If i had a nickel for every time someone commented this over the years, I could re-edit Inside Out to actually make them look like that.
Anger is also supposed to be a brick, and Fear is designed after a nerve. They at least look way closer to their inspirations than the girl characters do, which had to be designed way more human-looking.
The inherent difference between a human and a character is a character cannot think for themselves. Everything they do and say is for a specific purpose, even if it’s a small one.
Like, sometimes nerds argue “just because this character chooses to dress sexually doesn’t mean they’re not a strong female character!” and its like, they’re a character, ya dingus. They didn’t choose to do anything. A designer decided that this character should be wearing this. So you can talk for hours and hours if you want about how the character has a deep and engaging backstory and is super tragic and human but at the end of the day a designer decided to dress them up like a lingerie model for a reason. This becomes extra irritating when the character engages in a lifestyle that is completely at odds with their wardrobe. Oh, she chose to wear that bikini in a combat situation? She sure sounds level headed. No, please, don’t give me your twelve page long essay about how her battle bikini “makes sense in canon” I have to catch a train this week
Can we, as a society, just collectively agree to stop doing this? It’s pretty played out by this point.
flonde
This post is unsettling in two ways.
Firstly, the way this post reads implies it’s acceptable for dudes to be portrayed like “total freaks” while women should be portrayed like normal people. Why is that women not being portrayed abstractly is okay? It’s impossible to argue it’s not sexist to suggest this unequal treatment is okay because it’s “visually interesting.” Equal means equal treatment; not favoured in towards one or another.
Secondly, since when was the last time you could tell a male *chipmunk or cat from a female chipmunk/cat just by looking at it and saying “oh, this cat is obviously male/female!” Not based on behaviour, just what it looks like.
As an animator, if your viewers can’t immediately tell the gender/sex of the portrayed character, you’re going to confuse them (unless that’s the intended effect). Like with the hair and clothes, what we hair usually indicates what sex we are. Look at Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse; Mickey has pants whereas Minnie has feminine clothing and lashes. Wardrobe is often indicative of what the viewer is looking at, like if you put a cute bow on a small rock, it’d look feminine, whereas if you put a sailor hat on the rock, you’d think it’d look masculine.
The suggestion that we should simply stop this is unrealistic, especially given that there is no alternative to this method provided in the post. If you want it to stop, be constructive and provide an alternative instead of just asking for it to stop.
Sorry, the point I was trying to make is that I want to see more girl characters that are just as weird and freaky as the men. Like, more fox girls that have hairy cheeks and long snouts, not just a little button nose and "fur" that looks like white people skin. So, more equality, not less.
If your artstyle has animal characters, the men and women should at least look like they're part of the same species. If they wear clothes, that's fine, but everyone should wear clothes then, not just the women.
And there's other ways to communicate gender if you need, like their voice or the pronouns they use.
Joy, Sadness and Disgust would not look like normal people. For one thing, their head to body ratio is way off. For another, Joy doesn’t have toes.
Also, why use the relatively obscure Candy Kong and not the well-known and actually playableDixie Kong?
Oh look, both Diddy and Dixe have hats and clothing. What about Tiny Kong?
Original look. What about now?
She got older, and now dresses like, well, a teenage girl. Probably to prevent confusion with Dixie.
Gadget’s primary trait isn’t her looks, it’s her Macgyvering. If you’te going to complain about hair - a simple indicator of gender - you might as well complain about Jack having a moustache.
As for the Looney Tunes show…
Porky has a coat and tie. Speedy has hat and worker clothes. Tweety has long-feminine eyelashes. Both main male characters - Daffy and Bugs - look more or less like normal dudes. And since they were grandfathered in, they don’t usually wear clothes. As opposed to Lola, introduced in Space Jam in a basketball uniform, and whatever the duck lady’s name was, created for this show.
Getting back to Inside Out, they were designed after a nerve, teardrop, star, broccoli, and square, respectively. Turns out the one we spend the most time with, Joy, looks the most human. Sadness doesn’t, but she is supposed to look cute and huggable.
