AuthorTopic: Big boobed characters in video games  (Read 125639 times)

Offline ptoing

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Re: Big boobed characters in video games

Reply #70 on: January 19, 2013, 05:55:47 pm
Again, it is not your problem, it is theirs. If they are happy with their situation and they did not ask you for opinions it is a dick thing to go "Hey btw, you are too fat, you should do something against that."

Just saying.
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Offline Lachie Dazdarian

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Re: Big boobed characters in video games

Reply #71 on: January 19, 2013, 06:18:46 pm
I think Seiseki was provoked by that Feminism 101 link, as well as I was. Internet is full of these sort of opinions, in the form of blogs, articles or motivational pictures, where obesity is celebrated/supported/defended.

There is something weird going on in "free societies", where most of use agree that everyone is entitled to their own lifestyle (as long as it doesn't hurt anyone) and opinions, only in the same time too many believe that these opinions shouldn't exists in form of criticism of someones poor or unhealthy (in critic's opinion) life habits.

Freedom comes with a cost. And the cost is being criticized. Deal with it!

And I could get back to the original topic. I think we, in western societies, achieved almost the maximum in equalizing the right of men and women in front of the law, which is really all the state (an organized community) can do, where even women are often favored (like in child-custody disagreements). Now how we portray women and men in works of art, really shouldn't be more than a discussion of good or bad taste. Sexualized female characters are far from something we can call absolutely wrong or right. Well, some here are so sure to call that sort of thing wrong. I think they have issues. Now portraying women as evil/stupid or characters that specifically murder women as heroes would already be a worthy topic to discuss about, but we are far from anything like that predominating in our works of art.

Offline Arne

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Re: Big boobed characters in video games

Reply #72 on: January 19, 2013, 06:25:08 pm
But Ptoing! What if their vice is not eating, but an insatiable urge to put big breasted women into their video game products? Poor Tomonobu Itagaki, catching so much flak :o

Lachie> Of course, freedom also means a right to ignore the criticism and roll on.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2013, 06:27:23 pm by Arne »

Offline huZba

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Re: Big boobed characters in video games

Reply #73 on: January 19, 2013, 06:28:08 pm
I was once a proud twig, always gaming away, living at my mom's, unemployed, till an overweight foreigner who I used to tease about his weight made me work out with him. I became more confident, energetic, got a job. I met a girl, who told me I should learn to socialize more, she was very blunt about it, very bad things were said. I told her I was happy how I was, she wouldn't take it, helps me fix myself, I end up skyrocketing my career. We're going to get married.

I'm happier than I could ever have imagined thanks to people taking the effort of not letting me proudly be what I thought was fine, cause it most certainly wasn't.

Just saying.

Offline Seiseki

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Re: Big boobed characters in video games

Reply #74 on: January 19, 2013, 06:38:49 pm
Again, it is not your problem, it is theirs. If they are happy with their situation and they did not ask you for opinions it is a dick thing to go "Hey btw, you are too fat, you should do something against that."

Just saying.

You're right, and I've never done that, nor would I..
But there's a difference between being proud of obesity specifically and just being proud in general.

We all have faults but we should not put one of those on a pedestal, like how awesome it is to drink, eat lots of fat, smoke weed or cigarettes, own a bunch of guns, play video games all night.
(I don't think either of those things are good for people or society in general)

@Arne, I didn't actually attempt to read it before.
But now that I've started reading it I can say that it's very interesting. (it's soo long though -.-)
And I can relate a lot of it to points I've been trying to make but which I think Helm sees as just an "expression of my own privilege" or a diversion.

It's especially interesting how we use words which tell how we really value women.
And I think that is the core of all issues, we don't value things associated with femininity as high as masculine ones.
But by that definition, the manliest of manly things would be two beefy gay guys as a couple. The manliness would be doubled.
I don't think anyone shares that opinion though.. :D

@Lachie, ugh, why is the attention centered on me? xD
I might have been provoked, but that's more because I don't see myself as fitting into the male norm and much less enforcing it.
As for the article itself, I found it much less provoking than this discussion has been..
Maybe because it also actually confirms and includes the male side of things which Helm seems to be completely opposed to.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2013, 06:50:49 pm by Seiseki »

Offline Ashbad

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Re: Big boobed characters in video games

Reply #75 on: January 19, 2013, 07:06:09 pm
I was once a proud twig, always gaming away, living at my mom's, unemployed, till an overweight foreigner who I used to tease about his weight made me work out with him. I became more confident, energetic, got a job. I met a girl, who told me I should learn to socialize more, she was very blunt about it, very bad things were said. I told her I was happy how I was, she wouldn't take it, helps me fix myself, I end up skyrocketing my career. We're going to get married.

I'm happier than I could ever have imagined thanks to people taking the effort of not letting me proudly be what I thought was fine, cause it most certainly wasn't.

