The “What if” section is exactly what it sounds like. Delving into the potential unknown or currently nonexistent factors of the Ace series. Questions along the lines of “what if Mark had been a female lead?” or “what if there was no Jessica” or “what is Sparx had been the main character rather than Ace?”

I’m going to start out with something rather deep. I’m looking at the use of disability in this show – albeit the lack of it. We never see a disabled character in the show. Never anyone blind or deaf or physically disabled. This is a shame, because Ace is pretty good on other moral issues – why doesn’t it address this issue? Granted, it seems you can’t make a character disabled in any way, shape or form in TV without having a moral message connected to the disability. Would this be an apt aspect for Ace to follow, or a distraction from the moral message? (Imo either way I’d still have liked to see it repsented). The overall message IS “there’s a hero in us all”. And I think it would've attracted audiences for another thing, it would've been lovely to see young, disabled kids being encouraged by this.

To make this an even more focussed question, I’m going to draw on certain characters.

If Heather were in a wheelchair, for example, would it draw people to view the character with more sympathy? It could be viewed as an aspect of her personality – she’s disabled, so she’s learned to take no crap from anyone and to draw on her other strengths. How might this be viewed?

Or what about Sam? Would have been interesting to have the canon girlfriend in a wheelchair, as well as of an ethnic minority, wouldn’t it? What impact might this have had?

Mark’s the main character right – what if he’d been deaf? Would it have produced communication problems, or would he have communicated in a different way? One imagines it’d be easy for Ace to learn sign language – he could have it programmed. Or maybe speech could appear in text boxes as it often does in games. Would the show then be suitable for signers?

Feel free to draw on other ideas (or come up with your own what if queries.)

I agree placing Heather in a wheelchair could've highlighted her strengths as well as allowing diverse representation. And I reckon it would've been pretty cool to make a disabled character the canon girlfriend--one isn't stopped from all romantic feelings in that situation.

Text captions on screen would've made the show less accessible to the majority population, though again it would have been great to see a diverse approach. And "there's a hero in us all" would have been particularly applicable.

If Mark had been a female lead, I think chances are that Michelle would've turned out something of a Sue. Female characters often fall on one side of "exaggeratedly good" or "horribly flawed", and for a main character that's likely to be the former. Male-as-default has led to a more diverse and realistic characterisation for male characters over the years. Female characters also aren't generally permitted to be 'clueless' unless they're the minor-cheerleader-type-stereotype, which often implies that they should be doing the work rather than the clueless male, so I think a Michelle would have been a bit keener on the hero business, rolled her eyes at Ace's antics more often, and had less of a romantic life taking up her time. It'd also have made Herman's pursuit come across as nastier due to the general male/female dynamics present in our sexist society, and even Michelle/Sam would have cast the male as initiator. And of course Herman/Betty would have been downright abusive. :P

You can come up with some right scary answers, Sarah :P But good ones.

Maybe there's another reason why there's suitably less females in Ace in general - Females are pretty damn tricky to doo well, as Kat is a perfect example of. While it would've been nice to have a female lead (Heather, for example, though we're currently pondering whether or not she'd just use her logic to press the delete buttom immediately and the story would be over before it began) the target audience WAS mostly males of too low an age for hormones to be kicking in (sorry to all us girls, but that would've been the reason they made her a girl, I expect. Two words Buffy. Summers.) , therefore a male lead was more logical to drawthe fans, and people were less likely to riot over clueless stereotypes. Not that fair, but perfectly logical.

Wasn't Buffy intended to override the stereotype of the helpless blonde cheerleader in the slasher flick? By an author who holds strong feminist beliefs and is known for writing lots of strong female characters?

Nope, not fair. But at least they did a pretty good job with the female characters they used, Kat aside.

Here's a question for you: What if LI was male? How does that change the dynamics of LI/Ace? Or the rivalry between her and Sparx? Does it make LI/Fear squickier to contemplate? (Obviously it shouldn't, but...) Would it emphasise the homophobic cliche Fear originates from?

This depends on how you interpret Joss Whedon overall :P I think he is quite accepting and good about that kinda stuff, but Buffy also fulfilled another stereotype to the letter – the upcoming Lara Croft, with a lot more spunk. As a character I personally didn’t like her, much. I preferred dorkier characters like Xander, or reformed ones like Spike.

We've often speculated on fear's preferences when it comes to guys and gals, and it's not entirely logical that he's not bothered either way, so it's plausible that would still have happened.

Then again... maybe Li wouldn't have been so accepting of his punishment as a male? We don't know how stereotypes work in the 6D, but lets presume women, while accepting in power and ability, cannot achieve certain things and have certain things expected of them (rather like Klingon females, who are just as fierce and can be considered warriors, but still have a somewhat more limited position in society. They can't be on the council, for example.) Lets Say Li has been brought up to believe that a female serves a man - if with her strength and wits rather than in usual... worse human assumptions. Would a Male LI have these problems, or would he allow his cunning to take command.