Compare and contrast with Toy Story. Woody and Buzz. Basically human-shaped, as opposed to Rex or Slinky.
alaskantigah
Wait, wait, wait. Are you telling me they took a collection of very intelligent, resourceful, and often important to the story females…and dumbed them down to their looks? Soo…who’s onjectify8mg who now?
In a shocking turn of events, people are entirely capable of talking about one aspect of a character without that making the only thing that matters to them.
Joy, Sadness and Disgust would not look like normal people. For one thing, their head to body ratio is way off. For another, Joy doesn’t have toes.
Also, why use the relatively obscure Candy Kong and not the well-known and actually playableDixie Kong?
Oh look, both Diddy and Dixe have hats and clothing. What about Tiny Kong?
Original look. What about now?
She got older, and now dresses like, well, a teenage girl. Probably to prevent confusion with Dixie.
Gadget’s primary trait isn’t her looks, it’s her Macgyvering. If you’te going to complain about hair - a simple indicator of gender - you might as well complain about Jack having a moustache.
As for the Looney Tunes show…
Porky has a coat and tie. Speedy has hat and worker clothes. Tweety has long-feminine eyelashes. Both main male characters - Daffy and Bugs - look more or less like normal dudes. And since they were grandfathered in, they don’t usually wear clothes. As opposed to Lola, introduced in Space Jam in a basketball uniform, and whatever the duck lady’s name was, created for this show.
Getting back to Inside Out, they were designed after a nerve, teardrop, star, broccoli, and square, respectively. Turns out the one we spend the most time with, Joy, looks the most human. Sadness doesn’t, but she is supposed to look cute and huggable.
Compare and contrast with Toy Story. Woody and Buzz. Basically human-shaped, as opposed to Rex or Slinky.
You’ve got Kazooie, Banjo’s best friend and partner from Banjo and Kazooie, a breegull of sass and wit who is indeed female.
The Gummi Bears, whose female members are aesthetically similar to the males!
And it’s worth addressing Tails, of the Sonic games, who was orignally slated to be female and was thusly referred in many a gaming magazine at the time, but Sega pulled an EA-Revan and made the character confirmed male by the third game. Regardless, Tails’ proportions in-game are the same style as Sonic’s.
By that token, so too is the case with Sally, whose proportions are the same as Sonic’s in the cartoon inspired by the games (Sonic Sat-AM)
Beast Wars’ Airazor of the Maximal faction is female, but apart from subtly feminine curvature, she is no less powerful in appearance from her male counterparts.
Or Blackarachnia, of the Predacon faction, who has more obvious female appearance, but is still clearly a powerful robotic organism. She has giant claws, spider legs protruding from her biceps (Which are on rotating bearings) and her transformation is visually similar to Tarantulas, the Predacon who repurposed her from her Maximal origins..
Long story short, there are numerous examples of female characters who share the visual traits of their male counterparts.
Now, you *do* have a point and it’s pretty annoying, but you picked some strange fruit.
Honestly, you could make a complete paper on World of Warcraft’s ridiculous art style alone…
Uhh, I’m not totally sure what your intention is here. Because if you agree that these tropes get really samey and boring, then we’re on the same page. This post is more for the people who’ve never noticed this before, or who will staunchly defend lazy designs.
I’m going to disagree that my examples are cherrypicked, and the (perceived?) implication that most female characters are actually very unique and well designed. There’s a long history of “slap a bow on it” characters, and I don’t think we’re going to overturn that by throwing a handful of good or bad characters back and forth.
Joy, Sadness and Disgust would not look like normal people. For one thing, their head to body ratio is way off. For another, Joy doesn’t have toes.
Also, why use the relatively obscure Candy Kong and not the well-known and actually playableDixie Kong?
Oh look, both Diddy and Dixe have hats and clothing. What about Tiny Kong?
Original look. What about now?
She got older, and now dresses like, well, a teenage girl. Probably to prevent confusion with Dixie.
Gadget’s primary trait isn’t her looks, it’s her Macgyvering. If you’te going to complain about hair - a simple indicator of gender - you might as well complain about Jack having a moustache.
As for the Looney Tunes show…
Porky has a coat and tie. Speedy has hat and worker clothes. Tweety has long-feminine eyelashes. Both main male characters - Daffy and Bugs - look more or less like normal dudes. And since they were grandfathered in, they don’t usually wear clothes. As opposed to Lola, introduced in Space Jam in a basketball uniform, and whatever the duck lady’s name was, created for this show.
Getting back to Inside Out, they were designed after a nerve, teardrop, star, broccoli, and square, respectively. Turns out the one we spend the most time with, Joy, looks the most human. Sadness doesn’t, but she is supposed to look cute and huggable.
Compare and contrast with Toy Story. Woody and Buzz. Basically human-shaped, as opposed to Rex or Slinky.
Holy shit, syabm? You’re just now seeing this post? I was certain this made its rounds in the anti-sj circles years ago when I made it. Okay.
Uhhh, yeah, pardon me if my tone seems dismissive, I’ve just seen, and addressed, almost all of these points already. And now all your followers are just going to reblog the versions where you “pwn’d” me. 9_9
Joy, Sadness and Disgust would not look like normal people. For one thing, their head to body ratio is way off. For another, Joy doesn’t have toes.
Yeah, we’re talking about “normal” by cartoon standards. Ellie Fredricksen is proportioned like a bobblehead, but is relatively normal shaped compared to Carl.
Look at those chins, mang. And you could fit both of her big eyes in Carl’s nose. Also, this is really important and the key to the whole issue:There’s nothing wrong with characters looking endearingly weird or “unrealistic”. My problem is female characters rarely get to be as unique as male characters.
Also, why use the relatively obscure Candy Kong and not the well-known and actually playableDixie Kong?
I could’ve totally used Diddy and Dixie and talked about her incongruent hair, or any of the other girl characters with inexplicable hair. I picked Candy because she was the clearest example for the series, being contrasted against Donkey Kong, her love interest/counterpart. I could’ve also done Tiny here, but she doesn’t have as clear of a counterpart.
Gadget’s primary trait isn’t her looks, it’s her Macgyvering. If you’te going to complain about hair - a simple indicator of gender - you might as well complain about Jack having a moustache.
pfft. This post is specifically about looks, not their role in the series. And I’d care about Jack’s mustache if it was even remotely as prevalent as the hair. If almost every male non-human character had a mustache just to make sure the audience knows it’s not girl.
Getting back to Inside Out, they were designed after a nerve, teardrop, star, broccoli, and square, respectively.
Yeah, I saw the 107 facts video, and every other commenter in these notes, and I’m still not seeing it. I’ll just repost another of my responses to this.
So, for fun, I tried my hand at redesigning the girls from Inside Out. Not saying that these are “better” or “correct” designs, but this is what I would have come up with if given the theme of broccoli, teardrop, and star.
Disgust stayed mostly the same, but with more stocky legs and rounded hair.
Sadness is overall more pear-shaped, and i picture her skin would act more liquid-y, squishing and stretching more than the others. Her clearly defined hair would be replaced by lumps that just meld into her head.
Joy was given a crop top and capri pants which are better suited for running, jumping, and playing. The most accurate version of a “star” would be Maggie Simpson in her winter wear, so this is the next best thing. She now has a weird Lisa Simpson-style head, with points like a star.
Haha, I wouldn’t have typed out that whole wall of text on your other infamous post if I saw this one first. This is an argument style that I think really works. Great job on this comic. It’s got a clear message and it comes from good intentions. I wanna see this one spread around more.
Yeah, same. Not only does this comic end on a happier, more agreeable note, but I feel it’s also much broader and strikes at what I see as the real issue. (Though a lot of people got a chuckle out of duck tiddies. :p)
THIS is exactly what I keep trying to communicate.
brainal-leakage
I find this style appealing. I don’t think it’s inherently bad. I don’t think it’s inherently good. It’s just a style. Fuck me I guess, but I feel like people should draw what they want. If you don’t wanna see it, go ahead and be the one to draw it differently. Some people will like it. But don’t put me and other artists down for having a preference that doesn’t line up with your ideal art wonderland. It’s subjective.
So no, we cannot as a society just collectively agree to stop doing this. As a society we each want something different. I’m as tired of these posts as you are of these designs.
“It’s just a style” is a true statement, and as with all artistic criticism, you’re free to ignore it.
I’m just pointing out a reason why it doesn’t make any sense.
It’d be like, in Zootopia or The Legend of Zelda or some random cartoon, all the male characters had propellers coming out of their head. And there was no reason given; this just happens across mediums, time, in most media, without context.
It’d just be weird, right? And why don’t any of the girl characters have that? It seems like a fictional character has to have a propeller in their head for the audience to tell that they’re male, for no reason.
Surely you’ll permit me to point out what a lot of people in the notes have noticed but never put their finger on.
I’ll give you eyelashes even though they’re not prominent, but pink wasn’t a condition, and the clothes are typically masculine in addition to not being the norm for the character.
Doesnt matter if they aren’t prominent. Theyre there.
So no win for you.
But youre right on one point. Lets add not making the character entirely out of a historically established “girls colour”.
And before anyone gets all tumblr on me, yes I know in Victorian times pink was a boys colour how dare I patriarchy rarraghdhejjaraeg
Ok, so, looks like a guy, looks like a non sentient at most androdgynous cat, and then we get to: eyelashes, followed by eyelashes.
Seriously I get it, women in tit armour is bad and giving ducks tits is questionable. But generally speaking, at a glance, without prescribing a *female voice* to a character to indicate it’s female, which you can’t do in 2d media, it’s stupendously hard to at least not fall back on the little things like thick eyeliner on the eyelashes to indicate gender. More curvy shapes is an option vs more angular shapes but then you run foul of the whole sexualisation of female cartoons by making them overtly curvy crowd. I’m not trying to piss on your bonfire buy the fact is theres a reason why this shit is standard. Because without It you have a world of androdgynous at best characters. Which, if that’s what your story calls for, more power to you. But it isn’t always the case.
victoriousfightingbuddha
What if androgynous is just kinda the way to go for non-humans since only humans have our specific form of sexual dimorphism?
For that matter, why is it that female characters need to read ‘feminine’ whereas anything else is presumed male? Why do ‘ugly’, ‘inhuman’, and ‘default’ all get read as male?
I’ll give you eyelashes even though they’re not prominent, but pink wasn’t a condition, and the clothes are typically masculine in addition to not being the norm for the character.
Doesnt matter if they aren’t prominent. Theyre there.
So no win for you.
But youre right on one point. Lets add not making the character entirely out of a historically established “girls colour”.
And before anyone gets all tumblr on me, yes I know in Victorian times pink was a boys colour how dare I patriarchy rarraghdhejjaraeg
Ok, so, looks like a guy, looks like a non sentient at most androdgynous cat, and then we get to: eyelashes, followed by eyelashes.
Seriously I get it, women in tit armour is bad and giving ducks tits is questionable. But generally speaking, at a glance, without prescribing a *female voice* to a character to indicate it’s female, which you can’t do in 2d media, it’s stupendously hard to at least not fall back on the little things like thick eyeliner on the eyelashes to indicate gender. More curvy shapes is an option vs more angular shapes but then you run foul of the whole sexualisation of female cartoons by making them overtly curvy crowd. I’m not trying to piss on your bonfire buy the fact is theres a reason why this shit is standard. Because without It you have a world of androdgynous at best characters. Which, if that’s what your story calls for, more power to you. But it isn’t always the case.
victoriousfightingbuddha
What if androgynous is just kinda the way to go for non-humans since only humans have our specific form of sexual dimorphism?
For that matter, why is it that female characters need to read ‘feminine’ whereas anything else is presumed male? Why do ‘ugly’, ‘inhuman’, and ‘default’ all get read as male?
Because, and i want to be clear here: all our examples here are meant for a child audience.
A child will not have a clue what sexual dimorphism is.
These are simple entertainment, good vs evil, I associate with the one on screen that sounds most like me so that I can form a speedy bond with this character in under 20 minutes.
