Changes are afoot for Northanger Abbey!

Tags: posts, gender, dev log, northanger abbey, from dreamwidth, visual novels,

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Note: This was originally the first substantive post at my dreamwidth blog.

The reason I made this blog is that I felt like having a place I could ramble about what I'm up to that allowed for proper comments.

So what have I been up up to? Why, working on some major changes for my dating sim version of Northanger Abbey! Namely:

I also added the option for players not to give their character an assigned gender, in which case the game just avoids the topic. I feel kind of bad for not doing that from the start.

The other changes are quite wide ranging, so are taking a while to implement. I'm going through scene by scene, drawing rule 63 versions of the characters as they come up, checking for any missed gendered language, adding image descriptions, and then testing.

The designs are still pretty sketchy while I get everything set up, but here's some original and flipped versions I've designed so far: Mrs Allen, Henry Tilney, and a footman. Original and genderflipped versions of various Northanger Abbey characters. They are all wearing conventional regency wear and both versions have the same colours. Mrs Allen, who is in fancy green clothes. Henry Tilney, who is in dark pink and using a cane. A footman in livery, the female version is dressed as a maid. In every case the female version is about half a head shorter.

The protagonist already had the option to present as male/female/genderqueer so they haven't changed.

How the matriarchy setting works is it flips all the gender flags: all the men become women and the women men. Sexism now favours women over men. The trans woman character becomes a trans man, and the non binary character remains non binary, but their gender presentations change in some contexts. The protagonist's gender and presentation is up to the player, but how sexism affects them is flipped in a matriarchy.

The reason for flipping everything and everyone is that it means nothing changes in terms of which characters have gendered privilege, so the plot, dynamics, and underlying diualogue stay the same, modulo some pronoun etc changes.

The worldbuilding and fashion doesn't make much sense if you think about it for very long, but hopefully anyone choosing to play a matriarchal version of a Jane Austen novel knows what they're getting into. For simplicity, and because it's the most fun for me, I've kept fashion much the same rather than trying to figure out what a matriarchal regency England's fashions would more realistically look like. But I haven't changed anyone's colour scheme, so men's fashion is now much more colourful, and women's less so.

After looking into average heights, I decided to make the afab versions of characters around half a head shorter than the amab versions except where it didn't feel right for the character. I'm still figuring out how big to make the heads when I scale up/down to have it look right. Expressions and body language are basically unchanged, though, which creates an interesting effect.

Of course the obvious question you may have is: why flip the genders at all?

And the answer is: because it's fun!

The novel Northanger Abbey is all about gender, both uncritically replicating the roles of the early 19th century, and subverting them. This is one reason it's fun to let the player change the protagonist's gender: she's SUCH a gothic novel Heroine, so giving her arc to a male or non binary character, or even just letting her be into girls, is enjoyably at odds with narrative convention.

Similarly, it's fun to flip everything around. Jane Austen loved writing men who were oblivious and smug in their gender privilege, yet still endearing. Turning them into cheerfully sexist women is funny and hot and interestingly strange, showing how ridiculous sexism is without turning anyone into straw(wo)men.

Also...the world needs girl!Henry Tilney. Or at least I do >.>

A friend suggested the idea to me years ago, and I've always wanted to do it, but was determined to finish the other routes first.

But I've been stalled on that for like a year, and eventually decided it's better to just follow my muse and keep up my creative momentum.

I know some trans people don't like rule 63/genderflips, but personally I think they're fine as long as they're done in a way which acknowledges trans people and gender variety in general (which is something all stories should do). This version of the story already has trans/non binary characters, so a genderflipped version does too. It is a little weird thinking "what would a male/female version of this character look like" as a genderfluid person, but interestingly so.

And writing a world with no sexism simply wouldn't work, not without far more extensive rewrites than I am interested in doing. Simply flipping the genders requires a lot of new sprites, but very little rewriting beyond adding a bunch of variables for pronouns etc. And I already had that for my protagonist.

As for the accessibility stuff: The latest version of Renpy (the coding framework I use) has a new accessibility menu, which has a lot of nice options but is UGLY AS SIN. Luckily a few people have written prettier alternatives. I'm using Caption Tool by npckc, which is simple to use and easy to edit.

Thanks to Renpy, the game is screenreader compatible by default, but that just gives blind players the dialogue. A lot of the appeal of visual novels come from the visuals, and they'll only know what's going on there if I tell them. I've been meaning to add image descriptions since the start but was putting it off because I am a BAD DISABLED GAME DEV.

So this genderflip thing gives me a good reason to go through scene by scene and think about what descriptions would add to the experience of blind players. I'm still figuring out the line between dryly informative and the more mannered, ironic tone of the narrator.

And that, dear readers, is where I am at! There's always a chance I'll get sick of this rule 63 malarky before I'm done, but since the original patriarchal version of the story remains unchanged within the code I can just have that be the only version if necessary.