Non-Binary Kerbals and Gender Non-conforming Kerbals In KSP2?

[BigStar Aerospace]

6 minutes ago, Coo said:

All of us know that is "Politically correct". 

Then people ask why there is no red Kerbel? And color is a social subject, but not a political subject.

We should keep this out. That's a people subject, not a Kerbals subject.

I refuse to reply to you more because you're trying to make this a political subject in which I wish this not to be.

Wow! Two pages thanks everyone!

[MalneyKerman]

The proposal of the OP is utterly sensible.  Ideally, cis binary norms re gender would have been lax or absent ab initio.

[TROPtastic]

9 minutes ago, Coo said:

We should keep this out. That's a people subject, not a Kerbals subject.

What are Kerbals if not a representation of the most optimistic, cooperative, and (dare I say it) recklessly enthusiastic aspects of ourselves?

We went through this years ago when people were upset by the addition of female Kerbals to KSP1. Back then, the opposition was essentially the same: gender is a people subject, not a Kerbals subject, and thus we should keep the status quo. As a guy, I could kind of see this logic, but the sensible reply was that it was easy for everyone who already had representation in the Kerbal form to say this, since every character up to that point had a "male" hairstyle and male names. In addition, having female Kerbals more accurately reflected the real-world history of human spaceflight and rocketry, which was a huge inspiration to many aspects of KSP1's game design.

I think there are a lot of parallels between the situation back then and this request now, with the big difference that multiplayer will cause a lot more people to care about looking unique on their spacewalks and while exploring planets. I think there's no strong argument against either randomly generating Kerbals that could be interpreted as nonbinary (I have no experience as to what this would look like, so I'll defer to those with personal insights) or using a character creator that will already exist to make enby Kerbals for those who want them. 

Of course, if there are no current plans for a Kerbal creator and the planned random generation will be unsatisfactory, then we can get into a debate on whether implementing a character creator would be more valuable than some other gameplay mechanics that could be implemented. 

[Vanamonde]

This sort of subject can become political but let's try to avoid that, please. Keep it polite. 

[Strawberry]

All this will be is a green spaceman having a description that reads "this astronaut says they went to the prestigious KIT, where they claimed to be magma bun sauteed" instead of  "this astronaut says they went to the prestigious KIT, where he claimed to be magma bun sauteed", alongside like 10 lines of code for this. Regardless of your thoughts there are people who go by these pronouns and kerbals are ultimately representations of people, so Im for it on that terms (also I think its a nice bit of worldbuilding which implies theres more to kerbal society then what we see directly). 

[BigStar Aerospace]

31 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

This sort of subject can become political but let's try to avoid that, please. Keep it polite. 

Thank you very much mixter moderator person!

 

1 hour ago, TROPtastic said:

What are Kerbals if not a representation of the most optimistic, cooperative, and (dare I say it) recklessly enthusiastic aspects of ourselves?

We went through this years ago when people were upset by the addition of female Kerbals to KSP1. Back then, the opposition was essentially the same: gender is a people subject, not a Kerbals subject, and thus we should keep the status quo. As a guy, I could kind of see this logic, but the sensible reply was that it was easy for everyone who already had representation in the Kerbal form to say this, since every character up to that point had a "male" hairstyle and male names. In addition, having female Kerbals more accurately reflected the real-world history of human spaceflight and rocketry, which was a huge inspiration to many aspects of KSP1's game design.

I think there are a lot of parallels between the situation back then and this request now, with the big difference that multiplayer will cause a lot more people to care about looking unique on their spacewalks and while exploring planets. I think there's no strong argument against either randomly generating Kerbals that could be interpreted as nonbinary (I have no experience as to what this would look like, so I'll defer to those with personal insights) or using a character creator that will already exist to make enby Kerbals for those who want them. 

Of course, if there are no current plans for a Kerbal creator and the planned random generation will be unsatisfactory, then we can get into a debate on whether implementing a character creator would be more valuable than some other gameplay mechanics that could be implemented. 

You uphold my argument better than myself, thank you very much!!!!

