Tidy-Up Tuesday #9
This week’s tidy-ups:
pyranova , the original poster of last week’s throwback, asked us to give Dr. Nerdlove, the site that posted the original article, a shout-out. The post itself was an excerpt from a second article in the site’s long-running series of writeups about male privilege (parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).
Dr.Nerdlove in general is a site worth acquainting oneself with, rife with good advice for the socially awkward and critical of many social problems which are still rarely challenged among the geek community.
A reader asked what would we say to a woman who wants to cosplay Quiet.
We’d say “Go for it, you beautiful lady! Unlike Quiet, you are a human and make your own choices! We admire the craft, ingenuity and confidence that goes into cosplaying scantily clad characters.”
We’ve been also asked to post more about Pokemon. Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately), unlike with Digimon, we can not find a way to connect the franchise to our blog’s topic.
Things we covered before:
~Ozzie & – wincenworks
Tidy-Up Tuesday #9
This week’s tidy-ups:
pyranova , the original poster of last week’s throwback, asked us to give Dr. Nerdlove, the site that posted the original article, a shout-out. The post itself was an excerpt from a second article in the site’s long-running series of writeups about male privilege (parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).
Dr.Nerdlove in general is a site worth acquainting oneself with, rife with good advice for the socially awkward and critical of many social problems which are still rarely challenged among the geek community.
A reader asked what would we say to a woman who wants to cosplay Quiet.
We’d say “Go for it, you beautiful lady! Unlike Quiet, you are a human and make your own choices! We admire the craft, ingenuity and confidence that goes into cosplaying scantily clad characters.”
We’ve been also asked to post more about Pokemon. Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately), unlike with Digimon, we can not find a way to connect the franchise to our blog’s topic.
Things we covered before:
~Ozzie & – wincenworks
Fiore
Lucas submitted:
I think i saw Star Ocean 5 here before but i’m not sure. They finally released some in game screenshots and the art for the main characters.
As anyone can see, the green haired girl quite a “unoptimal attire”. Her name is Fiore and here is her art.
I’ve seen a lot of crazy outfits in games but this is reaches around the “i can’t even” tier. Everything looks so glued into her i have no idea how she managed to wear that in the first place.
But hey, i’m sure she must have a “good reason” to walk around like that right? According to one interview with the devs here:
F: I’d like to ask about a newly introduced character, Fiore. Is there a story behind her attire? (laugh)
K: In order to use spells in this world, mages must have a spellmark*** carved somewhere on their bodies. To show off the strength of her own spells, Fiore prefers to wear the kind of outfit that you’ve taken notice to. In Randock, the country that Fiore lives in, there are outfits used specially by Spellmark Mages, and you can customize these in any which way you want. I can ensure you they are far from being indecent (laugh).
Oh, so she needs to expose her skin to use her magic and “chose” to dress like that to show of her strenght!
At least she isnt breathing through her skin.(I wonder if these guys are laughing because even they can’t keep a serious face with this crap)But despite that, he isn’t wrong. I searched a bit and found out that this is “normal” in the Star Ocean universe. For example, this is Nel from Star Ocean: Till the end of time
As you can see, she “needs” to show off her thighs because the “magical marks”. But if that’s the case, then there are some problems here.
First is that, if Fiore really needs to show her marks, she doesnt need to show that much skin, only the necessary. And second is, Fiore doesnt have any marks. I keep looking the screenshots but cant find any.
This is even more disappointing. I mean, if you’re gonna invent a stupid excuse to make the character walk around semi-naked, at least go all the way and try to convince people, don’t lie about it and leave it that.
Yes, we featured that design before on BABD, and now that her special reasons for “choosing” to dress that way are revealed, it somehow got MUCH worse.
To be precise, Fiore does have a mark on her thigh, as seen in this pic of her on EscherGirls:
How does that explain wearing holes all over her body, not just that one spot on the leg? Hell if I know.
Dear Star Ocean crew: if you really want to excuse obvious sexualization with
a diegetic argument, then the least you could do is stay consistent within your own logic. It would still not be valid justification, but at least a less insulting one.
~Ozzie
Fiore
Lucas submitted:
I think i saw Star Ocean 5 here before but i’m not sure. They finally released some in game screenshots and the art for the main characters.
As anyone can see, the green haired girl quite a “unoptimal attire”. Her name is Fiore and here is her art.
I’ve seen a lot of crazy outfits in games but this is reaches around the “i can’t even” tier. Everything looks so glued into her i have no idea how she managed to wear that in the first place.
But hey, i’m sure she must have a “good reason” to walk around like that right? According to one interview with the devs here:
F: I’d like to ask about a newly introduced character, Fiore. Is there a story behind her attire? (laugh)
K: In order to use spells in this world, mages must have a spellmark*** carved somewhere on their bodies. To show off the strength of her own spells, Fiore prefers to wear the kind of outfit that you’ve taken notice to. In Randock, the country that Fiore lives in, there are outfits used specially by Spellmark Mages, and you can customize these in any which way you want. I can ensure you they are far from being indecent (laugh).
