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Chamomile
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Post by Chamomile »

angelfromanotherpin wrote: I'm going to stop you right there. Because I want you to actually *look* at this first pose of the Huntress. I want you to actually figure out what her spine has to look like to facilitate that pose. Look at her senselessly arched back and off-center neck.

That you see that as 'perfectly reasonable' just tells me that you have become accustomed to accepting women posed like they're made out of rubber.
It's only a problem if you apply it solely to women, though. If you don't mind any particularly agile character, including Spider-Man and Nightcrawler and the like, being posed like that, all it means is that you have a stylistic preference for or ambivalence towards extreme depictions of flexibility. While it's true that the industry in general doesn't pose agile, flexible men this way, and therefore it does indeed have a double standard, it is unfair to assume that this double standard is reflected in anyone who's okay with rubber spine females. You can't know they're not okay with rubber spine males until it actually comes up, and the fact that a rubber spine male is depicted and hyzmarca said "pose is fine, costume needs work" rather suggests the opposite.

EDIT: Hyzmarca made a post while I was writing this one which provided rather more certainty about his opinion than this post stated, so I'm retracting the point.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

hyzmarca wrote:I can't even tell that her back is arched i that picture, there is too much glass in the way.
No there is not. If you think there is then you should have your eyes tested, because the curve of her back is plainly visible.
But really, it's a standard jump kick. It's a badly drawn standard jump kick, but it's the same sort of jump kick that people use in real life.
Right, except for all the spinal contortions that are fucking endemic when female characters are drawn, it's perfectly normal. In other news, except for the shit, a shit sandwich is perfectly edible. Pay a visit to eschergirls, get some perspective on just how universal this bullshit is.
The contortions are basically due to the need to keep her full face in the frame, instead of just half her face.
I think you need to stop opining on this subject, because you appear to be artistically and anatomically illiterate. Take a live-drawing class, or even just browse some online art anatomy lessons. Wash the Dunning-Kruger out of your mouth and try again.
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

Hyz, I have no idea how you can't see the back bend. My guess is that you actually do see it but you're being a troll.
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Post by hyzmarca »

...You Lost Me wrote:Hyz, I have no idea how you can't see the back bend. My guess is that you actually do see it but you're being a troll.
Everything between her head and her hips is just drawn terribly, as evidenced by the fact that she has no shoulders.

What I see is someone attempting to emulate a pucture of a martial artist performing a jump kick and failing at everything in the torso area.
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Post by Maj »

Wow. That fact that those poses are justifiable is... Just no. Wow.
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Post by DSMatticus »

tussock wrote:I don't see any of that. What I see is people pointing out ad infinitum that there's near constancy in the ridiculously porny portrayals of women in various industries (like, mainstream comics, until recently anyway), while having nothing but power-fantasy and problem-solving male characters.
Then you are not looking hard enough. Let's talk about Dragon's Crown. Here's a complaint you could make having seen the promotional material for Dragon Crown: "It's a fairly typical example of the cool dudes/sexy women double standard. That double standard needs to die in a fire." Here is Jason Schreier's complaint about Dragon's Crown: "It features the sorceress, one character from the game. As you can see, the sorceress was designed by a 14-year-old boy. Perhaps game development studios should stop hiring teenagers?"

Observe that the former calls out a genuine form of sexism in the industry, but the sexism isn't "the sorceress exists and Kamitani still has a job," it's "the industry is overwhelmingly composed of Kamitani's and their sorceress-esque creations." It's a complaint any sane, decent person can get behind. Every single fucking entertainment industry needs more diversity. But it doesn't give you ground to make any specific condemnations of specific creators absent further offense.

Observe that the latter is just straight-up shaming Kamitani for designing a sexualized female character. Jason Schreier is criticizing Kamitani on the unspoken assumption that male sexuality is somehow degrading or objectifying and should not be expressed publicly without ridicule and scorn. That is reprehensible.

