What gender are the Kerbals we see in the game?

[Brotoro]

My stance is that "girbals" is a silly term.

[Frannington]

Kerbals don't have a gender now, but once upon a time they did. But that was on their real homeworld, when they had a very different name for themselves.

Millions of years ago, a space-faring species secretly visited the homeworld of what we now know as Kerbals and kidnapped a male member of the dominant species. They took him back to the planet that we now wrongly call Kerbin.

You see, these kidnappers needed a slave species and had a key technology; cloning. Unwilling to clone and enslave members of their own species, and lacking a native species that was usable for productive work, they found these little, green, peaceful simpletons to be ideal. The abductee they chose - whose name was Jebediah - was particularly good with machines, easily trained, lacked any care for his personal safety and so suited their purpose perfectly.

Time rolled on and every home eventually had a Jebediah. Leisure time for the kidnappers increased exponentially and much like the Roman empire, they became decadent. Eventually an argument over wallpaper led to one of them launching a comet at another's house. That's where the big circle crater came from. In the following devestation, the entire population of the planet was wiped out. But one clone factory survived, still automatically creating Jebediahs. Unfortunately, it was subtly damaged, so small errors in replication were introduced. Bob and Bill were created.

With their masters gone, the "Kerbals" inherited their late masters' technology, and started using it. And that's when we discovered them. And now we're going to give them females to give them back their heritage.

Plot twist: Not all of the kidnappers were on-planet at the time of course. Some survived, and we know them as "Krakens".

And that's my back-story for them.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Frannington

[tg626]

And that's my back-story for them.

Not bad!

[I_Killed_Jeb]

lol at the ridiculous logical contortions and mental gymnastics people at undergoing to 'prove' kerbals aren't obvious representations of males

[Wallace]

I use texture replacer so I can have boy and girl kerbals, having different kerbal faces is the main reason I use it.

[KerbMav]

They are the neutral worker drones distributing space spores while the queen and her male concubinos live in the underground city.

/silly

[Holo]

concubinos

Hey look, my new favourite word.

[Skorpychan]

Asexual semi-plantlike humanoids.

They reproduce by spores. That's what the puff of smoke is when you smack a kerbal into the ground.

[FlyingPete]

I still think Kerbals are closer to a plant. They grow in the ground, then when mature they shed the leaves from their head, crawl out and jump into a rocket. Of course in most cases the rocket then explodes, which spreads the spores around and grows new Kerbals (which is why there's a never-ending stream of would-be Kerbonauts)

[Holo]

So, it seems that Kerbals use masculine pronouns:

He's an accountant, called Mortimer. He doesn't have many friends, but he likes things to be under control and arranged in right angles. This job is pretty stressful for him.

Linus is Wernher Von Kerman's Intern. Because Wernher himself is too important to be bothered with these boring strategy meetings. He sends his intern in his stead.

Walt Kerman is the spokesperson for the Space Program. He wears a hazmat suit. Which isn't strictly required for his job, but it seems appropriate for someone working in such a toxic environment.

Gus Kerman is head of Space Program Operations and all-around repairs guy whenever something around here breaks down. We hope nothing catches fire while he's here.

[Franklin]

It's a fictional universe! "His" could mean anything!

[Trentendegreth]

im still wondering why people care so much,

in my opinion, Gender dosn't matter.... at all. like what i had for breakfast means more to me than gender. more so in video games. pixels being represented by some arbitrary social norm is a busload of a headache, so my kerbals are some sort of plantlike life form that all spawn from the same tree. thats why they all look alike,

alternatively they could be like dwarves... LOTR reference there.

[Frannington]

im still wondering why people care so much...

I don't. My post above was a bit of fun.

Like you, the gender of someone doing a job doesn't really matter to me one way or another, any more than it does in Real Life. But I enjoy Sci-Fi, and our Kerbal friends are just ripe for storytelling.

So I'm still wondering why some people care so much that some other people want to create a narrative, for whatever reason. I also wonder why some people are so desperate to shoot those narratives down.

It's just a diversion for most of us, and anyone who feels the need to shout "NO! They're all men/women/genderless!" is just exposing their own bias. Ignore the discussion. Go fly a rocket.

[PCGeek]

They are all kerbal.

Probably the best answer to anything! EVER!

(Although it is true, they are all kerbal...)

[Trentendegreth]

I don't. My post above was a bit of fun.

Like you, the gender of someone doing a job doesn't really matter to me one way or another, any more than it does in Real Life. But I enjoy Sci-Fi, and our Kerbal friends are just ripe for storytelling.

So I'm still wondering why some people care so much that some other people want to create a narrative, for whatever reason. I also wonder why some people are so desperate to shoot those narratives down.

It's just a diversion for most of us, and anyone who feels the need to shout "NO! They're all men/women/genderless!" is just exposing their own bias. Ignore the discussion. Go fly a rocket.

fair enough, glad im not the only one