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

There are about two situations it would be practical. One is in water, especially in settings where modern materials don't exist. Skin is very well-suited for handling water. Hair is not, however, or at least as far as speed and agility is concerned.

The other is if you want to be stealthy. Now, it depends on what kind of stealth you're aiming for, but most kinds of clothing make noise (including many types of skin tight clothing). If you're indoors, colours usually don't matter, since the best colour for stealth is whatever the background is, which isn't necessarily the stereotypical dark blue, green, grey or black, and it takes a very specific situation where colours actually make you invisible where you'd otherwise be visible. People have far better eyesight than fiction give them credit for (especially stealth games, balance aside). Overall, it's usually better to not wear something than to wear something. Of course, this doesn't go if you want to blend into anywhere people would actually see you.

The relationship between "Skimpy" and "combat" is at best neutral, but almost always a detriment. Ancient gladiatorial combat do have some more or less skimpy armour designs, but they're highly specialised for their purpose and role in the battles, which isn't strictly about combat effectiveness. If you're an adventurer, you also want something that's comfortable enough to wear all day (stiletto heels ain't it), so highest protection value isn't what's the best to aim for. On the other hand, you probably want a general protection for any odd situation that may appear.

If you're actually going for sexy, which is a non-combat approach, it's certainly an option. They don't combine (specific fetishes aside), even if they can appear at the same time. Almost everyone will see one or the other if put in the situation. And surviving trumps sexiness pretty much any time.

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Hmmm good points there. I honestly wasn't aware of the stealth thing (well atleast not to that degree) and I can't believe I forgot about gladiatorial combat (although considering that the practice was generally used as a blood sport...)

I was more pointing my ire towards games like Tera and a few other games like that that take the skimpy armor/clothing designs to the extreme. Hell female characters are pretty much forced to wear heels in that game (which was very irritating to me as I hate heels, especially in a setting like that).

The thing with gladiators is they were as much show as they were fighting, infact putting up a good show, was probaly better then having strong armour since well, they may not want to kill you if you constantly look good during your fights, so form was kind of a function there.

I would debate stealth though, since tan does not blend with most things not mud, you say that clours cant make you invisible, that is true, but they do help, they help A LOT, or else militaries would not need to CONSTANTLY develop better camouflages.

I thought I wrote it was also for show, but I guess I accidentally edited that out. It's what I meant about their role in it, since it's not about their combat role, but performance role. All the different types of fighters served a different narrative purpose, and they were usually matched against other types, since the contrast between them made for interesting fights. Well, a lot of this I'm just inferring from what I know, but yeah, the main point is that it was something mainly for the audience, and not for the fighters themselves.

Concerning camouflage, you're talking about a different situation. Military use is completely different, since you're talking about far greater distances where noise isn't a factor. Which really is the only advantage it is to not wear as much clothes. And sound is only a factor if you're indoors trying to steal stuff or assassinate someone. At that point you're a few paces away from someone, which is completely different from a battlefield. Modern military camouflage can make you pretty much invisible, if you don't move.

Although the main point I was making is that the situations where it's actually useful isn't the kind of situations it's used for in fiction.

Game characters almost invariably fall into the adventurer category I was talking about. The most important part there is comfort without sacrificing too much protection. While I agree with most opinions about game armour being too skimpy, many people take it too far, and say it's more realistic that everyone wear full plate armour all the time. That's just swinging too much in the other direction. It still depends on what you're doing, though. Are you raiding a dungeon, exploring new lands, or grabbing a beer in the local tavern?

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Incidentally, I recently discovered that /r/ArmoredWomen is a thing, It's specifically about female characters in armor that's reasonable and functional — no Chainmail Bikinis, no Cleavage Windows, and no "boob plates" (which we don't actually seem to have a specific trope for, surprisingly enough — Breast Plate is a redirect to Chainmail Bikini) are explicit rules listed on the sidebar.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Boobplate makes me wonder something - do males get absplate?

As far as I can tell, boobplate is usually used like a Tertiary Sexual Characteristic, especially when the wearer is in full plate and a face-concealing helmet. Hard to get congratulated for putting a female character in good armor when people can't even tell the character is female.

A common rebuttal for skimpy clothing for female characters is "it's fantasy, it's not supposed to be realistic!" How well this works depends on the rest of the setting, such as the intended tone of the setting, and the clothing of the male characters. A quick rule of thumb: female characters should be as unrealistic as male characters. If you line up all the female characters, and make another line for all the male characters, and the female characters have less than half the cloth of the male characters, there's probably something wrong.

Not that it's necessarily wrong to resolve this imbalance by removing cloth from the male characters

edited 25th Feb '16 7:50:43 AM by hellomoto

Certain Roman breastplates famously had that. I don't know too much about them, so I could be wrong, but I think they were most common with commanders (who wanted to look impressive while not usually being in direct combat) and gladiators (who, as we covered just before, were showmen as much as warriors).

Well, at least after you take into consideration that male characters are frequently four times the size of female characters.

I think the strongest sign of something not being realistic is that they're not wearing helmets. It's the most common piece of dedicated (by that I mean stuff that isn't also clothes) armour in history.

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For those who are interested, this kind of breastplate is called a muscle cuirass.

Armors of many kings also were visibly flashy for the purposes of...well. Being impressive, kingly and whatnot.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

Quite often, it's a common feature on Roman armor for example, then there is modern Batman armor.

edited 25th Feb '16 10:14:32 AM by Memers

Yeah, it helps that it's often not as exaggerated as boob plate often is.

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Do you mean exaggerated or accentuated?

