Retreading "feminism"

I'd say part of it is the very simple matter of the cost of development, and part of it is catering to the masses. I'm not saying that's a bad thing - Paragon Studios is a business, after all - and I'm definitely not saying the masses are somehow inferior for being... Well, "the masses." A lot of times, popular stuff is popular for a reason, and I'm not discounting that. Short of entering into some kind of preaching monologue about how society is WRONG for what society likes, I can't really argue with that. People like what people like. Rather than argue against it, let's just accept that as a fact.

The underlying question here lies elsewhere: Should the studio solely focus on developing more of what people are believed to want, ignoring what what's seen as a niche request (read: most everything I request ), thereby satisfying demand, even when there are seen to be enough costume pieces in those categories, or should the studio instead try to broaden the field of choices the game presents by opining up new avenues of creativity even if there isn't much of a stated interest in them beforehand? This may seem like a typical long-winded question with a simple answer - give the players what they want - but I think there's more to it than that.

If we interpret players to want directly what's being mentioned again and again - in my case more muscular women - then yes, the answer is obvious. But if we, instead, interpret player requests to be the vague description of much more general desires, then the answer starts to go sideways. To stick to my own case, when I ask for a more muscular texture for women, this is just the most obvious aspect of an entire theme that I feel the game is missing - that of more masculine and generally larger women. Even if the game doesn't give me directly what I asked for, so long as it gives me things in that general theme, I still fell like I've gotten what I wanted, if not necessarily what I asked for. A good example here are the IDF boots. I asked for big stuff for women, and the IDF are HUGE. They may not be "titanic arms," but they're close enough in a broader sense that I'm actually pretty satisfied with my entire thematic request just by these boots.

More broadly, the question of what to develop is muddied even further by the fact that you really don't like whether you like something or not until you actually at least see it. I didn't think I liked high heels as a concept until I made that pink bunny in the OP and her high heels made sense, and gave me a good frame of reference for making heeled women in the future. I didn't think I liked skirts in general until I had to make a character who called for a skirt just because that's what made sense, and that one gave me a good basis to make newer ones. Opening new grounds opens new opportunities, and that's often much more rewarding than yet another suit of tech armour like the other eleven we already had before.

My point is that while on a superficial level it might look like designing more of what players have been using the most, that's not always the right choice. Saturating a theme TOO much brings problems of its own, problems of burnout and boredom and problems of fans of other things feeling left out. Expanding the game's conceptual breadth, on the other hand, earns us new fans who didn't like the status quo but like the new addition, it expands the horizons of some of our existing players and just makes the game that much more diverse. Of course, the problem of people who liked the status quo and don't like the new addition might feel left out, instead, and that's always unfortunate, plus I know there will always be the kind of people I actually can't stand who insinuate that if characters should NOT be allowed to look a certain way or borrow from certain themes because "it's not like that in comic books." That, really, is the unfortunate reality of "you can't please all the people all the time."

In the end, the answer is neither one nor the other. The studio has, so far, done a reasonable job of appending existing themes and opening up new ones. Hell, much as I dislike the colouring of the set and the fact that it's a T9 veteran reward, I still think Celestial was so far outside the established game thematic that it opened up a whole new game to us, not all of it Fantasy. The Barbarian set itself brought its own thematic expansion with the oh-so-sweet "girl abs" chest texture. They've been doing a good job, and I encourage them to press on the advantage and continue being creative, rather than being constrained by what "society" expects.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I think this is a good idea.

I think you make a good point about male sexualization in the costume editor. While I do think the female models have more street-walker style clothing available, the nature of that clothing is more "sexually daring" than it is explicit. You can strip a male character down so that he exposes nearly all of his flesh. What I find interesting is that the female is considered more sexualized when it is given "teasing" types of clothes. Perhaps it is an issue of volume.