Jason Schreier is a stupid asshole who doesn't really understand the issues he's trying to tackle, and as a result it's basically a coinflip whether or not he'll get it right or manage to say something offensively misandrist. Which is exactly why he shouldn't be saying things at all. You genuinely can use Dragon's Crown as a starting point for a frank discussion about the industry, but you can't do it with the opener "only horny teenagers like boobs. Grow up, game developers." Jason Schreier tried and failed. Exactly like when Anita Sarkeesian starts talking about damsels in distress, she is touching on a legitimate issue, but she is doing it with so little grace and understanding that all she really manages to do is put her own foot in her mouth.
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Post by hyzmarca »

Chamomile wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote: I'm going to stop you right there. Because I want you to actually *look* at this first pose of the Huntress. I want you to actually figure out what her spine has to look like to facilitate that pose. Look at her senselessly arched back and off-center neck.

That you see that as 'perfectly reasonable' just tells me that you have become accustomed to accepting women posed like they're made out of rubber.
It's only a problem if you apply it solely to women, though. If you don't mind any particularly agile character, including Spider-Man and Nightcrawler and the like, being posed like that, all it means is that you have a stylistic preference for or ambivalence towards extreme depictions of flexibility. While it's true that the industry in general doesn't pose agile, flexible men this way, and therefore it does indeed have a double standard, it is unfair to assume that this double standard is reflected in anyone who's okay with rubber spine females. You can't know they're not okay with rubber spine males until it actually comes up, and the fact that a rubber spine male is depicted and hyzmarca said "pose is fine, costume needs work" rather suggests the opposite.

EDIT: Hyzmarca made a post while I was writing this one which provided rather more certainty about his opinion than this post stated, so I'm retracting the point.
Most of the female action poses that people complain about do look just as good, occasionally better, with a male character in them.

Some of the more overtly sexual female poses also look just as good if not better with a male character, assuming that you're sufficiently secure in your sexuality to appreciate them.

Honestly, I look at that picture of Huntress and my focus is not on her spine, it's on her crutch, because that's the part of her body that's right in the viewers face. And it's perfectly appropriate for it to be there, considering the context. But my god, put on some real pants.
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Post by Maxus »

He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

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Post by name_here »

Actually found a good male one looking through Eschergirls:
Image

Yes, he's on fire. It's a thing he does.
Anatomically nonsensical, but cool. He is clearly jumping past something while drawing his sword to slash at it.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Yeah, "this pose is complete nonsense" is not a complaint that has ever resonated with me. Nonsense is what fiction is for. The rule of cool is more important than accurately representing the limitations of the human spine. But female characters are far more likely to be put in sexualized poses for the benefit of a male audience. That's a real thing, and a real problem. Not because sex is evil or men are the devil, but because it's a symptom of how insanely male-dominated these industries are.

I dream of a world where everyone has the privilege of looking at contorted, scantily-clad, hypersexualized parodies of their own gender and wondering "do people actually find this shit attractive?" Also, maybe a world in which that happens a little bit less all around. Not everything has to be both awesome and somebody's fap fuel. Some of it can just be awesome, because awesome. But I'm convinced that in both cases the answer is the same; diversity among creators.
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Post by Orion »

I think there's a critique of nonsense poses along the lines of what you're saying with Dragon's Crown. Some nonsense poses look awesome, some look stupid. Some of the stupid ones are used in an attempting to be tittilating. This horrible 90s image comics. We can and should point out that the terrible nonsense is terrible.
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Post by tussock »

#gay. That's not it, eh.

When you turn your toe up, it extends and exposes your crotch, by dropping the other knee that accentuates it. It's traced from porn, that's what that is. It's why the man in the photo has his kicking toe to the side, and his bottom foot pointing forward. That's also why the Huntress has her toe turned up and lower leg down dragging through broken glass.

Her shoulder is dislocated to get it out of the way of her face, also.


Wonder Woman's spine is broken. Danger Girl's is not, but serious, try looking behind yourself, your body will not let you do it that way, the distant knee bends to let the hips rotate, and your head tips to the side to get that far around. Black Widow is not climbing a wall, that's a boob and butt pose with a wall behind it, climbing does not work like that.

