We wanted to write our own thoughts about WF's gender inequality upon seeing @mariopartybluntrevolution's post, and it got a bit long so we're making our own post here.
There's no longer a 50/50 gender split in Warframe's main narrative quests as of late and I don't like it.
Dominus Thrax, the Drifter's best friend turned warlord, integral to Drifter's backstory: a boy.
Uriel, a Warframe people have claimed is "The Operator's Frame" because of his link to the pivotal events of TOP: male.
Adis, a sweet Sentient child and the Operator's best child-soldier-friend-in-arms, and again, Very integral to the Core narrative: a boy.
Next: The Hunra. Mafia godfather. First look at Tau society. Male.
BRYSKO. Another male Warframe important to the core story: unskippable gameplay, first of his kind. MALE.
The other women/fem aligned characters in the Tau update? Larynde, a Sentient singer with conventionally attractive feminine features with a conventionally feminine occupation: Side character. Zoff and Jeldrin. Fun minibosses with fun designs: but they're still side characters!!! Through and through!!!!!
Hunhow, Stalker, Umbra, Albrecht, Loid, Parvos, Erra and those other idiot blue men. All these names of people who are moving the plot forward. They aren't just vendors either: they have speaking roles in recent/relevant Quests. But none of them are women!
Lotus is the only persistent force through all this, which is great because she seriously IS the most cohesive character Warframe has offered, but look at the rest of the cast!!!
The important female characters with relevant powers, unique abilities to persist through not just timelines but with the narrative significance to colour the whole narrative? The Unum, Praghasa, Rusalka, hints of Nitokh I begrudgingly suppose, maybe Archon Nira, and even the damn ass Worm Queen... Where are they? What are they doing? What is DE doing? What are they going to use these female characters for?
Operator: yeah I have lots of friends who are women! Like my mom, my mom, my mom, and my mom who looks like a bug this time.
Like. I'm sorry but the writing team NEEDS to do something about this. it's fucking dire. We love the female side characters in Fortuna, Duviri, and 1999. We love the newer female Warframes like Koumei and Follie. We love that Lotus is a collection of multiple women genuinely but she surely cannot be your one defense for not diversifying your Main Story Cast.
Saying your current cast is diverse when it consists of 10 men and 1 woman who is also a bunch of intrinsically-connected other women is so..... ??????? Why are you doing this?
Warframe challenged and subverted the "men go to war to protect the women and children" belief with the Lotus' and Operator's story and we loved it. We love the angle of love and healing that builds the core of this game. We love the political symbolism of Natah, Lotus and Margulis being female victims of domestic abuse to a very patriarchal symbol of greed and power. We love that they made their own decisions to take back their agency. We love that they have family and friends who love them and support them. We love that loving Lotus is a non-negotiable choice for our player Operator and Drifter. We love their portrayal as traumatized survivors of abuse. We love that they are genuinely Carefully Written Women with major resonance in the entire game.
But your most narratively significant woman in the past years is Jade. A woman who was pregnant and died to push her husband's story instead. A woman who needed an Extra Journal Entry OUTSIDE of her quest to give her the necessary characterization afforded to Stalker and Hunhow instead.
We can only hope that DE is holding back on the significance of their female characters because they're prepping for a crazy thematically consistent, politically sound arc about the symbolism of women in war. Maybe they're doing a Yin-Yang balance theme about the societally perceived "Activeness of Men" and "Passiveness of Women". How the idiot men mentioned above are digging their graves searching for Dominance (eg, b*llas and erra), while the women are Decidedly Not doing that because they have the smarts to understand you can't live without caring for the people around you. (eg, Margulis, Eudico, Unum)
We can only hope that DE has a good resolution to the questions: "why do the Sentients emulate gender roles in Human society?" and "can we help them fix that?"
If not? Well. DE is just gonna have to make sure the Lotuses are perfect paradigms of character work, because it's becoming rather difficult to accept anything less than that!
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