Hang on, folks. Things are about to get VERY heavy here.
In the Fall of 2009 and Winter of 2010, I was going through an extremely rough period in my life. I am transsexual, and in that period of time I was in the early stages of transitioning from living as a man to living openly as a woman. At the same time, my parents were going through a divorce. As I suffer from a rather severe case of social anxiety disorder, I was not exactly able to work, so I lived at home with my mother. As if to cap this all off with a cherry made of pure black comedy, I was also coming to grips with the fact that my mother was very abusive my entire life.
Wow. After reading over that last bit, I'm actually beginning to realize exactly the scope of how crappy my life was at that point. These aren't things you think about at the time. It's just life, so you kind of forget how good or bad things might be in relative terms.
It was during this period that I found myself extremely bored on a sunny November day (I live in Southern California, so sun is pretty much a constant year round. Go fig). I was eager to play a game that I had wanted for several years. That game was, of course, Dragon Age: Origins. However, DA:O was not to be released until some weeks later, so I found myself in a Best Buy looking for something cheap to kill time. That was when I had an encounter that, thinking back on it, seems silly to imagine as anything more than a ridiculous inevitability.
Some necessary background: I have been a gamer all my life, and I suspect I shall be a gamer until the day I die. In particular, I have been a BioWare fan since I first played Baldur's Gate back in the late 1990's. I'm also a big fan of the fantasy genre, as well as Dungeons & Dragons, which was what ultimately led me to Baldur's Gate in the first place, so it was only natural that I would be highly anticipating DA:O, which was being hailed as a "spiritual successor" to Baldur's Gate. So it was not exactly like I had no reason to be interested in Mass Effect, but I had never thought myself to be as big a fan of sci-fi as of fantasy.
Back to that November day in Best Buy: I saw Mass Effect on the shelf, and being that I was already a fan of BioWare and was in the mood to play a BioWare game, I found myself purchasing Mass Effect for $20. I had no idea at the time that it would be the best $20 I had ever spent.
When I booted up the game on my PC for the first time, I was surprised. For the first time I had ever seen, not only was I allowed to pick the dialogue of my character, but that dialogue was fully voiced. But Commander Shepard's voice was not what I had come to expect from women in video games; her voice was husky, deep, and disciplined in a way a person would expect from a military officer, but also carried the timber that is typically associated with speech patterns in women (forgive me if this goes beyond your understanding, as, being transsexual, I actually had to train my voice, so picked up a level of understanding and analysis of speech patterns between genders that most people just take for granted, and sometimes I don't realize how much more I might know). This was wonderful, in my mind, as I've never considered myself to be the most "feminine" person in the world, in spite of identifying as female while living as male.
The game offered two forms of "morality" that you could play Shepard to align with, Paragon and Renegade. I told myself at the time that it made more sense to try to play primarily Paragon on my first run through the game because it made the most sense to start with. This was a complete lie. The truth was that was what I needed at the time: a paragon; a female role-model who was strong and brave and didn't give in to the temptation to be cruel or rude. A true heroine, as it were.
As I continued to play through Shepard's adventure, I was enthralled. Not only was the story amazingly well-written and the characters likable, but I found Samantha (as I had named her) Shepard to be an amazing character in her own right, a dimension I was left to imagine entirely on my own in previous BioWare games. It became apparent that my own imagination was not, in fact, as thorough as I had previously believed, since in games where my character never spoke, I never became so attached to that character.
Jennifer Hale, the woman who performs the voice of FemShep (as the fan community has lovingly dubbed the female version of Commander Shepard) was not new to me. I had heard her voice before in several games, including as Bastila Shan in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, a previous BioWare game. But it was her performance as Commander Shepard that literally inspired me. She could look death in the eye and just say "No." It was exactly the thing I needed to experience - to see as well as hear - at a time in my life when I had no one else to believe in. When my mother came to me and decided she would shame me for not dropping to my knees and praising her for no reason, I asked myself, "What would Shepard do?" And the answer was always to hold onto my own self-respect and stand up; to do what was right, regardless of what was safe.
