This week’s livestream will be moved to Saturday 9 AM PST. It will be another 3-hour stream (that’ll probably be the norm from now on), and I will actually be revisiting a redesign I did a few weeks ago, as I looked at it again and decided I hate it. Hel Part 2: The Resurrection will be next week.
If this day and time turns out to work better for everyone, I might just keep it, so feel free to comment on this post with feedback.
male gamers like to pretend that male characters designed, draw/rendered and written by men, made hulkishly muscular and hypermasculine by men for a deliberate target audience of men is objectification and hypersexualisation rather than actively appealing to male power fantasy
and it’s somehow women’s fault of course
My favorite example of this is when people try to invoke this guy as their ultimate trump card of “Men are objectified in video games too!”
The ultimate steroid rager who converses primarily by screaming and murdering. A completely selfish man who, since murdering his wife and daughter, seems to only one emotion (anger) and prone to random acts of violence. A man so terrible that he goes out of his way to incorporate murdering random women* into “puzzle solving”.**
People actually point to this character, created by a man (David Jaffe) and try to tell us this is objectification of men in order to pander to women.
Then, presumably, after throwing a tantrum and destroying random objects in their home, then wonder why women aren’t impressed by this and find them undateable.
* The fact that almost the entire female population, including the monsters, goes to great pains to show off their breasts to the player also never seems to factor into their assessment.
** This sequence featured in Tropes vs Women in Video Games – however please be advised that this sequence along with other parts in the video contain extreme depictions of violence against women. (x)
– wincenworks
So, due to some minor events that gave this myth a shot in the arm, it’s probably worth bringing this back this week, particularly since said event related to barbarians and similarly physically powerful warriors.
The notion that “men are objectified too” really doesn’t hold up under the slightest scrutiny – particularly when so much media insists on asking the audience to cheer for super violent male characters who are often amazingly unlikeable.
Some readers gave us heads up regarding Tumblr mobile app going buggy with links to tags that end with /chrono, so we’ll try to avoid them in the future. With that in mind, from now on we’ll be linking our most discussed topics as the newly created masterposts (work still in progress) that list the most significant posts in each category.
When submitting/recommending a bad design to BABD, please always make sure it’s from a commercial project, not an artist’s independent/personal exercise at character design.
If you’re like to ask for design advice, we recommend checking out:
Or drop in to @how-do-i-armour-and-stuff and send in an ask or submission (it doesn’t update as often as wincenworks would like, but he will happily review any questions/requests etc)
So close, yet so far (to a good design). I even like the pink/gold color scheme! But I think we know why they left those 4 inches of skin on her legs… <sideglance at clothing damage> But this seems to be a thing for Fire Emblem ladies, unfortunately. Who needs pants anyway?
Also, is it just me, or is her left arm really long in that first pic…?
-Icy
Can we discuss how egregious her boobplate is, though?
So much ornamentation frames the breast cups and their cleavage, just in case anyone forgot she had titties and they were very definitely separated. If no boobs, how woman, after all?
This is the newest addition to High-Rez’s hero fighter, “Paladins” who is one of the more interesting characters on their roster as far as her character goes, but that just makes it so much more disappointing that this is the design they ended up going with. This full screen image was the first thing I was greeted with upon logging in after the latest patch.
My biggest question is how she’s going to find the person who stole the rest of her outfit (and mangled her spine?) with that blindfold on, and hopefully that necklace doesn’t impale itself into her chest while she’s chasing them.
The one positive I find in this creatively sterile design* is the fact that Seris, unlike most Paladins champions, isn’t a direct or indirect ripoff of any Overwatch character. Though it won’t surprise me if she was heavily influenced by someone from a more fantasy-oriented franchise, like LoL or WoW… or maybe Warmachine [x]:
So i just want to say that, aside from a few small gripes (mainly the seeming assumption that only cishet males promote the objectification of women in games. Feel free to tell me if i misunderstood that.), i love this blog. It does address many of the issues in modern media in regards to women. While there still seems to be a small bias it is easily ignored for the most part as the information provided is useful to designers. Thank you, though, for keeping things as straight forward as possible
Glad we can be of service! I did want to clarify our “assumption that only cishet males promote the objectification of women” because we do see people trying to throw the objectification blame around as if that’s productive. We never meant to imply that only cishet males objectify women, just that design decisions that lead to things like this are usually made to appeal to the cishet male demographic, or even just to their cishet male designer. Anyone can objectify a character, but that doesn’t mean that the character was designed to be consumed in that way by certain demographics. With how many “men only” game ads we see, I think we can agree they aren’t pandering to queer women.
I follow quite a few women / nb people in the anime and games community who are attracted to women (I’m a straight woman), and sometimes I see them enjoying or creating art that is objectifying and makes me uncomfortable. One example is Camilla from FE Fates, and the ‘damaged-clothes’ pictures in FE Heroes. I see women / nb people finding these things sexy. I don’t want to tell LGBTQ people what they should or shouldn’t be attracted to though. Do you have any thoughts on this?
There is no social structure in place that routinely supports male objectification or places queer people in the same position of power over women as it does for cishet (white) men.
That said, we don’t tell anyone, even cis straight men, who and what they should be attracted to. We just want people to be aware and critical of those things and consider the bigger picture of what that attraction means. Especially if that thing comes from mainstream media that inevitably builds the collective image of the world we live in, and not from, say, niche kinky corners of the Internet.
Inspired by Icy’s work during the Friday livestreams (and the need to test new hardware), I’m intending to stream at 8 pm (or 20:00, as I call it) CEST.