Just saying.

I was about to point out that grey area between "being a dick" and keeping things silent, but I think this is a wonderful example of it -- "encouragement", which is definitely applicable when it comes to social and health issues.  Happy to hear about the marriage, g'luck mate!

I'm not sure this grey area exists in other situations, though -- the situation being homosexuality, transsexuality, etc., since there's nothing to "encourage".  People can't change aspects like sexuality, and whether or not you agree with what they are, you should allow them to be proud of who they are, since they can't change it and being a dick hurts everyone.

So I'm not sure that states of being, such as Obesity and Homosexuality, can really be grouped together as easily as some think.

I think that this "Obesity" discussion is getting really off-topic, though -- perhaps I should tie this back to women with large breasts in vidya (the whole feminism discussion isn't off-topic, I just don't really have anything to directly address it right now, so I'm skipping over it a bit.)

I think the idea of having a character that works as either male or female is a wonderful way to describe a good character in many settings.  Obviously, there will be key aspects of gender that have an impact on a story, such as the ability to become pregnant.  As another exception, girls that strive "just to be" DO exist in the real world, and the implementation a few 2 dimensional characters here and there does make things more interesting.  i.e., having 10 female characters that are all waist-size 0 with Double-Ds that have a constant urge to bed a (male) protagonist is boring, stupid, cliched, and trivializes women as a whole.  However, having 8 or 9 females that act like normal people and having 1 or 2 boring "strive to be" female characters would be interesting.

I also don't think it's bad to mix a little bit of sexualization into a 3-dimensional female character.  By a "little bit", I mean "recognizing she's female and may be feminine", without forcing her to be the exact opposite of the "ideal women" in modern vidya.  A good character example:



Ritz wears pink clothing, a cliche of effeminacy.  She has somewhat-apparent cleavage, with bronze cups around her breasts, but they're rather small and they definitely don't jump out at you at a first glance.  She's also wearing something that's between a skirt and actual armor, which is also somewhat "feminine".  On the other hand, she fights as a warrior, and during the entirety of the game she's in, she's not objectified as a sexual target whatsoever -- she's treated like the warrior she is.  You could easily make her a young boy instead of a young girl, and she'd be just as effective.  It's an interesting combination, and I think it was actually pretty great.  I'd love to see less women characters who are polarized to be either "extremely attractive and only strive to be beautiful" or "extremely defiant of society's expectations, dresses just like a man 100% of the time, hates anything effeminate"; I'd love to see more characters that are more naturally between the two, with an additional sprinkling of interesting characterization on top.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2013, 11:20:34 pm by Ashbad »

Offline Ai

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Re: Big boobed characters in video games

Reply #76 on: January 19, 2013, 11:12:58 pm
Ritz wears pink clothing, a cliche of effeminacy.  She has somewhat-apparent cleavage, with bronze cups around her breasts, but they're rather small and they definitely don't jump out at you at a first glance.  She's also wearing something that's between a skirt and actual armor, which is also somewhat "feminine".  On the other hand, she fights as a warrior, and during the entirety of the game she's in, she's not objectified as a sexual target whatsoever -- she's treated like the warrior she is.  You could easily make her a young boy instead of a young girl, and she'd be just as effective.  It's an interesting combination, and I think it was actually pretty great.  I'd love to see less women characters who are polarized to be either "extremely attractive and only strive to be beautiful" or "extremely defiant of society's expectations, dresses just like a man 100% of the time, hates anything effeminate"; I'd love to see more characters that are more naturally between the two, with an additional sprinkling of interesting characterization on top.
(your image is broken btw)

Nice example, that really demonstrates that a character can have sexual aspects without being sexualized. It's unclear to me whether people are really understanding this in this, that sexualization is like placing the character behind an observation screen where we can 'observe them being sexual' (note the distance of point of view), whereas sexuality is a natural part of a person that comes up some, but certainly not all, of the time. A sexualized character is one that is meant to be related to primarily or exclusively sexually. A non sexualized character could talk about sex and you could notice them sexually on occasion, but they also have plenty of other things in their life*. There's a whole bunch of other stuff relating to this in feminist literature -- for example talking about how men are expected to 'obtain' sex with women while simultaneously othering them and rejecting feminine traits.

* The whole reason sexualization is bad being, of course, that it encourages the opposite sex to think of people of that sex as objects for them to manipulate, as 'others' who are somehow less than human.

I can agree that less polarized characters are far more interesting. I think that the reason extremely polarized characters are common is because it cheaply generates drama. (ie. we need to raise writing standards in order to actually get a significant increase in the amount of balanced characters)

Quote
I thought this was a place where you could just discuss anything from any perspective.
Are you sure you're not the one trying to enforce something you feel passionate about?
I think he is. And that's good. A thread where "you could just discuss anything from any perspective" is going nowhere, will reach no definite conclusion, no-one derives any lasting benefit. If you've ever chaired a meeting you know this: if people don't have a clearly delimited topic and standards of behaviour, they'll just bandy words until your meeting is well past over.
Assuming that we want this thread to accomplish something at all rather than merely functioning as an echo chamber, a definite goal is something that it needs.

