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crankyoldmanI'm gonna link to character art that most of you have seen, because I have some people on the f-list who haven't, not because I think you are dumb.
So, my job at work often involves me doing grantwork, as in, typing shit up. I talk with production and work with them, yes, but I am primarily a "come up with ideas" and "omg does this even make sense with SCIENCE?" and "shit can you do the lit review for this?" type of person. And it's a lot of fun most days, but some days I am idling (like yesterday). But the good thing about working in EDUCATIONAL gaming is that not only are we supposed to looking at stereotypes, but we're supposed to avoid them. And it's not easy!
Being a female in engineering, I was in charge of most of the review for "how do we get girls to play this?" And while some of the research has me rolling my eyes, I try to keep an open mind and remember that I am about as close to normal girl as well, I'm not. XD And even I don't get how it just doesn't click for some girls. Outside of fandom, I hung in mostly dude circles! So I have to get the dudebro out of my brain sometimes.
But we still have mistakes! And thankfully the office is pretty even with men and women (we are, it's kind of shocking for a tech company, and one of our programmers is of the chick variety) so they don't happen for long. And we had a slight problem with the sexy.
See, we had to do a poster advertising the NASA part of the platform, and we wanted a girl on it. Well, the graphics dudes pick a well, sexy model. Sure, she was wearing a spacesuit, but the way she was standing, the expression on her face, the complete impossibility of her perfectly symmetrical features... it did not send out the right message.
Now, I've nothing against the sexy in games. Fran from FFXII's design does in fact give me a nosebleed. But I'm also totally into chicks in a homosexy way. Femme chicks. Like, Lulu from FFX, Tifa from FFVII, and Quistis from FFVIII? Totally do it for me. But Paine from FFX-2? Not so much. And she's only lightly butch. The real butches out there would probably kick her ass. And scare me, I fully admit that. So heterosexy male aim? Works on me, for the most part (unreal boob dynamics is where I am less interested. boobs are not spheres, they are teardrops at best. that is against the laws of gravity. that is not sexy, that wtf).
Anyway, so the womenfolk in the office all responded pretty negatively. And the graphics dudes were all scratching their heads going "what would work?" My suggestion? Kara Thrace, aka Starbuck. Good example of balancing the ned for pretty (let's face it, we still want a LITTLE commercialism, and she IS pretty) but balancing it with neutrality. Look at how she's standing in that picture. That is a pose that says, "why yes, I am going to do this shit" instead of "hey boy wanna have sexytimes?". Body language matters!
It got fixed, and de-sexyed, but it got me thinking. And then![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
celelorial linked a post about D&D playbook covers. And I thought back to the sexy and the poster issue.
In an educational game, the sexy really shouldn't exist, unless it IS an educational point (and believe me, there is a part of me that really wants to design a module about that, I just don't know HOW yet). But it is very prevalent in commercial games, as we all know. I think to some extent we are desensitized to it. There are cases where something that makes sense also happens to be sexy (like, I personally found Tifa's outfit in the original game made a lot of sense for both her figure AND her job class. if she were a dude, she'd be shirtless, like Sabin in FFVI. Sure, she had bare midriff, but she was not cleavage-tastic, and yeah, she wore a miniskirt, but she had HIPS and as my lady always says, those chafe when you are endowed there!) And I thinkdarenciel you had some talk about The Sexy and games, so I hope I'm not just repeating myself.
And I've never thought of the issue as being that sexy chicks exist, or they sometimes wear kinky things, or all that. It's that in most media? Most of the time only the chicks have the sexy. THAT is my issue.
This lovely article on WoW classes and costumes and this amazing genderswap of a typical comic drawing book really illustrate this.
Why the straight male heterosexy? I think that a lot of Japanese games play with this a little more (like this drawing of FFVI's Edgar basically says, "hey ladies, wanna see my sword?" and there is something kind of kinky to Vincent Valentine from FFVII and those are just the ones off the top of my head) than Western ones for the most part (Ah Gears of War, there's a face only a mother could love). But even with the existence of pretty guys in games, they are rarely posed for maximum sexy (unless it's Castlevania, which has characters drawn mostly by a woman).
