WIR? (Spoilers)

Like I said - faith in an author has burned me in the past. I watched Naruto for four, five years maybe, waded through 300-something episodes, all hoping that women in the show would stop being worthless and useless, but nope. It's only getting worse. I'm not making that mistake again. I'm not putting up with a story that's tanking in the vein hope that it will get better. It never does.

But, no, I don't worry about this happening to men because... It generally doesn't. Sure, it might, occasionally, in the same sense that I might get struck by lighting within the next five minutes. I mean, I'm using a computer that's hooked up to the power grid. It could happen. But it probably won't.

Not so with female protagonists. EVERY time I see a game or story build up a female character as capable, popular or likeable, I always fear it's so destroying her very soon thereafter will be that much more "shocking." And you know what? I'm almost always right. When a story shows me a competent man, it's usually so I can be impressed by his competence. When a story shows me a competent woman, it's usually so she can fail and suffer for it down the line. That's been my experience, at least. Hell, I applaud stories that don't do this, but those are somewhat rare. For instance, much as it's stupid, Heavy Metal 2000 at least avoided humiliating its female protagonist. She may be a male fantasy fanservice character, but at least she doesn't get put on a fridge and she gets to kick *** right into the credits. That counts for a lot.

And I'm really not against killing characters per se, not even female ones. In fact, one of the most powerful scenes I've seen comes from an otherwise HORRIBLE anime called Divergence Eve, where a female character previously established to be likeable, pretty and nice gets quite literally eaten alive (in surprisingly un-graphic but very disturbing fashion). This is scene, however, added to the story because that story earned it, and because it built toward the finale, and because it was handled well. Sure, the rest of the series sucked ***, but that one moment is what made it memorable to me. Because it was done right. And you'll actually probably see that in every music video compilation of that series (blood dripping over an open eye, a hand smearing blood over a happy photo) because it's pretty much the strongest that ****** show ever got.

However, that's an exception to the rule. When I start seeing strong, confident, competent female characters starring in their own stories, not overshadowed by men and not built up only to be brought down in a horrible fashion and when I start seeing this in any meaningful number, THEN I might stop being so weary. For now, I stick with experience.

Yeah, and that's pretty much where I stopped reading. That art style and that plot pretty much killed whatever interest I had with the comic. Even naked super Benjamin Franklin couldn't do enough to make me see past that damn depressing issue. That's one more site scratched off my bookmarks.

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.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Alexis isn't the one the tag line is referring to. That's what rubs many people the wrong way. "Who will die?" Well, Alexis just did. "Oh, um... She didn't matter. I mean who will die that's actually important and we care about him?" But Alexis just died! "Yeah, and a lot more people are going to die in the coming stories. They're not important. We're going to kill a SIGNATURE character. That's what matters. Everyone else is just meat."

One of the reasons people are upset at her death is because the "Who will die?" slogan doesn't apply to her. She got killed for no reason other than to set up the scene for the famous people to die in. That's just using her and tossing her in the trash if ever I've seen it.

Here's a hint - next time you tout an arc's selling point as someone dying, make sure you don't kill other people, because then we have to explain why they weren't important enough to count.

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.

Personally, I'm against pointless shock deaths in general. I'm not motivated to care when I see people who haven't been established get killed, I'm motivated to feel the author couldn't think of a better way to make his story darker. Let's kick a puppy, that always works. Movies like 2012 are especially bad about this. At least in Independence Day, we had people we cared about to build suspense. But 2012 just destroys cities for the sake of seeing cities be destroyed and people getting killed. It's collateral damage for the sake of collateral damage.

Basically, grabbing a supporting character and killing her in a demeaning fashion is just cheap writing. It demeans the character even though she could have been interesting to get to know, and all it achieves is a cheap grab for attention in a story that could have been written to give the same motivation in a more interesting way.

These are stories people are getting charged for. These are stories I'm supposed to see as a perk of my subscription. I want to see them actually written well, not just lavished with pretty custom maps and gimmick mechanics. Having the gall to kill a named character is not an example of good writing. It is a crutch. And it's a particularly mean-spirited crutch.

