Realism, Except for women or Are there any real girls in video games.

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Are there any games you can think of that include "real" women?

Is there any real life "real" women? I know some people IRL who are shallower than some game characters.

How do you define the difference, and is this difference shared?

Chun-Li has a job, a life and a history. So does Lara Croft. So does FemShep.

What makes them "real"? (Before we ask exactly the same question of men)

Is Thursday Next or Agatha Raisin real? Trisha McMillan? B'lana? Seven of Nine? Buffy Summers?

 

[Folksoul]

See: Entire female cast of Persona 3 and 4.

 

[intheweeds]

Hi there, friendly neighborhood blah blah blah. Lets get straight to my point:

So while fussing around on some awesome Character Creation Engines suggested by all you delightful Escapees, when I realized that I only ever see "real" women on games that feature them, or, barring that, ATTEMPTS at "real" women. So I'm wondering one thing, solely because if I addressed the second I'd just get one million valid opinions I've all already heard, so, instead I ask: Are there any games you can think of that include "real" women? Either physically or emotionally, and yes, I know, some real women are sticks with balloons attached, or single note stereotypes, thus the use of quotations.

TLDR: You're a bad person, read the post, it's like, ONE paragraph.

Edit: I'm seein this pop up a bit so I'll say this now. I'm not here to discuss the amount of male Idealization the occurs in Video Games, I do however, plan to, just at a later date. Thank you all for understanding. ^^

Not that I can think of, but seriously, I would gladly play another space marine shooter if the protagonist were a REAL butch dyke. Maybe i never see myself represented, sure lesbians are in popular culture, but only if they are pretty enough. I don`t mean the stereotypical fat, motorbike riding leather vest wearing type people, either. Those people make us look bad. Just a woman who happens to be more masculine or androgynous treated like a normal person. They have a whole show called The L Word which is nothing but lesbians all day everyday and they STILL don't have any real butches. Occasionally you can find one sitting in the background in a bar scene, but that's about it. The kind of woman who naturally gravitates towards more masculine ventures.

I have a hard time believing that they couldn`t find ONE real lesbian for Noble team (as an example). You would think that far into the future they would realize that butches make tough soldiers and have given at least one a good position. I want short hair on my protagonist because it`s easier to take care of - especially if your job is being a space marine. A woman who sits with her legs open because really - who the hell cares, we are in a war. Basically a Starbuck attitude (minus the crying Adama daddy issues) with a more butch look. That would be more realistic to me than stuffing more polygons into the terrain.

For the love of god (and this goes for all women in video games) draw smaller breasts! Girls with breasts of the size i see in almost every video game (yes even the ones considered small) are the ones that quit all sports in high school because of them. They would never end up fist fighting or platforming or shooting a gun for a living. I have no idea how Lara Croft grabs platforms she jumps to. Seems to me she would just bounce off and fall to her death in about five seconds if she didn't break her back first.

 

[Kahunaburger]

And I said T&A DOES (typically) disqualify a girl from being "real" I'm not saying real girls are never like lingerie models, I'm just saying most aren't.

It's also kind of silly that you think that a character being attractive makes them not "real" - there are attractive people IRL, you know.

I have a feeling you aren't listening to me. And yes, the fact that Ivy is fighting for the soul edge is because the plot dictates she should. It's less of a character driving the plot and more plot driving the character, but this isn't at all what I'm debating or in fact, asking initially at all.

No, I'm listening to you - you just don't seem to be making a whole lot of sense.

Personality =/= actions in plot. And if you define "personality" as "actions taken in plot," like you seem to be doing here, then of course what the character does in the plot is going to be driven by the plot. That's true of any character of any gender.

And you don't seem to have addressed the whole point, either - It's still pretty unclear what you think a "real character" is, and if you have anything to back your definition of a "real character" up with, TBH.