To answer the supposition about whether seeing Brad Pitt shirtless in a movie is a pleasure for gay men, I will just say this; one unspoken advantage of being straight is that you will never be a thirteen year old boy watching TV with your dad when a men's underwear commercial comes on. What I mean by this is that even if I enjoyed seeing half naked male characters I'm not sure I'd want to do it in this environment. I'm not sure whether that is an individual feeling or something generally true of other gay (and female) players. I do know I wouldn't feel comfortable cat-calling at a picture of Maelstrom the way posters sometimes do Desdemona. So there is a fair possibility that sometimes the reason some characters are sexualized and others aren't is that the implicit audience wouldn't be receptive; whether this is because they just aren't interested or whether it would be too stressful/embaressing to engage the image in a public setting is an outside question I can't answer.

I also seem to differ in opinion from many other posters on the issue of Sister Psyche. I actually like her more recent portrayals better than the originals. Not because I am sexist (I hope) but because I find her more relatable than the other characters, male or female. If she would just lose the stripper outfit (doesn't Frederick's of Hollywood sell lycra that isn't lime green?) and have a couple of more moments to show her unique strengths she'd be spot on. IMO the issue isn't sexism really so much as that there isn't a lot of personality smoothing between poles, because we aren't shown these characters very often. The fact that the character even has concerns outside of just "being heroic" IMO makes her more dynamic than the rest of the group. The character I actually find completely off-putting is Statesman, who while not sexual comes across to me like a bludgeon of not-sexuality. It was the justaposition of Statesman's canon image with the Statesman-Faultine shipping/hook up that made that thread so funny.

It's time for me to head to work, but just to conclude I'll add that there was one instance that stands out to me as a time I was uncomfortable with the sexualization of a character, and it was thankfully ret-conned: the characterization of the Dominatrix character. It just seemed like a frat joke taken way too far. Paragon City is a place without context in a lot of ways; a mythical American city with no racial districts, no tangible crisis of education and youth violence, nobody protesting the opening and closing of housing projects or community centers. The villains we fight materialize out of thin air without making a commentary on what must have created them. These things are too objectionable to include; but making over the icon of Atlas Park into a dominatrix was greenlit, and against the lack of realistic setting really jarred me.

I have to disagree with you on Sister Psyche. Her portrayal in the tutorial pic is just horrid. No offence to the artist, I'm sure he thought this looked sexy (though why she'd be trying to look sexy when the city is falling down around her is anyone's guess), but she doesn't. Her spine looks like either it's broken or it's made of rubber bands and her mouth looks like that of a blow-up doll. There's no reason for Sister Psyche to look like she does EXCEPT to titillate, and that's not an expression of her character or personality. She's not trying to be sexy around the other people in the shot (BABs and his weird jaw). It's like god folded her back in half so that she would be titillating to the PLAYER. And that's just wrong.

I mentioned before that I don't mind objectification of characters when it's accompanied by an otherwise compelling character, but this only extends to objectification of said character that makes sense. If Sister Psyche wants to a lace curtain because she's liberated, fine. We know it's fanservice, but if it makes sense for her character to do that, we can roll with it. Why not? But to pose her sexy in front of Galaxy City being destroyed is just horrible, poor taste. People are dying, homes are being destroyed, aliens and villains are invading, lives are being devastated before our eyes, but check out the butt on her! Poor, poor, POOR taste, that's all I can say.

There's a time and place for sexuality, even for cheesecakes. Horrible, appalling devastation is neither the time nor the place for it. Whenever I read a story, watch a movie or even so much as look at a picture and I see not what's actually being shown to me, but instead spot the shadowy hand of the creator trying to TELL me something through the work I'm observing, I get angry. And that's exactly what I'm seeing here - the artist telling me that Sister Psyche has a butt, breasts and large lips. That's not what you should be telling me, comic. I'm well capable of reaching that conclusion on my own without you rubbing it in my face and going "Look! Look! You're not looking!" What you should be telling me is that Galaxy City is being destroyed and these two heroes are fighting for their lives and fighting for the lives of the people. They should look heroic, or at least desperate. Instead, Sister Psyche looks like the meteors interrupted her exotic dancing practice.