The Ace dynamic... in canon you bet he's be presented as a man who either considered that he owed Ace a debt of his life, or had learned to respect him as an equal and question himself and believe in his own ability to change his programming.

They'd probably have turned his relationship with Sparx into UST and had it work that way, which would have been interesting. I really don't think he'd be like Kellamy, or anything, but might have similar ideas about several things.

And what of Lord Fear as Female? Or Random as female? Ace could logically have been an ex lover of Random’s in that case, and the het pairings would be flying. As for a female fear… shunned, perhaps? He does have some clearly long standing issues with Ace and mere crippling seems like a good motive only up to a point… not that we didn’t discuss that when he was male.

See, I’m drawing on a lot of stereotypes here. But then, Ace is a lot about that, I expect we’d see them in reverse gender roles, too.

He's a skeleton whose ideology seems to center around flouting accepted social norms. (Like, gawths--evil is kewl and all that. Probably a defiance of human prejudice against non-humans and a keen adopting of a name others applied.) So, yeah, not OOC at all to place a pretty-boy type in the LI role.

Sexism seems to be part of the 6D. Sparx feels she has to be 'male' in order to succeed as a Knight and seems to despise 'feminine' behaviour, and LI feels she needs to be not just competent but attractive in order to succeed. But male!LI would still be a minion, so it's not like the male version would hae that much more independence, though might have a bit more of a sense of self-importance.

It'd definitely be homophobic to have male!LI "recover" from a m/m relationship with the main villain to a female Knight, but I reckon you could keep the Ace/LI relationship with it being even more of a flouting of Knightly norms.

Female!Fear is an extremely rare character type, and in a sense that'd be a woman without what defines women to us. Interesting concept, and the physically repulsive woman seeking a male gold-digger is less common a trope than with genders reversed, and seen as 'worse'.

I'd expect a version of Ace with CGI genders played around with to still use cliches of those genders and orientations, because that's the point of it--fictional cliches turning to reality. And the humans inhabit our culture, so we couldn't go too far in gender reversals--for example, if girl!Mark was still attracted to women, she wouldn't have "dated" Sam and Heather so openly, but would've more likely come to gradually realise orientation.

Female!Random would have been pretty damned cool, I reckon. Large women rock.

Yup, it’s altogether possible. Though I worry, somewhat about the implications that it would have – making only the bad characters gay? Often comes across worse than having none of them gay. Star Trek, for example, has always been dead in the water on the equal rights for homosexuals front (which is odd, really given it’s setting and the ideology of “peace, knowledge and development” the 24th century is trying to put across.) and the areas where it was suggested were usually in negative characters such as Q (a member of an omnipotent race who can quite literally do whatever the hell he wants and relishes in tormenting what he calls “lower life forms”. One lower life form in particular…) ad that’s a big issue with the show. It could be an issue in Ace. Remember Kunkle? He’d have a hell of a time with that. I think then, that Male!Li would probably have to be portrayed in a more sympathetic light, simply to avoid this.

Now is sexism a part of the 6D? One could argue the opposite in Sparx’s case – that the stereotype doesn’t exist and Li, being a strong female, would seem to support this. What would Ace’s first comment have been if the first person he saw was a female, like Heather, or Sam? Would it have even mattered? Does what Sparx is matter? She certainly fits the awful “butch lesbian” stereotype… The other hand, Sparx as a boy? I really... don't think it'd be that much fun. Sparx s cool because she's a girl and acts that way. I'm not sure why this is so, but it is.

Though one would also assume that yes, knightly norms are up for tradition – a family with working dad, maybe working mother and kids, not homosexuality.

I’m not sure female!Fear is that rare an idea… I’ve seen strong “bitchy” female characters, but I doubt fear would fit into any regular female stereotypes as that gender.

And that was my point – Ace plays on clichés, and clichés are, most usually, heterosexually oriented. The male hero, the female seductress, the spunky tomboy… if Ace didn’t play on those things, it might not be Ace, and who knows, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten into it in the first place. Sometimes wonder how much awareness we have left of the actual canon given all our fanon extrapolation.

Exactly. :P And I reckon a male!LI opening Ace's worldview would be rather slashily delightful. Kunkle, of course, is a moron.

Devaluing what is Traditionally Female can be sometimes read as devaluing women, and Sparx strikes me as a character who's doing just that. She certainly is a cool character, a woman in what seems to be a male-dominated profession. She's diametrically opposed to the more 'feminine' LI, which might be read as holding in contempt women who like things like makeup and looking nice, which really isn't feminist at all. But if she was a boy, I suspect she'd be quite the knuckle-dragging sexist, holding femininity in contempt without the redeeming grace of being female herself.