Quote
we don't value things associated with femininity as high as masculine ones.
Or more precisely, the idea is that masculinity is default, femininity is special (and also 'special' - not worthy of taking seriously).
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline Seiseki

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Re: Big boobed characters in video games

Reply #77 on: January 19, 2013, 11:56:19 pm
I don't think you can come up with solid conclusions or anything that everyone will agree on through a discussion like this..
But that doesn't make it any less interesting.

And pointing at the thread starter..
So, what do you guys and gals say? I'd like to read a little more about your opinion :)

I pointed out that gamers are jerks and I think this is a bigger issue because it affects everyone and especially minorities and those unprivileged.
Kids these days are raised behind a screen of anonymity, where they can say anything without being punished for it.
This in turn will keep a lot of women from gaming and the gaming industry, which in turn leads to the male bias being maintained.

Also, reading the feminism 101 article. I think that an approach that talks about mens inherent privilege and subsequent responsibility won't get a very positive response from the privileged white males whom the blame is being placed upon. Nothing in this situation is fair, no one choses to be born into a certain gender there's no way to get rid of this privilege.
Gah, so many conflicting feelings...

@Ashbad, that seems like a pretty standard image of japanese lolita ideal common in games and anime. The facial expression suggests that she's a typical tsundere, strong on the outside but fragile on the inside. At least the Japanese always apply a personality, even if they're based on certain archetypes.
I'm not sure how this should be analyzed from a feminist perspective. But I'm willing to bet it's not going to be very favorable.
And Japan is known for having a strict and homogeneous society with very traditional gender roles. On the other hand, anime and other japanese cultural expressions are nothing like japanese society, but a product of it nonetheless.

I like Japanese shoujo anime/manga and yaoi culture for breaking the norm though. But that's because they're made for women, usually by women.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2013, 12:26:13 am by Seiseki »

Offline #36005A

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Re: Big boobed characters in video games

Reply #78 on: January 20, 2013, 12:23:24 am
Let me just say, I am very glad this conversation is taking place here. I don't wish to contribute much at the moment, but here is a link about privilege that some here might find useful: http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-03-08_146
The nice thing about this is that it addresses individually a lot of the common misunderstandings about these topics (privilege, feminism, gender, power, etc.) in an easily-navigable way.

As an example:

Also, reading the feminism 101 article. I think that an approach that talks about mens inherent privilege and subsequent responsibility won't get a very positive response from the privileged white males whom the blame is being placed upon. Nothing in this situation is fair, no one choses to be born into a certain gender there's no way to get rid of this privilege.

A quote from the article that addresses this exact point:
Quote
You Aren’t Bad for Having Privilege
You don’t have any control over the privilege you were given, and we get that. It’s important for you to get that, and get that we aren’t saying that, and then realize what that means when combined with your privilege to pretend that you aren’t privileged. Confused? Simply put: you aren’t bad for having privilege, but not being able to give up your privilege is not a ‘get out of jail free’ card for bad behaviour. So, what, then, to do about it? Well, finding a balance between accepting your privilege and fighting against it is not easy. I still struggle with it on a daily basis. But, one way to start is to listen to and take feedback from non-privileged groups. They are a good judge of how your actions come across to them. Not everyone’s opinions will be the same, but eventually you’ll come out with some semblance of balance that works for you and those around you.

Offline Seiseki

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Re: Big boobed characters in video games

Reply #79 on: January 20, 2013, 12:43:43 am
Accept Your Privilege :'( Learn to Listen Rather Than Speak - Err.. :-[ :-X You Aren’t Bad for Having Privilege :)
Don’t Make It About You - Too late..  :-[ Intent Isn’t an Excuse - Aww.. :(

I can't handle this rollercoaster of emotions... xD

Edit: On a more serious note.
I can clearly see the points Helm was making now. The points on that site is like a check list to me which directly relates to my posts in this thread.
But I can't fully accept it still, it's like some kind of anti-norm, anti-opression that turns into another type of oppression suffocating the way I'm used to express myself.
The long list of "rules" makes me not want to engage in these kinds of topics, rather than keep breaking the rules, it totally kills any curiosity I used to have and it feels completely depressive.
Don’t Make It About You - And I did it again.. ::)

As helm points out, as privileged males we can only have a privileged male conversation.
But I don't want to see the world in black and white like this. Maybe I'm just naive.
I should have taken the blue pill...
« Last Edit: January 20, 2013, 01:31:02 am by Seiseki »