Mirror Leeta's voice isn't annoying

The server is down so I went to the forums to see what was up (they're investigating, I should be going to bed... :P), and here's a post from those swamps:

Just want find out if it's just me or this time around Chase Masterson voice is just darn annoying. No intended disrespect for the actor since that is the way she truly sounds but IMO just trying to get away from a real world and escape from an annoying cruel reality of a wife/partner yelling at your neck all the time.

Do you find Leeta's voice ANNOYING? 60 votes
Yes...she sounds like a nagging wife/girlfriend who's at your back ALL the time.
20% 12 votes
Annoying but tolerable. I'm a single guy and dont think wives would ever yelled like that.
11% 7 votes
Does not matter a bit to me. I don't feel annoyed.
38% 23 votes

I started playing STO last year a bit before the summer event, and I thought the female dance instructor was really cool. She had a lot of energy, I like theater and really campy acting... And then I found out that she's one of the most hated NPCs in the game because of her "annoying" voice. She apparently overacts (is that even possible for a *dance instructor* in a *video game*? would it be preferable if she sounded sedated?), but the male dance instructor was apparently perfect.

Fine, maybe I was just weird there.

Then came the winter event where a whole bunch of NPCs shouted annoying things: that Ferengi who loves Q, the Epohh Lady, and Neelix. For the life of me, I couldn't stand the Ferengi, who was doing an annoying voice and saying annoying things as frequently as the Epohh Lady was saying not-annoying things in a peppy voice. Plus I just don't like Neelix. But Cryptic got a lot of pressure to reduce the frequency of the Epohh Lady's statements, not the Ferengi's or Neelix's.

But I thought that maybe I was just weird again, although it was weird that 2/5 NPCs in question were female, and those were the 2 whose voices everyone complained about.

Now I've been seeing in zone chat (yes, I know I need to wash my eyes out with bleach) people complaining about Leeta's voice, as if the problem is her voice and not the fact that there's a bug making her repeat the same line over and over again in the Badlands. Chase Masterson did a good job with her voice and made her sound like a Mirror version of Leeta, but then I see that nonsense above in the forums.

So, yeah, I don't think I'm totally wrong here. This is the same old bs that men do when they're looking for an excuse to tell women to shut up. It's an instinctive bias and... I don't know what to do other than complain here about it (and yes I responded on that thread and told the dude he's a misogynist).

... adding: I went back before posting this to see if anyone responded to me but there was only this new message:

Somewhat annoying but not half as bad as sela....damn we need a "Shut up Sela" button!!!!

Maybe the reason some people were complaining about the "Wait for Sela to finish speaking" message in Midnight was because they're not used to waiting for any woman to finish speaking ever?

I don´t know why I´m just thinking of 40 years olds, who are still living in mom´s basement and are playing STO (read: conversing in ESD zone chat) all day long (when they´re not posting in the official STO forums, that is).

Can´t you imagine that they feel disturbed, annoyed and threatened after her mom asked them ten times within 4 hours to bring the garbage out? I can totally understand that they - of course! - find women´s voices annoying.


That said, on a more serious note:

I don´t find Leeta´s voice annoying, it´s just this bug that lets her repeat her introduction over and over.

And I agree with you, Alex. A part of the sto community seems to be mysogynistic.

Do you remember "Gateway to Grethor", when it was launched? There was also a bug, which let the Klingon say every 5 seconds "the troop transports are making their way to the planet" or something like that.

If memory serves, in the forums this bug was described as... a bug. There haven´t been comments like "sounds like my husband when he´s telling me for the umpteenth time how big that fish was".

lol. I agree though, her voice is annoying. But it was annoying in DS9 too. It's just part of her character to me. She wouldn't be Leeta if her voice was not annoying :P

I agree Alex... I think that bug would make anyone's voice annoying... Can you imagine if it was Shatner and you couldn't skip it?

THIS, IS, ADMIRAL, JAMES, T, KIRK, OF, THE, I.S.S., ENTER,PRISE, BE, PRE,PARED, TO, BE, DE,STROY,ED

The battle zone would be lost before the cutscene had ended - you'd be stuck in a never ending loop.

I'd like to think this would create the same amount of outcry if it were a male actor. It probably wouldn't, but I do remember a lot of complaints about Paris and Harry and Nog.... Not to same degree, but they weren't bugged.

For me at least, she is only annoying because I can't skip her. I think that I am quite annoyed. The same went for Sela in the last mission of the Iconian arc. And also for Nog in that mission I can't remember the name of. Its fine to listen to once.

At least with Tuvok in the Delta Rising Arc, you could just escape out of that scene. Man he went on and on and on and on.... But he still had more charisma than Paris.

My point is, and I think I'm repeating alex's point here: I think we are annoyed with the repetition and we tend to associate that with the character rather than just being annoyed with repetition. Maybe it happens faster because it is a woman (I'd like to think this isn't true), or maybe it happens faster because it's a bug, or maybe it happens because we have no choice - I just turned the sound off and listened to some music.

Truth is, if you give these Zone Chatterers anything, they'll hate it and pick fault with it, because that seems to be acceptable behaviour these days (I think I just channeled my grandmother)

"Kurland here" #justsayin :evil: :whistle: :evil:

get your epohh's!!!!!

I remember when it was all just text...now that was so lonely.... :blink: