Gender and Outfits in Heroes

[Ice Dragon]

8 minutes ago, Othin said:

Because those male characters, like most male characters in media, were created to appeal to guys. It's not that complicated.

Just because FE apparently considers sex appeal the only kind of appeal for female characters doesn't mean it's ever handled male characters that way.

The character popularity poll results for the two Elibe games that I posted on the first page would contradict that. More than half of the male characters in the top 10 for each game appeal more to female players than to male players.

There are obvious cases of male characters being made to appeal to males (Dieck, Rutger, and Roy, for example, fit fairly typical shounen anime tropes), but there are just as many cases of male characters in the top 10 that appeal more to female players.

 

4 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

Each character was created because someone on the dev team thought they'd be received well by fans.

The palette-swaps of Akaneia would say otherwise. Some characters are just made to fill space. Among player-controllable characters, this is more common with the older games, but most "generic" bosses still exist out of simply needing a warm body to sit on the throne and drive the chapter's story.

 

8 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

I disagree on the whole on the 3ds characters being one-dimensional but I do see what you're trying to say and I agree to an extent

As a whole, they aren't, but there are enough cases of it happening for it to be noticeable. I don't know first-hand since I haven't really played the 3DS games, but it's come up often enough in other discussion (namely new character releases in Heroes) that it's hard not to notice.

[Othin]

9 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

The character popularity poll results for the two Elibe games that I posted on the first page would contradict that. More than half of the male characters in the top 10 for each game appeal more to female players than to male players.

There are obvious cases of male characters being made to appeal to males (Dieck, Rutger, and Roy, for example, fit fairly typical shounen anime tropes), but there are just as many cases of male characters in the top 10 that appeal more to female players.

The character popularity poll shows which characters appeal more to male vs female players, while I was talking about which characters were intended to appeal more to male vs female players. They're related, but not the same.

Still, that's a fair point. More likely, not all male characters were intended to appeal more to male players than female ones, just a portion of them.

Looking back at that poll, it seems the average male votes among the top 10 were 68.55% for Binding Blade and 62.19% for Blazing Sword. For Binding Blade that's slightly higher than the total percentage of male respondents, while for Blazing Sword it's slightly lower. Which I guess evens out to not really saying anything.

I'm curious what such a poll would look like for Heroes.

Edited March 23, 2019 by Othin

[Etrurian emperor]

3 hours ago, eclipse said:

Child marriages with the boy being married young isn't as much of a hot-button topic, because I think girls were married off young, historically.  Pretty sure there's been cases of child marriages, but I can't think of too many examples (if any) where the groom is a child and the bride is not.

There's that, but on the whole the shotacon crowd seems a lot smaller than the Lolicon crowd so there's less reason to suspect that a bridal Raigh would be included to pander to any uh...interesting urges. It would likely happen because the devs know Raigh would hate it. Sanaki has her potential for such a reaction too but because Lolicon is so much bigger I'm quicker to suspect Sanaki was put in a wedding dress for money related reasons. 

[Ottservia]

38 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

The palette-swaps of Akaneia would say otherwise. Some characters are just made to fill space. Among player-controllable characters, this is more common with the older games, but most "generic" bosses still exist out of simply needing a warm body to sit on the throne and drive the chapter's story.

fair enough I suppose which I guess is the core of the problem regarding game representation in heroes. I dunno it's weird.

38 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

As a whole, they aren't, but there are enough cases of it happening for it to be noticeable. I don't know first-hand since I haven't really played the 3DS games, but it's come up often enough in other discussion (namely new character releases in Heroes) that it's hard not to notice.

y'see it's those kinds of discussions is where I tend to raise an eyebrow because most of the time I see a lot of the same old arguments of "anime tropes" or whatever. Not saying those are the only arguments being presented just that a lot of the discussion(at least from what I've seen) surrounding the writing quality of the 3ds characters tend to be "surface-level" if you get my meaning. Then again this isn't the thread for that.

Edited March 23, 2019 by Ottservia

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Icelerate said:

Is that your main go to team? That's also my main go to team for clearing content. 

Yep. Starting the game with Laguz Royals banner spoiled me. It's hard to use anything else when I'm so used to a group of 3 Move Fliers. How I am supposed to use things that can't stay out of enemy ranges at the start of a turn and yet kill 3-4 enemies in one player phase?

 

1 hour ago, Nanima said:

Speaking of birbs: I think Vika has a decent chance of making it in despite having so little development. It would be odd to see her be more powerful than Naesala, but it could happen as we saw before. But seeing as the Binding Blade banner didn't have any insane powercreep (even Idunn doesn't really outpace H!Myrrh), so maybe that won't happen despite her later release date and more favored gender. 

I think she has a case for trainee BST. Her availability is really limited unfortunately (this makes her something of an Est though- a good argument for trainee BST), but her growths are very good outside of Str and Def (as in 50% minimum for every other stat, even useless Magic). Her growths altogether hit 400%, the highest in the game tied with Micaiah and Sanaki, it's particularly striking considering the next highest value for Laguz is Kurthnaga's 345%, and many Laguz have sub-300 (in the meanwhile Nolan has 390, and Elincia 385).

 

3 hours ago, eclipse said:

Unless we get beast alt spam (please no)

It wouldn't surprise me if they already have a Halloween Selkie or the like brewing in their heads. If canonical pool is limited in number and popularity, and NH alts are hated, so Seasonals become the way to add more Beasts (although Spring Marisa is proof they won't always pick more exotic weapon-class combos for Seasonals).

 

4 hours ago, eclipse said:

I think the concept is hilarious, but the colors don't work.  Corrin's already a pale dude, and adding more white on top of it makes him looked extremely washed-out.

In case you didn't see the fan recolor:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FireEmblemHeroes/comments/9vj1c3/edit_darkzura_palette_dream_mcorrin/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb&_branch_match_id=638145314315018496

 

53 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

There's that, but on the whole the shotacon crowd seems a lot smaller than the Lolicon crowd so there's less reason to suspect that a bridal Raigh would be included to pander to any uh...interesting urges. It would likely happen because the devs know Raigh would hate it. Sanaki has her potential for such a reaction too but because Lolicon is so much bigger I'm quicker to suspect Sanaki was put in a wedding dress for money related reasons. 

Define "Bridal Raigh":

If in a wedding gown, then I'd attribute it to Nino liking to put her boys in dresses when they were little (she was gone at four- up to which putting boys in dresses doesn't sound unreasonable) and Raigh having fond memories of it. Thus leading him to develop a secret love of crossdressing which he'd rather not have anyone know about. Not to mention FE7 implies the Father whose orphanage Lugh and Raigh were raised was Lucius, who isn't exactly crushing testosterone.

If in a suit, well what suit? His mother and father, if one assumed Jaffar to be the father (and that malicious look in Raigh's eyes suggest it to me more than Erk or Generic Man), then I doubt Nino and Jaffar ever actually had a formal with vows legal marriage. This is because Jaffar, a fugitive wanted by headhunters, would not be wanting to live a very public life for the sake of his life and his family's lives. In the case they were just a common law husband and wife, on the night they exchanged informal oaths of forever being in love, they were likely in plainsclothes. Therefore, Groom Raigh would be wearing Jaffar's ordinary garb, complete with midriff.

Either way, it'd be funny.

[Lewyn]

On Vika, she is a fairly attractive woman, so yeah she might get the royal treatment in Heroes.  The trainee bonus thing, that and the jaegen penalty (which we haven't seen since launch I think) well they are great in the main games.  Like yeah those units you get super late and have to babysit a ton to reach their potential, but that potential is higher than other characters.  Or the units you get start of game prepromoted and able to sweep maps easily, much more powerful than the rest of your units, however their max potential is lower than those units usually.  It doesn't fit in Heroes cause you train everyone to level 40 the same, there is no advantage/disadvantage sacrifice.  Trainees are just better in Heroes, and Jaegens just worse.  Anyways the royals were the best in the Tellius games, besides the great skills and stats they bypassed the major weakness of laguz by being transformed all the time with no penalty.  So I hope the laguz royals aren't just power creeped.  Yes and they have been good recently with power creep, I hope they can stick with it.

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

There's that, but on the whole the shotacon crowd seems a lot smaller than the Lolicon crowd so there's less reason to suspect that a bridal Raigh would be included to pander to any uh...interesting urges. It would likely happen because the devs know Raigh would hate it. Sanaki has her potential for such a reaction too but because Lolicon is so much bigger I'm quicker to suspect Sanaki was put in a wedding dress for money related reasons. 

Well I think, disgustingly the shotacon crowd is mostly male as well.  Very few women are into kids in a sexual way.  94% of sex abuse against female children is done by males, 86% of sex abuse against male children is done by males.  

[Nowi's Husband]

All the seasonals save brides in 2017 had a 2:2 ratio, I feel like dropping to 3:1 meant the guys weren't being whaled for like the girls.  I'm not opposed to bringing it back to being balanced myself, just rationalizing IS's decision.

[GrandeRampel]

4 hours ago, eclipse said:

Here's an opinion that you didn't ask for, since anecdote = data in your mind.

 

I asked for this when making my bold statement, didn't I?