Oh, so she needs to expose her skin to use her magic and “chose” to dress like that to show of her strenght!
At least she isnt breathing through her skin.(I wonder if these guys are laughing because even they can’t keep a serious face with this crap)But despite that, he isn’t wrong. I searched a bit and found out that this is “normal” in the Star Ocean universe. For example, this is Nel from Star Ocean: Till the end of time
As you can see, she “needs” to show off her thighs because the “magical marks”. But if that’s the case, then there are some problems here.
First is that, if Fiore really needs to show her marks, she doesnt need to show that much skin, only the necessary. And second is, Fiore doesnt have any marks. I keep looking the screenshots but cant find any.
This is even more disappointing. I mean, if you’re gonna invent a stupid excuse to make the character walk around semi-naked, at least go all the way and try to convince people, don’t lie about it and leave it that.
Yes, we featured that design before on BABD, and now that her special reasons for “choosing” to dress that way are revealed, it somehow got MUCH worse.
To be precise, Fiore does have a mark on her thigh, as seen in this pic of her on EscherGirls:
How does that explain wearing holes all over her body, not just that one spot on the leg? Hell if I know.
Dear Star Ocean crew: if you really want to excuse obvious sexualization with
a diegetic argument, then the least you could do is stay consistent within your own logic. It would still not be valid justification, but at least a less insulting one.
~Ozzie
Let’s talk about Quiet, and attempt to answer the question:
Can you slut-shame a fictional character?
And in case anyone reading our blog still doubts whether or not Quiet (or any other woman in fiction) can be slut-shamed for her choice of attire or behavior, here’s Sursum Ursa’s concise video explanation.
Spoilers: the answer is no.
~Ozzie
As a side note, since we’re on the topic of Quiet and sexualzing characters, I feel this is an appropriate point to touch on something related:
If your argument is the men are sexualized too, but you have to comb through all the individual games to try to get together enough material to try (unsucessfully I might add) to match how much Quiet is sexualized in ONE game – you’re not going to be very convincing.
There is a massive difference between depicting a character who is many different things throughout their arc (tough, vulnerable, protected, naked, etc) and happens to be sexy at some points and creating a character who is primarily and overwhelmingly sexy all throughout their arc and happens to get to be some other things during it.
One is creating a character who’s like a person so the audience can relate to them, the other is creating a sex object and calling them a character.
It’s kind of important.
– wincenworks
more about character agency on BABD
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Brought to our attention by superheroineworld (thank you so much for linking it in a reblog!)
This video sums up pretty damn well why any sort of “makes sense in context” justification for absurd and creepy things in fiction (like, say, bikini armors) is invalid by default.
Quotes worth highlighting:
Writers routinely alter the rules to suit their interests and the needs of their story. So, in the world outside of the diegesis, in our world, only the implications and impact of that fiction actually matter.
It’s basically a circular argument to expect that the fictional rules created specifically for the narrative will shield the narrative from being criticized on the meta level.
Criticism of a creative work is, ultimately, criticism of the decisions that people made when they were putting it together.
Which is also why “you’re slut-shaming that character" is a fail at responding to criticism. Characters are fictional constructs with no agency and the “choices” they make can be blamed solely on their creators.
You guys might have noticed, but around half of the Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo is made from Thermian arguments. That’s how popular this circular logic is among skimpy armor defenders. And I’m glad we now have this video to explain why it doesn’t work.
~Ozzie
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Rule: When analyzing or critiquing media, you can not defend a problematic aspect of media by saying that a character CHOSE to do it, and that people are allowed to CHOSE to do things.
Because fictional characters do not have the capacity to make choices. Because they are not REAL people.
Power Girl and Starfire did not CHOOSE to fight evil in skimpy, revealing outfits. It is not their PERSONAL CHOICE to wear those clothes. They are fictional characters and their wardrobes are under the control of the author and artist.
Dumbledore did not CHOOSE to stay in the closet as a personal and professional choice because that was his right as a person. He is a fictional character. The fact that his sexuality was left at only vague subtext and only revealed through word of god was a deliberate decision made by the author.
Fictional characters are fictional characters. They do not make their own choices.
Addendum to the rule: for the same reasons, you can not argue that criticism “shames” a character for their appearance or behavior.
And just for the record, seeing what kind of responses this post received before we got to reblog it: NO, the fact that fictional characters tend to grow and take a life of their own still does not mean they have agency.
No matter how developed a fictional person is, they’re still written by a real person (or people) who have their own biases and rationalizations. Just because some “choices” feel natural to the author doesn’t mean they’re objectively plausible “choices” for a character to make within the given narrative.
Sometimes the choice, like (in case of what our blog critiques) decision to wear a sexualized costume to battle, can be explained by specific circumstances. But in most circumstances or with other explanations, the same choice can be plain silly and inconsistent with the rest of established story/worldbuilding.
~Ozzie