And woman created a sociological essay about a video game from 1992
Mars and Venus: The Difference Between Male Starconners and Female Starconners
(Yes, I have decided to call Star Control fans "Starconners." "Starconnie" is too cute, "Star Control freak" is too easy a pun, and I can't think of anything suitable that ends in "-head.")
Anyway, this is an essay about something that's been floating about in my mind. Please note that I'm not bashing anyone (least of all you, zarla). There's nothing in this essay that we won't admit about ourselves. Well, maybe there is one thing...but it's not an insult, honestly. You'll know it when you see it.
Oh, and I might make some icons based on this essay later on.
ETA: I didn't mean to suggest that all female Star Control fans were heterosexual, just that the player was expected to be heterosexual and male.
Alexander Pope once wrote:
Men some to business, some to pleasure take,
But every woman is at heart a rake.
He wrote that because he lived in the eighteenth century and could therefore get away with making a sweeping generalization about women. But this notion seems to be true to a certain extent in the Star Control fandom. (The statement may be true of fandom in general. Is simply following a television program, film, book series, or video game enough "pleasure" for male fans, leaving the female fans to take their pleasure to the next level by writing fan fiction?)
Fan fiction and fan art enable an observer to differentiate male Starconners from their significantly fewer female counterparts. Most fan fiction written by female Starconners focuses on interaction between individual characters, as opposed to the militaristic fiction favored by the male fans.* For this reason, original characters are far less common in female Starconners' work, unless said Starconners are creating AUs that depend on original characters. That is, the Captain, Fwiffo, Commander Talana, and Admiral ZEX (who will be expounded upon later) appear with greater frequency in female Starconners' fanfic because they are individual characters with unique personalities. The inherent nature of militaristic fiction requires Redshirt types in its character population, so original characters from species with interchangeable members are common in male Starconners' fanfic. Similarly, the intense discussions of naval tactics in hypothetical Star Control sequels and debates over the merits of various ships are entirely unknown on frungylovers, whereas they comprise the lifeblood of the Ur-Quan Masters forum. The same principle holds true for fan art: the UQM forums contain many pictures of ships and redesigned species for ongoing sequel projects (both hand-drawn and computer-created), and Frungylovers posts are often composed primarily of pictures of individuals interacting in some way. These latter pictures often show the characters in human bodies because of a couple of coincidences that haven't gotten old. Said coincidences have staying power because they afford an opportunity to humanize (a less charitable person might say romanticize) the characters' emotions, not just their bodies.** Also, the human form may be easier to draw than a mollusk-derived physique. Male Starconners never seem to draw human VUX or Spathi. Once again, men have the "business;" women have the "pleasure."
The character of Admiral ZEX tends to polarize the sexes in an amusing way. Most male Starconners are disturbed by his attempts to seduce the player character, if they even recognize his lines as flirtation rather than a simple possessive desire for a pet man. If male fans include him as a fanfic character or mention him in a discussion, it is for his military prowess rather than his xenophilia. By contrast, female fans are nearly unanimous in their real-life love for the character. Frungylovers has a disproportionate amount of ZEX-centric fan art and fan fiction because the community is moderated by a ZEX fangirl, and such proclivities are contagious in this environment. (That is, many current community members joined the community because of the moderator's ZEX/Captain slashfic.) Blaming the contagion on a fondness for homoeroticism is reductive and inaccurate, however. The VUX are intended to be repulsive, but a female gamer's reaction to a tentacled, long-tongued biped with a swaying proboscis might be very different from a male gamer's.
Moreover, the player character already has a love interest, the Syreen Commander Talana. She's (ostensibly) not human, but she's good-looking, and the relationship is portrayed as healthy and positive. Talana is an unconventional love interest in her own way: although she wears little clothing, she's a smart, assertive Amazon type from a matriarchal society, not a damsel in distress as most previous video-game heroes' girlfriends were (and she's not too skinny, either). Still, she would be considered attractive on Earth, despite her luminescent green eyes and blue skin. ZEX, the other character who takes a sexual interest in the player character, is decidedly unattractive to humans, and he has to die in order to revive the Shofixti species. While the implications are unintentional, they are unfortunate, seeming to suggest that it's only within a human's rights to engage in xenophilia if his partner is attractive by human standards. (There's also the fact that ZEX's attraction to the Captain is homosexual, but that is probably incidental.) In other words, both male and female Starconners are provided with fanservice, but only male Starconners are so provided intentionally, and only they feel sexually validated within the game's context. Female Starconners are denied such a "pleasure" within canon, so they congregate to create it for themselves and each other.
Of course, the VUX weren't supposed to be attractive to humans at all, so if the player character had the option of reciprocating ZEX's affection, then he would have to be able to proposition all the aliens, if one thinks about it. (That would make for an interesting gaming experience....)
Fortunately, male and female Starconners do share common ground. Both sexes of fans are at least somewhat scientifically and sociologically inclined, which is to say that the various alien species fascinate all Starconners. The UQM forum and Frungylovers are both filled with discussions about the physiology of the different species, and everyone seems to enjoy joking about the alien cultures' peculiarities. This commonality brings the martial and the venereal together, reminding us that we, of both sexes, are terrestrial, and ultimately interested in the cosmic.
And that concludes our broadcast day.
*This realization inspired the rest of the essay.
**I usually ignore Damned-based artwork because it brings everything down to Earth instead of concentrating on the expansive, interplanetary scope present in the game. Turning space aliens into humans seems to defeat the purpose of Star Control fan art in the first place, especially when ZEX is a woobie. But that's just my opinion.