Well to be fair, even if different people will obviously have different opinions, the original topic was about Corrin being bait for men, vs him being bait for women. You explained why you didn't like him, but nothing you said pointed towards him being made for horny boys.

Or to put it more clearly, the end result doesn't change the intention.

Hot Springs Camilla may look like ass, but it doesn't change that she was made for guys. Adrift Corrin may look like ass to you, but it doesn't change he was made for girls.

[Othin]

3 minutes ago, GrandeRampel said:

I asked for this when making my bold statement, didn't I?

Well to be fair, even if different people will obviously have different opinions, the original topic was about Corrin being bait for men, vs him being bait for women. You explained why you didn't like him, but nothing you said pointed towards him being made for horny boys.

Or to put it more clearly, the end result doesn't change the intention.

Hot Springs Camilla may look like ass, but it doesn't change that she was made for guys. Adrift Corrin may look like ass to you, but it doesn't change he was made for girls.

Suppose a game makes 10 characters as "fanservice bait" for men and 10 characters as "fanservice bait" for women, and 9 of the ones made for men are popular among men while only 3 of the ones made for women are popular among women. They might have the intent of giving equal-opportunity fanservice, but they're completely failing at it, so female players will still feel left out. It's still a problem that needs to be fixed, and probably means there aren't enough women working on the game.

Heroes isn't even trying for equal-opportunity fanservice, of course. Even if we assume the game is targeting a 1/3 female and 2/3 male audience and suppose it's trying to make 1/3 of the fanservice bait targeted at women, I think it's safe to say that much less than 1/3 of the "successful" fanservice bait characters are ones targeted at women.

[Nowi's Husband]

What even is proper male fanservice?  It always seems so nebulous with the power fantasy for males concept.  I don't have a point of reference of what people are wanting out of it since I'm a guy myself, not into other guys.

[GrandeRampel]

2 minutes ago, Othin said:

Suppose a game makes 10 characters as "fanservice bait" for men and 10 characters as "fanservice bait" for women, and 9 of the ones made for men are popular among men while only 3 of the ones made for women are popular among women. They might have the intent of giving equal-opportunity fanservice, but they're completely failing at it, so female players will still feel left out. It's still a problem that needs to be fixed, and probably means there aren't enough women working on the game.

Heroes isn't even trying for equal-opportunity fanservice, of course. Even if we assume the game is targeting a 1/3 female and 2/3 male audience and suppose it's trying to make 1/3 of the fanservice bait targeted at women, I think it's safe to say that much less than 1/3 of the "successful" fanservice bait characters are ones targeted at women.

This I can 100% agree on. As a man I can hardly guess which males the girls find hotter than others (both in real life and in the realm of anime/games) so it makes sense for a company with few women in the higher positions to struggle and fail. 

At the very least one can assume that the boys who received dedicayed shojo manga must be popular with girls. So Takumi, Leo and Eldigan. Of those 3 only Takumi is getting good alts! WHY!? Come on IS, it's hard, but you are literally ignoring data you have.

[Ice Dragon]

7 minutes ago, GrandeRampel said:

so it makes sense for a company with few women in the higher positions to struggle and fail. 

On the other hand, it's not "people in higher positions" that matter when it comes to content creation. It's the writers and artists, and there's certainly no shortage of female artists for this game.

[Etrurian emperor]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Define "Bridal Raigh":

I guess he could either wear a miniature version of Marth's groom outfit or dress like a flower boy. Now that I think on it  a flower boy alt could work pretty well for Nils since his big sister is already a bride in both Heroes and in one of the blazing endings. Alternatively he could be one for bridal Lyn's wedding too.

Edited March 24, 2019 by Etrurian emperor

[Flere210]

3 minutes ago, Nowi's Husband said:

What even is proper male fanservice?  It always seems so nebulous with the power fantasy for males concept.  I don't have a point of reference of what people are wanting out of it since I'm a guy myself, not into other guys.

As i said in the other thread, thing like what you see in Twilight, and similar novels, or from a more japanese perspective, the bishonens and fujobait that is common in shojo. Three house artist is famous for Otome games, wich are mostly dating sims aimed at girls, so i'd say that the boys of TH are an example.

But in general i am not a fan of this argument. Check "romance books covers" or something like that on google images. Many of them feature shirtless muscular mens, and i doubt that those books are aimed at guys. And on the other side, Bayonetta was designed by a woman according to her own power fantasies. There are overlaps beetwen fanservice and power fantasies, because often people want to be like what the people they like desire.

[Othin]

13 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

On the other hand, it's not "people in higher positions" that matter when it comes to content creation. It's the writers and artists, and there's certainly no shortage of female artists for this game.