I know Shepard isn't real. I know that most people don't think of Shepard in the same way I do. For some, Shepard is a man, or a jerk, or a racist. A soldier, an adept, an engineer. But none of that matters to me because, to me, Shepard will always be the woman who stood up and delivered a great, big verbal middle finger to the Reapers, an enemy so impossible and powerful that anyone would have been afraid. Shepard does not exist, but the Reapers do; everyone has seen them. The Reapers are those things we fear. For me, it was my mother, and I did what Shepard would do: I stood up and held onto the courage to speak for myself rather than let my abusive mother define me.
So, yes, my first three posts in this blog may make me out to seem like a one-trick pony, but there's good reason for why so much thought has been devoted to Mass Effect lately. To me, Shepard is an ideal. A strength that comes from courage and not physical ability. I am a stronger person now because of these games, their developers, and Jennifer Hale, whose voice personified the heroine I needed.
I am Commander Shepard, and these are my favorite games in the galaxy.
Has Jennifer read this? From the little bit I've learned about her from reading her tweets I think she would be honored to know one of her characters touched someones life like this.
ReplyDeleteI was sifting through Mass Effect-related news when your title caught my attention. I am so glad I clicked on this link, as your story is itself inspirational and I agree 100% on everything you said. I grew up as a gamer, playing games like Crusader: No Regret in the 90s when I was still in elementary school. But more importantly, I grew up as a female gamer. The Mass Effect series are, by far, my favorite games/story/entertainment media/etc. And it's not because it's simply cool or fun with lots of 'splosions (not to say that it's not fun, of course). It's because it was the first game(s) I'd ever played that not only featured a female protagonist, but one who was A) not sexualized in ANY manner, which...is an amazing feat for any entertainment media, especially video games, B) not unique or special because of her gender or gender-specific attributes, and most importantly, C) a Leader. A) and B) I'd seen in previous games (generally adventure games), though rare, but...a leader? A military leader? Whose voice wasn't high-pitched, ridiculous, or the idea of what a man might want his woman to sound like. She was exactly as you described. I doubt you are the only one to see Shepard and the ME series as life-changing inspiration.
ReplyDeleteSomething that even my close male friends could never quite grasp, was the importance of having a character (that I must say, Jennifer Hale created as much as Anthony Hopkins created Hannibal Lecter) like Commander Shepard. It wasn't until the turn of the century and games like Mass Effect that I realized something rather disturbing. No matter what game I'd play, even RPGs where I could potentially choose the gender (like Baldur's Gate)...even as a mage class where physical strength was useless...I would always, ALWAYS, create a male. In my mind, a male character always seemed stronger, better, superior, more capable. It wasn't until my sister asked me (after I introduced her to gaming) if it was normal to feel precisely this, that I realized how much gender norms and our society affects us--even those of us who constantly laugh at those expectations. I mean, I was playing tackle football with the boys when I was in pre-school; whenever we had an uneven number, the deal was always that the team with the extra person was not allowed to have me, because that would be too much of an advantage. And despite my own confidence and conviction in who I was, I still fell prey to a more traditional way of thinking. By 2007, I had been starting to play more female protagonists, but Commander Shepard absolutely cinched the deal for me.
Okay, this has been pretty long-winded now, but I strongly felt the need to respond as reading your blog really made my week. It's nice to know there are others who see Shepard the way I do and have asked WWSD (What would Shepard do?) to push themselves forward in their lives. Because you are absolutely right: Shepard is an ideal, and no matter how many idiots you get on the Internet who seem to miss this very point, it remains as such, and is why this series has engendered so many loyal fans. As an addendum, it is also why I have and will probably always have the hugest crush on Ms. Hale. My boyfriend's completely fine with this, of course, on account of my introducing him to FemShep. He actually hadn't played FemShep until he met me (I like to tease him about it now), and now he can't imagine the Commander as anyone else.
Now, let's hope Bioware can shake itself from the Evil that is EA, and give the incredible Commander Shepard the ending she truly deserves. Keelah se'lai!