Poll: Bayonetta 2: "Sexy" done right

[Erttheking]

Snip

I hope that you get to see the irony in that picture. Because that comic calling out a strawman argument is, in of itself, a strawman. Really any fictional argument that ends with the other side stuttering or throwing a temper tantrum after their point has flawlessly been defeated. just make me roll my eyes.

...No one said that there was. I don't know why objective has been brought up so much as of late by gamers. We just keep railing on and on and on about it with people saying "X isn't objective" or "y isn't objective" and every time I just want to shout "Was there ever any doubt!?" Male power fantasy and female sex fantasy can go hand in hand, but you don't see that many female power fantasy and male sex fantasy go hand in hand. The JoJo's are drop dead sexy and pose all the time, yet they are also built like brick shit houses and kick ass all the time. I'd like to see more female characters who are drop dead sexy and kick twelve different kinds of ass...I'd like to see more characters like Bayonetta and less Jessica Sherawat from Resident Evil. Less "Fuck me" and more "I'm gonna fuck YOU"

To be honest you don't see that many characters like the JoJo's too. Plenty of male characters are muscle bound but not all of them are sexy. Kratos is muscular and bare chested, but he's scarred, brutal, uncharismatic and he's covered in the ashes of his dead family. Kind of a dead off. Just about all the characters of Gears of War are huge and muscular, so much so that they look like giant slabs of meat that have grown legs. Scarred and ugly too. I feel that characters like Dante fall into female sex fantasy better than them.

Conclusion? More Jojo's and Bayonetta's please. More people that are sexualized and own their sexuality.

 

[Erttheking]

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I never said that Jojo didn't always do them. I said I had seen posses outside of Jojo that weren't as sexualized as the ones in JoJo I know they always did them in JoJo (Though oddly enough I don't remember any posses in the anime of part 1, just the promotional material)

 

[grassgremlin]

An important thing to recognise about Bayonetta is that the presentation of her sexuality is not incidental.

Not just to the presentation of her as a character, but to the moment to moment gameplay. To understand this you have to understand the genre of games Bayonetta is part of, spectacle fighters. A major part of spectacle fighter gameplay is that there are "flair moments", moments where there's a brief rest in the tempo of a fight whilst the character does a particularly flashy thing. Whether it's the over the top Obliteration Techniques of Ninja Gaiden 2, the fem-dom Torture Attacks and dodges into witch time in Bayonetta, Kratos' brutally demolishing a poor schmuck, whatever. They're moments in the game where the player gets to release a bit of tension not just because there's something cathartic happening on screen but because they are, in the good ones, temporarily invincible whilst it is happening (see: Space Marine, the execution moves did not render you invulnerable).

So, the sexualisation of Bayonetta is not subtractable from the presentation of the game as a whole without replacing it with something else.

This is an important reason why people are saying it is "done right", because it feels like a necessary component of the character and of the game as a whole, whereas in many other examples the sexualisation just feels so incidental, they're not doing anything in the game except being sexualisation, and if the game doesn't have the balls to go all out porn* they just end up being a bit tacky.

This is what grassgremlin is talking about with Ivy, not only is her sexualisation incidental to her character, it's actually contrary to what the narrative of her character purports to be, it's almost the ultimate in "doin it rong" when it comes to presenting a realistic and consistent character. (Plus by Soul Calibur 5 she's about 50 and should be tripping over those things)

*Srsly, I have played actual porn games which have less blatant fanservice during most of their content than many non-porn games. Seriously, if you told people one of these [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JodKGxAni8U] two [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuCdI8w_N3c] games was pornographic and asked them to guess which, unless they knew the games they'd probably guess wrong.

I couldn't it say it better myself.
Is Bayonetta above criticism? No.
But to say she represents something wrong in sexualization is debateable.

The reason she has what people call "agency" with her sexuality is the fact that she represents this outside of her character design. She's not simply drawn to be a hot piece of tail for the artist's fetishistic appeal, though verdict is out due to the fact she's designed by a female . . . but, she's drawn like a piece of tail for fetistic appeal AND she knows she's a hot piece of tail.

Compare and contrast this with not just Ivy but the majority of the ladies of dead or alive. They're design contradicts both characterization and their actions. Most of this time, especially with characters like Kasumi, they act as if they don't want to be dressed this way.

Ivy is suppose to be chaste. An alchemist and noble who's bio indicates she's Asexual. And yet, she's dressed like a dominatrix . . . this doesn't make sense. If Ivy reflected this in her personality, goals and ideals, then she could be taken a bit more seriously, but because she's chaste while fighting people with overt sexual moves, you're faced with the idea, from a famous quote from Roger Rabbit: "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn this way."

In some cases, it's a bit creepy when you think about it. The character is dressed in a manner the artist desired without consent. If Bayo is the kind of woman who chooses to dress provocatively, Ivy was forced by her handlers into ridiculous clothing for there perverted amusement.

Of course, all this falls apart because they're both video game characters and not real. Argue that all you want, but I'm referring to a real world implication. If they were real women.=, though . . .

 

[michael87cn]

I think this is hypocritical. It's a really fun game so people defend it. Sexualization is sexualization... even though sexualization isn't a word. It is what it is. "Yeah you can her butt and boobs and stuff but she's really strong and has a cool personality! It's okay to look at her naughty bits! ^_^"

Okay. Hypocritical imo... Personally I have no problem with sexy characters cuz I don't attribute media to real life. It doesn't affect me and shouldn't affect you. I don't play bloody games and gain a desire to cause harm to people and likewise I don't get brainwashed by sexy characters into thinking that's what women really should look like. Fantasy does not equal reality. That's normal. We don't have to normalize our fantasies just because they make some people uncomfortable. Boo hoo, they'll survive.

 

[Erttheking]

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And yet it was still involved. If it gets in the way and is kind of the overall point trying to be made, it defeats your overall purpose.

Glad me pointing out the bullshit antics in political leaning comments make you laugh for some reason.

Not really. You can outline them and define the aspects of what make them up. Male power fantasies don't really work if it's a sexy guy in a speedo posing at the camera and doing nothing of value.

That's not an argument.

And some people think that being morbidly obese is attractive. Is Honda from Street Fighter a female sex fantasy? This "it's all subjective thing" you keep bringing up is completely ignoring cultural context, the tone of the story, and the characters role in it.

Do they also like the scarred and ugly thing? Because that was part of my point. What about coated in the ashes of their dead family?

To throw that right back in your face, remember when you put up that comic with Giorno Giovanna? He just fell into YOUR line of what is cool. Plenty of men out there wouldn't want to wear a skin tight outfit that shows off their chest. Plenty of people would think it looks stupid

Please point out where I claimed to represent either gender? And you're didn't make an argument, you just said "That's just your opinion" over and over again. You're ignoring context and the way people treat characters. The logical conclusion of that would be claiming that you can't prove Bayonetta is sexy because that's just your opinion of what sexy is. We're allowed to make logical conclusions on what is and isn't treated as sexy based off of the knowledge of the culture that we're in. And in American culture, big breasts, long legs long flowing hair and a tight ass are all considered sexy. Being muscular with tell toned features is also sexy. Tantalizingly showing off body parts is also sexy. Being fat and scarred isn't.

Your argument proves nothing Really it's just a argument that doesn't make a point, it just brings the discussion to a grinding halt.

 

[Erttheking]

*cut*

Wait, you didn't mean Jacob as in Mass Effect, you meant Jacob as in TWILIGHT??? What does it have to do with anything? That would be like me saying that videogames are sexist because if I watch a porn movie, there are naked sexy women in it.

Well yes that's the point you can apply the same arbitrary standards to other artistic genres and show just how stupid it is.

So tell me again how Jacob in Twilight isn't sexualised to appeal to women again ?

You can generally tell if a male character is sexualized or not by the way they act. Kratos?

Spoiler

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/kratos5.jpg

Eh...no. The Pillar Men?

Spoiler

http://38.media.tumblr.com/57565e3ae9144dc0eefa44210bc5e257/tumblr_nbig47BgAm1s755fuo1_500.png

Much more so. Just the way that dress and hold themselves screams "Fuck me"

so no-one finds power sexy ?
[if I could find it there would be a clip of Cleveland Brown explaining why he finds Margaret Thatcher to be sexy here]

This is something people seem to mixing up a lot. There's a difference between someone who you find to be sexy and who was designed to be sexy.

 

[Callate]

I'm glad she likes it, but that's kind of beside the point. It isn't up to anyone else to dictate what someone finds sexy. You can shame them for it, if you're a sanctimonious and terrible person, but repression is an infamously poor way of actually changing the way people feel.

Is having a dissenting opinion and not being happy with the way things are in media really shaming and repressing?

That kind of depends on how the opinion is phrased and the intent of the person expressing it, doesn't it? Simply having it and not being happy with the state of things? No, of course not.

 

[grassgremlin]

And hey, I didn't say all that lol. Araki just likes poses. They weren't really intended to be sexy or anything. I guess you can think they are sexy, but that wasn't the intention. Araki had stated that he found Jojo posses " blur the line of fantasy and reality".

. . .

Spoiler: You're joking right?

 

[SUPA FRANKY]

And hey, I didn't say all that lol. Araki just likes poses. They weren't really intended to be sexy or anything. I guess you can think they are sexy, but that wasn't the intention. Araki had stated that he found Jojo posses " blur the line of fantasy and reality".

. . .

Spoiler: You're joking right?

Q: Do you realize the boom of JoJo ?
A: I first realized it through JoJo?s Pose. ?Amazing. This is modern art,? I felt so. I want to draw more fantasy-inspired art because I pursue the reality in the story. JoJo?s Pose is the way to achieve a perfect balance between reality and fantasy.

 

[SUPA FRANKY]

Snip

I never said that Jojo didn't always do them. I said I had seen posses outside of Jojo that weren't as sexualized as the ones in JoJo I know they always did them in JoJo (Though oddly enough I don't remember any posses in the anime of part 1, just the promotional material)

When I think Jojo, I never really thought sexual.

I always got the feeling of flair, mysterious, otherworldly.

Like the Pillar Men being thousands of years old and leaking with lore and understanding of the world or Stands being ghostly Ripple manifestations.

But different strokes for different folks.

 

[grassgremlin]

And hey, I didn't say all that lol. Araki just likes poses. They weren't really intended to be sexy or anything. I guess you can think they are sexy, but that wasn't the intention. Araki had stated that he found Jojo posses " blur the line of fantasy and reality".

. . .

Spoiler: You're joking right?

Q: Do you realize the boom of JoJo ?
A: I first realized it through JoJo?s Pose. ?Amazing. This is modern art,? I felt so. I want to draw more fantasy-inspired art because I pursue the reality in the story. JoJo?s Pose is the way to achieve a perfect balance between reality and fantasy.

That fantasy is pretty damn sexy.
Last I checked, that quote doesn't say whether or not he meant for the characters to be sexy.

 

[SUPA FRANKY]

And hey, I didn't say all that lol. Araki just likes poses. They weren't really intended to be sexy or anything. I guess you can think they are sexy, but that wasn't the intention. Araki had stated that he found Jojo posses " blur the line of fantasy and reality".

. . .

Spoiler: You're joking right?

Q: Do you realize the boom of JoJo ?
A: I first realized it through JoJo?s Pose. ?Amazing. This is modern art,? I felt so. I want to draw more fantasy-inspired art because I pursue the reality in the story. JoJo?s Pose is the way to achieve a perfect balance between reality and fantasy.

That fantasy is pretty damn sexy.
Last I checked, that quote doesn't say whether or not he meant for the characters to be sexy.

I can't find anywhere that he intended them to be sexy either. ( Doesn't mean you can't be attracted to them. If I recall, he even said Dio was Bisexual.)

 

[Erttheking]

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Formatting them that way is a pain in the ass, I don't bother.

I will when it makes your point reek of hypocrisy less.

Uh-huh. You gonna kill me last too?

We're talking about power fantasies, not sex fantasies. Yes being admired for your sexy body can be a sex fantasy and some people can enjoy it. It tends to not be a power fantasy though if you do nothing else put pose. And if the character has no agency at all, it's not really a male sex fantasy, it's a character designed to pander to a female audience and it's just a female sex fantasy. And by agency I mean the person actually being a character with a personality who acts in a way that fits with his three dimensional personality and not just in a poorly written way to meet the needs of the plot.

Not it isn't. Dismissing an entire point that I made by saying "That's just your opinion" isn't an argument, especially when you don't seem to have any problems offering up your opinion and expecting me to take it seriously.

Honda is a sex fantasy? A fat sumo wrestler? I'm using context and tone of the story and culture? You know what? Yes I am, because you know what matters? intent You can tell when you're reading a story if a character was meant to be sexy or not by the way they act, hold themselves and behave, especially if it contradicts the tone of the story. When Jessica Sherawat from Resident Evil says "Me and my sweet ass are on the way" and wears a stupid impractical wet suit in a world where plenty of people seem to get by in practical combat gear and you're supposed to take the story seriously, I'm pretty sure she's sexualized, and in a bad way. Likewise, you can tell that Bayonetta is sexualized because if she wasn't, the camera wouldn't give us a close up of her va-jay-jay with a blinding light come out of it while she's writing and making very suggestive noises. And the thing that baffles me is that you're treating me taking context of story and culture into consideration like it's a BAD thing. Things don't exist in vacuums! Culture affects the way people think and the tone of a story shows what it thinks of characters and whether they're sexualized, for better or for worst. There are indeed a wide variety of sexual interests out there, but they tend to not be pandered to in mainstreadm media because they're a niche audience at best. If Honda was supposed to be a sexy character you'd be able to spot it a mile away by the way he acts in story and the way people act around him in accordance to the tone. That's what I'm talking about

No, I haven't.

So either you're saying God of War was aimed at satanists of that Kratos wasn't designed to be sexually appealing.

No, the purpose of that was to point out the flaws in your argument, which you can see better when it's turned back against you. I can't help but notice that you ignored the point that argument made when it was directed at you.

So if I talk about male or female fantasies I'm claiming to be a representative for the entire gender? Is that how it works?

As I said above. It doesn't matter if a random person finds a character sexy or not sexy, that's my business. I'm talking about the mindset going into making games and how they're trying to make characters sexy or not. I don't think Bayonetta is sexy at all and I still think she's sexualized. Maybe I'm not making it clear, but sexualized isn't the same as finding someone sexy. It's when a main selling point of characteristic of the character is their physical appeal, not when they just so happen to look good and it's just kinda there. I feel like we're talking about two different things here.

 

[TrevHead]

There is no right way of doing sexy, just like Twilight isn't sexy done wrong. That said Bayonetta is a good character because rather than using T&A in a one dimensional way Platinum have used sex as a way to flesh her out and make an interesting protagonist.

I haven't played Bayo 2 yet (I have the game just not the console to play it on atm) but from my observations the sequel has more crotch shots than the original ever had. I think all this is Nintendo's doing to course a stir and sell more copies.

That's the funny thing about this sexism ho-har, that feminist's getting offended over T&A has made publishers and devs put more T&A in their games to get media attention, look at Dragon's Crown, a boxed 2D beat em up would have normally gotten as much attention as a bullet hell shmup, but because the feminist coursed a shit storm everyone knew about it.

I'm a big believer in market forces changing to meet demand, more women gamers will eventually mean more women in video games and if it doesn't it just means ppl are more bothered about being offended than actually playing games. Just like it's common to see gamers bitching on the net about there being no games of a certain type, but when a game does come along they don't buy it at launch if at all, or in the case of Bayonetta 2 look a gift horse in the mouth and ***** some more.

Grass is greener where you water it and all that.

I really don't like these sort of pictures, it's so dishonest since women don't find that sexy, if they did you would be your arse there would be men cross dressing like that both on the street and in media.

I mean it's not like we've had this kind of controversy turn up before or anything about people in certain stances being too sexualising

Good post you reminded me the YT vids Cheshire Cat Studios put's out on the matter
Tbh I'd rather play as a "sexy" male wearing women's underwear than yet another angry bald muscle man or white thirty something with brown hair (even though I'm the same) atleast a guy in drag would be interesting. That's why I generally prefer games to have a woman protagonist since they tend to have fleshed out personalities and say interesting things.

 

[the spaciest]

Who's to say what "sexy done right" even is? To me the notion of sexy is difficult to define, fleeting and subtle. To others it's double anal fisting all showered in piss and arse biscuits. Whatever, I am however, certain that nothing can be sexy when it has to conform to some kind of braying, majority consensus. But then that's the internet; dehumanised conformity at any cost.

 

[Uriel_Hayabusa]

Way I see it, there's nothing inherently ''empowering'' about Bayonetta. Which isn't to say that others can't think of her as such, but I just don't see it. If Bayonetta counts as a symbol of female empowerment, you might as well consider Juliette Sterling (Lollipop Chainsaw), Solange (Code of Princess) or any of the women from the Dead or Alive games to be ''symbols of female empowerment'', the only thing setting Bayonetta apart from any of those characters is that the former's much more in-your-face about it.

And I don't consider the ''She has agency'' argument valid either. For me ''She's a fictional character'' should be all that's needed to debunk that.

Seriously though:

Bayonetta Pole Dance[/youtube]

I admit I'm no expert on feminism, but I doubt THIS is what the suffragettes were shooting for when they started doing their thing.

 

[Evonisia]

I agree for the most part with that developer in the article. However, from what I've played so far into Bayonetta 2 (loving it so far by the way), they've forced the gender to become a "thing". I mean, the camp nature of the game makes the dialogue and the even more extreme sexualisation of the character a wonderful sight to behold, but there are frequent lines of dialogue like "You need to know how to talk to a Lady", "Do I look like a ma'am to you?" and so on. I feel like the developers are putting that in because they know they can, not because it's appropriate dialogue for the situation. Luka even gets called a pervert which I think is just bizarre given that nobody cared in the first game that he was following her around.