You can see it quickly defended in the comments of the D&D article that "but there are some dudes sitting around with their crotches thrust out INSIDE the books, that's female fanservice!". This prompted my "hey those attracted to the mens, do you look STRAIGHT at the crotch of an attractive male?" because well, I am not attracted to the mens (except David Bowie because he's David fucking Bowie) so I had to make sure. I had one "sometimes" (from a dude!) and mostly "ah, no". Hate to break it to you dudes! Women are not always thinking about your wang! I'm pretty sure that even most gay men are not thinking about your wang that much! Homosexy and female heterosexy fanservice is so much less manly man oriented than a lot of guys want to believe. Early hearthrobs? Rudolph Valentino, Rock Hudson (who also turned out to be gay... guys, the gay can help sometimes), and James Dean (who I admit is one of my style icons). And I'm not even going into Carey Grant. XD These are not the biggest baddest dudes (not even Rock, hell, Rock's body language alone).
Are we really that afraid of even a hint of male "gay" (because let's be frank, a little femme on a dude does not make them automatically gay)? It strikes me as a bad business model. I mean, seriously dudes, have you ever seen fanfiction? And no, this does not speak for all heterosexy girls and homosexy guys. But it works for a good number of them. Add a hint of homoeroticism to just about any manly thing and suddenly you have a female fandom (original Star Trek! yeah, Kirk was banging all those chicks but he spent much more time arguing/talking/emoting at Spock...).
You're never going to get rid of objectification, but why not open up objectification to more groups? More people = more money = profit! Why us educational gaming people try so hard to appeal to a larger number is because we want larger numbers!
So basically the point of all this is that even in the happy place where I am, where we try to think of equality and minorities and including everyone, we still have moments were we default back to Dudebro 101. And that's silly! Plus lots of other people talk about this way better than I do. The end!
So, my job at work often involves me doing grantwork, as in, typing shit up. I talk with production and work with them, yes, but I am primarily a "come up with ideas" and "omg does this even make sense with SCIENCE?" and "shit can you do the lit review for this?" type of person. And it's a lot of fun most days, but some days I am idling (like yesterday). But the good thing about working in EDUCATIONAL gaming is that not only are we supposed to looking at stereotypes, but we're supposed to avoid them. And it's not easy!
Being a female in engineering, I was in charge of most of the review for "how do we get girls to play this?" And while some of the research has me rolling my eyes, I try to keep an open mind and remember that I am about as close to normal girl as well, I'm not. XD And even I don't get how it just doesn't click for some girls. Outside of fandom, I hung in mostly dude circles! So I have to get the dudebro out of my brain sometimes.
But we still have mistakes! And thankfully the office is pretty even with men and women (we are, it's kind of shocking for a tech company, and one of our programmers is of the chick variety) so they don't happen for long. And we had a slight problem with the sexy.
See, we had to do a poster advertising the NASA part of the platform, and we wanted a girl on it. Well, the graphics dudes pick a well, sexy model. Sure, she was wearing a spacesuit, but the way she was standing, the expression on her face, the complete impossibility of her perfectly symmetrical features... it did not send out the right message.
Now, I've nothing against the sexy in games. Fran from FFXII's design does in fact give me a nosebleed. But I'm also totally into chicks in a homosexy way. Femme chicks. Like, Lulu from FFX, Tifa from FFVII, and Quistis from FFVIII? Totally do it for me. But Paine from FFX-2? Not so much. And she's only lightly butch. The real butches out there would probably kick her ass. And scare me, I fully admit that. So heterosexy male aim? Works on me, for the most part (unreal boob dynamics is where I am less interested. boobs are not spheres, they are teardrops at best. that is against the laws of gravity. that is not sexy, that wtf).
