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Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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Magic Knight Rayearth is very cool. Wish we had more stuff in anime...but they would just sexualize it out of the wazoo if the did.
Saved me the trouble of asking what that was, thanks gang :D
Weltall Zero pointed us towards Steven Universe, we're watching that at the moment.
Weltall Zero pointed us towards Steven Universe, we're watching that at the moment.
Loved Rayearth as a kid, I used to watch it with my sister back when it aired on public TV here (as " Las Guerreras Mágicas"). It's part of a number of aimed-at-girls series I used to enjoy with the excuse of "yeah I just watch it with my sister so she doesn't do it alone", same with Card Captor Sakura, Corrector Yui and kinda sorta Inuyasha, haha.
OK, you win.
Yeah, Kosmos is from Xenosaga.
I mean, this is the Official Uniform of a High Ranking Special Forces Military Commander.
I don't know what the hell is going on in that image but in the game she's clearly wearing pants.
As expected of an all-female Manga group: CLAMP does action girls well.
\OK, you win.
Yeah, Kosmos is from Xenosaga.
I don't know what the hell is going on in that pick but in the game she's clearly wearing pants.
lol basically how I looked at Terra in FF6 too. Tiny sprites showing skin doesn't translate well at all, I thought it was some neutral-coloured body suit at first. xD;;;;;
I doubt it, considering that it's a Clamp work. The studio and staff chosen to animate it don't do that if it's not part of the original, as the ones in the past never did with other Clamp adaptations as far as I remember.
As expected of an all-female Manga group: CLAMP does action girls well.
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lol basically how I looked at Terra in FF6 too. Tiny sprites showing skin doesn't translate well at all, I thought it was some neutral-coloured body suit at first. xD;;;;;
Ehhhh, there's no such thing as expected with female authors in manga (or any media, even more in japan). It can go both ways depending on the person.
Well yeah that too. I can't come across a stream of Shining Resonance that doesn't have the girls wearing a stupid French maid outfit or a swimsuit or a combination of the two. I especially loathe how the blond girl in the ponytail stands. She puts her feet and knees pointing very awkwardly inwards pointing at each other at an angle. It looks dumb as shit, super uncomfortable and unnecessary but in Japan that's seen as cute so we have to have it.
But how will the League of Legends players know that she's a woman if the void dimension monster that is also her outfit doesn't give her a v-neck cleavage window?
This turned out a bit image-heavy so I'll quote-tag my own reply:
This is the mech in question:
Sure, it's pink, and I won't defend that, but these are only "boobs" and "heels" if you've never seen a Gundam:
I mean, these are the gears of the main character and the first other playable male characters.
And incidentally, there's two other female playable characters and these are their gears.
(yeah, this is all an excuse to post mecha pictures. :D).
Yeah, it looks much better as a character designed for an audience of young girls over the 80s She-Ra.
At best with your edits the design becomes more androgynous, which to me it still doesn't fall clearly in a "boy" category. I just think it's weird that female characters so often NEED to have big eyelashes and delicate, small features (aside from huge dinnerplate eyes) and curves but no muscles and long hair and a big bow or people will be unable to properly read them as female and just lump them into the male category. I guess it stems from male characters often getting a much wider berth of design options, body types, and facial features while female characters are so often constrained to a much smaller range, but it bugs me.
The world of focus testing is so weird. There was a show on cartoon network called Young Justice (teenage superhero cartoon) that I liked a lot but it got cancelled after 2 or so seasons, and one reason I read was that when they did focus testing and surveys they found it was much more popular with girls than the intended audience of boys. I guess it was something about how toy sales wouldn't have worked out how they wanted it, so instead of revising their merch plans or whatever they just tossed it all in the garbage. Dunno how true that is, but I've heard some dumb stories about how companies react to focus testing so I don't think it's that far off. Dunno about it being an easy solution, but both having focus testing for different audiences (even the ones you may not necessarily be targeting) and being adaptable to finding out you may have tapped into a different market's appeal might help some.
Lol the more I read atomsks post i realize that 2+2=5 was basically approaching character design from the ms. pac man school of thought.
"But they have to know she's a girl! Hurry put lipstick or a bow on her or something."
"But they have to know she's a girl! Hurry put lipstick or a bow on her or something."
Imagine what would happen if someone with that kind of mindset blundered into an alternative nightclub. It would break their minds.
lol right? I was laughing so hard I could barely breath at some of the shit going down in the last thread about dating trans people. Posting pictures of post-HRT trans men blew their fucking minds. They're not even ready to handle shit like non binary people.
