I never get this view It's not like this is some new thing, she's been sexualized since day one. The only moment she was viewed as a strong tall character was before the ending to the first game was discovered
Oh you and your lesbians~
HOLY WHAT A GREAT SEASON Damn you Pendleton Ward, why did you create such an insanely interesting world?
I'm watching the Smash Bros Direct from the other day, and reading about people hating how Zero Suit Samus wears high heels The argument being put forward that they're impractical for fighting Why is that suddenly a big deal with high heels? I mean, this is Smash Bros, a Nintendo franchise, where the game is already full to the brim with things that are impractical for fighting. Peach wears a dress, Wario wears weird pointy shoes. But for some reason it's high heels where the unreal-ism has gone too far? I mean, if you look at the footage, she doesn't even touch the heel end to the ground. The heel end is also a jet booster which she uses to enhances her strength, btw. But yeah, ZS Samus is always balancing on the balls of her feet, which makes sense since her character is based around agility (and now rocket boots) Really the high heel design perfectly compliments her combat style, but apparently it's terrible and impractical. Even if it was, the magic of a fictional world is that we can HAVE impractical things be practical like keyblades
This is a question I've passed around with friends and family, and one that, quite honestly, scares me a fair bit, and is probably a major reason why I don't really want to pursue a relationship, though I haven't checked. Basically, the past... hudnredish years have had HUGE levels of upheaval. New technology daily, modern notions of social standards are steadily becoming the norm. I mean, the fact that wars are being fought against the basic notions of disease and hunger is INSANE, when you think about it, but that's where humanity is right now. And something that has come a very long way in a very short time is women's rights. Pushes against sexism, pushes for rights, all kinds of stuff. While it's definitely not there yet, women are on more equal footing than they've ever been, and with that is coming a destruction of the concept of the nuclear family. Similar pushes in gay rights, which definitely have a ways to go before even matching women's rights, but one thing that this has called into question was the need for two different sexed parents. The idea that a male and female influence is needed to raise a child is being called into question. So where we have women pushing into work forces that were once considered man only, and the way we raise children in constant flux even WITHOUT the stuff that comes with gay and women's rights... where does a man fit it? What traits can a man bring to the table that offer anything unique? In a world where the notion of a breadwinner father and stay at home mother is challenged, what does a many have to offer anymore? Is it their role to simply be a subpar mother? Because biologically mothers have the edge there, even eliminating the notion of 'maternal instincts' they're still the ones able to breastfeed, and carry a child. Meanwhile, you can't argue that the child needs 'a man's view' or whatever, to help them grow- that's sexist- and also challenged by the notion of same sex parents, where the parents are, or at least have the ability to be, on equal ground. I guess the thing is, while it's all well and good to fight against having stereotypical roles... roles are kind of nice. It's scarier to have to define yourself in life. I've talked to a few girls about this, and they expressed something along the lines of the opposite yet the same problem. Talking about how it'd be a fair bit simpler to be able to just focus on one thing, whether it's raising their kids, or earning the money, but being expected by society to do both and more. There's certainly a nice simplicity to having complimentary roles, it makes life a little more manageable, instead it seems like by and large women are being subjected to too many directions while men aren't being given any I guess each family nowadays is going to have to carve their own niche? Sounds like a lot of extra work in a world that moves as fast as ours. Bleagh g'night
This actually reminds me of an interesting video series I watch, one of the episodes went on a side tangent about the relatability of furry characters, or as we used to call them, Disney characters. Basically the theory being that by removing defining aspects of race and sex, but keeping the fundamentals about humans that we find acceptable, you create a character that can appeal to a much broader range of characters. Where a person might not feel that they can aspire to be like a character that appears to be different from them in a way we easily recognize, the same character WITHOUT any defining human social setups, like skin colour or overt physical gender identification, people can more easily put themselves in the character's shoes, since focus is taken away from their appearance, and redirected at their actions and personality. I feel bad that I'm not going to have as long of a reply to this but: First of all I want to make it clear that I'm talking about a theoretical amalgamation of many arguments I've heard over the years, as I've said elsewhere in the topic my view is that a strong character is a strong character and that's the end of it, what I was more steering for was an explanation of what a so called strong gendered character might entail. Either I was missing something, or the people I'd debated with, overheard, or otherwise encountered were searching for a creature of double standards that couldn't exist. And that's where the other thing you mentioned that I want to talk about comes in. You say that the strong character movement is a reaction to the feminist movement, basically the desire to see strong female characters at all, after so long not having much representation, if any. Correct? As such, there is no male counterpart to the notion because there is no corresponding stifling of the presence of male characters in media. I mean, I suppose there's an argument to be made for subcategories of men, but that's another can of worms entirely. But going by this, it seems to me like pursuing this 'strong female character' will be destructive. I think the demand is dangerously high for something that, if followed, will more than likely simply hamper the actually writers/whatever else media creators, and end up making nobody happy.
The term reverse is a distinction that comes from the argument that white people can't be the victims of racism because of their privilege. It's a term coined by the opposition that posits that racism towards white people doesn't exist, and as such needs a separate description because it's a theoretical practice. A person who believes that anybody can be racist would most likely not use the term unless the context was a debate
Honestly wish you HAD said something and managed to better express that mess of a post. I'm still recovering from the worst sickness I've had in years, so I feel like all of my points are only being half expressed. But I THINK I know what I'm going for now... bear with me Right, so are you familiar with the black coffee test? Basically the idea that it's hard to know what a person wants, because they don't know what they want. When people are asked what kind of coffee they like, a lot of people say they like their coffee black, because they think it makes them seem more sophisticated + other reasons. I feel like this is the same thing, where people are stacking together a all these different ideals for a 'good character' that SOUND great, but sabotage things in the process. Like when a person asks for a strong female character who isn't a female stereotype, but isn't just a male character reskinned to be female. You're ultimately asking that a strong female character be neitehr male, nor female, yet still be very interesting. It's a whole bunch of different standards that SOUND great, but in practice is all but impossible to execute. And that's really where I was coming from with this topic from the start. I was thinking about how nobody seems to approach writing a male character with the question "what makes for a strong MALE character?" and yet this is a constant debate right now. I decided to ask KHv and see what happened, either I'd get some interesting insight on what actually makes for strong male characters, or it'd confirm my suspicions that people chasing after this mythic strong female character are basically looking for the holy grail, a thing that they'll never actually find, and even if they do it'll be a lot less exciting than it seemed, like in Indiana Jones
This is the first time I've actually seen reverse racism equated exclusively to institutionalized racism. Up until now the many times I've seen it thrown around as justification for why a poc is allowed to be hateful towards a white person, or something to that effect. Like on KH13, a person said white people can't celebrate Cinco De Mayo because it's not a white person holiday, and when someone said that was racist they replied that reverse racism was a myth
I know the feeling
...
clearly an unappreciated little snowflake
Of all things, acting has an easiest answer here. It's acting. It's far more important that have authenticity than it is to pretend that something never happened. You talk about sugar coating, but how is IGNORING that racism exists by refusing to portray it NOT sugar coating something?
I figured I'd get a response somewhat like this. Interesting info to look at. For all the talks about having these dated expectations for women in media, there's not really any similar progress working in reverse, and there's very little drive for it. As tongue in cheek as the responses were, it's not particularly far from the average of truth. Personally, I'm of the belief that what skull joke said earlier is the case, strong characters are just strong characters, and they don't need to make use of some sort of gender element to make it so But that's why I find all this stuff interesting. There's a HUGE push for something I was hoping someone would be to explain to me, because to me it seems like a paradox. The idea that a character to adheres to stereotypical is sexist, but a strong female character can't have masculine traits, and must be strong based on feminine traits, but feminine traits are stereotypes. It seems like an impossible end goal. But I find it interesting that not many people seem to be looking at the reverse sexual angle to this. Is there a desire here? Do people want to see men go beyond the fundamentals of strength, big dicks, bangin' chicks, being tough, that sort of thing? Societally, we seem to be set up in a way that makes even the thought of this unlikely. Whereas feminism ultimately worked towards the notion of rejecting stereotypes of inherent weakness, or lacking, doing the same with masculine traits would ultimately be to reject what are deeply ingrained to be inherently positive traits, of strength and testosterone and whatnot. Who would reject that, or support the rejection of that? It seems like whereas women are being presented more and more with the power of opportunity, men will at large be relegated to simplicity Though who knows, maybe in the future there will some sort of movement that calls for equality in complexity, but so often it seems more like men as a species accept simplicity as an easy crutch. I dunno got a headache shouldn't have written this with a headache
That example reminds me of a specific line from this song "Ethnic jokes may be uncouth... but you laugh because you know they're based on truth" There are groups where certain traits become prominent. Canadians are polite, British accents are sexy, gay women are butch, what have you. These come from aspects that dominate on at some point dominated a large majority of the group in mind. Most Canadians ARE excessively polite, a TONNE of people find British accents immensely attractive, as the stereotypical looks/behavior of homosexuals of both genders started off as a way for gay people to easily tell someone what their orientation was without having to ask, which was especially useful not long ago when persecution for that was more widespread and generally accepted. There's a rhyme and reason behind a lot of these things, it's just easier to look at it in a really broad, yet specific way.
Reminded of this by the last topic. I REALLY don;t get this. When a person says "there should be a genocide against white people so they know what it's like" that sounds PRETTY racist to me. On a similar topic, the myth og reverse sexism. When a woman says she's surprised I actually read a book, because most men don't read... that sounds PRETTY SEXIST :| ...thoughts?
Got an appointment on the 24th, so if anything's wrong, I'll know
Well I mean, they've all been coming in fine, it just hurts because of the whole rearranging jaw thing
It's been the recent movement of having high profile female characters, people have endless debates about stuff like Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite, Katniss in the Hunger Games. They argue f they're strong characters, but then add a secondary modifier of 'strong female character' and make the argument 'their strength isn't dependent on their gender, therefore they aren't strong female characters'