Seriously, when I say they routinely break their women's spines to get both their butt and their boobs firmly in the picture at the same time, that's what they do. It's not controversial, they actually trace two different pictures, one with a woman facing away and another with a woman facing toward and join them together in the middle in ways which are not physically possible. Facts, man.


Yes, like Black Widow in the avengers poster is not distorted, but she is the only one with her butt to the camera, because she's a real woman and they weren't allowed to break her spine, so they made do with side-boob and butt for a change. The men do not show us their bums because Patriarchy. Also, wearing pants that don't quite so tightly define the gluteus, jeans and actual armour.


So it is totally the costumes. And the poses. And the activities which, yet again, force a woman to impossibly contort her spine so as to look back past her butt to where the camera is without turning her eyes or hips, just twisting in the middle to get the shoulder out of the way so she can show you her nice red lipstick. And the characterisation, who gets character development, who gets rescued and then kisses the hero.

Also they get snuck up on from behind a lot. Especially when bending down, with the back arched like they traced it from porn. That's not something the male characters ever have happen to them. No one jumps batman when he's got his bum in the air because he crouches down in a sprint launch like a normal heroic persona.
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Post by Maj »

tussock wrote:Also they get snuck up on from behind a lot. Especially when bending down, with the back arched like they traced it from porn. That's not something the male characters ever have happen to them. No one jumps batman when he's got his bum in the air because he crouches down in a sprint launch like a normal heroic persona.
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Post by hyzmarca »

tussock wrote:#gay. That's not it, eh.

When you turn your toe up, it extends and exposes your crotch, by dropping the other knee that accentuates it. It's traced from porn, that's what that is. It's why the man in the photo has his kicking toe to the side, and his bottom foot pointing forward. That's also why the Huntress has her toe turned up and lower leg down dragging through broken glass.
Different kicks. That was my mistake. The man in the photo is doing a side kick, which strikes with the side of the foot. Huntress is doing a front kick, which strikes with the ball of the foot, or the sole of the boot in this case.

Image

The front kick is a better choice for kicking through glass.

Also they get snuck up on from behind a lot. Especially when bending down, with the back arched like they traced it from porn. That's not something the male characters ever have happen to them. No one jumps batman when he's got his bum in the air because he crouches down in a sprint launch like a normal heroic persona.
Batman totally stick his butt up in the air more often.
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Post by Meikle641 »

hyzmarca wrote:Batman totally stick his butt up in the air more often.
There's also a lot of cheesecake shots with Nightwing and Spiderman, from what I've heard. Ass shots mostly, IIRC.
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Post by hyzmarca »

Meikle641 wrote:
hyzmarca wrote:Batman totally stick his butt up in the air more often.
There's also a lot of cheesecake shots with Nightwing and Spiderman, from what I've heard. Ass shots mostly, IIRC.
Spider-Man wears a Skin-tight costume. In comics, that manifests as a well-defined butt. In real life :
Image
This is why Superman wears trunks on the outside of his costume.
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Post by Leress »

Meikle641 wrote:
hyzmarca wrote:Batman totally stick his butt up in the air more often.
There's also a lot of cheesecake shots with Nightwing and Spiderman, from what I've heard. Ass shots mostly, IIRC.
There is also a swimsuit issue that has male and female comic book characters.
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Post by OgreBattle »

DSMatticus wrote:
tussock wrote:I don't see any of that. What I see is people pointing out ad infinitum that there's near constancy in the ridiculously porny portrayals of women in various industries (like, mainstream comics, until recently anyway), while having nothing but power-fantasy and problem-solving male characters.
Then you are not looking hard enough. Let's talk about Dragon's Crown. Here's a complaint you could make having seen the promotional material for Dragon Crown: "It's a fairly typical example of the cool dudes/sexy women double standard. That double standard needs to die in a fire." Here is Jason Schreier's complaint about Dragon's Crown: "It features the sorceress, one character from the game. As you can see, the sorceress was designed by a 14-year-old boy. Perhaps game development studios should stop hiring teenagers?"
Hahah, I remember reading that, it made my blood boil, I got so mad I scurried like a mohawk minion to Platinum's Kamiya so he could draw more attention to it:
https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/status/324359897766567936
Schreier's article was so hated that Kotaku head actually contacted me afterwards to write a follow up article on Dragon's Crown art, as my brother n' I had already written about it on our blog:
http://art-eater.com/2013/03/from-micke ... c-homages/


As for the portrayals of women in games, back in 1997 George Kamitani made Princess Crown.

