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

It can be used, whatever is a good defense is another matter.

Im wont be eaiser to said she look the boob Window? I feel this a problem of cómic writer of wanting of what a wacky and color setting and be taken seriously at the same time.

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

It also warrants noting that using the lore of 90's-era video games to defend any creative decision is shaky ground to begin with. The writing of those games were often considered one of the lowest priorities on the development list. In point of fact, the only storytelling early Mortal Kombat games had was the bio and ending cards for each character, and half of those weren't even canon.

Characters like Kitana or Sheeva weren't designed to be super-faithful to their backstories. That Sonya Blade goes on-mission as a military officer wearing sweat pants and a sports bra is a walking reminder of that. They were designed because the developer thought they'd look cool, with some bullshit likely written up after-the-fact to try and invent a brief explanation for who they are for the 10% of fans who care.

Like, one of the series's prominent recurring characters - Baraka, specifically - literally only exists because one of the creators saw a scary-looking mask in a Halloween store and went, "We've got to make that into a character." The lore did not come first.

edited 8th Jan '18 12:30:10 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Things should have a in universe reason to exist beyond the out of universe reason something is done. It gives a piece of media a more complete feel. It is just a matter of making the in universe reason make sense by the rules established by said media in its own universe.

edited 8th Jan '18 12:34:07 PM by Darthwyn

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

That's only partially true. There are some things for which there can be no in-universe reason deeper than "because that's how character X is".

Which depend of some thing: consistency(why female chararter have skumpy outfit while male dosent) how much integrate with the chararter and other things outhere.

But I will said Sheeva is not a good example because so far she have been consistent with the shokan race so far and she isnt "sexy" aside for her cloth(not sexy pose for example).

Now Li mei in MKD or Sonya in MK 9?....yeah, that is problematic and worst because unlike the first entries that display your typical ninetieness all over, those games were kinda resent so they should now better....them again, after sawing MKX maybe they learned already.

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

Someone earlier made the excellent point that what matters is proportion, a few fanservicy characters is one thing but when all of your female characters are dressing skimpy and the same ration of males are not then it's a rather obvious double standard.

edited 8th Jan '18 1:32:13 PM by Fourthspartan56

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Mortal Kombat is also a fighting game. The genre on average is even less concerned with storytelling than most others. If you asked what the plot of the early Mortal Kombats were, I don't know if anyone could really tell you besides "oh there was some tournament thing I guess?".

That's true. Mortal Kombat did eventually start putting more effort into their story design and lore than most fighting games typically do, but that only happened after the 3-D switch. Deadly Alliance was the first to try and put a little more effort into a plot, while Deception was the first game of the franchise to openly feature a Story Mode.

Deadly Alliance, as I noted, was also the second-best in terms of female character design after X. Which isn't to say that the move to 3-D fixed the problem, mind, as Mortal Kombat 2011 is by far the worst offender.

edited 8th Jan '18 3:21:47 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Deadly did kinda have a story mode to a certain extent. Each character having a series of missions while showing what each character was up to before deadly alliance story starts.

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

MK actually did have a pretty deep lore for a 90's fighting game, not SNK level of deep mind you, but still surprisingly in depth. Problem was that like all 90's games, it was All There in the Manual.

And the bios in-game, which... could only be gotten after beating a tournament bracket. Every time. Bar some cheat codes, but that doesn't help.

Later games added ways of viewing endings/bios by unlocking them in some way, which unfortunately didn't exist for the original 2D games.

It's not a lack of story so much as a lack of easily getting it. Combined with how it was quite easy to find the game used for cheaper, and some didn't have the manual or never read it(and the fact they don't have the story consistently told to you outside of the intro), and you simply get a story that's harder for people to notice. And it wasn't a bad story by any means, just very simplistic like your typical fighting game story. It had enough lore to be passable for its time(especially with the bios). 3D games vastly improved on that, as well as characterizations.

For a genre that relies A LOT on tournament arcs and others, MK does have a quite deep story actually and I kinda dislike how much is lump into "mindless basher" critics

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

Wasn't saying otherwise, just that it wasn't super easy to access the full set of details for many gamers.

