Same! In “Fighter/Mage/Thief,” I always go “Thief.”
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Would you prefer Hag? I don’t have a lot of options, which is my point. 
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As they say, sometimes words are mightier than the sword. I’ve always admired rogues/thieves for their wittiness and speech-craft. Also I’ve always admired the perceived “brotherhood” thieves have. “Thick as Thieves.”
Try feminist icon Margaret Thatcher instead of Mercy for an avatar.
There are a lot of issues with the construction of masculinity, too. And a lot of really productive conversations to be had about the expectations and limitations imposed on men. Every problem with the modern understanding of femininity can be mirrored in masculinity because they developed in tandem.
And I really do wish that, especially in the US, it was easier for men to play around with masculinity and sexuality. The negative blowback for men who don’t fall in line can be really harsh.
That being said: maintaining the kind of ‘thin’ that looks good in a midriff-baring shirt is basically a part-time job. A bare minimum of 5 hours of exercise a week, and that’s with a skilled trainer and a good diet. More is better. Is that easy? Eh. A lot of people could achieve it if they had the time and the money.
More and more these days I think that physical fitness is mostly an indicator of wealth. Wealth and leisure.
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You are bleeding hatred old duck, perhaps you can show a bit more respect hmm? This is a discussion, not personal.
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Perhaps I do need a quick dive into the money bin. Or sleep lol.
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That is incorrect. Large muscles, broad chest, thin waist, long hair, calves that look like brains, hairless, circumcised, long thick schlong. Men already compete in beauty pageants but they are called bodybuilders and to be honest are weaker than a power lifter, and by weaker i mean , the amount they can lift in raw weight.[quote=“Lyya, post:119, topic:11906, full:true”]
You seem to be ignoring my point. The beauty standard for men doesn’t matter because their worth as a character (in-universe and out) isn’t measured by it. They are successful by charm or deed.
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This would be correct if women were to chose a man based on wit or deed and not measure them with their eyes. A fat man can not get a woman as easily as a muscular man even if their wit or deeds are the same.[quote=“Personette, post:127, topic:11906”]
expectations and limitations imposed on men
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There are many soul crushing expectations on men that those that give up also give up their lives. By that i mean male suicide which is another taboo we do not talk about.
This may be the fantasy idealized male, but it is by no means a requirement for a successful fantasy male. See Gems of War if you want examples, there are plenty.
You can say the same for women, GoW is a great place where you can see females take on the four horseman and possibly win. What i listed however are reasons women would say to men they are missing in order to date them. It basically goes back in history to the codpiece. Women’s ideals shape men’s bodies.
This sort of comment is an example of the underlying problem with these discussions. Essentially, it is completely dismissive of the people who have shared in detail why they have a problem with images they feel are oversexualized.
As I’ve said, I don’t agree with many of the criticisms of female GoW characters mentioned in this thread, but I’m not going to dismiss other people’s opinions just because I disagree.
I love the male and female form, yet I can still recognize when characters in a game are just sex objects/props versus actual well thought out characters that happen to be sexy.
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I am wondering when a woman’s actions in a game will ever out weight the looks over their body. (samus, bayonetta, kazooie)
I think BioWare does it best, personally, and partially because the hero is either gender (and therefore the NPCs do not use their gender to define them).
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It’s already happened in non-sexist games. Some have already been mentioned in this thread.
(And seriously, the first Samus treatment is a prime example of old timey sexism in games.)
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If the broad point you’re getting at here is–we’re not all equal, well, no. We’re not all equal. Some of us are more desirable than others. Some of us are broadly desirable and some of us have a more niche appeal.
I dunno, guys. That’s how it goes. Life is hard and then you die.
We all have to muddle through our lives as best as we can, being the best we can be, and hoping some other people will want to share it with us. But fiction–books and games and movies–is all about escaping into other words where anything is possible.
So what do we want the world to look like? What do we want to be and do? What kind of relationships do we want to have? All fiction is always asking and answering those questions.
This is why it’s so frustrating when the range of possibilities for women is so crushingly narrow.
