Genia

Don't get too excited, and plan for Pesach.

You've got to admit that there's some truth to this post...

However, I'll go out on a limb this once, and get into a slight nitpicking battle, because Arcanaville is so highly esteemed that her word often bears the stamp of law, especially when she makes lists. This once, though, her analysis could use some tweaking. I don't completely disagree with the list she provided, mind you, but there are some areas in which I find it misleading. So I'd gone into the costume editor myself, and tried to improve on it.

Caveat: I don't have all the packs. I still don't have steampunk, i never bought the Martial Arts, Beast or Party pack, so this is going to be slightly off. Not, however, by much.

I am not going to quibble with anyone over the definition of 'slinky', 'sexy' or 'skimpy', because these things can be awfully subjective. While I agree with people who posted concerning the neckline of such pieces as the v-neck (we could really use a v-neck that doesn't look like it might fall off the nipple, in my humble opinion) I'm going to be a bit more generic than that. My two main concerns as for addressing the analysis made previously are going to be that:
a) It is not sufficient to list the root categories in the costume menu in order to achieve any sort of comprehensive analysis of how much of which there is. You'd also need to go into the categories themselves, to check for overlaps, and to see how many items each category contains, in order to detect a trend.
b) It would be necessary to examine the items added in the recent slew of expansion packs.

Because what we're evaluating is a trend, or a tendency, these. points become important. Do the expansion packs strengthen the trend? Weaken it? Don't change it? How many of these items are actual distinct pieces and how many are the same piece? And so on. In my own parsing of the costume generator, I decided not to count patterns as separate costume pieces, because, frankly, they're not. Whether you've got stripes or little triangles on your shirt is really immaterial to the main point. I also noted duplicates between different options.

Here's my list:
Tops
Tights - basically one option of the same tight shirt, with applied patterns, but, for the sake of argument, there are 31 different varieties.
Tights with Skin - 51 options, none of which I would use on a character who wished to appear respectable rather than appealing
Shirts - 4 options, all of which expose the midriff. If you want not to expose the midriff, better select something to go underneath.
Baggy - 8 options, some of which overlap with 'tight'.
Robes - 7 options, including the 'tattered'
Sleeveless Robes - same, except, of course, sleeveless
Jackets - 27 options, including ones that are a closed/open version of each other
Sleeveless Jackets - same as Jackets
Trench Coat and Magic Bolero - one option each
Armored - 22 options, most of which overlap with Tight or Baggy

To sum up till now, Tights with Skin are, bar none and by a significant majority, the largest category on this list. 51 options to everything else's twenties and thirties. Among the rest, variety is somewhat limited as each piece appears with a sleeved and sleeveless variety. Some of the other pieces are debatable.

Bottoms
Tight Bottoms - same story as tight tops, but with an actual greater variety, 43 options. They're still mostly one style of piece with patterns, but we'll note them anyway.
Bottoms with Skin - 33 options, of which two are tights+shorts, actually less than tops
Skirts and Shorts - 15 options, including pleated and non-pleated varieties of each skirt. Including the Valkyrie and Witch skirts the latter of which, at the least, is definitely on the eyebrow raising end, as well as miniskirts. I did not count patterns like Plaid or Wedding
Tucked In - 10 options
Tight Pants - 3 options, including (and this merely amused me) a Baggy option.
Pants - 9 options, including another tight option
Armored - 20 options, once again with some significant repeat of the Tight category
Monstrous - 2 options. Whether to define them as 'slinky' or not I am not sure, but I don't quite see any cloth coverage there.

To sum up further, the bottoms seem to fall out better than the tops, with the vast majority of options sitting in the Tights group. Whether the variety of patterns is sufficient or not to make up for Tights being basically one piece is not an argument I intend to get into, now or in the future. The second largest category is still dominated by Tights with Skin, some of which are Tights with A Lot of Skin, with some of the skirts and shorts thrown in for good measure.

Now onward to the additions of packs.

I won't be able to be as precise here as elsewhere because I find it hard to locate and examine every single item, but the Steampunk pack added, chiefly, a rather brassieresque shirt, two types of corset, and a very tiny bustle. The Magic pack added the Witch skirt, a major offender, and the Witch bottoms, and corsets, even bigger offenders. The trend seems to be less pronounced in the Science pack, which added a labcoat with some variations, and that piece actually was the same for male and female toons, as I recall, except of course the female one was shorter.

Is the trend there? This list says yes. Is it absolute and unvaried? Obviously, no. It gives somewhat different results than Arcanaville's initial list, though.

I've seen quite a few very nice designs as well. However, I will say this: it is significantly harder to make certain styles of costume for females than it is for males. My husband and I've been playing, for years now, a married couple who dress in fairly similar tones. It had always, almost without exception, been more difficult for me to design anything than it had for him. This holds true for several different styles of dress: dressy, casual, awe-inspiring, combat, etc' etc'. This is not an absolute digital yes/no issue, but the possibilities are indubitably skewed.

What I've been clamouring for, from the very first moment this issue came up - and for me it truly became evident when the Magic pack came out - was a less skewed output regarding costume pieces. It does not have to be identical. It does not have to always match item for item and tit-for-tat, but a less skewed selection of a greater variety that would enable female characters to have a better set of options for dress that is not inclined towards the absolutely slinky would make almost automatically for greater equality, and lesser levels of unfortunate social undercurrents.