24 minutes ago, Strawberry said:

also I think its a nice bit of worldbuilding which implies theres more to kerbal society then what we see directly)

Agreed! With the colony building and all, we can truly see the kerbals as a civilization now. More than tiny green sentient plants or frogs or well, aliens, but now they are simply put, people. We treat them with love and curiosity as we would ourselves, so why not allow us to portray ourselves as the explorers we are as a species.  Who's to say they did not have ancient philosophers previously in their history that debated such topics as of what the universe consists of and how many snacks are enough to walk around the planet? Or even, is Kerbin flat or round, does the rest of the universe revolve around Kerbin? Was there once a Kalileo Kalilei to debate the tyrannical rain of the once great Flat Kerbin Society? There is history to be learned here, as we are all different, but so are they. Who else is there to say that they are not different in similar ways? We are all explorers are we not?

[Alastor the Kerbal Demon]

As long as all of the little green aliens still get to Explode pilot my rocket equally I'm all for it

 

Anyways.. fifteenth times the charm?

 

[adsii1970]

Several posts in this thread have been removed. This forum is open to all members and does not distinguish or discriminate nor promotes or tolerates discrimination in any form. Please refrain from posting comments on this or any threat that tries to bring political, religious, or other social elements into the discussion that violate the forum guidelines. It is our desire to make this an inviting forum for all members of our Kerbal Space Program community.

[Alexoff]

It would be nice if kerbals did not disappear after unsuccessful flights, but became partially disabled. Imagine a real space pirate Jeb with a hook instead of an arm, an eye patch and a parrot on his shoulder!

[mcwaffles2003]

Doesn't the premise of this thread already do things like assume gender? No one knows the sex of any kerbal, personally I didn't believe they had a sex (so wouldn't they already be non-binary?) . No where in the game do we delve into how the kerbals identify themselves nor do we learn of their sexual biology and to be frank, I really couldn't care less about it. For all we know, Jeb could be a female that identifies as a man and shows it by wearing a typically male hairstyle.

Im not here to identify with kerbals, I'm just here to build rockets and experiment with attempts of simulated natural physical laws. To me kerbals are just pieces of rockets used to command craft without signal, repair craft, and maintain experiments. If this gets added, fine, but I really don't want a game that delves into kerbal lives, if I want that I'll go purchase The Sims.

Edited October 22, 2022 by mcwaffles2003

[MechBFP]

3 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Im not here to identify with kerbals, I'm just here to build rockets and experiment with attempts of simulated natural physical laws.

That’s cool, however many people do identify with characters in media, including the OP. There are reasons why KSP is more popular than Simple Rockets, and Kerbals are definitely a piece of why that is. 

[kerbiloid]

Why care when they anyway don't take off the spacesuits or visit toilets?

P.S.
"little green men persons of genders"

[mcwaffles2003]

15 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

That’s cool, however many people do identify with characters in media, including the OP. There are reasons why KSP is more popular than Simple Rockets, and Kerbals are definitely a piece of why that is. 

23 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

If this gets added, fine, but I really don't want a game that delves into kerbal lives, if I want that I'll go purchase The Sims.

Also, As I already said:

23 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Jeb could be a female that identifies as a man and shows it by wearing a typically male hairstyle.

So does the game need to slap a "transgender" or "non-binary" sticker on some kerbals when gender and sex haven't even been in the game? Also:

And hey, for all we know Valentina has male parts...

 

 

Edited October 22, 2022 by mcwaffles2003

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

that delves into kerbal lives

The first one who took care about the Kerbal privacy.

[MechBFP]

6 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

 

I think that kind of concern is generally referred  to as “making a mountain out of a mole hill.” 
You don’t have anything to worry about. The devs clearly have a lot of work left on other things that need to be done first before that would even be in the realm of possibility anyway. 

[mcwaffles2003]

Just now, MechBFP said:

I think that kind of concern is generally referred  to as “making a mountain out of a mole hill.” 
You don’t have anything to worry about. The devs clearly have a lot of work left on other things that need to be done first before that would even be in the realm of possibility anyway. 

your quote box is empty...

Also, really would like to know a good solution on:

8 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

So does the game need to slap a "transgender" or "non-binary" sticker on some kerbals when gender and sex haven't even been in the game?