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I havent been looking for points. What percentage of people do you think play gow and even consider this topic? Even in the 21st century the masses just do not care to even notice; they turn on the game, match a few gems and turn it off. That is the reality and why I said nobody else cares whats changed
We are not treated equal, we are not seen as equal and even when both genders have the same issues women’s issues are seen more often than men. When there is issues of suicide or sexism in video games we brush men aside and focus on how this affects women. When it comes to tropes for men and women we always observe female tropes as sexist but never try to look at male tropes as sexist. One example is the dwarf as that pushes the stereotype that men are all idiots or single minded. That is a form of sexism right there. Even tau is a 1 dimensional character that is fully sexist in the way he is another strong minded single thought male. You can sugar coat the story but did any of the male characters get passed being single minded automatons in this game and grow as characters. To me not realy, the most backstory and growth we see is from the females in this game so if we look passed their bodies, maybe their actions are less sexist than their bodies are.
Well that was a lot of thread made in not a lot of time… And moderately free of trolling…
I don’t have a problem with the artwork… It’s a game… But I do hear the voices over gender issues in art, games, Internet in general… Just think it’s all a wider issue in most societies going back thousands of years… A bit of mildly pervy art in a puzzle game is a non-issue to me, like stressing over one small straw in a whole haystack of problems.
I do have a problem when the art is (1) rubbish (Reaver I am looking at you) or (2) uncomfortably misdrawn in pose/position (GreenSeer)…
Oddly, I would support the game having that mildly pervy art more visible (GreenSeer was the icon for a while, for example) as for marketing purposes I think it would land far more hits (teenage boys eye caught by cartoon cleavage) than misses… Which could mean more players, more content… Who knows…
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I’m afraid you have this entire topic backwards. Seriously, dude, you’ve been pushing this kind of logic throughout the thread, which I find a bit sad and frankly annoying. The very first thing I’d advise would be to look up “sexism” and understand what’s at stake a little better. Sexism is not just “clichés about each gender”, it is the unfair treatment of one gender compared to the other. It is a real thing in the actual world and yes, the gender that got the short end of the stick there is, by and large, the female gender. Pushing for “and how about what’s unfair to us men, then?” in a discussion about sexism is akin to bringing up “white heritage” in a discussion about racism, or asking “why don’t we have a Straight Pride, then?” in a discussion about gay rights. In other words, it’s missing The Point.
Let me try to get that point across to you with one real-life example. Let’s consider a nightclub in which women can enter for free, whereas men have to pay an entrance fee (as is shockingly common nightclub tactics). You might say that this policy is unfair or even sexism towards men. You’d be very wrong: it’s sexism, period, which is to say it’s perpetuating gender inequality, which is actually unfair to women (you know, the gender that’s actually affected by sexism, in general). How do we come to this conclusion? Well, if the purpose of the nightclub was just for people to listen to music and dance, that policy would be nuts and plain unfair to the poor guys who have to pay when the girls don’t. You wouldn’t see this kind of nonsense at a concert, for instance: everybody actually comes for the band, and everybody pays for their ticket. That’s not at all what your typical nightclub is about, though: most men go to a nightclub specifically in hopes to get laid. They gather and pay the entry fee and a fortune on cheap whisky and the opportunity to get tinnitus from impossibly loud garbage music that makes it impossible to talk, all so they can spend the night hitting on women, and hopefully go home with one who was drunk enough to let them (to keep it simple enough, I’ll leave out the most gruesome subtopic which comes to mind in this particular example - it rhymes with “tape”). Women don’t pay the entry fee, because the nightclub needs as many of them inside as possible, so that the men I just described have targets to hit on. That’s how this works. So, basically, it’s a trap for women. But yeah, a cursory glance at the nightclub’s policy in and of itself and out of context could mislead someone (especially a man) to call it unfair to men.
You also brought up suicide a few times, which is another very serious issue in our world indeed, but largely unrelated to this topic (even if you happen to have an exception in mind). I’m deeply sorry if you were affected by it, as many of us were, but developing this topic here would really derail the thread.
Obviously, yes. So is your point that we shouldn’t have this discussion, because it won’t have much impact on the overall community? As I said above, a discussion can be worth having in and of itself. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and certainly not by people who sighed “why bother?” all along. ^^
For a guy who fairly often brings up having kids who also play the game when someone drops a swear word, it’s a bit surprising… I’d consider sexist tropes as a worse thing to give a pass to than mature language, but to each their own, I guess.
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My kids just find the artwork funny - they like the dragons more, or cute beasties like the fox.
Personally I don’t see a risk to their perceptions of men and women from GoW. They see and hear far worse on tv or in the playground every day. Down to us as parents to set a tone, but I think GoW’s cartoony art is the least of our problems.
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