Tag: Positive Examples

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femfreq:

Why are almost all the female characters in games slender and young? We dig deeper into gaming’s problem with body diversity in our brand new Tropes!

You can find a complete transcript of the episode on our website.

While body shape is not technically the focus of this blog, it is a heavily related issue simply because it basically all fits into idea that female characters are only worthwhile if they are conventionally attractive, heavily sexualized and avoid challenging too many perceptions.

For all the talk about how much people like a female character for being badass, there’s a tendency to only support it if it doesn’t clash with other ideals like conventional beauty or sexualization.

This has created an odd situation where many people are more comfortable with a woman built like a fashion model wearing an outfit made of dental floss as being a badass than they are with, well a badass like this:

image

Which is not only ridiculously limiting from a creative perspective, but also re-enforces the idea that all women should look like these ridiculous fantasies (that look like at best, very few real women, and at worst no real women).

– wincenworks

We touched upon this issue before, especially when talking about Overwatch (particularly this post), but Anita puts the problem of double standards of beauty in character design most comprehensively in this video. 

Lots of illustrative examples really drive the point home: There is a noticeable lack of visual diversity among female game characters (and, by extension, in other popular media), while male ones get a variety of appearances.
This limits not only the designer’s creativity, but the female audience’s sense of inclusion.

~Ozzie

more about: character design | double standards | suspicious dimorphism

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Posted on

dimestoretajic:

mtg-talk:

New legendary creature, plus some other cool stuff. I’m really liking Recruiter of the Guard.

@bikiniarmorbattledamage has to LOVE Wizards… they run the gamut from, well, Adriana to Burning Wish! Endless material from both ends of the spectrum! 😀

Love is… not the descriptor I would assign to Wizards of the Coast, particularly to Magic: The Gathering.  Particularly since their art guide have, for over a decade now, essentially been content with the idea that as long as it’s not blatant softcore pornography and the women are closer to “kicking ass” than being a damsel then it will be fine.

Ultimately the positive examples from Magic tend to fit into one of two categories.  One is that it tends to feed into societal tropes that encourage people to harshly judge women based on their attire, the other is it basically confirms that many artists like portraying women in practical armor and many consumers like paying for images of women in practical armor.

(This, by the way, is something they should be aware of given the history of their franchises.)

All that really holds things back is the plethora of nonsense myths various people are deeply invested in perpetuating.

– wincenworks

Posted on

dimestoretajic:

mtg-talk:

New legendary creature, plus some other cool stuff. I’m really liking Recruiter of the Guard.

@bikiniarmorbattledamage has to LOVE Wizards… they run the gamut from, well, Adriana to Burning Wish! Endless material from both ends of the spectrum! 😀

Love is… not the descriptor I would assign to Wizards of the Coast, particularly to Magic: The Gathering.  Particularly since their art guide have, for over a decade now, essentially been content with the idea that as long as it’s not blatant softcore pornography and the women are closer to “kicking ass” than being a damsel then it will be fine.

Ultimately the positive examples from Magic tend to fit into one of two categories.  One is that it tends to feed into societal tropes that encourage people to harshly judge women based on their attire, the other is it basically confirms that many artists like portraying women in practical armor and many consumers like paying for images of women in practical armor.

(This, by the way, is something they should be aware of given the history of their franchises.)

All that really holds things back is the plethora of nonsense myths various people are deeply invested in perpetuating.

– wincenworks

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Tidy Up Tuesday #48

A few things to catch up on this week

Things we addressed before:

We also have have people referring us to more positive examples than we can really feature in a week without derailing the focus of the blog, so here’s a few we thought we’d share here:

~Ozzie & – wincenworks

Posted on

Tidy Up Tuesday #48

A few things to catch up on this week

Things we addressed before:

We also have have people referring us to more positive examples than we can really feature in a week without derailing the focus of the blog, so here’s a few we thought we’d share here:

~Ozzie & – wincenworks