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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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Ehh it depends, some either show up in bad faith, others probably don't articulate themselves properly. I admit, I'm pretty bad a writing.
For example from what i've read of this thread breast armor seems to be a negative in a lot of peoples column. Yet for me it's pretty much a grey area, where it can be tastefully done and I have no issues with it. Take Wonder Woman, she has breast armor, and I've seen backlash for it in the movies and recent comics. Yet personally i view it as tasteful, and see no wrong in it at all. Then take Altria from Fate Grand Order, her breasts just hang all out, and it just makes me feel uncomfortable.
Honestly, T&A for me is something I kinda enjoy but every damn video game ever with it has to frame someone with titty as "hey nico, let's look at big american titties," give them absolutely no character whatsoever, and are dressed in an outfit that looks like someone went wild with the lasso tool and doesn't fit whatsoever. More or less, T&A is a combo deal with slimy objectification. Turning a conversation about objectified female characters into one about T&A in bad faith is just a distraction of the bigger picture issues and a trap to claim that removing objectification will end T&A forever.
I don't think we should pretend that every person who feels unwelcome in this thread is a sexist when there have been times in the past that women have felt uncomfortable in this thread and left - it can be intimidating when a group of people who clearly have been writing to each other for a long time to try and enter with your own opinion, especially when gaming in general can feel like it's trying to shut women's opinion's down, so it's really easy to have it come off that way in the thread, especially when unfortunately, just due to forum demographics, this thread seems to skew mainly male (though I know you guys all try to be welcoming, and I'm glad you feel strongly about the subject, it's just unfortunate that theres's not more women in this thread). This problem is not just isolated to this thread and would be there across this forum. While clearly, that's not what Bhonar is getting at when he says the place is an echo chamber, I would feel we are doing each other a diservice if we pretended there have never been people, like women, that aren't sexist, that have felt shut out of this thread. We can only improve from a problem if we admit it's there in the first place.
I don't think anyone's really saying that though. I think most people would be perfectly willing to accept sex in games if it was treated like an adult, rational, reasonable thing. The problem with objectification is that, 90% of the time, it begins and ends with "teehee, titties". It doesn't explore sexuality, it doesn't explore relationships, it doesn't explore why sex can be healthy and gratifying or horrifically damaging, it's just "check out these tits! tee hee". And there are so many times where entire characters are literally defined by their outfits (or lack there of), the only thing framing the characters beyond how much skin their showing being the necessary additions of context to their relevancy of staying in the franchise at all. Ivy from SC is a good example of this, her backstory is pretty neat. Trying to kill her father, immune from aging, basically poised to become the pirate queen of the world because she can't be challenged, and almost no one knows about any of that stuff...because at the end of the day she's still defined by whatever S&M gear they put her in. They've never even explored her sexuality in the games, I don't think there's a line of dialogue explaining her motivations matched with her attire, if anything, her story matches her secondary outfit more than her primary.
But..."titties are great, tee hee". ::Shrugs::
At the end of the day, objectification is easy and that's why people keep doing it. It's been interesting to see people get mad at efforts taken to not go the easy road and just make female outfits a string bikini or a colored sling, but at the end of the day...a lot of people don't care about the characters, as long as they get to see some titties. They'll wheedle around saying it all day, but there are so many people who just buy a game because there's a pair of huge knockers on the cover. And that's dumb and that's sad, and that's true.
User Warned: Drive-By Posting
I don't see a problem with sexualisation if they do it for both genders. Like the SF5 Hot Edition, with Hot Ryu and Hot Chun Li.
But they don't. And they never will.
Even if you want it to be 50/50, you'll never get it. Even using your example of SF5, the amount of objectifying costumes for the women VASTLY outpaces the men, and the ones for the men are more due to legacy and history than titillation.
And when games put guys into actually objectifying outfits, guys complain. "Dicks are supposed to be funny, not sexy."
Men are objectified far less frequently than women.
From the OP:
Except sexualized men is a huge rarity in the industry and will never match the numerous amounts of sexualized women, the gap between them is ridiculously large.
