Bioware, Please Make A Plus-Sized Female Dragon Age Character!

[Estarc]

Article title is clickbait. I would probably still have read it if it was something like Bioware: Please Give Your Characters Bigger Boobs. Cause it is clickbait AND accurate to the article.

I think one of the reasons Bioware avoids curvier female characters is the same practicality issues you ran into in your cosplay attempts. Like armour. Having large breasts and then trying to get yourself into some platemail, or indeed armour of any kind, isn't easy and can lead to wonky looking designs. I think this is why only Isabella, who wore no armour and side stepped the issue, was given a fuller figure.

Also, Bioware is really fucking weird about giving their characters sexy designs. They flip flop back and fourth on the issue, going from Miranda (Mass Effect 2) and Isabella *(Dragon Age 2) at times and then releasing Dragon Age Inquisition where sexy clothes are evil and everyone has to be super practical. Except the Bull. Cause males can be exploited I guess and no one kicks up a fuss. Fucking double standards. Let everyone be as sexy as the Bull.

 

[Amaror]

I think there generally needs to be some way to have a clear cut definition of what certain body descriptions actually mean.
Like i remember one thread that just talked about what female body types people prefered and there was this sort-of War between the "curvy" and the "skinny" groups attacking each other viciously.
Which was weird because as i read every comment neutrally both groups didn't seem to want different things at all.

Group "Skinny" wanted girls with a healthy figure, without unhealthy amounts of fat. The sort of figure you get by simply not eating fast-food every day and going jogging once a week. And they thought that Group "curvy" wanted every women to be giant balls of fat rolling through the street.

Group "Curvy" wanted girls with a healthy amount of fat. The sort of figure you get by eating more than an apple per day. And they thought that Group "Skinny" wanted every woman to be an anorexic skeleton without a single drop of fat on them whatsoever.

Both opinions weren't exclusive to each other at all, yet because each group had a different opinion on what a certain word meant they viciously attacked the other group trying to keep them from "promoting an unhealthy bodyimage". It was bizzare.

 

[Winnosh]

I get the feeling that a lot of people flat out do not understand what the term plus sized means. Which leads to a lot of people talking around each other.

A Plus sized model is anyone size 8 and up. That's chest 26 inches waist 23 inches hips 27 inches

Now plus sized clothing is anything size 16 and up. which is surprisingly not double the size of size 8

That's chest 37 Waist 27 Hips 35



Now that you can see what we are talking about, perhaps you can understand it's not people saying that they want everyone to look overweight when they say plus sized, it's more having a person with a larger body, ESPECIALLY in something like a game like Dragon age which is filled with warriors. Come on Where's my badass 6'6" Warrior amazon. Yes I effing know there are no amazon's in Dragon age.

 

[Erttheking]

No one wants to be fat, and no one wants to see someone fat.

Real life is real life, but there's still the fact that fat people are objectively inferior human beings than fit people.

That isn't what objective means. Fat people are objectively inferior. If they were, we'd have some studies on it.

 

[Dalsyne]

The big problem with this article is that they used "plus-sized" instead of buxom or whatnot and the comments section is filled with people who interpreted "plus-sized" as "fat".

I mean I did, too. But then I read the subtitle and... there was some confusion, but I understood the angle the article took.

Obviously, big boobs should exist on characters. They're a genetic trait most of the time, one that you can't really choose, and they're fairly common (about as common, if not more so, than tiny or flat chests) so there's really no reason to exclude them.

so let's talk about fat people instead. I'm generally a proponent of diversity in characters (or everything, actually), but I also like my characters to be aesthetically appealing. So if you're going to include fat people, might as well include ugly people. Now, some games already do this, like The Witcher, but those are all minor characters - you generally don't want to make your main characters unappealing to the vast majority of people for obvious reasons.

Personally, I'd be ok with a fat character if he or she was done right. If the character was obese yet able to run all day and go adventuring with the fittest of the bunch with no problems whatsoever, that'd be a bit unrealistic.

 

[RedRockRun]

I think we have enough beautiful people already.

This is """""plus-sized""""" Liana Kerzner.

She has the body type of every female videogame character ever made. Her personal lament is completely uncalled for. It's like having The Rock complain he can't cosplay as any Gears of War characters.

Yeah, what a joke. She isn't plus sized, and I find it a bit insulting that she'd give such a back-handed brag like this while trying to push the diversity card. "Oh no! Hey all you mostly male escapists, my boobs are just soooo big! Bioware ought to make fat girls btw."