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It's exaggerated yes, the abs under the plate do not usually match what is presented with the plate. The older generals who typically had them were not as fit as the younger guys so they had the armor made to look like they were fit.

Actors too are usually not THAT fit to things like this◊, it's why they use rubber instead of spandex for comic book movies.

Regarding the whole armor and chainmail bikini thing:

It's a pretty old artistic trope that goes back to at least the pulp era with stuff like Conan the Barbarian (most of the women in frank frazetta's art are barely wearing anything at all◊). I'm sure most of us are aware of the "sexy lamp" and male power fantasy considerations behind them, so I won't get too into it.

Artists usually have pretty traditional ideas of beauty and art has been taught that way for centuries, there is a pretty big drive to make women look pretty and to get the traditionally feminine look just right (let me tell you: it's really hard). As I've stated multiple times in this thread, most artists just want to make things they like and look cool, they're usually not concerned with larger trends or how those might be perceived as "problematic". Not to mention that even if they did want to avoid that, they usually are at the mercy of executives and directors who might tell them to make a design "more sexy" or w/e. The societal concerns about this have been around for a little bit, but are only just now starting to get noticeable traction.

I don't think having the "boob plate" is bad if it's a ceremonial piece of armor for example (and by default, isn't meant to be practical), but that's pretty much never the case. Speaking as an artist it is just something I would prefer to avoid since there are other ways of making armor look more feminine that don't involve this, it's just kinda tacky. And yes, I have seen "ab and pec plates" a number of times. I don't really mind them as much.

edited 25th Feb '16 11:12:34 AM by wehrmacht

A surprising amount of fiction have people fight in 'parade colors' and such because it looks prettier. Even Gundam's Red, White, Gold and Blue color scheme is it's parade colors instead of its standard white and off blue ◊ scheme.

Breasts are actually a secondary sexual characteristic, which is basically anything different between sexes that doesn't directly involve reproductive organs.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

he is right in that one: many artist just want to draw what it likes, evrerything else being damn, now the problem in the example put it before is many want to justify what it is simple fan servce, just like the clasical powergirl example, they cant just bring and said "I think is sexy that way" and call it a day, so it come close as stupid.

On the other hand I dislike that turmblr a little bit after their reasoing in Mortal kombat X female chararters.

"If you line up all the female characters, and make another line for all the male characters, and the female characters have less than half the cloth of the male characters, there's probably something wrong. "

This is usually the other problem, batman have bordeline full battle armour with plento of gadgets and female chararter have....a stripper suit? ughhh.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Don't get me started on reactions to fighting games, look at Street Fighter, according to some media the only reason anyone has a problem with it is because they're sexist homophobes, not because the game is a broken pile of shit on launch full of bugs.

This is why people get pissed at gaming media, they try and turn "this game is broken, what the fuck!" Into "I hate women ad hate this game because they took out the butt slap", and tell people to play broken games because if they don't they'd a bad progressive.

Looks like I got started.

edited 25th Feb '16 2:24:26 PM by Silasw

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

Identical accusations are being thrown around about Street Fighter V and Mika's butt slap removal, by Kotaku Australia, ignoring the fact that the game is literally only 1/3rd finished and servers cant stay up.

I cant find a link at the moment but Total Biscuit wailed on it his podcast here

The problem is the way the two issues conflate in the complaints, to the point that it's hard to tell the difference which is which.

Street Fighter 5 is a broken piece of shit at launch, but it also removed the butt slap. Both of these have caused outrages in the community, and the media can have a hard time telling the two apart when the one with the more finite, quantifiable point of contention perfectly fulfills that terrible reputation we're trying to get away from.

As gamers, we're our own worst enemy in this regard. We can protest over and over that it's the game's quality that has us so pissed off, but then the media looks two feet to the left and sees gamers congratulating each other for restoring Mika's butt slap and the closeup of Cammy's crotch, ruining the credibility of our protests.

It's like trying to protest that Eskimos DO NOT steal cars and that is a vicious and savage rumor while half of the protestors are busying themselves in the parking lot stealing cars. People will be less inclined to think of us as perverts desperately scrambling to make nude mods for the latest game as soon as they stop seeing us desperately scrambling to make nude mods for the latest game.

edited 25th Feb '16 2:35:25 PM by TobiasDrake

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Kotaku's being shit and water's still wet, more news at 10. :/

edited 25th Feb '16 2:35:14 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

The butt slap "outrage in the community" is admired by the author of the article to consist of some trolls on 4Chan who likely did it just to piss him off, with the author having to specifically going looking on shithole message boards for the outrage so that he could write about it.

It's not half the protesters, it's two guys who are do it deliberate to fuck things up, the press have to stop treating the two go like they're all of us.

X3 Yeah that's the one I was talking about, I confused names for a sec.

Kotaku has to have its claim to represent progressives in gaming disputed, because they're making all the actual progressives look bad.

Moders have also put giant horse dicks into games, Moders are weird and not resentative of anything.

edited 25th Feb '16 2:39:42 PM by Silasw

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

True but games media in general loves pulling that shit.

edited 25th Feb '16 2:38:29 PM by Memers

Considering that I have seen that one more then I have seen people complain about the game being a broken peice of shit, I have a very hard time beliving it is just a couple people on 4chan.

I may be wrong, the butt slap may not have been the stuff dug up from 4chan, that may have been the homophobia (that I belive wasn't actually homophobia but a dislike of a non-'manly' male character, assuming that all non-'manly' men are gay is actually homophobic itself on Kotataku's part).

Out of curiosity, where have you seen such outrage?

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran