Rainbow_Dashtruction said:
BNguyen said:
Rainbow_Dashtruction said:
KissingSunlight said:
I saw this report in the news, female CEO of Archie Comics is being sued by her male employees for repeatedly calling them "Penis". The CEO dismissed the seriousness of the lawsuit by saying, "White men are not a protected class."
It got me to thinking. It seems like everytime someone brings up a complaint regarding gender. He get shouted down. The best example that occurs on this website is when men bring up that male videogame characters who match the same description as the female videogame character that some people are complaining about as sexist. They get womansplained that those characters are a male power fantasy. (By the way, I am just being cheeky with the obnoxious term "mansplaining". No need to get upset by that.)
I can't think of one thing that men can complain about. (Without being about race, religion, sexuality, etc.) That people will side with men and say, "Hey! That is a serious problem we should address."
Are men allowed to be offended?
Ok firstly, women are correct with the male power fantasy angle, but feminists do have the habit of wanting more then men get. I'll let women have what they want when society equates me hitting a women in the face for pulling shit to me punching a guy in the face for doing the same thing. Feminists only want the bonuses of equality and complain when the bad parts rear their head.
So yes, its colossal bullshit that the court case failed when she'd probably win the same case if they started calling her only by the title of vagina.
that male power fantasy thing is all subjective - I don't feel as though a person can just explain away a male character's looks onto my being a male as a "power fantasy"
although men have more of a wide range of appearances in gaming, nearly if not all are muscular above the average man - some more able to be seen than others due to clothing hiding their physical forms, but like I said in an earlier post about Street Fighter - all of the men are above average in terms of muscular mass - large pecs, bulky arms and legs, etc.
about the only characters I've seen that would not fall into "power fantasy" were Little Nemo and Lester the Unlikely wherein Nemo is a young boy and Lester is a thin nerd
in the spirit of being a gamer, I'd like to know what a female power fantasy character would look like - not hidden beneath clothes so as to be able to judge muscle mass in regards to a male counterpart
Its very hard to actually do such a thing because theres pretty much no example of it being done that really springs to mind that wasn't done with a kiddy art style that cant really be considered a comparison (Kya Dark Lineage). I mean, for some reason people keep referring to Katniss Everdeen when they refer to this and I just cant see how that'd be. She's a deeply mentally scarred person who is constantly brought into fight or die situations but cannot stand killing and gets PTSD syndrome from doing so. (humans at least, she enjoyed hunting quite a lot in book 1) If that's a power fantasy, I'm a little scared of women now.
I suspect a certain amount of trauma tends to go with most heroes of any gender. I'm trying to think of exceptions and not finding a lot.... Duke Nukem? Wonder Woman, maybe? But a lot of superheroes (Pretty much the entire Justice League, Spider Man, Daredevil), video game protagonists (Lara Croft, Kya, Jade, the Prince, Solid Snake, all the walking fridges in Gears of War) as well as protagonists in books (Harry Potter, Alanna of Tortall, everyone in Song of Ice and Fire, Frodo) or movies and TV (Jack Bauer, Xena, Liam Neeson in everything ever) don't get to be mega badasses until they've been kicked around by life a bit. Hence the popularity of the orphan origin. Showing a character's suffering gives you emotional context for them and can be very helpful for fleshing out who they really are and how they'll respond to certain situations. Of course there's a gradient. Some characters lose their family, some just get hired for a job that goes horribly wrong, some are just life's punching bags. And when done without really thinking about it or writing the character's actions accordingly it comes out really stupid and unbelievable, or just trite.
So yeah, in most media you don't get to really be a hero until you've suffered somehow, and sometimes it can get kind of ridiculous. Also, in the particular case of characters like Katniss Everdeen, their youth is part of the issue. It would read as wrong if while going through all this crap she were totally ok with killing people and being constantly in danger, the audience (primarily people about the same age) would find her unbelievable or unrelatable. An adult who's had time to adjust might still come across as kind of a psycho (see Lara Croft) but at least you could believe that they've come to terms with past trauma. But Katniss is still in the thick of it, her learning to cope is part of her character arc. As such I can't quite see her as a power fantasy either, but I can see how her example would make the reader feel bolstered and encouraged a la "If she can do that, I can handle my life."
The first character I thought of as a female power fantasy was Xena, actually, and her backstory is a horror show. So I wonder if part of the issue is that the term needs to be unpacked a little. I mean, when we think about actually inspiring characters, I would theorize that most people think of someone whose origin includes suffering well beyond their own lives, not someone who's just effortlessly awesome, or even someone who got that way through steady hard work and support from loved ones. I don't know if that's a current-generation thing, you know, gritty reboots and all that, or just a ubiquitous aspect of storytelling. Either way I get the impression that a "power fantasy" in the form of a physically and mentally healthy badass isn't very compelling to most people in any media with a pre-written protagonist. The only exception I can think of would be role-playing where you create your character from scratch or where they have no story or existing character, and there aren't a lot of games like that.
