The Flak over Fl4k and what it cost

Sorry it’s also a coding joke. Not just.

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And with Sonic, Furries come.

convulsive shudders

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other employees have called FL4k … “it”. Canada Fan Expo Cosplay award winner dressed as Fl4k says Fl4k is a male robot. There were only male psychos in BL1 and yet cosplayers decided female psychos existed.

Furthermore, they could be just setting us up for a plot twist. Angel was a machine… until a plot twist revealed she was a human female. The Vault in BL1 went from being a thing… a static entity … to a complex combination of treasure… dangerous living thing… and magical event that sparked planetary change.

Bungie is playing it right. You can be whoever you want to be as a Guardian. Its a bad idea to boss your customer around.

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Good sci-fi is always about a fictional concept offering a moral or insight that relates to our own world, or future world.

I just hope it’s written well. Flashbacks to torgue’s friendzone monologue

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I never minded that bit. I enjoyed Janey’s character too. Writing quality is generally pretty subjective. (Then again I may be saying that to support my own tastes for art that has no moral purpose whatsoever lol)

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So we can’t misgender FL4K.
Supposed to use they/them pronouns.
Cool
So why do they have a masculine voice?
Why do they have a masculine figure?
And why is Beastmaster, a term used to refer to a female or male commander of beasts in their name?
If you want a nonbinary character thats fine but don’t give them features that characterize a male or female.

yawn, stretch
Let’s see

They have a solid robot body. Should you perceive that as masculine, that’s alright. I’ll just point out that Felicity should by your standard be masculine in her Constructor Shell.

Same as above. To me it’s a machine voice. Yes, their voice is deep, which obviously some consider masculine. That, in fact, is not detrimental to their non-binary nature in any way.

Because language only adapts in a glacial speed. Take a look at threads discussing the they/them question and the arguments that using such pronouns is almost impossibly complicated or something like that. It seems to me that this would be even more complicated, had Gearbox invented completely new designations and pronouns…

And by the way, titles aren’t always clear on gender in English. For example, just hearing that “the doctor will see you soon”, contains no information about sex or gender of said doctor. So I fail to see your problem regarding Beastmaster.

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Deception creates a combat advantage. who knows what or who fl4k actually is.

At the start of Borderlands stories Gearbox says all kinds of stuff that turns out to be wrong. So I don’t think Fl4k is this gender neutral robot/emergent AI that Gearbox is currently saying he or she is.

If people want to claim I’m hurting Fl4k feelings by misgendering. Welp, Fl4k is a killing machine who kills via combat while Fl4k wears the heads of male characters.

I think Fl4k is a guy who is using all the current political climate to create a deceptive smokescreen similar to Jessica Yaniv. Except instead of getting free stuff through nefarious means as Jessica does… Fl4k uses deception to aid in killing people and animals.

A Vault Hunter is going to do a Heel Turn in BOrderlands 3. I wonder if it’ll be Fll4k or Zer0 ?

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This is a kind of non-binary creature that has a male voice :man_shrugging:

Also, the they/them pronoun might have to with his pets too, who might be a part of fl4k. The spiderant is female, for instance.

Falicity has no Masculine features because shes a constructor… FL4K is very deliberately humanoid and until their trailer I thought FL4K was a dude with lots of armor or something.
The voice is deliberately male. It has a male voice actor and actually has a slight german tone to it.
And you have no explanation for the beastmaster thing.
Doctor is not explicitly male or female true but doctor is not beastmaster. Those are two seperate words. Beastmaster is intended to reder to male or female. If we broke it down further seeing as beastmaster is not an official word in the english language, its master. Master is inherently male.
If gearbox was concerned about the misgendering thing they would have altered the name at least seeing as the name contains a male pronoun.
But if you’re simply looking for attention and trying to show everyone how “woke” you are then its perfectly reasonable to just decide this robot character’s lack of gender is important.

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Like in the master’s degree, or the bachelor’s degree?

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Also, this idea that FL4K can only be they/them as a collective is unfounded reasoning.

FL4K (individual) is they/them.
Mr.Chew is he.
Broodless is she.
Meat Thief is he. (I think)
FL4K as a group is they/them.

(Mr.Chew is the Skag. Broodless the Spiderant. Meat Thief the Jabber)

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This has nothing to do with the character’s identity; voice actors don’t have to be the characters they create. By this logic Bart Simpson is a girl.

It strikes me that it’s hardly only ‘woke’ people - if that’s how you categorise the people on here supporting a small change to benefit non-binary people - who find this issue important. If you read this thread, you’ll find many users who, like yourself, have gone to the trouble of signing up and posting here just to make the opposite case.

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meh, Fl4k wears Marcus’s head and dresses like a homeless guy. So i’m not surprised when Borderlands employees refer to Fl4k as male. Or when Gearbox’s army of quid pro quo corporate reviewers with their own TV shows refer to Fl4k as male.

Literally every point you make has been addressed in this thread already. I know, it’s a hefty read, but it’d be simply peachy if you could take a little time to read it.

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As someone who identifies as Parental (Pronouns are DADDY / Daddy) I think its really cool to have a Non-Binary character.

If some want to call it male or female it does not affect how i see the character. Its your world play it as you see fit

Please read the pinned post at the top of the Flak section.

I honestly don’t understand why people are making such a big deal out of this it’s a robot in a video game and if we were able to hypothetically speak with Fl4k I very much doubt they would care about potential miss gendering when they have bigger problems to worry about like saving a planet or getting shot

I don’t think anyone can claim to know how much FL4K cares, except the writers at Gearbox. Why invent ficticious reasoning on behalf of the character if you’re not even going to bother respecting the writing choice in the first place?

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People were getting “friendly reminders” from mods. This is the thread for discussing it. It’s not really a big deal outside of this thread, and basically a zero deal outside of this forum.

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