I don't mind objectification or sexualisation of characters because, in the end, it's all fantasy. If you can make a compelling character who's also a cheesecake, then more power to you. But if you CAN'T make a compelling character but still choose to objectify it or, worse still, CAN make one but objectify it in such a way that you undermine your own characterisation, that's not a good thing. That's never a good thing.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Again, here I don't disagree on any one point. I was merely trying to draw a distinction between the majority of what people consider the gaming market (and there was an interesting article that I came across once upon a time about Farmville changing what the word "Gamer" means; I just wish I could remember where I found it) and games such as Farmville which seem to have a different targeted demographic.

Go ahead and try to explain that to someone who doesn't play the game who sees the character from a more distant fresher perspective. (YMMV on this experiment depending upon the age, maturity and orientation of your test subject.) They may not get that she has one-of-a-kind hair. But I can tell you from my experience she's been described to me by outsiders as, "Is that the character with the huge white boobs?" Sure, there's accentuating what you've got. And then there is silly.

To me, Ghost Widow's costume has always felt as silly as the nipples on Batman & Robin's chest plates in Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin simply because it overshadows everything else about her with a big flashing neon sign that essentially says "BOOBIES -->". Even with years of familiarity with the content of the game, I've found it hard to get over that costume. And I've found those outside the game simply can't take any deeper expositions of her character seriously as it sort of seems like just weak coverup to justify folks liking her simply because of how she looks. And in that case, I think her overt sexualization actually serves for some (myself at least and those I've already described) as an obstacle to accessing the character or taking her seriously.

In my experiences, for a character like her to work, there needs to be a synthesis between the overt sexualization, her motivations as a character, and the role her sexuality plays in her interactions with other characters.With a character like Ghost Widow, it seems when someone brings up the costume the response is "Yeah, but she's cool for different reasons..." rather than "Yeah, she's all that and then some..." It may sound like a subtle difference. But it's a difference that matters in my book.

And before this conversation goes there: Yes I get the whole dead, disinterested and therefore unobtainable schtick ascribed to GW. I get it. But I also find it a rather boring manifestation of unobtainability. She is no Rogue or Doctor Manhattan in this respect. Part of it is because she is already so disinterested that it just doesn't matter that she is a non-corporeal being. The other part again is the sillyness of the white plastic boob-guard costume. Instead she comes off like the cartoonish sit-com woman who THINKS she catches someone eying her in public and then proceeds to bob and weave her head while loudly asserting "NUH uh honey, you ain't gettin' into this". (Or Jill Talley's beautiful moment in a Mr. Show sketch from about 15 years ago when she comes out of a truck stop bathroom, wipes her nose and then randomly asserts to some person waiting on-line at the register "Take a pi'ture, it'll last longer. Jag-off!") The only valid response for most characters targeted by this is a mixture of confusion and reciprocal disinterest by the pre-emptive rejection. And for some, add a touch of privately held embarrassment at GW's lack of self awareness.

Anyways, I realize this is an argument of opinions which I'll never win here with most forum members. Ghost Widow has a strong fan base amongst CoX players. Or at least she seems to. I've never understood the mystique though.

It's not surprising that men try to sidetrack any discussion about women's issues with an argument that basically translates to "But what about the men? We have problems too! Now shut up and let's go back to talking about us!"

See, I can make sweeping generalizations too.

Of course she is. Drag is based around exaggerated femininity. Which is kind of the whole point of this discussion, isn't it?

Men play video games because they're full of stuff men like because men play video games because they're full of stuff men like because men play video games. When trying to attract female players it's just assumed that women will accept "guy stuff" before men will accept "chick stuff." If a woman sees an action movie it's mostly assumed she wanted to see it. If a man sees a romantic comedy it's usually assumed his girlfriend dragged him to see it. So people market most things toward men and just assume women will either take it or leave it...even in a game that tells you to dress up a virtual Barbie doll before you're allowed to start punching people in the face.

