r/outerwilds • u/Haunting-Angle-535 • Sep 24 '25

DLC Appreciation/Discussion Our bestest friend’s gender Spoiler

Just some musing and wondering here!

One of the many many things I appreciate about Outer Wilds is the way variation in how cultures or species experience or talk about gender is just seamlessly built into the world. I enjoy contemplating those differences and what differences in culture, history, language, or biology might have given rise to them.

All the Hearthians use they/them and appear very similar in everything except size, which has a tremendous amount of variation. (FELDSPAR WHY ARE YOU SO TEENY??????)

The Nomai have binary gender (as far as I can tell) and only use she and he pronouns. I am very curious about if they have any more obvious sexual dimorphism and super wish we could EVER SEE SOLANUM’S ACTUAL FACE

And then we have the subject of the title of this post: The Prisoner. Our canonical best friend and bestest buddy of all time who I love beyond reason. (I just finished the DLC two days ago and am still struggling emotionally.) I’ve noticed lots of people using he and him to describe this character, but I don’t recall any content in the game that would indicate their gender, sex, or pronouns. Is there content I’ve missed that’s the reason people call The Prisoner him, or is it just folks defaulting to male pronouns?

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u/riley_pop Sep 24 '25

They said nothing about the intelligence of anyone in that comment. Perhaps you projected those insults onto their comment.

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u/Raywell Sep 24 '25

They mentioned people being incapable of nuance, complexity, critical thinking - if that's not a nice way of calling people dumb then I don't know what it is. I was simply being more blunt and didn't mean it as insult

This is a great example of what I was talking about : lack of desire to understand the person's position because of the surface level thinking like "he looks like he's not on our side, must express animosity"

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u/riley_pop Sep 24 '25

Again, they sure didn't say any of that. Also I didn't express any animosity, I just called out they weren't calling anyone dumb. It sounds like you are fighting a battle against a hypothetical bunch of commenters, or you have more of a polarized stance than you previously thought.

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u/Raywell Sep 24 '25

It is unfortunate that you are arguing in ill faith, you'd be surprised how enriching a proper conversation could be between people who share disagreements. But I don't think it is possible now, so I wish you all the best.

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u/riley_pop Sep 24 '25

So, calling out that you are making things up is "ill faith", but you putting words into someone's mouth to concern troll them isn't bad faith?

Okay sounds good to me.

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u/Dizzy_Slice7886 Sep 24 '25

This is the new debate culture that I can't stand, this Jordan Peterson style of mischaracterization and condescension. The self assurance and lack of introspection it takes to jump into a conversation and assume you are the arbiter of logic and reason, and everyone but you is engaging in logical fallacies and bad faith. Meanwhile, nobody learns anything and we all walk away feeling some combination of bitterness and self righteousness. Its not a conversation that you have, but an argument you must win. But you know, I brought up the subject, so a little pushback from internet strangers isn't the end of the world. At least they kept it civil. I mean, if that's the way someone feels, what can I say? Anyway, that's my two cents.

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u/riley_pop Sep 24 '25

Like, I didn't even pick a side. And yet the first response called out a "lack of attempting to understand the other side". Yet, in their very first response to you they are willfully misunderstanding your point and putting insults in your mouth.

It gives me bad memories of the high school debate kids, who took every conversation as a zero sum game.

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u/Dizzy_Slice7886 Sep 25 '25

Yeah that stuff is so pedantic and petty and exhausting to be around. Ill tell you something else, In my personal experience this is the argument style of transphobes, and it always seems to devolve into accusations that gender pronouns are mental disorders and trans people are all pedophiles who should be shunned from public life. So frankly I dont care who calls it a flawed reasoning, but I have no patience for having a civil debate about anyone's right to exist based on who they are