There’s an interesting difference in the general social behaviour of men and women. Women tend to pay more attention to each other and try to achieve some sort of consensus about everything. Men tend to be more confrontational and they leave each other alone more. A woman will look at another woman tying her shoelaces, a man will look away, leaving the other to his or her own business. This is probably why women have received the reputation of babbling all the time. They seem more social in their behaviour. While for men it’s a matter of respect for the other, to not seek so much contact. Women look at each other, men look in the same direction.
To translate this to Drama Princess, opportunities would need to be marked as more feminine or more masculine (or perhaps more or less social and contact-seeking) and the actor would need to know whether it is male or female, so that they can tend to choose things that fit their gender better. Also, more “decorative” actions could be added: female characters can look at other characters more quickly, male characters could try and create a bigger distance from other characters.
Posted on July 26, 2006 at 6:56 pm
I don’t know if you should go with such a boolean distinction. Something based on a numeric dynamic which weights frequency of masculine or feminine behaviors might be more advantageous.
Posted on July 26, 2006 at 10:57 pm
I’m not sure if such subtleties work well in the realtime 3D medium. It might be confusing to the viewer, or bland. I think stylisation is important. And I think expressing something clear about gender differences can be very endearing. Much more than trying to stick to something that is theoretically correct.
But this is just our own style. For the sake of usefulness to authors other than ourselves, I guess masculine-feminine could be implented as a gliding scale. Thanks for the suggestion! 🙂
Posted on August 10, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Actually your decision sounds prudent, you might want to check out Katherine Isbister’s book for similar tips on gender, body language, proxemics ect.
Posted on August 10, 2006 at 1:12 pm
I just started reading it! It’s very interesting.
(another gender-related anecdote: most literature that we’ve been reading in the context of Drama Princess was written by women…)