It isn’t a two hour documentary on gender equality, the history of transgender visibility or the spectrum of sexual identity. By the same count they don’t do a Ghibli style of storytelling where there is no good there is no evil there are just people making choices. It’s not deep. If you want androdgynous character design, don’t look at western animation.
These are anthropomorphic/humanoid creatures. Most of them are going to have some form of human like characteristic that visually identifies them as female apart from their male counterparts which will have a more rough-looking or feral design while still being anthropomorphic/humanoid…
lycaonthewolfking
@bladeofthepoet It’s hilarious, honestly, when you realize that the gorilla shown earlier is a male character that happens to be voiced by a woman.
A-a-T is my side blog, and I haven’t checked its notifications in a while, so I had no idea all this wonderful #discourse was happening.
@ppdk
The problem is this conversation started on the wrong premise that you should draw a character that “appears to be female” without using the common tropes. Yes, slapping a bow on a bird will make sure the audience knows it’s a female bird. We’re aware of this; that is an effective technique. But that’s not the underlying problem.
In fact, I already did make a comic explaining the problem.
Here’s a challenge for you: Try drawing a male character without a mustache, necktie, or big muscles.
Oops, was that too easy? Okay, how about a male character with few hard angles, and softer colors?
This was a post about non-human female characters, so okay, how about non-human male characters?
Okay, but what about non-human male character without a mustache, necktie, big muscles, sharp angles, but having softer colors AND traditionally ‘girly’ tropes!
...(Wait, Spongebob does wear a tiny necktie.) but am I making myself clear? (and if I were being paid to do this, I’d find a ton more examples) How about a male character devoid of any anthropomorphizing elements at all?
The issue is not merely that girl characters are often marked with familiar elements to signify their gender, it’s the double standard that men don’t ever have to be. Male characters get to be every type of thing, female characters don’t.
Or rather, there’s nothing stopping female characters from being as interesting as male characters except for the limited imaginations of some character designers.
Back to @ppdk for a second: You say it’s because “it’s just for kids”, as a way to dismiss the criticism, but you can’t act like this all exists in a vacuum. Children grow up around this kind of representation from birth, so of course they’re going to be familiar with it.
ahhh hmm.. I will try my best to give you some info at least on how i do it/good things ive seen? I don’t have a lot of rules about my faces and I tend to just kind of Go At It a lot of the time? But I can give you some things to think about or the techniques I like to use. There are lots of ways to construct heads and stylize faces.
I think the most important things I keep in mind, like with everything else, is that the head is a solid object with volume, and that it has its own muscles and fat and stuff.
in terms of anatomy, with the way i stylize stuff, i like to show a few key things
1) The head is not separate from the neck, and it is not just sitting on the next like a lollipop. The neck interacts with the head. Most people also have at least a little bit of neck/chin fat, if not just loose skin there so that you can move your head. that area is in general soft.
2) the eyes are In the head, not just stickers on the head or spheres stuck to the head. (of course, this is not the only way to stylize, this is just what I like to show) the eyes are set into the cheek.
3) the mouth area makes no sense like thats not how that works but don’t worry about it.
the most basic way i construct a head is i start with like, a sphere, which im sure you’ve seen before:
the lines of the symmetry for me are pretty rough. i don’t follow them very specifically. I use them more for like “the head is facing this direction on this axis and this direction on this other axis”
vertical line is how far left or right its rotated, and the horizontal is how far up or down. I know the horizontal line is supposed to also be roughly where the eyes go, but I don’t really follow that too carefully. I mean it helps figure out where the eyes are going to be, but if it ends up not feeling right, be free to adjust. It’s more for keeping the head volumetric.
then i have a second oval (of varying shapes for different faces) for the lower half of the face. the top of the cheek starts roughly at the horizontal line of symmetry. I tend to think of this also as a volume.
This maps out the entire lower half of the head for me, so im sort of like, drawing all the way around underneath the head if that makes sense? it’s very helpful for drawing heads in weird perspectives. For example it helps with over the head perspective a lot because it sort of puts the jaw underneath the cheek bones, underneath the forehead, etc.
then i construct the face over that, using the nose to indicate direction by keeping it right on the vertical axis or floating over the vertical axis.
In doing facial expressions, I think something really important to keep in mind is the retention of mass. Like, even when you’re stretching the face really far, don’t add mass. (at least, for the style that i’m working with. this isn’t applicable to all styles) This combined with remembering what parts of the face are hard and what parts are soft will make characters seem, more, Solid.
so like:
the jaw doesn’t grow or shrink with the mouth opening, there’s still the same amount of chin. the jaw opens to open the mouth, the upper teeth are not on a hinge so the lower jaw is the only thing that moves.
I totally do not always follow this, though.
like, the chin here is probably a little bit “shrunk” to accommodate the mouth. However, other thing to think about that I’m trying to show with this, is that when one part of the face moves, so does the rest of it. Even if the facial anatomy isn’t realistic, it still all interacts. Like, the mouth opening up that wide smushes up the cheek muscles into the eye. (even though the mouth is just kind of drawn as a hole in the face)
(more examples of this)
even if the face is kind of “rubbery” here, though, the overall mass is still kept consistent. like its stretched in the second on, but it hasn’t “grown”
flesh is pulled over an imaginary skeleton underneath, and there is still “depth” shown by the angle of the teeth. there is also thought about how the eyes are sitting in their sockets, even though those sockets are being “stretched” a little bit.
I hope this isn’t a completely incoherent mess and that its at least somewhat useful information?
turns out critically analysing media is "thinking of ways to be pissed off"
Nah, you don't even have to think to notice these trends in cartoons and video games, they're everywhere. It's not bad to at least be aware of how prevalent it is.
btw, I already made a post addressing Problematic Slime's points, and hey, they ended up agreeing. We're cool now.
Oh gosh, I wouldn’t have known this reblog had commentary. Thank you to @teddybearyoshi for putting this into my notes.
Yeah first of all, none of the emotions have ears, but the others at least have hair to cover their lack of ears. If the men had hair too, that wouldn’t even be an issue. (Or like, if any of the girl characters had hairstyles that clearly showed a lack of ears? But they don’t, they all have hair that covers their lack of ears and makes them look more human to the audience)
As for Gumball, we’re talking about sexual dimorphism in the same species. We’re also not concerned about individual cases, but what a trend of cases represents. On gumball, the characters are overall wildly diverse, regardless of gender. You’re comparing slime and paper.
Next, Pearl has a long nose, and most gems have weird colored skin, but they look extremely human as far as aliens go. Keeping that in mind, since Steven is a hybrid of human and alien-that-looks-human, of course he’s going to look mostly human. Additionally, excluding the single hybrid case, the gems are a species of one gender, so there is no dimorphism between sexes. I’m just going to ignore your Steven Universe point from now on unless you revise it, since it appears to be hyperbole.
The bit you mentioned about male and female characters who look the same but wear a bow is a separate issue that I’ve also made a comic about.
Why is it that a character has to wear a bow for an audience to believe they are female? Why is it that a character could wear nothing, or even be a featureless box, and the audience assumes it is male? That’s what we’re talking about here. It’s not THAT an artist staples a bow to someones head so the audience knows it’s female. We’re wondering WHY this is the case.
And the thing is, this isn’t even always the case. So many people do it because it’s easy (read:lazy) but @dabathhouse reblogged this post with some very good examples from Dreamworks who managed to make animal characters of different genders that still look like animals.
I’m not against making male and female counterparts look different entirely, but I don’t think it should be a universal standard. And when it gets to the point where they don’t even look like the same species, (or they’re extremely stereotypical) then yeah, I’m gonna talk about it.
problematic-slime
thanks for clearing these up cause, i honestly had thought about this comic for a while, but expressed my views in some angry dumb comic, cause i try to be entertaining at the same time
but yeah, theres alot of cases where, there will be a female oc who isnt femine enough, people think she’s a girl.