"Who will die, among the people we actually care about?" is a terrible angle to sell a story on. Just having a character death as a selling point is exploitative enough. This just pushes it over the edge.

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.

But what if the majority wants is not what entertained you about the product in the first place. What if adding Incarnate raid after incarnate raid broadens the appeal of the game more than adding some nice little story arcs? Or adding full world PvP? There only so many resources and if the aim is to make something that the most people will like, then what any one particular person likes might well have to be sacrificed for the greater good. If the devs really were focussed on increasing the appeal of the game, then the best bet would be to delete the code and run WoW on the servers. Far more people like that, so it would achieve the aims of making a more widely appreciated product.

Now you could say: 'Obviously, I meant changes that didn't remove the key points thatmake the product unique' but then, as we have said, each person will have their own different reasons for liking something. Even if you averaged it out, to find some core things most people agreed upon, some things you love about the game would have to be dropped. Is it really better to make something that 1000000 people think is pretty ok rather than something that 50000 love?

I appreciate you saying that. To be honest I was a little stunned to read the initial responses to my conjecture that Paranormal Romance and the Superhero genres are closely related. Looking back on it I can see how it might possibly seem like I was saying that to make the Superhero genre more palatable to women you have to Sex and the City it up. I still feel like your take on what I wrote was a bit unfair but I'm willing to bury the hatchet because I generally like you and what you write.

Anyway, my take on the situation is still that just adding more strong female characters is unlikely to attract volumes of female readers. I have plenty of female geek friends; most of them have no interest in reading superhero comics whatsoever but are mad consumers of paranormal stories. Their reasons for watching and reading this material is sometimes because there are chicks that "kick butt" but just as often that there is a guy on the show who is hot and often shirtless. What will attract female readers is stories that appeal to females. That might seem like an infinite loop but is demonstrably true in that there are subsets of the super-powered entity genres that attract many female fans already. It is likely there are other formulas that would prove popular; what they might look like is hard to conjecture. And whatever their nature, some women will still not like them, and maybe even find them reductive or insulting in their own way.

To quote Luthor:
Wrong!

If done correctly, it is usually possible to add elements that Alice will like to a story or game without removing the elements that Bob likes.

Now, Bob may not like the fact that Alice-elements have been added to the game, but that is a seperate issue, and Bob's issue, really. Adding anything to the game might have the same effect of ticking off Bob.

Except pure additive change is frequently wishful thinking. Think LFG queue and the Winter event. Think impact of adding iTrials to number of people rolling new low-level alts, and therefore impact on forming low-level teams. "If done correctly" is a qualifier of Jovian proportions.

True.

But 'difficult' is equally far from 'impossible'.

Making the Winter Event accessible from the LFG queue did not require removing the um, present method.

Adding iTrials impacts low level alts, but so does adding any content at all that can't be done by levels 1-5. Even at that, they could (and probably should) add missions that team Incarnates and low level characters; what better way to get Freems and Preems to want to go VIP?

Et Cetera.

I see, but WIR at least to Gail S. seems to say anything bad that happens to a female chaarcter.

Storm was on her list, and Storm was always active and still an awesome character (okay, awesome is subjective, but I think you get the point) who was shown to be more than capable without the powers.

But that does bring up a good point. But then I think it comes back to sales.

Spider-Girl I think is the title that had a lot of promise, and I believe the numbers had it as one of the most popular of female lead comics, but I believe even then it was still low.

I'd enjoy Wonder Woman more if I didn't think the writer/artist changes to often for me to enjoy her comic more (but that can be said for any comic I guess).

I gave up on Gen13 when the artist changed to Gary Frank and the writing started to be suckie. Bad art, bad writing = no sale.

While the series is over, if you can find it, if you can find it, I suggest checking out "The Tenth"

While the name of the comic is the name of the male lead, I'd argue the true main of the story is Esperanza, who imo anyways was a strong female lead.

[EDIT] *GASP* I loved Divergence Eve!

Alexis wasn't a surving eight. They never said other people wouldnt die in the arc, they just said a member of the survivng eight would die.