Like, how would this actually be implemented seeing as this game isn't CP2077. I feel like you're avoiding the points I've been making here. Genuinely want to know, what does implementation of this look like? I'm not trying to be crude, but how do you label a kerbal as transgender or non-binary to make a point that they are, do we add a bar next to stupidity and courage with man on one side and woman on the other to show where their identity lies on the gender spectrum?

And once again, we don't know the sex of any kerbals so far, you can't have a transgender identity when you don't even have a biological sex characteristic, its kind of the crux of the concept of being transgender...

[shdwlrd]

Does it really matter? The devs don't want to delve into Kerbal intimacy and sexuality, why do we have to worry about it? If you want a female Kerbal with really short hair or a male Kerbal with real long hair it's simple; open the different hair models for both Kerbal models. It's not like you're going to see then when they have helmets on 90% of the time.

[mcwaffles2003]

1 minute ago, shdwlrd said:

Does it really matter? The devs don't want to delve into Kerbal intimacy and sexuality, why do we have to worry about it? If you want a female Kerbal with really short hair or a male Kerbal with real long hair it's simple; open the different hair models for both Kerbal models. It's not like you're going to see then when they have helmets on 90% of the time.

The thing is, the game doesn't even have male and female kerbals though, it just has hair styles and eyelashes (properties found on both sexes)... any statement about kerbal identity after that is already assuming sex/gender. Every kerbal we've had so far could be transgender for all we know.

[Bej Kerman]

On 10/21/2022 at 4:49 PM, The Aziz said:

If they were humans, sure. They're alien species. That's all I have to say about it.

So, they can have human genders, human names, human facial features, human-like technological development... but god forbid we let them have the same same-sex relationships and gender dysphoria that humans can have?

Weird place to draw the line. Is it even about how human they are in the first place...?

[Alexoff]

In general, in 2022, making a character constructor like in cyberpunk is commonplace. Imagine, choosing the sizes of individual parts of the body of a kerbonaut ... But it is too much to demand this from developers who cannot add science to the game in the sixth year of development. And we haven't seen the game yet! Well, the video where Scott Manley sat down at KSP2 and flew to Mun on a simple ship, we saw only short fragments.

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

it just has hair styles

Who at all said that it's hair?..

1 minute ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

and eyelashes

... and eyes?

Their view camera is monocular and is placed on the forehead.

3 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

So, they can have human genders, human names, human facial features, human-like technological development... but god forbid we let them have the same same-sex relationships and gender dysphoria that humans can have?

They reproduce by cloning the default binary objects in memory. Their gender system can be quite tricky.

5 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

But it is too much to demand this from developers who cannot add science to the game in the sixth year of development.

Remember, they have presented the Kerbal emotions years ago.

Maybe exactly the development of the dedicated mechanics took so much efforts.

[mcwaffles2003]

3 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Who at all said that it's hair?..

... and eyes?

Their view camera is monocular and is placed on the forehead.

you know... those are fair points

[Alexoff]

14 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Maybe exactly the development of the dedicated mechanics took so much efforts.

Surely the whole team made different kerbals, so there was not enough time for the rest. You can still fantasize the plot of the game, which no one promised.

[Superfluous J]

40 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Why care when they anyway don't take off the spacesuits or visit toilets?

I'd be very surprised if the Kerbals living in colonies are in space suits. And I wouldn't be all that surprised if Life Support is in the game that there is some form of waste management.

As to the topic in general, I was surprised by the end of this thread that I hadn't yet run out of Likes today. I can't support this idea enough. The *FIRST* thing I thought of was said an hour ago:

50 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

There are reasons why KSP is more popular than Simple Rockets, and Kerbals are definitely a piece of why that is. 

KSP is Kerbals and Kerbals are KSP. We blame the Kerbals for our failures and celebrate with them our wins. If you don't that's fine. You shouldn't care if they look male or female or any other gender or if they're amorphous blobs. But there is a very large contingent of players who DO care about them, and being able to care about them more will make the game more engaging.

[kerbiloid]

5 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

I'd be very surprised if the Kerbals living in colonies are in space suits.

Having seen their construction style, I would even sleep in helmet in a Kerbal lunar house.