Manchu wrote: It sounds like you are arguing against yourself. I wonder if you believe either line of reasoning or if you are just baiting the thread as you were about clothing in FF13.
I said its a tool, but it doesn't make the character. I should probably clarify that.
Clothing may say something about the character, and give us hints about them. But it doesn't create the character. It doesn't make them interesting. It is their actions and what they do that can be.
But that is a old tool.
The Captain Walker example is an example of taking that one step forward. But it is rarely executed. People usually have the same look throughout the game, and don't change. (But there are exceptions) That these injuries or wounds or new battle armor might say loads about the character.
But currently most designers do not execute it to its fullest.
I'm having a real hard time following your point here. I think design can go a long way to help the at least the credibility of a character, often doing a great deal to provide context and set the right tone.
Since we've been going on abouts Final Fantasy and I've brought up the design before, consider Judge Drace a (sadly), minor character from FF12:
Spoiler:
Watch that scene and then consider how it would have felt if she'd had a design more in line with Fran's, or something like this:
Spoiler:
In addition to affecting the credibility of the character, it would change the tone of the scene immensely to me.
Appearance (including clothing) is one aspect of a character design. How important it is depends on a couple of things: (a) how much other characterization there is and (b) whether other characterization focuses on appearance.
What Samus wears, for example, is extremely important to her characterization.
To answer the OP (Since I have no opinion about the FF series) I don't like how normal looking women seem to be the exception rather than the rule. Take a gander outside and you'll see that earth is not populated by buxom women wearing next to nothing. Yet Video Games doesn't reflect this reality. It indirectly states that women are eye candy first and foremost. Their abilities are secondary.
Manchu wrote: Appearance (including clothing) is one aspect of a character design. How important it is depends on a couple of things: (a) how much other characterization there is and (b) whether other characterization focuses on appearance.
What Samus wears, for example, is extremely important to her characterization.
True. But I said it rarely happens. In most games,
Since we've been going on abouts Final Fantasy and I've brought up the design before, consider Judge Drace a (sadly), minor character from FF12:
I withdraw my statement.
That is very much more in-line with the idea that it says alot about their position and the status among society. So I might need to make definition a little bit more broader than my teacher has taught me thus far.
In addition to affecting the credibility of the character, it would change the tone of the scene immensely to me.
I can get what you're saying. Using a character I actually know and Hellsing again as examples, Integra would be nowhere near as believable if she were dressed in a sexy or ridiculous outfit. She spends half the series commanding an eldrich abomination, and lacking any sort of refinement or fine dress to visualize her confidence and strength, she'd just look too ridiculous.
In GW2, I rather like Eir as a character, but her outfit kind of kills her for me. She lives on a freezing mountain, and she's dressed like this.
Visually, I do like the design, but I just don't imagine that keeps her very warm. That exposed thigh just completely kills the look. Same with Queen Jenna. I always o check her feet every time she shows up because I want to know if she's still barefoot. You compare them to Jory and Kasmeer (a deconstructed fantasy airhead) and their designs just don't mesh with their characters.
Granted at this point I'm not talking about skimpy or sexy outfits so much as characters with visual designs that kind of ruin them for me, but the principle I imagine is applicable. Characters who don't mesh their visual appearance with their character can be a hindrance.
Lightning's appearance is very important to her characterization.
She is confident, capable, tough, and terse. But she also has pretty pink hair and a cute outfit.
In other words, Lightning does not have to trade being a conventionally attractive woman to be fighter and a leader. Nor does she have to hypersexualized to be those things.
She is confident, capable, tough, and terse. But she also has pretty pink hair and a cute outfit.
Yeah see I can buy that. Her clothes are practical nothing outlandish about them. The bare shoulder says confident/strong, that her neck is covered says professional, and then she's still got a skirt, which still suggests a hint of femininity. If that's how she is in game, then her design is great as a representation of who she is (and looks cool on top).
Nor does she have to hypersexualized to be those things.
There's a reason I'm very found of the Lady of War trope, to me best personified by Saber
Slarg232 wrote: Aren't the Norn immune to the cold due to the Animal Spirits they worship? Because most of the guys go Barechested, at least in GW1.
Even if this was the case a lot of this can do with presentation. Skin isn't just about skin. Like the design he posted clearly shows that character has metal scales and heavy leather, some feathers or fur. It's evokes feeling of rough, wilderness fighter.. and then it's got like pieces missing. Not just any pieces but just specifically the ones that are going to show off cleavage or her thighs.
When you get some big muscly dude with his shirt off, it's usually just a muscly dude with his shirt of. It's matter of a fact, you can tell it wasn't specifically designed to enhance titillation.
Like, Consider Zangief of Street Fighter fame. Dudes barely wearing any clothing, but he is designed is like that to make him look like a Wrestleman. Whatever reason that lady's design is showing off her thighs and cleavage, it's not to show she's particularly resistant to the cold.
If you're not cold, you wear cool clothing. You don't take heavy clothing and then specifically cut out around your breast cups and run a slit up your thigh.
Slarg232 wrote: @LordofHats: Aren't the Norn immune to the cold due to the Animal Spirits they worship? Because most of the guys go Barechested, at least in GW1.
If that's in the lore then I completely missed it XD I assumed it was just general style over practicality design.
@Chongara: (Disclaimer, GW2 didn't really interest me, but i played the GAK out of GW1).
Spoiler:
This is how most of the female Norn were in GW1, notice the armor around the legs and arms, but not the chest/head.
Spoiler:
This was the male counterpart, again notice the armored legs and arms, but not chest/head.
My point being, in GW1 at least, it was the basic pattern set up by the norn to have bared chests, and the females were treated no differently than the males.
I'm joking obviously. I remember when that game was coming out and I saw Vaan, Ashe, and Fran and was just like "omg they look so ridiculous." I've liked the art work for the final fantasy series a lot (I had one of the old art books). X had some wonderfully amazing character designs, but XII was just wtf. Only character I really liked the look of in XII is Penelo.
Didn't even like Basch? Apparently he was meant to be the original protagonist. But then Square Enix thought Vaan would appeal more to their target audience
Warcraft 3. The only female enemy I remember is the sorceress who had a somewhat sexualised costume (high boots are totally impractical, as is a top which you will constantly pop out of on the battle field). Again, magic attacker, there's no female with physical prowess.
AS a WC3 Map maker, I find that completely false.
The entire Night elf race is made up of women. O.O
There are custom units that are female. The Ranger, The Villager, The dark ranger, Slyvanas Windrunner, Jaina Proudmoore, Lady Vashj, Naga Sirens, Naga Summoners, Succubus, Wraiths, Banshees, and then finally the high eleven villager.
There are tons of units that are female.
Please do proper research before you talk about it.
Plus the Sorceress Character. Is probably the most overpowered unit in the game with polymorph and slow. She floats around, she uses magic. She really doesn't give two craps about anything, because... Well. She kind of kicks a lot of ass if put in a proper position
All of WC3 is about positioning and micro. And intense almost OCD microing but still. A group of 15 sorceresses can change an entire army into bloody sheep and kill them with ease. Or they make the entire army invisible and sneak into someones base and kill everyone there.
The Assassin and Amazon want a word with you.
All those were succubus's. They are succubus. Lets repeat that. They are succubus's. ITs sort of their job to be sexy. Andariel is the Queen of all Succubus's. So no duh she would do that. She is known to be beautiful, but also scary as gak.
Hi. I'm glad you replied, although many of your examples support my argument rather than go against it.
As I said about WC3, I only mentioned what I remembered. I didn't research anything. Maybe I should have so I can post here, but I never said I did research on that.
The night elf race. I looked for character models. The female ones I could find were mostly scantily clad in a way that was unnecessary and didn't give them good armour. I couldn't find many that were direct combatants, or had non-sexy clothing.
I didn't mention the Assassin or Amazon, as we were talking about female enemies. If you want I can talk about how the Assassin who is supposed to sneak around has a huge amount of pale skin exposed along with black armour. She isn't Assassinating anything in that. She also has high heels on.
The Amazon would might need to cut off one of those boobs if she wanted to be a serious battlefield archer. Her costume isn't bad, but it isn't good.
The Fallen Rogues, the cats and the succubi were pretty much the only female enemies in D2 then. Yet one was wholly devited to sex(it doesn't matter if that is what a succbi does, why didn't they include Banshees, or some other fantasy female creatures that weren't about sex). The cats had ok armour, the Rogues did not. Same problem as the assassin.
As to your prostitute argument.
GTA-
Prostitutes are actually thought to be actually in control of situations. Do you pay them to do things? No, you are required to pay them. They control you.
Even willing prostitutes are not what I'd call in control of situations, considering they often have a pimp, they are often required to do fairly degrading things. You may be paying them, but to say they feel power in that situation is like saying that whenever you spend money on gambling, you win.
The fact that we are discussing the most sexualised job there is when talking about representation of women in games tells me that there is something wrong here. You didn't counter my point by naming a bunch of empowered non-sexualised women in GTA games. Instead you responded by saying that prostitutes are powerful. Keeping in mind that prostitutes in GTA are paid, and then can be killed and robbed, or beaten up by the player immediately afterwards. They do not have guns, they do not have personalities.
Also, as to clothes making the character. I have done work in animation too(usually do straight up video work). You're mistaking the juztaposition of childlike characteristics with an inanimate object to mean that character appearance does not matter. If this: http://ohiok.com/img/yourspacecooment/meredo/sexy/sexy-babe.gif
had been the character model used in that lamp sketch none of us would ever have watched it, because it would be terrible.
Proper characterisation requires well thought out character appearance, even if a juxtaposition is used to make a point about that character.
As you said yourself in a later post, what the character wears tells us a lot. Not just about them in general, but also about them in that moment. Female characters don't often get this treatment.
Slarg232 wrote: @Chongara: (Disclaimer, GW2 didn't really interest me, but i played the GAK out of GW1).
Spoiler:
This is how most of the female Norn were in GW1, notice the armor around the legs and arms, but not the chest/head.
Spoiler:
This was the male counterpart, again notice the armored legs and arms, but not chest/head.
My point being, in GW1 at least, it was the basic pattern set up by the norn to have bared chests, and the females were treated no differently than the males.
This design is still, less than good in my view. See you're pointing them out and measuring by a metric that's roughly "Amount of skin exposed". They both aren't wearing a lot of clothes, so the designs are roughly comparable! This is an insufficient way to look at things if not the entirely wrong one.
While it's true they're both not wearing much on their upper bodies, the way they're not wearing much is very different. Everything about the dude gives this impression of weight. I'm not just talking about how he's big, I'm talking about how only his lower arms are covered, his beard and hair lie very flat and flow downwards. In addition he's got this bigass belt buckle thing that's super solid and has a boar's face on it. This is all really cohesive and meant to emphasis a sense of power. He's the same as his hammer. It speaks of a warrior or maybe a rugged craftsman and that's it. That vision isn't fighting anything with anything.
Then in contrast note how the womans leggings stop just short of covering her hips, and connect to a belt/chain that slides in a way that points at her pelvic area.Now we can't really have her bare-chested modesty and all that. However the way they choose to cover her breasts is key. They could have gave her the giant belt buckle thing and extending up above/around her breasts, or better yet more a simple band of made from the same natural materials as the other parts of their outfits. Instead it's this ornate boob-cup thing. There is this strip that runs up from her waist right up into the middle of her cleavage.The whole design draws attention and highlights her breasts, hips and crotch in a way the male design doesn't for him. Gone too is the cohesive sense of weight in the design, with the gloves reaching all the way up the forearm either stopping to or becoming more form-fitting to really bring out her soft shoulders.
Like if the dude was wearing a pair of sort of semi-armored chaps, with an ornate codpiece and his gaint belt-buckle had a cutout for his abs where the boar's head is these designs might be really comparable. However they're not. You can't just look at what they do and don't have covered, the way they're covered and what it draws attention to is equally if not more important.
Completely and utterly scandalist. I mean look at the warden, The huntress! They show so much damn skin!)
Scandlist! Can't you see? No, no one can. They only show their belly buttons which is kind of a stupid design, but eh. Considering what was coming out at the time. I can deal with that.
For instance, because I never tire of posting it, this show lots of skin (including naked breasts) but it is not sexualization:
(Beware, trailer for a children movie)
Manchu wrote: The "how much skin" argument is bad. But that doesn't mean that showing skin can never be a sign of sexist character design.
A lot of the problem appears to be that trends matter much more than specific examples on this particular topic, but a lot of people have no or little understanding of trends in specific or statistics in general.
Manchu wrote: The "how much skin" argument is bad. But that doesn't mean that showing skin can never be a sign of sexist character design.
WEll my argument is that the entire night elf race shows skin. Like both night elf male heroes are shirtless. And consider there are only two other male units, (The druid of the claw and the druid of the talon) they are the two only units that are the only ones covered that are male)
You really can't say those models are even sexualized. Infact its one of the few games that has more females in one specific playable race that don't look like complete sluts.
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Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: For instance, because I never tire of posting it, this show lots of skin (including naked breasts) but it is not sexualization: (Beware, trailer for a children movie) video
Correct as long as you don't drag attention to it and just have it there where it makes sense. Then yeah.
But in games like of god of war. With the Goddess of Love bit. Yeah I called absolute "Yeah right." on that.
Asherian Command wrote: You really can't say those models are even sexualized. Infact its one of the few games that has more females in one specific playable race that don't look like complete sluts.
Having more females than males doesn't have anything to do with sexualization. And what do you mean by "complete sluts"? Do you mean they are only somewhat slutty?
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Melissia wrote: trends matter much more than specific examples
I'm not sure what you mean by trends. The impression I get is people who reject criticisms of sexist character design do so by making false equivalence arguments about surface area of exposed skin or zero sum arguments.
Asherian Command wrote: You really can't say those models are even sexualized. Infact its one of the few games that has more females in one specific playable race that don't look like complete sluts.
Having more females than males doesn't have anything to do with sexualization. And what do you mean by "complete sluts"? Do you mean they are only somewhat slutty?
I think you are misinterpreting me here.
I am being sarcastic. I am saying they are not sexualized. AS in most games the make the women usually in a fantasy settings are scantly cladded, and well don't act like normal people.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: For instance, because I never tire of posting it, this show lots of skin (including naked breasts) but it is not sexualization:
(Beware, trailer for a children movie)
[youtube]
The puritans in the states would freak out and lose their minds over this one. Just look at all the nonsense they said about disney hunchback OMG it's a naked girl in the flames, boycott it.
The puritans in the states would freak out and lose their minds over this one. Just look at all the nonsense they said about disney hunchback OMG it's a naked girl in the flames, boycott it.
To be honest that scene is the darkest in all of disney history. Its about pure lust. How an old man wants the flesh of a gypsy woman. And is inner turmoil about it.
So yeah... I mean it was kind of dark. (But it is the best villain song ever)
The puritans in the states would freak out and lose their minds over this one. Just look at all the nonsense they said about disney hunchback OMG it's a naked girl in the flames, boycott it.
To be honest that scene is the darkest in all of disney history. Its about pure lust. How an old man wants the flesh of a gypsy woman. And is inner turmoil about it.
So yeah... I mean it was kind of dark. (But it is the best villain song ever)
You mean this?
I love it. It's metal as feth. I mean, the imagery and animation alone is chilling, and the song adds even more to the atmosphere.
Also, she's not actually naked...she's wearing a night dress.
Oh the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I got the pleasure of reading a really, really, good paper on that movie. Of the three men in the movie, two of them treat Esmeralda in a sexist manner (Quasimodo and Frollo both view her as something they've earned or deserve) with Phoebus being the only one of the three to treat Esmeralda as an actual person, valuing her inner and outer beauty while Frollo only values the outer, and Quasimodo the inner.
Manchu wrote: I'm not sure what you mean by trends. The impression I get is people who reject criticisms of sexist character design do so by making false equivalence arguments about surface area of exposed skin or zero sum arguments.
"There is a trend of gamemakers thinking it is more important to depict a woman as sexy than as capable" being one example of an argument raised, then responded to by people who have no understanding of the idea of a trend.
Manchu wrote: I'm not sure what you mean by trends. The impression I get is people who reject criticisms of sexist character design do so by making false equivalence arguments about surface area of exposed skin or zero sum arguments.
"There is a trend of gamemakers thinking it is more important to depict a woman as sexy than as capable" being one example of an argument raised, then responded to by people who have no understanding of the idea of a trend.
Yes that is a trend or a cliche in the gaming industry. But over the last few years we've been seeing less and less of that.
Blizzard On Heroes Of The Storm, Female Designs In MOBAs
By Nathan Grayson on November 22nd, 2013 at 9:00 pm.Tweet this
Papa Blizzard, Papa Blizzard! Why are Aunt Kerrigan and Uncle Diablo fighting? No, seriously, why? I didn’t even know they were from the same side of the family. Or the same dimension. And yet, for all the “because why not”-ness of the game’s premise, Heroes of the Storm plays quite nicely, taking MOBA mechanics and sanding down the rough edges to a point of real intuitiveness – sculpting a svelte ice swan from a figurative iceberg. I discussed the surprise hit of BlizzCon with game director Dustin Browder, and we touched on everything from business models to plans for a map editor to whether or not Heroes counts as a “casual” MOBA. That was all delightful. Unfortunately, Browder’s perspective on the MOBA genre’s epidemic of absurd, hypersexualized female characters turned out significantly less so.
RPS: What is the Storm? How does one become a hero of it? Is it at all important to any sort of story? A blizzard is a type of storm. Is it just another way to say Heroes of Blizzard?
Browder: Honestly, theories differ. Some people have said that it’s Heroes of Blizzard, because yeah, Blizzard is a storm. Other people have said the Nexus is sort of a storm of worlds crashing together. That’s where it’s come from. And some people just thought it was a cool-sounding word.
Inside the studio, I think you get all three of those answers to where it comes from and what it means.
RPS: Is there any sort of story here – if not with narrations and cut-scenes then through, say, little mid-match character interactions ala League of Legends?
Browder: It’s very light in terms of how it’s done. Heroes meet in the Nexus to battle it out. For glory, for honor, and kind of just for the fun of it. It’s not canon or because Thrall died in some battle and now he can’t be in Orgrimmar or something. It’s very loose. I mean, this is a game where at some point a murloc is gonna get Diablo in a headlock and kill him. It’s not a serious game. It’s not a serious part of the lore.
We’re doing some character interaction stuff, though. We’ve got heroes who will talk back-and-forth to each other. We have a line where Nova kills Arthas, and she’s like, “Who’s the ghost now?” We’ll try to have relationships. We certainly had discussions about Kerrigan and Raynor when they’re on the same team, when they’re on separate teams, etc. So I think we’re going to have a lot of fun with relationships that already exist and ones you might imagine would exist if these characters came together.
RPS: Over the years, I’ve developed a wild theory: Blizzard is not, in fact, an altruistic charity like everyone presumes, but is instead some sort of business. How do you plan on making money off this one?
Browder: At this point, the basic outline I can give you is that we’re probably gonna have a rotation of heroes you can check out or change over time. We’re gonna give you an earned currency you can use to check out or permanently purchase anything you want to use in the game. We’re excited about the idea of – though I’m not sure if we’re going to go this way or not – hero-specific quests that you can complete. Those will earn you things.
We’ve also really geeked out about what the Hearthstone guys did with their quest system. They encouraged people to play as different classes in that game. I don’t have a Druid deck, but I got a quest the other night to be one. Six hours later, I’m playing my new Druid deck and optimizing it. It got me out of my rut of playing my Warrior deck. We’re excited by the idea of maybe doing something similar to that.
We also want to give you additional earned currency for playing with your friends. So if you just went into chat and made a friend, that’s totally OK. We want to get you playing with your buddies, form new relationships, and try new things. Those are the basic values of the system we’re building.
RPS: LoL and DOTA have taken eSports by storm, but how is your Storm going to take eSports by… DOTA? No, that really doesn’t work. Please act as though I said nothing, but randomly answer a question about similar topics stated much more eloquently.
Browder: We’re pretty much going to do what we did with StarCraft II. We’re going to provide the tools, we’re going to provide all the features we have time to create, and we’re going to create the best game possible. Then we’re going to see what the community does with it.
That’s exactly what happened with StarCraft, and now here we are years later doing WCS. This is after years of community development, and we’re looking at it saying, “How can we help this community be stronger and better? How can we help our partners to do better on their end?” So we’re trying to very gently support our community and make sure that they’re as successful as they deserve to be.
It’ll be the same way with Heroes. And if the community takes it to a place where we find ways to help them, then we will come in with everything we can to help them be successful.
RPS: I suppose Heroes of the Storm would also make for a pretty different eSports proposition than LoL or DOTA. It’s streamlined in a way that I think people are enjoying quite a bit, but that also makes it – and this has become a pretty dirty word in the gaming industry – a lot more casual.
Browder: It’s like Hearthstone in that respect. Is that game casual? Yeah, sometimes. But after you play it for a while, is it anymore? It’s a very competitive game. It is, in many ways, simpler than what anyone else has done.
We’ve removed things that we didn’t like in the genre for Heroes, and we’ve added new things to make it even more complicated. Or maybe more challenging, is a better way to put it. It’s not about providing you with 17 choices that are all watered down. It’s about providing a few choices that are each like a nail in your brain. Like, “Oooooof! Which three… [gasps dramatically] I don’t know!” That’s what makes great game design.
I think the game will be competitive. I actually feel like it’s competitive when we play in the office. I don’t feel like it’s very casual. I feel like my need to coordinate with my team over map objectives is enormous. The better team wins, and the worse team loses. We need to come together as a group and win these matches by correct composition, by correct positioning, by hitting skillshots – the whole thing.
But I don’t know where it’s going. You could totally be right.
RPS: It’s certainly an interesting position to be in. So far, the genre has thrived on players who are super dedicated to eating up all sorts of tiny, sometimes arbitrary nuances – both in order to understand the rules and, ultimately, to be best at playing their favorite characters. The best MOBAs fuse the thrill of rapid-fire character building with the long-term satisfaction of learning. I can’t help but wonder if your game can match that level of near-bottomless depth. Do you even want it to?
Browder: That is awesome [that players can have that kind of experience with those games]. There are players who will continue to like that, and they won’t find as much of that in this game, and they won’t like it as much as a result.
RPS: What sort of crowd are you aiming to pull in?
Browder: The crowd that likes Heroes of the Storm.
We don’t really know, to be honest. There’s this belief that we must do a bunch of market research before we start making games. We have all these clever guys and we do all these focus groups. We get this perfect target audience [demographic], this guy, and then we build our games especially for him. But really at Blizzard we build the games we want to play. We build games that get us excited and are aesthetically pleasing to us. They have clean game design. They have pretty art. The code is well-built. We like these things, and we hope they find an audience.
We don’t necessarily want Heroes to be like WoW, but I’m using WoW as a comparison. When they shipped it back in 2004, the biggest MMO at the time was EverQuest. I remember people saying, “EverQuest is the real game, and WoW is just the dumbed-down version of EverQuest.” That was some of the feedback. What WoW had done was remove some things – XP loss on death, the challenges of sitting for a long time to recover, etc – and then it added more in other areas.
It was easy to look at that and be like, “Oh, they just removed some gak.” But once people got into it, they realized there was always other stuff.
That’s what we’re going for. I don’t know if we’ve succeeded. We could totally fail. But we’re trying to create an experience where we’ve gotten rid of some stuff and added other stuff. It’s its own experience. We feel like when we play, it’s very competitive and very scary and there’s a lot of skill involved, but we’ll see.
RPS: Heroes’ maps are already fairly elaborate – at least, insofar as some have “quest”-like objectives and others have multiple locations/tiers – but how crazy are you planning to get with future additions?
Browder: That’s the beauty of having the map editor we have and building a game around different battlegrounds. We want to communicate to players very early that this is not about one map. This is not about a collection of maps. This is about a constantly evolving selection.
It’s a lot like what we did with StarCraft II. We shipped that in 2010, and the general consensus from the community was, “Make Lost Temple, and then go away. We don’t need your maps.” And we were like, “O… OK.” So we made a bunch of maps like Lost Temple. But here we are in 2013, and if we don’t update the map pool every couple of weeks or months, the community is up on us like, “Dude, where’s my new maps?” And that’s right. That’s correct. That’s one way to play with a constantly evolving set of terrain.
We really want to do that with Heroes as well. In 2015 at BlizzCon, you could come in with an idea for a battleground and pitch it to me, and I might say, “Oh, OK. Sounds cool.” I can take that back to the studio, put it into the editor, and have something up in just a couple weeks.
RPS: Surely, then – between that and this game’s origins as a StarCraft editor showcase – the natural conclusion is a Heroes map tool that anyone can use?
Browder: I certainly hope that it is.
We’re talking in the studio about the challenges that we have as a free-to-play game. You know, in StarCraft if you start using the editor to upload pornography, we can ban your game and ban your account, and you’re out. In a free-to-play game, we don’t really have that option. You can always create a new account.
So there are a few hiccups we have to work out in terms of security of the service. But once those are solved, we’ve got some ideas. We just need to decide which ones make the most sense. I think once those are out of the way, you can expect to see an arcade, a map editor, the whole thing. We’d love that as part of our game. I mean, it’s helped create this whole genre. We wouldn’t even be here without that.
[PR motions that time is running low]
RPS: You have some interesting alternate outfits for heroes. Roller Derby Nova, especially, caught my eye. On its own, that’s totally fine – just a silly, goofy thing. A one-off. But it got me thinking about how often MOBAs tend to hyper-sexualize female characters to a generally preposterous degree – that is to say, make it the norm, not a one-off at all – and StarCraft’s own, um, interesting focus choices as of late. How are you planning to approach all of that in Heroes?
Browder: Well, I mean, some of these characters, I would argue, are already hyper-sexualized in a sense. I mean, Kerrigan is wearing heels, right? We’re not sending a message to anybody. We’re just making characters who look cool. Our sensibilities are more comic book than anything else. That’s sort of where we’re at. But I’ll take the feedback. I think it’s very fair feedback.
RPS: I have to add, though, that comics might not be the best point of reference for this sort of thing. I mean, it’s a medium that’s notorious – often in a not-good way – for sexing up female characters and putting them in some fairly gross situations.
Browder: We’re not running for President. We’re not sending a message. No one should look to our game for that.
RPS: But it’s not even about a message. The goal is to let people have fun in an environment where they can feel awesome without being weirded out or even objectified. This is a genre about empowerment. Why shouldn’t everyone feel empowered? That’s what it’s about at the end of the day: letting everyone have a fair chance to feel awesome.
Browder: Uh-huh. Cool. Totally.
[PR says we've run over, tells me I have to leave]
RPS: Thank you for your time.
NOTE: This interview, quite obviously, ended in an uncomfortable place, and I decided to break that down at length in a separate opinion piece. It will be live soon, and I’ll link it here when it’s been posted.
Its kind of funny, because the Designer means well, but the interviewer had another hidden agenda, and only wanted to you know not ask questions about the game, but about sexism.
Which is all in good, but I don't think that is what people are interested in particularly.
Asherian Command wrote: Which ones? Smite I know does, but some of the characters have a reason to be like that.
Smite, LoL, Heroes of Newerth, … Basically all of them. Strife, the one I am currently playing, is mostly okay, with only one very sexualized character. The one featured in the tutorial .
Blizzard On Heroes Of The Storm, Female Designs In MOBAs
By Nathan Grayson on November 22nd, 2013 at 9:00 pm.Tweet this
Papa Blizzard, Papa Blizzard! Why are Aunt Kerrigan and Uncle Diablo fighting? No, seriously, why? I didn’t even know they were from the same side of the family. Or the same dimension. And yet, for all the “because why not”-ness of the game’s premise, Heroes of the Storm plays quite nicely, taking MOBA mechanics and sanding down the rough edges to a point of real intuitiveness – sculpting a svelte ice swan from a figurative iceberg. I discussed the surprise hit of BlizzCon with game director Dustin Browder, and we touched on everything from business models to plans for a map editor to whether or not Heroes counts as a “casual” MOBA. That was all delightful. Unfortunately, Browder’s perspective on the MOBA genre’s epidemic of absurd, hypersexualized female characters turned out significantly less so.
RPS: What is the Storm? How does one become a hero of it? Is it at all important to any sort of story? A blizzard is a type of storm. Is it just another way to say Heroes of Blizzard?
Browder: Honestly, theories differ. Some people have said that it’s Heroes of Blizzard, because yeah, Blizzard is a storm. Other people have said the Nexus is sort of a storm of worlds crashing together. That’s where it’s come from. And some people just thought it was a cool-sounding word.
Inside the studio, I think you get all three of those answers to where it comes from and what it means.
RPS: Is there any sort of story here – if not with narrations and cut-scenes then through, say, little mid-match character interactions ala League of Legends?
Browder: It’s very light in terms of how it’s done. Heroes meet in the Nexus to battle it out. For glory, for honor, and kind of just for the fun of it. It’s not canon or because Thrall died in some battle and now he can’t be in Orgrimmar or something. It’s very loose. I mean, this is a game where at some point a murloc is gonna get Diablo in a headlock and kill him. It’s not a serious game. It’s not a serious part of the lore.
We’re doing some character interaction stuff, though. We’ve got heroes who will talk back-and-forth to each other. We have a line where Nova kills Arthas, and she’s like, “Who’s the ghost now?” We’ll try to have relationships. We certainly had discussions about Kerrigan and Raynor when they’re on the same team, when they’re on separate teams, etc. So I think we’re going to have a lot of fun with relationships that already exist and ones you might imagine would exist if these characters came together.
RPS: Over the years, I’ve developed a wild theory: Blizzard is not, in fact, an altruistic charity like everyone presumes, but is instead some sort of business. How do you plan on making money off this one?
Browder: At this point, the basic outline I can give you is that we’re probably gonna have a rotation of heroes you can check out or change over time. We’re gonna give you an earned currency you can use to check out or permanently purchase anything you want to use in the game. We’re excited about the idea of – though I’m not sure if we’re going to go this way or not – hero-specific quests that you can complete. Those will earn you things.
We’ve also really geeked out about what the Hearthstone guys did with their quest system. They encouraged people to play as different classes in that game. I don’t have a Druid deck, but I got a quest the other night to be one. Six hours later, I’m playing my new Druid deck and optimizing it. It got me out of my rut of playing my Warrior deck. We’re excited by the idea of maybe doing something similar to that.
We also want to give you additional earned currency for playing with your friends. So if you just went into chat and made a friend, that’s totally OK. We want to get you playing with your buddies, form new relationships, and try new things. Those are the basic values of the system we’re building.
RPS: LoL and DOTA have taken eSports by storm, but how is your Storm going to take eSports by… DOTA? No, that really doesn’t work. Please act as though I said nothing, but randomly answer a question about similar topics stated much more eloquently.
Browder: We’re pretty much going to do what we did with StarCraft II. We’re going to provide the tools, we’re going to provide all the features we have time to create, and we’re going to create the best game possible. Then we’re going to see what the community does with it.
That’s exactly what happened with StarCraft, and now here we are years later doing WCS. This is after years of community development, and we’re looking at it saying, “How can we help this community be stronger and better? How can we help our partners to do better on their end?” So we’re trying to very gently support our community and make sure that they’re as successful as they deserve to be.
It’ll be the same way with Heroes. And if the community takes it to a place where we find ways to help them, then we will come in with everything we can to help them be successful.
RPS: I suppose Heroes of the Storm would also make for a pretty different eSports proposition than LoL or DOTA. It’s streamlined in a way that I think people are enjoying quite a bit, but that also makes it – and this has become a pretty dirty word in the gaming industry – a lot more casual.
Browder: It’s like Hearthstone in that respect. Is that game casual? Yeah, sometimes. But after you play it for a while, is it anymore? It’s a very competitive game. It is, in many ways, simpler than what anyone else has done.
We’ve removed things that we didn’t like in the genre for Heroes, and we’ve added new things to make it even more complicated. Or maybe more challenging, is a better way to put it. It’s not about providing you with 17 choices that are all watered down. It’s about providing a few choices that are each like a nail in your brain. Like, “Oooooof! Which three… [gasps dramatically] I don’t know!” That’s what makes great game design.
I think the game will be competitive. I actually feel like it’s competitive when we play in the office. I don’t feel like it’s very casual. I feel like my need to coordinate with my team over map objectives is enormous. The better team wins, and the worse team loses. We need to come together as a group and win these matches by correct composition, by correct positioning, by hitting skillshots – the whole thing.
But I don’t know where it’s going. You could totally be right.
RPS: It’s certainly an interesting position to be in. So far, the genre has thrived on players who are super dedicated to eating up all sorts of tiny, sometimes arbitrary nuances – both in order to understand the rules and, ultimately, to be best at playing their favorite characters. The best MOBAs fuse the thrill of rapid-fire character building with the long-term satisfaction of learning. I can’t help but wonder if your game can match that level of near-bottomless depth. Do you even want it to?
Browder: That is awesome [that players can have that kind of experience with those games]. There are players who will continue to like that, and they won’t find as much of that in this game, and they won’t like it as much as a result.
RPS: What sort of crowd are you aiming to pull in?
Browder: The crowd that likes Heroes of the Storm.
We don’t really know, to be honest. There’s this belief that we must do a bunch of market research before we start making games. We have all these clever guys and we do all these focus groups. We get this perfect target audience [demographic], this guy, and then we build our games especially for him. But really at Blizzard we build the games we want to play. We build games that get us excited and are aesthetically pleasing to us. They have clean game design. They have pretty art. The code is well-built. We like these things, and we hope they find an audience.
We don’t necessarily want Heroes to be like WoW, but I’m using WoW as a comparison. When they shipped it back in 2004, the biggest MMO at the time was EverQuest. I remember people saying, “EverQuest is the real game, and WoW is just the dumbed-down version of EverQuest.” That was some of the feedback. What WoW had done was remove some things – XP loss on death, the challenges of sitting for a long time to recover, etc – and then it added more in other areas.
It was easy to look at that and be like, “Oh, they just removed some gak.” But once people got into it, they realized there was always other stuff.
That’s what we’re going for. I don’t know if we’ve succeeded. We could totally fail. But we’re trying to create an experience where we’ve gotten rid of some stuff and added other stuff. It’s its own experience. We feel like when we play, it’s very competitive and very scary and there’s a lot of skill involved, but we’ll see.
RPS: Heroes’ maps are already fairly elaborate – at least, insofar as some have “quest”-like objectives and others have multiple locations/tiers – but how crazy are you planning to get with future additions?
Browder: That’s the beauty of having the map editor we have and building a game around different battlegrounds. We want to communicate to players very early that this is not about one map. This is not about a collection of maps. This is about a constantly evolving selection.
It’s a lot like what we did with StarCraft II. We shipped that in 2010, and the general consensus from the community was, “Make Lost Temple, and then go away. We don’t need your maps.” And we were like, “O… OK.” So we made a bunch of maps like Lost Temple. But here we are in 2013, and if we don’t update the map pool every couple of weeks or months, the community is up on us like, “Dude, where’s my new maps?” And that’s right. That’s correct. That’s one way to play with a constantly evolving set of terrain.
We really want to do that with Heroes as well. In 2015 at BlizzCon, you could come in with an idea for a battleground and pitch it to me, and I might say, “Oh, OK. Sounds cool.” I can take that back to the studio, put it into the editor, and have something up in just a couple weeks.
RPS: Surely, then – between that and this game’s origins as a StarCraft editor showcase – the natural conclusion is a Heroes map tool that anyone can use?
Browder: I certainly hope that it is.
We’re talking in the studio about the challenges that we have as a free-to-play game. You know, in StarCraft if you start using the editor to upload pornography, we can ban your game and ban your account, and you’re out. In a free-to-play game, we don’t really have that option. You can always create a new account.
So there are a few hiccups we have to work out in terms of security of the service. But once those are solved, we’ve got some ideas. We just need to decide which ones make the most sense. I think once those are out of the way, you can expect to see an arcade, a map editor, the whole thing. We’d love that as part of our game. I mean, it’s helped create this whole genre. We wouldn’t even be here without that.
[PR motions that time is running low]
RPS: You have some interesting alternate outfits for heroes. Roller Derby Nova, especially, caught my eye. On its own, that’s totally fine – just a silly, goofy thing. A one-off. But it got me thinking about how often MOBAs tend to hyper-sexualize female characters to a generally preposterous degree – that is to say, make it the norm, not a one-off at all – and StarCraft’s own, um, interesting focus choices as of late. How are you planning to approach all of that in Heroes?
Browder: Well, I mean, some of these characters, I would argue, are already hyper-sexualized in a sense. I mean, Kerrigan is wearing heels, right? We’re not sending a message to anybody. We’re just making characters who look cool. Our sensibilities are more comic book than anything else. That’s sort of where we’re at. But I’ll take the feedback. I think it’s very fair feedback.
RPS: I have to add, though, that comics might not be the best point of reference for this sort of thing. I mean, it’s a medium that’s notorious – often in a not-good way – for sexing up female characters and putting them in some fairly gross situations.
Browder: We’re not running for President. We’re not sending a message. No one should look to our game for that.
RPS: But it’s not even about a message. The goal is to let people have fun in an environment where they can feel awesome without being weirded out or even objectified. This is a genre about empowerment. Why shouldn’t everyone feel empowered? That’s what it’s about at the end of the day: letting everyone have a fair chance to feel awesome.
Browder: Uh-huh. Cool. Totally.
[PR says we've run over, tells me I have to leave]
RPS: Thank you for your time.
NOTE: This interview, quite obviously, ended in an uncomfortable place, and I decided to break that down at length in a separate opinion piece. It will be live soon, and I’ll link it here when it’s been posted.
Its kind of funny, because the Designer means well, but the interviewer had another hidden agenda, and only wanted to you know not ask questions about the game, but about sexism.
Which is all in good, but I don't think that is what people are interested in particularly.
I remember it too. What hidden agenda are you talking about? He did ask tons of question about the game, and he also asked a question about if the game would follow some trend that some people have problem with. Personally, I was interested in that, and I am glad he asked the question. Not every question is going to be about something you personally are interested about.
Asherian Command wrote: Which ones? Smite I know does, but some of the characters have a reason to be like that.
Smite, LoL, Heroes of Newerth, …
Basically all of them.
Strife, the one I am currently playing, is mostly okay, with only one very sexualized character. The one featured in the tutorial .
Blizzard On Heroes Of The Storm, Female Designs In MOBAs
By Nathan Grayson on November 22nd, 2013 at 9:00 pm.Tweet this
Papa Blizzard, Papa Blizzard! Why are Aunt Kerrigan and Uncle Diablo fighting? No, seriously, why? I didn’t even know they were from the same side of the family. Or the same dimension. And yet, for all the “because why not”-ness of the game’s premise, Heroes of the Storm plays quite nicely, taking MOBA mechanics and sanding down the rough edges to a point of real intuitiveness – sculpting a svelte ice swan from a figurative iceberg. I discussed the surprise hit of BlizzCon with game director Dustin Browder, and we touched on everything from business models to plans for a map editor to whether or not Heroes counts as a “casual” MOBA. That was all delightful. Unfortunately, Browder’s perspective on the MOBA genre’s epidemic of absurd, hypersexualized female characters turned out significantly less so.
RPS: What is the Storm? How does one become a hero of it? Is it at all important to any sort of story? A blizzard is a type of storm. Is it just another way to say Heroes of Blizzard?
Browder: Honestly, theories differ. Some people have said that it’s Heroes of Blizzard, because yeah, Blizzard is a storm. Other people have said the Nexus is sort of a storm of worlds crashing together. That’s where it’s come from. And some people just thought it was a cool-sounding word.
Inside the studio, I think you get all three of those answers to where it comes from and what it means.
RPS: Is there any sort of story here – if not with narrations and cut-scenes then through, say, little mid-match character interactions ala League of Legends?
Browder: It’s very light in terms of how it’s done. Heroes meet in the Nexus to battle it out. For glory, for honor, and kind of just for the fun of it. It’s not canon or because Thrall died in some battle and now he can’t be in Orgrimmar or something. It’s very loose. I mean, this is a game where at some point a murloc is gonna get Diablo in a headlock and kill him. It’s not a serious game. It’s not a serious part of the lore.
We’re doing some character interaction stuff, though. We’ve got heroes who will talk back-and-forth to each other. We have a line where Nova kills Arthas, and she’s like, “Who’s the ghost now?” We’ll try to have relationships. We certainly had discussions about Kerrigan and Raynor when they’re on the same team, when they’re on separate teams, etc. So I think we’re going to have a lot of fun with relationships that already exist and ones you might imagine would exist if these characters came together.
RPS: Over the years, I’ve developed a wild theory: Blizzard is not, in fact, an altruistic charity like everyone presumes, but is instead some sort of business. How do you plan on making money off this one?
Browder: At this point, the basic outline I can give you is that we’re probably gonna have a rotation of heroes you can check out or change over time. We’re gonna give you an earned currency you can use to check out or permanently purchase anything you want to use in the game. We’re excited about the idea of – though I’m not sure if we’re going to go this way or not – hero-specific quests that you can complete. Those will earn you things.
We’ve also really geeked out about what the Hearthstone guys did with their quest system. They encouraged people to play as different classes in that game. I don’t have a Druid deck, but I got a quest the other night to be one. Six hours later, I’m playing my new Druid deck and optimizing it. It got me out of my rut of playing my Warrior deck. We’re excited by the idea of maybe doing something similar to that.
We also want to give you additional earned currency for playing with your friends. So if you just went into chat and made a friend, that’s totally OK. We want to get you playing with your buddies, form new relationships, and try new things. Those are the basic values of the system we’re building.
RPS: LoL and DOTA have taken eSports by storm, but how is your Storm going to take eSports by… DOTA? No, that really doesn’t work. Please act as though I said nothing, but randomly answer a question about similar topics stated much more eloquently.
Browder: We’re pretty much going to do what we did with StarCraft II. We’re going to provide the tools, we’re going to provide all the features we have time to create, and we’re going to create the best game possible. Then we’re going to see what the community does with it.
That’s exactly what happened with StarCraft, and now here we are years later doing WCS. This is after years of community development, and we’re looking at it saying, “How can we help this community be stronger and better? How can we help our partners to do better on their end?” So we’re trying to very gently support our community and make sure that they’re as successful as they deserve to be.
It’ll be the same way with Heroes. And if the community takes it to a place where we find ways to help them, then we will come in with everything we can to help them be successful.
RPS: I suppose Heroes of the Storm would also make for a pretty different eSports proposition than LoL or DOTA. It’s streamlined in a way that I think people are enjoying quite a bit, but that also makes it – and this has become a pretty dirty word in the gaming industry – a lot more casual.
Browder: It’s like Hearthstone in that respect. Is that game casual? Yeah, sometimes. But after you play it for a while, is it anymore? It’s a very competitive game. It is, in many ways, simpler than what anyone else has done.
We’ve removed things that we didn’t like in the genre for Heroes, and we’ve added new things to make it even more complicated. Or maybe more challenging, is a better way to put it. It’s not about providing you with 17 choices that are all watered down. It’s about providing a few choices that are each like a nail in your brain. Like, “Oooooof! Which three… [gasps dramatically] I don’t know!” That’s what makes great game design.
I think the game will be competitive. I actually feel like it’s competitive when we play in the office. I don’t feel like it’s very casual. I feel like my need to coordinate with my team over map objectives is enormous. The better team wins, and the worse team loses. We need to come together as a group and win these matches by correct composition, by correct positioning, by hitting skillshots – the whole thing.
But I don’t know where it’s going. You could totally be right.
RPS: It’s certainly an interesting position to be in. So far, the genre has thrived on players who are super dedicated to eating up all sorts of tiny, sometimes arbitrary nuances – both in order to understand the rules and, ultimately, to be best at playing their favorite characters. The best MOBAs fuse the thrill of rapid-fire character building with the long-term satisfaction of learning. I can’t help but wonder if your game can match that level of near-bottomless depth. Do you even want it to?
Browder: That is awesome [that players can have that kind of experience with those games]. There are players who will continue to like that, and they won’t find as much of that in this game, and they won’t like it as much as a result.
RPS: What sort of crowd are you aiming to pull in?
Browder: The crowd that likes Heroes of the Storm.
We don’t really know, to be honest. There’s this belief that we must do a bunch of market research before we start making games. We have all these clever guys and we do all these focus groups. We get this perfect target audience [demographic], this guy, and then we build our games especially for him. But really at Blizzard we build the games we want to play. We build games that get us excited and are aesthetically pleasing to us. They have clean game design. They have pretty art. The code is well-built. We like these things, and we hope they find an audience.
We don’t necessarily want Heroes to be like WoW, but I’m using WoW as a comparison. When they shipped it back in 2004, the biggest MMO at the time was EverQuest. I remember people saying, “EverQuest is the real game, and WoW is just the dumbed-down version of EverQuest.” That was some of the feedback. What WoW had done was remove some things – XP loss on death, the challenges of sitting for a long time to recover, etc – and then it added more in other areas.
It was easy to look at that and be like, “Oh, they just removed some gak.” But once people got into it, they realized there was always other stuff.
That’s what we’re going for. I don’t know if we’ve succeeded. We could totally fail. But we’re trying to create an experience where we’ve gotten rid of some stuff and added other stuff. It’s its own experience. We feel like when we play, it’s very competitive and very scary and there’s a lot of skill involved, but we’ll see.
RPS: Heroes’ maps are already fairly elaborate – at least, insofar as some have “quest”-like objectives and others have multiple locations/tiers – but how crazy are you planning to get with future additions?
Browder: That’s the beauty of having the map editor we have and building a game around different battlegrounds. We want to communicate to players very early that this is not about one map. This is not about a collection of maps. This is about a constantly evolving selection.
It’s a lot like what we did with StarCraft II. We shipped that in 2010, and the general consensus from the community was, “Make Lost Temple, and then go away. We don’t need your maps.” And we were like, “O… OK.” So we made a bunch of maps like Lost Temple. But here we are in 2013, and if we don’t update the map pool every couple of weeks or months, the community is up on us like, “Dude, where’s my new maps?” And that’s right. That’s correct. That’s one way to play with a constantly evolving set of terrain.
We really want to do that with Heroes as well. In 2015 at BlizzCon, you could come in with an idea for a battleground and pitch it to me, and I might say, “Oh, OK. Sounds cool.” I can take that back to the studio, put it into the editor, and have something up in just a couple weeks.
RPS: Surely, then – between that and this game’s origins as a StarCraft editor showcase – the natural conclusion is a Heroes map tool that anyone can use?
Browder: I certainly hope that it is.
We’re talking in the studio about the challenges that we have as a free-to-play game. You know, in StarCraft if you start using the editor to upload pornography, we can ban your game and ban your account, and you’re out. In a free-to-play game, we don’t really have that option. You can always create a new account.
So there are a few hiccups we have to work out in terms of security of the service. But once those are solved, we’ve got some ideas. We just need to decide which ones make the most sense. I think once those are out of the way, you can expect to see an arcade, a map editor, the whole thing. We’d love that as part of our game. I mean, it’s helped create this whole genre. We wouldn’t even be here without that.
[PR motions that time is running low]
RPS: You have some interesting alternate outfits for heroes. Roller Derby Nova, especially, caught my eye. On its own, that’s totally fine – just a silly, goofy thing. A one-off. But it got me thinking about how often MOBAs tend to hyper-sexualize female characters to a generally preposterous degree – that is to say, make it the norm, not a one-off at all – and StarCraft’s own, um, interesting focus choices as of late. How are you planning to approach all of that in Heroes?
Browder: Well, I mean, some of these characters, I would argue, are already hyper-sexualized in a sense. I mean, Kerrigan is wearing heels, right? We’re not sending a message to anybody. We’re just making characters who look cool. Our sensibilities are more comic book than anything else. That’s sort of where we’re at. But I’ll take the feedback. I think it’s very fair feedback.
RPS: I have to add, though, that comics might not be the best point of reference for this sort of thing. I mean, it’s a medium that’s notorious – often in a not-good way – for sexing up female characters and putting them in some fairly gross situations.
Browder: We’re not running for President. We’re not sending a message. No one should look to our game for that.
RPS: But it’s not even about a message. The goal is to let people have fun in an environment where they can feel awesome without being weirded out or even objectified. This is a genre about empowerment. Why shouldn’t everyone feel empowered? That’s what it’s about at the end of the day: letting everyone have a fair chance to feel awesome.
Browder: Uh-huh. Cool. Totally.
[PR says we've run over, tells me I have to leave]
RPS: Thank you for your time.
NOTE: This interview, quite obviously, ended in an uncomfortable place, and I decided to break that down at length in a separate opinion piece. It will be live soon, and I’ll link it here when it’s been posted.
Its kind of funny, because the Designer means well, but the interviewer had another hidden agenda, and only wanted to you know not ask questions about the game, but about sexism.
Which is all in good, but I don't think that is what people are interested in particularly.
I remember it too. What hidden agenda are you talking about? He did ask tons of question about the game, and he also asked a question about if the game would follow some trend that some people have problem with. Personally, I was interested in that, and I am glad he asked the question. Not every question is going to be about something you personally are interested about.
Yeah I reread it and found out he had a balanced article.
But the awkward moment when he kept pushing the issue though was kind of funny to me.
Yeah I reread it and found out he had a balanced article.
But the awkward moment when he kept pushing the issue though was kind of funny to me.
And yeah Smite is known for its designs.
Well it's a sign of a good interviewer if they keep pushing until they get an actual answer, I think. Not commenting on that particular interview, just interviews and interviewers in general.
Tempted to post the Paxman/Michael Howard interview but it'd be off topic
Smite is like extra-super-bad, but it is a MOBA problem in general. For instance, Heroes of Newerth, look at those outfits: http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/intro#page4 .
Smite is like extra-super-bad, but it is a MOBA problem in general. For instance, Heroes of Newerth, look at those outfits: http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/intro#page4 .
I am not talking about the wc3 one. Just check it out. Look at
The ice lady looking one/energy one.
Oh star nipples. They say there is no accounting for taste. I liked that design more then the others. They have a kind of neat unearthly look. Though ya they might actually look better without star nipples.
I am not talking about the wc3 one. Just check it out. Look at
The ice lady looking one/energy one.
Oh star nipples. They say there is no accounting for taste. I liked that design more then the others. They have a kind of neat unearthly look. Though ya they might actually look better without star nipples.
I can buy that Poison Ivy fights in leaf-panties, I guess, she is supposed to be the seductress etc. But why does Catwoman have a zip-cleavage and more importantly, why does she jump around doing acrobatics in high heels?
I can buy that Poison Ivy fights in leaf-panties, I guess, she is supposed to be the seductress etc. But why does Catwoman have a zip-cleavage and more importantly, why does she jump around doing acrobatics in high heels?
Good question. I mean, it would be interesting to see a design that is not a BDSM costume. But it might be about the character coming out and displaying her sexuality for the world to see. Or the designer wanted a sexy female in the dark world of batman.
I also remember that Arkham got some controversy about how gendered and sexualized the enemies taunts against her were. I know they are thugs, but it was a level of icky that you never got while playing as batman.
It's like the developer's did not notice it during play testing.
Seriously I'm playing a superhero game for the cathartic beat-the-gak-out-of-people feeling, I don't want to get rape threats directed at the character I'm playing as :/
Asherian Command wrote: But it might be about the character coming out and displaying her sexuality for the world to see.
I am doing a burglary. I want to display my sexuality for the world to see. At the same time. Also known as “too stupid to live”.
If you are committing a burglary, you do not want anyone to see you, let alone your sexuality.
Asherian Command wrote: But it might be about the character coming out and displaying her sexuality for the world to see.
I am doing a burglary. I want to display my sexuality for the world to see. At the same time. Also known as “too stupid to live”.
If you are committing a burglary, you do not want anyone to see you, let alone your sexuality.
Hahaha true. But lets face it that is a universal problem currently.
Melissia wrote: I don't think I would blame Arkham Asylum for the sexualization of catwoman, I'd blame DC
That kind of feels like passing the buck. I mean if they really cared the studio leadership could have taken a position anywhere from "Well, we'll change the design" to "We'll not include to Catwoman" to "If DC won't let us do those things, we'll not make a batman game. In the grand scheme things one character design is kind of minor problem. I'm just trying to point out that the game's creators are responsible for the content as the original IP owners
AdeptSister wrote: I also remember that Arkham got some controversy about how gendered and sexualized the enemies taunts against her were. I know they are thugs, but it was a level of icky that you never got while playing as batman.
It's like the developer's did not notice it during play testing.
It's not that the developer's didn't notice, the developers put it in their game intentionally. You don't "oops" your way into recording the voice clips and setting the triggers for them. Multiple members of the team went "Yes. This is a good idea, we should be doing this. Let's do this, we're doing this. We did this, it works".
It's possible that nobody in testing was bothered by it, didn't speak up or nobody upstairs listened we can't say.
At minimum (checking the credits), women were included in the QA process and woman was even a QA lead. So at least the problem isn't stemming from exclusion. The cynic in me would be at least one of them probably was bothered by it but didn't speak up because that's kind of bad for your career but like I said, we can't know.
Asherian Command wrote: But it might be about the character coming out and displaying her sexuality for the world to see.
I am doing a burglary. I want to display my sexuality for the world to see. At the same time. Also known as “too stupid to live”.
If you are committing a burglary, you do not want anyone to see you, let alone your sexuality.
It helped in batman returns, when she does get's seen, the guards are way to distracted by her sexuality, so she clobbers them and escapes.
It's also how she got batman to feel for her and it affected his judgement as well.
It's like the old joke, a woman robs a bank naked and gets away with it because no one can describe her face.
sirlynchmob wrote: It helped in batman returns, when she does get's seen, the guards are way to distracted by her sexuality, so she clobbers them and escapes.
That is possibly the most stupid trope/excuse for skimpy design I have ever read and I hope it dies forever.
(Just to clarify, I am not saying that you are stupid, I am saying the game is stupid for using it)
I remember reading it in a Warmachine official fiction, and it quite cheapened my views of the setting.
sirlynchmob wrote: It's also how she got batman to feel for her and it affected his judgement as well.
I do not think that is how it works. I am pretty sure it is not how it would work with me. Raising sexual arousal and raising affection are really not the same.
Melissia wrote: I don't think I would blame Arkham Asylum for the sexualization of catwoman, I'd blame DC
That kind of feels like passing the buck. I mean if they really cared the studio leadership could have taken a position anywhere from "Well, we'll change the design" to "We'll not include to Catwoman" to "If DC won't let us do those things, we'll not make a batman game.: In the grand scheme things one character design is kind of minor problem. I'm just trying to point out that the game's creators are responsible for the content as the original IP owners.
I agree. Remember that they changed Tim Drake's design so that he has a shaved head and did MMA as a hobby. They also hyped up the sexualization of Harliquin. They made these choices.
Ugh. On the upside, I'm willing to be that wasn't something Seacat had input on. I hope not anyway. I really like liking that guy.
I like the Iron Kingdoms as a setting particularly as Seacat envisions it, but there are definitely some folks at the company that are anywhere from in denial (looking at you Simon) to just downright unapologetic about the sexist aspects of their design choices.
Every female warcaster from Cryx seem to share that mentality from the models.
And it is almost the same for the other draconic faction. Notice that fantastic escher-girl b&b pose:
Do draconic corruption allow your torso to twist that much?
Asherian Command wrote: But it might be about the character coming out and displaying her sexuality for the world to see.
I am doing a burglary. I want to display my sexuality for the world to see. At the same time. Also known as “too stupid to live”. If you are committing a burglary, you do not want anyone to see you, let alone your sexuality.
This is Catwoman we are talking about. She is cocky and extroverted enough to try to prove you wrong... And she's right
Trying to apply logic to a comic setting is like trying to apply logic to Warhammer 40k...it's bad for your health.
What about trying to apply logic to why characters in a fictional setting were designed the way they are by some real-world persons and what message these designs carry over to other real-world persons reading about the character ?
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: What about trying to apply logic to why characters in a fictional setting were designed the way they are by some real-world persons and what message these designs carry over to other real-world persons reading about the character ?
Hmm. Interesting, but I don't think it demeans the character at all. I mean here look is not as bad as 'certain' characters in comics are. Catwoman is not as bad as harley's design in the Arkham Games or the designs of certain women in comic books.
Every female warcaster from Cryx seem to share that mentality from the models.
And it is almost the same for the other draconic faction. Notice that fantastic escher-girl b&b pose:
Do draconic corruption allow your torso to twist that much?
Preachin' to the choir here. PP is really good when it comes to their world building and including women in the world, but almost all of their art & character design have issues of varying degrees. It frustrates me so. *sigh*. That's just how things be I suppose.
Every female warcaster from Cryx seem to share that mentality from the models.
And it is almost the same for the other draconic faction. Notice that fantastic escher-girl b&b pose:
Do draconic corruption allow your torso to twist that much?
Preachin' to the choir here. PP is really good when it comes to their world building and including women in the world, but almost all of their art & character design have issues of varying degrees. It frustrates me so. *sigh*. That's just how things be I suppose.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: What about trying to apply logic to why characters in a fictional setting were designed the way they are by some real-world persons and what message these designs carry over to other real-world persons reading about the character ?
It's also entirely possible there is no message to carry over. It's a fictional story, often times with no real world implications or messages.
It is a burglar, that wants to display her sexuality to the whole world while doing a burglary. I am pretty sure just by this pitch, anyone and their dog could guess the gender of the burglar and the gender of the intended audience .
Asherian Command wrote: I mean here look is not as bad as 'certain' characters in comics are.
If we are going to base our judgments on the worst examples from an industry that is already pretty bad with their average, it is not going to be very conclusive, is it?
sirlynchmob wrote: It's also entirely possible there is no message to carry over.
It is a burglar, that wants to display her sexuality to the whole world while doing a burglary. I am pretty sure just by this pitch, anyone and their dog could guess the gender of the burglar and the gender of the intended audience .
Asherian Command wrote: I mean here look is not as bad as 'certain' characters in comics are.
If we are going to base our judgments on the worst examples from an industry that is already pretty bad with their average, it is not going to be very conclusive, is it?
sirlynchmob wrote: It's also entirely possible there is no message to carry over.
No intended messages, yes, I can imagine.
She's a comic book hero. She is a power fantasy for women. She kicks ass. I know tons of girls that say catwoman is one of their favorite villains. In fact I could get all of them to confirm that.
Just because you have a problem with the character, does not mean everyone else does.
She is not as scandalist as you make her out to be.
sirlynchmob wrote: It's a fictional story, often times with no real world implications or messages.
And Helter Skelter is just a song.
But there are some people out there who will look for a message or implication in anything. Probably shouldn't make it easier for them than it has to be
sirlynchmob wrote: It's a fictional story, often times with no real world implications or messages.
And Helter Skelter is just a song.
But there are some people out there who will look for a message or implication in anything. Probably shouldn't make it easier for them than it has to be
Sometimes people see metaphors. Sometimes there is not.
Like I remember having a discussion with a teacher about this color a color on a wine glass in one of the stories I was reading. It was silver. The teacher exclaimed that it meant something more than just it was silver, and represented the fame and fortune and whatever she was talking about. I just raised my hand and said, "Silver just means they are rich, because I mean, its silver, it doesn't mean there is an implication that it means more than its a wine glass." I then pointed to the fact that there are other symbols, that she down right ignored.
There are certain symbols that happen in the game, but it does not imply that all mechanics are metaphor, that not all things are a metaphor.
Sexy distraction is a trope I don't know if I have seen done right. It's another one of the sexy outfit excuses. If you were really trying to dress in a way to distract people, what would you do? My idea tassels, bright colors. There are weapons that were made to be distracting and what they did was put brightly colored strings and tassels on them to distract the eye by movement.
Another thought is maybe catwoman has a fetish. Like she gets exhibitionist thrill from sneaking around in sexy clothes. It's just a thought though. If it was an aspect of her character, you would want it to be addressed and talked about.
A metaphor and an unintended message are two very different things!
nomotog wrote: Another thought is maybe catwoman has a fetish. Like she gets exhibitionist thrill from sneaking around in sexy clothes.
Not exhibitionist if her thrill is not being seen, I guess.
The Male Marines (see my sig) are master of the use of sexy costume to distract their opponent. I am sure they have whole training courses on stretching their torso so that their nipples ends up just above their asses too!
Asherian Command wrote: Its why they have it on characters to be scantly clad or near perfect, its because its a fantasy character, its who we want to be.
Really, here it is who we (are supposed to) want to gaze at, rather than who we want to be, mostly.
Asherian Command wrote: Its why they have it on characters to be scantly clad or near perfect, its because its a fantasy character, its who we want to be.
Really, here it is who we (are supposed to) want to gaze at, rather than who we want to be, mostly.
I disagree. See they are perfect in every sense in physical form. I mean why do people read about Conan the barbarian or Superman? Because at some level we want to be them
We want to be those people, because they have abilities beyond us. At some primal level we want to be like them, So we compare ourselves to them and draw our conclusions.
Most readers do not pull out and spank to catwoman. Most read her as a character, and secretly want to live her life and have her body. In essence to be her.
Asherian Command wrote: Its why they have it on characters to be scantly clad or near perfect, its because its a fantasy character, its who we want to be.
Really, here it is who we (are supposed to) want to gaze at, rather than who we want to be, mostly.
I disagree. See they are perfect in every sense in physical form. I mean why do people read about Conan the barbarian or Superman? Because at some level we want to be them
We want to be those people, because they have abilities beyond us. At some primal level we want to be like them, So we compare ourselves to them and draw our conclusions.
Most readers do not pull out and spank to catwoman. Most read her as a character, and secretly want to live her life and have her body. In essence to be her.
Yes No Maybe. There is no way you can predict how someone will take a bit of media and people have different outlooks. (I once read a manga that I regarded as a trashy guilty pleasure only to find a lot of people took it as a inspiring story.) It seems clear that catwoman was made to be ogled (It's a tricky thing to define I'll admit too.)... On the other hand, ya I might like to be catwoman. That would be fun.
Asherian Command wrote: Its why they have it on characters to be scantly clad or near perfect, its because its a fantasy character, its who we want to be.
Really, here it is who we (are supposed to) want to gaze at, rather than who we want to be, mostly.
I disagree. See they are perfect in every sense in physical form. I mean why do people read about Conan the barbarian or Superman? Because at some level we want to be them
We want to be those people, because they have abilities beyond us. At some primal level we want to be like them, So we compare ourselves to them and draw our conclusions.
Most readers do not pull out and spank to catwoman. Most read her as a character, and secretly want to live her life and have her body. In essence to be her.
Yes No Maybe. There is no way you can predict how someone will take a bit of media and people have different outlooks. (I once read a manga that I regarded as a trashy guilty pleasure only to find a lot of people took it as a inspiring story.) It seems clear that catwoman was made to be ogled (It's a tricky thing to define I'll admit too.)... On the other hand, ya I might like to be catwoman. That would be fun.
That often happens.
People take different experiences. And see something else.
I don't really see clothing as something that determines the experience. A character is determined by what they do, and how they act, If they wear badass armor that is great, but, it only tells me somethings about their personality not the whole story.
Emotion and actions create a character. Not the armor or clothing of someone make the character. Otherwise they are just background.
People take different experiences. And see something else.
I don't really see clothing as something that determines the experience. A character is determined by what they do, and how they act, If they wear badass armor that is great, but, it only tells me somethings about their personality not the whole story.
Emotion and actions create a character. Not the armor or clothing of someone make the character. Otherwise they are just background.
I think you are undervaluing aesthetics as they relate to defining a character. What a character wears isn't background. It's more like foreground you know because it's one of the first things people notice. It is a little like a inverse of the classic lesions. Judge a book by their cover because that is where the name is. The style of a character isn't the only thing about a character, but it's the first thing people see and tells you a lot about them.
This actually relates back to games. Saints row 2 is a good example. That game has crazy customization, but it's all visual. The game doesn't let you change the actions or emotions of your character, but you can make some radically different characters by just changing the visual aesthetics. It's something I wish more games would copy. Games have a really easy time changing aesthetics. Changing story or actions is really hard comparatively.
People take different experiences. And see something else.
I don't really see clothing as something that determines the experience. A character is determined by what they do, and how they act, If they wear badass armor that is great, but, it only tells me somethings about their personality not the whole story.
Emotion and actions create a character. Not the armor or clothing of someone make the character. Otherwise they are just background.
I think you are undervaluing aesthetics as they relate to defining a character. What a character wears isn't background. It's more like foreground you know because it's one of the first things people notice. It is a little like a inverse of the classic lesions. Judge a book by their cover because that is where the name is. The style of a character isn't the only thing about a character, but it's the first thing people see and tells you a lot about them.
This actually relates back to games. Saints row 2 is a good example. That game has crazy customization, but it's all visual. The game doesn't let you change the actions or emotions of your character, but you can make some radically different characters by just changing the visual aesthetics. It's something I wish more games would copy. Games have a really easy time changing aesthetics. Changing story or actions is really hard comparatively.
I agree I do, I often forget that, it is still visual based. I often don't judge a person by its cover. But I forgot most people do judge a book by its covers.
I still want an answer. Sure, the cleavage is a bit unnecessary, and I doubt it is a coincidence that the suit is partly open like that, but that is ultimately a lesser concern. Having the suit zipped down a little won't prevent her from doing cool stuff. The high heels, though! The high heels would. Have you tried pulling that kind of moves in darn high heels? If not impossible, it is really difficult! Hell, just running in them is hard enough and using them in combat is just self-crippling.
Ashiraya wrote: I still want an answer. Sure, the cleavage is a bit unnecessary, and I doubt it is a coincidence that the suit is partly open like that, but that is ultimately a lesser concern. Having the suit zipped down a little won't prevent her from doing cool stuff. The high heels, though! The high heels would. Have you tried pulling that kind of moves in darn high heels? If not impossible, it is really difficult! Hell, just running in them is hard enough and using them in combat is just self-crippling.
Guys don't understand how heels work. To them, they are simply a visual choice with no impact on how you have to move or act.
Ashiraya wrote: I still want an answer. Sure, the cleavage is a bit unnecessary, and I doubt it is a coincidence that the suit is partly open like that, but that is ultimately a lesser concern. Having the suit zipped down a little won't prevent her from doing cool stuff. The high heels, though! The high heels would. Have you tried pulling that kind of moves in darn high heels? If not impossible, it is really difficult! Hell, just running in them is hard enough and using them in combat is just self-crippling.
Hell if I know, but I always thought:
1) Tons of practice, so as to be able to move like that in them.
OMG look at all the cleavage they're showing and running in heels. They're being hypersexualized and reduced to an object by doing that. Everyone who watches that video is clearly a misogynist.
This seems to by the idea feminists are saying about sexy video game characters, so it should apply in the real world as well right?
As it's perfectly fine for women to go around wearing what they choose, it's fine to design characters that portray characters that have the same style.
sirlynchmob wrote: OMG look at all the cleavage they're showing and running in heels. They're being hypersexualized and reduced to an object by doing that. Everyone who watches that video is clearly a misogynist.
This seems to by the idea feminists are saying about sexy video game characters, so it should apply in the real world as well right?
As it's perfectly fine for women to go around wearing what they choose, it's fine to design characters that portray characters that have the same style.
In the real world people are people it is diffrent. They also don't look like the video game characters that catch flack for how they look.
sirlynchmob wrote: OMG look at all the cleavage they're showing and running in heels. They're being hypersexualized and reduced to an object by doing that. Everyone who watches that video is clearly a misogynist.
This seems to by the idea feminists are saying about sexy video game characters, so it should apply in the real world as well right?
As it's perfectly fine for women to go around wearing what they choose, it's fine to design characters that portray characters that have the same style.
The event being show is about running in heels, showing off a particular skill in a specific context. If your average video game was EA Sports: Heel Run 2010/2011/2012/2013/2014/2015. This argument would hold water. They aren't so it doesn't. Next.
Actually. Can people just not tell when something is too much and when it's not? I mean it can be a tricky issue some times lots of little parts to it, so it's normal that reasonable people would have different views.
On the other hand that comment could have been some kind of covered insult of some kind rather then a genuine thought.
sirlynchmob wrote: OMG look at all the cleavage they're showing and running in heels. They're being hypersexualized and reduced to an object by doing that. Everyone who watches that video is clearly a misogynist.
This seems to by the idea feminists are saying about sexy video game characters, so it should apply in the real world as well right?
As it's perfectly fine for women to go around wearing what they choose, it's fine to design characters that portray characters that have the same style.
In the real world people are people it is diffrent. They also don't look like the video game characters that catch flack for how they look.
In the video game world, no people exist.
A character has no agency outside what the creator of the content the character is a part of gives him/her. Does a character eat a PBaJ sandvich or a Tuna Sandvich? The character can't decide, he/she doesn't exist. Does a Male Character wear Combat Boots or Stripper Heels? He doesn't know, he doesn't exist.
A painting, a book, a poem, a movie, all are glimpses into the minds of those who made them. A character in a Play has no more agency than a word in a poem. To believe otherwise is fallacious at best.
sirlynchmob wrote: OMG look at all the cleavage they're showing and running in heels. They're being hypersexualized and reduced to an object by doing that. Everyone who watches that video is clearly a misogynist.
This seems to by the idea feminists are saying about sexy video game characters, so it should apply in the real world as well right?
As it's perfectly fine for women to go around wearing what they choose, it's fine to design characters that portray characters that have the same style.
In the real world people are people it is diffrent. They also don't look like the video game characters that catch flack for how they look.
In the video game world, no people exist.
A character has no agency outside what the creator of the content the character is a part of gives him/her. Does a character eat a PBaJ sandvich or a Tuna Sandvich? The character can't decide, he/she doesn't exist. Does a Male Character wear Combat Boots or Stripper Heels? He doesn't know, he doesn't exist.
A painting, a book, a poem, a movie, all are glimpses into the minds of those who made them. A character in a Play has no more agency than a word in a poem. To believe otherwise is fallacious at best.
I can't tell if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing with me.
Though you bring up the idea that characters that have no agency. That is actually kind of a fun topic. Can a character in a video game have agency?
sirlynchmob wrote: OMG look at all the cleavage they're showing and running in heels. They're being hypersexualized and reduced to an object by doing that. Everyone who watches that video is clearly a misogynist.
This seems to by the idea feminists are saying about sexy video game characters, so it should apply in the real world as well right?
As it's perfectly fine for women to go around wearing what they choose, it's fine to design characters that portray characters that have the same style.
In the real world people are people it is diffrent. They also don't look like the video game characters that catch flack for how they look.
In the video game world, no people exist.
A character has no agency outside what the creator of the content the character is a part of gives him/her. Does a character eat a PBaJ sandvich or a Tuna Sandvich? The character can't decide, he/she doesn't exist. Does a Male Character wear Combat Boots or Stripper Heels? He doesn't know, he doesn't exist.
A painting, a book, a poem, a movie, all are glimpses into the minds of those who made them. A character in a Play has no more agency than a word in a poem. To believe otherwise is fallacious at best.
Correct. Also there is this idea in fiction. The characters are not people, they are parts of the story that make it work they are a gear that makes the thing turn. ITs a sad truth.
sirlynchmob wrote: OMG look at all the cleavage they're showing and running in heels. They're being hypersexualized and reduced to an object by doing that. Everyone who watches that video is clearly a misogynist.
This seems to by the idea feminists are saying about sexy video game characters, so it should apply in the real world as well right?
As it's perfectly fine for women to go around wearing what they choose, it's fine to design characters that portray characters that have the same style.
In the real world people are people it is diffrent. They also don't look like the video game characters that catch flack for how they look.
In the video game world, no people exist.
A character has no agency outside what the creator of the content the character is a part of gives him/her. Does a character eat a PBaJ sandvich or a Tuna Sandvich? The character can't decide, he/she doesn't exist. Does a Male Character wear Combat Boots or Stripper Heels? He doesn't know, he doesn't exist.
A painting, a book, a poem, a movie, all are glimpses into the minds of those who made them. A character in a Play has no more agency than a word in a poem. To believe otherwise is fallacious at best.
I can't tell if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing with me.
Though you bring up the idea that characters that have no agency. That is actually kind of a fun topic. Can a character in a video game have agency?
Spec Ops: The line explores this.
Does Walker have control, and we are the consciousness within walker, are we really in control? Are we truly the ones in full control?
So, you are now equating “being in every sense in physical form” with “displaying your sexuality for the world to see”? I am pretty sure neither Superman nor Conan, your male examples, do “display their sexuality for the world to see”. Would you read about a Superman wearing this:
or this :
Double standard, double standard .
Gonna be honest. The little hankerchiefs over the nipples just kill the ensemble. I give it a B for effort but in good conscience I can't rate it any higher than that
So, you are now equating “being in every sense in physical form” with “displaying your sexuality for the world to see”? I am pretty sure neither Superman nor Conan, your male examples, do “display their sexuality for the world to see”. Would you read about a Superman wearing this:
Double standard, double standard .
Conan surely does.
I mean he is shirtless. All the bloody time. We wears only short shorts.
I like how you keep saying this over and over. Clearly you have a problem with it. While other females I have talked don't have this problem. See I think there are certain designs that take it too far.
Now that is funny, but also true. It happens in our society and it is known for happening. Its not great, but considering we are making steps towards being gender equals.
Someday the costumes will be very similar in design, but not towards the sexy design, but more in league with frightening.
I have made four female characters that could be considered heroines , everytime, I have gone out of my to ensure they are not dressed with little clothing, but are fully clothed, and actually wear reasonable things such as full body armor. One is a soldier who wears armor that is heavy, and she is the best fighter among her squad, Another is a woman in full platemail, another in leather armor, and the last one and the only one I would even remotely call 'sexy' esque, is one of my first female heroines, She is a robber, her entire shtick is tricking men out of their money, and then running the hell out of there. She is a mob princess, and she kicks alot of ass. Now it really matters on the times and place....
Melissia wrote: One of the most mentally unbalanced and atrocious writers in the comic book industry at the moment. At least in the big name publishers anyway.
A racist, misogynist, fascist man who thinks he's smarter than everyone and all women are prostitutes. He writes ugly stories, with ugly illustrations about ugly people doing ugly things for ugly reasons. Here is a review of one of his works. . If iirc, he's also the original creator behind comics adapted into awful meritless swill like "Sin City".
A racist, misogynist, fascist man who thinks he's smarter than everyone and all women are prostitutes. He writes ugly stories, with ugly illustrations about ugly people doing ugly things for ugly reasons. Here is a review of one of his works. . If iirc, he's also the original creator behind comics adapted into awful meritless swill like "Sin City".
That is actually kind of a fair point. Some times there is this knee jerk reaction. Something that looks bad is placed in the this is bad pile before people have a chance to kind of take it all in and see there is something else going on.
Maddox was the guy who said he fantasized about having a business where people paid him to literally punch feces out of constipated old people. I can't really take him seriously outside of a comedic setting.
Melissia wrote: Maddox was the guy who said he fantasized about having a business where people paid him to literally punch feces out of constipated old people. I can't really take him seriously outside of a comedic setting.
And somethings we have knee jerk reactions in the other directions. So literal poop punching... ya
That is actually a fair point. Some times there is this knee jerk reaction. Something that looks bad is placed in the this is bad pile before people have a chance to kind of take it all in and see there is something else going on.
It mostly has to do with the typical SJW reaction of pick 1 thing despite having little to no interest in the subject, do zero to minimal research, ignore contradictory evidence, call detractors misogynists, stay offended forever, and repeat. Optional choices include pretending to be a victim, and claiming that white males don't get an opinion because they are privileged racist and sexist, despite that being privileged racist and sexist....
Oh man. Maddox, he's still a thing? I remember him from when 19-year-old me was embarrassed that 15-year-old me had found him hilarious at one point.
Melissia wrote: Maddox was the guy who said he fantasized about having a business where people paid him to literally punch feces out of constipated old people. I can't really take him seriously outside of a comedic setting.
If you believe any particular part of his video is worth discussing, then discuss it. Simply linking the video and saying "here watch this" makes for a very lame argument and not something anyone will respond to very seriously.
That is actually a fair point. Some times there is this knee jerk reaction. Something that looks bad is placed in the this is bad pile before people have a chance to kind of take it all in and see there is something else going on.
It mostly has to do with the typical SJW reaction of pick 1 thing despite having little to no interest in the subject, do zero to minimal research, ignore contradictory evidence, call detractors misogynists, stay offended forever, and repeat. Optional choices include pretending to be a victim, and claiming that white males don't get an opinion because they are privileged racist and sexist, despite that being privileged racist and sexist....
Well this is what I would call an awkward position. I kind of agreed with you and now I am regretting that. I mean that video did bring up a few nice and valid points and I brought up what I see as a problem with internet culture and our rapid option forming. Now you have spun that off into a slam on SJW. (A group I am apparently a part of according to some people on my steam list. )
Melissia wrote: If you believe any particular part of his video is worth discussing, then discuss it. Simply linking the video and saying "here watch this" makes for a very lame argument and not something anyone will respond to very seriously.
... Well I did...
I guess this is what I get for having a knee jerk reaction. I get to look kind of stupid for awhile.
Because the point he makes is a good one, what is more needs to be said, most superheroes look like they have bodypaint on.
The only point i disagree with is spandex, i guess they never heard off latex
Jehan-reznor wrote: Because the point he makes is a good one, what is more needs to be said, most superheroes look like they have bodypaint on.
The only point i disagree with is spandex, i guess they never heard off latex
Only if your superpower is not secreting sweat or skin oil. Spandex breathes.
Stop posturing Mel. He posted the video. Your unwillingness to watch it (and joining in in attacking the creator rather than his points) just shows how unwilling you are to listen to anyone who disagrees with you.
LordofHats wrote: Gonna be honest. The little hankerchiefs over the nipples just kill the ensemble. I give it a B for effort but in good conscience I can't rate it any higher than that
The Second one, sorta kind of, but batman was wearing a leotard at that time.
So her costume in that show was honestly better than the games 'interpretation'.
I agree. I was talking about the idea that this first design was scantily clad because “its who we want to be.” No, it is because it is what the audience is supposed to want to gaze at.
He makes some valid arguments, but also regularly misses the point. I mean, sure, the superheroes costume have always looked like painted on (well, except of course for the crotch area, of course, especially with male characters). Sure, Spiderman is certainly the one male character that would fit in many poses of female characters. However, missing the problem of basically every heroine ever being sexualized, much much more than the male ones, for instance? Also, I disagree with his assertion that the ass is not more emphasized in the spider-woman cover than on the spiderman cover.
Chongara wrote: A racist, misogynist, fascist man who thinks he's smarter than everyone and all women are prostitutes. He writes ugly stories, with ugly illustrations about ugly people doing ugly things for ugly reasons. Here is a review of one of his works. . If iirc, he's also the original creator behind comics adapted into awful meritless swill like "Sin City".
You know, I kind of like his work. I mean, for instance, 300 the comic was pretty cool as a description of two horrible, horrible faction beating the gak out of each other. The movie where it turned into the brave american supermen of Sparta (really, I expected them to start eating apple pie and play baseball at some point) fought against the evil middle-eastern invaders of evil (the portrayal of Iranians in the South Park parody of the movie was less offensive. By far. South Park. That is saying something.) I liked Sin City too, both the comic and the movie. Not saying his work does not have problematic aspects, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
If you believe there is something of value from the video-- or from the laughably irrelevant gif you just posted-- surely, you can make that argument yourself.
If you are incapable of doing so, then obviously there is nothing of value in them to begin with.
This isn't posturing. It is simply me deciding that posts consisting of "here respond to this" and then lazily linking a video or a gif of an incoherent, self-congratulatory rant in lieu of an argument... just aren't worth my time.
If you believe there is something of value from the video-- or from the laughably irrelevant gif you just posted-- surely, you can make that argument yourself.
If you are incapable of doing so, then obviously there is nothing of value in them to begin with.
This isn't posturing. It is simply me deciding that posts consisting of "here respond to this" and then lazily linking a video or a gif of an incoherent, self-congratulatory rant in lieu of an argument... just aren't worth my time.
Ever heard of the concept of debating in bad faith?
However, missing the problem of basically every heroine ever being sexualized, much much more than the male ones, for instance?
I must wonder how much research you put into this?
My bet is on zero.
Thats not true. She probably just looked up heroines and used the first result ^.^
You know ignoring Rogue, Storm, and several others.
Just because a costume is created that is worn by a character and it shows their boobs, even if it is inside their costume, does not mean they are sexualized otherwise, the hulk is sexualized.
Your argument on the whole matter is incorrect.
I.E. The most over sexualized characters happen in all mediums, But that does not mean every heroine is sexualized, very few are.
This whole idea that they are all sexualized I think is stupid.
Don't look at me-- I still like comic books, but I also still criticize them as well (unfortunately, some artists trace their poses for female characters from softcore porn, making them look like they're completely out of place compared to the male poses). Equally unfortunately, while, Frank Miller and Rob Liefeld are still gainfully employed in the comic book industry, I doubt it'll see much improvement.
I don't have that much of a problem with spandex in general, but you gotta admit, a skintight suit is easy to sexualize.
Melissia wrote: Don't look at me-- I still like comic books, but I also still criticize them as well (unfortunately, some artists trace their poses for female characters from softcore porn, making them look like they're completely out of place compared to the male poses). Unfortunately, while, Frank Miller and Rob Liefeld are still gainfully employed in the comic book industry, I doubt it'll see much improvement.
Agreed. They seem to like the hardcore big boobs message. Instead of I don't know.... A character, who is just normal, and is a girl, who doesn't have this perfect body.
I... reeeaaallllllyyy don't think that is the case, regarding the shoulders
Though certainly she has usually been depicted as having an attractive face, I think the main thing people like about her is how much of a badass she is.
It mostly has to do with the typical SJW reaction of pick 1 thing despite having little to no interest in the subject, do zero to minimal research, ignore contradictory evidence, call detractors misogynists, stay offended forever, and repeat. Optional choices include pretending to be a victim, and claiming that white males don't get an opinion because they are privileged racist and sexist, despite that being privileged racist and sexist....
You know, if you stopped asserting that people that disagree with you are SJWs and going 'we'll, SJWs don't do any research and they're stupid so I must be right'', you might have more meaningful discussions.
On the subject of the video, it's been a while since I watched it, and I'm in a bit of a rush at the moment, but does it address the fact that the guy that drew the cover is actually a softcore porn artist? And that the pose is almost an exact copy of another image of his, which consists of a woman in that position fiddling with herself to an audience? (I can't remember if it does or not, and I don't have the time nor inclination to sit through another ten minutes of Maddox ranting)
Edit: Managed to find the image in question, NSFW, obviously:
Melissia wrote: I... reeeaaallllllyyy don't think that is the case, regarding the shoulders
Though certainly she has usually been depicted as having an attractive face, I think the main thing people like about her is how much of a badass she is.
I'm telling you. It's all about the arm cannon. Samus, Megaman, Megatron, and even Freiza's mooks, all understood the startling power of the arm cannon
Perhaps they're where he hides the compelling parts of his character.
Melissia wrote: I... reeeaaallllllyyy don't think that is the case, regarding the shoulders
Though certainly she has usually been depicted as having an attractive face, I think the main thing people like about her is how much of a badass she is.
I'm telling you. It's all about the arm cannon. Samus, Megaman, Megatron, and even Freiza's mooks, all understood the startling power of the arm cannon
Perhaps they're where he hides the compelling parts of his character.
Melissia wrote: I... reeeaaallllllyyy don't think that is the case, regarding the shoulders
Though certainly she has usually been depicted as having an attractive face, I think the main thing people like about her is how much of a badass she is.
I'm telling you. It's all about the arm cannon. Samus, Megaman, Megatron, and even Freiza's mooks, all understood the startling power of the arm cannon
Perhaps they're where he hides the compelling parts of his character.
I think the crux of his (maddox) argument is that the cover is 'optional', the artist is famous for provocative imagery of women and men, and Spiderman is shown is very similar poses all the time. I don't think there is anything wrong with what he said, but then he was arguing against people who have quite an extreme and badly thought out position. That kind of leads us into an argument from fallacy. Just because random people on the internet have stupid opinions that they can't defend, doesn't mean sexism doesn't exist or there aren't double standards for men and women.
I would also like to add an artist perspective on this. I frequent a few art forums, and have a special interest in comic book art (I even won a competition once). If you hang out in these places, It quickly becomes obvious that comic book artists have a preoccupation with anatomy. I've got three or four books myself just on drawing hands. So I think for a lot of artists, drawing skintight costumes is how they express all that hard won anatomical knowledge. Being able to draw someone who looks beautiful and sexy from imagination takes a lot of skill to do consistently, drawing ugly deformed people is very easy by contrast. So I think there might be other factors at work here besides sexism.
Artists will also tend to exaggerate certain characteristics to make the illusion more convincing. This is one of the reasons women are often drawn with high heels and their butts sticking out with the back arching inwards. It looks feminine, and the artists job is to mediate that the character is female. In truth human men and women look very alike. Aliens would have trouble telling us apart, in the same way we have trouble telling dogs or cats apart. We find it easy, but then we're human and we're hyper sensitive to the subtle differences in bone structure. In drawings these differences aren't as apparent unless they are exaggerated. This is one of the reasons why caricatures seem to look so like the people they represent, and yet few people could be identified from their silhouette (their true shape).
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: Not saying his work does not have problematic aspects, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Excellent point. Someone once asked me why I hate Mark Millar so much. I told them I had no reason to hate Mark Millar because he's just a hack. But I do hate Frank Miller and Alan Moore because those guys are (or at least were) extremely talented. They influenced comics in a terrible way that we are still trying to overcome but you have to admit that they were able to do so because they were so talented.
sirlynchmob wrote: women seem to hate other women who are cuter than themselves. It's not about the game characters, it's about the feminist and their low self esteem.
This is a very interesting theory. So uh um, I'm like a dude. Like legit not a lady at all, body hair, shorter lifespan, the whole 9. Heck I'm like straight dude, in more appropriate contexts I actually rather enjoy sexualized images of women. How do you account for objection to the matter and the generally feminist-informed views I'm taking in this thread.
sirlynchmob wrote: women seem to hate other women who are cuter than themselves. It's not about the game characters, it's about the feminist and their low self esteem.
This is a very interesting theory. So uh um, I'm like a dude. Like legit not a lady at all, body hair, shorter lifespan, the whole 9. Heck I'm like straight dude, in more appropriate contexts I actually rather enjoy sexualized images of women. How do you account for objection to the matter and the generally feminist-informed views I'm taking in this thread.
Only you can answer those questions. their your views, how did you come by them?
But on a guess I'd say 'men are from mars' has the answer. A women voiced a problem, and as a man your instinct is to fix the problem.
1. Beauty
You don’t have to believe it to be true. If the women around you think you’re prettier than them, your fate is sealed. The prettier you are, the more threatened the women around you will feel. Your mere presence makes them feel like an ogre standing next to you.
talk to your significant other and ask her what she thinks of other women.
sirlynchmob wrote: women seem to hate other women who are cuter than themselves. It's not about the game characters, it's about the feminist and their low self esteem.
This is a very interesting theory. So uh um, I'm like a dude. Like legit not a lady at all, body hair, shorter lifespan, the whole 9. Heck I'm like straight dude, in more appropriate contexts I actually rather enjoy sexualized images of women. How do you account for objection to the matter and the generally feminist-informed views I'm taking in this thread.
Only you can answer those questions. their your views, how did you come by them?
sirlynchmob, I am disappoint. You made an assertion I provided a counter-example, now account for it. If the stink about game characters isn't about game characters but uggos being totes jelly of how girlfriend here be rockin ...whatever... this... is..., why am I raising a stink?
Melissia wrote: I... reeeaaallllllyyy don't think that is the case, regarding the shoulders
Though certainly she has usually been depicted as having an attractive face, I think the main thing people like about her is how much of a badass she is.
I'm telling you. It's all about the arm cannon. Samus, Megaman, Megatron, and even Freiza's mooks, all understood the startling power of the arm cannon
Perhaps they're where he hides the compelling parts of his character.
Shots fired. (But, were they from an arm cannon
It's really weird how the arm cannon is almost universally regarded as badass.
sirlynchmob wrote: women seem to hate other women who are cuter than themselves. It's not about the game characters, it's about the feminist and their low self esteem.
This is a very interesting theory. So uh um, I'm like a dude. Like legit not a lady at all, body hair, shorter lifespan, the whole 9. Heck I'm like straight dude, in more appropriate contexts I actually rather enjoy sexualized images of women. How do you account for objection to the matter and the generally feminist-informed views I'm taking in this thread.
Only you can answer those questions. their your views, how did you come by them?
sirlynchmob, I am disappoint. You made an assertion I provided a counter-example, now account for it. If the stink about game characters isn't about game characters but uggos being totes jelly of how girlfriend here be rockin ...whatever... this... is..., why am I raising a stink?
Spoiler:
I don't vagina.
You're not an example though, you're merely a data point on a study. in psychology there is no one answer that applies to everyone, they do the study and deal with the largest population. There are always outliers, and odd data points. So when you talk about an individual, you need to discuss the individual.
sirlynchmob wrote: women seem to hate other women who are cuter than themselves. It's not about the game characters, it's about the feminist and their low self esteem.
This is a very interesting theory. So uh um, I'm like a dude. Like legit not a lady at all, body hair, shorter lifespan, the whole 9. Heck I'm like straight dude, in more appropriate contexts I actually rather enjoy sexualized images of women. How do you account for objection to the matter and the generally feminist-informed views I'm taking in this thread.
Only you can answer those questions. their your views, how did you come by them?
sirlynchmob, I am disappoint. You made an assertion I provided a counter-example, now account for it. If the stink about game characters isn't about game characters but uggos being totes jelly of how girlfriend here be rockin ...whatever... this... is..., why am I raising a stink?
Spoiler:
I don't vagina.
Ummm wow. So thats scantly cladded O.o
Kind of skanky. Hows that useful in combat at all.
Dude. I'm not part of study, there is no study going on here. You made a very distinct claim and I quote you here:
women seem to hate other women who are cuter than themselves. It's not about the game characters, it's about the feminist and their low self esteem.
You've asserted that the issue at hand is that women with low self-esteem are making a stink because of that they think they game characters are prettier than they are. That's a claim. That's a claim that you made.
sirlynchmob wrote: If you draw a girl with boobs, she's sexualized, if you draw a character with bigger boobs than the average woman she's oversexualized.
This could be the most extreme bad faith argument ITT and that's saying something given AsherianCommand's many efforts yesterday.
For good faith participants/readers:
Sexualization is not measured in cup size any more than it is measured in square inches of exposed skin. It looks like the first step to understanding in this case is dropping the notion that we're going to figure out sexism with a tape measure.
To begin with, persons are sexual. This includes visually. We display sexual characteristics. Sexualization is emphasizing those characteristics. There is nothing inherently wrong with sexualization. Sexualization is often subverted, however, to dehumanize. Terms like "hypersexualization" most often refer to extreme cases of such dehumanization.
Kind of skanky. Hows that useful in combat at all.
And the odd thing is that the lack of clothes bother people more than the fact that those wings would make flight impossible and that staff weapon is preposterous. Loin clothes on sentient flying creatures is also a fantastic choice. Of course, then there's the abdominal area. I mean, she's this torso:
Spoiler:
Combined with every other part of this:
Spoiler:
Don't get me wrong, the lack of clothes is stupid, but the whole thing is an utterly ridiculous caricature of a female, a human being, martial combat, and physics in general.
I really have to struggle to get offended by what the thing is wearing, simply because the rest of it is completely outrageously bad. The most redeeming part about it is the name given to the character in obvious reference toward the hilarity of the fact that a model looking like that made it into the actual game.
Kind of skanky. Hows that useful in combat at all.
And the odd thing is that the lack of clothes bother people more than the fact that those wings would make flight impossible and that staff weapon is preposterous. Loin clothes on sentient flying creatures is also a fantastic choice. Of course, then there's the abdominal area. I mean, she's this torso:
Spoiler:
Combined with every other part of this:
Spoiler:
Don't get me wrong, the lack of clothes is stupid, but the whole thing is an utterly ridiculous caricature of a female, a human being, martial combat, and physics in general.
I really have to struggle to get offended by what the thing is wearing, simply because the rest of it is completely outrageously bad. The most redeeming part about it is the name given to the character in obvious reference toward the hilarity of the fact that a model looking like that made it into the actual game.
Considering how bad the design is in general I agree.
But considering how bad certain designs are that is not the worst design I've seen :/
I.E look up the prince of persia warrior within female bosses.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: However, missing the problem of basically every heroine ever being sexualized, much much more than the male ones, for instance?
I must wonder how much research you put into this?
My bet is on zero.
Research? Of course I did not do research, that sounds an awful lot like work. What I did, though, is read comic books. Because even though they are not my favorite pastime, I still like it. I mean, I just said I enjoyed Frank Miller's work, but that does not seem to fit your narrative that only evil people with an agenda that hates comic books and video game criticize how female character are represented in these mediums, so you ignored it…
Asherian Command wrote: Thats not true. She probably just looked up heroines and used the first result ^.^
Alice Liddell. And yes, she is not sexualized. And yes, I was making hyperbole, saying “every” instead of “almost every”, and yes, comic books and video games are very different medium.
Melissia wrote: Actually most of the time Superman doesn't have pouches.
I was mostly commenting about what is known by fans as Bearded Idiot, a superman-like hobo in "Superman: At Earth's End".
You know.
Spoiler:
... that guy.
Seems like a fun read.
Goliath wrote: And that the pose is almost an exact copy of another image of his, which consists of a woman in that position fiddling with herself to an audience?
It is not. Just like her pose is not the same as the pose of spiderman he uses. Really, spiderwoman is climbing at the top of a building. Her right leg is still below the roof. Just put slightly less emphasis on her butt and the cover will be just fine. The other image has the character actually putting her ass in the air to expose herself, and she is making a suggestive gesture with her finger in her mouth. I think this cover has been a bit blown out of proportion, because of the author.
sirlynchmob wrote: Iwomen seem to hate other women who are cuter than themselves. It's not about the game characters, it's about the feminist and their low self esteem.
Woah, classy. I wonder how long it will take before you start explaining that men that share this concern are actually all homosexuals.
Yeah, the boyscout superman never seemed that much interesting to me.
But it is the DCvel, so those are not characters, just franchise. So, some Supermen can still be awesome .
But more than them I hate all the world's companies - be it video game companies or comic companies or any other entertainment distributors.
Why? Because the most holy thing to them is their PR image, and NOT the art that they produce and the identity of it.
If SJWs stir up enough of the consumer crowd, companies are the first to cave in and yield to their demands, censoring, redrawing and redesigning to make sure they dont end up on the news.
For them revenue and profit margins are always more important than artistic license.
But they are incredibly shortsighted, because in their attempt to ward off the wrath of SJWs, they lose customers in the long run.
I'm not saying blatant sexist imagery is a great thing, but oftentimes in the right context it can be seen as a distinct artform.
And the 80s was full of it. What I'm trying to say is that SJWs and parents have irrevocably destroyed an art style in their mad fight for "justice".
What is it with this irrational hatred of anyone who says anything critical about games, gamers, or game developers, and the labeling of them as "SJW", this nebulous thing that has no real meaning other than "a person who said something I don't like"?
Yes, I outright said it. Your dislike is irrational. You're asserting that they're losing customers, but there's no evidence of that.
Asherian Command wrote: Not really. See I am talking about clothing wise no, Posing wise yes.
You are drawing a lot of strange distinction. I never spoke about clothing specifically. I just said almost every female character in comics were sexualized.
I never referenced the writer specifically either, it seems to me.
Are you getting all defensive because you feel like I am actually attacking you on things you have no control on?
That actually looks like a more interesting Superman than Superman. I'll have to look that one up.
It's not, it's really horrible writing. Here's a good summary of the garbage that is Superman: At Earth's End. A quick text summary though, is that it's a comic with stupid character designs (red "biomech android" robots with chicken-hats, for example), ridiculous preachy "your refusal to kill gets you nowhere!" bullgak, inconsistent artwork/artwork inconsistent with the narrative (like claiming a place is heavily polluted when the air looks pristine and there's a clear sky and there's no trash anywhere to be seen), hilarious historical inaccuracies (Such as claiming the USA existed during the stone age), inconsistent power levels for superman (claiming that a single fight which he won handily without taking any damage will sap all his strength leaving him at normal human strength), etc etc etc. And that's all WITHOUT taking in to account any consideration for the inconsistencies it has with plot and story with previous Superman stories-- it has no such consistency whatsoever (but we can probably let that slide since it's an ElseWorlds story). Also, it seems to pretend that women don't exist in the future? I dont' even know.
While true, it's not a bad thing. Certainly nearly all male characters in comics are sexualized as well and this does not prevent them from sometimes being written as people. The issue is not sexualization but rather sexualization without or in lieu of characterization as a person.
Well, I think it is pretty clear that we have quite different tastes anyway. I enjoyed Sin City, for instance .
Melissia wrote: A quick text summary though, is that it's a comic with stupid character designs (red "biomech android" robots with chicken-hats, for example), ridiculous preachy "your refusal to kill gets you nowhere!" bullgak, inconsistent artwork/artwork inconsistent with the narrative (like claiming a place is heavily polluted when the air looks pristine and there's a clear sky and there's no trash anywhere to be seen), hilarious historical inaccuracies (Such as claiming the USA existed during the stone age), inconsistent power levels for superman (claiming that a single fight which he won handily without taking any damage will sap all his strength leaving him at normal human strength), etc etc etc. And that's all WITHOUT taking in to account any consideration for the inconsistencies it has with plot and story with previous Superman stories-- it has no such consistency whatsoever (but we can probably let that slide since it's an ElseWorlds story). Also, it seems to pretend that women don't exist in the future? I dont' even know.
The part I put in italics could actually be advantages. You know, I am the kind of guy that have read the entire Hokuto No Ken manga, right ? And I love movie like Trauma's and Sushi Typhoon's ?
Manchu wrote: [Certainly nearly all male characters in comics are sexualized as well
I totally and wholeheartedly disagree.
I have posted on Dakka some examples of what I consider sexualized male character, if you have not seen it I can post it again. It is much more than just being muscled and nude/in spandex.
Melissia wrote: It's not, it's really horrible writing. Here's a good summary of the garbage that is Superman: At Earth's End. A quick text summary though, is that it's a comic with stupid character designs (red "biomech android" robots with chicken-hats, for example), ridiculous preachy "your refusal to kill gets you nowhere!" bullgak, inconsistent artwork/artwork inconsistent with the narrative (like claiming a place is heavily polluted when the air looks pristine and there's a clear sky and there's no trash anywhere to be seen), hilarious historical inaccuracies (Such as claiming the USA existed during the stone age), inconsistent power levels for superman (claiming that a single fight which he won handily without taking any damage will sap all his strength leaving him at normal human strength), etc etc etc. And that's all WITHOUT taking in to account any consideration for the inconsistencies it has with plot and story with previous Superman stories-- it has no such consistency whatsoever (but we can probably let that slide since it's an ElseWorlds story). Also, it seems to pretend that women don't exist in the future? I dont' even know.
It's... just a bad thing that is also bad.
I'll have to watch the review later when I have a chance. I have a pretty strong tolerance for bad writing in comics though. I don't expect everything to be Watchmen.
What you mention doesn't sound very reassuring though.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: I have posted on Dakka some examples of what I consider sexualized male character, if you have not seen it I can post it again. It is much more than just being muscled and nude/in spandex.
I think you are playing fast and loose with the word sexualized and the concept of sexualization, which leads to a puritanical, non-feminist appraisal of media.
Dude. I'm not part of study, there is no study going on here. You made a very distinct claim and I quote you here:
women seem to hate other women who are cuter than themselves. It's not about the game characters, it's about the feminist and their low self esteem.
You've asserted that the issue at hand is that women with low self-esteem are making a stink because of that they think they game characters are prettier than they are. That's a claim. That's a claim that you made.
Yes and?
In my professional opinion this is what is going on. It also goes along with 'men are from mars' observations that women point out their problems to gain empathy, and have no desire for a actual solution to their problem. That is exactly what I've seen lately from quinn, anitta and their followers, lots of complaining, and no solutions being offered.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: Does that make me a puritan non-feminist? That is one of the strangest thing I heard.
Puritanical in that you seem to think the sexual aspect of a character is shameful and non-feminist in that you seem to believe that sexualization by itself is the problem.
This is sexualization:
Spoiler:
Notice how his male secondary sexual characteristics are emphasized.
Whether a particular instance of sexualization is problematic requires more than glancing at a picture. This is because sexualization itself is not the problem.
sirlynchmob wrote: In my professional opinion this is what is going on. It also goes along with 'men are from mars' observations that women point out their problems to gain empathy, and have no desire for a actual solution to their problem. That is exactly what I've seen lately from quinn, anitta and their followers, lots of complaining, and no solutions being offered.
That is pretty much it in a nutshell.
Some people point out what they claim is a glaring flaw / unfairness in the world.
The guys look and think "A valid point, how can we fix it?".
Frustration sets in when attempts at discussing means of correcting the situation is greeted with "You do not understand this at all do you?".
The real question may be more like "How would you feel if treated like this? Do you feel some sympathy for this circumstance? Come join the cause."
Now sounding like a guy: How about we skip the let us all hold hands together part and expend a bit of personal activism rather than "groupthink".
I am more than happy to check-in with the community and see if some interesting methods of being heard are voiced, but I do not need their approval or have a few rounds of catching each other as we fall.
The problem I have with how women are represented in games?
When they are not presented as interesting people. Then again, that could apply to men as well, funny that.
Talizvar wrote: The guys look and think "A valid point, how can we fix it?".
More like, a bunch of men watch Sarkeesian's videos and think "that nasty whore needs to be raped and killed and her family should be murdered and she is a liar and a thief etc etc etc." Let's not judge men altogether please.
I do not agree. I think neither the pose nor the build are neither sexy nor sexualized. I think this, however, is sexualized. And this too. And that. And I also believe there is nothing wrong or shameful about those images either. I think what is wrong is that we do not see more of them and less image of not sexualized female characters.
Melissia wrote: SirLynchMob's sexist generalizations are as irrelevant as they are unfounded, and shouldn't be the basis for a discussion here.
Unfounded? really? you mean based on a well establish and respected book, by a author with a PHD and numerous other studies.
Ya we should totally focus on the sexist generalizations from feminists that are irrelevant, unfounded, and have no research to support their opinions.
You're offering your own personal taste in erotica rather than a definition of sexualization.
Sexualization is not necessarily overtly erotic. It's just a matter of emphasizing sexual characteristics.
Lots of male characters are sexualized but even if this was not the case, the problem would not be that fewer male characters are sexualized than female ones.
The problem is when female characters exist solely or primarily for the sake of being sexualized.
Manchu wrote: Sexualization is not necessarily overtly erotic. It's just a matter of emphasizing sexual characteristics.
What sexual characteristics are emphasized in your drawing of Superman? His muscles? Certainly not his nipples, in any case. Where do you base your definition of sexualization from? [edit]Okay, after reading Chongara's post I understand your definition better. For you sexualization is not about emphasizing the characteristic that makes someone sexually attractive but emphasizing the characteristics of being male/female. I never heard anyone using it before and it seems a very strange definition to me. Both Wikipedia and the Wiktionnary disagree with you. Do you have anything to back your weird definition?
Manchu wrote: Lots of male characters are sexualized but even if this was not the case, the problem would not be that fewer male characters are sexualized than female ones.
The problem is when female characters exist solely or primarily for the sake of being sexualized.
I think if the huge majority of female characters are sexualized and only a really tiny minority of male characters are, this is a problem in and by itself. What you are describing is another problem. And even then, I do not think this is a problem unless it happens a lot, or only happens to female characters. I mean, you told me how I had a puritan viewpoint, but you are now basically telling me that you want to end pinups ?
You're offering your own personal taste in erotica rather than a definition of sexualization.
Sexualization is not necessarily overtly erotic. It's just a matter of emphasizing sexual characteristics.
Lots of male characters are sexualized but even if this was not the case, the problem would not be that fewer male characters are sexualized than female ones.
The problem is when female characters exist solely or primarily for the sake of being sexualized.
Most definitions of sexualization I've heard seem to fall closer to Hybrid's than yours. That is making a character sexual in the sense of making them project sexuality or sexual desirability, not strictly emphasizing traits they happen to have because of their sex, though doing so is almost always a part of sexualization. I mean at least in feminist-ish leaning discussions of media that's how I've seen it use.
I'm not sure the distinction is terribly important to make though. At least in the context of this discussion.
Talizvar wrote: The guys look and think "A valid point, how can we fix it?".
More like, a bunch of men watch Sarkeesian's videos and think "that nasty whore needs to be raped and killed and her family should be murdered and she is a liar and a thief etc etc etc." Let's not judge men altogether please.
Ah, just no winning with generalizations.
I could narrow down the categories: those who like to help? Have some measure of empathy? Happen to like problem solving?
The mindset you rattled off quite well would be just an insane thing to delve into.
Nasty: invalid points raised
Whore: objectify
Raped: to conquer
Killed: silence opposition
Family murdered: possible source of opinions and to cause pain
Liar: invalidate
Thief: no ownership
I swear you copy-pasted some post at 4chan.
We are all different people, who or what we are I find has little meaning on who has the moral high ground.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: I think if the huge majority of female characters are sexualized and only a really tiny minority of male characters are, this is a problem in and by itself.
Why so?
I'd say imbalance is just a symptom. And not really a worrying one in itself.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: I mean, you told me how I had a puritan viewpoint, but you are now basically telling me that you want to end pinups?
You'll have to explain how you got that out of anything I said. I thought we were talking about characters in video games and comic books rather than purely pornographic images.
Melissia wrote: Manchu basically copied/paraphrased it from the initial responses people made to Sarkeesian's first video on youtube before she shut off comments.
And what people are still saying about her with apparently increasing intensity.
Melissia wrote: Manchu basically copied/paraphrased it from the initial responses people made to Sarkeesian's first video on youtube before she shut off comments.
Question who here actual thinks her evidence is viable?
I personally don't
Especially when she started talking about the damsel in distress bit. Because of a lot of things. I've had it explained to me, I watched the video.
I hated them with a fiery passion. Her opinion not her. She lists things and makes them out to be bad, that it disempowers women, that it gives women a bad name. While willfully ignoring MANY many counter arguments such as Ico and Shadow Of the Colossus .(One she used as an example of a Damsel of Distress)
She says that in Ico the Woman is in distress. Yet in the game there is no inclanation of any sexual or willful want for her as a prize. Infact the two only hold hands. The character has a deep connection to the character, and wants to protect them. Why is that seen as sexist? Ico is a great game, that has a lot of grown up material in it.
There are tons of games where women are protected by their spouses, by their loved one,
Is that demeaning? Is being protected demeaning? Would you like the roles reversed? Because let me tell you that happens quite often.
Zelda, Shadow of The Colossus, and Halo. Three examples. RIGHT THERE!
Growth of body hair, including underarm, abdominal, chest hair and pubic hair. Loss of scalp hair due to androgenic alopecia can also occur. Greater mass of thigh muscles in front of the femur, rather than behind it as is typical in mature females Growth of facial hair Enlargement of larynx (Adam's apple) and deepening of voice Increased stature; adult males are taller than adult females, on average Heavier skull and bone structure Increased muscle mass and strength Larger hands, feet and nose than women, prepubescent boys, and girls Larger bodies Square face Small waist, but wider than females Broadening of shoulders and chest; shoulders wider than hips Increased secretions of oil and sweat glands, often causing acne and body odor Coarsening or rigidity of skin texture due to less subcutaneous fat Higher waist-to-hip ratio than prepubescent or adult females or prepubescent males, on average Lower bodyfat percentage than prepubescent or adult females or prepubescent males, on average Enlargement (growth) of the penis
So very Superman! Anyhow, I edited my message. Your definition of sexualization is a very damn weird one that I have never seen anyone else using. Putting emphasis on “Increased secretions of oil and sweat glands, often causing acne and body odor” is sexualizing? Seriously?
Because of the unfortunate implications (and the lack of variety).
Manchu wrote: You'll have to explain how you got that out of anything I said.
A pinup is, as far as I can tell, a character who exists solely for the sake of being sexualized. Using the definition I share with the wikis, and the rest of the world.
Manchu wrote: I thought we were talking about characters in video games and comic books rather than pornography.
So very Superman! Anyhow, I edited my message. Your definition of sexualization is a very damn weird one that I have never seen anyone else using. Putting emphasis on “Increased secretions of oil and sweat glands, often causing acne and body odor” is sexualizing? Seriously?
A few of the girls I know can confirm this is part of the female arousal bit. ITs really weird. IT happens. Its why a majority of women love horses. They are big and strong, and extremely muscular.
Asherian Command wrote: She says that in Ico the Woman is in distress. Yet in the game there is no inclanation of any sexual or willful want for her as a prize.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with being a Damsel in distress.
Is the female character helpless and the male character has to save her? Yes. Is that a problem? Not if it happens in one game. But if it happens this way rather than a male character that is helpless and needs a female character to save him 99,99% of the time, it gives the unfortunate implication that women are impotent and need men to save them.
You really need to not think in term of one game, but in term of broader trends.
Asherian Command wrote: Especially when she started talking about the damsel in distress bit.
Her "damsel in distress" videos were factually correct, and actually quite fair and gentle to the games being discussed.
Asherian Command wrote: While willfully ignoring MANY many counter arguments such as Ico and Shadow Of the Colossus.
Going to cut you off here and say that few random, isolated counter-examples do not disprove a trend. And just because a game is a good game does not mean it must also be perfect. No game is beyond criticism, not even the best game ever made, Psychonauts.
She indicated that what she would like (and I agree with her in this instance) is less reliance on the "damsel" trope to begin with, but especially when it comes to using women as "damsels".
On its own, the fact that Ico had the girl be the one being rescued is perfectly fine. It only becomes a problem when there is a greater trend which promotes the idea that women are mostly suitable to be "damsels" and other supporting roles, and not suitable to be active and protagonist roles.
And there is such a trend, to a lesser extent these days sure, but it still exists even today. Halo is in fact a good example of this, with Cortana.
Welcome to our multi-part video series exploring the roles and representations of women in video games. This project will examine the tropes, plot devices and patterns most commonly associated with women in gaming from a systemic, big picture perspective.
This series will include critical analysis of many beloved games and characters, but remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects.
So without further ado let’s jump right in to the Damsel in Distress.
Let’s start with a story of a game that no one ever got to play.
Back in 1999 game developer RARE was hard at work on a new original title for the Nintendo 64 called “Dinosaur Planet”. The game was to star a 16 year old hero named Krystal as one of the two playable protagonists. She was tasked with traveling through time, fighting prehistoric monsters with her magical staff and saving the world. She was strong, she was capable and she was heroic.
Clip- Dinosaur Planet Trailer Footage
And who might you be, animal girl?
My name is Krystal!
Pretty cool right? Well it would have been, except the game never got released. As development on the project neared completion, legendary game-designer Shigeru Miyamoto joked about how he thought it should be the 3rd installment in his Star Fox franchise instead. Over the next two years he and Nintendo did just that. They re-wrote and re-designed the game, and released it as Star Fox Adventures for the Game Cube in 2002.
Clip- Star Fox Adventures
In this revamped version the would-be protagonist Krystal has been transformed into a damsel in distress and spends the vast majority of the game trapped inside a crystal prison, waiting to be rescued by the game’s new hero Fox McCloud.
The in-game action sequences that had originally been built for Krystal were converted to feature Fox instead. Krystal is given a skimpier more sexualized outfit.
Clip- Star Fox Adventures
Wow. She’s beautiful! What am I doing?!
And yes, that is cheesy saxophone music playing to make sure it “crystal clear” that she is now an object of desire even while in suspended animation – to add insult to injury Fox is now using her magic staff to fight his way through the game to save her.
Clip- Star Fox Adventures
The tale of how Krystal went from protagonist of her own epic adventure to passive victim in someone else’s game illustrates how the Damsel in Distress trope disempowers female characters and robs them of the chance to be heroes in their own rite.
The term “damsel in distress” is a translation of the French “demoiselle en détresse”. Demoiselle simply means “young lady” while détresse means roughly “Anxiety or despair caused by a sense of abandonment, helplessness or danger.”
As a trope the damsel in distress is a plot device in which a female character is placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her own and must be rescued by a male character, usually providing a core incentive or motivation for the protagonist’s quest.
In video games this is most often accomplished via kidnapping but it can also take the form of petrification or demon possession for example.
Traditionally the woman in distress is a family member or a love interest of the hero; princesses, wives, girlfriends and sisters are all commonly used to fill the role.
Of course the Damsel in Distress predates the invention of video games by several thousand years. The trope can be traced back to ancient greek mythology with the tale of Perseus.
According to the myth, Andromeda is about to be devoured by a sea monster after being chained naked to a rock as a human sacrifice. Perseus slays the beast, rescues the princess and then claims her as his wife.
In the Middle Ages the Damsel in Distress was a common feature in many medieval songs, legends and fairy tales. The saving of a defenseless woman was often portrayed as the raison d’être – or reason for existence – in romance tales or poems of the era involving a ‘Knight-errant’ the wandering knight adventuring to prove his chivalry, prowess and virtue.
At the turn of the 20th century, victimized young women become the cliche of choice for the nascent American film industry as it provided an easy and sensational plot device for the silver screen. A famous early example is the 1913 Keystone Kops short “Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life” which features the now iconic scene of a woman being tied to the railroad tracks by an evil mustache twirling villain.
Clip- Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life
Around the same time, the motif of a giant monkey carrying away a screaming woman began to gain widespread popularity in media of all kinds. Notably, Tarzan’s love interest Jane is captured by a brutish primate in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 pulp-adventure “Tarzan and the Apes”. In 1930, Walt Disney used the meme in an early Mickey Mouse cartoon called “The Gorilla Mystery”.
Clip- The Gorilla Mystery
The imagery was even exploited by the US Military in this recruitment poster for World War I.
But it was in 1933 that two things happened which, 50 years later, would set the stage for the Damsel in Distress trope to become a foundational element in video games as a medium. First, Paramount Pictures introduced their animated series “Popeye the Sailor” to cinema audiences.
The formula for most shorts involves Popeye rescuing a kidnapped Olive Oyl.
Clip- Popeye the Sailor
marry me?!
Oh popeye, help!
Second, in March of that year, RKO Pictures released their groundbreaking hit film “King Kong” in which a giant ape abducts a young woman and is eventually killed while trying to keep possession of her.
Clip- King Kong
[Screams]
Fast forward to 1981 when a Japanese company named Nintendo entrusted a young designer named Shigeru Miyamoto with the task of creating a new arcade game for the American market.
Originally, the project was conceived of as a game starring Popeye the Sailor, but when Nintendo wasn’t able to secure the rights, Miyamoto created his own characters to fill the void, heavily influenced by the movie, King Kong.
Clip- Donkey Kong
The game’s hero “Jump Man” is tasked with rescuing a damsel, named “The Lady” after she is carried off by a giant ape. In later versions she is renamed “Pauline”.
Although Donkey Kong is perhaps the most famous early arcade game to feature the Damsel in Distress it wasn’t the first time Miyamoto employed the trope. Two years earlier, he had a hand in designing a 1979 arcade game called Sheriff.
Clip- Sheriff
In it a vague female-shaped collection of pixels, referred to as “The Beauty”, must be rescued from a pack of bandits. The hero is then rewarded with a “smooch of victory” for his bravery in the end.
A few years later Miyamoto recycled his Donkey Kong character designs; Pauline became the template for a new damsel named Princess Toadstool and “Jump Man” became a certain very famous plumber.
Clip- Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Save Princess Peach
[Screams]
Princess Peach is in many ways the quintessential “stock character” version of the Damsel in Distress. The ill-fated princess appears in 14 games of the core Super Mario Brothers platformer games and she’s kidnapped in 13 of them.
Clip- Mario 25th Anniversary Video
The North American release of Super Mario Brothers 2 in 1988 remains the only game in the core series in where Peach is not kidnapped and also the only game where she is a playable character. Though it should be noted it wasn’t originally created to be a Mario game at all. The game was originally released in Japan under a completely different title called Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic which roughly translates to “Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic”.
Clip: Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic Japanese ad- [Japanese Dialogue]
Nintendo of America thought that the original Japanese release of Super Mario Brothers 2 was too difficult and too similar to the first game so they re-skinned and re-designed Doki Doki Panic to star Mario and Luigi instead.
Clip – Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic
Clip- Super Mario Bros. 2
However the Japanese game already had 4 playable characters, so the designers opted to include Toad and the Princess to fill the two remaining slots, building directly on top of the older pre-existing character models. So really, if we’re honest, Peach is kinda, accidently playable in this one.
Clip- Super Mario Bros 2
Still, she had the awesome ability to float for short distances, which came in really handy especially in the ice levels.
Sadly Peach has never been a playable character again in the franchise. Even with newer games that feature 4 player options, like New Super Mario Brothers Wii and Wii U, the Princess is still excluded from the action. She’s been replaced with another Toad instead as to allow Nintendo to force her back into the damsel role again and again.
Clip- New Super Mario Bros U
Peach does of course appear in many spin-offs such as the Mario Party, Mario Sports and Mario Kart series as well as the Super Smash Brothers Nintendo Universe crossover fighting games. However all of these spins-offs fall well outside the core Super Mario series of platformers. She is the star of only one adventure and we will get to that a little later.
One way to think about Damsel’d characters is via what’s called the subject/object dichotomy. In the simplest terms, subjects act and objects are acted upon. The subject is the protagonist, one the story is centered on and the one doing most of the action. In video games this is almost always the main playable character and the one from whose perspective most of the story is seen.
So the damsel trope typically makes men the “subject” of the narratives while relegating women to the “object”. This is a form of objectification because as objects, damsel’ed women are being acted upon, most often becoming or reduced to a prize to be won, a treasure to be found or a goal to be achieved.
The brief intro sequence accompanying many classic arcade games tends to reinforce the framing of women as a possession that’s been stolen from the protagonist.
Clip- Montage
The hero’s fight to retrieve his stolen property then provides lazy justification for the actual gameplay.
At its heart the damsel trope is not really about women at all, she simply becomes the central object of a competition between men (at least in the traditional incarnations). I’ve heard it said that “In the game of patriarchy women are not the opposing team, they are the ball.” So for example, we can think of the Super Mario franchise as a grand game being played between Mario and Bowser. And Princess Peach’s role is essentially that of the ball.
Clip: Super Mario Galaxy 2
Princess Peach: Mario!
The two men are tossing her back and forth over the course of the main series, each trying to keep and take possession of the damsel-ball.
Clip- Mario Sports Mix
Even though Nintendo certainly didn’t invent the Damsel in Distress, the popularity of their “save the princess” formula essentially set the standard for the industry. The trope quickly became the go-to motivational hook for developers as it provided an easy way to tap into adolescent male power fantasies in order to sell more games to young straight boys and men.
Clip- Montage
Help me! Help me! Help me! Save me! Help! Please help me please!
Throughout the 80s and 90s the trope became so prevalent that it would be nearly impossible to mention them all. There are literally hundreds of examples showing up in platformers, side scrolling beat-em ups, first person shooters and role-playing games alike.
Clip- Montage
Many of these games drew inspiration from the historical myths that we discussed earlier. Medieval legends, Greek mythology and Arabic folk tales were all popular themes.
Let’s take a quick moment to clear up some common misconceptions about this trope. As a plot device the damsel in distress is often grouped with other separate tropes: including the designated victim, the heroic rescue and the smooch of victory. However it’s important to remember that these associated conventions are not necessarily a part of the damsel in distress trope itself.
So the woman in question may or may not play the victim role for the entire game or series while our brave hero may or may not even be successful in his rescue attempt. All that is really required to fulfill the damsel in distress trope is for a female character to be reduced to a state of helplessness from which she requires rescuing by a typically male hero for the benefit of his story arc.
This brings us to the other famous Nintendo Princess. In 1986 Shigeru Miyamoto doubled down on his Damsel in Distress formula with the NES release of The Legend of Zelda. This was the first in what would become one of the most beloved action adventure game franchises of all time.
Clip- Zelda 2 The Adventure of Link Ad ! The legend of Zela continues
Rescue the princess! Zelda! Zelda! Zelda 2 The Adventure of Link! Nintendo! Now you’re playing with power!
Over the course of more than a dozen games, spanning a quarter century, all of the incarnations of Princess Zelda have been kidnapped, cursed, possessed, turned to stone or otherwise disempowered at some point.
Clip- Montage
Zelda has never been the star in her own adventure, nor been a true playable character in the core series.
However it must be said that not all damsels are created equal and Zelda is occasionally given a more active or integral role to play than her counterpart in the Mushroom Kingdom. Unlike Peach, Zelda is not completely defined by her role as Ganondorf’s perpetual kidnap victim and in a few later games she even rides a line between damsel and sidekick. Remember the Damsel in Distress as a plot device is something that happens to a female character, and not necessarily something that the character is from start to finish.
Once in awhile she might be given the opportunity to have a slightly more active role in facilitating the hero’s quest – typically by opening doors, giving hints, power-ups and other helpful items. On rare occasions she might even offer a last minute helping hand to the hero after all is said and done at end of the journey. I call this variant on the theme “The Helpful Damsel”.
Indeed Zelda is at her best when she takes the form of Sheik in Ocarina of Time (1998) and Tetra in The Wind Waker (2003).
Clip- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
In Ocarina of Time, Zelda avoids capture for the first three quarters of the game. Disguised as Sheik she is a helpful and active participant in the adventure and is shown to be more than capable, however as soon as she transforms back into her more stereotypically feminine form of Princess Zelda, she is kidnapped within 3 minutes. Literally 3 minutes, I timed it. Her rescue then becomes central to the end of Link’s quest.
Clip- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Similarly, in The Wind Waker (2003), Tetra is a feisty and impressive young pirate captain. But as soon as she is revealed to be, and transformed into her more stereotypically feminine form of Princess Zelda, she is told that she’s no longer allowed to accompany Link on the adventure because it’s suddenly “too dangerous” for her. She is ordered to wait in the castle, which she does until she is eventually kidnapped, while waiting obediently in the same spot. It is noteworthy that in the very last stage of the boss battle, she does help Link fight Ganondorf, for a few brief minutes, which is a refreshing change.
Clip- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
However the next time Tetra’s incarnation appears in 2007’s The Phantom Hourglass she is kidnapped immediately during the intro. Later she is turned to stone and then kidnapped for a second time.
It’s disappointing that even with her moments of heroism, Zelda is still damsel’ed – she is removed from the action, pushed aside, and made helpless at least once in every game she appears in.
Clip- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Original Ad
This brings us to one of the core reasons why the trope is so problematic and pernicious for women’s representations. The damsel in distress is not just a synonym for “weak”, instead it works by ripping away the power from female characters, even helpful or seemingly capable ones. No matter what we are told about their magical abilities, skills or strengths they still ultimately captured or otherwise incapacitated and then must wait for rescue.
Distilled down to its essence, the plot device works by trading the disempowerment of female characters FOR the empowerment of male characters.
Clip- Vigilante
Let’s compare the damsel to the archetypal Hero Myth, in which the typically male character may occasionally also be harmed, incapacitated or briefly imprisoned at some point during their journey.
Clip- Montage
In these situations, the character relies on their intelligence, cunning, and skill to engineer their own escape — or, you know, just punching a hole in the prison wall works too.
The point is they are ultimately able to gain back their own freedom. In fact, that process of overcoming the ordeal is an important step in the protagonist’s transformation into a hero figure.
A Damsel’ed woman on the other hand is shown to be incapable of escaping the predicament on her own and then must wait for a savior to come and do it for her.
Clip- New Super Mario Bros Wii
In this way the Damsel’s ordeal is not her own, instead it’s framed as a trial for the hero to overcome. Consequently, the trope robs women in peril of the opportunity be the architects of their own escape and therefore prevents them from becoming archetypal heroes themselves.
Today many old-school damsel games are being resurrected for modern platforms, services or mobile devices as publishers are in a rush to cash in on gaming nostalgia and capitalize on any recognizable characters from years gone by.
For example- SEGA’s 1993 platformer Sonic CD featuring a damsel’ed Amy Rose has been enhanced and made available for download on a wide variety of modern platforms
Clip- Sonic CD
Jordan Mechner’s famous (1984) Karateka and Prince of Persia (1989), originally released for the Apple ii home computer in the 1980s, have both seen modern HD remakes.
Clip- Montage
And the 1983 animated Laserdisc game Dragon’s Lair with ditzy Princess Daphne has been ported to just about every system imaginable
Clip- Dragon’s Lair
Daphne: Please save me! The cage is locked! With a key! The dragon keeps it around his neck! To slay the dragon us the magic sword!
Remember Pauline, damsel from the classic Donkey Kong arcade?
Clip- Donkey Kong
Well she has also been revived, first in 1994’s Donkey Kong for the Gameboy and later in the Mario vs Donkey Kong series for the Nintendo DS. Each game features a re-hashing of the old excuse plot with Pauline is whisked away by the giant ape during the opening credits.
Clip- Mario vs Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem- Mario!
Pauline: Please help me!
The now iconic opening seconds of the 1987 beat-em up arcade game Double Dragon has Marian being punched in the stomach, throwen over the shoulder of a thug and carried away. In several versions her panties are clearly shown to the player while being abducted.
Clip- Double Dragon
The game has been remade, re-released and ported to dozens of systems over the last 25 years, ensuring that Marian will continue to be battered and damseled for each new generation to enjoy. Most recently Double Dragon Neon in 2012 re-introduced new gamers to this repressive crap yet again, this time is full HD.
Clip- Double Dragon Neon
The pattern of presenting women as fundamentally weak, ineffective or entirely incapable also has larger ramifications beyond the characters themselves and the specific games they inhabit. We have to remember that these games do not exist in a vacuum, they are an increasingly important and influential part of our larger social and cultural ecosystem.
The reality is that this troupe is being used in a real-world context where backwards sexist attitudes are already rampant. It’s a sad fact that a large percentage of the world’s population still clings to the deeply sexist belief that women as a group need to be sheltered, protected and taken care of by men.
The belief that women are somehow a “naturally weaker gender” is a deeply ingrained socially constructed myth, which of course is completely false- but the notion is reinforced and perpetuated when women are continuously portrayed as frail, fragile, and vulnerable creatures.
Just to be clear, I am not saying that all games using the damsel in distress as a plot device are automatically sexist or have no value. But it’s undeniable that popular culture is a powerful influence in or lives and the Damsel in Distress trope as a recurring trend does help to normalize extremely toxic, patronizing and paternalistic attitudes about women.
Now I grew up on Nintendo, I’ve been a fan of the Mario and Zelda franchises for most of my life and they will always have a special place in my heart, as I’m sure is true for a great number of gamers out there. But it’s still important to recognize and think critically about the more problematic aspects especially considering many of these franchises are as popular as ever and the characters have become worldwide icons.
The good news is that there is nothing stopping developers from evolving their gender representations and making more women heroes in future games. It would be great to finally see is Zelda, Sheik and Tetra as the protagonists at their own games… and not just mobile DS games, I’m talking full-on console adventures.
Ok, so we’ve established that the Damsel in Distress trope is one of the most widely used gendered cliché in the history of video games and has been core to the popularization and development of gaming as a medium. But what about more modern games? Has anything changed in the past ten years? Well, stay tuned for part 2 where I’ll be looking at more contemporary examples of the Damsel in Distress trope. We’ll look at all the dark and edgy twists and turns and see how the convention been used and abused right up until today. And then we’ll check out some games in which developers have tried to flip the script on the Damsel.
I would like to extend a big thank you to all my backers on kickstarter who have continued to support me and helped to make this video series a reality!
Welcome to the 2nd episode in our multi-part series exploring the roles and representations of women in video games. This project examines the tropes, plot devices and patterns most commonly associated with women in gaming systemic, big picture perspective.
Over the course of this series I will be offering critical analysis of many popular games and characters, but please keep in mind that it’s both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy a piece of media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects.
I just want to caution viewers that as we delve into more modern games we will be discussing examples that employ some particularly gruesome and graphic depictions of violence against women. I’ll do my best to only show what is necessary but this episode does come with a trigger warning. It’s also recommended that parents preview the video first before sharing with younger children.
In our previous episode we explored the history of the Damsel in Distress and how the trope became so pervasive in classic era games from the 80s and early 90s. We also explored some of the core reasons why damsel’ed characters are so problematic as representations of women. So if you haven’t seen it yet, please check that one out before continuing to watch this one.
As a trope the damsel in distress is a plot device in which a female character is placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her own and then must be rescued by a male character, usually providing an incentive or motivation for the protagonist’s quest.
Now it might be tempting to think the Damsel in Distress was just a product of its time, and that by now surely the trope must be a thing of the past. Well, while we have seen a moderate increase in the number of playable female characters, the plot device has not gone away. In fact the Damsel in Distress has even seen a bit of a resurgence in recent years.
Clip – Montage
The Bouncer- [Screams]
TimeSplitters 2- [Screams]
Rygar: The Legendary Adventure- “Rygar!”
Maximo: Ghosts to Glory- “Silence!”
Castlevainia: Harmony of Dissonance- “Nooo!
Grabbed by the Ghoulies- [Muffled screams]
Resident Evil 4- [Screams]
Red Steel- “You’ve got to get me out of here”
Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword- [Screams]
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones- [Laughter]
Devil May Cry 4- “Come and get her”
Prototype- “Alex!”
Ghostbusters: The Video Game- [Screams}
Splatterhouse (2010)- “He’s…He’s hurting me”
Alan Wake- [Screams]“Alice?!”
Deadlight- “Help, Please!”
Hitman: Absolution- “Bullet in her head!”
Ninja Gaiden II- “What a dear little bird you are”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; suffice it to say the trope is alive and well even today.
Clip- Devil May Cry 4
“Let her go!”
And since the majority of these titles focus of delivering crude, unsophisticated male power fantasies, developers are largely unwilling to give up the Damsel in Distress model as an easy default motivation for their brooding male heroes or anti-heroes. Remember that as a trope the Damsel in Distress is a plot device used by writers, and not necessarily always just a one-dimensional character type entirely defined by victimhood.
Now and then Damsel’d characters may be well written, funny, dynamic or likeable.
Clip- Psychonauts
“I’m just trying to set you on fire through this stupid hat!”
“What a delightfully mean little brain you have.”
However this extra character development tends to make their eventual disempowerment all the more frustrating. Damsels on the more sassy end of the spectrum may struggle with their captors…
Clip- Hitman: Absolution
“Get away from me!”
… or even attempt an escape on their own but inevitably their efforts always prove futile. Occasionally they may be allowed to offer the hero a last minute helping hand or to kick the bad guy while he’s down but these moments are largely symbolic and typically only happen after the core adventure is over or the danger has passed.
These token gestures of pseudo-empowerment don’t really offer any meaningful change to the core of the trope and it feels like developers just throw these moments in at the last minute to try to excuse their continued reliance on the damsel in distress.
Periodically, game developers may attempt to build a more flushed out relationship or emotional bond between Damsel’d character and the male protagonist. In the most decidedly patronizing examples depictions of female vulnerability are used for an easy way for writers to trigger an emotional reaction in male players.
As we discussed in our first episode, when female characters are damsel’ed, their ostensible agency is removed and they are reduced to a state of victimhood.
So narratives that frame intimacy, love or romance as something that blossoms from or hinges upon the disempowerment and victimization of women are extremely troubling because they tend to reinforce the widespread regressive notion that women in vulnerable, passive or subordinate positions are somehow desirable because of their state of powerlessness. Unfortunately these types of stories also help to perpetuate the paternalistic belief that power imbalances within romantic relationships appealing, expected, or normal.
Ok so we know that the Damsel in Distress is alive and well in gaming but that’s not the full picture, there’s even more insidious side to the story. Over the past decade game companies have been desperately searching for ways to stand out in a market increasingly oversaturated with very similar products. As a consequence we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of games attempting to cut through the clutter by being as “dark and edgy” as possible.
So we’ve seen developers try to spice up the Damsel in Distress cliché by combining it with other tropes that involve victimized women. I’ve identified a few of the most common of these trope-cocktails, which join together multiple regressive or negative representations of women including the disposable woman, the mercy killing and the woman in the refrigerator.
The term “Women in Refrigerators” was coined in the late 1990s by comic book writer Gail Simone to describe the trend of female comic book characters who are routinely brutalized or killed-off as a plot device designed to move the male character’s story arc forward. The trope name comes from Green Lantern issue #54, in which the superhero returns home to find his girlfriend murdered and stuffed inside his refrigerator.
This trading of female characters lives for something meant to resemble male character development is of course part of a long media tradition, but the gruesome death of women for shock value is especially prevalent in modern gaming. The Women in the Refrigerator trope is used as the cornerstone of some of the most famous contemporary video games. It provides the core motivational hook behind both the Max Payne and the God of War series for example.
Clip- God of War
“My wife…my child…”
In each case the protagonists’ wife and daughter are brutally murdered and their deaths are then used by the developers as a pretext for their inevitable bloody revenge quest. It’s interesting to note that the reversed scenario, games hinging on a woman vowing revenge for her murdered boyfriend or husband are practically nonexistent. The gender role reversal is so unusual that it borders on the absurd, which is one of the reason’s why this scene from Disney’s Wreck it Ralph is so humorous.
I could do a very long video just exploring this one trope in gaming, but today I want to look at how the Woman in the Refrigerator is connected to the Damsel in Distress and specifically the ways game developers have found to combine these two plot devices. One popular variation is to simply use both tropes in the same plotline so as to have the male protagonist’s wife stuffed in the fridge while his daughter is damsel’ed.
In Outlaws (1997) your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter.
Clip- Outlaws
“Who did this?”
“They’ve taken Sarah”
In Kane & Lynch your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter.
Clip- Kane and Lynch
“I’ll find them all before they find Jenny”
In Prototype 2 your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter.
In Inversion your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter.
Clip- Inversion
“Leila, where is she?”
In Asura’s Wrath your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter.
Clip- Asura’s Wrath
“Save her.”
In Dishonored the empress is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue her daughter – though it’s heavily implied that she is your daughter too.
Clip- Dishonored
“Find Emily. Protect her!”
It’s no coincidence that the fridged plot device and the damsel plot device work in much the same way, both involve female characters who have been reduced to states of complete powerlessness by the narrative. One via kidnapping and the other via murder. The two plot devices used together then allow developers to exploit both the revenge motivation and the good old fashioned “save the girl” motivation.
Believe it or not there is another more insidious version of this particular trope-hybrid, which I call the Damsel in the Refrigerator. Now you may be asking yourself how can a fridged woman still be in distress? Since by definition being fridged usually sort of requires… being dead. Well here’s how it works — The Damsel in the Refrigerator occurs when the hero’s sweetheart is brutally murdered and her soul is then trapped or abducted by the villain. This ‘oh so dark and edgy twist’ provides players with a double dose of female disempowerment and allows developers to again exploit both the revenge motivation and the saving the damsel motivation but this time with the same woman at the same time.
This trope-combination can be traced back to old school sidescrollers like Splatterhouse 2 and Ghouls’n Ghosts but the Damsel in the Refrigerator has definitely become a more popular trend in recent years.
In Medievil 2 your murdered girlfriend’s soul is stolen and you must fight to save her.
Clip- Medievil 2
[Screams]
In The Darkness 2 your murdered girlfriend’s soul is trapped in hell and you must fight to free her.
Clip- The Darkness 2
“Her soul is mine!”
In Shadows of the Damned your murdered girlfriend’s soul is trapped in hell and you must fight to free her.
Clip- Shadows of the Damned
“Yes, help her!”
[Screams]
In Dante’s Inferno your murdered wife’s soul is trapped in hell and you must fight to free her.
In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow your murdered wife’s soul is trapped on Earth and you fight to free her.
The Damsel in the Refrigerator is part of larger trend of throwing women under the bus in increasingly gruesome ways in an apparent attempt to interject what I’ll loosely refer to as “mature themes”. Developers must be hoping that by exploiting sensationalized images of brutalized women it will be enough to fool gamers into thinking their games are becoming more emotionally sophisticated, but the truth is there is nothing “mature” about most of these stories and many of them cross the line into blatant misogyny.
Since what we are really talking about here are depictions of violence against women it might be useful to quickly define what I mean by that term. When I say Violence Against Women I’m primarily referring to images of women being victimized or when violence is specifically linked to a character’s gender or sexuality. Female characters who happen to be involved in violent or combat situations on relatively equal footing with their opponents are typically be exempt them from this category because they are usually not framed as victims.
As I mentioned in our last video the damsel in distress doesn’t always have to be accompanied by a heroic rescue.
Clip- Max Payne 3
“Here I was again, with all hell breaking loose around me, standing over another dead girl I had been trying to protect”
Sometimes the hero fails to save the woman in question either because he arrives too late or because (surprise twist!) she has been dead the whole time.
Clip Montage
Dead Space – “Nicole has been dead this whole time”
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (2005)- “No! Kaileena!”
InFamous- “All my powers…and I couldn’t do a thing”
Deadlight- [Cries] “Kill me”
Or in the case of the 2009 version of Bionic Commando, not only has your wife been dead the whole time but, turns out she’s also part of your bionic arm.
Clip- Bionic Commando
“I never wanted you to be involved in this”
“It’s okay, I’ll always be by your side”
Yes you heard that correctly, his wife IS his arm.
But the most extreme and gruesome variant of this trend is when developers combine the damsel in distress with the mercy killing. This usually happens when the player character must murder the woman in peril “for her own good”. I like to call this happy little gem the “Euthanized Damsel”. Typically the damsel has been mutilated or deformed in some way by the villain and the “only option left” to the hero is to put her “out of her misery” himself.
We can trace this one back to the original 1980s arcade game Splatterhouse in which your kidnapped girlfriend is possessed and the player is forced to fight and kill her.
After saving his bitten beloved in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (2003) the hero must then kill her to gain the power to defeat Dracula.
Clip- Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
“Thank you”
In Breath of Fire 4 (2000) Elina has been turned into a hideous monster and then begs you to kill her.
In Gears of War 2, Dom is motivated to rescue his captured wife Maria. When he finds her, she has been starved and possibly tortured into a catatonic state; and so he shoots her.
In Tenchu: Shadow Assassins…
Clip- Tenchu: Shadow Assassins
“Do it, you must”
…the princess meekly asks the hero to cut her down to get to the villain, which he does.
A particularly egregious example can be found in Grand Theft Auto III (2001) when after you’ve rescued Maria Latore it’s implied that the protagonist suddenly shoots her because she is talking about stereotypically “girly things”.
Clip- Grand Theft Auto III
“I broke a nail, and my hair is ruined! Can you believe it? This one cost me $50!” [Gunshot]
The writers deliberately wrote her character to annoy the player so in the end, the violence against her becomes the punch line to a cheap, misogynist joke.
Sometimes these killings happen via cutscene while other games ask the player to participate directly by pulling the trigger themselves.
In the Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles remake if you don’t rescue Richter Belmont‘s beloved Annette, she will turn into a vampire and you’ll then have to kill her.
Clip- Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles
“Oh my God, Annette, I’m so sorry I didn’t save you. But you know what I do to vampires. What I have to do.”
“No! I’ll make you mine forever!”
The captured women in Duke Nukem 3D beg you to kill them throughout the game. This misogynist scene is regurgitated and actually made worse in the 2011 follow-up Duke Nukem Forever developed by Gearbox.
Another popular Gearbox game, Borderlands 2, also uses this plot twist when Angel asks the player to murder her as a way to try and thwart the villain’s evil plan.
Clip- Borderlands 2
“Destroying the iridium injectors that keep me…alive…will stop the key from charging and it will end a lifetime of servitude”
The end of Alone in the Dark (2008) gives the player the choice between killing your girlfriend yourself…
Clip- Alone in the Dark
“Chose quickly, carrier. Kill her or let her live. You alone can decide!”
…or letting Satan kill her, by being reborn in her body
The Wii game Pandora’s Tower includes one ending in which Elena begs you to kill her before she completes her transformation into a monster.
Clip- Pandora’s Tower
“Please…I beg of you”
Clip-Prey
“Help me, I’m so afraid!”
In the 2006 shooter Prey, when the hero finally reaches his abducted girlfriend she has been hideously mutilated and fused with a monster, which you must fight while she screams for help over and over again
Clip- Prey
“Get away from me, Tommy! She wants me to kill you! I can’t stop it! [Screams]
After being incapacitated she begs you to kill her…
Clip- Prey
“Please, Tommy, let me go”
… and the player can’t advance in the narrative until you shoot her in the face.
These damsel’ed women are written so as to subordinate themselves to men. They submissively accept their grisly fate and will often beg the player to perform violence on them – giving men direct and total control over whether they live or die. Even saying “thank you” with their dying breath. In other words these women are “asking for it” quite literally.
The Euthanized Damsel is the darkest and edgiest of these trope-hybrids but it’s also an extension of a larger pattern in gaming narratives where male protagonists are forced to fight their own loved ones who have been possessed or brainwashed by villains.
When Kratos finds his mother in the PSP game God of War: Ghosts of Sparta, she morphs into a hideous beast forcing you to fight and kill her. An act for which she thanks you with her dying breath.
Clip- God of War: Ghost of Sparta
“Finally, I am free”
After your girlfriend is transformed into a green ogre in Grabbed by the Ghoulies she chases you around trying to get kiss. Later you beat her unconscious before she can be returned to normal.
The final boss in Shadows of the Damned turns out to be your own girlfriend…
Clip- Shadows of the Damned
“Where is my freedom?!”
…who you must shoot down. Similar scenarios are replicated in dozens of other tittles as well:
Clip Montage- Resident Evil 5
“Get that device off her chest!”
Although the narratives all differ slightly the core element is the same, in each case violence is used to bring these women “back to their senses”.
These stories conjure supernatural situations in which domestic violence perpetrated by men against women who’ve “lost control of themselves” not only appears justified but is actually presented as an altruistic act done “for the woman’s own good”.
Of course, if you look at any of these games in isolation, you will be able to find incidental narrative circumstances that can be used to explain away the inclusion of violence against women as a plot device. But just because a particular event might “makes sense” within the internal logic of a fictional narrative – that doesn’t, in and of itself justify its use. Games don’t exist in a vacuum and therefore can’t be divorced from the larger cultural context of the real world.
It’s especially troubling in-light of the serious real life epidemic of violence against women facing the female population on this planet. Every 9 seconds a woman is assaulted or beaten in the United States and on average more than three women are murdered by their boyfriends husbands, or ex-partners every single day. Research consistently shows that people of all genders tend to buy into the myth that women are the ones to blame for the violence men perpetrate against them. In the same vein, abusive men consistently state that their female targets “deserved it”, “wanted it” or were “asking for it”,
Given the reality of that larger cultural context, it should go without saying that it’s dangerously irresponsible to be creating games in which players are encouraged and even required to perform violence against women in order to “save them”.
Even though most of the games we’re talking about don’t explicitly condone violence against women, nevertheless they trivialize and exploit female suffering as a way to ratchet up the emotional or sexual stakes for the player.
Despite these troubling implications, game creators aren’t necessarily all sitting around twirling their nefarious looking mustaches while consciously trying to figure out how to best misrepresent women as part of some grand conspiracy.
Most probably just haven’t given much thought to the underlying messages their games are sending and in many cases developers have backed themselves into a corner with their own game mechanics. When violence is the primary gameplay mechanic and therefore the primary way that the player engages with the game-world it severely limits the options for problem solving. The player is then forced to use violence to deal with almost all situations because its the only meaningful mechanic available — even if that means beating up or killing the women they are meant to love or care about.
One of the really insidious things about systemic & institutional sexism is that most often regressive attitudes and harmful gender stereotypes are perpetuated and maintained unintentionally.
Likewise engaging with these games is not going to magically transform players into raging sexists. We typically don’t have a monkey-see monkey-do, direct cause and effect relationship with the media we consume. Cultural influence works in much more subtle and complicated ways, however media narratives do have a powerful cultivation effect helping to shape cultural attitudes and opinions.
So when developers exploit sensationalized images of brutalized, mutilated and victimized women over and over and over again it tends to reinforce the dominant gender paradigm which casts men as aggressive and commanding and frames women as subordinate and dependent.
Although these stories use female trauma as a catalyst to set the plot elements in motion, these are not stories about women. Nor are they concerned with the struggles of women navigating the mental, emotional and physical ramifications of violence.
Instead these are strictly male-centered stories in which, more often than not, the tragic damsels are just empty shells, whose deaths are depicted as far more meaningful than their lives. Generally they’re completely defined by their purity, innocence, kindness, beauty or sensuality. In short they’re just symbols meant to invoke the essence of an artificial feminine ideal.
Clip- Shadows of the Damned
“Help me!”
In fact these games usually frame the loss of the woman as something that has been unjustly “taken” from the male hero.
Clip- The Darkness II
“So now I take from you”
“Jackie, this is not your fault”
[Gunshot]
The implication being that she had belonged to him – that she was his possession. Once wronged the hero must then go get his possessions back or at least exact a heavy price for their loss. On the surface victimized women are framed as the reason for the hero’s torment, but if we dig a little deeper into the subtext I’d argue that the true source of the pain stems from feelings of weakness and/or guilt over his failure to perform his “socially prescribed” patriarchal duty to protect his women and children.
Clip- Max Payne 3
“And I hated myself for allowing this to happen to her, and our little girl”
In this way these failed-hero stories are really about the perceived loss of masculinity, and then the quest to regain that masculinity, primarily by exerting dominance and control, through the performance of violence on others.
Consequently violent revenge based narratives, repeated ad nauseum, can also be harmful to men because they help further limit the possible responses men are allowed to have when faced with death or tragedy. This is unfortunate because interactive media has the potential to be a brilliant medium for people of all genders to explore difficult or painful subjects.
So to be clear here, the problem is not the fact that female characters die or suffer. Death touches all of our lives eventually and as such it’s often an integral part of dramatic storytelling. To say that women could never die in stories would be absurd, but it’s important to consider the ways that women’s deaths are framed and examine how and why they’re written.
There are some games that try to explore loss, death and grief in more genuine or authentic ways that do not sensationalize or exploit victimized women. Dear Esther, The Passage and To The Moon are a few indie games that investigate these themes in creative, innovative and sometimes beautiful ways. These more contemplative style games are a hopeful sign but they’re still largely the exception to the rule. A sizable chunk of the industry is still unfortunately trapped in the established pattern of building game narratives on the backs of brutalized female bodies.
Violence against women is a serious global epidemic; therefore, attempts to address the issue in fictional contexts demands a considerable degree of respect, subtlety and nuance. Women shouldn’t be mere disposable objects or symbolic pawns in stories about men and their own struggles with patriarchal expectations and inadequacies.
The “dark and edgy” trope-cocktails we’ve discussed in this episode are not isolated incidents, or obscure anomalies; instead they represent an ongoing recurring pattern in modern gaming narratives. In most cases the damsel’ed characters have simply gone from being helpless, to being dead. Which is obviously not a huge improvement from her perspective.
I know this episode has been a little bit grim, but please join me next time for the 3rd and final installment covering the Damsel in Distress where we’ll take a look at some titles that attempt to flip the script on the damsel and then we’ll go on a quest to find some examples of the elusive “dude in distress” role reversal.
Asherian Command wrote: Especially when she started talking about the damsel in distress bit.
Her "damsel in distress" videos were factually correct, and actually quite fair and gentle to the games being discussed.
Asherian Command wrote: While willfully ignoring MANY many counter arguments such as Ico and Shadow Of the Colossus.
Going to cut you off here and say that few random, isolated counter-examples do not disprove a trend. And just because a game is a good game does not mean it must also be perfect. No game is beyond criticism, not even the best game ever made, Psychonauts.
She indicated that what she would like (and I agree with her in this instance) is less reliance on the "damsel" trope to begin with, but especially when it comes to using women as "damsels".
On its own, the fact that Ico had the girl be the one being rescued is perfectly fine. It only becomes a problem when there is a greater trend which promotes the idea that women are mostly suitable to be "damsels" and other supporting roles, and not suitable to be active and protagonist roles.
And there is, to a lesser extent these days sure, but it still exists even today.
Though I will agree, parts of her agrument are a flaw.
It is proven that the Hero Link is not out for a reward. (Which is usually the trope among the Damsel in Distress tropes) Is that he is not seeking an award his main goal is to defeat Ganadorf and save the land. Zelda is the princess of the Land and A Sage. You fight her once, because she is testing you.
See the thing is Antia uses certain bits and pieces and lacks proper context in certain parts of the game.
The one issue being the Mercy kill or the Enthusasian kill, she forgets to mention that in all the games, the main character, usually says. "I don't want to do this. This is wrong." And then begrudgingly through a heavy heart kill them after the request to be killed by the person who originally wanted to die.
That is willfully misleading.
I think in the industry the main problem is that there is less representation of Strong Female Characters.
Clip- Psychonauts “I’m just trying to set you on fire through this stupid hat!” “What a delightfully mean little brain you have.”
However this extra character development tends to make their eventual disempowerment all the more frustrating. Damsels on the more sassy end of the spectrum may struggle with their captors…
Clip- Hitman: Absolution “Get away from me!”
… or even attempt an escape on their own but inevitably their efforts always prove futile. Occasionally they may be allowed to offer the hero a last minute helping hand or to kick the bad guy while he’s down but these moments are largely symbolic and typically only happen after the core adventure is over or the danger has passed.
These token gestures of pseudo-empowerment don’t really offer any meaningful change to the core of the trope and it feels like developers just throw these moments in at the last minute to try to excuse their continued reliance on the damsel in distress.
Periodically, game developers may attempt to build a more flushed out relationship or emotional bond between Damsel’d character and the male protagonist. In the most decidedly patronizing examples depictions of female vulnerability are used for an easy way for writers to trigger an emotional reaction in male players.
As we discussed in our first episode, when female characters are damsel’ed, their ostensible agency is removed and they are reduced to a state of victimhood.
So narratives that frame intimacy, love or romance as something that blossoms from or hinges upon the disempowerment and victimization of women are extremely troubling because they tend to reinforce the widespread regressive notion that women in vulnerable, passive or subordinate positions are somehow desirable because of their state of powerlessness. Unfortunately these types of stories also help to perpetuate the paternalistic belief that power imbalances within romantic relationships appealing, expected, or normal.
Ok so we know that the Damsel in Distress is alive and well in gaming but that’s not the full picture, there’s even more insidious side to the story. Over the past decade game companies have been desperately searching for ways to stand out in a market increasingly oversaturated with very similar products. As a consequence we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of games attempting to cut through the clutter by being as “dark and edgy” as possible.
Wait what
WE NEED CONTEXT. LACK OF CONTEXT.
The Girl in pyschonauts, that was the first time she had gotten caught. She's not the end goal of the game, infact she is an extremely strong female character throughout the game.
YOU NEED CONTEXT.
Shesh.
Now the second video Though I have more of a problem on. But the rest of the video is factual.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: Your definition of sexualization is a very damn weird one that I have never seen anyone else using.
Aside from the fact that you have never seen it before, what makes it weird? More to the point, can you give an objection to my definition other than posting pictures of men you find erotic?
It is the player that is rewarded, more than Link-- while I don't remember the ending of the first game, I have the second one on my person right now in fact. The ending is of them kissing, then curtains fall and the insinuation is well you know what happens next wink wink nudge nudge. The games started out using Zelda as little more than a living prop.
This is by no means unique amongst the series. Though named after Zelda, it wasn't really until Ocarina of Time that she became more than scenery, and even then, only in the form of Sheik-- and always destined to be fought over instead of fighting for her own self in the final battle.
Then why are you ignoring it? You're ignoring the greater context that she talks about-- the "big picture", to use a cliche term for it-- to focus on nitpicky details.
The Girl in pyschonauts, that was the first time she had gotten caught. She's not the end goal of the game, infact she is an extremely strong female character throughout the game.
YOU NEED CONTEXT.
As she said earlier, it doesn't need to be the end goal to be the damsel in distress trope.
And she also said that her being an extremely strong character throughout the game just makes the damsel in distress trope more lazy and infuriating.
That is not evidence, that is her unfounded opinion.
Let's look at this opinion of hers
"The belief that women are somehow a “naturally weaker gender” is a deeply ingrained socially constructed myth, which of course is completely false- but the notion is reinforced and perpetuated when women are continuously portrayed as frail, fragile, and vulnerable creatures. "
If that was in any way true, why would the military have 2 standards for fitness for men & women? When you compare Olympic scores between men & women, which one is faster?, stronger?, more agile? Her statement here is a blatant lie.
Then there is this opinion of hers:
"Damsel in Distress trope as a recurring trend does help to normalize extremely toxic, patronizing and paternalistic attitudes about women. "
Where is the research to support that?
Like she said it's her "critical analysis" ie her unfounded opinion and her unfounded conclusions.
It is the player that is rewarded, more than Link-- while I don't remember the ending of the first game, I have the second one on my person right now in fact. The ending is of them kissing, then curtains fall and the insinuation is well you know what happens next wink wink nudge nudge. The games started out using Zelda as little more than a living prop.
This is by no means unique amongst the series. Though named after Zelda, it wasn't really until Ocarina of Time that she became more than scenery ,and even then, only in the form of Sheik.
Then why are you ignoring it? You're ignoring the greater context that she talks about-- the "big picture", to use a cliche term for it-- to focus on nitpicky details.
She needs more than a single scene. In order to really delve into the situation you can't say yep that is against women. And ran with it.
She wasn't picking on the first or second. Which was when the games were younger.
Later on they become friends and allies. They are no longer this couple. Infact I feel that aspect of the two has begun to disappear.
The entire thing is she needs to give context to these scenes. The thing is that she doesn't define it as a reward for the player. When she does talk about the player she forgets in one of her reviews you are given a choice. (Do not get me started what she said about hitman absolution, especially about the stripper bit, Because you are docked points EVERY SINGLE TIME you kill a civilain, they are civilains, you are a strip club, of course they are going to be sexualized, they are in the MAKE-UP Room, and it happens once in the level. The game is about saving a girl from a group of assassins because your former boss, a woman ,who died in the shower, and had dialogue and was actually menacing and that is more than most of the male characters in the game, it was a big deal when you killed your boss)
There are certain periods when she forgets parts of the game.
Sometimes there are times when this does not work, there are damsels in distress.
I.E. Prince of Persia Warrior Within (As much as I hate the game), there is a time when you have to save this woman, this woman later in the game turns out to be main bad guy. But at the time she was in distress. From being attacked by another woman. Hang on for a tick. Is this demeaning to the character? No not really. (But what they were wearing kind of was....) But I digress, the main issue is you have to describe the scene.
The biggest problem is the part when she talks about pyschonauts, about the love interest, when throughout the game was quite a strong character, and she was not the only one that was being experimented on, she was one of the last characters to be, the main villain was not just targeting her, but many other characters, (NO matter what the gender)
The Girl in pyschonauts, that was the first time she had gotten caught. She's not the end goal of the game, infact she is an extremely strong female character throughout the game.
YOU NEED CONTEXT.
As she said earlier, it doesn't need to be the end goal to be the damsel in distress trope.
And she also said that her being an extremely strong character throughout the game just makes the damsel in distress trope more lazy and infuriating.
Ever played Pyschonauts?
If you have played the game you know full well that is not what was happening. She was in distress once. Like the entire cast. It was not just one character. It was multiple times. Not just female, but male. Both genders got a chance to get captured.
Its not a tired cliched. Nor is infuriating for her character. Sometimes you get caught out of position and surrender. Is that wrong? No not really.
I would like to drive your attention to stick it to the man, where the main female lead is captured but saves the alien to help save her boyfriend, but forgets to untie herself, so she stays behind.
"Damsel in Distress trope as a recurring trend does help to normalize extremely toxic, patronizing and paternalistic attitudes about women. "
You do not need to be a writer not to laugh at that.
The Girl in pyschonauts, that was the first time she had gotten caught. She's not the end goal of the game, infact she is an extremely strong female character throughout the game.
YOU NEED CONTEXT.
As she said earlier, it doesn't need to be the end goal to be the damsel in distress trope.
And she also said that her being an extremely strong character throughout the game just makes the damsel in distress trope more lazy and infuriating.
Ever played Pyschonauts?
Yes. She is a great, strong character yet still needs to be rescued from Loboto by Raz.
The Girl in pyschonauts, that was the first time she had gotten caught. She's not the end goal of the game, infact she is an extremely strong female character throughout the game.
YOU NEED CONTEXT.
As she said earlier, it doesn't need to be the end goal to be the damsel in distress trope.
And she also said that her being an extremely strong character throughout the game just makes the damsel in distress trope more lazy and infuriating.
Ever played Pyschonauts?
Yes. She is a strong character yet still needs to be rescued by Raz.
Read the rest of what I said.
She's not the only that gets captured in the game.
There were certain bits of her argument that fall apart once a male is put into the mix and captured. We see this quite often.
Is it bad for a character to get captured? No not really. It doesn't demean and intoxicate the character. Sometimes the character is overwhelmed it happens. If a mobster came up to you with a machine gun do you really think you would disagree with him.
Manchu wrote: Aside from the fact that you have never seen it before, what makes it weird? More to the point, can you give an objection to my definition other than posting pictures of men you find erotic?
Yes. Language is made to communicate, and if you do use a definition that is different from the definition everybody else uses, it is not going to help communication.
Manchu wrote: A pinup is a kind of image not a kind of character.
If your pinup is an image of a car, an apple, or any inanimate object rather than a character, you are doing it wrong.
Wasn't Peach a playable character in all the Mario Karts, Super Mario 2 (as mentioned) and I thought also Super Mario RPG?
Also, what I kind of got out of Alan Wake was that he thought Alice needed saving, but it was actually he that was trapped? Doesn't she actually "save" him in the sequel? Granted, the second one was admittedly terrible, but still.
No, to laugh at that statement, you just need to be a person who refuses to think about what that statement might actually mean to the person saying it.
Melissia wrote: Her "damsel in distress" videos were factually correct, and actually quite fair and gentle to the games being discussed.
Just to nitpick, but Melissia, do you hold to the assertion she made in the first video that the physical strength disparity between men and women 'is a socially constructed myth'?
Melissia wrote: No, to laugh at that statement, you just need to be a person who refuses to think about what that statement might actually mean to the person saying it.
I would like to direct you to many examples of male characters being captured.
Final Fantasy 5 The Hermit (Saved by the party consisting of mainly females) King Tycoon Final Fantasy 5 Bartz Final Fantasy 5 (who saves the party gaulf, faris and Lenna, and the newcomer) Call of Duty Captain Price (Being cornered and is calling for assistance) Halo 1-3 Marines (Marines are caught out of position and need your help, considered to be apart of the damsel in distress,) Halo 3 Segerant Johnson (Chief and Captain Halle (She ultimately dies trying to save him) ) Halo 2 Sarge and the Elites (Arbiter comes to rescue his brethren) Prince of Persia The Prince (Farah Saves his bloody ass) Every military shooter where a squad is surrounded and needs aid or a hostage situation (Military, happens quite often is apart of the trope as well) (Need I go on?)
Movies Conan The barabarian Conan ( Conan is saved by the angel of his past love) Serenity The Entire cast (Saved by River, who did major kick ass things) Indiana Jones Dr. Indiana Jones (His Female sidekicks Multiple occassions) Star Wars Luke (Princess Lea) Star Wars Han Solo (Princess Lea)
Books Game of Thrones Every Male lead (Brienne of Tarth, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Catelyna Stark,)
And thats all from the top of my head. A damsel in distress is not a demeaning thing to the character. IF you take it as one you need to read more. There are quite a few times when a character is captured. But they come out of alive. (Or sometimes not)
This happens and it only strengthens the character's relationship with their savior.
Asherian Command wrote: I would like to direct you to many examples of male characters being captured.
Final Fantasy 5 The Hermit (Saved by the party consisting of mainly females)
King Tycoon Final Fantasy 5
Bartz Final Fantasy 5 (who saves the party gaulf, faris and Lenna, and the newcomer)
Call of Duty Captain Price (Being cornered and is calling for assistance)
Halo 1-3 Marines (Marines are caught out of position and need your help, considered to be apart of the damsel in distress,)
Prince of Persia The Prince (Farah Saves his bloody ass)
Every military shooter where a squad is surrounded and needs aid or a hostage situation (Military, happens quite often is apart of the trope as well)
(Need I go on?)
Melissia wrote: Her "damsel in distress" videos were factually correct, and actually quite fair and gentle to the games being discussed.
Just to nitpick, but Melissia, do you hold to the assertion she made in the first video that the physical strength disparity between men and women 'is a socially constructed myth'?
I agree with that it is a social construction, females can take more harm and won't feel as much pain, and have naturally better reflexes and eye hand coordination.
Males just have more muscle mass, and height. The down side is that men can take harm and will feel more pain.
Asherian Command wrote: I would like to direct you to many examples of male characters being captured.
Final Fantasy 5 The Hermit (Saved by the party consisting of mainly females) King Tycoon Final Fantasy 5 Bartz Final Fantasy 5 (who saves the party gaulf, faris and Lenna, and the newcomer) Call of Duty Captain Price (Being cornered and is calling for assistance) Halo 1-3 Marines (Marines are caught out of position and need your help, considered to be apart of the damsel in distress,) Prince of Persia The Prince (Farah Saves his bloody ass) Every military shooter where a squad is surrounded and needs aid or a hostage situation (Military, happens quite often is apart of the trope as well) (Need I go on?)
Various women, Ride to Hell: Retribution (2013) #damselindistress
With that my friends I keep my arguments up and stand strong.
There are more men saved in video games to date than women, because of the lack of women in games.
How do I know this?
How many military shooters are there? Count how many times you have to save a group of men?
In strategy games count how many times you have to save a group of soldiers?
Tell me how many times do you have to save that lost squad of marines?
That is an incredibly short list compared to how many times you have to save men.
The Damsel in Distress Trope applies to both men and women. Do not say it happens only to women, because I will smack you harder than you would believe possible.
Its way too laughable. If you have played shovel knight, the shovel knight IS USELESS without the Shield Knight.
You can't think that is bad for women everywhere. When in the game she makes the game So much easier to play than when its just the shovel knight, You find out quite quickly that she is a major part of the shovel knight, and is that necessarily bad.
Oh my god.... This is abosolutely dreadful. CONTEXT can go a long way.
Melissia wrote: Her "damsel in distress" videos were factually correct, and actually quite fair and gentle to the games being discussed.
Just to nitpick, but Melissia, do you hold to the assertion she made in the first video that the physical strength disparity between men and women 'is a socially constructed myth'?
It is a socially enforced phenomenon, yes.
I am physically stronger than many of the men I know-- and I'm by no means a mutant, I simply exercise more and smarter than the men I refer to. Women are discouraged from exercising and building strength because it is said that strong women are ugly, and women who develop muscular mass are often mocked for it. As a result of this societal push, most women live sedentary lifestyles, compared to the more active lifestyles of men.
Melissia wrote: Her "damsel in distress" videos were factually correct, and actually quite fair and gentle to the games being discussed.
Just to nitpick, but Melissia, do you hold to the assertion she made in the first video that the physical strength disparity between men and women 'is a socially constructed myth'?
It is a socially enforced phenomenon, yes.
I am physically stronger than many of the men I know-- and I'm by no means a mutant, I simply exercise more and smarter than the men I refer to. Women are discouraged from exercising and building strength because it is said that strong women are ugly, and women who develop muscular mass are often mocked for it. As a result of this societal push, most women live sedentary lifestyles, compared to the more active lifestyles of men.
LOL, that is the most ridiculous thing I've seen posted yet. Who are these mysterious people discouraging women from exercising?
Melissia wrote: Her "damsel in distress" videos were factually correct, and actually quite fair and gentle to the games being discussed.
Just to nitpick, but Melissia, do you hold to the assertion she made in the first video that the physical strength disparity between men and women 'is a socially constructed myth'?
It is a socially enforced phenomenon, yes.
I am physically stronger than many of the men I know-- and I'm by no means a mutant, I simply exercise more and smarter than the men I refer to. Women are discouraged from exercising and building strength because it is said that strong women are ugly, and women who develop muscular mass are often mocked for it. As a result of this societal push, most women live sedentary lifestyles, compared to the more active lifestyles of men.
LOL, that is the most ridiculous thing I've seen posted yet. Who are these mysterious people discouraging women from exercising?
Melissia wrote: Her "damsel in distress" videos were factually correct, and actually quite fair and gentle to the games being discussed.
Just to nitpick, but Melissia, do you hold to the assertion she made in the first video that the physical strength disparity between men and women 'is a socially constructed myth'?
It is a socially enforced phenomenon, yes.
I am physically stronger than many of the men I know-- and I'm by no means a mutant, I simply exercise more and smarter than the men I refer to. Women are discouraged from exercising and building strength because it is said that strong women are ugly, and women who develop muscular mass are often mocked for it. As a result of this societal push, most women live sedentary lifestyles, compared to the more active lifestyles of men.
LOL, that is the most ridiculous thing I've seen posted yet. Who are these mysterious people discouraging women from exercising?
Idiots. Status Quo, Disney, Peers, Society.
Quite a few people actually.
Disney you say? ok, then surely you can produce a link for that one.
society is pushing for more active and healthier lifestyles for everyone.
Melissia wrote: Her "damsel in distress" videos were factually correct, and actually quite fair and gentle to the games being discussed.
Just to nitpick, but Melissia, do you hold to the assertion she made in the first video that the physical strength disparity between men and women 'is a socially constructed myth'?
It is a socially enforced phenomenon, yes.
I am physically stronger than many of the men I know-- and I'm by no means a mutant, I simply exercise more and smarter than the men I refer to. Women are discouraged from exercising and building strength because it is said that strong women are ugly, and women who develop muscular mass are often mocked for it. As a result of this societal push, most women live sedentary lifestyles, compared to the more active lifestyles of men.
LOL, that is the most ridiculous thing I've seen posted yet. Who are these mysterious people discouraging women from exercising?
Idiots. Status Quo, Disney, Peers, Society.
Quite a few people actually.
Disney you say? ok, then surely you can produce a link for that one.
society is pushing for more active and healthier lifestyles for everyone.
Fashion magazines, guys who judge women based off of appearances (not always (though usually) outright called ugly, but still, strong women will frequently be assumed to be lesbians and referred to as such in very homophobic ways, often with the insinuation that only ugly women are lesbians), religious figures, etc. "She doesn't look like a proper lady" being the more old fashioned way to say it, but the meaning is no different.
Fashion magazines, guys who judge women based off of appearances (not always (though usually) outright called ugly, but still, strong women will frequently be assumed to be lesbians and referred to as such in very homophobic ways, often with the insinuation that only ugly women are lesbians), religious figures, etc. "She doesn't look like a proper lady" being the more old fashioned way to say it, but the meaning is no different.
Yep.
Most girls I know complain about this. And they are completely right.
Well I suppose it's a good thing we have video games that support exercising then, and female characters that are psychically fit to encourage women to exercise . Along with proper role models like the first lady, the president and his fitness challenge, Doctors who tell everyone to work out. Companies with fitness and wellness programs. The fitness magazines that are always next to the fashion ones.
Sarkeesians claim is that men and women are naturally equal.
Melissia wrote: I am physically stronger than many of the men I know-- and I'm by no means a mutant, I simply exercise more and smarter than the men I refer to. Women are discouraged from exercising and building strength because it is said that strong women are ugly, and women who develop muscular mass are often mocked for it. As a result of this societal push, most women live sedentary lifestyles, compared to the more active lifestyles of men.
But that doesn't address the claim of men and women being naturally equal.
Frankly, I refuse to touch the topic of biological differences with anyone on this forum. The last few times the topic came up, it was basically used by misogynists to justify saying women were worth less than men in almost every area of life outside of childbirth while outright calling any woman who entered the topic a blatant liar about any of her experiences on the matter. And I'm certainly not interested in discussing it here, in THIS thread, where it's not really relevant to the topic at hand anyway.
Frankly, I refuse to touch the topic of biological differences with anyone on this forum. The last few times the topic came up, it was basically used by misogynists to justify saying women were worth less than men in almost every area of life outside of childbirth while outright calling any woman who entered the topic a blatant liar about any of her experiences on the matter. And I'm certainly not interested in discussing it here, in THIS thread, where it's not really relevant to the topic at hand anyway.
In my belief it is more on the less of the cans and cannots, but more on the physical attributes of being able to take pain more than a man can.
Woman can take more pain than a guy can.
Men usually have more muscle mass, but that does not mean women cannot have more.
But I agree it is not the thread.
But personally I would love to see more female characters better represented in gaming. Other than the object of lust.
I personally find it more interesting how selective people are with that silly little line of discussion. Chun Li kicks Ken into the ground and everyone says "Awesome!" Cause in a fighting game, no one cares if a woman is one of the strongest characters in the game.
Then someone says "why are women always dex/int when men are always str/con" and they say "sexual dimorphism!" as if that old cliche is somehow worth justifying let alone justified by that phrase in the first place. Immediately followed by "women aren't as strong as men" and I just look back at Chun Li and think she's about to drop kick murphy someone.
LordofHats wrote: I personally find it more interesting how selective people are with that silly little line of discussion. Chun Li kicks Ken into the ground and everyone says "Awesome!" Cause in a fighting game, no one cares if a woman is one of the strongest characters in the game.
Then someone says "why are women always dex/int when men are always str/con" and they say "sexual dimorphism!" as if that old cliche is somehow worth justifying let alone justified by that phrase in the first place. Immediately followed by "women aren't as strong as men" and I just look back and Chun Li and think she's about to drop kick murphy someone.
On interwebs, you so silly
Its funny because Dex and intell are usually the strongest stats. Str/con just means they can take more hits.
Critical damage and being able to hit is determined usually by dex and intel.
Dex also determines dodge.
Intel usually about magical knowledge or knowledge in general.
That means that the women are smarter and faster. While the men are beat sticks.
Mind you, usually the only fighting games I like are the ones with create-a-character modes (such as certain Soul Calibur games, though some of the series more than the rest), or the more simplistic ones like the DBZ series of fighting games. I hate memorizing a huge list of awkward-to-do combos, like many games make you do :/
Mind you, usually the only fighting games I like are the ones with create-a-character modes (such as certain Soul Calibur games, though some of the series more than the rest), or the more simplistic ones like the DBZ series of fighting games. I hate memorizing a huge list of awkward-to-do combos, like many games make you do :/
I personally do not like fighting games because of the very competitive scene they promote. Loot droppers are my fancy.
(Cause when can a thread have too much Team Four Star? The answer is NEVER).
Sure, fighting games more than many others practically sell themselves on women in really skimpy outfits (oh Christie...). Is Nina Williams pretty much sold with sex appeal? Yeah, but at least she kicks ass while she does it
I love the original Soul Calibur. Competitive scene? I was playing with my brother and my friends!
Back then Ivy's alt costume was awesome. From what I got, she never got it back :(.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: I love the original Soul Calibur. Competitive scene? I was playing with my brother and my friends!
Back then Ivy's alt costume was awesome. From what I got, she never got it back :(.
IT is very competitive, The tournaments that is. Its not something I enjoy playing or consider very leisure.
Manchu wrote: Aside from the fact that you have never seen it before, what makes it weird? More to the point, can you give an objection to my definition other than posting pictures of men you find erotic?
Yes. Language is made to communicate, and if you do use a definition that is different from the definition everybody else uses, it is not going to help communication.
You seem to be making an assumption about the definition of sexualization instead of offering a definition or even an argument against mine. Anyway, I don't see how my definition -- emphasizing sexual characteristics -- is different from the usual meaning of the term.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: If your pinup is an image of a car, an apple, or any inanimate object rather than a character, you are doing it wrong.
Needs a source, because I actually do know quite a lot about biologically and that makes no sense. Men have stronger upper bodies thanks to evolutionary biology, being the only gender that can have children doesn't automatically mean women can take more pain though. I mean, the parts of the body that deal with the pain perhaps, but they evolve to deal with it. The idea that "men couldnt take the pain" is an old wives tale.
gak, my mate lives next to a woman with 11 kids, if it hurt that fething much wouldn't she have quit after the first one?
Basically I reckon its down to the individual, so the world is full of tough men, and weak men, and tough women, and weak women, and they all sit around and discuss why none of them are as tough as me.
Needs a source, because I actually do know quite a lot about biologically and that makes no sense. Men have stronger upper bodies thanks to evolutionary biology, being the only gender that can have children doesn't automatically mean women can take more pain though. I mean, the parts of the body that deal with the pain perhaps, but they evolve to deal with it. The idea that "men couldnt take the pain" is an old wives tale.
gak, my mate lives next to a woman with 11 kids, if it hurt that fething much wouldn't she have quit after the first one?
Basically I reckon its down to the individual, so the world is full of tough men, and weak men, and tough women, and weak women, and they all sit around and discuss why none of them are as tough as me.
Women are actually stronger than men pound for pound of muscle, just men have more pounds of muscle and better muscle distribution for balance for moving and shifting stuff. Womens' muscle fibre is actually more dense. Interesting fact. I forgot where I heard it.
Women take pain in a childbearing sense due to afterbirth chemicals released that cause them to remember the birthing pain as being of a lower intensity than it actually was. In the case of my grandmother she didn't seem to get these chemicals and refused to have another one due to the pain.
I'd actually say that womens physiology having deeper blood flow may mean the nerves are slightly lower maybe meaning that yes they are more resistant to pain. That's pure conjecture though.
Needs a source, because I actually do know quite a lot about biologically and that makes no sense. Men have stronger upper bodies thanks to evolutionary biology, being the only gender that can have children doesn't automatically mean women can take more pain though. I mean, the parts of the body that deal with the pain perhaps, but they evolve to deal with it. The idea that "men couldnt take the pain" is an old wives tale.
gak, my mate lives next to a woman with 11 kids, if it hurt that fething much wouldn't she have quit after the first one?
Basically I reckon its down to the individual, so the world is full of tough men, and weak men, and tough women, and weak women, and they all sit around and discuss why none of them are as tough as me.
Yeah, I'd like to see a really good, conclusive study that shows that women take pain "better" than men, and what that means.
Needs a source, because I actually do know quite a lot about biologically and that makes no sense. Men have stronger upper bodies thanks to evolutionary biology, being the only gender that can have children doesn't automatically mean women can take more pain though. I mean, the parts of the body that deal with the pain perhaps, but they evolve to deal with it. The idea that "men couldnt take the pain" is an old wives tale.
gak, my mate lives next to a woman with 11 kids, if it hurt that fething much wouldn't she have quit after the first one?
Basically I reckon its down to the individual, so the world is full of tough men, and weak men, and tough women, and weak women, and they all sit around and discuss why none of them are as tough as me.
She doesn't have enough tattoos for my tastes, but any woman that can kick my ass in Starcraft and look that good in a bikini will get my vote.
And I dunno about pain (or how you'd even go about measuring that), but women definitely do have an edge over men in handling high g environments.
Women are actually stronger than men pound for pound of muscle, just men have more pounds of muscle and better muscle distribution for balance for moving and shifting stuff. Womens' muscle fibre is actually more dense. Interesting fact. I forgot where I heard it.
Maybe from a bloke in the pub?
Seriously if men and women are the same height and weight, the bloke is literally always stronger. Its a proven fact. Sexual dimorphism is a complex subject and many animals have stronger and more powerful females, for example gak loads of insects, birds, and the occasional mammal, but humans ain't one of them.
Its why the military has different standards for men and women. If what you were saying was true they would be identical, or made easier for men!
I suppose I'm a genuine feminist in that regard, In that I think they should do away with that outdated concept, and allow women to join the SEALs and SFODD too. I know for a fact that some women would be able to pass it, but they would earn their place and the respect of their peers. I definitely prefer it to the current system where you have plenty of female soldiers that are weak as piss because they lowered the bar so much. I mean, the USMC standards for men are fething easy, but for women they are laughable, my missus would eat the mans one for breakfast, let alone hanging off a bar and not actually going anywhere!
She doesn't have enough tattoos for my tastes, but any woman that can kick my ass in Starcraft and look that good in a bikini will get my vote.
Yeah I dunno, I just don't really care about "sexy" youtubers making videos like that, it seems almost infantile. Like, I long grew out of wanting girls to do everything I do. I don't feel the need to play warhammer with my wife, that's what my mates are for, same as I don't want to go shopping with her, I like to keep things separate and I think the whole "lusting after a partner that likes all my stuff" thing is just a hallmark to my teenage years.
If I want to see games, I want to see games, If I want to see women, Ill watch pornography. Its sort of like FHM in that regard, its like a gak happy medium in that its way worse than an actual book to read, and way worse than a jazz mag for lusting over.
Are far as pain tolerance goes men have it higher than women except during pregnancy as pregnant women build up chemicals that help them cope with the pain of childbirth.
mattyrm wrote: Yeah I dunno, I just don't really care about "sexy" youtubers making videos like that, it seems almost infantile. Like, I long grew out of wanting girls to do everything I do. I don't feel the need to play warhammer with my wife, that's what my mates are for, same as I don't want to go shopping with her, I like to keep things separate and I think the whole "lusting after a partner that likes all my stuff" thing is just a hallmark to my teenage years.
If I want to see games, I want to see games, If I want to see women, Ill watch pornography. Its sort of like FHM in that regard, its like a gak happy medium in that its way worse than an actual book to read, and way worse than a jazz mag for lusting over.
Id rather read the back of a shampoo bottle.
Oh, she's a YouTuber?
And I think you're selling it a bit short, man. My wife games, and it can be a good time. She's not into nearly everything I am - no shooters, no strategy games, etc. - but she'll play the gak out of some MMOs, far more so than me. Shared interests can be good.
I don't really get the whole "Let's Play" phenomenon to begin with, but I suppose if I was going to watch one, I'd be more inclined to watch a cute, witty chick than anything else.
Women are actually stronger than men pound for pound of muscle, just men have more pounds of muscle and better muscle distribution for balance for moving and shifting stuff. Womens' muscle fibre is actually more dense. Interesting fact. I forgot where I heard it.
Maybe from a bloke in the pub?
Seriously if men and women are the same height and weight, the bloke is literally always stronger. Its a proven fact. Sexual dimorphism is a complex subject and many animals have stronger and more powerful females, for example gak loads of insects, birds, and the occasional mammal, but humans ain't one of them.
Its why the military has different standards for men and women. If what you were saying was true they would be identical, or made easier for men!
I suppose I'm a genuine feminist in that regard, In that I think they should do away with that outdated concept, and allow women to join the SEALs and SFODD too. I know for a fact that some women would be able to pass it, but they would earn their place and the respect of their peers. I definitely prefer it to the current system where you have plenty of female soldiers that are weak as piss because they lowered the bar so much. I mean, the USMC standards for men are fething easy, but for women they are laughable, my missus would eat the mans one for breakfast, let alone hanging off a bar and not actually going anywhere!
you kinda missed the 2nd part of the important line but that's ok as your probably on your 5th pint. Women are actually stronger than men pound for pound of muscle, just men have more pounds of muscle and better muscle distribution for balance for moving and shifting stuff. Womens' muscle fibre is actually more dense
I'm a feminist in that i think sport should consist of a first and second division and everyone competes on a similar footing. A good side effect of this is transgender people can compete with no problematic rules, and the pay for female athletes would be higher as they get a share of the advertising revenue, which less face it due to viewer numbers is woeful in female sport.
Manchu wrote: You seem to be making an assumption about the definition of sexualization instead of offering a definition or even an argument against mine. Anyway, I don't see how my definition -- emphasizing sexual characteristics -- is different from the usual meaning of the term.
Images of sexualised children are becoming increasingly common in advertising and marketing material. Children who appear aged 12 years and under are dressed, posed and made up in the same way as sexy adult models. "Corporate paedophilia" is a metaphor used to describe advertising and marketing that sexualises children in these ways.
I am pretty sure those children are not given fake beard and fake body hair .
The American Psychological Association (APA) in its 2007 Report looked at the cognitive and emotional consequences of sexualization and the consequences for mental and physical health, and impact on development of a healthy sexual self-image.[5] The report considers that a person is sexualized in the following situations:
a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or sexual behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;
a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;
a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or
sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.
Nothing about secondary sexual characteristics, it is all about sexual attractiveness or sexual acts. Like in every definition and every use outside of yours, ever.
Basically, you have given a ridiculous definition that no-one else uses, but you also shifted on me the burden of proof to show that your definition is not the right one. Great.
Manchu wrote: Non sequitur. Characters are not images.
No, but an image of a character pretty much imply the existence of a character. Let me give you an example. I just did an image search with the pin-up keyword. I found that :
Spoiler:
This is an image of a character “who exists solely for the sake of being sexualized.” And do you know what is funny? It is the case for every damn one of the other results too!
My solution was to never go at a tournament. Well, that is not true: actually I did not even knew tournaments existed. I just played the game as a game…
Needs a source, because I actually do know quite a lot about biologically and that makes no sense. Men have stronger upper bodies thanks to evolutionary biology, being the only gender that can have children doesn't automatically mean women can take more pain though. I mean, the parts of the body that deal with the pain perhaps, but they evolve to deal with it. The idea that "men couldnt take the pain" is an old wives tale.
gak, my mate lives next to a woman with 11 kids, if it hurt that fething much wouldn't she have quit after the first one?
Basically I reckon its down to the individual, so the world is full of tough men, and weak men, and tough women, and weak women, and they all sit around and discuss why none of them are as tough as me.
Yeah, I'd like to see a really good, conclusive study that shows that women take pain "better" than men, and what that means.
Ahem.... What do women have every month compared to men?
Needs a source, because I actually do know quite a lot about biologically and that makes no sense. Men have stronger upper bodies thanks to evolutionary biology, being the only gender that can have children doesn't automatically mean women can take more pain though. I mean, the parts of the body that deal with the pain perhaps, but they evolve to deal with it. The idea that "men couldnt take the pain" is an old wives tale.
gak, my mate lives next to a woman with 11 kids, if it hurt that fething much wouldn't she have quit after the first one?
Basically I reckon its down to the individual, so the world is full of tough men, and weak men, and tough women, and weak women, and they all sit around and discuss why none of them are as tough as me.
I would agree with that logic,
Considering there have been supporting facts for both men and women have higher tolerance for pain.
mattyrm wrote: Its why the military has different standards for men and women. If what you were saying was true they would be identical, or made easier for men!
Not really no. I don't entirely approve of the military's differing standards, myself, but you have to admit, someone whom has been sedentary their entire lives is going to have a harder time adapting to military lifestyle than someone whom has been fairly active their entire lives, with sports and fights and etc.
Basically, society ENCOURAGES women to stay physically out of shape while doing their best to somehow still manage to stay thin in spite of this. A woman whom has been active her whole life doesn't usually have a problem meeting the military's standards.
I disagree with how they are going about trying to fix this problem, mind you.
mattyrm wrote: Its why the military has different standards for men and women. If what you were saying was true they would be identical, or made easier for men!
Not really no. I don't entirely approve of the military's differing standards, myself, but you have to admit, someone whom has been sedentary their entire lives is going to have a harder time adapting to military lifestyle than someone whom has been fairly active their entire lives, with sports and fights and etc.
Basically, society ENCOURAGES women to stay physically out of shape while doing their best to somehow still manage to stay thin in spite of this.
more of that nonsense eh?
So why don't you take the Navy's physical test and let us know how you do.
You have 2 mins to do as many push ups as you can. Take a 2 min rest, then you have 2 mins to do as many sit ups as you can. Then go run a 1.5 mile course.
mattyrm wrote: Its why the military has different standards for men and women. If what you were saying was true they would be identical, or made easier for men!
Not really no. I don't entirely approve of the military's differing standards, myself, but you have to admit, someone whom has been sedentary their entire lives is going to have a harder time adapting to military lifestyle than someone whom has been fairly active their entire lives, with sports and fights and etc.
Basically, society ENCOURAGES women to stay physically out of shape while doing their best to somehow still manage to stay thin in spite of this.
more of that nonsense eh?
So why don't you take the Navy's physical test and let us know how you do.
You have 2 mins to do as many push ups as you can. Take a 2 min rest, then you have 2 mins to do as many sit ups as you can. Then go run a 1.5 mile course.
I remember when I got do 100 push ups. On my finger tips. Ah. Good times. Doubt I could do ten now But if you need a box lifted, I can lift that mother fething box!
LordofHats wrote: I remember when I got do 100 push ups. On my finger tips. Ah. Good times. Doubt I could do ten now But if you need a box lifted, I can lift that mother fething box!
I'm out of shape compared to ten years ago, but I just did twenty of those as part of my daily exercise.
Could probably do more if I was trying to build up to something or pass a physical test, though.
Still... I could do so much more back when I was trying to lose babyfat and get in shape in my teen years. Then again, I was a lot more motivated to exercise back then, now I just do it out of habit.
(I'm assuming you mean fingers as in all five, mind you, I find the idea of doing it on one fingertip to be stupid)
I used to do Karate 5 days a week in High School I was assistant instructor for 3 years so I needed to be there early and I basically had nothing to do but work out and wax on wax off the mats And yeah, all 5 fingers. That whole 1 finger thing is terrible for you (yes it's possible) but the finger was not designed to be used that way. I started doing it after knuckle pushups became too easy I used to be damn ripped.
Of course, being assistant instructor, if I did 100 push ups, everyone else did 100 push ups (my last day I made them do 200, because I'm evil like that), and the girls didn't seem to struggle with that anymore than the boys did. If anything the girls almost consistent did a better push up than the boys. I had to keep an eye on all of them make sure they were doing the full motion (chest should be about a fist's height from the floor) and the girls as I remember almost never needed to be reminded.
The entire bit about men have more muscle is completely off the point. Fiction is almost always about exceptional people. Whatever the average for humans might be is wholly irrelevant to a work of fiction (i.e. it's an argument that falls in the pit of pointless before it even starts).
Melissia wrote: Basically, society ENCOURAGES women to stay physically out of shape while doing their best to somehow still manage to stay thin in spite of this. A woman whom has been active her whole life doesn't usually have a problem meeting the military's standards.
The Marines seem to keep recruiting inactive women, I guess.
Basically, society ENCOURAGES women to stay physically out of shape while doing their best to somehow still manage to stay thin in spite of this. A woman whom has been active her whole life doesn't usually have a problem meeting the military's standards.
I disagree with how they are going about trying to fix this problem, mind you.
This is so very painfully true and thank you for saying this because it needs to be said again and again until women are encouraged to be more than a skinnyfat twig with a plastic rack. The "feminine" image pushed by society is either a waif that is probably suffering from numerous mineral deficiencies and has brittle bones or the equally obnoxious borderline obese "curvy" figure. Both are inactive.
All humans should be physically active to some extent and women should be encouraged to be fit and athletic. They shouldn't be encouraged to starve themselves.
Seaward wrote:
Melissia wrote: Basically, society ENCOURAGES women to stay physically out of shape while doing their best to somehow still manage to stay thin in spite of this. A woman whom has been active her whole life doesn't usually have a problem meeting the military's standards.
The Marines seem to keep recruiting inactive women, I guess.
Have you ever even been around female Marines or any Marines at all? You don't need to be a physical stud to complete Boot Camp (it'll help though), you don't need to be particularly fit to do a lot of the jobs, and in all honesty all the most strenuous job requires is muscle endurance. I have a 6'2" 170lbs dripping wet twig of friend that someone managed to get through B oot Camp, SOI, and is now an 0311. There are some hard chargers out there, but that doesn't mean every man or woman in the Corps is in particularly good shape.
trexmeyer wrote: Have you ever even been around female Marines or any Marines at all? You don't need to be a physical stud to complete Boot Camp (it'll help though), you don't need to be particularly fit to do a lot of the jobs, and in all honesty all the most strenuous job requires is muscle endurance. I have a 6'2" 170lbs dripping wet twig of friend that someone managed to get through B oot Camp, SOI, and is now an 0311. There are some hard chargers out there, but that doesn't mean every man or woman in the Corps is in particularly good shape.
Oh, one or two. They run around the flight deck a lot.
They've been trying for a couple years now to ditch the flexed arm hang option for women in favor of pull-ups. A minimum of three, to be precise. They've had to push back implementation twice because it's still well over 50% of all female Marines failing when tried. It's a serious problem.
You keep focusing on hair. It is disingenuous (and irritating) given that you thereby ignore every other secondary sexual characteristic. It boils down to an argument that Superman is not sexualized because he doesn't have a beard. Also, you keep ignoring the relationship between sexual attraction and secondary sexual characteristics. Attractiveness is not necessarily sexual and "sexiness" is obscured by individual preference. All the pictures you linked earlier of men you find to be erotic demonstrate only your taste in erotica rather than any meaningful standard for sexualization. As I already mentioned, sexualized is not a synonym for erotic or attractive or sexy. It's interesting to me that you dredge up an APA report on sexualization of children without connecting the dots between it and the discussion here. First, secondary sexual characteristics indicate biological adulthood. That is the objective basis for the inappropriateness of sexualization of children. Second, my definition covers the same ground -- objectification and dehumanization as distinct from personal value and sexiness.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: you have given a ridiculous definition that no-one else uses, but you also shifted on me the burden of proof to show that your definition is not the right one
You have yet to demonstrate that my definition is ridiculous or that no one else uses it. For my part, I never claimed that anyone else every used it. I just claim that it is (a) reasonable and (b) useful. By reasonable, I mean that it does not hinge on personal taste. By useful, I mean that it clarifies the difference between sexiness (which is not inherently problematic) and dehumanization (which is always problematic).
I get what you mean but that superficial logic skirts the point. A character is more than a body; characters also have personality, history, and perspective. A pinup can convey this fuller sense of character -- which is why I have no idea why you brought up piunups in the first place or how you got the idea that I wanted to ban them. What I actually said was:
Manchu wrote: The problem is when female characters exist solely or primarily for the sake of being sexualized.
Appearing in a pinup does not necessarily mean the character exists solely or primarily for the sake of being sexualized, even if the character does not exist outside of the pinup. This is where the term 'pinup' is being abused because of its broad meaning. If what you are really talking about is pornography then just say so. As for pornography, yes I think it is certainly problematic but I don't think it should be banned.
It's not going to happen because the average American male struggles to even do a single pullup. I've seen some women knock them out, but they've always been Crossfit gals or "gym rats". Until female athleticism is celebrated military standards for them are forced to be low.
Talizvar wrote: Most of these "fun" arguments of men with more muscle mass and women with more pain tolerance are geared toward the "extreme" ends of the spectrum.
Testosterone helps build muscle. Men have much more testosterone than women. An average male is capable of building more muscle than an average woman. How is this even debatable?
Talizvar wrote: Most of these "fun" arguments of men with more muscle mass and women with more pain tolerance are geared toward the "extreme" ends of the spectrum.
The bunch of us "normal" types there would be little to differentiate so getting hung up in these discussions are a no-win situation.
I like strong, smart women.
Funny: I like that in my male friends as well.
What problem do I have with how women are presented in games?
When their sex somehow makes them "special" in that game.
Agreed. IT should just be like. Yeah she's a girl so what.
trexmeyer wrote: It's not going to happen because the average American male struggles to even do a single pullup. I've seen some women knock them out, but they've always been Crossfit gals or "gym rats". Until female athleticism is celebrated military standards for them are forced to be low.
If you say so.
Incidentally, I suspect some 0372s would argue about the most strenuous jobs requiring mere muscle endurance, but what do I know.
trexmeyer wrote: It's not going to happen because the average American male struggles to even do a single pullup. I've seen some women knock them out, but they've always been Crossfit gals or "gym rats". Until female athleticism is celebrated military standards for them are forced to be low.
If you say so.
Incidentally, I suspect some 0372s would argue about the most strenuous jobs requiring mere muscle endurance, but what do I know.
Modern combat is much more focused on muscle endurance and reflexes than it is only absolute strength and explosiveness. Yeah, you still need the latter, but it is secondary.
Broadly speaking the capabilities of a lot of video game characters don't track at all to real human ability. Unless we're talking about whatever small subset of games aim to be a realistic simulation of real people in real situations, I just don't get how any of this "Male vs Female" strength/pain tolerance/snow-pee writing ability/capacity to menstruate has any relevance.
trexmeyer wrote: Modern combat is much more focused on muscle endurance and reflexes than it is only absolute strength and explosiveness. Yeah, you still need the latter, but it is secondary.
I found it to be much more focused on effective communication and fine motor skills, with an annoying amount of math. I suppose it depends on what you're doing.
I don't know why the Marines are struggling to get women to manage three pull-ups. As you said, the majority of males in America would have trouble meeting the requirements, yet the Marines don't lack for male recruits who can meet and exceed minimums. The same is not true on the female side of the coin. I find that worth noting, at the very least.
trexmeyer wrote: Modern combat is much more focused on muscle endurance and reflexes than it is only absolute strength and explosiveness. Yeah, you still need the latter, but it is secondary.
I found it to be much more focused on effective communication and fine motor skills, with an annoying amount of math. I suppose it depends on what you're doing.
I don't know why the Marines are struggling to get women to manage three pull-ups. As you said, the majority of males in America would have trouble meeting the requirements, yet the Marines don't lack for male recruits who can meet and exceed minimums. The same is not true on the female side of the coin. I find that worth noting, at the very least.
You know I was referring to the physical side of it Seaward.
Chongara wrote: Broadly speaking the capabilities of a lot of video game characters don't track at all to real human ability. Unless we're talking about whatever small subset of games aim to be a realistic simulation of real people in real situations, I just don't get how any of this "Male vs Female" strength/pain tolerance/snow-pee writing ability/capacity to menstruate has any relevance.
So you're suggesting that this;
Isn't possible in reality and acting as though fantasy must adhere to the limitations of real humans is silly? Get outta here
Manchu wrote: Also, you keep ignoring the relationship between sexual attraction and secondary sexual characteristics.
Sexual attraction. That is the thing. Superman is not designed to emphasize his sexual attraction. Those examples I gave are.
Manchu wrote: All the pictures you linked earlier of men you find to be erotic demonstrate only your taste in erotica
No. I am not interested in males. I am able, though, to recognize a picture that was made to emphasize sexual attractiveness, and one that was made to emphasize physical strength like your Superman picture.
Manchu wrote: As I already mentioned, sexualized is not a synonym for erotic or attractive or sexy.
Your own personal definition of sexualization is not relevant here.
Manchu wrote: You have yet to demonstrate that my definition is ridiculous or that no one else uses it.
No, I do not. Burden's on you.
Manchu wrote: For my part, I never claimed that anyone else every used it. I just claim that it is (a) reasonable and (b) useful.
Using a different definition than anyone else of a common word is not useful. Or reasonable.
Manchu wrote: By reasonable, I mean that it does not hinge on personal taste.
It is not a question of taste, it is a question of judgment. I never said whether those pictures were tasteful or not, or whether I personally liked them. Some of them might be very tasteful, other not at all, all that matter is whether or not emphasizing sexual attractiveness is the aim. This may be a little more subjective than determining whether secondary sexual attributes was the aim, but only slightly so, and it has the great advantage of not presenting this as sexualized:
Spoiler:
even though there is some very big secondary sexual attribute on this picture.
Manchu wrote: By useful, I mean that it clarifies the difference between sexiness (which is not inherently problematic) and dehumanization (which is always problematic).
Just to be clear, you are telling me that the picture of Superman you posted was dehumanizing? This is really what you meant?
Manchu wrote: Appearing in a pinup does not necessarily mean the character exists solely or primarily for the sake of being sexualized, even if the character does not exist outside of the pinup. This is where the term 'pinup' is being abused because of its broad meaning. If what you are really talking about is pornography then just say so. As for pornography, yes I think it is certainly problematic but I don't think it should be banned.
So, what about the picture I posted. Was it pornography? Or has the character any other purpose that makes her sexualization secondary?
Chongara wrote: Broadly speaking the capabilities of a lot of video game characters don't track at all to real human ability. Unless we're talking about whatever small subset of games aim to be a realistic simulation of real people in real situations, I just don't get how any of this "Male vs Female" strength/pain tolerance/snow-pee writing ability/capacity to menstruate has any relevance.
So you're suggesting that this;
Spoiler:
Isn't possible in reality and acting as though fantasy must adhere to the limitations of real humans is silly? Get outta here
Exactly. It's just a nonsense side track. I mean would
trexmeyer wrote: It's not going to happen because the average American male struggles to even do a single pullup.
When I started doing push-up, I started being able to do at least 10 in a row, and very quickly grew to be able to make 20 in a row. I struggle to imagine the average American male is so much weaker than me. Or has obesity reached such level there? (I grew up to being able to do about 45 in a row iirc, and then my wrists started aching so I stopped, and never really went back to it. But climbing should do for the exercise, I hope.) [edit]Oh, I mixed push-ups and pull-ups! I can barely do 5 pullups.[/edit]
I think complaining about pullup's is ultimately kind of silly. Pullups are really really hard. Even when I could do back to back sets of 10 pushups all the way up to 250 if I wanted to, I couldn't do that many pullups. The minimum pullups for the military is what, 3 to 5?
When we were doing the presidential fitness test, the girls and the small kids were pushing out upwards of five to ten pull ups no sweat, while the jocks could barely do two or three. At the end of the day I've always felt the pullup is a deceptive test, especially since it's easier to do large numbers of pullups with less muscle mass.
What is considered appropriate adult sexuality in our culture has its basis in the development of secondary sexual characteristics. For those who are obsessed with facial hair, you must be aware that beards do play a role in sexually attracting women to men generally speaking. So do other male secondary sexual characteristics, such as pronounced muscle mass. Emphasizing masculine sexual characteristics is not only meant to titillate straight women, however. It is also meant to idealize masculinity for male consumption -- and this is certainly the bigger market when it comes to video games and comic books.
For example, the famous table-turning parody of the Avengers movie poster actually fails to make a coherent point. The commentary suggests Black Widow is singled out for sexualization because of her unique pose. In reality, every one of the Avengers is sexualized in that poster. The male Avengers are posed differently because of underlying male secondary sexual characteristics: square jaws, broad shoulders, buldging arms and thighs. Black Widow's pose emphasizes her breasts, waist, and rear end. Black Widow's pose is unique because she is the only woman, not because she is the only character whose sexual aspects are being emphasized.
Why do people have such a tough time realizing this? I think the answer is extremely complex but I would start by suggesting that latent homophobia makes straight men hesitant to admit that they themselves are the primary consumers of images of men wearing skin tight clothing over bulging muscles as a matter of sex appeal. There is also a related notion that only women can be sexually objectified/exploited in a meaningful way (that is, sexual objectification of men is a non-issue because our culture is patriarchal).
Moving back to the original point from pages ago, there is no zero sum game as between characterization and sexualization. All of the Avengers, including Black Widow, are portrayed as having history, personality, and viewpoint that is not merely contingent upon their sexiness. A meaningful feminist critique of media is not about opposing women being conventionally sexy (as has been suggested in many forms ITT) but rather about pointing out when women (and men) are reduced to little more than a sexy image to be consumed.
Manchu wrote: So do other male secondary sexual characteristics, such as pronounced muscle mass.
Not just “pronounced muscle mass”. The hulk is not a sex symbol. Actually, leaner builds are much more popular. It is certainly not “the more the better”, and your Superman would be more attractive to most people with less muscle.
Manchu wrote: The male Avengers are posed differently because of underlying male secondary sexual characteristics: square jaws, broad shoulders, buldging arms and thighs.
So, why do not Iron Man get some nipple-window on his armor, like power girl get a boob window?
Manchu wrote: Black Widow's pose is unique because she is the only woman, not because she is the only character whose sexual aspects are being emphasized.
I disagree with you. I am pretty sure the rear end of men is just any less sexual than the rear end of women, and the reason only Black Window's rear end is emphasized is because she is the only one where there is a conscious effort to make her sexy. The parody poster is a parody, so yeah, the pose do not make the other avenger actually sexy, but just look at that B&B disney character I posted. Would you really say that his rear end is not emphasized by his pose to make him more sexy? Or do you think it makes him look feminine?
I think you are on the right track by contrasting masculine sexiness with feminine sexiness. I would also add that the target audience is important. The Avengers poster plays up the masculine sexiness of the male Avengers and the feminine sexiness of Black Widow as targeted at a straight male audience.
Manchu wrote: I think you are on the right track by contrasting masculine sexiness with feminine sexiness. I would also add that the target audience is important. The Avengers poster plays up the masculine sexiness of the male Avengers and the feminine sexiness of Black Widow as targeted at a straight male audience.
Funnily enough a lot of girls looked up at black widow as a true heroine.
There is nothing wrong with girls looking up to a sexy woman as a role model so long as being sexy is not the only or primarily ideal aspect of the role model.
Basically, society ENCOURAGES women to stay physically out of shape while doing their best to somehow still manage to stay thin in spite of this. A woman whom has been active her whole life doesn't usually have a problem meeting the military's standards.
I disagree with how they are going about trying to fix this problem, mind you.
Sound logic. Certainly when I was a teenager we were always out causing havoc, climbing trees, and running away from the authorities at great speed.
My missus was never in the military but she began training with me when we started dating, 5 years later she can crack 12 proper pull-ups and run three miles in about 22 minutes. Stunned men constantly comment on it at the gym, I'm aware they probably mainly do it so they can try to get her phone number, but almost once a week she gets home and says "Oh another guy came over and slapped me 5 today and said "DAMN ARE YOU IN THE RANGERS?!"
Manchu wrote: I think you are on the right track by contrasting masculine sexiness with feminine sexiness.
I never said they were the same.
Manchu wrote: The Avengers poster plays up the masculine sexiness of the male Avengers and the feminine sexiness of Black Widow as targeted at a straight male audience.
You know, I still have a lot of problem with the idea the entirely covered up in metal that let us only vaguely guess at the shape of his body Iron Man is sexualized. Or Hulk, for that matter. I mean, there is a reason this parody was made:
Iron Man's armor is stylized muscle mass. The depiction of him and the Hulk is primarily targeted at straight men not gay men or straight women. The "He-Hulk" parody makes that point. The former is a kind of sex appeal for the target to emulate. The latter is a kind of sex appeal for the target to desire.
As is often said of James Bond, "women want him and men want to be him." The Avengers poster is aimed at straight men. They are not meant to want to be Black Widow. The usual argument goes, what about straight women looking at the poster? If they are meant to want to be Black Widow and Black Widow is depicted as desirable by straight men then are we sending the signal that straight women should want to be desirable by straight men?
YES FFS that is exactly the message.
And that is exactly why straight men want to be like James Bond -- so straight ladies will want to be with them.
Are you saying strength is not a sexually desirable trait in men?
Also I added more to the post above. Reposting here since we are on a new page:
Manchu wrote: Iron Man's armor is stylized muscle mass. The depiction of him and the Hulk is primarily targeted at straight men not gay men or straight women. The "He-Hulk" parody makes that point. The former is a kind of sex appeal for the target to emulate. The latter is a kind of sex appeal for the target to desire.
As is often said of James Bond, "women want him and men want to be him." The Avengers poster is aimed at straight men. They are not meant to want to be Black Widow. The usual argument goes, what about straight women looking at the poster? If they are meant to want to be Black Widow and Black Widow is depicted as desirable by straight men then are we sending the signal that straight women should want to be desirable by straight men?
YES FFS that is exactly the message.
And that is exactly why straight men want to be like James Bond -- so straight ladies will want to be with them.
So, how is it sexualized/sexy/in any way related to sex? He sure seems focused on strength, and only strength to me.
Because society (and this is practically universal among humans) sexualizes male power. Strength is sex. It's at times hard to note sexualization of males by males because it's indirect. It's not about a big shlong or a tight butt so much as it is about what men think will get them women. The answer to that question is strength. Physical, mental, emotional, etc.
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