Tag: nuttynutifications

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@nuttynutifications submitted:

Extra Credits’ latest video is about how the player character’s appearance might affect how the player plays the said character, based on a RL experiment on how people’s mental capacities are affected by whether or not the test subjects were wearing lab coats when solving problems.

While tangential to the bikini armor thing, this video immediately provoked me to think: giving the player character an outfit that doesn’t look entirely ridiculous or immersion-breaking might actually boost the player’s performance. And now, we know that there are many, many people who find bikini armor ridiculous and immersion-breaking.

I feel it’s particularly worth noting since (intentionally or not) Extra Credits starts discussing the importance of how tropes cement our vision of a character – thus it should be obvious that if you want people to believe your character is complex and deep… best not to dress her up like a 70s pulp fantasy pinup.

Especially if you want your story to be great storytelling or represent a deep, immersive experience for the player.

– wincenworks

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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A trend I’ve seen in positive female armor examples… I find neither good nor bad but just thought-provoking… In many of positive female armors, the ladies have a long, often untied and fancy (even sexy) hair. That kind of hair is usually very impractical in battle (blinds, someone can grab it), and while dudes can sometimes have freely flowing long hair, long hair is mostly girls’ thing in pop culture. Your thoughts, what is the okay-ness of giving a lady warrior long fancy hair, and why?

Largely we don’t address the long hair issues because the solution is pretty straight forward (as shown by the-hero-dies aka Kevin Warren):

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As for the okay/appropriateness – it generally depends on the consistency and suspension of disbelief.  It’s common practice in all kinds of media to have named characters go without helmets do they can be easily recognized and in more than a few productions the men have equally impractical hair styles.

When it becomes a problem is when products signal that some men are practical and/or warriors by giving them close cropped hair styles and then give women with equal responsibility fancy hair styles because they have an arbitrary checklist of traits all women need.  Such as:

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Then it’s terrible because it showcases the double standard, objectifies women and destroys the visual story telling by mixing the messages on what a character’s appearance is supposed to tell us.

– wincenworks

Gifs from this Regretroid Music Video

Posted on

nuttynutifications:

A trend I’ve seen in positive female armor examples… I find neither good nor bad but just thought-provoking… In many of positive female armors, the ladies have a long, often untied and fancy (even sexy) hair. That kind of hair is usually very impractical in battle (blinds, someone can grab it), and while dudes can sometimes have freely flowing long hair, long hair is mostly girls’ thing in pop culture. Your thoughts, what is the okay-ness of giving a lady warrior long fancy hair, and why?

Largely we don’t address the long hair issues because the solution is pretty straight forward (as shown by the-hero-dies aka Kevin Warren):

image

As for the okay/appropriateness – it generally depends on the consistency and suspension of disbelief.  It’s common practice in all kinds of media to have named characters go without helmets do they can be easily recognized and in more than a few productions the men have equally impractical hair styles.

When it becomes a problem is when products signal that some men are practical and/or warriors by giving them close cropped hair styles and then give women with equal responsibility fancy hair styles because they have an arbitrary checklist of traits all women need.  Such as:

image
image
image

Then it’s terrible because it showcases the double standard, objectifies women and destroys the visual story telling by mixing the messages on what a character’s appearance is supposed to tell us.

– wincenworks

Gifs from this Regretroid Music Video