Yeah, definitely true about Fenris, his backstory is pretty wacky.
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Why women criticise sexualised character designs |OT2| I have no pants and I must scream (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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Yeah, definitely true about Fenris, his backstory is pretty wacky.
I didn't play Dragons Age but can't comment, but if it's another "monster breeding with human women" then its bad in my book, even if it doesn't imply sexy women.
As Machachan says, it tells you when this is usualy never used for men, the same fantasy that monsters can make human women pregnant can make human men pregnant.
If it isn't about it then ignore my post lol
Mind you, I'm not talking necessary about rape stories . I'm talking about those "monster making women pregnant" stories. I find it incredibly degrading and I'm not even a woman. Nothing about it makes a kind of sense when you analyze how such a species could exist.
Remember reading how they wanted with Alien to make men unconfortable about sexual violence (something that is usually targeted against women). Alien is still nonsense but a liitle less, because it's parasitic instead of women somehow getting pregnant with other species, but the most important thing is that we see it happening to men, women, and animals.
It's not really making women pregnant so far as tainting them and making them darkspawn - it's how the Blight works in Dragon Age, it infects living things most of the time killing them - the darkspawn themselves infect the world around them, making so the land can't bare crops and sickens animals, people. Like I said, it implies rape:
First day, they come and catch everyone.
Second day, they beat us and eat some for meat.
Third day, the men are all gnawed on again.
Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate.
Fifth day, they return and it's another girl's turn.
Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams.
Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew.
Eighth day, we hated as she is violated.
Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin.
Now she does feast, as she's become the beast.
Now you lay and wait, for their screams will haunt you in your dreams.
It turns women into something else - Broodmothers.
But the Blight does affect everything in the world, not just women.
(I also note that the Codex entry for it just says that women are forced to eat the darkspawn tissue/vomit - Darkspawn are asexual, i don't think they actually have reproductive parts)
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Not sure if it's been talked about yet, but yesterday I finished playing The Missing, the new game by Swery; it's puzzle platformer slash horror game starring a queer woman and it's the most emotionally powerful game I've played in years. It's hard to convey everything great about it without spoiling it, but I'm legit shocked a narrative this empathetic and nuanced came from a niche japanese game.
The catch is that it uses mutilation as core mechanic (it's not very graphic at all, but still) and it's really hard to show what the game is like without it looking like torture porn... But it's really not and it actually important part of the story, but again, spoilers.
It's quite a good game mechanically too, which I hear it's new for him lol (never played a Swery game before, but I'm definitely never skipping one from now on)
The catch is that it uses mutilation as core mechanic (it's not very graphic at all, but still) and it's really hard to show what the game is like without it looking like torture porn... But it's really not and it actually important part of the story, but again, spoilers.
It's quite a good game mechanically too, which I hear it's new for him lol (never played a Swery game before, but I'm definitely never skipping one from now on)
I had heard about the Raz character, and how horribly the game treated sexual misconduct/assault, but nothing about the other characters. I cant say I'm surprised though, the first game was a lot of fun to play, but the story was a mess of poorly handled racial issues and unfortunate examples of sexism. Sitting through that story was like pulling teeth, so I am super depressed at how many issues 4 seems to have.
I can only speak for myself, but while DAO didn't go too far with it's rape scenes, and most definitely tried to avoid sexualizing those incidents, the game did go to that well maybe one too many times for my taste. DAO has many strong female leads, and even a few good supporting characters, but their use of rape sometimes rang as an attempt to prove how adult and mature the story was.
I wouldn't compare it to goblin slayer beyond some very mild connections, and the intents of the series are almost polar opposites, but I think there is a discussion to be had about why fantasy series seem to frequently use rape as a source of drama.
I thought the Broodmother stuff was fine but I found the City Elf origin handled a bit too heavily - it felt a bit much. While it made sense that elves in the society would be more likely treated that way, it still felt a bit more shock for my liking - I felt like there was a better way of writing/framing what happened. I felt DA2 with Fenris and the Tranquiled girls was handled alot better.
I can understand that, and I think DA2 handled this a lot better than DAO. I find it funny that the Dalish story was the one that just crossed the line for me. I think the bigger problem is that a lot of writers want to use sexism and sexual violence to make commentary on misogyny, especially in fantasy stories. The problem is that it seems to become their most common tool.
I also think you need to make a hard distinction between series that depict rape, and those that fetishize it. DAO, Game of Thrones, and their like should be criticized for their over reliance on rape to show how hard life is for women. However, I feel like there is an ocean of difference between those series and pure dreck like Goblin Slayer.
I think that is the problem that they do want to highlight the injustices against women - and rape is used as a symbolism for that. Unfortunately while it does feel like it can be used too often, I never feel like it's unrealistic because it's something that is sadly way too common in real life. But games don't have to be realistic all the time either, and women need escaspism too so infrequent use of rape as a storytelling device tends to be better as it allows women (and men too) to have a break from it while also increasing the impact the few times you do use it. I also forgot how bad that Dalish story was - the curse was cool but they could have come up with a much better story for it. I actually really enjoyed more what they've done with elves since then especially in DAI,
And yeah, I would never truly compare those series to Goblin Slayer, was just pointing out that I did actually see a series where the "monster impregnates girl" thing was actually done quite well - in saying that it doesn't completely follow that pattern either.
Some David Eddings novel has dryads that are always female and capture human men for breeding. Pretty sure they just look like (conventionally attractive) human women, though. Cause all female fantasy monsters do, after all. Unless I was reading that into it. Not like there were any pictures.
Also:
Stories of supernatural entities kidnapping humans for sex/marriage is as old as human civilisation (it evolves with the times: Gods, faeries, angels, demons, aliens...)
It's not a Isekai series, it's a ~dark fantasy~. There's no reincarnation.
And the anime is quite mediocre at best but much like any seasonal thing, it'll disappear from the internet until the next wave. It's always like that. The only people who still will be talking about it after the anime ends would be the LN readers since it's licensed and the manga adaptation readers.
Otherwise, in two months that conversation will be completely gone, at least until a possible second season since in Japan the manga adaptations and the LN got a sizeable boost so maybe in 2-3 years it'll be back.
Oh gawd, yas! This is one of the most powerful, empowering and well-written stories I have experienced in video games and probably the best with a female lead. And I was shocked that it came from SWERY too. It dealt with the issues it presented delicately and without a false note. It's one of those games that's I would like for everyone to play.
I was literally crying at the end.
Sure, but I was referring specifically to dryads, and the fact that men are usually the weaker party in this relationship. I should have thought more before writing that post, however; my familiarity with dryads comes mostly from Sapkowski's works (where they are a wild bunch of badasses with a penchant for guerrilla warfare), and one of the foundations of the Witcher books is the subversion of typical fantasy tropes. So, if such characterisation were actually a common trope, he probably wouldn't have used it, knowing his modus operandi.
Yeah but even here... the dryads are usually portrayed as impressed/happy with the male attention, and the dude often gets away unscathed, other than being displaced by a century.
The contrast to what happens to women is huge. I mean, GS specifically does its best to assure the audience the women in question were irreperably broken. That's almost never the case for a dude kidnapped by a dryad.
And... I don't really want to point this out, but a lot of the monster portrayals in fantasy has very ugly crossovers with "icky non-whites stealing our women" propaganda, too. Particularly in western fantasy.
Seems I really need to look into "The Missing" more. Those limb mechanics though @_@
They actually pay it off as something more than a gross gag, trust me.
Seeing as computer games/rpgs borrow heavily from fantasy which borrows heavily from mythology, it's also interesting that depictions of the dryad, despite it's origins as a tree-nymph or sort of genus loci, is almost never paired with the Satyr, the equivalent male embodiment of sexualised, carefree nature spirit. Even though the goatlike aspect was later added by the Romans (through Faunus), it's also a rare example where the male creature is (if only a little) more monstrous than the female. Or perhaps that's later Christian interpretation of nature spirits that like drinking, partying and sex as demonic rather than companions and almost avatars of Pan and Dionysus. Going back to the whole 'sexualised female monsters but not the male ones' thing, it reminds me of Succubi and Incubi, where if a game calls for a sexy demon in lingerie to turn up and both flirt with and fight the player, the former is incredibly common, the latter not so much!
I can only suppose that this can be traced to the fact that men are to this day viewed as the 'stronger half' - so much so that I've seen people assert that male rape does not exist. Not people that I consider worth of any attemtion, but still.
Also, I can't not think at the not-so-unusual double standard that if a man fucks a lot, he's a winner; if a woman does, she's a slut.
That would require Scamco to care more about the franchise. Several of the character models are the same ones from SC4 and/or SC5. They did not even carry over a bunch of the CaS equipment, some of the pieces having been usable since SC3. My guess is to sell it to us in the season pass. The game received little to no advertising and was having to compete against the disappointment of SC5, which is showing in the sales info we know for it now. I would not be surprised if the higher ups will be done with the franchise after the season pass content is all released.
As an aside, I played Tira's story mode and her entire persona just makes me roll my eyes. Being an evil sexualized mentally ill (split personality) girl/women who goes on to kidnap children is something I wish interviewers would have asked Namco employees about but I guess not.
While I'm banging on about mythology, I think part of it goes back to story/quest narratives (as told/compiled by men) in that the men seeking out adventure and encountering sexualised female creatures are, by their nature as protagonists, depicted as brave, resourceful, sanctioned by higher powers and/or well-equipped. Usually when a woman in these stories encounters a sexualised creature she's not the protagonist, it's not her choice and the act of her being preyed upon in her sanctum by the agency of the creature itself is just as much pictured as an affront to her (human) male admirers. As such, you get the difference between, say, Harker's dramatic escape from the brides of Dracula contrasted with the vampire's attacks on Lucy and Mina. That sexual-agency-as-adventurer, alongside the fascination with desire and infatuation and then rape runs through a lot of stuff.
I remember watching Excalibur (the 1980s John Boorman one) as a kid, having been raised on tales of King Arthur and Celtic myth, only to find it's depiction of Uther's fascination with and magical rape of Igrayne (assisted by Merlin, no less!) to be something, er, a bit weird. Merlin gets the child he wants (Arthur), but Igrayne is essentially just the price for it. Of course, Arthur's sister, Morgana, see's what happened, but despite being a sorceress, it's still a young girl watching her mum being raped by someone she knows isn't her dad. Of course the later conflict between Morgana and Merlin, Mordred and Arthur, all hinges on the wrongness of Merlin's deal with Uther. It's right there in the myths that the film is based on, it suggests a real fascination with rape and desire (and also the potential products of it in birthright, legitimacy and sanctioned power mattering more than the victim) going back a long way.
Sorry if me waffling is a detraction from the continued discussion of, er, goblin slayer :D
Your waffling is a much better topic than Goblin Failer. :)
The "agency adventurer" really runs quite deep, even way back to Odysseus.
The "agency adventurer" really runs quite deep, even way back to Odysseus.
:-)
Yeah, absolutely. There is quite a bit of 'and then I found some extremely hot women that turned out to be monsters...' about back then :D
One more point on Uther's assisted rape of Igrayne, throughout history male suspicion of whether they are truly the father of a child has led to all kinds of stuff (the concept of the honeymoon period, the worth of bloodied sheets on the wedding night etc). The Arthurian myth, however, rarely bothers itself with whether or not Igraine ever discovers Uther's deception or how she feels about it. Both Uther and Merlin are 100% certain (through magic etc) that Uther is the father, but Igrayne isn't. It's a complete pack of lies regarding her bodily autonomy, repurposing male anxiety over reproductive uncertainty into a tale of rape and guaranteed lineage and destiny for a bunch of guys. By the storyteller, by Merlin, by Uther, even after, in some tellings, Uther and Igrayne live happily together afterwards.
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Wooooow.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily...e=twitter&utm_medium=lawdesk&utm_campaign=4pm
This is the Trump administration in action:
Also:
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily...e=twitter&utm_medium=lawdesk&utm_campaign=4pm
This is the Trump administration in action:
Also:
Thanks for the tip, it looked really interesting so I just bought it!
The more interesting competition would be who didn't get an insta-quadruple bingo with that character designAnyone up for a game of bingo? Here's Aversa's artwork, the latest addition to Fire Emblem Heroes (character originally from FE Awakening).
I've got outfits painted onto breasts with no nipples, weird anatomy, zetta-ryoki, arrow pointing to crotch, focus on thighs and breasts as the key parts of the art, battlefield stilettos and combat suspenders on my board so far.
I always thought they were the result of nocturnal emissions?
It's actually correct.
not exactly what I expected but ...
But you still shouldn't support this terrible game.
It's a bit of both as far as I remember. The Malleus Malificarum claimed Succubi took semen (hence wet dreams etc) so that demons could reproduce, using Incubi to impregnate human women (hey, there's that obsession with monster rape again!) and leading to physically disabled children etc. Justifying even more abuse. More modern theories link the word to sleep paralysis through 'night terrors', the feeling that something is sitting on your chest and restricting your breath.
wiki:
People should be watching That Time I Reincarnated As A Slime instead of Goblin Slayer. It's still got big anime tiddies, but the main character treats everyone well and the world isn't set up to give you periodic rape scenes. And it has a tsundere dragon of unimaginable power
Not all porn is equal. The rape-y kind of porn is very problematic. Non-rapey porn that still treats women as nothing but wham-bam-done sex objects for men is less so but it's not wholly unproblematic either. There are just too many men who get their only "education" about sex from porn and then they don't understand when real life generally isn't like that and women aren't satisfied or don't appreciate being treated as sex objects with no free will or right to refuse and that every situation alone with a friendly woman is an automatic invitation to stick their hand down their pants or worse.
As far as DOA Volleyball goes, leaving quality of gameplay outside of the argument (it's a shit game and I feel you need to be pretty desperate to buy it), I think that it's somewhere in a darkish grey area, mostly leaning on the negative side. On one hand it is a separate game so at least they don't infest the main series with that kind of crap. On the other it still takes these women who are strong fighters in the main game (even if somewhat sexualized/objectified) and makes them into anime sex objects, which I find iffy more than if this was an IP of its own and didn't use the DOA series' women at all. That and all the other issues (i.e. underage sexualization) take it towards an overall negative side.
I've never got it either.
It's like if a 14 year old read Berserk and got rid of all of the redeeming qualities.
Literally every female character has some attraction to the MC, irrelevant, or gets assaulted.
Well, this game's sounding less and less appealing by the second. Between this and Goblin Slayer getting so much push lately, I'm having a real hard time connecting with things people are into talking about all the sudden. Just as a general rule of thumb, I prefer to avoid things that are that blatant with their horrible fetization of just about everything awful you can have happen or implied to happen to the characters.
At the end of the day, anime gonna anime. And VC4 triples down on the anime.
(BTW, I saw the pilot of the cartoon from your avatar, it was dope).
Slime-san is one of the better Isekai stories out there, even if it's not terribly challenging.
Yeah, guess that's essentially what it keeps coming down to.
And yeah, I absolutely fell in love with Cliffside and I'm really hoping they go through with making more.
Interspecies breeding is a thing. Women are the ones with the capability of becoming pregnant when... "compatible" semen is involved. The idea itself isn't misogynistic or unrealistic. It's how it's used.
If it means constant rape of women and is made a whole thing that is a common and often used occurrence towards women (Goblin Slayer), it's bad. Berserk's case isn't bad just for existing, it's because of how it's drawn. If it was depicted differently it would just be one case of horrible things happening among other horrible things (many of them not sexual or gender-/woman-exclusive in nature) in the world of Berserk. It's a world where men face similar horrible treatment (demons have used men as playthings as well), so it's not like the manga revels in making women only suffer (sexual abuse) at every chance possible and only on that.
Men don't have the history of ovjectification for it to be anywhere on the same scale.
Only with species withing the same genus. You won't see a cat and a dog breeding, or a gorilla and a zebra. And you won't convince me than a troll and a human have similar genetics. It's also a rare ocurrence and more often than no interspecies between animals is forced from human's hand, rather than something happen naturally (not always, of course).
Only in rare cases like horses donkeys you can breed with different species (mules) but that means that the offsprings are sterile anyways, so a species that exist though interspecies of different genus breeding is literally impossible to survive for multiple reasons.
At that point, the only thing left is "fantasy", and with fantasy you could do a lot of things othen than the "women getting raped to breed" (see: Alien example). To me , the idea that "women are supposed to breed therefore anything can make them pregnant no matter how are the rules of nature" is objectifying and simplifying.
I don't want to get into an argument between Berserk and Goblin Slayer, it's clear as day Berserk is better, but it does fall into these tropes too. I mean, as much as men suffer and are raped too, it's not neither as common nor as graphic as with women (we tend to forget that it doesn't only matter if men are also raped, but how are these action depicted/drawn vs women agressions, this is a more global thing btw, also happens in GoT, etc...).
The idea that this "frustration" doesn't exist is cute. Hilarious even. Have you never noticed the backlash to ANY women-aimed story with romance? Have you never seen the gargantuan hatred neckbeards screech over and over about stuff like, well, Twilight? Have you never seen gamers lose their shit the second a final fantasy character that was male had a slightly sexualized design?
So, first issue with your line: It exists. Men especially overreact constantly to women-aimed stories that have even slight fanservice. Bashing women-aimed stories is culturally normalized. If anything, this thread is providing the missing other side of the coin, so you've got that one backwards.
Second isssue: Topless young dudes are not the equivalent of sexualized outfits for female characters. This is:
So we've got some catching up to do.
The fact that we need a movie that came in 2008 to use as an example when we've been using examples from a few weeks at most says which is more problematic.
I remember someone here posting that pic of that sexualized black monk CG dude with the loincloth around his dick and was deleted for being too NSFW even though it was the equivalent of what we usually see with female sexualized designs so yeah, sexualized dudes truly equal to sexualized women are way less normalized.
eh, disagree with this. topless dude can be fanservice. he man is not, gladio is. what you posted is the equivalent of a cameltoe or ivy from soul calibur, surely not a shirtless man
on the twilight-style movie argument, that's totally fanservice. i mean the movies even have a mom-fanbase drooling over 20 years old boys
The idea that this "frustration" doesn't exist is cute. Hilarious even. Have you never noticed the backlash to ANY women-aimed story with romance? Have you never seen the gargantuan hatred neckbeards screech over and over about stuff like, well, Twilight? Have you never seen gamers lose their shit the second a final fantasy character that was male had a slightly sexualized design?
So, first issue with your line: It exists. Men especially overreact constantly to women-aimed stories that have even slight fanservice. Bashing women-aimed stories is culturally normalized. If anything, this thread is providing the missing other side of the coin, so you've got that one backwards.
Second isssue: Topless young dudes are not the equivalent of sexualized outfits for female characters. This is:
So we've got some catching up to do.
And to add to the example picture, imagine a game set during world War 3. Female soldiers, including the main characters, are all dressed in combat appropriate attire. Something like this:
There is however, one token male character, wearing the lovely ensemble Machachan posted. Oh, and a pair of thigh height leather boots. And every time said character is in a cut scene, the camera lingers on his but and his bulge, even when the cut scene depicts something serious, like discussing past trauma.
There are no games or movies like that. No, not even Twilight. Only women get treated thus in media. And that's why we complain.
It's not that women are "supposed to breed" (or rather, men are "supposed to breed" just as much, they just can't carry a child), just that they have the necessary organs that if there was another species with the capability to breed with humans, they are biologically the only sex with the ability to grow a life in the traditional way. I guess they could make female trolls who rape men to impregnate themselves...
Fantasy has a lot of interspecies breeding, even when rape is not involved. Humans having children with dwarves and elves for fairly similar beings, orcs and dragons for less similar, so fantasy in general isn't as strict with the biological realities with how possible/realistic these things are. I guess I just don't see the idea of a troll being able to breed with humans ludicrous, as shitty as the rape is.
All this said, I agree that rape is such an overused plot device that I wouldn't miss it if I never experienced a piece of fiction with it ever again, so I'm not sure why I'm even arguing with you. :p I guess I like Berserk and the, what, 2-3 pages of troll rape (unless I completely forget how much of it is depicted) is such a miniscule part of it that I don't really feel it's a huge deal.
On a completely other topic, you, proud member of wwccsd-Era, help me decide whether red dead redemption 2 is worth getting.
My problem is this: I don't particularly care about westerns. It's just not a compelling genre to me. I need some kind of twist for it to be interesting, like westworld. And honestly, growing up and learning about how is basically a white fantasy for people who want to live in lawless times when they're the ones in power hasn't endeared me to it since. And I didn't like the first game that much either when I tried it.
So I was initially not even gonna bother. But there has been so much praise heeped on it that I'm waffling. My solution is that I'd get it if I could find an excuse for it. And one hook I would take is good representation of its female characters in a empowering way.
So if anyone on here is playing the game and noticing it's got good female depiction, you can convince me, a total stranger, to get in on the craze.
My problem is this: I don't particularly care about westerns. It's just not a compelling genre to me. I need some kind of twist for it to be interesting, like westworld. And honestly, growing up and learning about how is basically a white fantasy for people who want to live in lawless times when they're the ones in power hasn't endeared me to it since. And I didn't like the first game that much either when I tried it.
So I was initially not even gonna bother. But there has been so much praise heeped on it that I'm waffling. My solution is that I'd get it if I could find an excuse for it. And one hook I would take is good representation of its female characters in a empowering way.
So if anyone on here is playing the game and noticing it's got good female depiction, you can convince me, a total stranger, to get in on the craze.
Well you won't get that from this game. if you do have an interest in developing an interest in westerns, watch Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy and play this. But if you're really not interested, it probably won't do much for you in that respect. If you want good western stuff with a twist like that, Stephen King's Dark Tower series might be right up your alley; but can't think of too much video game-wise that fits.
Nobody said that it isn't fanservice? Machachan said that it's not fanservice to the extend and frequency of what female characters get subjected to.
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