Wonder how much the world would be better if people weren't so sheltered all the time and just explored the world and got to meet the different people in it.
You've got that exactly right. Very few women are flicking the bean thinking about He Man. That's coming from the perspective of a man and He-Man is a power fantasy for men. Also what even gay men are attracted to is somewhat different from straight/bi women most the time. He-Man might be a thing for gay men, but not straight women. Women aren't as obsessed with guys having huge muscles.
It comes up in these type of threads often on the old site or here. Men will trot out Kratos as an example of something designed to titilate a female viewer. No girl thinks Kratos is hot.
If you want to see male characters specifically designed to titliate women, the clearest example I can think of is Free! the anime about a boys swimming club.
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Notice how they're not body builders? also they're not literally dressed like that all the time.
They're more often dressed like that in their uniforms.
I get your point, and actually agree with it. But I feel like you are speaking a bit too broadly. There are a bunch of women who like big buff dudes. But not everyone woman likes big buff dudes. And maybe, even with the buff dudes as well as the smaller swimmerbody dudes, you actually design them and position them to be attractive rather than a male power fantasy. At least if that is the intent of the game.
Speaking on that note, really would like it if street fighter 6 decided that not every dude needed to be at least so buff. Ed's design kinda got messed up because of it, hopefully they slim him and a few others down, in the next game.
I think that sexism in video games like this is influenced by society much more than vice versa. If I can elaborate, I believe that the only way that video games will stop having depictions of women in this sense is when women are treated on a more equal basis in real life. After that it should come rather naturally that video games will change to reflect the new social norms. We are already seeing improvements; however I am skeptical myself of how far we can actually go while remaining in an economic system that encourages competition and thus, power and domination over others.
I agree, but the way that some guys think is just cartoonishly ridiculous. We're not like men in that often we focus more on stuff like face, clothes, hair rather than just straight up how their body looks. Again I'm speaking mostly for myself, obviously sexuality has a huge wide spectrum, I'm just saying not every buff dude is going to be a girl's fantasy (Kratos is ugly as fuck.)
This an extreme comical comparison more for toxic incel type of guys, but it illustrates my point
https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelTears..._girls_mean_when_they_say_they_like_muscular/
I found it kind of interesting that Iris was the only poke girl to not get fanservice stuff forced in the anime. It only adds to her being the best one and I'm they never resorted to it. Plus her champion design is ace.
I agree with this whole statement. I agree with this whole statement as a guy who do art , I would like men to be designed more diversely, and I say this as a guy who likes drawing buff people punch buff people.
I'm with you, spider - less pink mechs for female pilots would only improve things. And especially less "this mech has a female pilot, better give it schoolgirl/maid/obviously "feminine" design touches to make sure the audience knows there's a GIRL in there".
I'm just laughing as I imagine how dumb Voltron would be if the lion Princess Allura is piloting had to have a bow or a skirt on it.
I'm just laughing as I imagine how dumb Voltron would be if the lion Princess Allura is piloting had to have a bow or a skirt on it.
I completely agree with what you're trying to get across with your posts, but I just had to say, and maybe it's just an age thing as my wife and I are a bit older, but my wife absolutely hates the "pretty boy" look for men, and thinks Dad Kratos is the ideal build for a man. Again, it could just be an age thing, as I do think you're absolutely correct for the most part, but I find that younger women have different sexual interests in men than older or more middle aged women.You've got that exactly right. Very few women are flicking the bean thinking about He Man. That's coming from the perspective of a man and He-Man is a power fantasy for men. Also what even gay men are attracted to is somewhat different from straight/bi women most the time. He-Man might be a thing for gay men, but not straight women. Women aren't as obsessed with guys having huge muscles.
It comes up in these type of threads often on the old site or here. Men will trot out Kratos as an example of something designed to titilate a female viewer. No girl thinks Kratos is hot.
If you want to see male characters specifically designed to titliate women, the clearest example I can think of is Free! the anime about a boys swimming club.
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Notice how they're not body builders? also they're not literally dressed like that all the time.
They're more often dressed like that in their uniforms.
Not sure if I should be thankful or disappointed I missed that thread...
And I think a lot of the world's problems would sort themselves out if people were willing to just open up to others and learn a little bit of empathy. Video games, though, are built on a foundation of escapism and power fantasy, which, in many ways, the exact opposite. And it shouldn't be - the medium has so much potential to widen perspectives and provide windows on the world.
