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Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

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Memers Since: Aug, 2013
#7676: Feb 24th 2016 at 8:59:26 AM

Snake ruined cardboard boxes for everyone.

TotemicHero No longer a forum herald from the next level Since: Dec, 2009
No longer a forum herald
#7677: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:08:48 AM

No, he ruined cardboard boxes for stealth. Cardboard boxes for scientific progress, on the other hand... tongue

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
Aszur A nice butterfly from Pagliacci's Since: Apr, 2014 Relationship Status: Don't hug me; I'm scared
A nice butterfly
#7678: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:09:57 AM

So, hopefully this is a subject for this thread, if not, well just forget it but I was wondering about you guys' opinions...why do you think Merida, the princess from disney's Brave did not take off as much as the other princesses?

edited 24th Feb '16 10:10:35 AM by Aszur

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
wehrmacht belongs to the hurricane from the garden of everything Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
belongs to the hurricane
#7679: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:21:50 AM

Because the movie itself was very underwhelming and lackluster compared to other Pixar movies? Merida's character arc to me felt very average and played out.

MrAHR Ahr river from ಠ_ಠ Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: A cockroach, nothing can kill it.
Ahr river
#7680: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:23:17 AM

Yyeahh. It's weird. Like I think if this was a Disney movie, it would have done better, in an odd way? But it's Pixar, and what we expect from Pixar isn't... that.

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TotemicHero No longer a forum herald from the next level Since: Dec, 2009
No longer a forum herald
#7681: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:26:25 AM

It doesn't help that Merida was competing with Disney's other princess offering of that year, Vanellope. (I admittedly have not seen Brave, but as a video game fan of course I had to watch Wreck-It Ralph.)

edited 24th Feb '16 10:26:54 AM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
TobiasDrake Queen of Good Things, Honest (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
Queen of Good Things, Honest
#7682: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:26:30 AM

It was never quite clear where the film was trying to go. It just sort of rolled around and did stuff until the credits rolled.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
wehrmacht belongs to the hurricane from the garden of everything Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
belongs to the hurricane
#7683: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:28:09 AM

Wreck-It-Ralph was mostly interesting because of the videogame theme, the plot itself was a very standard animated film story but was done much better than brave's imho.

Aszur A nice butterfly from Pagliacci's Since: Apr, 2014 Relationship Status: Don't hug me; I'm scared
A nice butterfly
#7684: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:29:23 AM

Mmm. I dunno. I kinda liked Brave, but I just think that more was expected of Merida than she actually ended up giving. Her challenging the tomboy role with its on problems, I think, was part of the problem

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
DeathsApprentice Jaded Techie Fox from The Grim Since: Aug, 2011 Relationship Status: Is that a kind of food?
Jaded Techie Fox
#7685: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:34:28 AM

Brave was an alright movie, but it was pretty lackluster for a Pixar movie. It felt more like a standard Disney princess movie than a Pixar movie. Funnily enough, a lot of people say that Wreck-It Ralph felt more like a Pixar movie than a Disney movie.

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Aszur A nice butterfly from Pagliacci's Since: Apr, 2014 Relationship Status: Don't hug me; I'm scared
A nice butterfly
#7686: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:35:10 AM

man, I havent watched wreck it ralph. I havent watched any movie in a long time.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
DrunkenNordmann from Exile Since: May, 2015
#7687: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:41:07 AM

[up] It was decent - even though I can't pass by a pack of Oreos anymore without getting an earworm.

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TobiasDrake Queen of Good Things, Honest (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
Queen of Good Things, Honest
#7688: Feb 24th 2016 at 11:01:28 AM

It also had a paper-thin excuse for an action climax. The heart of the movie was the fractured relationship between Merida and her mother and the way the two needed to learn from each other, but that wasn't intense enough so they threw in some bullshit about an evil bear.

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Aszur A nice butterfly from Pagliacci's Since: Apr, 2014 Relationship Status: Don't hug me; I'm scared
A nice butterfly
#7689: Feb 24th 2016 at 11:08:05 AM

That seems kinda harsh.

Wouldn't we also be able to describe, say, Frozen like that? Some bullshit story about sisterly love with a curse thrown haphazardly in between? Or Big Hero Six? A story about the acceptance of death with a crappy villain thrown in between because something needed to cause the death, I fucking guess?

I am just going with thoe cuz I know they are more positively received.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
MrAHR Ahr river from ಠ_ಠ Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: A cockroach, nothing can kill it.
Ahr river
#7690: Feb 24th 2016 at 11:18:53 AM

I mean I would say Frozen in general was very haphazard. So I would.

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TobiasDrake Queen of Good Things, Honest (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
Queen of Good Things, Honest
#7691: Feb 24th 2016 at 11:19:53 AM

The bear wasn't the villain. The movie didn't have a villain. He was just a bad thing that exists in the general vicinity of the plot and shows up to be an asshole in the last five minutes. The movie mentions him from time to time, but nothing that happens is actually related to his story. He's just there.

edited 24th Feb '16 11:20:44 AM by TobiasDrake

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Julep Since: Jul, 2010
#7692: Feb 24th 2016 at 11:32:25 AM

I think the biggest rival to Merida wasn't Vanellope, it was Rapunzel. One year earlier Disney spectacularly resurrected and updated classic princesses movies, so when Brave came out, it wasn't extremely original.

Pixar tackling the Princess genre out of the blue? Yes, it sounded great. Pixar doing the same after the huge success of Tangled? You would need an awesome product for it to be a hit, and as far as Pixar movies go, Brave was not. It was still waaaay better than the previous and next Pixars, but by no means one of the studios classics (unlike Inside Out).

I do like Brave - have to say that I work on bears so I might be biased. I really like the Merida/Elinor relationship, and Merida herself is - in my opinion - a character that is much more original than Rapunzel, Anna or Elsa. But the plot is far too convoluted for its own good and reeks or production issues. Had it been much more straightforward story, I think it could have been a much bigger hit.

MrAHR Ahr river from ಠ_ಠ Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: A cockroach, nothing can kill it.
Ahr river
#7693: Feb 24th 2016 at 11:33:51 AM

Also it felt like Brave was trying to go all Miyazaki-esque, and was just not succeeding on the ambience and aesthetic.

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DrDougsh Since: Jan, 2001
#7694: Feb 24th 2016 at 11:36:22 AM

The bear isn't totally pointless. He provides a cautionary tale about what will happen to Elinor if she can't turn back into a human, and a backstory to flesh out why Merida needs to meet these specific conditions to accomplish that.

Julep Since: Jul, 2010
#7695: Feb 24th 2016 at 11:42:28 AM

[up][up]Only by how it looks then...the story or characters have little in common with Miyazaki classics (okay, the witch kind of looks like Yubaba). It is a Pixar movie, Pixar loves family drama (they made a superhero story on that, and Toy Story or Inside Out heavily rely on this topic too).

It's just...I don't know, after watching Zootopia (WHICH IS AWESOME), I feel like Brave is the first movie where John Lasseter's departure to Disney really shows. Toy Story 3 or Cars 2 were sequels (with the quality on par with the previous installments in the series), so the creators knew where to go even without Lasseter. But Brave looked like many people tried to push the movie in different directions, and no one was here to say "Stop, let's do this, I decide now".

Which doesn't mean that Pixar is doomed (Inside Out proves that), just that they don't settle production disagreements quite as well as they did before. I hope the few years of lower quality were just the studio finding its new marks.

edited 24th Feb '16 11:42:44 AM by Julep

GAP Formerly G.G. from Who Knows? Since: May, 2011 Relationship Status: Holding out for a hero
Formerly G.G.
#7696: Feb 24th 2016 at 12:05:24 PM

Snake really likes his boxes and he is an expert on corrugates.

edited 24th Feb '16 12:05:46 PM by GAP

"Thanos is a happy guy! Just look at the smile in his face!"
Aszur A nice butterfly from Pagliacci's Since: Apr, 2014 Relationship Status: Don't hug me; I'm scared
A nice butterfly
#7697: Feb 24th 2016 at 12:22:20 PM

The bear is also part of the entire motif of the movie, speaking both thematically in the visual and story sense.

A kinda cheap one, but viable still

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
hellomoto Since: Sep, 2015
#7698: Feb 24th 2016 at 3:51:47 PM

So it has nothing to do with sexism.

Back to skimpy-dressed characters with equally skimpy excusesnote .

In particular, Fiore Burnelli from Star Ocean 5. Comments from the producer before she was released (before she even had a name):

“Ever since the announcement, we’ve gotten a lot of comments on this character. It’s the green-haired mage. [Her outfit] is a little sexy. We showed off a screenshot of her character design earlier and ever since then, we’ve been inundated with comments and users making up their own designs and art. Akiman and myself have been very, very surprised, and we are very happy that the fans have taken to her.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t really show off too much of her in the trailer. You might have seen a little magic here and there, but in terms of her normal attacks, I hope you keep watching these and stay tuned for updates on this project as we reveal more information.

The parts that aren’t black are actually her skin. The outfit, as you can tell, is very revealing. It’s a very unique design. I was talking with Akiman and various other staff members to make sure that was okay. And once we got the okay, we really pushed for this because we think it’s a great design. I’m glad we can incorporate it into the game.