I'd never bar anyone from making a female toon dressed in what could easily pass for underwear if they so wish. Some people - even some people who posted in this thread - obviously are inclined to make these sorts of choices in their costume creation. That is okay. But the fact that making costumes of a different variety is difficult is not okay. This is what I essentially want corrected. Surely, the artistic mettle of the developer team is sufficient that it can be applied, from time to time, to original female pieces, if they so wish it, that portray female power of a more comparable type to men. They could view it as a challenge, if they feel so inclined.

As for myself, my characters, who do not choose to dress to show everything at all times, have been stuck with a nigh-onto-unchanged set up jackets, skirts, blouses, pants, since Issue 13 came out. That makes me sad. But what disappoints me even more is that so few people truly see the problem with the costume choices we are given. I have to agree with Kid Crisis that, while I wouldn't want to accuse the developer team of any sort of bias - at the least not without any kind of evidence - the social tendencies underlying the presentations that we're seeing are problematic. Call me a misguided feminist, if you will, but I feel it's my duty, as a female player of this game, to point them out.

I don't ask for complete identity. I don't even ask for complete parity. But I think female toons deserve greater variety of styles and options than what they get, and at least a somewhat comparable ease in making them to the male models. I don't think that is an unreasonable request, or a limiting one.

This, right here, is the crux of the issue in my mind.

Look, if you want women running around in lingerie, or wearing what you might call slinky (and what I might call something else, perhaps), go right ahead. That's fine. It has a long tradition in comics, I grant you, little though I've read of them. You have about three thousand five hundred and six different options on how to go about it.

But that does not mean that all female options should constantly be limited to corsets, bras, tiny skirts and maybe a set of gloves. Women should have as much variety in costume as men, and that variety should range from "skimpy lingerie" to "a nice, respectable coat" to "civvies" to "awe inspiring and dignified magical". And at present female toons really don't get that. The costume selection applicable to a character that does not run around in lingerie in the best of comic tradition hasn't changed in any significant measure since they added in day jobs. That's issue 13, people! We're at issue 20.5!

I am not even going to - though I could - harp about the incredible, immense sexism inherent in that "best comic tradition" everyone's so keen on. It's enough for me to point to the history of the packs in this game and the costume pieces the women keep getting again and again. Look at the magic pack for instance. Men got a Baron coat - an incredibly nice and utilitarian piece of costuming that can be used almost anywhere: I've seen it used as a fancy overcoat, as a trenchcoat Mal Reynolds style, even as a labcoat. They got a top hat. They got a dignified magician-esque look. What do women get? A push-up corset and a transparent skirt with holes in the stomach.

The message? Men who do magic are dignified, intimidating and formidable. Women presumably run around in cabals of orgies every other night, and dress accordingly.

This pack is not really any better. Steampunk men get a variety of styles pf clothing. Women get close to the same repetitive items again and again. Why can't we, if this variety is so much tauted, get a more varied appearance to or female characters? Why are they limited to one specific look which is, to be honest, full of very sad sociological implications? Why can't we have some of that, and a little of the other?

Let's not just glue ourselves to that famed and very problematic comic tradition. Comics were created in the 20's, when women just got the vote in America. They were made in the 1950s, when it was dutifully assumed that a woman's place is at home, entertaining her successful husband's guests. They were drawn in the 1960s, when the feminist movement was just waking up and rubbing its eyes... We're not there anymore. We can transcend the obvious sociological imprints of severe gender bias, and allow ourselves do go further. Women can wear clothes. Even coats! Costumes in video games are allowed to reflect that from time to time.

Once every other pack would be okay.

Ah, Ad Hominem. Long time, no see.

Well, at least some SG leaderships were out of the loop for Yom Kippur.

What can I say? I check the boards, but I don't feel obligated to click them every hour, sometimes not every day, and when I'm away from the computer - well, I am away from the computer.

On a somewhat different topic; we do stuff, we're pretty active and we RP, and in my opinion we're a mature, decent group of people, but the group and the theme is not for everyone. You're welcome to check it out but since I've no idea what sort of character you play nor what sort of social interactions you like, I shan't push my group forward too much.

Power Boost no longer affects Knockback.

Uh... we do fill your requirements, but I don't know whether we will suit. Check our VV page and get in touch with me if you're interested.

Well, no, of course I don't know the mods. Hence why I chose to stay on the fringes of the issue, rather than in the midst of it. Having gone through a not-insignificant amount of hassle and headache due to arbitrary, easily-offended, moderators, my natural sympathy lies with the OP though his joke style is very much not in my taste. As a channel mod, I tend to take kicking someone as a rather extreme action, but, as a channel mod also, I am aware of the difficulties of cat-herding a group of people.

However, this response demonstrates at least one thing about the VU crowd to me: they have very little sense of humour.

Since when is getting along an adult activity?

Children in kindergarten get along; Political parties, nations, religions and philosophy schools - don't. Adults either resolve the issue... or start a war.

(And would the VU mods have banned me for this little joke? I'm rather curious to know).