These films sell because that is what little girls are told is "normal" and "desirable" female behavior. In romantic comedies women do stupid and funny and cute things to land a man, and get a happy ending, while in real life women do irresponsible and dangerous and financially and emotionally damaging things to get a man and end up unemployed with three kids from three different fathers, one of whom is abusive, one of whom is a deadbeat and one of whom is emotionally twelve, but it all comes from the same kind of mindset. You're supposed to have a man. You're supposed to be popular. You're supposed to be pretty. Most women don't find them offensive because they portray women successfully achieving all the rigid and unrealistic expectations that real women consistently fail at.

1: She's one of the best-developed characters in the game. Furthermore, her character development comes early in a player's CoV career. She's a sad figure but she never comes across as whiny like Scirocco does, and she's evil but not "lol, look at me I'm evil" like Mako and Black Scorpion and Recluse.

2: Goth chicks are apparently "hawt." And by "hawt," I of course mean widely fetishized. Incidentally, Desdemona wouldn't look at all out of place at a goth club.

Noble Savage spoke to this maybe a year or so ago when he posted about giving us some of what we've been long clamoring for as well as some things we never knew we wanted. From direct experience, I think one of the most gratifying things as an artist is delivering the unexpected to an audience and getting a strong positive response. For the sort of work I do, it often comes in the form of a "Damn, you proved me wrong. I would've said this would have never worked. But here it is. And I love it." And I imagine for the art team it's coming up with an unsuggested, or rarely suggested costume piece concept, keeping it under wraps, releasing it and then getting wild praise and extensive usage from the player base.

For me, I think the railroad crossing sign as an improvised titanic weapon falls into this category. I never realized I wanted to make a character that bashes things with railroad crossing signs till I saw the artwork.

In a subtler fashion, those metallic upper arm rings for female models from the barbarian pack have similarly changed one of my main characters signature look. I've repurposed them as more generic armbands of cosmic power and colored them gold or purple depending upon the outfit. But it works. Makes the character feel more complete. And I never knew she'd be better of with them before seeing them and playing around with them. (This character coincidentally is the same one I rerolled in that OTHER hero MMO with the muscle definition slider set to 11.)

I get these points. I do. When I said I didn't get the mystique, I guess I meant to say that viscerally, the character or her appearance has never really had an effect on me. It all makes sense to me intellectually. And I'm no stranger to lusty, romantic attractions to a variety of subcultures, emo and goth included, but GW has just never floated any boat I've rowed. Nor has her backstory piqued my imagination.

Agreed, and i know Rock/metal/goth music fans *love* "Rocky Horror" Themed nights at dance music orientated nightclubs even though they dislike the music that gets played.... strangely enough this is normally the night where the Rockers/Goths go out to the mainstream nightclubs, and then have their own "Rocky Horror" nights a few days later at their regular Rock Club

((Noticed the above from working in rock/dance clubs as well as doing promo work for them))

I make most of my toons this way.
It'd be nice to make a huge female or a heavy/fat/fluffy hero/villain, but it ain't gonna happen.
Once again, I reckon I am in a minority, but I'd make many look way big.
My opinion, and only my opinion, is colored by my own personal situation...

In real life, I am 6'6" and well over 400lbs. I am 3 standard deviations on a gaussian curve beyond what is considered "normal" and though there are some folks taller than me, and some folks heavier than me, the number of people who are larger than me in both dimensions is relatively small.

In other words, I am larger than 98% of the people on the planet.

I've always been bigger than my classmates, my friends, my family (though my father and an uncle are/were over 6'4"/6'6" respectively), and most everyone I meet. It does not define who I am, but it often does modify the behavior of those I interact with.