I think it's pretty easy to read some level of sexism into Knight society. They seem to be identified with Aryan-Republican-conservative-"traditional values" types, with a fairly repressive attitude towards sexuality (look at Ace, for example), and possibly a view that married women/women with children shouldn't be serving. Hausfrau Madonna the ideal, I assume, something that women like Sparx can rebel against, but on the condition that they try to imitate men as best they can and refrain from relationships. And for the evils I assume the ideal would have a strong component of sexuality. Which is sexism in both cases--one involving women as private property of a husband/father, the other involving women as public property, attractive to all.

Ace himself is certainly the type to *try* to think of women as equal to him, though he might have absorbed some sexist attitudes down the track.

There are lots of strong 'bitchy' female characters, but I've never seen one as physically repulsive as Fear is. Mostly they're merely older and fading, or beautiful but of an opposite physical type to the heroine.

I did a couple of odd things when I tried to write my own take on Ace gender-bending. Kellamy as male!LI received a phallic sword rather than crystal balls (and became less powerful), and Fear wasn't there as an evil overlord at all.

Cliches are oriented towards certain heterosexual patterns, but for the tomboy cliche to a certain extent today it suggests lesbianism, for example. And Ace as a virginal male hero ("I've never flirted before") is fairly unique. Emphasis on male virginity usually only occurs in the overly religious type of tale, and insists that the male in question be paired off with a similarly 'pure' young lady.

Kunkle’s moronic-ness has been well established… still the temptation to point it out comes on a regular basis. He man really needed dismantling with something.

I definitely don’t think Sparx is devaluing what is female. Nor do I think it’s fair to suggest it. She’s just a different KIND of woman. It’s difficult to define something like a human being and it doesn’t seem fair on the character to say this is what they’re doing because they choose (sort of, anyway, she IS programmed based on probably clichés, after all) he reminds me a lot of how I was as a child and I’d certainly not have taken kindly to someone saying that about me, merely because I chose not to wear dresses and to hang around in the mud and dirt and never to wear makeup, except when I was messing around. I didn’t really care about being feminine. I just wanted to be accepted as what I was, regardless of gender.

I’m all up for the idea of embracing our femininity rather than going out of our way to oppose it (I figure this is probably the source of many of our disagreements in that respect, Sarah.) but not being limited by it (though I do say the tendency towards such things as being a “mother” and looking after kids may have a certain genetic value, we should not be bound by our genetics alone. But is Sparx really doing that, or does she just not care about being feminine? Why should she be forced to care if she really is a tomboy at heart?

I think you’re probably right about how Sparx would’ve been portrayed as a boy. She’d be like… Artha-meets-Q-meets-Jason Todd. Nit at all an attractive character, in my respects. It’s being female that gives her a certain uniqueness, despite engendering these traits, to me.

Very much true on the potentiality in the knight’s world for sexism. It’s highly likely. I’m not sure at all about the idea of having to imitate men and refrain from relationships – again, this probably isn’t what Sparx is doing. She seems to have a genuine (or as genuine as one can be when they’re programmed, or not as the case may be) contempt for feminine behaviour, make up, clothes and composure. I really don’t think she’s rebelling against these ideals out of spite, though she may be rebelling against it by genuinely just not liking it. I would never see her as a voice for feminism, but then neither would I see her as a deliberate slur on female identity. I sometimes got the impression that I was being penalised for not being feminine- and not by Males, but by other females.

We never see Ace trying to educate her in “the female ways” (and knowing him he probably would.) and yet, he’s such an exact fitting of the stereotypes you mentioned (male, heterosexual, possibly privileged or at least, reasonably well off upbringing). .wouldn’t he have been taught those kind of things, like you said? We only see him teaching her how to be the best knight she can. This suggests to me that if there are any distinct female/male divisions in the 6D, then they’re through association and general acceptance as a norm, rather than a deliberate confinement as in our world (though again, we have to consider these limits could have been programmed in, if they were even considered at all, which puts a new slant on everything). But then, norms and assumptions in themselves can be restrictive – it doesn’t seem to have bothered Sparx.

I can present only one example off the top of my hat of a disgustingly ugly female villain (besides the one in snow white, who was still of course, naturally beautiful in an evil way) and that’s the character of The Witch Dragwena in The Doomspell (Cliff McNish) and even she had an attractive form with which to entice the children. She was an interesting, scheming and intelligent enemy, and I really liked her in the book (as much as I can like a bad guy anyway) while the heroes in contrast were rather bland children… understandable, almost as the heroine was based on the writer’s daughter. Heck, she practically WAS the writer’s daughter, same name and everything.)