That's part of why some barely knew of it till later games fixed this issue.

And yeah, for the many that don't know, them bashing it makes sense. Not that they should be bashing things, but it's kind of hard for them to know a story that is presented in a hard way to find within the game alone. With bios extremely difficult to get on average, you're left with a short story snippet, which is what the majority of gamers will see as is. This makes it a lot more understandable on where this thought came from, that it lacked a lot of lore and such.

I agree proportion matters, but I'm not sure it's the only thing that matters. I'm imagining an hypothetical situation ^cough which at least resembles my impression of Legend of the Cryptids in which 100% of the male characters are sexualised... but they're about 5% of the cast and you have to really go looking for them, while there may be a fair number of reasonably-designed female characters but they're still heavily outnumbered.

I guess you could say that that's disproportionate to the cast as a whole though?

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Hey look more Digimon talk from me

So anyway I stumbled upon this interesting video discussing Yolei and Cody from 02.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U68pOo5KAqk

The main thrust of this is that the video believes that Yolei should have gotten the digiegg of knowledge and while Cody should have gotten the digiegg of love. Yolei is shown as being interested in computers much like Izzy and is even shown coordinating strategy with him on occasion. Cody meanwhile has the love for his dead father is one of his defining traits. Yet it kind of seems that Yolei got the love egg because the crest of love was given to a girl in the previous series and love is a concept often associated with female characters (see the Star Sapphires from Green Lantern). And really the only thing Yolei has in common with Sora is both have bird digimon.

I honestly never gave this much thought but I do find myself agreeing with the video. And it's a shame as I feel switching the eggs around might have given both Yolei and Cody more depth than they had.

That is a good idea, really good one.

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Wall of Text incoming.

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I was thinking about female Big Bad s, especially, Haman Khan and Miang.

Both characters are pretty good Big Bad (IMO) and while I like Miang more than Haman (and most of the Gundam Big Bad besides Durandal, I really had a soft spot for that Totalitarian Utilitarian), I considerate both to be pretty good female Villains, threatening and powerful.

The issue is that their characters are somewhat sexist.

Haman inherited the power for her father, had a romantic-mentorship story with a male character and ultimately develops romantic feelings for the male protagonist (who is 14, but acts like 16-18). Ambar called her "Medea in a Humongous Mecha" BUT, Haman avoids the worst of it because the story focus into her role as The Evil Overlord of Axis Zeon and a brutal Knight Templar that is able to unify the remanents of the old Zeon and is able to take advantage of all the devastation that happened in Zeta.

...but that also highlights another issue, not with Haman, but with Zeta itself. The issue that Haman, one of the Big Bad Duumvirate of Zeta is the only competent woman of the series besides the Heroic Enma Sheen (that outrights denies her feminity, by saying dumb things like "I am not bound for female emotions" and justifying the betrayal of one of her friends by saying "she was just following her womanly instints").

BUT something good happens, and that is ZZ Gundam, that honestly? Needs More Love , a lot more love, because it manages to have a level of gender equality that a lot of series in this day should try to imitate. A good bunch a Action Girl s, Haman at her best and most threatening, a Ms. Fanservice villain that still manages to be a good threat to the heroes (and that also works as a sad deconstruction of the Quircky funny Starter Villain), even the Non action little sister of The Hero manages to have moments of awesomeness.

Myang is similar to Haman in that, at being a female Big Bad, she's a female competent villain, with the issue that she's the only competent female.

I Love to Hate Miang, she's the Cosmic Horror Story of Xenogears made flesh, but she's the only competent woman. And even that is ruined.

Miang is the humanoid avatar of a Eldritch Abomination, which means that even the female Big Bad is not a "real" female, all other woman exist to fulfill a purpose for a main character, including the main heroine, whose purpose become leaving the military and living for the sake of her Love Interest. It wouldn't be bad if it wasn't that she lampshades it, and start treating gender roles as literally sacred, and especially if Elly wasn't the other important female besides Miang.

In a more personal question, the idea of a Female Big Bad stealing the bodies of other woman is sexist? Because I actually used that as a concept in my stories.