Image

Here's the intro that shows a demon slaughtering his way through knights to kidnap the queen for his demon king... only for the queen to enter the fray herself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6MrKchH-po

Princess Crown takes place years later about the queen's daughter who wants to be a strong queen like her mother was. If this game came out today it'd be heralded as some great leap forward in social justice in games, but it came out in the 90's when the press hadn't gotten so political and was largely ignored.
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Post by tussock »

There's games and comics and TV and movies and everything with solid female protagonists. Wonder Woman is from 1941 as a power-hero fighting the Nazis, when bathing suits were less revealing and women being regarded more seriously was an important part of the war effort, and keeping up with the Communists.

The problem is not that things have always been bad (though they mostly have), the problem is that ...
hyzmarca wrote:The front kick is a better choice for kicking through glass.
If you enjoy dragging your crotch through broken glass. You know there's very large and exposed arteries that will just fucking kill you if they get cut in there? Not to mention sensible clothing again.

You know how people go through windows? They completely remove the glass, then go through the empty hole. Knew a guy who knew a guy, went partly through a window, nerve damage is forever. Fucking near did it myself as a kid. You break it high and drag your body low, you could expect to die.

The comic is a crotch shot with a broken window in it. It's lampshading at best.
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Post by Orion »

I don't think any of us are confused about whether kicking through windows is a good idea.
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Post by Meikle641 »

I'd think it was obvious that glass in entertainment is unlike real plate glass, given the lack of being sliced to ribbons.
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Post by icyshadowlord »

Wait, how did this thread about racism derail into talk about Anita Sarkeesian, sexism and ridiculous poses?

I am also surprised at the lack of talk about stuff in Ferguson, the increased antisemitism in Europe and other more relevant shit.
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Post by Stahlseele »

because obviously brown people problems are not as important to talk about in comparison to fictional women being drawn all sexy like.
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Post by Chamomile »

The thread isn't about racism, it's about tumblr definitions of oppression and why they are bad. Racism specifically is the easiest way to talk about this because it's extremely clear-cut. There are no consolation prizes for being black, you just get higher incarceration rates and lower graduation rates and otherwise are generally more likely to have a bad time. Sexism is a slightly stickier issue in that women do get some consolation prizes (people have never liked sending women to the gallows, for example, regardless of their crimes) and, what with people being distressingly far more sympathetic to the plight of a white woman than that of a black anything, a lot of women's problems are solved and possibly even over-compensated for (education rates favor women now) even though others have received little or no attention at all. The thread is called "racism" because I decided to talk to Prak specifically about racism because racism is much easier to talk about, while also being sufficient to prove that the definitions he gave for racism (and by extension, sexism, homophobia, etc.) were terrible.

As to where the seam comes in, a conversation between darkmaster and DSM about whether or not Prak's definition is pragmatically helpful in actually talking about or reducing oppression (it is not) was hijacked by Vynonymous declaring himself to be a misogynist and also that misogyny wasn't a big deal anymore because he's one of those people who thinks that if someone makes use of Orwellian redefinition to try and control an argument, the appropriate response is to cease condemning the behavior described by the redefined words. This was incredibly stupid and the conversation then became about how stupid that was.
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Post by Orion »

I dunno, I think the idea which academics use "-ism" to refer to -- the harmful effects of a pervasive system of discrimination which is backed up by state or corporate power and enacted by people who may have no personal animus -- is an important concept. I'm not sure there's a better word than "racism" for that, although maybe a qualifier like "structural racism." So I'm fine with the conversations Prak is referencing here. I do agree that in the vernacular there's no need to police colloquial usage and that when a man or a white person does encounter prejudice against their gender or race, (usually the former), there's no point barging in and trying to stop them from calling it "sexism" or "racism."
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