Clichés change with time so perhaps, what we should be talking about here is not clichés, but ARCHETYPES. That said, considering that Ace is a walking cliché, are virginal heroes also more common? Certainly they were back in the eras of king Arthur’s stories, when marriage was at it’s most sacred – though that said he did sleep with his sister… didn’t know it was his sister, but.

Yes, that “I’ve never flirted” line really did strike me as a surprise when it comes to lines spoken in movies. The only time I’ve ever heard something along those lines before was from Data on Star Trek, and HE was a pre-programmed android. He was technically fourteen years old at that point, for Pete’s sakes. You’re right – he IS a virginal hero, which makes me wonder how a female Ace would have been portrayed. Certainly, closer to a Sue than he is now… (clumsiness is a sign of a female sue, though it would’ve been interesting to see him break stuff as a woman – ever notice that Sparx doesn’t beak as much, despite being the more outgoing and rambunctious of the two?

I think he's becoming a fandom byword. :P

The reason why a lot of women "choose" to stay at home with the kids, wear makeup, shave their legs, take their husband's name, etc often has more to do with established culture than true choice. So women who don't make these choices can be said to be making feminist choices, and women who do might be said to be making anti-feminist choices. But it's problematic to criticise the individual women who do, firstly because it's just plain rude and secondly because it very well might be something they'd independently choose. It's much better to criticise the system and the pressures leading women to be Traditionally Feminine © rather than women themselves. There's also a school of thought that we should recognise some Traditionally Feminine qualities, because to hold them in contempt often comes across as contempt of women (ex. "Spunky Tomboy is the speshul Sue and she's soooo much better than all those stupid ladies in dresses!!one!"), and some of them are valid, such as solving problems in a non-combative manner.

It depends on whether you want to read Sparx as simply a tomboy at heart, or someone who's deliberately going against a mainstream culture to the extent that she starts holding people from that culture in contempt. (The Spunky Tomboy who thinks other women are stupid--like some antifeminists, wanting to *join* the guys instead of *challenge* them.) The big assumption comes in that the Knights are part of a fairly conservative society; women are obviously allowed to take whatever jobs they want, but Kinder, Kuche and Kirche is still the ideal. It contrasts nicely with the evils' more libertarian and diverse views. How Sparx has personally responded to that presumed culture is by taking on a very Traditionally Masculine role. Does she think that it's wrong for LI to look like she does and use her appearance? I think there might just be enough in her hatred of LI to support her taking that attitude towards more 'feminine' women, holding them in contempt for living with the system rather than analysing why they feel pressured to do it (and let's face it, Sparx is not the most analytical of people). But all this is of course a lot of conjecture.

I'd like to hope a female!Ace would still have his large build, which would be less Sueish than a pretty slender blonde. :P I think the writers would more likely take female!Ace from the Valkyrie archetype, which would still enable her to have canon!Ace's nobility and idealism and clumsiness when it came to the real world. I don't know how Mark would have reacted to a female Ace--maybe he'd have a bit of a crush on her, maybe he'd respond less well to her because it wouldn't be 'male bonding' any more.

Male heroes are supposed to be the aggressors in their relationships with women, the pursuers and rescuers. While purity is the *ideal* for them, it's generally accepted that it's okay for them to have had some sort of previous relationship, probably with some prostitute who doesn't even matter, so that they can still retain their superiority in marriage. It's the female maiden whose purity gets emphasised; men are supposed to be 'studs'. I have seen some stories where male virginity is a requirement--for example, Elsie Dinsmore, for all its flaws, insists that the main character's love interest must meet the same standards of pure virginity as women are expected to; a male character's suit of Elsie is turned down due to the double standard fact that were he a woman he would have to reject himself due to previous 'relationships' with prostitutes--but they generally have at least equal emphasis that the woman needs to be a virgin. But a male!LI, assuming the relationship with a Fear of either gender was maintained, wouldn't exactly fit the 'stud' archetype due to that lack of independence. Of course, an experienced woman is half-expected to have fulfilled the subordinate role. *sigh*

Sounds like a sweeping generlisation to make. Have you actually gone around and asked all thse women? Most of them that I know are either a) chav varieties who were simply not bothered with making any impact on society. B) . If it's an established culture then sure, we can consider this, but I don't see a lot of women MINDING having to pour over the fashion books and wear fancy modern diamonds and make up. Many alsdo feel pressured, particuarly in younger women and teenagers, but it's not a given.

It's an established system, yes, and one that needs some working (and getting Bandura et al. out of the picture with all those flaming studies would help this issue) what has worked for years does not nessecarily work now (someone needs to tell that to the guys who wrote the New Testament)

When you get down to it, we don't KNOW the scenario if the 6D. It does, however, seem safe to asusme that it fits within many of your (and our) presumed stereotypes, but it's not a given. We're working without a basic here, and it's tricky.