My point with mentioning both villains was that, a Female Big Bad that use sexist tropes is fine, unless they become the only competent female representation.

edited 23rd Jan '18 11:31:01 AM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

Stealing bodies of women is technically sexist, but not necessarily problematic. It depends entirely on how it's done. What's the purpose; why only women?

Likewise, using sexist tropes can be done in so many ways. Playing them dead straight without a point in them being sexist is usually bad, though. You can play them straight to have them highlight an issue, or to make the setting darker or less modern. In the case of a villain, there's a good opportunity to highlight something morally wrong. However, sending the message that a character is evil or less competent because she's female (or because he's male, for that matter), plainly isn't good.

If it's the only competent female character, then that's a problem of its own, assuming there are plenty of other female characters and competent male characters. That gives the impression the character is competent despite being female. Gender shouldn't play a role in competency without a good reason.

Check out my fanfiction!

For a In-Universe perspective, is because Miang is the duplicate of the mother of all the humanity and she search for similar bodies, For a outside one? The Author liked gender roles so much that he turned them into the key to save all humanity from being used as spare parts for a Mechanical Abomination.

And about my own story? Well, said Big Bad apparently decided that she liked female bodies more than male ones, she happened to awake in a female human body and she liked it (she IS a Nyarlatothep-like Eldritch Abomination, she understand humanity despite not being human at all)

edited 23rd Jan '18 11:41:20 AM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

Neither of these are actually true, but the fact that they're so pervasive in the fandom is telling anyway. In Zeta proper, there's nothing to suggest that Haman has any romantic feelings for Char — she treats him like a friend and ally, until he reveals that he's defected and is no longer loyal to her, then she treats him like an enemy and a rival. Most of the "Haman had a crush on him" stuff comes from the "Char's Deleted Affair" manga, which was made by different people and has a loose grasp of continuity in any case.

As for Judau, what's actually going on is that they have a Newtype connection, but Haman herself doesn't understand it, so even she thinks (at first) that it's romantic attraction. She's wrong, however, and eventually realizes her mistake. Her attraction to him is due to the fact that she's a Misanthrope Supreme who thinks that Humans Are Bastards and he's The Idealist who believes that Rousseau Was Right. Since she spent her formative years surviving in (and eventually seizing control of) a Deadly Decadent Court, she's genuinely never encountered anyone with that attitude before, so she becomes rather obsessed with him after seeing that worldview from the inside thanks to their psychic connection.

Haman is legit one of the best characters (to say nothing of female characters) in the Gundam franchise — the fact that the fandom regularly (re)defines her entirely as "Woman Scorned" and "The Cougar" is intensely frustrating.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Part of the issue, at least in the English dub (haven't watched the Japanese) is that all of the language choices Haman uses to describe her relationship with Char and why she's mad that it's over, echo the Woman Scorned and the tropes around it. I'd never read CDA, but I still came away from Zeta with the distinct impression that Char had seduced a teenage girl, abandoned her, and was now reaping what he'd sown.

That is why I added the pseudo, dubs (and subs) harm things , I , like Ambar, came with a similar idea. Anyway, I am not complaining of Haman at all, I think that she did a great job as the Big Bad of ZZ.

Same.

I was just using the example as a way to express my main idea, a Female villain can be done with no issues (or even if she uses sexist tropes in some way), but she just should NOT be the ONLY competent female of the series.

edited 23rd Jan '18 12:00:35 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

And you gotta admit, his manipulations of Lalah Sune (age 17) and later Quess Paraya (age 13) make it rather easier to believe that Char did that to Haman.

edited 23rd Jan '18 6:13:53 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

As long as it's not about beauty, or at least solely because of beauty, and especially not to get the desires of men, then it's not.

Is because she's a Eldritch Abomination trying to summon herself into our world and destroy everything so she finally can be free from the bounds of the existence as we know it.

I forgot that we were talking about Miang for a while, I curse my bad memory

edited 23rd Jan '18 8:18:42 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

edited 24th Jan '18 12:48:33 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised