of the spectrum. Two people can have totally different experiences, use different pronouns, and present differently, while still both identifying as nonbinary, because it's a blanket term rather than a specific point like 'male' or 'female'. Sorry for the long ramble, honestly just really like the video and have a lot of thoughts I wanted to get out
Everyone watching this video for the topic:
Me watching it for the Overwatch gameplay: Haha, kill that Mercy >:)
I think this adds a lot of sections to figuring out a character. Not just Race, Species, Class, Religion, Sex, Gender, etc...but Why. What does this mean to them? There's a lot of characters currently that may not have an answer, or even understand the Gender question, that are on the binary scale. I think that's the crutch you spoke of.
Race for example. A lot of white people don't think about it. To the point they may refer to white as "normal" or "default" with no ill intent or prejudice. It just was never questioned, even if they have the forethought to try to be conscious of minorities and the discrimination towards them. And then you get those that would answer "Superiority"... As a mixed person, this has been a major point of thought of where I fit, what I count as, and what's safe to say. Appalachian, African American, and Native American, but I look Middle Eastern or Hispanic. Idk if I could sum it down into one field on a form, it's far too deep.
I think this is the same kind of thing. Gender Fluidity for me means I'm a guy, or I have to fight through the dysphoria if any when I'm not so trauma about being bullied for looking like a girl pops up. I have some skirts, have long hair, and occasionally paint my nails. I also carry gum, because if I'm not male, and if I'm feeling dysphoric, it helps and I need it urgently, but otherwise it sits in my bag, within reach but untouched, for at least 360 days a year.
But most of my OCs, unless it's a self-insert, the Gender and Sex can all be filled in with one letter, either a M or a F. And then we move on to the rest of the design. One cannot do that with nonbinary characters and bake it work, and maybe I shouldn't with binary characters either, unless that's part of the character.
Lots of food for thought. And I didn't expect the genderfluid section to be so long, yet feel so shallow. I think I have questions about myself now...
A trick I was taught for figuring these things out was to choose a characters gender last. Smooth out the visual design, what they'll do, their story, if its a game then their kit. Then, at the very end, add that final choice onto it. People really can look like anything, there is no one right choice for any character presentation. It simplifies the process, and also helps to break stereotypes. And it doesn't just apply to non-binary characters. Using the same approach for all characters opens up a range of variety and helps to break down the strict binary stereotypes we see.
So basically the way I’m understanding it is there is no way to create a non binary character effectively, as if you use mixed male and female identifiers then it doesn’t accurately represent non binary people, but if you use more identifiers from one gender then they don’t appear as non binary unless the game outright tells it to you? The video was well made but idk if it actually addressed what the title was asking, as the answer just seemed to be “non binary is not being associated to a gender so there is no right or wrong way to design a non binary character”
Something that I think adds to the whole issue, is the confusion (or even rejection) that many people have regarding the idea of gender at all. How many people see a binary trans as "I would rather be a boy/girl then what I physically am" really muddles the ability to understand what a binary trans person then is. If people can't understand the internal nature of having a trans identity, binary or nonbinary, how do they understand recognizing one? If they can't recognize one, how do they then write one?
I think that, unfortunately, this whole discussion is innately seated, to a degree, on activism to trans people's validity, because we can't really communicate the fiction if people are screaming about the reality. As, people for some reason are pretty hung up on the idea of fictional gender nonconforming existing because they think gender is fake/ideological IRL, despite playing games with laser guns and dragons...)
I don't intend for this to go into the validity of gender identity, what I'm trying to say is the matter of being able to parse, sorry if I failed in the regard
as a very fem presenting nonbinary person this video made me tear up a little im not even gonna lie, thank u so much for making this video :3 i rlly hope more people educate themselves on this and begin to talk about it more ^^
As a writer I've always asked myself what does it mean to be non binary and can I explore the concept in a fun way?
I just always found the absense of traditional binary perception fascinating.
So since I wanted to avoid falling into stereotypes and personal biases I did my best to understand how a non binary character should be written and designed by asking my enby friends about it directly.
Here's a quick summary of what I heard, being non binary is more of a mindset than something outwardly tangable, there aren't any particular rules in design, the only real limitation I was given is to not make the design skew too much too one extreme, by which they meant don't just have a character that in all metrics seems feminine or masculine just be non binary as it would seem odd to them. Which is fair in my opinion, but most people characters aren't just one thing, so I kinda obsessed over that point where I also fell into this mindset of have the character feel like they could be either binary gender... which since then I've tried to not be my explicit goal.
Essentially what I've been trying to achieve is just have them be a character that happens to be non binary for whatever personal reason. That way they aren't just defined by being enby and instead are a real person that also is enby, so now I can explore the concept and have them be a character that fits the story.
Another thing I wanted to quickly bring up since it might be interesting to listen to, in the social bubble me and that friend were, the concept of non binary was sorta normalized in a way.
This meant we were exposed to other enbies in the community as well as characters presented as non binary.
What I noticed however was that enby characters felt more like token characters, they exist just to be representation, which at least to my friend and also me after discussing it with them felt monotone and like those characters lacked depth.
So during our talk we discussed how to avoid that and the answer we agreed on was make them a real person as a character, so I said mostly offhandedly, what about negative traits or flaws?
A big thing we noticed in those token characters is that they felt devoid of depth and we seemed to agree that lack of negative traits or flaws is a significant problem with those characters.
My personal philosophy with characters is that just like people nobody is a perfect saint who can't do wrong.
Which led to us discussing the concept of an enby antagonist and to some this will either sound stupid like, why can't you just do that, while to others it might seem like I wanted to represent them intentionally in a bad light.
And this devide is my concern, my friend agreed it'd be a neat idea since they always love villain characters in stories and while I too like the charm and novelty of the idea, I'm on the fence with it.
Currently I decided I'm gonna go through with the idea but I will balance it out, by them being not an antagonist because they are specifically non binary and by having a different enby character that fulfills a more neutral positive role in the story.
But for those that have read this long comment, what do you think, enby antagonist yea or nah?
It’s simple.
You just remove their binaries. Give them a basic binary-removal operation.
Jokes aside, I LOVE this 💕
Ahhhhhh. I hope you never stop tackling topics like this. You speak so confidently and clearly on it.
And- AND- now I get to have something to listen to while I’m at the gym. Perfect timing. Win-win.
As an nonbinary artist, a lot of the time when trying to create an enby character is trying to replace gender with another thing completely different, because most people won't be able to tell gender if the thing they are looking at only gives them star vibes
I think a big things to pay attention to is the difference of how venture and Clove (Clive, clover. Clitoris? Idfk the name) were portrayed as enby characters, with venture their identity was known from the getgo and explicitly stated. But Clove (I know I’m fucking the name up I don’t play valorant) was introduced as a female and then retconned as enby BECAUSE of a business model from riot. You could say the same for venture but then again the creators weren’t as aggressive with flaunting the fact that the character was enby but more so viewing it as something that just so happens to be part of the character.
I am not NB, but based on what I've witnessed in terms of queer representation in media, I think another problem that makes people hesitate when designing NB characters involves story impact.
In theory, gender or pronouns could almost be defined as a "Biography Trait." If your story's setting is more progressive, then like blood type or birth date, a character's gender could be inconsequential to where you could change it without affecting the story aside from niche cases.
In many stories, the only time being NB comes up is when dealing with story beats that are overused to the point of being trite: "Who am I?" "They don't accept me for who I am." "But I have to fit the mould!"
Even when "gender-related hardships" aren't a narrative focal point for a character, some such event may still come up as the writer's attempt at making a "more authentic" NB experience. See, for example, Sacha's gender only really coming up when subjected to Gio's bigotry. Furthermore, gender only getting brought up or explored when referencing struggle or trauma isn't appealing. It's very limiting from a narrative standpoint and potentially uncomfortable or upsetting for your queer consumer base.
I could be way off base, and if I am, please correct me. But I think your final point of "Just make a character and then make them NB" is closer to the correct Occam's Razor method of creating a greater variety of good characters who happen to be They/Themers.