Also, this balance still would not excuse the gross objectification of women characters.
Yeah, the current state of the thread is a bit pitiful. The addition of the top poster feature had me realize time again how many outspoken women this thread has lost. Sometimes it feels like it is run by men, when it should be by women. While I think that conflict among women even on this topic can not always be avoided - after all, something of the sort happened not long ago - the men of this thread might want to consider taking a step back when a new female face pops in not quite parroting what we tend to say here just yet. If this is indeed a thread by women and for women, then the opinion of a woman should never be dismissed with haste.
To be fair, I have a problem shutting up and I was pretty bad in the last thread so just ignore me.
Still look at the old thread and the who had posted and a lot of people are no longer on this site period.
I defo don't think it's just a this thread problem but a whole forum problem but this is also meant to be a safe haven for women in the forum, so I think we could work on improving it to be more welcoming. I am sad though how many promenient women posters that seem to be going down over time and I don't feel like they are enough new women posters coming in either (to be clear, talking about the forum in general) :(
I quite like your output, so I'd be hard-pressed to ignore you.
And while a number of people left the site for good, keep in mind some of them like PhazonBlonde did so over disagreements in this very thread. I didn't always agree or get along with her, but I always valued her opinion. Now she's gone.
A problem this thread now has is that you come here as a new person and see a bunch of men discuss women's issues in videogames. Which is not a bad thing at all, but a woman looking for a safe place might be turned away by the lack of fellow women in a thread like this.
I remember a case a few months back when a female member proudly posted her own anime design that was supposed to be a representation of her. She was shamed out of the thread very ungraciously and without any empathy. It really made me feel bad for her.
What would serialization for a man be then? The best I can think of is Dick Grayson. And with the knowledge that dick physics won't be a thing, cause I gotta say, that would be unattractive at least to me.
I think the issue is that some people believe that women shouldn't/wouldn't sexualize other women, and if they do it's due to guys. That's at least the feel I get here. Especially when you see comments on anime designs made by women.
Most of them are on various discords now tbh.
Yeah, I remember that one, it turned pretty ugly - the other posters weren't necessarily making bad points but there was just a large number pointed at her and they were needlessly aggressive - and it didn't help that other posters who don't normally appear in the thread to messy the waters with defending the yougness of anime designs in general. It ended up a huge pile on her.
Actually, PhazenBlonde was the prime example I was thinking of when I brought it - it felt wrong that she felt so unwelcome in this thread.
Again though, "Dicks are supposed to be funny, not sexy."
Show me a game that has the same loving devotion to male erections that, for example, DOA has towards breast physics.
I remember this but let's not conflate events here, it wasn't male posters that made PhazonBlonde decide to stop posting.
Edit: that said, oh boy the "who replied?" listing is... illuminating lol >_< No offense to all the lads in this thread, of course, but damn.
Yeah, male sexuality tends to be more...clothed than female sexuality. Like take Twisted Wonderland, a game where all of Disney Villains are now pretty boys that go to a Hogwarts school and you play as an iseki girl who picks which house and villain pretty boy to date.
...no I'm not joking
Here is male Ursula and the eel henchmen
Here's Jaffar's Parrot Iago
Here's Jaffar's Staff.
So year, fanservice for women in anime/manga/otome games tend to be more...clothed.
...ALSO WHY JAFFAR'S STAFF YOU CANNOT TELL ME THAT PEOPLE WERE HORN- *shuffled off screen*
Yeah, male sexuality tends to be more...clothed than female sexuality. Like take Twisted Wonderland, a game where all of Disney Villains are now pretty boys that go to a Hogwarts school and you play as an iseki girl who picks which house and villain pretty boy to date.
...no I'm not joking
Here is male Ursula and the eel henchmen
Here's Jaffar's Parrot Iago
Here's Jaffar's Staff.
So year, fanservice for women in anime/manga/otome games tend to be more...clothed.
