Gender challenge

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Tazzy da Devil

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1. I'd say Elena from Uncharted. I don't really remember much about that game, but I do remember being pleasantly pleased with her character. This is hard to do since my inner feminist makes me hate the way almost every female character is portrayed.

2. From the same game, Nathan Drake. I know he gets a lot of hate, but that guy is hot as.
 

sanquin

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Aris Khandr said:
Cammy has some of the smallest breasts in gaming. If you think she is ridiculously proportioned, then I'm not sure how you play any fighting game with a female character.
I never said I took offense to such characters. Well, I usually don't, though sometimes they cross the line for me. But that's beside the point.

Have you ever seen female body builders? Without quite a bit of plastic surgery, or already having natural D cups or more, they won't have large looking boobs. And those boobs on Cammy definitely look like at least D-cup. Combine that with her overall body shape, and yes, they are ridiculously proportioned.

Shows how desensitized people have become to sexualized females in games, thinking that Cammy is not ridiculously proportioned...
 

jamesworkshop

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For the first point i'm going to submit



"What's that, Father? Teach them about fire. Well, if you insist."



On point 2 I struggle, i'm not sure the question makes sense Men don't have much in common with women when it comes to personal attractiveness, no direct parallel exists when it comes to things like clothing, their is no male equivalence to short skirts or high heels, look at the thread most talks around female characters is the sexually charged clothing i.e presentation more so than actual body type.

Men it would seem operate in a more binary fashion, a good looking man is always good looking, but nothing can save the unattractive man, a sexy shirtless guy remains sexy but a shirtless ugly guy is still ugly whereas a lesser attractive women can throw on the right outfit(short skirt, high heels etc) and present a more sexualized image.


Your first point has a flaw in that it only addresses a male view point should I as a straight man be asked to define what a gay woman might find attractive, sexual objectification in a male gaze is unlikely to be the same as sexual objectification in the eyes of a gay woman.

see the difference between "girl on girl" porn and porn made "by lesbians for lesbians", one I enjoy and the other I find boring

I very much doubt my straight female relatives like this




Like the largely gay male audience does
 

jamesworkshop

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sanquin said:
Aris Khandr said:
Cammy has some of the smallest breasts in gaming. If you think she is ridiculously proportioned, then I'm not sure how you play any fighting game with a female character.
I never said I took offense to such characters. Well, I usually don't, though sometimes they cross the line for me. But that's beside the point.

Have you ever seen female body builders? Without quite a bit of plastic surgery, or already having natural D cups or more, they won't have large looking boobs. And those boobs on Cammy definitely look like at least D-cup. Combine that with her overall body shape, and yes, they are ridiculously proportioned.

Shows how desensitized people have become to sexualized females in games, thinking that Cammy is not ridiculously proportioned...
How do you know she hasn't had surgery

in fact you already identify that at least some female body builders do get implants (otherwise you would have no visual reference point)
The discrepancy could even be a driving force to get breast implants due to having less of the normally defined feminine features.


Lets not forget that objectively these are pixels or polygons not real flesh and blood people, but designs in an environment where nothing exists unless defined, in a virtual or abstract way these are objects.
 

Aris Khandr

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sanquin said:
Aris Khandr said:
Cammy has some of the smallest breasts in gaming. If you think she is ridiculously proportioned, then I'm not sure how you play any fighting game with a female character.
I never said I took offense to such characters. Well, I usually don't, though sometimes they cross the line for me. But that's beside the point.

Have you ever seen female body builders? Without quite a bit of plastic surgery, or already having natural D cups or more, they won't have large looking boobs. And those boobs on Cammy definitely look like at least D-cup. Combine that with her overall body shape, and yes, they are ridiculously proportioned.

Shows how desensitized people have become to sexualized females in games, thinking that Cammy is not ridiculously proportioned...
Are you even aware of what D-cups are? Do you have half a clue how a bra is measured? In most official art, Cammy is a B, maybe a C.



And, really, have you ever looked at Street Fighter? Their male lead, who is supposed to be fairly normally sized, looks like this.



Cammy is one of the most reasonably proportioned characters, male or female, in that series.
 

Calibanbutcher

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Nov 29, 2009
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I got one:
The hero / heroine of Dark Souls.
Just fashion one to your liking.
You can even have eunuchs.
Hurray I win.
(And no cliched gender-roles, and you could even roleplay as a gay hero, if Solaire's innuendo is anything to go by.)
 

Aurora Firestorm

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So what are you looking for here? Is there some mythical Ideal Non-Controversial Woman? This concept as a whole is pretty irritating. Here is what I gleaned from the OP, with some of my interpretations thrown in.

She has to be pretty, because ugly is a statement on how pretty women are overdone, but not too pretty/sexy, because that's pandering. She has to be badass but not masculine, because masculine means the author is saying feminine is bad, but not overly feminine, because that's also pandering. So where in hell is this middle ground?

I'm going to ignore this and go for "awesome women who aren't there solely to be sexy or token females," since it's hard to nitpick to the middle of every axis of personality. Some of these have been done, but...

- Chie Satonaka: she fights in her school uniform, so you can't blame her for the skirt. She knows martial arts and can beat up the guys, but she is not so Ice Queen Badass that she can't chat about cute boys with her BFF Yukiko.
- Naoto Shirogane: her confusion about "men get the Better Treatment in my field, but I'm a woman" is genuine and not overplayed, and in the end, she's okay showing her more feminine side to people she trusts, while maintaining a strict neutral professionalism otherwise. I like.
- Samus, but you can argue that her gender is covered instead of simply made a neutral point.
- The Boss from MGS3. Badass enough to be the world's greatest soldier, female enough to birth and care for a baby, tough enough to shoot her lover for the sake of her country.
- EVA from MGS3. But her boobs are hanging out, you say? Ah, but that's the point! She *knows* what the stereotypes are, and she deliberately plays to them just to flip off all the people who are going "bleh, token boobsy female." In the end, she snows everyone because they're all too busy staring at her chest to notice her brain.
- People like Chell or FemShep can qualify, although they have been disqualified earlier in the thread due to being "author insert" shells.
- Tali from Mass Effect. She has a pretty female figure (suit curves WHOA) but wears the most clothes of just about any pretty female you'll ever see in a game, and she is reasonably proportioned. She plays support usually, but she also has a shotgun and has to deal with being part of a space-stranded species who are disparaged by everyone else in the galaxy. She holds her own, jumps into the crew of the most legendary starship known to man, and kicks lots of ass in the end. I'm tempted to count Liara for her stint as the Shadow Broker, but come on, all the Asari are there to be Sexy Blue Women. A female-only species who can mate with anything? Seriously now.


The problem with "oversexualized male" characters is that they tend to differ wildly in what "oversexualized" means. Some might consider hulking muscleheads with no shirt to be oversexualized, while I just think they're silly. Some might consider bishounen "girly-man" types to be oversexualized. For women, it's "tiny waist big boobs," but with men you get a range of pandering.

So...yeah, not sure what to answer for that.


Also, Dear Everyone: you *can* have muscles and boobs. What are you defining as muscles? Sure, bodybuilders scrape away every ounce of fat, but really, you can have a lot of *muscle* without being a *bodybuilder.* In fact, folks who can't store fat also can't usually gain much muscle. Have you seen women weightlifters? As distinguished from bodybuilders, women who just straight-up training lift are often larger people both in fat and muscle, which means they will also have bigger boobs. I will hazard a guess that because of this, most women who are not professional-no-fat folks, who have muscles, are also going to have at least an average size chest.
 

Phasmal

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RomanceIsDead said:
honestly? This is not going to happen. Samus was all we had and then she got stripped of her power in "The Other M".

I have not once seen a lead female character in a game that wasn't at least on the positive end of attractive. Because lets face it OP, you said it yourself. You want a female character that is still "pretty". You just like everyone else would not want to play as an ugly chick as your main character.

On to your second point...lot's of girls find Marcus Fenix to be catering to "female sexual fantasy" as you put it.
Wat.
No.
Maybe some women.
But `lots`?
You're over-reaching there.

As for the OT- Faith has been mentioned, she's cool.

Also for the second: Fenris from DAII, I would.
 

Patrick Buck

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Katie from GTA4? She's doesn't fall into the classic girl sexist steriotype. Bitta the irish one though.
And I honestly can't think of one for 2. Like, even at all. Prehaps I should play more games. This will be my excuse from now on,to play more. :p
 

Loonyyy

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#1. Yeah, they're rare, we get it.

