Yay, another gender topic.
Sorry, it's just something that I'd been thinking about after watching a couple of MovieBob's Game Overthinker videos. But I just want to issue two challenges to you, The Escapist gaming community.
1. Find an empowering female video game character that's somewhat pretty, yet not unrealistically and overpoweringly sexy, with no clichéd characterization or negative implications of femininity.
A good example I can think of, which I believe someone else brought up on another thread, is Makoto from Street Fighter III and Street Fighter IV. She's not ridiculously proportioned like Cammy, and wears a basic, agendered karate gi that isn't impractically fetishistic like Sakura's sexy schoolgirl outfit (seriously, that miniskirt flies up almost every time she makes a move. It's almost as if Capcom just want us to pit Sakura and Cammy against each other on CPU mode, then sit back and have a furious tug). And she's not a "sexy badass ice queen" like Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, or Ivy Valentine from Soul Calibur.
I mean, sure, she's a tomboy, which could be construed by the more fiercely outspoken feminists to mean that "even if you're a strong female, you need to act male to have power", but come on, this is a fighting game. Of course, many of its characters tend not to have that much personality, but it's personality nonetheless, amidst a sea of glorified strippers in fighting games that we're meant to believe can fight without getting snapped like a twig. Makoto actually looks like a competent fighter, and she's not butch to the point that she looks as if she's trying to prove something, like this (exaggerated for comedy, but the point sticks): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPDEy-iElmk
2. Find a sexualized male video game character that caters to both the male and female sexual fantasy.
Note, I'm not talking about male power fantasies, such as muscular brutes like Kratos from God of War and Marcus Fenix from Gears of War. I'm talking about guys that are appealing to both women and gay men (since, apparently, gay men have slightly/somewhat different notions of an attractive male, and it's more them that find super-masculine men with sexually predominant features attractive than women, who may focus more on confidence and features less connected to sexuality. Generalizations, ahoy! P.S. Please don't place too much focus on that stereotyping comment; I was half-joking and it's not really the point).
Anyway, I guess a good example would be Cody from Final Fight and Street Fighter. In Final Fight, he's a street fighter with a clean-cut appearance. In Street Fighter, he's a cocky, confident bad boy ex-con in a skin-tight prison uniform.
Sorry, it's just something that I'd been thinking about after watching a couple of MovieBob's Game Overthinker videos. But I just want to issue two challenges to you, The Escapist gaming community.
1. Find an empowering female video game character that's somewhat pretty, yet not unrealistically and overpoweringly sexy, with no clichéd characterization or negative implications of femininity.
A good example I can think of, which I believe someone else brought up on another thread, is Makoto from Street Fighter III and Street Fighter IV. She's not ridiculously proportioned like Cammy, and wears a basic, agendered karate gi that isn't impractically fetishistic like Sakura's sexy schoolgirl outfit (seriously, that miniskirt flies up almost every time she makes a move. It's almost as if Capcom just want us to pit Sakura and Cammy against each other on CPU mode, then sit back and have a furious tug). And she's not a "sexy badass ice queen" like Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, or Ivy Valentine from Soul Calibur.
I mean, sure, she's a tomboy, which could be construed by the more fiercely outspoken feminists to mean that "even if you're a strong female, you need to act male to have power", but come on, this is a fighting game. Of course, many of its characters tend not to have that much personality, but it's personality nonetheless, amidst a sea of glorified strippers in fighting games that we're meant to believe can fight without getting snapped like a twig. Makoto actually looks like a competent fighter, and she's not butch to the point that she looks as if she's trying to prove something, like this (exaggerated for comedy, but the point sticks): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPDEy-iElmk
2. Find a sexualized male video game character that caters to both the male and female sexual fantasy.
Note, I'm not talking about male power fantasies, such as muscular brutes like Kratos from God of War and Marcus Fenix from Gears of War. I'm talking about guys that are appealing to both women and gay men (since, apparently, gay men have slightly/somewhat different notions of an attractive male, and it's more them that find super-masculine men with sexually predominant features attractive than women, who may focus more on confidence and features less connected to sexuality. Generalizations, ahoy! P.S. Please don't place too much focus on that stereotyping comment; I was half-joking and it's not really the point).
Anyway, I guess a good example would be Cody from Final Fight and Street Fighter. In Final Fight, he's a street fighter with a clean-cut appearance. In Street Fighter, he's a cocky, confident bad boy ex-con in a skin-tight prison uniform.