Parvati Holcomb: The Unaccountably Happy Face of the Unreliable
The Outer Worlds, the new space RPG courtesy of Obsidian, helpfully provides your player character with exactly the sort of ragtag gang of misfits which you are probably expecting in such a game. Today, weâre going to talk about the most important of them.Â
Parvati Holcomb, likely the first companion you meet and definitely the first companion you can recruit, is a well-written female-character. Her talents for engineering and her incredibly positive and cheerful outlook quickly draw comparison with the character of Kaylee from Firefly (allegedly one of the main inspirations for the character), but there is one very clear difference between the two.Â
Parvati Holcomb is an asexual character.Â
While the term âasexualâ is never actually used in the game, Parvatiâs experiences and worries were so obviously born form the real-life experiences of asexual people that I was not the least bit surprised that she had been written by an asexual woman:Â
I was, however, properly delighted that Parvati had always been intended to be an asexual character, even before an asexual woman took over as Parvatiâs writer; Chris LâEtoile, the original writer, explicitly made the decision to create a warm and loving character, someone who could see the beauty and hope in a failing colony, who could express all the wonder they wanted their players to feel, and then he decided to make her asexual as well.Â
The stereotypical âlinkââ between asexuality and âcoldnessâ is even explicitly referenced by Parvati herself, when she explains her fears about starting a new relationship: âIâm not much interested in⊠physical stuff. Never have been. Leastways not like other folk seem to be. Itâs not that I canât. I just donât care for it. Itâs been a problem, in the past. The folk who wanted to be with me, back in the Vale? They didnât - They said I was cold.â
The first response offered to players? âYouâre about the warmest person I ever met. To hell with them.âÂ
Indeed, The Outer Worlds is a game which, over and over again, tells us that Parvati is not cold or unfeeling. This is a young woman who names a robot the moment she fixes it, who worries if the Captain calls the shipâs computer âitâ, who checks in with crew members and, in a game with a reputation system (rather than a Mass Effect style morality system), acts as the worldâs most adorable conscience.Â
And, while Parvati does find her relationship with Junlei complicated, those complications have very little to do with her sexuality and far more to do with her being a young woman, away from home for the first time, and experiencing possibly the first great love of her life. There are miscommunications, a night of drowning sorrows, endless over-analysing of each otherâs words and actions, and the need to go to four different worlds just to plan a date. As the player character can say:Â
PC: âIf you two marry, youâll be saying, âHaha, just kidding. Unless youâre not.ââ
Parvati: âI resent you saying such, on account of it being uncomfortably likely.â
But once Parvati has worked up the courage to tell Junlei who she is, the relationship works well. Well enough for Parvati to find a new home with Junlei once the fight is over:Â
Now, I always expect an Obsidian game to have some awareness of the wider spectrum of human sexuality - Fallout New Vegas included some same-sex relationships, and the player character could be played as straight, gay or bisexual, depending on which perks you picked. But I wasnât expecting the only great romance subplot in an entire game to include an asexual woman actively pursuing another woman. Were this just one relationship among many, it would still be beautiful, but for it to take centre-stage and not have to share that space with anything else? Itâs phenomenal.Â
And, just when I think that The Outer Worlds couldnât get any more lovely, it did this:Â
Yep, thatâs the option to identify your character explicitly as asexual. Thereâs even the option just afterwards to clarify your character as aromantic as well, which Parvati takes perfectly in her stride with a nice little nod to the playerâs strong relationships with their friends. Either revelation is meant with the same response from Parvati:Â
âSo weâre⊠weâre kin-like. That makes me, well - unaccountably happy, Captain. Itâs a lonely thing, being different like this.âÂ
Judging from that reaction, the Captain is likely the first fellow asexual who Parvati has met, and the relief in her voice was such a punch to the gut. Because Parvatiâs right - the loneliness of feeling âotherâ sinks in fast and thereâs nothing quite like the relief when you finally feel like maybe youâre not alone after all.Â
And the idea that this game and this character might give that moment of relief to someone out there, well, that just makes me unaccountably happy as well.
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