and its just kind of like, most of us just assume characters are male unless its a. obvious, or b. we’re told that’s a girl. it’s something embedded in our childhoods cause, children can only comprehend so much about gender. and it’s just such a rooted in trend, idk if it’ll end or not. but either way, we learn someday
so yeah, in retrospect my arguement was pretty weak, but i’m glad to have an indepth response back from you
Hey, it’s cool. I like dumb comics, they add flavor; I do ‘em all the time. They much more interesting than the walls of text I get punctuated by “REKT” and overused, smug gifs.
it’s something embedded in our childhoods
This is true, and it’s one of the reasons I try not to be too hard on artists who do it, because I used to do the exact same thing with all my girl characters. Really, the only way to unlearn these sort of attitudes is to just be aware of it. I mean, that’s why I do these little comics; I don’t want people to feel bad or guilty, I just want them to try and notice stuff like this when they’re watching stuff. Be more analytical of media, that kinda thing.
well i’m not going to block you, and i apologize for assuming, it’s been a rough 2 years of straight game journalists trying to explain how my hobby treats me (it gets to be tiresome), but I’m personally sick of poorly written lgbt character shoved in so creators can tout their diversity, people have a good point about characters whose entire purpose is to basically say their gay or trans and do literally nothing else. dragon age gets it “ok”, that baldurs gate character was atrocious(glad to hear their giving her a more intricate backstory) good lgbt characters exist,(like cortez from mass effect 3, beautiful and tragic backstory) but they’re few and far between. most devs go for poorly written lesbians though, than anything related to gay men.(see literally any lesbian romance in games, they all read like straight guy fantasies. hardly a selling point for diversity)
Well, just know that I don’t hold it against you, and I understand how easy it is to get swept up in the anger of other people. It’s all cool.
As for Baldur’s Gate, to that, I would highly recommend Rantasmo’s video on the whole Mizhena situation.
tl;dw: Not all lgbt characters have to be fully fleshed-out, well-rounded characters, because not all straight characters are. There are plenty of heterosexual NPCs in games that will mention their heterosexual spouse the first time you talk to them, or any number of weirdly personal details, and no one has a problem with that. (Also, Mizhena only tells you they are trans after you, the player, ask about their name, which would be a logical direction for the conversation to take)
I haven’t played any of the other games you mentioned, or any romance games as of late, but I don’t deny that we have a ways to go as far as queer representation in media.
Oh gosh, I wouldn’t have known this reblog had commentary. Thank you to @teddybearyoshi for putting this into my notes.
Yeah first of all, none of the emotions have ears, but the others at least have hair to cover their lack of ears. If the men had hair too, that wouldn’t even be an issue. (Or like, if any of the girl characters had hairstyles that clearly showed a lack of ears? But they don’t, they all have hair that covers their lack of ears and makes them look more human to the audience)
As for Gumball, we’re talking about sexual dimorphism in the same species. We’re also not concerned about individual cases, but what a trend of cases represents. On gumball, the characters are overall wildly diverse, regardless of gender. You’re comparing slime and paper.
Next, Pearl has a long nose, and most gems have weird colored skin, but they look extremely human as far as aliens go. Keeping that in mind, since Steven is a hybrid of human and alien-that-looks-human, of course he’s going to look mostly human. Additionally, excluding the single hybrid case, the gems are a species of one gender, so there is no dimorphism between sexes. I’m just going to ignore your Steven Universe point from now on unless you revise it, since it appears to be hyperbole.
The bit you mentioned about male and female characters who look the same but wear a bow is a separate issue that I’ve also made a comic about.
Why is it that a character has to wear a bow for an audience to believe they are female? Why is it that a character could wear nothing, or even be a featureless box, and the audience assumes it is male? That’s what we’re talking about here. It’s not THAT an artist staples a bow to someones head so the audience knows it’s female. We’re wondering WHY this is the case.
And the thing is, this isn’t even always the case. So many people do it because it’s easy (read:lazy) but @dabathhouse reblogged this post with some very good examples from Dreamworks who managed to make animal characters of different genders that still look like animals.
I’m not against making male and female counterparts look different entirely, but I don’t think it should be a universal standard. And when it gets to the point where they don’t even look like the same species, (or they’re extremely stereotypical) then yeah, I’m gonna talk about it.
