Why female breastplates don’t need breast-bulges

rinnenohate:

The game industry doesn’t want female heroes - Jim Sterling, Destructoid

rinjirenee:

countessnoir:

Remember Me is currently in development under the watchful eye of Capcom, but the story of a woman who can “remix” peoples’ memories had to do a lot of fighting to exist. According to creative director Jean-Max Morris, the industry at large hated the idea of a female protagonist.

“We had some [publishers] that said, ‘Well, we don’t want to publish it because that’s not going to succeed. You can’t have a female character in games. It has to be a male character, simple as that,’” he told Penny Arcade. “We wanted to be able to tease on Nilin’s private life, and that means for instance, at one point, we wanted a scene where she was kissing a guy. We had people tell us, ‘You can’t make a dude like the player kiss another dude in the game, that’s going to feel awkward.’

“I’m like, ‘If you think like that, there’s no way the medium’s going to mature.’ There’s a level of immersion that you need to be at, but it’s not like your sexual orientation is being questioned by playing a game. I don’t know, that’s extremely weird to me.”

I’ve never really thought about the whole kissing thing, but he’s right. Women are overtly sexualized in many videogames, but they’re rarely allowed to be sexual. Sure, have your female avatar swing massive boobs around in bikini battle armor, but if she dares to show physical interest in somebody? Oh, the scandal!

That, right there, is objectification at work. Having a female character exist for our saucy gratification, but not ever being allowed to reciprocate, initiate or otherwise become an active participant. Outside of games where players can create their own characters, I don’t think I’ve actually seen a playable female protagonist kiss a guy in a game…

We recently saw BioShock Infinite’s Elizabeth relegated to the back cover of the game case, for fear that the presence of a woman would turn consumers away. Naughty Dog also recalled a similar situation, where it had to fight to have a woman appear on the cover of The Last of Us. There’s something eminently shuddersome about the message that sends, a message that suggests women have their uses, but are best kept locked away with the rest of the tools until they’re required. It’s the kind of situation that puts an itchy feeling under the skin. 

There are some who argue sexism isn’t a problem in the game industry, but I don’t know how a rational person could see this kind of stuff and not admit, even grudgingly, that it exists in abundance. When publishers are trying to eradicate female protagonists or hiding the womenfolk away lest an audience be turned off, there’s some ill sentiment at play. Whether the fault of the industry itself or the audience, there is a fault, and it’s a downright unsettling one at that. 

And if you’d be seriously upset by seeing a female lead kiss a guy in a game, you’re emotionally broken.

And this is why it’s extremely important for folks to support Remember Me, because I’m tired of this. I’m pretty sure Square and Platinum got asked a couple of times why did they make female protagonists Bayonetta and Aya Brea respectively. 

For definitely reblogging

wheelr:

Me again!

comicsalliance:

Mutant Women of Earth: How Chris Claremont Reinvented the Female Superhero

By Andrew Wheeler

This April Brian Wood and Olivier Coipel launch a new X-Men title with a roster of Jubilee, Kitty Pryde, Psylocke, Rachel Grey, Rogue and Storm. That the team is all-female isn’t unusual for a book that isn’t defined along gender-lines. What makes the roster extraordinary is that it’s an all-star line-up. These are first draft X-Men, and the book could easily have added more top picks — Dazzler, Emma Frost, Jean Grey, Magik, Mystique — and still been all-female.

It’s hard to think of any other superhero team with such a strong bench of women, and it’s especially hard to think of another team where so many female characters rose to prominence within the team itself. What these characters have in common is no mystery; they were all written by Chris Claremont, the man whose name is synonymous with “strong female characters.”

Read more.

knightkeladry:

Karigan G’ladheon - Green Rider, by Kristen Britain

A Rider’s true heart the brooch shall seek…

(Warning: This contains spoilers of The High-King’s Tomb.)

The other ladies I’ve written about until now longed for a life full of adventure and heroism, Karigan on the other hand is very much a reluctant hero. She grows up a rich merchant’s daughter and is groomed to take over her father’s buisiness one day. But Karigan’s bad temper ruins all those plans. One day she gets into a sword-fight with a lord’s son, and not willing to face the consequences of her actions Karigan simply runs away afterwards. Travelling through the forest she meets a Green Rider, one of the king’s messengers. He’s deadly wounded and ask her to finish his mission and deliver an important note to the king. Karigan promises to do just that, not knowing that the most fearful enemies of the realm will try to stop her, and not knowing that even if she reaches the king in time, she cannot simply hand over the message and go home again.

When the first book starts Karigan is a young privileged woman with a bad temper who always got what she wanted. Until now. Suddenly she is forced to realise that the world just doesn’t work that way. She wanted to be a merchant, but she is forced into service as a Green Rider. She wanted a loving commited relationship, but instead she falls in love with King Zachary and has to choose to be either his secret mistress or not be with him at all. She wanted a nice and normal life, but instead she finds out that one of her ancestors was an infamous war-criminal and his legacy comes back to haunt her. And to top it all Karigan is forced to become the avatar of the god of death, drawing her even further into darkness.

So, why is Karigan such a compelling character? Because she changes. A lot. At the end of the 3rd novel there is nothing left of the bright girl who got herself into trouble because she couldn’t and wouldn’t control her temper. Now she is a Green Rider, a Knight of the Realm, a woman grown with deep emotional and physical scars, who longs for nothing more than to have back her freedom, knowing fully well that even if she could have it, she would not take it. Because being free of her duty as a Green Rider would mean that she would have to stop fighting for her friends, for the man she loves and for her country. And the one defining character trait of Karigan G’ladheon is that she never stops fighting.

Previous posts: Alanna of Trebond, Éowny of Rohan, Brienne of Tarth, Harry Crewe, Aerin-sol

thefallenblue:

DAY NINE - Favorite Female Character in a Video Game: Jade

Like yesterday, this is a meme deviation from what was originally a TV-related prompt. Because, you know. I want to talk about Jade. :D

Beyond Good and Evil was one of those occasional critically-acclaimed brilliant gems that just didn’t sell — the usual combo of bad timing, bad marketing, and bad luck — and its protagonist, the aforementioned Jade, was no small part of that acclaim. There are certain requirements for the hero of an adventure game — convenient possession of an unusual skillset, enough inoffensive genericness to avoid turning off the gamers who’re meant to identify with this character, a particular knowledge level that will allow the player to learn about the game world relatively seamlessly — that make it difficult to successfully give that hero much personality. But Jade manages all that, and still has personality in spades.

And that personality is even compelling and unique! Her martial arts skills notwithstanding, she’s a refreshingly mundane woman at first blush, just trying to live day-to-day despite the war zone that her planet has been all her life. She’s no crusader, just a reporter who takes whatever jobs she can get to keep afloat, even unglamorous, excitement-free research like photographing frogs. And she’s both intelligent and cautious about the idea of heroism; when presented with an opportunity to help the good guys, her first response is no credulous “hell yeah, let’s save the world,” it’s a measured, cautious, “well, alright, I’ll check this out, and if it turns out you guys really are who and what you say you are, we’ll go from there.” In fact, thoughtfulness and planning is basically the core of her whole plot. Jade’s not your standard brute force hero, storming the bad guy’s castle and slaughtering armies en masse. She’s a reporter, and she does good by reporting; she sneaks fearlessly into the heart of evil, takes pictures of it, and exposes it to the ignorant masses back home, singlehandedly obliterating years of PR work on the bad guys’ part and sparking the flames of rebellion. Victory through reason, planning, and the dissemination of knowledge is my very favorite kind, so you might imagine this endears Jade to me quite a bit.

But while Jade isn’t a brute force hero, there’s no question that “hero” is the word for her. As reluctant and cautious as she is at first, this is also a woman whose reporting gig is primarily intended to pay for the orphanage/school/permanent residence for displaced children that is her actual main job (and man, is she devoted to and protective of those kids). And from the moment it becomes clear that the good guys are right and the bad guys are bad, there’s no question whatsoever in Jade’s mind of risking her life to help. If she can protect and care for people, if her skills can do good, she’s there.

Plus, she’s clearly just a fun person to be around. Everybody in town knows and likes her, she’s adorable with both the kids and the orphanage dog, she’s always got a smile and a friendly hello on hand, she’s playful with her friends and sympathetic to strangers in need. And her pants are fantastic. Whoever designed those things deserves a raise, because there is just no way not to admire a woman with pants that cool.

knightkeladry:

Action Girls have been around as long as people have told each other stories; from the goddess Ishtar to the legendary Princess Fantaghirò to Buffy Summers. But they were all heroes (or villains). I haven’t come across many female supportive characters whose arc is questioning society’s ethics. But that’s what Ro Laren was all about. She might not have been human, but she joined the human-dominated Starfleet and was expected to follow their rules. Yet she disobeyed them, leading Picard – her captain and mentor – to threaten her with a court martial if she doesn’t follow orders. Eventually her betrayal seemed inevitable; but it was remarkable that she stayed a sympathetic character because the audience was shown her struggle and her ultimate decision to be true to her beliefs.

All in all the character of Ro Laren might not have radically changed science fiction forever, but she did introduce a new type of female anti-hero and without her we might never have had Farscape’s Aeryn Sun or Battlestar Galactica’s Kara Thrace.

Read the full article here