That chick from Sands of Time

^Troof. The leads in that game are stellar in general. But apparently attractive people are fake or something so OP doesn't like them as characters

 

[Kahunaburger]

Not that I can think of, but seriously, I would gladly play another space marine shooter if the protagonist were a REAL butch dyke. Maybe i never see myself represented, sure lesbians are in popular culture, but only if they are pretty enough. I don`t mean the stereotypical fat, motorbike riding leather vest wearing type people, either. Those people make us look bad. Just a woman who happens to be more masculine or androgynous treated like a normal person. They have a whole show called The L Word which is nothing but lesbians all day everyday and they STILL don't have any real butches. Occasionally you can find one sitting in the background in a bar scene, but that's about it. The kind of woman who naturally gravitates towards more masculine ventures.

...or at least she was in my ME2 playthrough. She tends to be pretty androgynous/masculine just because of the animations they picked. Not a real example, though, since it probably wasn't something they intended, unfortunately.

 

[mireko]

Another vote for Atlus RPGs, especially the Persona series. The relationship between Chie and Yukiko is wonderfully complex, and nearly everyone receives a great deal of deep characterization. Kaneko and Soejima are pretty good about toning down the fanservice too.

Spoiler: Fairly large images.

..which is also one of the reasons I can't get into Yasuda's style. His understanding of gravity and female anatomy is so fucking weird I don't even know where to start.

 

[intheweeds]

Not that I can think of, but seriously, I would gladly play another space marine shooter if the protagonist were a REAL butch dyke. Maybe i never see myself represented, sure lesbians are in popular culture, but only if they are pretty enough. I don`t mean the stereotypical fat, motorbike riding leather vest wearing type people, either. Those people make us look bad. Just a woman who happens to be more masculine or androgynous treated like a normal person. They have a whole show called The L Word which is nothing but lesbians all day everyday and they STILL don't have any real butches. Occasionally you can find one sitting in the background in a bar scene, but that's about it. The kind of woman who naturally gravitates towards more masculine ventures.

...or at least she was in my ME2 playthrough. She tends to be pretty androgynous/masculine just because of the animations they picked. Not a real example, though, since it probably wasn't something they intended, unfortunately.

hmm... i was hoping someone might make a suggestion here. I haven't played ME2 yet. Perhaps I should. Not intentional is better than not at all.

 

[DarksideFlame]

It bugs me that when people discuss how realistic videogame characters are portrayed then someone will always say that girls are overly sexualized in videogames because everyone looks like underwear models while I can list a lot of men who are not "realistic" in design look at Duke Nukem, Rico Rodriguez and Chris in RE5 that is not how every man in the world looks in my opinion the difference is that men just roll with it and women whine about it

 

[luckybreak]

To be fair, just because a woman,am is not wearing a lot of clothes and looks hot does not mean there fake, at least any more so than any other fictional character. Personality, motivations, reactions, ideas, and beliefs make a character realistic. If your only argument is that women are unrealistic in games because they don't look like regular people than you might as well say that Cloud from FF7 and Link and the Duke and really half of the more memorable video game characters. Like Kratos for example,.

 

[AdeptaSororitas]

And I said T&A DOES (typically) disqualify a girl from being "real" I'm not saying real girls are never like lingerie models, I'm just saying most aren't.

It's also kind of silly that you think that a character being attractive makes them not "real" - there are attractive people IRL, you know.

I have a feeling you aren't listening to me. And yes, the fact that Ivy is fighting for the soul edge is because the plot dictates she should. It's less of a character driving the plot and more plot driving the character, but this isn't at all what I'm debating or in fact, asking initially at all.

No, I'm listening to you - you just don't seem to be making a whole lot of sense.

Personality =/= actions in plot. And if you define "personality" as "actions taken in plot," like you seem to be doing here, then of course what the character does in the plot is going to be driven by the plot. That's true of any character of any gender.

And you don't seem to have addressed the whole point, either - It's still pretty unclear what you think a "real character" is, and if you have anything to back your definition of a "real character" up with, TBH.

That chick from Sands of Time

^Troof. The leads in that game are stellar in general. But apparently attractive people are fake or something so OP doesn't like them as characters

Okay for one, the plot WAS her personality, that was all there was to her.

Second. NEVER, pressume to tell OTHER PEOPLE how I feel personally, I thought the girl from sands of time was real, she was a princess who was taken to be married off, of course she would be somewhat pretty, however she was not OVERLY sexualized, which is my issue here. Read my posts or don't say anything at all. Peachy?