Right, because all those X-men comics in the '80s, with loads of female characters and soap-opera level drama (which would fall under the heading of character development and relationships)--you know, all that stuff that people keep saying girls want--were terribly unpopular with boys and weren't superhero comics.

And I guess this game isn't actually a superhero game either, since a lot of women play it. Actually, I don't get why guys play it at all, since you're told to dress up a virtual Barbie doll before you get to punch anything in the face.

I believe the word you're looking for in this case is "dumbs down." I'm pretty sure they didn't do that to appeal to girls, unless the "girls" in question are still in the third grade.

These aren't superpowered stories with romance, they're romance stories with superpowers. The difference is the focus. Sookie Stackhouse would have had a boring life if she hadn't started dating a vampire. On the other hand, Jean Grey have still had the Dark Phoenix saga if she hadn't started dating Cyclops.

It depends how it's done. Fanservice doesn't automatically mean sticking your rear in the air. Storm running around naked for no real reason other than she doesn't care certainly qualifies as fanservice, and yet doesn't make her a sex object, or any less someone to look up to. The entire superhero comic book genre is loaded with opportunities for incidental fanservice, what with everyone running around in painted-on tights.

That's the problem I have with that site. It obfuscates the real issue by listing examples that people can point to and say "see? You're wrong! All this stuff happens to male heroes all the time too!" And those people would be right, because that list is far too broad. That's why I prefer the list of examples on TVtropes.
No, it really isn't subjective. Storm without powers was awesome and anybody who disagrees with me is wrong.

Sure. But that's why I specified "complete with poses". That's not how Gen-13 was drawn.

[spoilers ahead]

Sookie Stackhouse was special from the get go. She was a psychic who, it eventually is revealed, is a descendant of fairies (her origin story). Her parents had already been murdered years before, though she thought it was an accident (origin story reveal). Her employer was a shapeshifter. Her brother was a male harlot who on his own accord ends up turning into a werepanther. Her fellow waitress was murdered, as was the cook (he lived in the TV series). She also got over said vampire boyfriend, and ended up dating a string of guys in a fashion normally reserved for characters like James Bond. While romance is a major element of her novels, the main focus is almost always on solving mysteries or outwitting the scheming of evil vampires, werewolves, and humans, often through a series of extended action sequences. While she is not a scrapper by choice, she shot Debbie Pelt dead when her life was threatened.

The two genres aren't exactly the same, but they have a lot in common.

Ah, my bad. I wasn't aware you were still talking about Gen-13.

Um, yeah, no. Personally, I don't see the attraction of sexualized poses like that in comics except on an extremely shallow level. Cheesecake is for pin-ups, in which "sexy" is the extent of the model's characterization. And no, I have absolutely no interest in seeing male heroes in sexualized poses either, and by that I mean actual male model poses not the silly "what if they posed Batman the way they pose Wonder Woman" pictures going around the internet. Superhero comics are supposed to be about superheroes, not underwear models.

Right, but that's a huge part of the point. "Done correctly". Sure, the devs might screw up the game kind of tangentially making any change, but it always behooves people to be cautious when they are explicitly adding something you're not interested in, for people who don't share your interests (or at least have significant non-overlap). A game's player community is an ecosystem, and the devs are unlikely and/or unwise to add new components to them without some effort to channel existing players into the new stuff, so the new people have someone else to play with.

Well, they already wrote out all 7 parts before the first part even went live, and they've also got some of Issue 29 already planned out, so they do have long-term plans

The more typical way to do it is like this:




Being shirtless and in a towel was a critical plot point in the Human Torch's character arc.

truthfully, in all the comics I read, I never noticed these "pin up shots" untill it was pointed out, and even then, it seemed to be those big panel shots, and usually them done in such a way, that yes, while the image is looking to excite, doesn't have them ina pose that is all together out of place.

The butt shot with a female playing pool, bent over the table for the shot. Sure, they could of done the shot of their face with the pool cue as they talk instead of showing them from behind, but that seems far different than say the Pin-Up style covers they might do (and really I never saw the covers as being to much in the story anyways).

Maybe I was just to innocent when going into comics and just liking the art styles and writing (and why I can only stay with a comic when I like at least one of them, and drop it when I hate both the art and story going on).