In our world, it's an established system. Makeup and leg-shaving do *not* come 'naturally'. The reasons why we think makeup looks attractive--that our own faces are somehow inadequate without it yet men's aren't--has a lot more to do with culture than fact. (For example, my mother's only a year younger than my father, yet she's much, much better looking than him; admittedly she dyes her hair but he is bald--and she still thinks that men age better and that women should wear makeup and men shouldn't.) Leg-shaving might be pleasurable from a "smooth skin" perspective (I think I'd shave if I wasn't lazy, though I don't wear makeup), but it's also a lot of effort for something that is pretty much dictated by cultural standards (ie. most men don't shave their legs). However, it's also less effort to simply give in to the established system, find things that one likes about it (eg. makeup CAN sometimes be fun, like face-painting) and pretend it was one's own choice than challenge it. The pressure is subconscious in a lot of ways, but when it comes to things that one gender does and the other doesn't have to, chances are there's prejudice of some sort behind it. Most people don't mind and might find benefits in bowing to the culture, but the reasons why they originally did it may have to do with prejudice that should be exposed. (Whether or not, after exposing the prejudice, we ourselves choose to continue with the activity for whatever reason.)

We certainly have little exposure to 6D culture, though working from cliche we do get rightwing!Knights and leftwing!evils. (Fear seems to be very much a libertarian type in how he'd rule the world; look out for oneself and get rid of as many rules as possible. The Knights seem to be a lot more rule-oriented.) And, unfortunately, sexism is part of cliche. And what do you think the feminist message is when the ruler likes having a pretty, subordinate woman on his arm? (Even if said woman also happens to be impressively competent.)

Again, it depends on how you look at it. We can't speak for all the women of the world (I'll speak for the shavers though - it is kinda nice, so there's that appeal in it) :P But yeah, it's effort so I don't usually bother.

It's fun when no pressure is involved, sure. hense why kids in the makeup box should usually be considered cute, rather than funny. Then you get rediculous sites like that one youlinked me to the other day, Sarah, which suggested soemthing infinitely more disturbing. Women have always been pressured more than men to make their appearance a ceretain way... though sometimes I wodner where the pressure came from. Men, or other women. Likely both, and with different intencities depending on the era.

And oh, I get to draw Star Trek again :P In Betaziod culture there was a tendency of women to wear very large wigs (rather like out 18th century varities) with small cages in them for animals. First this was a fashion, then, it went on long enough to become a tradition, in a simialr was to what I think a lot of our feminine routines seem to do. It was cruel to the animal and uncomfortable tofor the woman, but it went on until one self assuered young woman refused to ever wear them again. Pretty soon, the custom stopped. Does that work here?

That women are being subjigated, of course, but then that depends entirely on how the woman herself is portrayed. You can be a genius with an i of 165, but if you'd rather hang on the guys arm, thats your buisness. I imagine most women that smart would have more sense and therefore, are likely forced into the role.

I wodner, often, how strong the rpessure is on mento fit certain roles in the 6D. We know there's a certain ammount of pressure on them here.

The pressure would seem to come from men, who have been the ones who have held the majority of the power down the centuries and even today. (Some antifeminists claim that women hold power as wives/courtesans by seduction--no, that's not the real case. Women shouldn't need to seduce people to have power. Real power is openly wielded, not cunningly manipulated and stealthily gained.) Some women do *enforce* the culture, but it mostly benefits men, but we can read them as trying to gain whatever power they're allowed in a men's world and/or assuring themselves they won't meet the fate of those Other Women. (For example, women are often harsher on female rape victims than men, because if they can reassure themselves that it was her drinking/short skirt/leaving the house that caused the crime, they can feel confident it won't happen to them.)

But is the only reason why you'd 'want' to hang onto the guy's arm because there aren't that many alternatives?

The Knights seem to be male-dominated, and the evil minions certainly tend to be male (though it was just one male and one female as the humanoids until Kilobyte showed up). Women's rights activists tend to ally themselves more with the 'left' than the 'right', though men on both sides are discriminatory to them, and I'd guess that there's more flexibilty of female roles available as an evil than a Knight.

You know, I never considered the way females react to female rape victims in that way... you learn something new every day, it seems, and it is a plausible theory. We like to think that if we do everything right, it won't happen to us. The reall pressure is usually on women, but I still reckon men are taking a lot of the stick these daysbecause, as I've said before - the only people that get made fun of without their being a risk of their sueing the jokers is adult, white, heterosexual males.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Love is a strange beast that can do strange things to even the strongest woman's head. Fear, however, can be stronger (No pun intended).

True, it does look that way doesn't it? Though that said, just because the knights are male dominated doesn't say much. For all we know, there aren't many females in the 6D. Just because we're a F:M ratio of 52:48 doesn't mean they are.

Yeah, adult, white, heterosexual males get jokes told about them--and happen to be the group holding more real power than any other. And under the excuse of defying those evul PC dunderheads adult white heterosexual males feel free to say all sorts of nasty things, the word "feminazi" gets thrown around despite there being a complete lack of feminist death camps and the Nazis being extremely anti-feminist, and it's considered a reasonable opinion that a woman's body should be an incubator without her consent. Pardon me if I choose not to weep about the jokes for the time being, especially when the "joke" of the male incompetent at housekeeping and childcare implies that women should just get on and do the work 'cause they're always perfectly suited for it.

Oooh, that could be an interesting fanfic idea. :) And it'd make the "I've never flirted before" line make Ace seem a little less socially incompetent. :P

Of course, 'canonically' likely the only sentient humanoid females are Sparx and LI and maybe a couple of can-can zombies, but it's a fun idea to speculate on.

Yes, but this isn't a game of "he started it, we should be able to poke back" :P Aren't we suppsoed to rise above things like that? Take the high road? Not dignify with responses. It sometimes strikes me that more good would be done if we ignored or discredited those comments than went on rantages and protests about them. They say you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar...

It's a disticnt possibilt. WHich would also add to an idea of a society where women are prised, maybe treated more along the limnes of how LI is - allowed to show some strengths - but ultimately under the thumb for what some might claim was "their own protection and the good of the kingdom" yadda yadda.

The thought of can can zombies scares me.

I'm going to change the subject, now. (Though if anyone else wnats to, feel free to jump back in where we left off.) I have a new issue for you related to this one. And it's one we've probably dealt with before.

What if the 6D was made real via human intervention?

Actually, saying that sort of thing is something a lot of feminists find offensive. Women have been required to be soft and submissive and nice in contrast to male assertiveness for a very long time, and it's not exactly helped much. For women to be strident and make demands to be treated like human beings is something they have a perfect right to do. I know you feel you want to help by advising on technique, but trying the honeyed approach hasn't gotten us very far.

Anyway, it would be damn cool if the Sixth Dimension was a real, developed world. One of the things I like most about the show is that it offers that worldbuilding possibility, and while it would get rid of Ace's existential angst and some philosophical issues if the 6D characters were indeed 'real', it'd certainly offer some fascinating possibilities on how it really does work.

There’s a difference between “soft and submissive” and “quietly assertive.” We shouldn’t HAVE to scream from the rooftops to make our point, and it seems, to me, rather pointless to do so. There’s a saying “those who strain to hear an angry yell may struggle to hear a whisper.” (And yeah, you can take that the other way, sure, but I prefer to think of it as being a statement that all of this tossing back and fourth of accusations and statistics isn’t the answer.) It’s only by understanding the alternate perspectives – the reasons (however daft) why some men would prefer women in the kitchen and why at one time, we were refused votes. Granted, they’re never very good reasons, but they ARE reasons people have. We must respect that and we’re not going to completely change the world overnight. And certainly not by forcing the message down peoples throats.

I’m all up for making big statements about the immorality if this age – women are still being raped. Women are still being forced via conformity into restrictive situations – but the only way we can beat conformity is by opening our minds and just getting on with it. But you see a lot of arguments being used from the [i[sixties[/i] we’re not the same group of people that we where when Emiline Pankhurst rose up for votes for women.

When have we ever TRIED the honeyed approach? It never comes across that way. The women for feminism who I pay most attention to on TV, for example, are the ones who are polite and reasonable and speak without raising their voices and bashing their opinions over the heads of the viewers. You don’t want to be bashed over the head with the idea that “a woman’s place is in the kitchen”, and I certainly didn’t like having the message “a woman should be an assertive career woman including her femininity!!!” rammed into me when I just wanted to play in the mud, either.

I know it is a cool prospect, but personally, i've started to find the lack of knowledge we have of the 6D rather restrictive... It's beginning to frustrate me the way there are quite simply no facts, and we're running out of infimite possiblities. I know Jennifer Diane Reiss says there's a great deal of beauty in enigmatic ground, but there's a lot to be said for having some actual, solid answers.

I want to know a lot about the 6D. I want to see what it was and what it was intended to be. I wodner, if perhaps, this was itnended in the early days. What have we lost? What would we have gained?

What you're not getting is that some feminists think they have a *right* to be angry. Over the one-in-four statistic. Over the accepted POV that a woman's body should be an incubator. Over the fact that too many men get off on (simulated?) depictions of rape and torture of women. Over how often women are valued only for their appearance. Are you really planning to sermonize to them how they really should just calm down, and if they simply act like good little girls beneficient men will surely grant them their desires? (Yes, this is an exaggeration of your position, I know.) I understand the value of rationality and the appeal of a certain type of presentation, but I'm not about to tell people with justified grievances to shut up and be *nice*.

