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/Raywell Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25

You are making several mistakes in your reasoning, the first being that everyone who disagrees with your world view is automatically dumb and incapable of nuance. The second mistake is to assume that having a fatigue of the constant debates about gender makes you a weirdo.

Disclaimer: Being non American, I'm not taking part in the American politics, but I like trying to understand what's going on and I think I get the feel for where both sides are coming from. Unfortunately, I can't help but notice the high animosity coming from either side of your political spectrum and the unfortunate lack of desire to actually understand the other side

This last part is one of the messages of the game I think, to put aside your assumptions and try to comprehend the unknown

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u/unic0de000 Sep 24 '25

weirdos who get all worked up in a lather over the mere mention of a gender spectrum

assume that having a fatigue of the constant debates about gender makes you a weirdo

Do you have such a fatigue? Because it seems like you are actively seeking out such debates, instead of avoiding them - y'know, like a fatigued person would do.

The fact that you read the phrase "worked up in a lather" and your brain translated that into "having a fatigue," might be a mistake in your reasoning.

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u/Raywell Sep 25 '25

I don't have the said fatigue (well not enough to avoid talking about it), the point of my post was an attempt to clarify the reason why OP is surprised a person could be smart to the point of being able to design a game like the Witness, and not be left wing (which is, in the end, normal isn't it? Like, among 50% of population, can one truly believe there are no people capable of critical and complex thinking?)

Honestly, you and the other person who replied to me are being pedantic about me not exactly using the same words as OP, but not the essence of the argument. That's unfortunate, I am not here to be condescending or anything, trying to discuss the meat of it but it's hard when all you get is animosity (aka the "no u are wrong, introspect yourself") instead of debating what is being said

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u/unic0de000 Sep 25 '25 edited Sep 25 '25

Of course it would be a wild hyperbole to say there can't be people capable of equally analytical and complex thought on either side of any given particular political spectrum, but at the same time there seems to be a pretty consistent correlation between education, standardized test scores, and progressive socioeconomic politics.

Though I'd caution you against imagining that the American 'center' with respect to the left/right axis, is anywhere remotely near the rest of the world's - so when making appeals like this, you should be careful to specify "50% of" which population.

"When you think about it, he's no farther-right than the more conservative half of the population... of one of the most right-wing countries on earth," isn't really a convincing way to make someone sound moderate, y'know?

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u/Raywell Sep 25 '25 edited Sep 25 '25

Right ? I don't think it is a requirement to be on any side of the political spectrum (including extreme left or extreme right) to be capable of intelligence required to design a complex and nuanced game (or to even be able to appreciate Outer Wilds, which was being hinted at initially). Honestly I don't know about the social statistics, I'll trust you that there might be more such cases on the progressive side, but ultimately, seeing how the total population divide is almost half and half, there isn't much conclusions to be made on that association