...ALSO WHY JAFFAR'S STAFF YOU CANNOT TELL ME THAT PEOPLE WERE HORN- *shuffled off screen*
I hate everything about this. Where's the soul?
Blugh.
If I remember correctly though it was the straw that broke the camels back and she'd felt unwelcome for a while here? It wasn't just that one event - and she mentioned male posters too. And when I said women being unwelcome in this thread, I didn't actually just mean male posters as the problem, though I do think the gender ratio skew helps contribute, I think everyone (including myself) should try and be open to more women posters point of view.
The funny thing is that the Black Butler Magaka is behind the game so if they include some of Black Butler's...taste this might become the darkest Disney product ever.
This thread kinda consumed itself, I think? "Forum entropy" if you will. It became a safe space within a safe space, with constant deviations towards related topics that people wanted to discuss, but (I presume) didn't want to raise elsewhere, knowing what the reaction would be. As a consequence, it's become cliquey and alienating to new comments and new content.
I don't know enough about the wider forum/community, but it wouldn't surprise me if this thread is itself a microcosm of that.
I don't know enough about the wider forum/community, but it wouldn't surprise me if this thread is itself a microcosm of that.
Look, I like this thread, a lot, but I can't believe how much of a trashfire it turned into during that. There were more seriously hurtful insults hurled at that member and the artist she had commissioned than there are too people who act in blatantly bad faith. It was practically bullying.
I won't say this thread is an echo chamber, but people do feel comfortable wearing their emotions on their sleeve. Sometimes that's cleansing, and sometimes it leads to aggression where none was warranted or appropriate. That's why I prefer to lurk and react slowly. I want to try and get a good idea of what I'm dealing with before engaging.
So is it the part where we all agree to be more considerate in trying to separate trolls from people trying to engage in an honest conversation?
I mostly don't post for fear of being jumped on due to a poorly-worded statement, despite finding myself generally agreeing with the consensus of the thread regulars, but my current big complaint is how large a percentage of the thread recently has turned into just an anime discussion. Not anime as it relates to video game character design, just anime plot discussions, recommendations, etc.
There's definitely a huge amount of overlap (and some cause and effect) between the female character design issues in games and in anime, but as someone who's mostly out of the loop on anime and sees it as too much of a trash fire to bother sifting through at present, I just...wish there was a separate EtcetEra sister thread for discussing anime character design and treatment and we could keep it to games here. :/
On topic, though, I saw a character in a game recently that I was surprised by in a positive way, that I've been meaning to present here for analysis, and I keep forgetting. I'll remember one of these days.
There's definitely a huge amount of overlap (and some cause and effect) between the female character design issues in games and in anime, but as someone who's mostly out of the loop on anime and sees it as too much of a trash fire to bother sifting through at present, I just...wish there was a separate EtcetEra sister thread for discussing anime character design and treatment and we could keep it to games here. :/
On topic, though, I saw a character in a game recently that I was surprised by in a positive way, that I've been meaning to present here for analysis, and I keep forgetting. I'll remember one of these days.
Couldn't agree more, to be honest.
I don't want to stifle discussion or anything so I just kinda let it happen, but I won't lie, pages upon pages of, often barely tangential, anime discussion certainly what has been making me lose interest in this thread lately.
I also zone out for a few days when the anime discussion and recommendations kick off. I appreciate it's a heavily related topic considering how often design trends are shared though, and can see how topics get there through references to game-related stuff.
I think anime discussion is worth having some of the time simply because the anime-industry informs so much of Japanese game development. I feel they are more linked now than at any other time in gaming history. I'm confident a lot of anime designs are made specifically so they can be used to make money in gacha games based off that anime.
Anime discussion can be interesting when talking about the design of the characters and how such designs can influence games. I also lose interest when the talk turns into recommendations and talking about plots not related to the main topic though.
Maybe we need other, more focused threads then? Like a women in anime thread, or even a larger feminism thread. I'm definitely guilty of posting here about feminism in ways that are a bit outside of this thread topic. It's because I can't see where else I could discuss some of these subjects with rational people like the ones regularly frequenting this thread.