 

[Paradoxrifts]

I would personally revel in the intense flood of butt hurt that would be generated if Bioware linked the physical appearance of the characters in their games with the game mechanics that operate the game. I don't think either side of this debate would be happy with the outcome if the company allowed real science to inform the outward appearance of the player avatars and their physical capabilities.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

If by plus sized you mean Zarya from Over-Watch

Then yes, acceptable. She has a reasonable and feasible body type for an individual who undergoes large amounts of strenuous physical activity.

 

[Cati]

Gone are the days when people would read the first paragraph and then comment... Kinda want that back, after the nonsense response from all over to this article. The point is literally in the second sentence.

 

[sibrenfetter]

The only thing is that typically in games, heroes are running around everywehre, fighting, jumping, I mean their workouts are quite insane. Thus portraying them as oversized would make it a very strange thing. That said, there is a point here and Bioware should look at athletics for inspiration. There the range goes from super skinny with the runners to big and strong (yet sportive) with discus throwing and such.

 

[Beliyal]

A lot of misunderstanding in this thread seems to be coming from the simple fact that most of the people posting don't have boobs and have no idea how much of a hurdle they can be when it comes to clothing. People keep saying that she should just ignore the wrong body type and wear whatever she wants (which is a nice advice, but one that Liana addressed in her article and explicitly stated that she is not a "cosplay your body type" purist"). The thing is, sometimes you physically cannot wear whatever you want. Especially when it comes to some of the quirky designs from video games that can hardly work in reality. I don't even have big breasts and I've experienced discomfort and inability to even find the clothing that would stand on me during the day without looking or feeling weird (or even painful). I had a fairly large-breasted friend who had very limited amount of clothing available to her; nothing would fit and stay on properly, so she had to wear very simplistic and basic designs that just cover you entirely. Anything else would risk indecent exposure, discomfort or pain and constant need for adjusting during the day.

So I totally understand Liana when she says that she simply cannot wear certain designs due to her breasts and the fact that the original costumes were clearly not designed with reality in mind. As in, reality where there's gravity and several other forces that affect the movement of clothing and your skin; stuff that remains still as marble in the game.

How about Samara? ...

Samara's costume is pretty impractical actually. She doesn't seem to have a bra and has a huge, open and a very low cleavage; wearing that costume accurately would probably be difficult for most large-breasted women (seeing as non-augmented real breasts don't really stand like perfect circles, but fall down in a more tear-shaped fashion). I honestly can't tell what keeps Samara's breasts like that. Perhaps biotics, implants or some futuristic material. I just googled Samara cosplays and as far as I see, all of them have a far shorter cleavage (even the actual Samara model). Here's [http://img14.deviantart.net/b735/i/2012/195/4/2/justicar_samara_by_nerdpowers-d577001.jpg] one woman with larger breasts cosplaying her; as you can see, the breasts can't stand the way they do on Samara, the cleavage doesn't go so low and this woman probably wouldn't be able to do much physically without risking her boobs falling out. Also, there doesn't seem to be any breast support so it's probably also painful.

 

[-Dragmire-]

This sounds like an actor who wants a role in a movie. In that situation, having the person match the body of the character is important to getting the role.

Interesting read on some of the difficulties of cosplay though.

[small]Not going to touch the other comments, it's tense in here...[/small]

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Gone are the days when people would read the first paragraph and then comment... Kinda want that back, after the nonsense response from all over to this article. The point is literally in the second sentence.

I wish I could see a breakdown of which people opened the article, spend a couple minutes on that page reading it, and then went to the comments, and which people jumped right into the comments without seeing more that the headline. Although you can tell by all the people who are personally insulting Liana by dredging up old pictures and saying she has no right to ask for anything, and completely missing the problems that she would have cosplaying a Bioware character then or now that is explained clearly and repeatedly in the article.

And the Cosplay Dossier comment sections used to be so pleasant, a few people who actually read the article/watched the video talking about it. I stayed out of most of the shitstorm the past year or so, and it's disappointing to see that the people who talk about the Escapist becoming argumentative, unwelcoming and just plain mean have a point.

I too don't know how to put this politely, but just because she can't keep her figure doesn't mean Morrigan shouldn't either. Or that videogame characters should accomodate you in your insecurities, for that matter. Nobody owes you, the hypothetical gamer, the right to dress up as a character and look good in it.

She's not saying that Morrigan needs to be a size 8, or 10, or whatever (I can never keep track of which number denotes what body type). Here's a direct quote from the article, which I'm not sure you've read:

Granted, most video games don't go out of their way to accommodate plus-sized women, but Bioware is a company that preaches diversity and inclusion, so I think they could really set a trend here. Before you complain that "no one wants to see that in a game", the character could still be sexy as hell. I've seen plus-sized Wonder Womans and Poison Ivys who looked great, because those costumes allow for visible cleavage and a supportive bra. Really guys, are you going to complain all that much that a female character isn't a size two if her boobs are bigger than your head? ... Then again, it's Bioware. I shouldn't assume this character would be interested in men.

The woman does every Agents of Cosplay video in a fucking catsuit, for God's sake, she's not insecure about her body in the least. However, she goes over the fact that there are a ton of cosplayers out there who love Bioware games, who know that the company is stridently outspoken about being inclusive of everyone, and would love to see a character representative of them in the game, especially when so many of the other costumes are only workable for a small variety of body types due to the styling (she tried Morrigan, but it was just physically impossible to do).

She's not going out there and stretching photos of existing characters and demanding companies change characters to look like that. She's asking a company that wants to include everyone to include her by having a given character model, a request that is so minor it could be done by a couple artists and animators in an afternoon without impacting the rest of the game in the slightest.

 

[Lightknight]

To be clear, by "plus sized" it sounds like you're just talking about average sized women with larger cup-sizes and clothes that make sense with that ratio. Is that all the request is? Put larger breasts on regular women rather than only petite? In which case hell yeah, get some healthy people in there and what reasonable man would be opposed to larger (but not joke sized) breasts?

Or, are we talking about obese characters like comments in this thread seem to be thinking? Because I even find obese males in fighting games to be a joke. Not only are they generally non-existent too but I find the notion of someone being fat when they workout vigorously all day to be hilarious.

I don't cosplay and wouldn't even if I didn't look like the offspring of Jon Stewart and a mountain troll.

That actually sounds like even more of a reason for you to cosplay...

 

[Lightknight]

I think we have enough beautiful people already.

This is """""plus-sized""""" Liana Kerzner.

She has the body type of every female videogame character ever made. Her personal lament is completely uncalled for. It's like having The Rock complain he can't cosplay as any Gears of War characters.

Yeah, what a joke. She isn't plus sized, and I find it a bit insulting that she'd give such a back-handed brag like this while trying to push the diversity card. "Oh no! Hey all you mostly male escapists, my boobs are just soooo big! Bioware ought to make fat girls btw."

I think the "plus size" is referring to them designing women with a regular body but larger breasts. If you look at the characters, either the clothing choice is physically painful for people in real life (her bikini around the neck example) or the women are designed with almost no breasts at all in certain dragon age games.

If you read the article again you may recognize that "plus size" was apparently a way for her to easily say larger breasts rather than obese. While she is certainly in shape, her breast size would be considered larger than typical for her body type.

 

[Areloch]

Gone are the days when people would read the first paragraph and then comment... Kinda want that back, after the nonsense response from all over to this article. The point is literally in the second sentence.

I wish I could see a breakdown of which people opened the article, spend a couple minutes on that page reading it, and then went to the comments, and which people jumped right into the comments without seeing more that the headline. Although you can tell by all the people who are personally insulting Liana by dredging up old pictures and saying she has no right to ask for anything, and completely missing the problems that she would have cosplaying a Bioware character then or now that is explained clearly and repeatedly in the article.

And the Cosplay Dossier comment sections used to be so pleasant, a few people who actually read the article/watched the video talking about it. I stayed out of most of the shitstorm the past year or so, and it's disappointing to see that the people who talk about the Escapist becoming argumentative, unwelcoming and just plain mean have a point.

I too don't know how to put this politely, but just because she can't keep her figure doesn't mean Morrigan shouldn't either. Or that videogame characters should accomodate you in your insecurities, for that matter. Nobody owes you, the hypothetical gamer, the right to dress up as a character and look good in it.

She's not saying that Morrigan needs to be a size 8, or 10, or whatever (I can never keep track of which number denotes what body type). Here's a direct quote from the article, which I'm not sure you've read:

Granted, most video games don't go out of their way to accommodate plus-sized women, but Bioware is a company that preaches diversity and inclusion, so I think they could really set a trend here. Before you complain that "no one wants to see that in a game", the character could still be sexy as hell. I've seen plus-sized Wonder Womans and Poison Ivys who looked great, because those costumes allow for visible cleavage and a supportive bra. Really guys, are you going to complain all that much that a female character isn't a size two if her boobs are bigger than your head? ... Then again, it's Bioware. I shouldn't assume this character would be interested in men.

