Treblaine said:
CrystalShadow said:
I'm saying that the in context reason for a female warrior wearing what amounts to a bikini under her armour is vastly different to the most likely reason the developers of Super Metroid chose to have an ending where she is posing in her underwear.
There's little narrative reason for such a character to be depicted in that way, which raises the question of why such a scene exists. it's structured as a 'reward', and that feels a little off, regardless of whether I think there's anything wrong with sex or not.
It's tacked on, and out of step with the rest of the game. And that does disturb me somewhat.
But to get to why I refer to it that way, I meant innocent as opposed to deliberate.
That is, even though it's possible to find a rational in-context reason for depicting Samus in underwear/bikini, it looks as though it was done for the sole reason of it being 'sexy'.
It's like depicting a scene of someone getting out of the shower - Of course any normal person would be naked while taking a shower, but if you show this in a film, are you doing so because it makes sense for someone to be naked in such a situation, or because people might be aroused by it?
That's what I'm getting at here.
Look it's fan-service. I'm mature and secure enough not to start going on about how "it's a little off" having the blatant fanservice in Twilight series.
Just don't start acting like heterosexual attraction is something sinful or defiling of innocence. That doesn't make sense to mean "innocent as opposed to deliberate."
And yeah, for straight women and gay men, it's not much of a reward, but it's not like it's any punishment. But it's not exactly a significant reward for the straight male or lesbian player either, otherwise google-image search would be worth more than all the gold in Fort Knox. It's just a little something, it's not like it's persistent throughout the game.
You don't seem to get "fan-service" it's not supposed to trick the player. It's also a throwback to the original Metroid by how they revealed you'd been playing a woman all along, with such limited pixels and memory of 8-bit graphics and cartridge they of course decided to show her in a bikini.
And the suit would have to come off occasionally for narrative reasons... to remind that she's a woman, you can't even tell that walking metal thing isn't an alien or a robot. I'd really like a story about a humanoid robot, but if you're going to have a human, putting them in a metallic suit always... it's little different than if you had a robot.
And yeah, shower scenes are usually fan-service, except I think the shower scene in Apollo 13 where she loses her wedding ring down the sink hole, symbolism there for fear of losing her husband.
Well, it is what it is. It means little in the end, but that doesn't stop it feeling out of place to me.
And if you really want to get technical about it, you're reading far too much into a minor comment.
Interpreting this to mean something far beyond what I actually intended by it.
Maybe you'd understand it a little better if I had phrased it differently, but that would've required a much lengthier explanation that the handful of words I used originally.
Basically, it was intended to signify something along these lines:
Showing Samus in a bikini has a secondary purpose that exists entirely outside of the narrative of the story, but reasons could be devised for why it might make sense within the narrative.
However, the actual real-world reasons for why this scene exists are probably based almost entirely around this secondary purpose (eg. "Fan Service"), and is unlikely to have any real other reason aside from this secondary purpose.
Ultimately, I meant 'innocent' in terms of it being something whose intent was something that made sense in context, rather than something which required a concept of what the developer and/or audience for the game were expecting.
But of course these things are always a matter of interpretation, and that can lead to problems of it's own.
Consider for instance that somewhere in my photo albums I have pictures of myself as a young child, running around naked. - Which is something young children do a lot, funnily enough.
There is nothing in these pictures existing besides the obvious point that parents like to take pictures of their children, but if you start second-guessing the intent, you could also reach the conclusion that whoever took these pictures is some kind of pervert that likes seeing small children naked.
That would be completely wrong, but therein lies the problem of having to consider the intent of the creator when looking at things like this.
If I saw a woman in a bikini in reality, I could still be guessing at why she chose to wear it, but I'd know me seeing it is entirely down to my own intent, and some degree of random chance.
If I see this in a film or game, then the creators of whatever I'm playing or watching become a factor as well, and thus it's less clear why I'm expected to see this. Does it have some significance to gameplay/plot/etc? Or is it really only there because the creators thought the audience might like it in and of itself?
Anyway, fan service in and of itself isn't that big a deal. (Though I've seen my fair share of it that's either just plain creepy, or sometimes just plain rediculous.)
But despite it not being a big deal as such, it can still detract from whatever it's been tacked on to, by virtue of having been done in a careless manner.
Just like sticking a joke in the middle of an otherwise very serious drama can feel completely out of place, putting fan service or the like somewhere where it wasn't expected can really detract from something, rather than add to it.
Though at the end of the day the situation with Super Metroid doesn't amount to much to worry about, except that it feels kind of unnecessary.
Well, whatever. Thanks for making a mountain out of a molehill for me. ;p