“In the trailer, there was actually another character we had premiered. It was a female fighter, but we want to hold off on revealing more on her until a later date. So hopefully we can make that announcement soon.”

Bikini Armor Battle Damage's take on Fiore.

F: I’d like to ask about a newly introduced character, Fiore. Is there a story behind her attire? (laugh)

K: In order to use spells in this world, mages must have a spellmark*** carved somewhere on their bodies. To show off the strength of her own spells, Fiore prefers to wear the kind of outfit that you’ve taken notice to. In Randock, the country that Fiore lives in, there are outfits used specially by Spellmark Mages, and you can customize these in any which way you want. I can ensure you they are far from being indecent (laugh).

Oh, so she needs to expose her skin to use her magic and “chose” to dress like that to show of her strenght! At least she isnt breathing through her skin.(I wonder if these guys are laughing because even they can’t keep a serious face with this crap)

But despite that, he isn’t wrong. I searched a bit and found out that this is “normal” in the Star Ocean universe. For example, this is Nel from Star Ocean: Till the end of time. As you can see, she “needs” to show off her thighs because the “magical marks”. But if that’s the case, then there are some problems here.

First is that, if Fiore really needs to show her marks, she doesnt need to show that much skin, only the necessary. And second is, Fiore doesn't have any marks. I keep looking the screenshots but can't find any.

This is even more disappointing. I mean, if you’re gonna invent a stupid excuse to make the character walk around semi-naked, at least go all the way and try to convince people, don’t lie about it and leave it that.

(Add-on) To be precise, Fiore does have a mark on her thigh, as seen in this pic of her on EscherGirls ((it comes from this image.

How does that explain wearing holes all over her body, not just that one spot on the leg? Hell if I know.

Dear Star Ocean crew: if you really want to excuse obvious sexualization with a diegetic argument, then the least you could do is stay consistent within your own logic. It would still not be valid justification, but at least a less insulting one.

In the comments to that post:

This is just a bad excuse for bad clothing. I have seen other characters incorporate tattoos/markings much better into their looks than this character. Offhand Sirens from Borderlands 2 are also marked for their awesome skills, and work it in to the overall look better than this Fiore person.

Well, her outfit certainly is eye-catching and unique compared to other Fanservicey outfits tongue

Doesn't help that the creators are the ones who decide where the magical marks go. I get that magical marks look cool and you want to show them off, but when you decide to put them in places such as "inside of thigh"... imagine if they went on to put them on her breasts, or covered her entire body with them (which would've provided better justification for all that skin exposure, other than the part where they decided to cover her entire body in the magical marks just so she can wear a skimpy outfit). Are there even any males with these magical marks?

They could've said "skin-colored bodysuit" and be better off for it.

Also, kitten heels. There's only so many times one can claim "she's purposely wearing impractical outfits to show how badass she is!" especially if it's applied to lots of wildly different female characters across too many games.

edited 24th Feb '16 4:03:11 PM by hellomoto

AnotherDuck No, the other one. from Stockholm Since: Jul, 2012 Relationship Status: Mu
No, the other one.
#7699: Feb 24th 2016 at 10:38:36 PM

Consering that box-on-head thing, I used to know a girl who was okay with outrageous outfits as long as she had a mask on. But that's for performance art, not anything you wear regularly. For someone who's supposedly shy... not really that well thought out. It'd take a very specific personality to wear that outfit, and that doesn't seem to be it. Doesn't help that the rest of that "ninja outfit" is ridiculous and random as it is (why do ninja wear fishnets to begin with?). It does help with the cute and clumsy appeal, though.

Fiore... not even sure what to say. Looks better in the concept art than in the game? Don't really get it. Costumes that look like modern art have always been about as comprehensible to me as modern art.

edited 24th Feb '16 10:41:01 PM by AnotherDuck

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Bleddyn Since: Feb, 2014
#7700: Feb 24th 2016 at 11:19:12 PM

Y'know I really don't get the skimpy armor/clothing thing in general. It's not practical, it looks stupid to rather then sexy, and it has a habit of drawing attention away from the character's combat prowess to there physical form. The only time I will kinda pass it off is if the character in question is made out something other then flesh (they have a body of organic stone or metal) or is a god/goddess in the setting as they atleast have a reason behind why they aren't getting cut to pieces in combat.

I have seen many female characters look much more attractive in full body outfits rather then skimpy outfits. I don't see the appeal to the guys skimping either, even as a joke.

edited 24th Feb '16 11:19:35 PM by Bleddyn


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