 

[Kahunaburger]

Okay for one, the plot WAS her personality, that was all there was to her.

Second. NEVER, pressume to tell OTHER PEOPLE how I feel personally, I thought the girl from sands of time was real, she was a princess who was taken to be married off, of course she would be somewhat pretty, however she was not OVERLY sexualized, which is my issue here. Read my posts or don't say anything at all. Peachy?

Dude, Soul Calibur is a fighting game. They write extensive backstories for their characters that never really come up in arcade mode, like basically every fighting game. So for instance Ivy was an alchemist and Mitsurugi fought in the Sengoku Jidai. In other words, you're not going to win an argument about a character's personality by ignoring the character's background.

And once again, this is just pulling a random character out of a hat from a game I played a couple of days ago. Farah actually is a much better example, as are characters like Triss, Alyx Vance, and Caterina Sforza. And you can find a few examples of good characters of either gender in basically any Atlus game.

 

[nima55]

Yep, plenty. Here are just a few I've seen, along with the (abbreviated) games they appear in. Jade (BGAE), April Ryan and Zoe Castillo (Dreamfall/The Longest Journey), Chell (Portal), Zoe (L4D), Alyx Vance (HL2), Lucy and Rebecca (AC), Ashe (FF12), Lightning (FF13).

Need I go on?

I agree with all the rest but I have to take issue with Chell. she (like the freeman before her) is a complete empty vessel. she's meant to not have a personality so as to not interfere with the player's experience. I wouldn't even counter her as anything more than a camera really =\. good picks other wise ^^

 

[ckam]

I really like Yorda from ICO. The bond of trust between the two kids really seemed authentic to me.

 

[nima55]

Not that I can think of, but seriously, I would gladly play another space marine shooter if the protagonist were a REAL butch dyke. Maybe i never see myself represented, sure lesbians are in popular culture, but only if they are pretty enough. I don`t mean the stereotypical fat, motorbike riding leather vest wearing type people, either. Those people make us look bad. Just a woman who happens to be more masculine or androgynous treated like a normal person. They have a whole show called The L Word which is nothing but lesbians all day everyday and they STILL don't have any real butches. Occasionally you can find one sitting in the background in a bar scene, but that's about it. The kind of woman who naturally gravitates towards more masculine ventures.

hmm See I'm the opposite. It seem to me that the popular culture makes us out to only be of the butch variety and uses the stereotype that lesbians can't look feminine if they want to or that to be a lesbian you have to be "manly"

 

[Therumancer]

Hi there, friendly neighborhood blah blah blah. Lets get straight to my point:

So while fussing around on some awesome Character Creation Engines suggested by all you delightful Escapees, when I realized that I only ever see "real" women on games that feature them, or, barring that, ATTEMPTS at "real" women. So I'm wondering one thing, solely because if I addressed the second I'd just get one million valid opinions I've all already heard, so, instead I ask: Are there any games you can think of that include "real" women? Either physically or emotionally, and yes, I know, some real women are sticks with balloons attached, or single note stereotypes, thus the use of quotations.

TLDR: You're a bad person, read the post, it's like, ONE paragraph.

Edit: I'm seein this pop up a bit so I'll say this now. I'm not here to discuss the amount of male Idealization the occurs in Video Games, I do however, plan to, just at a later date. Thank you all for understanding. ^^

I think the problem is that you have no real concept of real women yourself. Like most nerds speaking on the subject your approaching this issue from a perspective that you think will make you more appealing to women.

That's not an insult, and it's a common issue, and has been going for decades.

As a piece of advice I'd direct you towards reading fantasy written by women and aimed at a largely female audience. Things like Kim Harrison's "The Hollows" series, Laura K. Hamilton's "Anita Blake", and similar works. You might also look at the fantasy art created by women, such as the artwork of Julie Bell.

If you look at it critically, you'll notice the characters women create are very similar to the ones you see in video games and works of fantasy in general. Like most heroes they represent a physical ideal, and they tend to have the same kind of adventuring personality traits that your normally see. To be honest women tend to be MORE into the sexual aspects of things than guys are, while people make jokes about "Buffy The Vampire Layer", both Anita Blake and Rachael Morgan (Kim Harrison's leading lady) have a truely staggering number of notches on their bedposts when you get down to it, right up there with Conan. Of course this shouldn't surprise you because if you ever take a walk over a few aisles from the science fiction and fantasy shelves at your local bookstore, you'll find the romance section... and well, I think the titles and artwork speak for themselves.

Like everything there are exceptions, but truthfully most female video game characters are fairly on the money. A character like Lara Croft is exactly the kind of protaganist girls come up with. If anything, in complaining about how the female characters in video games and other fantasy material are "offensively sexy stereotypes" we're being counter productive, if anything adding more sex would bring more women into the hobby. After all it's the whole "paranormal romance" genere that has been bringing more women into fantasy than ever before, the big differance between something like "The Hollows" and say the old "Shadowrun" novels is that Rachael has a new superstud carve his initials on her bedpost every couple of books. This isn't even getting into "Sookie Stackhouse" which is arguably the most successful of them all, having spawned both a substantial series of novels AND a TV series based on it. To be honest Ms. Stackhouse pretty much represents everything that your typical nerd thinks that a woman is going to find repellant... and yet she's arguably the most successful fantasy protaganist coming from women's fiction in recent memory.

I'll also say that I think there are plenty of girls out there playing video games, outside of the casual market, they aren't hard to find. The problem is that they aren't nessicarly overt about it. More than a few girls I knew in WoW also played male characters, and only wound up revealing themselves when I wound up being trusted enough to get their vent channels. This being other than the ones in my guild. People talk about guys playing girls, but it works the other way around too, and personally I think a lot of girls like playing dress up with the male models (for eye candy) the same way guys do.

Speaking of which this also brings up another side point, which I've mentioned before. It's a popular geek fantasy to want to "show girls how much better us sensitive guys are for them than the macho jerks they normally go with". The truth is however, that girls generally don't go for nice, safe, guys, especially not when they are young and playing around. Girls go for those "meatheads". The very "issue" which has been noted in society as long as we've had society kind of plays havoc with the whole logic of "appealing to girls by being sensitive in the media we want them to find appealing".

As I pointed out in a post I put up before, I noticed a lot of girls playing and talking about Duke Nukem. Not to mention having made note of what was going on around some of those cardboard "pose for a picture" promotional things outside of various Gamestops (which leads me to believe the game marketers were aware of this since guys are usually not into those on their own). While he's by no means attractive to all women (as many people would point out), I think a lot of people kind of miss the point that Duke is pretty much the perfect specimin from a female perspective. He's got the chiseled good looks, the big muscles, and happens to be an arrogant jerk but also a PROTECTIVE one. He's appealing in an over the top way the same way the female version is to a lot of us guys, and a lot of girls probably have fun controlling him for that reason.

Going by the response I got last time I pointed that out, it doesn't seem that I'm the only one who made note of it, and especially seeing as a lot of people are blasting Duke Nukem for being offensive to women (and trying to score points with women by doing so) I think that kind of demonstrates how off base a lot of gamer guys looking at this stuff are. In trying to evaluate media in relation to girls, nerdy guys who by definition don't know much about girls, are out of their element. Complaining about the female protaganists is ridiculous when looking at the creations of women, and anyone who has even a passing familiarity with the Chippendales and similar acts, or the career of Fabio (even if not all women find him universally attractive, the guy made a huge career out of being "the ultimate hunk" and probably sold oil tankers full of imitation butter to housewives... his heyday was mostly in like the 1980s, today he's well past his prime) should be able to tell that the kinds of complaints made by nerds about the way women are portrayed are like hugely off base.

Nothing is every 100%, but in reality if you were to put Lara Croft next to some overweight truck stop waitress and ask "who would you rather be" most people would pick Lara. Heck, the overweight truck stop waitress probably wishes she was like that too. That's why it's fantasy. By the same token if you were to take the senstitive protaganist of some nerd drama and put him next to a real life Duke Nukem and give a bunch of women a choice about who to go with, most of them would pick Duke (who would in stereotypical fashion probably wind up kicking sand in the nerd's face). Fair? No, but then again that reality used to sell junk out of the backs of comic books to outraged nerds.

I think part of the problem is another kind of detachment as well, see for a long time video games and fantasy used to be about stepping into the shoes of a macho man for a while, and letting your nerd find escapism by walking in the other guy's shoes for a while. In recent years people came up with the idea that "well, it's fantasy, so why can't the hero be a sensitive nerd guy?". The fantasy has gotten to the point where I think a lot of people in the community tend to have lost track of the basics, and come to believe on some level that the existance of such characters has changed the social order to an extent that it hasn't. Heroes with more quintessentially "nerdy" traits have if anything formed a sort of internal barrier within the community.

The odd thing is that today people make fun of the old "80s action heroes" and think such things can only be done ironically, when originally the point of those musclemen was that they are the kinds of guys that could hypothetically do those things. Albiet, they are also the guys who would pick on the guys worshipping the movies they are the hero of, which is in of itself ironic. Today, your fantasy audience wants some skinny nerd in a trenchcoat or something, and think that can somehow be taken seriously and with less irony than a dude
who actually looks like he could floor a terrorist with one punch. Being a huge nerd myself, I see the appeal, and why things have been evolving this way, but I think it's been becoming a problem both to the media, and to our own perceptions, and people need to take something of a step back from it and get some perspective on what's really supposed to be ironic in all this. It would also help resolve other issues like... the perception of what appeals to girls, and what role they actually play in all forms of fantasy fandom and what they are actually interested in.

I mean, for all the of my fellow Nerd-Bros out there who read this far, how many of you have actually paid attention to what women are reading/watching/playing? If your curious about what girls are 'into' look into the book series that appeal to them and have become popular enough to keep going on for 5 or more installments. That's how I got semi-addicted to "The Hollows".

 

[Da Orky Man]

Hi there, friendly neighborhood blah blah blah. Lets get straight to my point:

So while fussing around on some awesome Character Creation Engines suggested by all you delightful Escapees, when I realized that I only ever see "real" women on games that feature them, or, barring that, ATTEMPTS at "real" women. So I'm wondering one thing, solely because if I addressed the second I'd just get one million valid opinions I've all already heard, so, instead I ask: Are there any games you can think of that include "real" women? Either physically or emotionally, and yes, I know, some real women are sticks with balloons attached, or single note stereotypes, thus the use of quotations.

TLDR: You're a bad person, read the post, it's like, ONE paragraph.

Edit: I'm seein this pop up a bit so I'll say this now. I'm not here to discuss the amount of male Idealization the occurs in Video Games, I do however, plan to, just at a later date. Thank you all for understanding. ^^

Given your user-name, do the Daughters of the Emperor count? I mean, they do have more than an air of badassery around them; possibly a small ocean. Few male characters can claim that.

 

[Nekkie]

I don't see what the problem is, do people really think that this is realistic?

http://wow-pro.com/files/human_male.jpg

Sure some men might have that body shape and some women might even look like in video games but for the majority of people that's just unrealistic. Why this is a problem tough i don't know, they are merely images of how most of us want to look like.

If women/men would look normal in games, the character would quickly lose all their charm, imagine War from darksiders being a small fat bald guy or a really skinny wimp.

In some games however it helps that the character looks realistic (heavy rain for example) but games usually have a more fantasy theme to them so there is no need to make the character look plain and boring as someone would look like in the real world.

 

[AdeptaSororitas]

Hi there, friendly neighborhood blah blah blah. Lets get straight to my point:

So while fussing around on some awesome Character Creation Engines suggested by all you delightful Escapees, when I realized that I only ever see "real" women on games that feature them, or, barring that, ATTEMPTS at "real" women. So I'm wondering one thing, solely because if I addressed the second I'd just get one million valid opinions I've all already heard, so, instead I ask: Are there any games you can think of that include "real" women? Either physically or emotionally, and yes, I know, some real women are sticks with balloons attached, or single note stereotypes, thus the use of quotations.

TLDR: You're a bad person, read the post, it's like, ONE paragraph.

Edit: I'm seein this pop up a bit so I'll say this now. I'm not here to discuss the amount of male Idealization the occurs in Video Games, I do however, plan to, just at a later date. Thank you all for understanding. ^^

I think the problem is that you have no real concept of real women yourself. Like most nerds speaking on the subject your approaching this issue from a perspective that you think will make you more appealing to women.