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Tbf, this is probably the only thread on era with an active discussion on feminist theory. But I'd be open to a thread on feminist critique of anime.
I'd love an OT for animefeminist.com
I'd love an OT for animefeminist.com
Yeah, a OT feminism thread is a great idea, most of the OT here could fit in general topics as well.
I'd say that exploring relationships, sexuality, and sex itself would counteract objectification of characters as they would have to be more than objects for it to work out (to an extent.) But alas, "teehee titties" is an easier sell than "An actual mature look at sexuality and sex"
Yeah, if we could generally try to loop the point back around to gaming eventually, and keep recommendation discussion that has strayed from being tangentially related to the OP to be reasonably brief, that would be great. I know we're often pointing out industry comparisons, trends and analogies, especially when so many of us are JRPG fans as well as critiquing the designs and drawing lines of influence etc. However, if it's been a couple of pages since someone mentioned a computer game and we're knee-deep in deep-cut anime references, it might be time to dial it back on topic. I'm sure I've headed off on (non-anime! :D) tangents too over the last 18 months too!
Gods, imagine if Persona actually had the guts to tackle the reality of teenage relationships/sex instead of play the male power fantasy harem card every fucking time...
I'm not sure how many follow comics, but I wanted people's thought's on the recent backlash regarding Batgirl in the Hero's in Crisis series. In Hero's in Crisis you see many of DC's hero's and some villains, go into a confession like area where they discuss various trauma's they have experienced.
The issue is that some people see the below image as being inappropriately sexual as she is showing her bullet wounds. These being the wounds that Joker caused when he shot her and left her disabled for many years in the comics.
Below is just a reference of how she looked when her new costume was revealed. Some have stated it wasn't so much the costume, but the style of the artist.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/11542433/BG_Cv27.jpg)
I will admit, personally I don't see it. And it didn't even cross my mind as sexual in any way.
The issue is that some people see the below image as being inappropriately sexual as she is showing her bullet wounds. These being the wounds that Joker caused when he shot her and left her disabled for many years in the comics.
Below is just a reference of how she looked when her new costume was revealed. Some have stated it wasn't so much the costume, but the style of the artist.
I will admit, personally I don't see it. And it didn't even cross my mind as sexual in any way.
Thank you I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels or secondary outfit should be the one that's canon and therefore primary outfit offered . (Especially in SC2 this one was beautifull as all hell )
Also on side note I'd like an LGBTQAI thread much like this one where I also would have my place and peace out of this one . Being intersex i'm touched and directly concerned by women issues too but on an intersex level - hell even the ERA profiles won't let me state I'm intersex (and no "non-binary" isn't the same thing so I would not take that tag because it just doesn't apply to me ) - but yeah my input would be more fitting in a thread that has the same purpose but from an LGBTQAI perspective .
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Is the complaint how she's drawn? How it's framed? How she's posed?I'm not sure how many follow comics, but I wanted people's thought's on the recent backlash regarding Batgirl in the Hero's in Crisis series. In Hero's in Crisis you see many of DC's hero's and some villains, go into a confession like area where they discuss various trauma's they have experienced.
The issue is that some people see the below image as being inappropriately sexual as she is showing her bullet wounds. These being the wounds that Joker caused when he shot her and left her disabled for many years in the comics.
Below is just a reference of how she looked when her new costume was revealed. Some have stated it wasn't so much the costume, but the style of the artist.
I will admit, personally I don't see it. And it didn't even cross my mind as sexual in any way.
Like... it's a different artist who is definitely more traditional superhero compared to Sean Gordon Murphy's stylized look. The framing is pretty explicitly emulating a steadycam video confessional. And I mean there's nothing overly suggestive about the pose beyond that her ass is in frame.
With the current quality of their writing, I don't even want to know how that'd turn out.
The costume under the spoiler is OK. Biggest issue of the comic page is the framing of the shots. What's right smack-dab in the middle of every frame? T&A. Gah.
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