Given how regularly we get people rush in to tell us that we cannot question anything from outside the USA because of cultural reasons (never mind that neither of us is from the USA, or even near it) – this is kind of darkly hilarious.
Apparently Nintendo’s judgement is only unquestionable as long as they’re pandering to entitled straight men – as soon as that stops it’s an evil conspiracy to censor video games involving one or more of the following:
Everyone in politics from religious conservatives to liberal activists
“the Internet police”
The developers not “wanting the game to succeed”
the singular group of people who are the only ones who ever have concerns (except about censorship?)
Numerous groups zealot groups unique to western culture (as if God of War III was never altered for Japanese release)
Of course, it goes without saying that one can never include pandering in these video games – even when it’s fan service labeled “fan service” it’s always there for deep artistic reasons.
Speaking of which, my favourite part of the comments was this justification and insistence that these costumes are essential in a franchise which is about going around haunted houses, taking photos of ghosts with magic cameras:
And this was a movie where I was kind of kind of excited about because it had Gamora in it!
– wincenworks
It’s one of those cases that disappoints, but doesn’t surprise me. Especially since with the first movie, not unlike with Avengers, they reduced female team member count to one, despite there being more women in the comics.
And we should be always pointing that out, for as long as it remains the status quo.
~Ozzie
As the follow up to last week’s throwback, it’s worth remembering that the general differences between men and women in mainstream media are most certainly not the result of “how things are”.
Major studios hire casting teams to generate calls like this and then carefully curate everyone who gets to be in front of a camera. Sometimes this is for specific effects (making 5′9″ Lucy Lawless look like a towering glamazon) but more often it’s just to re-enforce harmful ideals and perceptions.
It’s bad enough when a sci-fi setting has all the ladies wearing painted-on tights so snug that you can see all the way up their respective buttcracks, but then they go and do it with the armour, too.
Like, it’s armour.
It’s a solid chunk of heavy, rigid material.
How does that work?
How do you walk with a pair of inflexible domes tightly cupping your glutes?
Hell, how do you even stand when you’ve got a quarter-inch durasteel plate wedged so far up your ass you’re tasting metal?
Concept: fantasy species where the ladies are nine-foot-tall horrors of teeth and claws and the men look like lithe twentysomething pretty-boys wearing body paint.
(Well, except for the Wise Elders. You can tell when a male is a Wise Elder because he looks mid thirties instead of early twenties and trades in the twinky underwear model aesthetic for a stubbly-yet-well-groomed Hot Dad vibe.)
This Friday, we continue the theme of suspicious dimorphism with this amazing sexy guy/monstrous lady subversion!
Sad part is, this idea shouldn’t only come up as a joke. There is no reason, other than blind belief that “sex sells” (to cishet dudes), for fantasy/sci-fi dimorphism to always make females look like conventionally attractive humans. Just think of all the genuinely creative world building possibilities that open up with fictional society where men take the Green Skinned Space Babe role, while women fill out all the more interesting alien race tropes.
I feel that the most critical step to really re-inventing those characters would be to get them away from Dynamite Entertainment.
I enjoy Gail Simone’s re-invention of Red Sonja and understand there’s a balancing act with the branding and appearance. But an ongoing thing with Dynamite Entertainment is that they stockpile old characters to use them in spinoffs, mash-ups, etc.
What would really be bold – is actually re-inventing these characters without anchoring them to bad branding and design decision made in 70s (or earlier). Red Sonja has changed far more than her costume has, and not updating her appearance to reflect that hampers the comic.
At the end of the day – the reason these properties got sold to Dynamite Entertainment and the reason this is the second time Red Sonja’s been re-invented since then is because the old branding isn’t speaking to audiences today.
– wincenworks
So, a year ago I expressed that I was less than excited about Dynamite’s “commitment” to reinventing a bunch of heroines including Red Sonja as less they hyper-sexualized. Now to be fair, they release the new Volume 3 run… a whole six issues of it! (FYI, Volume 2 got 21 issues and Volume 1 got 81 issues before getting rebooted)
However starting next year they’re going to be starting a Volume 4 run! Want to see the amazingly creative ideas they’ve got to take the title in a whole new direction unlike anything else in comics?
Time to spoil a seven year old game. Let’s talk about Kiera Stokes from FEAR 2: Project Origin
This is Lt Stokes
She is the only woman on the Dark Signal squad, and while technically her body armor covers the same spaces as her male counterparts, the game feels the need to have her undershirt not cover her stomach.
Naturally, she gets gut shot by recurring antagonist Aristide.
I can’t help but notice that they also decided that Stokes was the only one who didn’t need elbow length sleeves or elbow pads… presumably they were concerned that someone might mistake her for having arms with the kind of tone that tends to accompany intensive combat training.
