EVE Fiction

Jamyl the character was a catastrophe from a feminist perspective. She was galvanized, manipulated, and coerced into her position by the actions of male characters (her father, Falek, and the Other). If you want a feminist icon, then look at Catiz Tash-Murkon, a female character that is a self-made economic powerhouse, a woman who became the richest woman of New Eden by her own hard work and diligent effort, without any need to be pushed or controlled by men, or to abuse her sexuality. She might have limited background in comparison to Jamyl, but what background is there makes her a far better representation of women.

Jamyl never should have been brought back to life. It left a ridiculous cloud hanging over Amarr and Amarr RPers for years, and it killed one of the best player driven effects on lore in EVE's lifespan (the ascendance of Doriam II due the work of his champions in the succession trials). Now that she's gone, Amarr's story is finally able to move forward. Most of us Amarr players are playing for the Amarr Empire, not Jamyl. And from that perspective, Jamyl left a very sour impression due to her being a conveniently-ignored atheist clone sitting on the throne thanks to a deus ex machina plotline that made the rest of the Empire look incredibly incompetent. And from a religious perspective Jamyl along with most of Tony G's Amarr characters was very offensive as Tony G seemed to have a huge anti-religion agenda in his writing.

Yes, the manner in which Jamyl was offed certainly was bad (almost as bad as the manner in which they revived her) due to feeling rushed and with limited capacity for player involvement (most of the buildup events were great, but a 5 minute event to off such a significant character was very underwhelming and embarrassing for those of us who had sounded alarms to get people assembled to defend her). Though I'm pretty sure the reason it went as it did was due to the Alliance Tournament taking up most of CCP's attention at the time. Either way, I for one am willing to overlook it since Jamyl being out of the way allows the Amarr story to finally start progressing again.

Jamyl's portrayal was ruined the moment Tony G started writing her. Frankly, the main positive thing to say about Jamyl is that CCP were wise enough to keep most of the Tony G stuff away from the game, so most of her in-game news portrayals were decent. And CCP Eterne managed to salvage the character in And I Shall Hide, which was the only really decent depiction of her that we had aside from All These Wayward Children. I'd actually really liked Jamyl when all I had to go on was the news articles and those two chronicles, but I lost all interest in the character once I read Tony G's novels.

It doesn't matter if she had cloned or not. It wasn't drifter technology blocking it, it was her pod not having a burn scanner, or having it turned off (just like all the previous heirs had in 2003 when they committed Shathol'Syn in their pods). Even if she had an active scanner, and had survived, she would no longer be the empress as Amarr would have it verified that she is a clone and disqualify her. Amarr would have then declared her a heretic and likely hunted her themselves. And for all we know she might have actually cloned, but was killed by Amarr agents in her cloning facility for heresy (I could see Yonis Ardishapur having prepared for just this moment).

The moment her pod was breached was the moment she would no longer be empress. Even if she had survived, she would have no power over the Empire. As a result of that, CCP decided to give her a firm, concrete ending instead of leaving it vague and up in the air like they did with Heth. Sometimes a story has to be tied off neatly and clearly, and that's what they chose to do with Jamyl. By concretely ending her, they ensured that Amarr's story wouldn't get bogged down with the civil unrest and controversy that would have enveloped the Empire once it became truly and publicly known that she was a clone. She'll be remembered now as a martyr and savior instead of as a great heretic who stained the Imperial Throne by cloning.

Frankly, leaving her as proper dead-dead instead of reviving her was probably the best possible thing they could have done for Amarr, because it ensures that Amarr can actually move forward. If they had left her alive then Amarr would have been forced to deal with her figurative ghost for years to come. This would have certainly resulted in Jamyl being declared a heretic, struck from the Book of Records, and hunted by imperial ordinators.

By ending her cleanly, they chose to protect both Amarr and the memory of Jamyl from what would have been immense inevitable unrest.

Also, all the heirs are being removed. The bigger loss from Jamyl's death is that we will be also losing 4/5 out of 6 heirs to Shathol'Syn, and many of those characters are far more interesting and active than Jamyl was (Aritcio, Yonis).



Because a story that doesn't progress is stagnant and boring. Stories need to move forward. Characters have to change, storylines have to be resolved, and new plots have to emerge. Sometimes that entails the death of old characters and the creation of new ones.

If you liked the character, then remember who she was and what she accomplished. But just liking a character doesn't mean the entire story should be held back for that character. Jamyl's story was supposed to have ended in 2003, long before most of us had even started playing the game. She was brought back for one reason, and that was to develop the "Dark Jove" story, through the Other. That plot has at last culminated with the appearance of the drifters. Preparing and introducing the drifters was her role in the plot, and she fulfilled it. Now her arc has ended, and we move on to the next chapter of the story.

It really concerns me whena GamerGate activist who thinks feminists are crazy stops reading my posts on a game forum I don't even play.

Really.

Ah yes. Catiz Tash-Murkon, one of two strong female characters in Amarr who is defined by a paragraph and will be killed off soon.

You shouldn't make assumptions about people. I don't even know what gamergate is; I've only heard of it in passing.

Funny how you misrepresent what I said. I never said feminists are crazy, I said you hit "crazy feminist" levels. There's a distinct difference between the two that you ignored.

Agreed, the story hasn't moved along, and then this. Maybe CCP has a passive-aggressive organization. I think that that is a danger when a company is under original owner control for a long time and then, suddenly it's sold.

https://hbr.org/2005/10/the-passive-aggressive-organization

But in games the passive-aggressiveness is often aimed at a negative player base. So they don't release any stories since 2013...and then people are clamoring for an event. Suddenly the do this really big event that is basically a troll potshot.

Someone convinced management it was a good idea, when knowing it was a completely bad idea.


Games are a business where you have to ignore a lot of negative feedback and focus on data, and in my opinion, most organizations fail to manage their people so that they don't have access to the crowd that will upset them if they don't have the mind of a robot.

It gets to most people. There should always be a buffer between the raw player base and the devs.

For example, Blizzard should have kept Ghostcrawler away from the public, his mind couldn't handle it. etc. There's probably a lot of examples, I've watched it happen severall times before. Nice devs turn into bitter devs which improper handling.

Yeah, you certainly went straight off the deep end.

You're making a LOT of assumptions here, without knowing a thing about me. Not really a wise thing to do...

"and girls hate that." And what exactly are you implying with this?

Making assumptions about someone isn't a wise thing to do, because you might end up with your foot in your mouth.

I'm a woman. Have been all my life. I'm a cancer survivor, I'm a gun enthuseist, a rational feminist. I stick up for CCP when I can because I see in their past that they've failed, but that they try hard to make up for their failings and they generally succeed. The Eve community has actually been incredibly welcoming to me as a woman, and I've only ever heard positive things about the community from other women whom I've talked to that play Eve. It's also vwer welcoming to veterans, and there are some great communities within the game to help veterans dealing with PTSD and such.

All your talk about anti-semitism and sexism and ect, really just sounds like slander in the end. Can you provide any real hard proof that the company is party to stuff like that? Until then, your accusations are really... empty.

Alright, this thread has gone far enough.

Points have been made, and it's now being locked because frankly, some of the replies here are abhorrent.