Gender swap! The Magna Carta edition

It's been too long since I've done any original art for this blog, and I've been itching to do more! I knew as soon as I started working on that post about Hyung Tae Kim that I wanted to do another gender swap using his artwork, but it took me a while to find the time to sit down and do one.

Choosing an image was difficult. A lot of HTK's art is heavily distorted, and I wanted to experiment with actually not correcting anatomy this time around to see what the effect would be. However, I also really wanted to see what would happen if I took on a figure with an unnecessarily detailed crotch. For some reason, I wasn't able to find an image that was both very, very distorted AND very crotchular, so I settled for something crotchular and still a little distorted:

So this is Celestin Roaa from the Magna Carta series. This presented a huge challenge with the crazy boob perspective, and also with the costume - but I think it turned out well:

The costume presented quite the challenge, in that there wasn't any real male equivalent of the clothing that she was wearing. I compromised and gave my gender-swapped version a codpiece and chaps. Amusingly, I didn't realize how phallic the design on the codpiece was until after I drew it. I did try to give him a bulge, since Ken-doll superheroes with no visible bulge have always irritated me, but I think it was a bit obscured by the crazy codpiece. Alas.

The figure is softer than I intended, but I think that's more a result of me attempting to change as few lines as possible; I changed as little as I could to have the figure still be interpreted as male. (I'll admit the beard was me hedging my bets.)

Anyhow, in all other regards I'm quite happy with how the ridiculousness comes through. The chaps + codpiece are a wonderfully ridiculous combination, and the codpiece especially draws attention to the "HEY EVERYBODY LOOK AT MY CROTCH"-ness of the original pose. I think the low cut of the codpiece also helps make the sexualization extreme enough that it actually reads as sexualization. Were he wearing pants, I don't think that even the bare chest would really read as extreme sexualization the way the mostly bare chest with bikini top does with the original figure.

I think next time I'll tackle something with more obvious figure distortion, just to see what happens. I suspect it won't translate well, since the parts of the female body that get distorted don't really have male equivalents. But that unknown is part of why I'm doing this. I enjoy highlighting the ridiculousness of the imagery, sure. But the experimentation of what works and what doesn't is neat too.

I'd also like to do more re-designed characters, but I was having trouble deciding which character I should take on next. Anyone have any suggestions?

Apologetic linkspam: Have some WTF, and also some win

Okay, folks. As promised, here's a bit of extra WTF to carry you through the weekend. I resolve to fail less starting next week, but as I've discovered I need my weekends. Those two days to detox from all the icky shit I look at during the week in the name of research for this blog are important. Srsly. You don't even want to know some of the shit I stumbled across by accident while researching "clothing damage". Brr.

Anyway. Here's some WTF to console yourself with.

WTF the first: yet more creepy shit from Japan

So. There's this thing in Japan called a hostess club, where lonely young men go to spend time with women who are employed by the club, and by spend time I mean just that. Some of them will have board games, others will just have coffee... whatever. Anyhow, I stumbled across this article about a Japanese romance game centering around young women who work at a particular hostess club.

...yeah. Because stalking women home from work is totally romantic.

Anyway. No idea on if it's being translated - these screens are all in Japanese. But here's a taste:

If you want to see more, you can see the full article with lots, and lots, and LOTS of creeptastic screens here. Just don't say I didn't warn you. (And don't get caught reading it at work.)

WTF the second: dear Nukezilla, I heart you

Okay, this isn't so much WTF as an awesome repudiation of WTF. So remember the fail-tastic IGN Gamer Girl Christmas Gift Guide? If you haven't seen it, please do go glance through it. Don't bother reading the text if you're in a hurry - just check out the photos. Go ahead. I'll wait.

... yuck, right? I mean, I'm pretty sure anyone who would attach a photo like this to an article supposedly about gifts for "girl gamers"...

Okay, why is she making Seductive Face at SACKBOY? That's just creeping me out.

...has never really talked to a woman that games. (And yelling 'tits or GTFO' over XBox Live doesn't count, fellas. Neither does sending ASCII penises in chat.)

Anyway. John Kershaw over at NukeZilla wrote this amazing rant about how horrific that feature was. It starts off with "girls, meat, what's the difference?" and gets better from there.

John Kershaw, I don't know you, but you are my new hero.

WTF the third: The Bayonetta creator said something misogynist? NO! SAY IT ISN'T SO!

So everyone is familiar with Bayonetta, right? I have to say that she's hands down one of the best female characters to come out of the gaming industry in the last few years. She's strong, well rounded, not sexualized and... okay even I can't maintain the sarcasm.

Anyway. She's inspired a fair amount of controversy, which isn't too surprising since one of her main attacks involves spreading her impossibly long legs to kill things with her ladybits sword.

Bayonetta. Feminist icon and role model.

Anyway, Hideki Kamiya - the creator of Bayonetta - apparently thinks that all women view each other as enemies. Which begs the question... He designed a title with a female lead... why?

Oh right! The tits. I mean, sorry - the ass. Almost forgot. Kamiya is clearly an ass man.


...okay, that's enough fail. So here, have some win:

Troll data analysis

Blogger Kirbybits got involved in that whole Penny Arcade internets fiasco and got a lot of internet traffic to her blog. Interestingly, she decided to analyze comments to see what sort of trends troll comments display. The results are super-interesting! You can read the post here, but be warned there's lots of super-graphic language involving threats of rape.


And that's all I have time for today. I'll check in a few times this weekend just to make sure people aren't setting themselves (or each other) on fire in the comment threads, but otherwise I'll see you Monday!

Yuna: yes I liked X-2. Suck it up and deal. (possible spoiler warning)

I'm having a really shitty day, so I thought that I'd write about something that I liked rather than going off on another rant that I really don't have the mental energy for today. So today, here's a love letter (so to speak) to one of the greatest female characters ever, who - like Lightning - would have been perfect in every way if she'd been wearing pants:

There's a reason why I'm addicted to Square and BioWare games - both companies know how to write some fantastic female characters. And Yuna was the first character I ever encountered in my gaming life that made me sit back and say 'holy crap, she is such a fantastic female character!'.

Okay. So enough peaens to Yuna. Just what makes her so awesome? Let's start with the fact that she's a complete and total badass. The first time you meet Yuna, she's tired and sweaty from just having completed a huge ordeal - successfully summoning her first aeon:

Now that I'm a summoner, I could totally feed you your heart on a plate. Just sayin'.

So right off the bat, Yuna is established as a powerful character. She's no fragile little flower, waiting for a big, strong, manly hero to solve her problems. Aeons are entities of unbelievable power, so being able to call and control them confers with it a certain base level of badassery. I mean, when someone can call something like this to do their bidding:

(Oh, she can also walk on water, bee tee dubs.)

...it pretty much means you shouldn't mess with them.

What I liked even better about Yuna was that she didn't fall into the "powerful weakling" trap that's so common with many female characters in JRPGs. From the outset, Yuna was the leader of the party who had the skills and knowledge to get the job done. Really, Tidus - the protagonist - was just along for the ride. And how great is that? How many times in gaming do you see a female character really, truly in charge? Even the strongest male character, Auron, deferred to Yuna's judgement when they were at odds.

And let's face it, it's not like Yuna's job was all sunshine and puppies. Nope. She was walking a road that ended, as far as she knew, with certain death. What's more, she had to deal with the aftermath of disasters that left hundreds of people dead in their wake, and she was constantly being scrutinized as a public symbol of hope. But Yuna never whined or complained like you'd expect of a more strereotyped character. She did what she had to do.

One of the things that I loved most about Yuna was that she was either the saddest happy character or the happiest sad character I've encountered. Both roles are pretty stereotyped - pretty much any JRPG you play will have at least one genki girl. And many JRPGs and anime have stereotyped sad girls (often sad girls in snow). I love the fact that Yuna managed to turn both stereotypes on their head. When Yuna is sad, the player is sad because she's a genuinely endearing character. And when she's happy, it doesn't ring false like it would with a genki girl.

Furthermore, her sadness doesn't detract from her strength or otherwise make her seem like a weaker character. She has her moment of sadness, then she straps on her big girl boots and gets on with what she has to do. Her sadness, rather than being seen as a weakness of character, helps to define her strength because even when she is most sad she doesn't let that sadness control her life. That's powerful stuff.

Let's face it. If you found out the person you fell in love with wasn't real, you'd be pretty sad too.

The thing that makes me appreciate it all the more is that Yuna's sadness in X-2 mainly stems from not being able to be with Tidus. And that makes me appreciate her refusal to sit around and mope even more. She's moving forward with her life, not sitting around and being all weepy because of a man. Yuna's shenanigans in X-2 aren't all about saving the day, sometimes they're about having fun, pure and simple. And sure X-2 was full of fluffy "girl power" moments involving Rikku and Paine, but frankly I think that's the sort of thing that gaming needs more of - not less.