Video games are massively behind current social norms for aforementioned escapist fantasy reasons :/
That's really one of the big issues, honestly - a lot of these issues would be smoothed over if people were able to accept other people's perspectives as equally valid compared to their own, but so many gamers view games as being a kind of escapism that's meant to be JUST for them, and as such their desires, fetishes and personal quirks always seem to override the desires of others.
I think that's giving society too much credit, sexism is still a huge issue and I don't see it going away anytime soon.
Yeah, like I said sexuality is a wide spectrum. I'm also not a straight woman (bisexual), so that probably colors my perception a bit. And yeah, I think it's an age thing too. Many of the girls I knew that were into the more pretty boy type in high school or college have moved on to liking big hairy lumberjack types. People's attractions change over time, definitely. We can have both though! :)
My main point however was just to say that characters like Kratos, men are generally more comfortable with because it can be a power fantasy. The pretty boy type guys are way more uncomfortable with, because it's harder for them to have a power fantasy through those characters while operating under society's pretty rigid expectations about masculinity. So for those designs, design is decidedly not for them. Look at the seething cauldron of hate FFXV got even before its release about the cast being a 'fashion model boy band' and other such nonsense.
I like Hyung-Tae Kim's designs, mostly because of their absurdist tendencies and the waif characters. Well-defined facial structure and line work as well.
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Absolutely agree. I wish I had a more substantial response but I simply agree with everything you've posted here lol.
It's cultural too. Asian men in general would lean more towards the pretty boy aesthetic.
Video games are still petrified of having a protagonist - male or female - who sleeps with men.
Just for clarification, you mean sleeps with men literally, or just in that most female protagonists are single?
Mmm, very true too. Possibly some European men. In America men are held to such a strict standard of masculinity that kind of almost encourages them to have bad hygine or be slobs. That is changing a bit in the past few years though, thank fuck
I hate this! Lemme have my otome rpg already! :( Like this but a JRPG!
Female protagonists are either single or bisexual, and gay male protagonists are nonexistent.
Well, obviously there is a problem with representation in video games, but I'd say that same representation issue exists in society too.
Well I'm bi so i wanna see representation, but like.... why not both? Make a game where you can choose to be lesbian, bi, straight, whatever. Make guys and girls both dating / romance options. Everyone wins
I don't like the comic anymore, but Danny Wilcox from Dumbing of Age is pretty cool. His arc had some problems (including a fanbase literally begging for him to cheat on his girlfriend to hook up with the one other queer male in the cast, as well as his girlfriend going crazy and abusive to justify them breaking up), but he has a strong character arc on what his sexuality means to him, and how he comes to terms with it.
Admittedly I don't really watch game of thrones, but reading the synopsis he seems to fall into the trap of bisexual characters (male or female) where the main bi characteristic is that they will fuck anything or just wildly more sexually promiscuous in general.
Which is more complicated than that honestly.
There needs to be something like My lesbian experience with loneliness but with a bisexual perspective.
I can't say I'm particularly familiar with female mech pilots. The only one I can think of which I like is Haman/Qubeley. I really like the Qubeley's design in general but the white with pink accents looks pretty great. Probably my favourite colour on the mech even though that red and gold on the mk2 looks great as well.
It isn't that I want to exclude and having both is fine but I do feel that writing a single strong romance can often be better than the "take your pick" style. I feel like single romances tend to be better developed. There are less distractions and you stop thinking about what you, the player, wants and your thinking aligns more with what the character in the game wants. I don't know, I guess I'm not particularly impressed with romances where you can pick from a selection of characters. If each one is fully developed the other problem would be I'd be interested to see the differences.
PlaSmaaaaaaaaaaaaa i miss youuuuuuuuuuuuu
would be great if a pink feminine robot rocked out and then later the pilot is revealed to be a regular dude or a manly dude :> that'll be a lovely surprise ..... hahaha~
While I also roll my eyes at pink mechas, Ellie's Gear wasn't that awful, I can't say it bothered me. Plus the other female cast members' gears weren't bad (El-Crescens looked cool, and Siebzehn looked as unfeminine as it could be and it was piloted by a little wee girl lol), as were the female bosses. :shrug:
Been playing Observer, and it got me thinking about cyberpunk horror as quite a intriguing premise. I decided to dig a bit to see if I can find some other games with that kind of thing, and I found Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story, which could have probably been quite interesting, BUUUUUT:
I don't think I saw a woman in either the trailer or the pics that didn't have big breasts.<____<
I don't think I saw a woman in either the trailer or the pics that didn't have big breasts.<____<
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