While it would be really, really wonderful if we lived in a world where everything was equal and neat and people could afford to let go of their anger and we actually needed equalists or even MRAs to stand up for the vast numbers of poor oppressed men in those feminazi death camps, I'm afraid we don't.

Example: Feminist blog. Story of the arrest of a man accused of raping twenty-three women (strong evidence in favour of his guilt). A regular poster comments: "I hope he has a great time in prison getting raped." A first time commenter jumps in and replies: "That's hypocritical, he doesn't deserve it." Is the commenter right? Yeah, I think so. But should the blog owner get suspicious of them? Yes, because they seem to be paying more attention to one single coment involving a hypothesis than to twenty-three women who have actually been raped. I think you're doing something like that here, Scarab: concentrating on the presentation skills of people who have a right to be angry and giving no focus to their *reasons*. Of course, here and now isn't exactly the place for either.

I think the 6D as computer game would've been intended straight from the beginning--it's the basic concept of the thing, isn't it? It just so happened that we fantasy/sci-fi fans got onto it and wanted to imagine real or expanded world theories. (And no doubt in Mark's world there IS a complicated and interesting backstory to the immensly popular game, and 'ship wars over Ace/Sparx versus Sparx/Random and is-LI-really-evil debates and Evilfen wankage and...well, you get the idea.)

I do wish we had a little more information; the only game scenes we get are Random Minions, Googler, Kilobyte, and Rick and Chesebrough in cages. Nothing about anything that looks sentient, unfortunately. It'd be nice to know just little things that gave us clues to the characters, like real names and suggestions of backstories and so on. But maybe we *do* have some information, for example in LI's case--if she did have an actual first name Ace or Fear might know it by now, or Ace's--he's named after his job, that's unlikely to be what his parents called him--but did he HAVE parents? Maybe the Knights are test tube creations for battle or something...

I reckon we should explore Mark's-world-6D-backstory, though. What would the Ace fandom be like there? :P

Maybe the Sixth Dimension was just the location in the game, but when the lightning bolt struck Mark's house, it sent a channel of electricity through the computer (as seen) and maybe the game somehow obtained stuff from the internet or other programmes and started to recreate the game world into a real world.

New e-mail reply from Rick Siggelkow! :D Check it out on the usual topic.

That's a good point, and I don't know if we've ever looked at it in that way to any great extent. We've considered the 6D becoming real on contact with th human world... but we haven't considered the possibility that it had to be MADE real in orderfor Ace to come OUT. Rick clearlydidn't just simulate the characters he wanted - but the whole ngame. Does this suggest a sentient universe, however primitive?

I reckon it does. Gameverse 6D might be primitive, but it's definitely *a* *world* with sentient inhabitants running through it.

"Where" that gameverse is we don't really know--is it managed when Mark's computer is switched on? Does it run on Rick's systems? Is it independent of both of them? Is it really in another dimension?

According to Google Sentience is defined as: The condition or quality of being conscious or aware. An emotional response or perception that is different and distinct from the intellectual process.

Based on this definition, it's possible that while "alive" many of the creatures of the 6D are not actually sentient - they're just operating on an intellectual (i.e. Programmed) level. What is it, though, that would give them sentience upon entering our world?

Sorry, I meant the more developed characters making their way through it (like Ace and Sparx in the first few second season episodes).

How many hairs must a person lose to be called bald?

What is the fundamental difference between most people as they are at seventeen years and three hundred and sixty-four days and at eighteen years of age?

Precisely how much can we take from other sources before our writing can be called plagiarism?

I think the question of sentience is similar to these above. We know some beings are sentient and others are not, just as some people are bald, some people are adults, and some people plagiarise. We do not know the precise point at which the line is drawn--and, particularly regarding the question of sentience, I don't think there *is* one.

I think it would be safe to say that all the denizens of the Sixth Dimension who have appeared only in that world are merely *potential* sentients rather than already-living creatures, which would make their destruction merely a destruction of that potential (abortion analogy: like not having sex; abortion non-analogy: they do not directly depend on others' bodies for sustenance in any case, though their programs do make them attack others and as such those attacked are perfectly justified in defending themselves).

If they appeared in the mortal world, I assume it would be little cost to the characters to give them the benefit of the doubt as to a development of sentience, and that'd definitely be the right thing to do. But the minions other than the Rat seem stuck at the level of semi-sentient things with a couple of stock phrases; whether that would make killing them needlessly murder, I don't know. I don't really think so, somehow. It'd be cruel and un-heroic and awful, but I don't think it would be quite on the level of murdering another sentient being. But what am I saying here about people with mental illnesses? The minions *aren't* people, though. They are mutated members of various species not exactly known for their intelligence with a few catch phrases implanted within them by programming done by people who presumably regarded their species as non-sentient beasts. Most of the minions in the 6D seem about this level, and I don't think most of them would be able to become sentient (though probably some of the zombies would be capable of it, and I think Rotgut's a little closer to being a sentient person than the others, though he still seems to me more of a programmed set of responses than a creature more like the other humanoids).