In the end, Yuna manages to be a strong, well-rounded character who never loses sight of herself or her ideals. And maybe best of all, she manages to save the day and rescue the prince instead of being the damsel in distress. At the end, Yuna's actions bring Tidus back - which wouldn't have happened if she'd sat around being a sad girl in snow (or in sand, considering that Besaid is pretty tropical.)

I'm not too proud to admit that I cried.

Now if only more women in games were written as well as Yuna, I'd have a lot less to complain about. ...and okay it would be nice if she was wearing shorts that didn't expose the lower half of her buttocks. Details...

Clothing damage being exported to North America? (VERY NSFW)

[Note: It's been a shittastic week, hence the lack of posting. I'll get back to three posts for next week. Meanwhile, I'll try to hammer out a linkspam in addition to this post. Sorry, folks.]

While I wouldn't exactly call clothing damage a hallmark of Japanese/Asian games, it's something that is common enough that (for the most part) it doesn't raise any eyebrows. However, it's not exactly something that's been too common in North American games. Unfortunately, it looks as if that trend may be changing, thanks to games originally made by Asian companies and translated for North American players.

So here for your, um, edification are screens from Kabod Online, Soul Calibur IV: Broken Destiny, and Parasite Eve: the 3rd Birthday. I wanted to confine this post to titles that have gotten more hype than others - but there are certainly smaller titles featuring clothing damage as a key feature that are being translated as well: Ikki Tousen Xross and Queen's Blade: Spiral Chaos are just two that I've stumbled across recently. I'm sure there's more.

Kabod Online

Kabod Online is a translated Korean MMO from Kabod Entertainment. As far as fanservice-y models go, they seem to be pretty standard as far as free Asian MMOs go:

Fully armored dude? Check. Standing next to a chick in cheesecake armor? Check. Le sigh.

When you go to Kabod's website, there are apparently only three character classes to choose from, with only two specializations for each class - so it doesn't look like there's a whole lot of gameplay diversity. K-MMOs are pretty infamous for not even trying to disguise the treadmill, but this seems perhaps more egregious than most.

But Kabod Entertainment doesn't seem too worried about that. They've got a sure-fire plan. Sell their game with breasts! Only, since that's what ALL of the free Asian MMOs are doing, they had to take it to eleven - hence the introduction of clothing damage. In Kabod, both players and monsters take clothing damage as they engage in combat. There's a base level where clothing/armor is undamaged, a middle level where it's mostly off, and a bottom level where you're in your skivvies and, if the character is female, your gazongas are hanging out:

So Kabod has this neat combat simulation feature called clothing da... BOOBIES!!

Unsurprisingly, the clothing damage feature is what has gotten the most attention and what Kabod Entertainment has been advertising most heavily. Way to pander to the lowest common denominator guys. From what I read while searching for screenshots, it's pretty common to play a rogue (one of the least clothed classes) and let her get down to mostly naked just so you can ogle her while you play. I mean, check this out:

LEFT: One breast in, one breast out? That's gotta be uncomfortable. RIGHT: Oh god. They modeled ladybits, didn't they? That's just gross.

Will this be the game that launches a thousand faps?

So. Moving on. Shame on you, Kabod. Etc, etc, etc.

Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny

The studio behind Soul Calibur is apparently having a competition with Dead or Alive to see who can make the skeeviest game - it's the only explanation I can think of. Soul Calibur IV is getting a PSP release, with the addition of - you guessed it - clothing damage! Because, really, we weren't seeing ENOUGH of these ladies, amirite?

Also, there is a character creator that will not only let you create new characters, but will also let you customize existing characters, in case you're feeling like some of your wimminz are too covered up.

Anyway. I've ranted enough about Soul Calibur here, so here's some screens:

FLAWLESS... um... nudality?

Parasite Eve: the 3rd Birthday

So we have yet another entry in a series of female characters who used to be mildly positive strong characters and who have been turned into walking fapfests designed to please male gamers. Poor Aya. I'm not saying that Aya Brea was ever on the level of Samus, but she's a far cry from Princess Peach!

It should be noted that there was a fair amount of buzz about the fact that the beginning of 3rd Birthday features a shower scene. OMG! Color me excited!