Anyway, so the womenfolk in the office all responded pretty negatively. And the graphics dudes were all scratching their heads going "what would work?" My suggestion? Kara Thrace, aka Starbuck. Good example of balancing the ned for pretty (let's face it, we still want a LITTLE commercialism, and she IS pretty) but balancing it with neutrality. Look at how she's standing in that picture. That is a pose that says, "why yes, I am going to do this shit" instead of "hey boy wanna have sexytimes?". Body language matters!
It got fixed, and de-sexyed, but it got me thinking. And then
celelorial linked a post about D&D playbook covers. And I thought back to the sexy and the poster issue.In an educational game, the sexy really shouldn't exist, unless it IS an educational point (and believe me, there is a part of me that really wants to design a module about that, I just don't know HOW yet). But it is very prevalent in commercial games, as we all know. I think to some extent we are desensitized to it. There are cases where something that makes sense also happens to be sexy (like, I personally found Tifa's outfit in the original game made a lot of sense for both her figure AND her job class. if she were a dude, she'd be shirtless, like Sabin in FFVI. Sure, she had bare midriff, but she was not cleavage-tastic, and yeah, she wore a miniskirt, but she had HIPS and as my lady always says, those chafe when you are endowed there!) And I think
darenciel you had some talk about The Sexy and games, so I hope I'm not just repeating myself.And I've never thought of the issue as being that sexy chicks exist, or they sometimes wear kinky things, or all that. It's that in most media? Most of the time only the chicks have the sexy. THAT is my issue.
This lovely article on WoW classes and costumes and this amazing genderswap of a typical comic drawing book really illustrate this.
Why the straight male heterosexy? I think that a lot of Japanese games play with this a little more (like this drawing of FFVI's Edgar basically says, "hey ladies, wanna see my sword?" and there is something kind of kinky to Vincent Valentine from FFVII and those are just the ones off the top of my head) than Western ones for the most part (Ah Gears of War, there's a face only a mother could love). But even with the existence of pretty guys in games, they are rarely posed for maximum sexy (unless it's Castlevania, which has characters drawn mostly by a woman).
You can see it quickly defended in the comments of the D&D article that "but there are some dudes sitting around with their crotches thrust out INSIDE the books, that's female fanservice!". This prompted my "hey those attracted to the mens, do you look STRAIGHT at the crotch of an attractive male?" because well, I am not attracted to the mens (except David Bowie because he's David fucking Bowie) so I had to make sure. I had one "sometimes" (from a dude!) and mostly "ah, no". Hate to break it to you dudes! Women are not always thinking about your wang! I'm pretty sure that even most gay men are not thinking about your wang that much! Homosexy and female heterosexy fanservice is so much less manly man oriented than a lot of guys want to believe. Early hearthrobs? Rudolph Valentino, Rock Hudson (who also turned out to be gay... guys, the gay can help sometimes), and James Dean (who I admit is one of my style icons). And I'm not even going into Carey Grant. XD These are not the biggest baddest dudes (not even Rock, hell, Rock's body language alone).
Are we really that afraid of even a hint of male "gay" (because let's be frank, a little femme on a dude does not make them automatically gay)? It strikes me as a bad business model. I mean, seriously dudes, have you ever seen fanfiction? And no, this does not speak for all heterosexy girls and homosexy guys. But it works for a good number of them. Add a hint of homoeroticism to just about any manly thing and suddenly you have a female fandom (original Star Trek! yeah, Kirk was banging all those chicks but he spent much more time arguing/talking/emoting at Spock...).
You're never going to get rid of objectification, but why not open up objectification to more groups? More people = more money = profit! Why us educational gaming people try so hard to appeal to a larger number is because we want larger numbers!
So basically the point of all this is that even in the happy place where I am, where we try to think of equality and minorities and including everyone, we still have moments were we default back to Dudebro 101. And that's silly! Plus lots of other people talk about this way better than I do. The end!