This is very encouraging for a petitionist for android sentience as a whole in humanity, thanks for sharing :D

Some people might approach that from the opposite direction – they might claim that the lack of sentience in these creatures makes destroying them more justified (even more so by the fact that they are a threat) Similar arguments were upheld for centuries as a part of the reason why we as humans, kill animals for their meat – they aren’t sentient, so we aren’t killing something really “alive” – God put them there for our benefit.

Could the 6D “good guys” possess similar views.

Remember the DC/Ace crossover being cooked up? And the fact that in the DCU, so many heroes are firmly against killing the bad guys, and this is one of the moral contingencies for most of the comics? Nd when I introduced Sparx as a person quite willing to kill a “freak” (I.e. something which didn’t look human and was proving to be a threat to her.) Only to be stopped by non other than the Kryptonian Boy Scout :P? It was that which got me thinking about exactly how the Knights deal with the “bad guys” and how much they can call themselves in the right. It’s clear that, sentient or not, they do have feelings… which would also suggest that feelings and emotions are not essential for sentience (another score for the Star Trek Data fans :P).

To make an interesting suggestion… I think Rotgut is far more sentient than most give him credit for. And probably more intelligent, too. He seems to be as unconfined by the “rules” as LI is (the rules basically saying they can’t leave the carnival at certain levels…l Li breaks this rule often and pretty much all of them do at some point or another, though, so maybe that argument isn’t entirely valid) but even su, he still had the presence of mind to follow Chuck all the way to the school. He’s able to pick up a song being sung by another minor character (Clementine), he clearly has (or believes himself to have) a distinct set of emotions and is aware of himself and even has what seems to be a need for companionship – this sort of thing has so far only been present in Fear, Staffhead and Lady Illusion, and the Rat to some degree. This makes me think that there’s a lot more to Rotgut than meets the eye. He’s perhaps the next closest minor minion to sentience.

Yes, killing someone sentient is different from killing something non-sentient. But obviously animals *do* feel pain on some level, do develop loyalty to their owners, and so on, and hence cruelly killing animals or torturing them is wrong, but killing them for some good reason like food isn't. I don't think having feelings automatically indicates sentience, or even vice versa. (Animal testing? Well, I'd rather they tested it on animals than on people, but I think a lot of it is probably unnecessary.)

I assume the Knights have similar views about the minions, that most of them are just a few small steps up from beasts. We see Ace taunting them almost cruelly in a couple of scenes before blasting them (though admittedly he would know that his blasts aren't going to permanently destroy them). And yeah, it would be so easy for some Knights to decide to treat minions as animals to hunt down for sport, and I really don't think that'd be right. The minions are at a level higher than normal animals, but lower than human, maybe about the same level (or even greater? I recall Pigface having a rather sad reaction to LI's nastiness in ep six) as the chimps who know sign language. If they weren't a danger to virtually everyone who comes across their path, it would be good to give them the benefit of the doubt--and who knows, maybe without Lord Fear around they could be trained to behave a bit more nicely--but in a situation of war I wouldn't hold it against a Knight who destroyed them in battle.

The Rat is probably sentient, and put to his own devices he doesn't tend to actively harm people (though he'd certainly try to scam them). Rotgut seems to me to be a bit lower on that scale, but he's humanoid, which is a point in his favour in the context of the game (not to say that non-humanoid alien species should be presumed non-sentient, but in the programming of the 6D the humanoids appear to be the sentient ones), and you're right that he does show some elements of emotion and basic intelligence.

I get the impression, though, that the lower-level minions are "trapped" at their level of sentience. The Rat aside (and possibly Rotgut's attachment to Chuck), they haven't seemed to learn anything about the mortal world or develop (like Ace breaking things and learning, Sparx reading comic books, Ace and LI falling for each other, Fear watching TV). Maybe fading back into objects "resets" them and prevents them from developing mentally; it's also a very handy theory for why Fear and LI don't do anything like that. Which might mean they can't develop at all, but still, putting them down without necessity would be pretty cruel.

I think Googler is somewhat a bit sentinent, as he is smart, despite the fact he uses his own language most of the time.

Yes, byut why? Elaborate. being able to feel fear and loneliness when away form home? Does not nessecarily constitute sentience. personally I think the puppets are more sentient than googler is as they have the ablity to debate issues. Badly, but still.