Caelbain said:
I have to say, well done! I am genuinly impressed, you have indeed found a female protagonist who is clearly human (although cartoony) and not conventionally pretty, the cookie is yours! *Hands over* The fact that she's interchangeable with a whole bunch of other characters is kind of diminishing, but a victory none the less!
Considering Jim's Dinosaur example was also a character out of several and wasn't even humanoid I don't think it diminishing.
The cartoony bit is because this is a hand drawn picture of the character. Though I'd say all the characters are cartoony in the game even when rendered.
I also stated all three girls from Thomas was alone. But they're interchangeable as well.
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18lutqbl90oxujpg/original.jpg
Blue, purple, and pink are all playable female characters and ABSOLUTELY vital to beating the game. Look at the curves on that purple one... Except for the yellow one, the male characters are often ineffective. Do you think that's a desireable avatar to play as? It could be.
And about the musclebound thing: that is another gender issue, isn't it? Men are actually allowed to be "pretty" in different ways. A man can be a giant, scarred, gruffy guy and still be a-ok, or he can be skinny with feminine features and that's still good, but women only get one bodytype and that's it: slim, tits and ass, smooth skin. (Alright, sometimes it's also ok for them to be sexualized 6-year-old looking girls in Korea, but let's not go there)
This is a social view. Even in societies where overweight individuals are desireable, symmetry associated with beauty in females was still preferable. So we could even be talking a biologically imprinted preference here. I mean, darned if my wife doesn't get all hot and bothered when I flex my shoulder muscles. Herculean, I tell you. Haha.
Even to this day, a strong husband means provision and problem solving. A dangerous/tough man means protection. A dark and mysterious man means a terrible breakup and crying with Ben and Jerry's (as far as I can tell).
As for women? We simply don't see them as our providers or protectors. When a man can sit on his ass and be twice as strong as the average woman just because testosterone exists in his system, that's what you get biologically. A huge physical power disparity. A woman has to double her strength just to get up to the average male strength level. And don't forget, as you bulk you begin to lose some of the natural advantages the female body has like agility/flexibility.
And of course we still have the issue that they're very rarely allowed to be villain protagonists.
Few people feel good knocking a girl around or killing them. Villain or not. It isn't even just the social statement that a man shouldn't hit a woman but it's also a percieved power difference. Women are much weaker than men on average (40-50% upper body difference, 20-30% lower body on average). Even though women are absolutely capable of being villains, it doesn't feel like a fair fight, nor should it, even though there absolutely are women out there who could kick any untrained man's ass, barring a lucky shot. But even in sports like the UFC, a transgendered woman (born physically a man) just took the title because HRT can't undo all the benefits that growing up with testosterone provides. Stronger/denser bones, more aligned pelvic angle that allows for better weight distribution and movement, larger organs such as the heart and lungs that provide better circulation, and even a larger frame which translates into larger average reaches. All HRTs do is impact muscle growth (negatively) and fat distribution.
I would love for a genuinly tough woman, who even looks that way, to take the stage.
What do you mean by tough looking? Like the female knight from Game of Thrones or some such thing? It's basically making a girl that looks and acts like a man. Do you mean acts tough? Because we have plenty of those examples. Perhaps scarred and ugly? Why? Is that in demand?
I am saddened that absolutely noone in the AAA industry seems ready to risk anything with unusual characters concerning gender roles. Give us a whimpey man, who gets forced into getting tough, like it's usually done with the women! Give us a tough-looking badass without a dick nor implants! Heck, if you want a real easy one: give us a couple where the woman is genuinly a tougher fighter than her man, the movies had that figured out decades ago!
Movies don't generally cast ugly women either. The woman still looks 135 lbs or less and is somehow knocking 275 lb men through walls.
The question is whether or not there's a demand for such characters. Avatars are generally characters expressing something we want to play as. The Cave got around that by distinguishing between you and the characters you control. Neither males nor females particularly want to play as characters that do not suit their opinions of what they want to look like in some way. Even in games like Heavy Rain, the ugly characters are just one character you play during the game or display strength in the story in a way that makes you feel like they're tough despite looks and asthma.
It isn't taking a "risk" just to do something people don't want. Sometimes that's just doing something nobody asked for. I think for how unpopular these characters are we actually have a decent number of them.