That's not an insult, and it's a common issue, and has been going for decades.

As a piece of advice I'd direct you towards reading fantasy written by women and aimed at a largely female audience. Things like Kim Harrison's "The Hollows" series, Laura K. Hamilton's "Anita Blake", and similar works. You might also look at the fantasy art created by women, such as the artwork of Julie Bell.

If you look at it critically, you'll notice the characters women create are very similar to the ones you see in video games and works of fantasy in general. Like most heroes they represent a physical ideal, and they tend to have the same kind of adventuring personality traits that your normally see. To be honest women tend to be MORE into the sexual aspects of things than guys are, while people make jokes about "Buffy The Vampire Layer", both Anita Blake and Rachael Morgan (Kim Harrison's leading lady) have a truely staggering number of notches on their bedposts when you get down to it, right up there with Conan. Of course this shouldn't surprise you because if you ever take a walk over a few aisles from the science fiction and fantasy shelves at your local bookstore, you'll find the romance section... and well, I think the titles and artwork speak for themselves.

Like everything there are exceptions, but truthfully most female video game characters are fairly on the money. A character like Lara Croft is exactly the kind of protaganist girls come up with. If anything, in complaining about how the female characters in video games and other fantasy material are "offensively sexy stereotypes" we're being counter productive, if anything adding more sex would bring more women into the hobby. After all it's the whole "paranormal romance" genere that has been bringing more women into fantasy than ever before, the big differance between something like "The Hollows" and say the old "Shadowrun" novels is that Rachael has a new superstud carve his initials on her bedpost every couple of books. This isn't even getting into "Sookie Stackhouse" which is arguably the most successful of them all, having spawned both a substantial series of novels AND a TV series based on it. To be honest Ms. Stackhouse pretty much represents everything that your typical nerd thinks that a woman is going to find repellant... and yet she's arguably the most successful fantasy protaganist coming from women's fiction in recent memory.

I'll also say that I think there are plenty of girls out there playing video games, outside of the casual market, they aren't hard to find. The problem is that they aren't nessicarly overt about it. More than a few girls I knew in WoW also played male characters, and only wound up revealing themselves when I wound up being trusted enough to get their vent channels. This being other than the ones in my guild. People talk about guys playing girls, but it works the other way around too, and personally I think a lot of girls like playing dress up with the male models (for eye candy) the same way guys do.

Speaking of which this also brings up another side point, which I've mentioned before. It's a popular geek fantasy to want to "show girls how much better us sensitive guys are for them than the macho jerks they normally go with". The truth is however, that girls generally don't go for nice, safe, guys, especially not when they are young and playing around. Girls go for those "meatheads". The very "issue" which has been noted in society as long as we've had society kind of plays havoc with the whole logic of "appealing to girls by being sensitive in the media we want them to find appealing".

As I pointed out in a post I put up before, I noticed a lot of girls playing and talking about Duke Nukem. Not to mention having made note of what was going on around some of those cardboard "pose for a picture" promotional things outside of various Gamestops (which leads me to believe the game marketers were aware of this since guys are usually not into those on their own). While he's by no means attractive to all women (as many people would point out), I think a lot of people kind of miss the point that Duke is pretty much the perfect specimin from a female perspective. He's got the chiseled good looks, the big muscles, and happens to be an arrogant jerk but also a PROTECTIVE one. He's appealing in an over the top way the same way the female version is to a lot of us guys, and a lot of girls probably have fun controlling him for that reason.

Going by the response I got last time I pointed that out, it doesn't seem that I'm the only one who made note of it, and especially seeing as a lot of people are blasting Duke Nukem for being offensive to women (and trying to score points with women by doing so) I think that kind of demonstrates how off base a lot of gamer guys looking at this stuff are. In trying to evaluate media in relation to girls, nerdy guys who by definition don't know much about girls, are out of their element. Complaining about the female protaganists is ridiculous when looking at the creations of women, and anyone who has even a passing familiarity with the Chippendales and similar acts, or the career of Fabio (even if not all women find him universally attractive, the guy made a huge career out of being "the ultimate hunk" and probably sold oil tankers full of imitation butter to housewives... his heyday was mostly in like the 1980s, today he's well past his prime) should be able to tell that the kinds of complaints made by nerds about the way women are portrayed are like hugely off base.