The woman does every Agents of Cosplay video in a fucking catsuit, for God's sake, she's not insecure about her body in the least. However, she goes over the fact that there are a ton of cosplayers out there who love Bioware games, who know that the company is stridently outspoken about being inclusive of everyone, and would love to see a character representative of them in the game, especially when so many of the other costumes are only workable for a small variety of body types due to the styling (she tried Morrigan, but it was just physically impossible to do).

She's not going out there and stretching photos of existing characters and demanding companies change characters to look like that. She's asking a company that wants to include everyone to include her by having a given character model, a request that is so minor it could be done by a couple artists and animators in an afternoon without impacting the rest of the game in the slightest.

Well, as some people have brought up, I think part of the entire issue is a confusion of terminology?

She uses 'plus sized' in the article title, article, etc to comment on the body type for the topic, but then specifically highlights that the issue is "my boobs are too big".

That's not the definition of 'plus sized', at least not any one I can find. If you google "Plus sized women", you see that they are curvy, overweight/fat women. Them having big breasts is part of the figure, but not the totality of it. So It's hard to nail down exactly her complaint.

Further compounding the confusion of the request that the article makes, she comments about stuff like:

That bikini ties around the neck, and on a woman with boobs above a certain size, that leads to welts on the skin over your spine because there's just too much weight. It's not pretty, and it hurts in a unique and special way.

Similar issues plague the J-Lo-worthy plunging neckline of Vivienne's best-known dress. Tape is designed to secure, not defy gravity. There's nowhere to put an ample busom in that outfit, especially the way her boobs are spaced apart like the Grand Canyon.

So, we'll assume for now she's specifically talking about breast size, but the complain focuses on the basically physical impossible/unreasonable costume for a plus-sized person. But this confuses me, because a plus-sized character wouldn't have those clothing designs anyways(or if they did, because a game doesn't need to follow physics, the issue isn't resolved). And if they had a different clothing design than the 'problem character', then you'd be cosplaying something different than Viviene or whatnot.

I'm not a 'cosplay purist' or anything, so I may be having trouble deciphering the mindset, but if the "plus-sized" Viviennne alternative would be wearing a different outfit than Vivienne anyways, why not just wear a modified costume of Vivienne's that works with the body type?

 

[Areloch]

To be clear, by "plus sized" it sounds like you're just talking about average sized women with larger cup-sizes and clothes that make sense with that ratio. Is that all the request is? Put larger breasts on regular women rather than only petite? In which case hell yeah, get some healthy people in there and what reasonable man would be opposed to larger (but not joke sized) breasts?

Or, are we talking about obese characters like comments in this thread seem to be thinking? Because I even find obese males in fighting games to be a joke. Not only are they generally non-existent too but I find the notion of someone being fat when they workout vigorously all day to be hilarious.

I don't cosplay and wouldn't even if I didn't look like the offspring of Jon Stewart and a mountain troll.

That actually sounds like even more of a reason for you to cosplay...

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en...us+sized+women&btnG=Search+by+image&oq=&gs_l=

This is what Google thinks "plus sized women" means. It also jives with what stores I've seen that target "Plus Sized" people have. Plus Sized means, as far as I and Google can tell, to mean someone that is overweight/fat, but still curvy.

 

[Lightknight]

To be clear, by "plus sized" it sounds like you're just talking about average sized women with larger cup-sizes and clothes that make sense with that ratio. Is that all the request is? Put larger breasts on regular women rather than only petite? In which case hell yeah, get some healthy people in there and what reasonable man would be opposed to larger (but not joke sized) breasts?

Or, are we talking about obese characters like comments in this thread seem to be thinking? Because I even find obese males in fighting games to be a joke. Not only are they generally non-existent too but I find the notion of someone being fat when they workout vigorously all day to be hilarious.

I don't cosplay and wouldn't even if I didn't look like the offspring of Jon Stewart and a mountain troll.

That actually sounds like even more of a reason for you to cosplay...

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en...us+sized+women&btnG=Search+by+image&oq=&gs_l=

This is what Google thinks "plus sized women" means. It also jives with what stores I've seen that target "Plus Sized" people have. Plus Sized means, as far as I and Google can tell, to mean someone that is overweight/fat, but still curvy.

The context of her article seems more ambiguous as to what she meant by that. It seems to focus mostly are large cupped breasts moreso than body type.