So was playing Genshin Impact with him yesterday, apparently he's waiting for an update in the story and wanted me to play until then, for the first time. Side note I like the game so far but I sat down in a chair and couldn't get back up so I had to stop playing.
We started talking about the characters available their roles and gameplay value when the subject of women came up. He was using females and I asked him to stop using that word. He asked why I told him it weird and alienating like we were scientists observing animals. He pointed out that we were males so it looked like I wasn't getting through to him so I switched tactics.
I told him incels tend to refer to women as either females or femoids you know really alienating and off putting things. He was like 'oh shit' and stopped using female to describe the characters. He slip once like 30 minutes later but self corrected.
I know it's video games and nothing major but I feel like moments like this are important. Part of his concern was not being seen as an incel but I feel like not using incel language can help expand or at least not diminish empathy for others.
Also additional side note does anyone know the character's ages. I can't find anything or conflicting fan speculation. So far I like Amber and Lisa. Lisa looks like an adult but I have no idea how old Amber is.
The tall characters like Lisa and Jean are clearly meant to be adults, while short characters like Klee are clearly meant to be children. The mid-height characters like Amber feel like they're supposed to be coded as teenagers, but personality wise, some of them seem to be coded as adults. Characters like Bennet or Barbara have personalities that are more innocent/child-like, and they come across to me a being in the age range for high schoolers. On the other hand, characters like Amber and Noelle come across (to me at least) as much more mature than a typical high schooler, and both of them have jobs that I'd regard as too difficult/professional for most teenagers (Amber being a knight and Noelle being a hyper-competent maid who's training to be a knight), so I've been assuming they're probably in their early twenties. However, there's also Xingqiu who comes across as being both mature and competent, while still feeling coded as being high school aged.
In terms of in game lore though, some of the info about ages is a bit unclear/contradictory. For example, in Amber's "About Noelle" voice line, there's a discrepancy where the on screen text explicitly says Noelle is younger than Amber, while the actual audio of the voice line has Amber referring to Noelle as her predecessor, implying Noelle is actually the older one. To make it more confusing, in Noelle's "About Amber" voice line, she says she looks up to Amber, which could imply that Noelle is younger than Amber, but the rest of the line is her talking about how kind and accomplished Amber is, meaning she seems to just look up to her in general. Basically this means the game is intentionally or unintentionally unclear on how old its characters are, even relative to one another, so really it's probably just up to your own interpretation as to how old certain characters are.
You know after everything mentioned now I'm gonna just place Amber in her early twenties and be done with it and enjoy the game. Gonna go play now that my nephews are done with online school. I thank you and everyone who contributed in helping me ease my concerns. Need to sink in as many hours as possible tonight.