Wonderful video, I got a lil anxious seeing the thumbnail of the video because I remembered you weren't non binary but you absolutely blew it out of the park with this:)
I think my favorite non binary rep in a game rn is avery from scarlet hollow, who's clothing style you could interpret as pretty masculine along with their body yet their identity is never questioned in the narrative and its just accepted "yeah thats what an non binary person can look like" even if they aren't completely androgynous. Idk I'm a non binary person who dresses pretty fem alot of the time and it's just nice to see a character who dresses like a certain gender not have their actual gender identity questioned or diminished
the way u started the vid w Hi gay is a testament to why I love ur videos so much 🩵🥳
I'm a huge fan of when a character's design doesn't always correlate with their gender identity in obvious ways, in the same way that you can't tell a real person's gender by just looking at them.
One trend that I've noticed in a lot of these comments is that, well, there is no unifying trend of what constitutes "good" or "bad" enbie rep!
But what there does seems to be some agreement on is that it's all valid, there's just room for so much more.
I think it really highlights that the issue of representation is still, well, a lack of it in general.
We just, straight up, need more enbie characters and gay characters and lesbian characters and gnc characters and queer characters and so on and so forth.
But with how these sorts of live service titles specifically work, that kind of approach may not be easily achievable since, well, you'd have to think of how and when to introduce all these new characters.
The League community had been in their own bubble of resentment towards the new champion designs for years.
First, it was too much "Disney characters", then too much "edgelords", then too much "shirtless dudes", then too much "same face girls", etc.
Diversity is something that's both craved and, paradoxically, feared in large parts of these communities because changes always imply, at least for some period of time, a new vector.
"Please, don't release this hyperfemme popstar character because I've been wanting a new badass monster dude for a year now"
It turns character releases into a competition with "winners" and "losers".
So, Overwatch, Valorant, League, Apex, etc. both feel the most suited - due to their ability to stay relevant and continuously grow along with community feedback, and the least suited - due to the set precedent of appealing to everyone at once all of the time, at the same time.
As an enby, I just want to say your statement of "the problem" did a fantastic job of accurately depicting my own experience. "What does it mean to be non-binary" is sort of like asking "what does it mean to not be color blind" , I can say "oh I can see more colors than you" or I can say "I have more receptors in my eyes than you do" but none of that explains any part of what it's like to SEE those colors and all of it implies that one persons sight is "better" and anothers is "worse" when in reality there's evolutionary benefits to both and the biological diversity is a net positive for the human race. I just see different colors than you do.
As for character designs that I find validating, most of the "trying too hard to be enby" designs feel more like a Halloween costume than representation. For example, if I was in overwatch world I would be dressing for function not representation, but in a video game form and function can operate completely independently. I personally would rather more gender bendy options for the cast at large, and I love how games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Forza Horizon 5 allow you to just pick the "they them" pronouns and then pick any combination of parts and outfits. And in Overwatch specifically (which I do play quite a bit) I feel significantly more akin to Zenyatta than I do Venture, but I also am totally thankful that they've added an explicitly non-binary character even if the delivery was kinda meh.
As an enby, Venture is a perfect example of a well-executed enby character. I can’t find one thing wrong with them design-wise.
I'm really impressed at the nuance you were able to show in this video. As a nonbinary trans woman, I feel like the main problem that plagues NB representation is that most of these characters were probably designed mostly by cis people. I think queer and specifically nonbinary people are more easily able to conceptualize what being nonbinary looks like without being reductive. I've seen cis people try to put nonbinary back onto the gender binary as if the entire point of the identity isn't escaping it. You can see this with trends like the tik tok "they thems" stuff where a lot of these videos were placing a reductive stereotype onto NB identity. (typically this stereotype takes the place of a clearly AFAB, white, skinny, conventionally attractive person) I don't think these two latest characters from Valorant and Overwatch are bad, but I hope we see some representation for more boundary breaking explorations of what nonbinary characters can look like. I think we might just need to look towards queer artists to be the people to do that.
This video has really helped bring to attention how difficult it is to depict non-binary characters and how there isn’t a strong archetype to associate with these characters.
I am happily non-binary , although , I also happen to be AFAB and have a more feminine presenting voice and appearance , despite seeing myself as androgynous .