Nothing is every 100%, but in reality if you were to put Lara Croft next to some overweight truck stop waitress and ask "who would you rather be" most people would pick Lara. Heck, the overweight truck stop waitress probably wishes she was like that too. That's why it's fantasy. By the same token if you were to take the senstitive protaganist of some nerd drama and put him next to a real life Duke Nukem and give a bunch of women a choice about who to go with, most of them would pick Duke (who would in stereotypical fashion probably wind up kicking sand in the nerd's face). Fair? No, but then again that reality used to sell junk out of the backs of comic books to outraged nerds.

I think part of the problem is another kind of detachment as well, see for a long time video games and fantasy used to be about stepping into the shoes of a macho man for a while, and letting your nerd find escapism by walking in the other guy's shoes for a while. In recent years people came up with the idea that "well, it's fantasy, so why can't the hero be a sensitive nerd guy?". The fantasy has gotten to the point where I think a lot of people in the community tend to have lost track of the basics, and come to believe on some level that the existance of such characters has changed the social order to an extent that it hasn't. Heroes with more quintessentially "nerdy" traits have if anything formed a sort of internal barrier within the community.

The odd thing is that today people make fun of the old "80s action heroes" and think such things can only be done ironically, when originally the point of those musclemen was that they are the kinds of guys that could hypothetically do those things. Albiet, they are also the guys who would pick on the guys worshipping the movies they are the hero of, which is in of itself ironic. Today, your fantasy audience wants some skinny nerd in a trenchcoat or something, and think that can somehow be taken seriously and with less irony than a dude
who actually looks like he could floor a terrorist with one punch. Being a huge nerd myself, I see the appeal, and why things have been evolving this way, but I think it's been becoming a problem both to the media, and to our own perceptions, and people need to take something of a step back from it and get some perspective on what's really supposed to be ironic in all this. It would also help resolve other issues like... the perception of what appeals to girls, and what role they actually play in all forms of fantasy fandom and what they are actually interested in.

I mean, for all the of my fellow Nerd-Bros out there who read this far, how many of you have actually paid attention to what women are reading/watching/playing? If your curious about what girls are 'into' look into the book series that appeal to them and have become popular enough to keep going on for 5 or more installments. That's how I got semi-addicted to "The Hollows".

You do, of course, realize that I AM a woman right? I have two X's, breasts and a vagina, with ALL the working parts installed.

Secondly: Damn, that is one castle's worth of brick wall of text, not gonna lie, I skimmed, it's just too massive to go into detail.

Thirdly: I'm not here to argue why or why not "real" women don't appear in games/books/movies or even if most people want them there, I'm simply asking if you know any games they do appear in. I'm sorry If i come off as frustrated but it seems people have been ignoring my original question like it was the gorram plague.

 

[AdeptaSororitas]

Hi there, friendly neighborhood blah blah blah. Lets get straight to my point:

So while fussing around on some awesome Character Creation Engines suggested by all you delightful Escapees, when I realized that I only ever see "real" women on games that feature them, or, barring that, ATTEMPTS at "real" women. So I'm wondering one thing, solely because if I addressed the second I'd just get one million valid opinions I've all already heard, so, instead I ask: Are there any games you can think of that include "real" women? Either physically or emotionally, and yes, I know, some real women are sticks with balloons attached, or single note stereotypes, thus the use of quotations.

TLDR: You're a bad person, read the post, it's like, ONE paragraph.

Edit: I'm seein this pop up a bit so I'll say this now. I'm not here to discuss the amount of male Idealization the occurs in Video Games, I do however, plan to, just at a later date. Thank you all for understanding. ^^

Given your user-name, do the Daughters of the Emperor count? I mean, they do have more than an air of badassery around them; possibly a small ocean. Few male characters can claim that.

I'd say yes, they do. At least they few that are characterized. They typically have physical and emotion and personality flaws out the ass. So yes, I'd say they are, despite existing in a scifi/fantasy setting.