I WANT to make a dude with a gut. I'd dig that. I have a concept for a "fallen hero" who tries to "get back his life" and the physical changes could actually be seen by those around him (a la Virtue server)

I WANT to make a female bodybuilder type. I have a few concepts for heroes AND villains that'd be cool.

I WANT to have the bosom slider go to A cup or so on regular females. Huge chesty females aren't the only females in comics, or as superheroes.

I WANT to have sliders for a few more aspects of body modification (I saw a photo of Baryshnikov from the late 70s and, while he had almost ZERO body fat and was extremely toned from the waist up, his thighs and calves looked like they belonged on a bodybuilder [which makes sense as a ballet dancer {and for which a really killer new stalker emerged in my brain <new leaping attack for the win!>}]).

I realize that I am unlikely to ever see these additions, but I can still say I'd like them.

The human form is myriad and wonderful... The hero/villain form, apparently much less so.

Wait, what's the controversy around Desdemona? I haven't heard anything about it. I thought she was just an intentional cheesecake in boyshorts.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

No no. It's me not getting the appeal of Ghost Widow, visually or as a literary character. I understood Eva's point number 2 to be equally relevant to Desdemona's appeal as it was to Ghost Widow's. I think that is why she made the aside about D.

Hehe. Too many subthreads flying about here.

By the way, this is one of the most civil (and actually interesting) conversations about gender, visual representation, sexuality and how it all bundles up into character I've witnessed on a gaming forum... perhaps ever. Usually these things feel like the thread title implies, yet another boring retread on campus political correctness vs. sexual libertarians that then quickly decays into a mass flame war and thread lock.

Not to sound all group therapy, but thanks for sharing everyone. I've found many of the posts interesting to read.

The "beer gut" is one of those things I was referring to when I talked about "broadening horizons." From kids, we're conditioned to believe that being fat is bad and being thin is good, so why would we want to make a fat guy? Well... Why do we make hideous scarred villains? Why do we make tragic deformed heroes? Why do we make monsters? None of these are things that society considers beautiful, but they still make for compelling characters. So why not a fat guy?

I don't know what characters I could make with a beer gut. I've never really thought about it because there never was much of a point. I can't, so why bother? If, all of a sudden, I CAN make a fat guy, though... I probably would. I'm not sure what his personality or character would be, but I'd do my darnest to make a concept society sees as "wrong" work. And if I could... Well, that just means I've broken into yet another conceptual field and my imagination has increased. And that's a good thing!

For me, it's always been less about bodybuilders and more about warrior women. I'm well aware that modern fiction has made a whole genre out of having improbably skinny women perform feats of incredible strength, what TVtropes calls the cute bruiser. However, sometimes I just like to make a female character who not only acts, but also LOOKS like a heavy, power warrior. I want to make a female character who looks she the muscles, mass and durability to do the things I have her doing even if I didn't give her any real super powers.

I want this partially because it's unusual, partially because... Well, because I can't have it , but also partially because it's the basis of a few really cool concepts that I have, which I've managed to "kludge" into the game by damn near breaking the thing.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Okay: a couple of things
1) I was being a gaming snob about farmville and google earth. They're video games and, especially things like the Wii and Farmville and smart phone apps have changed the conversation about who gamers are. I was merely arguing that those video games that tend to appeal to men tend to be popular among men but not towards women.

Movies are a different genre. Those action films that are thought of as primarily seen by men aren't, at least for the most part. The creators of these big cheesy action flicks know that women make up at least 50% of their audience (number pulled out of ***, but I've actually seen the numbers and it was amazingly high, at least a few years ago and especially on TV). Women by and large are buying into their own objectification as a demographic. At least the ones with money do.

With all that being said, I don't think anyone disagrees on any one point that these objectification and stereotypes are necessarily dangerous when you look at what it does to female body image. What I don't think is mentioned enough is that these Rom Coms put forth unrealistic expectations about men and women both. There are a few Rom Coms that I like and a few that I love, but by and large I find the gender politics in them toxic to both sides of the equation.

I also think that the quintessential male figure - this tough muscular guy - is probably dangerous to male image as well, but it's more subtle. There at least have been some attempts to change the stereotype and gender boundaries about women (to mixed success), but very little attention to changing the toxic male roles portrayed overwhelmingly on television and films. Tell me that James Bond isn't sexualized. Now tell me that James Bond forcing himself onto a woman (in Thunderball [I just saw it a couple of days back which is why it's fresh on my mind], which i was at least a little shocked by) is made to look sexy because apparently she wanted it. How is that not toxic to how boys and men eventually see themselves in their relationship with women. And yet, women see James Bond films in droves.

We can talk all day about the objectification of women and I believe for the most part you're going to get agreement about many different points. Obviously Sister Psyche being overly sexualized in the newest art is at least a little bit weird if not troubling to me, but it raises this point: Just how much character are you seeing in the other surviving 8? SP seems about middle of the pack in terms of personality. On par, in fact, with BAB. They could have at least broken some boundaries with BAB, I mean make the towering black tough guy gay, or a cross dresser, or SOMETHING. The men in this game, and in the movies, ARE sexualized, but we've spent so much time talking about the objectification of women that we've spent no time looking at the fact that it's done on both sides. For some reason, the archtypical jerk (Captain Kirk, Han Solo, James Bond, Mathew McConoghy's ( I don't care enough about him to look up spelling) characters) aren't seen as sexualized in their representations, AND they always get the girl.

I implied nothing of the sort, as clearly indicated by the rest of the post you took the quote from.

I think people like Ghost Widow because she is a redside contact that genuinely appreciates your efforts. Most others are jerks. She is by contrast a very nice person. For a vengeful spirit, anyway.

That's fine. I'm talking about sexualization specifically, and responding to the apparently common misperception that attractiveness = sexualization. It doesn't.

Overall, I think this game has done a comparatively good job of minimizing the issue, especially when the genre is considered.

A lot of the broader issues in this thread I'd say have as much to do with poor writing and characterization as anything else. I still find all the original signature characters to be flat. They've filled out a little over the years, but they're still pretty bland and shallow. It's like the developers said, "We need a speedster guy!" and "We need an armor guy!" and didn't think much about them beyond that.

It's not lost on me that the one I find most engaging--Numina--was player submitted.

Yeah, but adding such things as Huge Females and Fat Sliders would increase their user base by what...two? Maybe three people?

Seriously, it wouldn't increase their user base by enough to warrant all the time and expense that would go into it, while costing them more players as they wouldn't beable to put out more new stuff that would make more people happy.

1) It's not wrong, it's marketing. For all the complaints about "Market more" well guess what, sex sells.

2) The pose may (or may not) be sexy, but I thought it was an obvious "OMG WHAT THE?!" look of surprise imo.

Like I said though, the majority of players wouldn't. You can see that in just the creations you see.

I mean out of what you just mentioned, I'd love the chest slider to go all the way to flat.

Personally though, no interrest in "lets make fat characters" and as for the female bodybuilders I don't see HUGE Female looking like a female bodybuilder, as HUGE Male doesn't look like a male bodybuilder.

Also, I've seen quite a few current female toons that can easily pass for Female Bodybuilders, if you work the sliders right, unless you mean you also want more muscle tone, veins popping out everywhere. For that, I guess they could make a few costume items to cover it.

Yes, I was referring to video games in the same "snobbish" video game sense. The players of these games are assumed to be men, so the games are marketed toward men, so they become popular among men. When people joke about "the rare and elusive gamer chick" they're not referring to someone who plays Bejeweled on Facebook.

Pretty much none, but that's a different discussion. There is nothing about Sister P's backstory or what little personality she has that suggests she should be overtly sexy; in fact, her most famous comment suggests that she's annoyed by people viewing her as a sex object. It's far more likely that David wanted to draw boobs and hers were the only boobs available.

No boy could fit in those shorts with calamitous biomechanical difficulty.