#2. Whut. Not only is the range of men women find attractive variable, the range that gay men find attractive is variable, and there's not necessarily that much of an overlap.

For instance, most of the girls I know like the classicly handsome muscly types. I've no idea how representitive that is, but whatever.
I've got two gay friends, one of them likes effeminate skinny guys, the other likes "Boy next door"-ish types from what I gather.

So they need to be:
-Skinny
-Buff
-Manly handsome
-Boyish as opposed to manly
Yay! Just with my incredibly biased and singular sample set, all of the criteria for choosing our sexualised male are contradictory!

And we're meant to find someone who fits all of these criteria and use that as our basis for compari-

Yeah, I overthought this as much as the OP overspecified criteria.

Better Question:

#1.) Name a well written female character who has no exploitative sexualisation.


#2.) Name a male character (Well written or not for the sake of widening the sample), who is sexualised for the benefit of the audience, whoever they may be.

So for #1, I'd put Chell, or Alyx Vance.
#2, I don't think I've played it yet. I hear Dante from Dante's inferno does a bit of this, so maybe him.
 

dimensional

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Relish in Chaos said:
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.
That is both a pretty narrow set of criteria while at the same time being incredibly broad people could literally say anyone they wanted and be correct to them and wrong to somebody else.


[quote/]2. Find a sexualized male video game character that caters to both the male and female sexual fantasy.

[/quote]

Again im sure there is something for everyone but you know you could flip your questions and still get the same result

1.Find an enpowering male video game character thats somewhat handsome, yet not unrealistically and overpoweringly attractive, with no cliched characterization or negative implications of masculinity.

2. Find a sexualised Female video game character that caters to both the male and female sexual fantasy.

What someone may find unrealistic others may not (but really we are talking about games here unless its a sim I dont expect much realism in my games). Same with Sexualisation I mean just because a woman has large breasts in a game dosent mean I find her attractive (I might but whatever) take Lara Croft I always thought she was butt ugly but I guess I was in the minority. People are focusing purely on aesthetics and condemning that but thats a bit short sighted there are woman of all shapes in games and men of different shapes are they all cliches? maybe, but people get put into cliches in real life as well.

We shouldnt be judging sexualisation purely on appearances if the character is in game just to look pretty and flirt and bang someone and has zero personality beyond that I would think er WTF why? But if they look pretty and thats it I wouldnt call that extreme sexualisation I mean if the game dosent allow you to expand on characterisation aesthetics is a major determining factor in whether people connect with its characters and so pumping things up to the max making some crazy, some sexy, some hideous etc as much as the spirit of the game will allow is the way to go.

I would wonder though who would attract the most ire from gamers If one female in a game had an hourglass figure and wears stupid clothes and another who is normal looking (whatever that is beyond 2 ears eyes legs hands etc) and dressed in jeans and ordinary top but throughout the game the second one flirts constantly, sleeps around, backstabs you constantly and generally makes advances on you at every opportunity while the other one is just a competent quiet girl whos strong, kind and considerate who always acts with decorum and dignity.

Anyway for your Questions ill play along for fun (after all that)

Isara Gunther from Valkyria Chronicles for the first

and Siegfried from Soul Blade/Calibur series for the second maybe im unsure on anyones sexual fantasies except my own I have yet to find a man sexually attractive but I would say Siegfried is handsome.
 

Relish in Chaos

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RomanceIsDead said:
Because lets face it OP, you said it yourself. You want a female character that is still "pretty". You just like everyone else would not want to play as an ugly chick as your main character.
No, I didn't. I just issued a challenge that entailed finding a female video game character that was somewhat pretty, yet that wasn't her defining personality trait. I wouldn't mind playing a ugly woman as a main character, as long as her characterization was good and, most importantly, the game itself was good.
 

sanquin

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jamesworkshop said:
How do you know she hasn't had surgery

in fact you already identify that at least some female body builders do get implants (otherwise you would have no visual reference point)
The discrepancy could even be a driving force to get breast implants due to having less of the normally defined feminine features.

Lets not forget that objectively these are pixels or polygons not real flesh and blood people, but designs in an environment where nothing exists unless defined, in a virtual or abstract way these are objects.
The point was about being 'ridiculously proportioned' compared to real life though.

And sure you can think about all the what if's and other such speculation, but unless it's written into her bio that she had breast implants, did body building, and has a very unnaturally slim waist because she was born that way, I won't think that's the case.
 

TehCookie

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Sep 16, 2008
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No one posted this beautiful lady yet?

Amaterasu from Okami, I find her to be adorable.

The taste is a lot harder since attractive men vary a lot. Dante and Leon are great since they're in between muscular and bishounen. I'd also say Snake from Metal Gear and Brotag from P4. Also that one dude from Dragon Age that I can't remember right now. Besides I'm pretty sure you'll find guys that like bishounens.
 
Feb 22, 2009
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I'm gonna go with Jade from Beyond Good and Evil too. Also April from TLJ, which someone has also said. Cos I have no original ideas. Those are both great female characters whose femininity plays essentially no role in their greatness. Also Commander Shepard, if you play her as a female (and why wouldn't you? Jennifer Hale > Mark Meer). Not sure if that counts though since the gender's obviously going to have no importance if you're allowed to choose it yourself.

For the second question I think I'll go with some more Bioware characters; I'm a straight guy so I don't exactly know, but I expect if I was gay characters like Kaidan and Alistair (Mass Effect and Dragon Age respectively) would fit that description. They're both obviously in good physical condition since they're soldiers, but they also have sensitivity and in Alistair's case, a lot of humour. So I guess they'd generally fit that description.
 

Twilight_guy

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Nov 24, 2008
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1. Alyx Vance (Yeah its not original but its a good example)

2. Chris Redfield
Guy is built like a fridge. Men want to have a studly body like him and women want to have sex with his studly body. (I have no idea what his character is like but I know what his art style and design says to the audience).

Actually it'd be far easier to find a female character that caters to both sexes then it is to find a male. I've heard that men tend to fantasy about having sex with women while women tend to fantasy about being an attractive woman. (I obviously have no way to verify this without finding studies but its what I heard from a reliable source).
 

Lt._nefarious

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1) Heather Mason from SH 3. Empowered possibly isn't the right word as everyone involved in Silent Hill is made the towns ***** but in terms of she wears proper clothes, is reasonably proportioned, charismatic (kinda) and has what can only be described as a "biblical abortion"... Oh and most others die apart from her and she stabs god in the face...

2) Dante from DMC? Or possibly Nathan Drake because all I know is if I were a straight chick I'd tap 'dat, or maybe even Batman since he's, y'know, Batman...
 

Lugbzurg

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OlasDAlmighty said:
RaginDrage said:
I think Chell from the Portal series fits fairly well for the first category.
She doesn't speak though, but actions speak louder than words right?

Nothing about her appearance feels like it's pandering to the oversexualized crowd of characters shamelessly added to follow the Smurfette Principle and "give something the guys to look at". If anything, she looks fairly normal and sports a pretty descent wardrobe that at least covers %80 of her body.
Chell is a shell. She's just a blank slate like Gordon Freeman that we can choose to project any characterization that we choose onto. She doesn't talk and her actions are controlled by us, not herself. Her wardrobe is just an orange jumpsuit that she has to wear involuntarily as a test subject.

If I had to go with someone I'd choose Alyx Vance.
She's a strong female character who wears sensible clothes and has a rich complex personality which makes her extremely likable not just as a woman but as a person. She's clearly attractive but the Half-Life games never try to push any level of sex appeal onto her. Strong and independent, optimistic and intelligent She and Gordon Freeman have a strong but entirely platonic friendship. She seems like an obvious choice for #1.

As for #2. I have no idea what a woman/gay man would sexually fantasize about. If I'd have to guess I'd say this...


I'm a strait male, and even I can't help fantasizing about this beautiful 8 foot tall golden man.
Starting to feel some seething rage, right now... Do not kid yourself. Alyx Vance is far from a "strong female character". She's not much better off than the stereotypes. She's missing a lot of character in herself and purely exists to make the player feel good about themselves. Doesn't that sound awfully familiar? You really need to see this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-3gcVICiCs

Anyway... Appropriately-fitting this criteria here, I can definitely say "Samus Aran". Particularity, the way she came off in Metroid Prime. Might've been on several other people's minds, but it certainly needs to be said. She looks nice, is very capable of taking care of herself (no kidding), isn't one to compromise, sticks to her guns, and is rather modest.