So the shower scene is bad enough, but series creator Nomura decided from the outset that there would be clothing damage in this title, and that Aya would take more damage as her clothing got damaged further. This would make sense if Aya was walking around in plate mail, but since she's wearing just normal clothes, the only possible explanation is "sex sells". So here's the progression that Aya goes through:

LEFT: Very slightly damaged (jeans start out distressed) MIDDLE: Medium damage RIGHT: Max damage

Now, Aya can get changes of clothing to cover herself up again by going back to base - but it doesn't really seem like that's a feature that's being heavily encouraged, since Nomura has said in an interview (unfortunately, I can't find the link anymore) that you can get Aya to max clothing damage quickly by dropping a few grenades nearby. "Not that anyone should play that way" - he hastened to add.

Even worse is that the clothing damage is, again, pretty much how they're promoting the game. I mean, check out this promotional art.

Look at that! Half her ass is just hanging out there! Oh Squeenix. I know that you can be pretty sexist, but why do you have to do shit like this? You want to give me well written female characters with no pants and very little clothing? Fine. I'll roll my eyes and pony up. But this? This is not okay.

Perhaps the most depressing thing of all is that you can switch Aya's costumes. There's a loooong list of options, including a Lightning costume aaaaannnd...

Fetish wear! Because who doesn't want to watch a maid get her clothes torn off while fighting monsters and stuff?

/headdesk

Industry artist fail: Hyung Tae Kim (so VERY VERY nsfw!)

While looking for another entrant in my fanartist hall of shame, I happened to stumble across an artist whose work I had not been familiar with - Hyung Tae Kim. I initially found him when I stumbled across this image:

/sigh. Distorted anatomy? Check. I mean, even more so than usual. Improbably large breasts that defy physics? Check. Lovingly detailed ladybits? Cheeeeeck. This guy is a charmer all right.

When I did more research I discovered that HTK is actually a pretty influential artist in the Asian gaming industry. He's worked as lead character design on a huge number of roleplaying games, including the War of Genesis series (3 games), the Magna Carta series (2 games), and Blade and Soul online. And while normally, I wouldn't tackle an artist like HTK because of the fact that he does work primarily in the Asian games industry, the fact remains that he does have a HUGE following here in North America and does occasionally work over here. That blue crotch-floss with butterflies? The cover for an Exalted sourcebook. So I figure that makes him fair game.

Amusingly, one of the first articles that I found about HTK that tipped me off to what a following he had over here was this one. The headline image shows a totally cleavagey chick, but don't worry folks. She's just an exception!

WTF is up with her boobs, man?

If this is an exception, why go to the effort of picking out this one? Methinks thou doth protest too much, sir... Anyhow. Mr. Mahan is mostly correct in that yes, a lot of HTK's women don't display actual cleavage. No, instead they have impossibly large, impossibly pointy breasts that flop around like distended lemons. I mean, seriously. Look at these things:

LEMON BOOBS AHOY!

I never thought I'd have to invent a new category of boob mockery, but here it is. LEMON BOOBS. Methinks this guy can't be getting a whole lot of action because holy shit in what universe do women have breasts that are this large and this pointy? Those gazongas are practically WMD! Also, contrary to popular belief, jiggle physics does not exist in real life just because it's called "physics". I know that there has never been a situation in which I've had to dodge being hit in the face with my own breasts, so ease off with the anti-grav field!

Another pretty common feature of HTK's artwork is the OUTTHRUST LADYBITS. (Yes, capitals required). If you look at his art, a lot of the women seem to be thrusting their ladybits pretty much right at the camera:

NOOOOO! THE LADYBITS!

So, I'm guessing he would feel quite a bit of affinity with the WoW artist who did that infamous ladybit assassin picture I mocked a while ago... Another pose that's way too freaking common is the "please do me from behind" school of posing:

Come on. It doesn't get less subtle than this!

So, yeah. This guy clearly not winning a lot of awards for class. I realize that Asian culture is a lot more misogynistic in some regards, but the fact that there are plenty of North American dudes panting to get their hands on scans of this guys art books is just discouraging. This takes the garden-variety misogynistic character design we get over here and make it seem tame in comparison!

The thing that makes me really want to punch HTK in the nuts is his fetish for lovingly detailed ladybits:

Seriously? Talim is totally underage! That's just gross.

The thing that makes me most sad is that Blade and Soul seems to have adhered to HTK's designs pretty slavishly in the rendering of their character models. I mean check this out! We have actual modeled camel toe:

Yuck.

WTF: The where the hell did my week go? edition

Holy shit, folks. This week kind of got away from me. I apologize for the radio silence - this week is a week of pure and utter madness. I've also been working on some things that require a bit more research to pull together. Next week, things return to normality, so I'll be returning to a more normal posting schedule.

Some of the stuff you can look forward to is a rant about why Jim Sterling of Destructoid is a despicable human being, a look at recent M:TG art, and, uh... this:

And worse, sadly.

Anyhow, I don't come completely empty-handed. I have some WTF for you, aside from the above.

WTF the first

David Jaffe, the director of the ever female-friendly God of War series, compared the new Sony handheld to a "fresh vagina". Unsurprisingly, game "journalists" have fallen all over themselves to repeat this in the name of "journalism", proving once again that game journalists really are incompetent fuckwits.

WTF the second

I've heard of several "virtual girlfriend" apps for the iPhone, which... okay. Whatever. A lot of them are based on the popular dating sim genre common in Japanese games. But what I really love is when North American men who don't even have a cultural excuse to fall back on wax enthusiastic about these games. Like this review of Virtual Girlfriend in which the title image is captioned:

The beauty is, when she starts getting bitchy, you just start over!

/facepalm

WTF the third

NOOOOOO!!! Samus! What have they done to you?? Curse you, internets! Curse yooooouuuuuu!!!

So. Okay. I want to point out that the file name of this picture is "waifu1". For those of you not familiar with Japanese, that's a Japanese rendering of "wife". There are many things that I can picture Samus doing. Being a housewife is not one of them.

For more housewife Samus fail, check out these photos here.

WTF: The tired Friday edition

Okay, folks. My schedule is kicking my ass this week, and my ass will be kicked even harder next week. So instead of giving you three real posts this week, you get two and a half. This might happen next week, depending on how much brainpower I have left after tech weekend for the show I'm in... But after that, I promise that I'll be returning to normal levels of snark.

Anyhow, I couldn't leave you empty-handed, so here's some miscellaneous pictures that I haven't found a home rant for yet.

I've forgotten what game this comes from, since I forgot to include the game's name in the file name when I saved it. I think that says a lot, don't you? I think I'm becoming a bit too blase about crotch floss as armor.

Okay, does anyone think it's a coincidence that "GROWING" is right over this poor woman's boobs? Neither did I. Though I'll admit the mental image of growing boobs made me think of DragonBall, which was an amusing mental non-sequiter. "AAAAAAAAAA!" "SHE'S REACHED BOOB LEVEL 9000!" "IMPOSSIBLE!"

...no? Just me then. Moving on... How about this?

WHAT. THE. FUCK. Seize power? Fine. Seize glory? Sure, if you think people really give a shit about your performance in a shitty knock-off browser-based game. Seize WOMEN? BECAUSE THEY'RE YOURS? AAARG. I know that the Chinese export a lot of translated games, Caesary being one of many, but I'd prefer that they didn't export their misogyny as well.

This is from an ad campaign in Europe - thank God not in North America. This fails on multiple levels.

Once again proving that the default of anything is male, and that female is always "special" or "distinct". Even, apparently, with puzzle games. I hope those of you with iPhones refrain from purchasing either version of what looks to be an uninspired Tetris clone.

I can't decide what I hate more. The cleavagey outfits, the interchangeable faces, the nauseating levels of pink, or the actual words. MISS BIMBO? There's a game out there called MISS BIMBO? Do they honestly think that making their ad pink will make the title any less revolting? Also, advertisers who perpetuate "bored of" should go die, like, right now. This makes my inner grammarian want to stab my eyes out.

Lightning is awesome. I just wish she was wearing pants.

I know I write a lot here about things that game companies and game artists do wrong, so I thought that maybe I should start doing occasional looks at things done right, or at least things done mostly right. I just finished playing FFXIII a few weeks ago (yeah, I know - I'm a bit late to the party), so I thought I'd take a look at Lightning, since she is now officially one of my favorite female characters evar.

[SPOILER WARNING: There be lots and lots of spoilers]

I've long enjoyed the Final Fantasy series of games because of the excellent writing and because they tend to be a bit more even-handed with the nudity. (Pantlessness is a bit more equal opportunity - just look at characters like Tidus or Kuja...) The more recent games in the series, from about Final Fantasy X onwards, have all had some pretty decent female characters as well. Sure there are some stereotyped characters like Rikku - the genki thief girl - or Lulu - the wise-cracking and sexy mage. But there are some really fantastic female characters - like Payne and Yuna in X(2) or Lightning and Fang in XIII. And even the more stereotyped characters are still engaging and three dimensional.

Anyhow. Lightning.

Lightning is probably one of my favorite female characters in a game I've played in the last couple of years.

I'll admit to totally hating her for the first several hours; at the beginning of the game Lightning is pretty one-dimensional and unsympathetic. She's completely focused on reaching her sister in time to save her, and doesn't much care how her actions affect the people around her. When circumstances throw her in with people less capable of dealing with the chaos and violence that the game opens with, she doesn't try to use her strength to protect those less able to protect themselves. Instead she bluntly tells her future companions to either keep up or get the hell out of her way. Not exactly an endearing introduction. (I'll admit that I said "what a bitch" several times during the first couple hours.)

Still, there was one thing that I appreciated right off the bat. Lightning is portrayed consistently through the game as the strongest character, bar none. Snow might come close to her prowess, as does Fang, but when it comes to engaging the enemy and emerging completely unscathed no one beats my girl Lightning.

Is that all you got?

Lightning's strength isn't ever questioned - it just is. Even better, no one ever comments that she should be easy prey because she's a woman. Nor does Lightning ever apologize for her strength or try to minimize her abilities to soothe male egos. She knows she's stronger than everyone else, and she enjoys the fact.

Gotta love that cocky smile.

Now the downside to all of this is that for the first several hours, Lightning does seem almost as if she's been written as a man with boobs. Out to rescue her sister from certain death, a cavalier attitude toward danger and a bold willingness to face danger single-handedly... these are traits we think of being the hallmarks of male heroes. Not to mention that Lightning does have a certain level of machismo...

Eventually, though, Lightning develops from a one-dimensional man with boobs into a sympathetic, engaging female character. The vulnerability beneath the bravado is revealed in glimpses until we get a picture of a woman who has become what she is in an effort to protect what is important to her. And we learn that the rudeness and unsympathetic behavior she exhibits at the beginning of the game are because she is consumed with guilt at failing at what she sees as her duty - to keep her sister safe. This is the kind of wonderful complex backstory that female characters almost never get. Here is a hyper-competent female character with complex motives and emotionally engaging goals who is allowed to be what she is without anyone ever second-guessing her because of her gender!

Eventually, as is inevitable in any game in the Final Fantasy series, Lightning forms close bonds with her companions and comes to value their safety just as much as her desire to free her sister from imprisonment by the Fal'Cie.

What really made me happy about the relationships she develops with the other party members is that Lightning is allowed to be a character without a love interest. She treats Hope as a younger, more vulnerable version of herself - responding to the fact that he has lost his mother just as she lost her parents, and repeatedly assumes the role of his protector and mentor. With Sazh, she shares the bond of experience and a certain world-weariness.

Incidentally, I was also very glad that Sazh wasn't just another Wise Cracking Black Man. Thank you for resisting the urge to make him comic relief, Squeenix.

And Lightning's initial antipathy for Snow deepens into a complex friendship between two very opposite personalities without ever once veering into romantic territory - despite the expectation for a romance between two of your party members. This makes her all that much more unique - how many strong and well-rounded female characters can you think of that don't have a romance arc?

By the end of the game, I was completely love with Lightning as a character. She wavers in the beginning, but once she finds the path that she needs to walk she doesn't falter in her resolve. She is strong without being unsympathetic, has complex and engaging relationships with her companions, and she becomes a source of strength to her companions.

At the end, I found myself crying just as much because of the touching reunion between Lightning and Serah as because of the bittersweet nature of Fang and Vanille's sacrifice.

Lightning's reunion with Serah

The final scene made me so very happy. Lightning doesn't try to hide her feelings as she might have at the beginning of the game - she's allowed to be both strong and sensitive and emotionally vulnerable.

The only thing.... the oooooooonly thing... I wish that Lightning was wearing pants. She's such a wonderful, otherwise completely unsexualized character that from certain camera angles her lack of pants just felt really jarring - especially since all of the male characters (for once) were completely covered by contrast. She's such a well-rounded and positive character that I wish that I could whole-heartedly embrace her as a universally positive character. As it is, my eyeroll is a very minimal one, and I very much hope that Lightning continues to be as well written in the upcoming FFXIII-2!

Ubisoft makes games for girls that I want to KILL WITH FIRE

[Edited to fix some minor formatting issues.]

The other day I stumbled across a link to the sort of game that makes me cringe - Imagine Fashion Party. According to Amazon, the key features are:

• Express your individual creativity in workshops including hair, makeup, clothing and accessories
• Use the Wii remote and nunchuck as scissors, hair brushes, makeup applicator and more
• Make your models perform the right moves to show off your designs in front of fierce judges
• Design in Creation mode, compete in the Reality Show, and challenge friends in mini-games
• Roll out your collection in a photo shoot and catwalk show, and share it with your friends via wi-fi
  

/facepalm

But then I noticed that this trainwreck of a "game" was by Ubisoft! I was curious about what other "girl's games" they might have in their lineup, so I did a little poking around and discovered that Imagine is actually its own line of video games with at least thirty-seven titles for the DS and Wii. (I think there may be a few that aren't showing up on Amazon.)

Even with the duplicates, that's still a pretty impressive number of titles. Most, though not all, games revolve around an occupation. Admittedly, a few of the titles are duplicates; there are three fashion designer titles, two rock star titles, two teacher titles, and two vet titles. But there's still a pretty impressive list of careers represented, including things like... Fashion Designer. And Fashion Stylist. And Makeup Artist. And Salon Stylist. In fact, a large portion of the careers represented by Imagine titles are stereotypically feminine roles. And even the ones that aren't are ridiculously infantalized or feminized.

For instance, instead of "Imagine Veterinarian", there are two "Imagine Animal Doctor" titles. Do they think that girls are too stupid to understand words longer than 2 syllables? And what about "Resort Owner" and "Boutique Owner"? Are these the only types of businesses that little girls should aspire to own? Even the sports titles are for sports that are traditionally "acceptable" female sports like cheerleading, ice skating, and gymnastics.

Just for shits and giggles, I made a tally of represented careers counted by job categories that were totally made up by me. Duplicate careers are counted - which means that all three "Fashion Designer" titles were counted under Fashion, etc. I also color-coded the resulting chart to help illustrate my point. ("Medicine" is orange because it is a bit of a stereotype, but the titles are for doctors, not nurses - which is a more traditional stereotype.)

Look at that! Nine titles just for fashion! NINE! Almost a quarter of all of their titles are devoted to telling girls that they should find fashion fun and important! ARG! Out of all of the careers that might make interesting games that exist out there, Ubisoft couldn't find careers that didn't involve either being pretty or making things look pretty???

Okay. So Ubisoft wants to market to girls who like girly things, you might be saying. And that might be reasonable. But then how does one explain the Imagine Babyz series of titles - Imagine Babyz, Imagine Party Babyz, and Imagine Babyz Fashion? That just takes the patronizing tone to a whole new level. "Not only are we going to try to sell you games about babies, but we're also going to give it a cutesy misspelling since you girls should be worrying more about babies and looking pretty than spelling!"

/sigh

Even then - EVEN THEN - I might have been able to forgive them if I hadn't gone looking for screen captures of Imagine games:

LEFT: Sweet 16 - a game about trying to become popular through throwing THE BEST PARTIES EVAR OMG! RIGHT: Makeup Artist - a screen capture from the Wii minigame in which you have to color inside the lip-shaped lines. Yawn.

This is from one of the many fashion design titles. I forget which.


From Champion Rider. Because all girls love horses, amirite?


Oh god. So. Many. Pastels. So. Much. Inane. Cuteness.

And all of this is just one series of "girls games" by just one company! There are dozens, if not hundreds of these shitty stereotype-ridden, steaming piles of failure out there - all marketed as "games for girls". And judging by the comments and reviews on Amazon, there seem to be a fair amount of mothers who play these games with their daughters. Way to teach your daughters about female empowerment, ladies.

The thing that makes it all so ridiculous for me is that Ubisoft is pretty famous for its hyper-violent adult titles like Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia, to name a few:

So all of this "games for girls" bullshit is just another way in which the gaming establishment (read:men) is telling gaming women that "YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE". And now I seriously want to buy as many copies as I can find of these horrendous games and set them on fire like the trash that they are.

Gah.