It's hard for me to feel "real" with my identity , which makes the lack of actual human characters who choose to identify as non-binary because that's who they are as people instead of "Ooh mystery person" a lot harder for me , because it just gives me an extra sense of not feeling human , like I don't belong .
I definitely relate to a character like Venture appearance wise , although Venture is definitely a more idealized version of myself LOL and I am happy about the newer representation !!
I hope to see more representation in the future , esp more feminine/masculine presenting enbies like myself !! Just because you express yourself that leans towards a specific binary [ or sometimes not exactly by choice in my case ] doesn't make you any less non-binary !! I feel like this is also where the mystery aspect in some NB characters comes from , because the "ideal" NB person wouldn't give you any hints of being male or female , making them a "mystery" , and to be honest , I strive for that too !! But it's not the case for everyone , as said in this video , there isn't a "right" way to be non-binary , or even just a few right ways , you can be non-binary however you see fit !! Which does make creating characters harder , so I ABSOLUTELY commend representation of enby folk in almost any capacity !! Since it is still "new" to a lot of people , so tackling it in media may seem daunting at first .
This video really made me smile , you are incredibly respectful and goes over this topic extremely thoroughly !!
I'm non-binary, and my personal thoughts for making NB characters is to just approach it simply. Characters to FL4K are a great way to introduce the public to the idea of a NB character because it can open an avenue to explore how they perceive themselves compared to the world. I personally enjoy that because a nonhuman character could feel like they don't fit, and express the struggle with that, and it's something I personally struggled with. Personally, I like seeing characters who happen to be NB but less NB characters if that makes sense. This has happened with TV and movies with gay characters for example, that being their defining or only character trait, being gay. While that is a part of us, to the general public it is a very small part of who we are relative to them. I think the hardest part of designing NB characters is that there is no stereotype to use. We're all so dynamic and have such a vast display of our identity that it's just not possible to have an easy access character design like they have with Lifeweaver. I personally present more masculine and even let people still refer to me by he/him pronouns even though I much prefer they/them. With me personally it's truly a preference but it's not that way with everyone. Some people hate being called he or she and want to only be referred to as they, and that is totally valid and so is my expression of gender identity or lack thereof.
This is getting rambly, so I'll get to my point. To design NB characters, design people. As in, design personality traits, start with who they are rather than what they look like. For example, who is Venture? They're a tough little goober who likes to save artefacts from the ancient world and happens to be NB. Characters like that are great for representation because they aren't reduced to just being something but aren't only their gender identity. Essentially, design on personality. Who they are, what they do, like Bloodhound.
Small note for you Viveros, dunno if you misspoke but Bloodhound isn't a robot. They're flesh and blood, bonafide human.
I think you might have misheard me, I didn’t call Bloodhound non-human afaik. I mentioned Bloodhound and then brought up Fl4k as a character with a similar aesthetic who is non-human, but I know Bloodhound is a human.
@@TheViveros Maybe I did, I was completely half asleep because funny nightshift. Great video though!
some of my favorite NB characters come from Hunt Showdown-- the Viper, Sofia, and Iron Bark are all NB and present in very different ways, with viper and iron bark being more masc while sofia is more fem
I love when your videos are super long!! please make a like, 2 hour long yap sesh about just all of ur opinions :3333
THIS PLEASE
Introducing: viveros streams /j
I really appreciated Venture's release. As a non-binary transmasculine dude, it was the first canonically trans character in a game I consistently played. I also really live how upbeat they are, it helps me stay positive. I also have adhd so i appreciate their hyperfixation on archeology. :]
It does feel absolutely upsetting that they got pretty cast aside in terms of cosmetics, with the least amount of release cosmetics of any overwatch 2 hero. Mauga also got pretty cast aside. It sucks because i really enjoy these characters.
I know im responding after pride and a while after this vid came out, but as a trans person i genuinely appreciate how you call out weird freaks who sexualize and hate us, far too few people outright support us and even less say that kind of thing, I know you have done this before but thank you
Maybe it's just because I'm not an overwatch player/i barely interact with the community, but the amount of toxicity from the community directed towards clove is crazy to me, in a way that makes me question riot's choices in character design. Pre-release, I was so hyped for the release, given that my dad's scottish and that i identified as nb for a significant portion of my life. Don't get me wrong, I love Clove's design and their kit, but as valorant's first foray into a trans/gender non-conforming character... I think they could've done better. Of course, as you said, not all nb people and androgynous, and that okay! I know nbs like Clove irl, who mostly present in a feminine manner. What we have to consider is that Valorant is catering to a GRAND majority cisgender audience, and they should've thunk about how they'll perceive the character. When I see clove, i just see a younger nb person with a feminine presentation, voice, and body type. When the average player sees Clove, they just think they're a girl and completely ignore the pronouns used for them. I rarely get team mates who don't use she/her on Clove in callouts. It doesn't help that Clove --accidentally or not-- falls in the stereotype of corporations thinking non-binary just means ''woman lite''. I think, for a first nb character in game, Overwatch did a great job with Venture, even if my way of measuring is that they are misgendered as being male AND female in hate comments I see on social media lol. In a transphobe's eyes, Clove is absolutely a female. Venture is just a point of confusion for them, of not knowing where to point their finger.
I have nothing much to add to this very thought provoking video beyond YTTD music! weow!
YTTD video is coming on Friday! (hopefully) (there is so much to cover) (i may have bitten off more than i can chew)
@@TheViveros OH WOW!!! YIPPIE!!!!
personally, i love venture and bloodhound being androgynous and clove being less androgynous because its a lot of representation for the entire spectrum (plus i like to imagine clove being immortal has smth to do with them feeling like they dont fit in a binary ^^)
Loved this video because its interesting to see a perspective on enby representation in regards to shooter games. I was wowed by the "way too many enby characters are robots in heavy clothing" part because I hadn't seen much of that in the genres I'm more familiar with. (VNs, JRPGs and monster catching games)
I've found that "enby equals non human" is still annoyingly common in all genres, but ij the ones I play theres more of a tendancy to have them be scantily clad/neutral outfits (for aliens) or not have clothes at all if theyre a robot (or inorganic creatures like golems) So its interesting how a robot in baggy clothes would be refreshing and new to me, while its overused in other games.
Its fascinating too how even within the genres I like, theres a lot of variation on cliche enby tropes. The thing about colour in particular! Purple feels like its the default go-to for a lot of western VNs and modern JRPGs, while I noticed a huuuuuge amount of green in older jrpgs around the 90s and 2000s. That colour's also the biggest enby shorthand in pokenon fangames and I wonder if its just a coincidence or they were inspired bt those games?
Ive also found that while "enby = has to always be androgenous and covered up" is common in actual defined characters, when it comes to customiseable protagonist it's ENDLESSLY ANNOYING to only have "looks exactly like cis" as an option. Most VNs and JRPGs with an option just still have Two Binary Bodies, two very stereotypically gendered voices, and all you can do is pick a third pronoun. And pokemon fangames annoy me so much cos they tend to have a new design for the enby option and its.. still just exactly the same as the binary. Pokemon Reborn has two whole new designs for enby options, and theyre just a heavy femme and heavy masc option. Pokemon Uranium only has one design for an enby option and they STILL look 99% masculine, just with a ponytail on top.
Basically, I find it frustrating that we both have "enby must always look androgenous" and "enby can NEVER look androgenous" as dumb tropes in different genres of game. And I completely agree that we just need more variety of nonbinary characters in general instead of this weird "we're trying to make a statement on what All Enbies Look Like".
Also I find it extremely funny in retrospect that some of the earliest enby characters in gaming are ironically more varied visually because none of these tropes had been established yet. Quina in FF9 is honestly an icon! Nobody had decided enby characters all have to be skinny and young yet, so we get an 80 year old freaky kabuki monster battle chef who stabs dragons with a 5ft tall spork. I think it works best to to it this way, just design them like anyone else, pick a look that suits their personality instead of getting too hung up on One Way To Be Enby.
Like lol, we're breaking out of the binary, of course theres gonna be infinite more options out there! It aint just a trinary! 😂
I haven't watched the vid yet but I have to say, as an enby that looks like someone's teenage brother, I wish there were more characters that looked more average-enby, instead of the over the top designs that are so common.
As someone who is nonbinary, Venture was nice to see. Too often media portrays nonbinary characters as inherently 'woman lite'(tm) which is an annoying stereotype. (And it places a target on femme aligned AFAB nonbinary people, which sucks.)
Venture reads as neutral if not trans-masc presenting nonbinary. Venture also embraces thier body via choosing to not fix a chipped tooth in a world where people can get prosthetic arms. It's nice to see a nonbinary character celebrate thier body through design that feels authentic and not just a stereotype. Venture wears a large jacket bc of archeology which doesn't read the same as the general stereotype due to it making sense for the career. Can't say I like the jacket itself tho lmafo the odd nonsensical cuts of the jacket layers don't make much sense. But Venture got summer sports sprays that showed them without a jacket, and it seems that Venture didn't get top surgery. So idk, Venture to me isn't bad for a nonbinary character.
Venture is the first human nonbinary character, but we also have Lynx (they/them) and Nameless (very gender punk, agender, and rejects the concept of omnic unit number, omnic caste, and names) but those are nonbinary omnics. Then again, all omnics basically awoke as agender then chose thier gender and pronouns later... Aurora was a woman omnic, declassified confirmed she chose she/her pronouns and modeled herself after her creators, Mina Liao.
In a recent voice interaction, Ramattra explained to Echo that Null Sector represents omnics rejecting humanity's assigned roles/numbers, and with Nameless being one of Ramattra's closest friends and a founding member of Null Sector + Ramattra is the leader of Null Sector + Ramattra's androgynous design (arguably he is similar to Reaper's gender expression), Ramattra is now also coded as nonbinary, too!
I was so excited to see how ventures legendary skins would look since it’s overwatch’s first NB character and then they came with zero and I was so disappointed.
make a character where gender is ambiguous but is ultimately not important to the character themselves. the only one ive personally seen done well is venture and they can be seen as both male and female and female depending on the situation but it ultimately doesnt matter because venture is goofball.
This is really great and kind commentary from someone who isn’t nonbinary. Thanks for being nice to us lol
I really appreciate this, often it feels like we’re an afterthought in the broader community
i’m so glad this video popped up in my feed as a nonbinary person. most nonbinary rep in games has disappointed me, but the best i’ve seen has been from indie games. i hope as time goes on we can both see more enby characters in mainstream games, and see fans of those games actually respect these characters
More good examples for a non-binary characters are: Testament from Guilty Gear and Bloodhound from Apex Legends! 😊
In the end, there are not a lot of games that have multiple nb representation. They become "the nb character" kinda like in the 2000' and before when in a group in a tv show there were "the girl character ".
It is a beginning but the fact that there is only one limit what can be shown, what a nb is or can be and what the writers can do with it.
If you are interested Gnosia is a great visual novel type game with 2 nb characters that are presenting pretty differently.
I think the big distinction here is that while other identities are POSITIVELY defined (i.e. defined by the things that they ARE), non-binary identities are NEGATIVELY defined (i.e. defined by what they AREN'T). This means that coding and signifiers that the author uses to define the character's qualities, while the typical route, is actually COUNTERPRODUCTIVE when depicting non binary identities.
My experience of being nonbinary has been mostly retrospective - realizing that I engage in gendered behaviours, but that I do so because each individual one resonates with me in isolation, rather than having some internal 'compass' of gender. Which is to say, my experience has had gendered expression be INCIDENTAL to self expression, rather than DRIVING self expression. And that sense of apathy for/lack of understanding of 'gender' as a concept and vague set of rules, means that there's no direct interface between my internal identity and what other people perceive as my gendered expression.
On the one hand, the idea of a character picking aspects of their expression completely without thought to their gendered connotations WOULD be effective representation, but it would be extremely difficult to actually COMMUNICATE in design or media, without just outright expositing that information in sledgehammer prose.
Thank you so much for the representation! I'm so tired of seeing and hearing people say "oh venture sounds like a girl so she's a girl" I hope all of them see this video and learn to know better
my friend's nonbinary, and when Clover and Venture dropped at nearly the same time they were so hyped for it :D in game, they love Clover but find Venture incredibly annoying tho LMFAO
What a well done video!! I appreciated how much you took into account the anecdotal experiences from non binary people in your circle when researching for this video. There's just so much nuance when it comes to gender identity across the board, but especially for enby's. Props to ya :D!!
venture is awesome bc bigots online cant decide which way to misgender them LOL
in all seriousness, as an agender person myself who does tend to present fairly masculine, i really liked how you talked about nb identites as colors that others can't see. that's genuinely how it feels and i havent heard it described so succinctly before
something that does concern me a lot about nb characters that are very heavily presented as masculine or feminine (such as clove) is that im certain corporations will do that only so they can make the char cisgender in regions where queerness is shunned or illegal. clove, specifically, is a cisgender woman in the chinese version of valorant, and it's very unfortunate. at the end of the day, corporations are corporations and they exist to make money, so these more "plausibly cis" nb chars feel like a way for the corporations to have their cake and eat it too :/
Personally i don’t see a problem with slapping the non binary label on a character that was designed one way or the other, but with more subtle details i think make the difference, for me as a non binary person i see myself as masculine and live life as pretty much a dude but my ID and everything is non binary
as a genderqueer person myself, this was a very refreshing video to watch and feel seen with
You said what I wanted to at the end of the video, but hopefully I can still contribute something: the problem isn't non-binary characters being hard to design or conceptualise. The problem is that in any and all stages of development, from concept to finalising to marketing, the idea of binary gender is so ubiquitous that how they're perceived will almost certainly become tainted by it.
The truth is that non-binary character design could be anything and everything. But paradoxically, by losing the restriction of gender, many people are suddenly confronted with how much of the world they perceive through that lens.
It's hard to intentionally design a character that reflects a different worldview to yours. It's infinitely harder when it's basically everywhere and you can't escape it. Non-binary is not a third, singular gender identity, but can encompass everything that's not strictly 100% "male" or 100% "female".
To design a non-binary character is usually quite simple; or at least, uses a principle that can be applied to designing any character with a trait you can't easily identify with: just a design a *character* .
No matter how much it will affect the final result, gender identity is only one aspect of what should be a well-rounded character. Designing with an idea or purpose that's not just "well they're [insert adjective here], so..." goes a long way into designing someone that isn't defined by that identity, or at least not some outlandish caricature of it. Go with what feels right for the character, make sure most of your design choices go beyond "they're the [adjective] character", and they will generally be better off for it.
I have a weird relationship with identification with character. (I'll use overwatch as an example)
I can say that I'm a old masculine gay man, but still I feel represented a lot more by Zarya, Roadhog and Reinhardt than soldier 76 that match perfectly with my description. Well, those three, like me, are big characters and for some reason, that physical trait is the one that makes me bond with them.
The point that I want to make is, there's so many ways that people proceive themself as that you can't even reach the ideas without the individual experiences of people.
Not the trixie Mattel and Katya reference in the beginning 😂
Enby here, specifically agendered, meaning I reject the spectrum itself. Just to give some context. Two points. First is more to show biases, I honestly thought Venture was just meant to be a girl until told they are non-binary. Not saying this is evidence of poor design but to say even us who are non-binary still kneejerk assign a gender to someone. The other thing is one good way to show non-binary in a character, which is very hard in video games, is to show variety. A big aspect of being non-binary is not being tied to masculine nor feminine looks. I'm fine in a skirt or a suit. I embrace being non-binary because I am free to mix and match based purely on my personal preferences. You can show a non-binary as masculine and still convey they aren't just by having them not always be in masculine trappings. This is a nightmare with video games since there is a default and people will assume that default is their identity. Though its honestly one of the best ways because their is something universal amongst us. Dealing with people saying we can't like/wear/do because it doesn't fit the binary gender we were assigned.
Thank you, this video has been very informative, it makes me look at the concept of NB very differently, I thought of it as something more as gender neutral, when in reality it’s just outside of the set of the gender binary, which makes it really hard to explore because it’s like trying to navigate somewhere without a map, but in a way there’s a sort of freedom knowing you could be anywhere.
I just wish you mentioned Testament from Guilty Gear Strive, but we can’t have it all I guess
The best way is to not act like we're either male or female for the love of god. Like can't you guys hire non binary voice actors 😭