That sounds like an oversimplification. Artists have flexibility, but if they're given a bad concept, it still constrains them.

[Etrurian emperor]

26 minutes ago, Nowi's Husband said:

What even is proper male fanservice?  It always seems so nebulous with the power fantasy for males concept.  I don't have a point of reference of what people are wanting out of it since I'm a guy myself, not into other guys.

I guess your average Koei game is a good example of male fanservice. Just about every male in the Warrior games is fabulous and various middle aged generals get aged down several decades to look in their teens or early 20's. 

[Ottservia]

31 minutes ago, Nowi's Husband said:

What even is proper male fanservice?  It always seems so nebulous with the power fantasy for males concept.  I don't have a point of reference of what people are wanting out of it since I'm a guy myself, not into other guys.

the only kinds I can think of is BL/yaoi(yes there is a difference) and just angsty/edgy boys that need a hug. Watching stuff like Free!, YoI, Ouran high school host club, and to lesser degrees Mob Psycho 100 and blue exorcist can be fairly enlightening.

Edited March 24, 2019 by Ottservia

[GrandeRampel]

30 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

On the other hand, it's not "people in higher positions" that matter when it comes to content creation. It's the writers and artists, and there's certainly no shortage of female artists for this game.

Technically speaking the artists do what they are told, they do art on commission. It's other people that decide which male characters get alts, and if those people have no clue who girls want, the characters girls want to see in sexy dresses may never be picked.

1 hour ago, Lewyn said:

Well I think, disgustingly the shotacon crowd is mostly male as well.  Very few women are into kids in a sexual way.  94% of sex abuse against female children is done by males, 86% of sex abuse against male children is done by males.  

Just read this and I have to speak my mind. My bad habit. This... is a very faulty deduction you made.

More men sexually assault little boys than women.  That's a real fact. But that doesn't prove that there are more males attracted to young boys than there are females. It just proves that mostly males are the ones that act on it. Which makes sense, since culturally, and maybe even on a genetic level, one gender is more prone to impose their own will over another individual's even with violence. And that is the male gender. The female gender is less violent and more used to not act upon their will, even if things are changing on that front.

However the realm of fantasy is just a free for all. In the realm of fantasy you don't have to actually impose yourself over someone else, you can just read shotacon doujins for how long you want, without anyone knowing or judging.

I will admit that this doesn't prove anything, and male shotacons could still outnumber female shotacons, but what I was trying to say is that we cant' rely on your data, since we are speaking of two very different things. We have no data on lolicons and shotacons, and we can't use the data from real life reports of pedophilia because it's like comparing apples and oranges.

How many registered pedophiles we know about doesn't tell us jack shit about how many lolicons and shotacons are out there all over the world. Just like the known cases of sexual harassment on pets doesn't tell us anything about the number of furries out there. 

 

I may have dug a rabbit hole too deep than necessary so, for everyone's sake, let's stop at "we have no reliable data" and call it a day.

Edited March 24, 2019 by GrandeRampel

[Icelerate]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Yep. Starting the game with Laguz Royals banner spoiled me. It's hard to use anything else when I'm so used to a group of 3 Move Fliers. How I am supposed to use things that can't stay out of enemy ranges at the start of a turn and yet kill 3-4 enemies in one player phase?

 

How did you choose to build them? I gave Naesala Tibarn's A skill, desperation, def smoke 3 and gave him Darting blow 3 seal. Tibarn is base kit but with attack smoke. He has heavy blade seal and uses gale force. Dancers use WoM or chill skills depending on circumstances. Are you going to merge up Naesala and Reyson? 

3 hours ago, Nanima said:

Looks like it's a quartet. But I use them for Abyssals only, since they are so powerful.

I can't even do legendary abyssal battles without them. Granted I'm not willing to put time and effort to do it any other way. 

 

[XRay]

7 minutes ago, Othin said:

That sounds like an oversimplification. Artists have flexibility, but if they're given a bad concept, it still constrains them.

In business, successful management takes a hands off approach to marketing, design, and anything creative related. Unless a specific manager has prior experience before hand in those fields before moving to management, interfering in creative work is generally considered a bad practice. You hire creative experts for their creativity and interfering with their creativity not only makes hiring them pointless (you might as well do it yourself if you micromanage them), but the interference may make things worse. Unless they specifically ask for input, the general policy for management is to leave creatives alone.

Basically, just as you would not dictate how your doctor does things, management should not dictate how artists do things.

[Interdimensional Observer]

23 minutes ago, GrandeRampel said:

I may have dug a rabbit hole too deep for everyone's sake, let's stop at "we have no reliable data" and call it a day.

And I think a mistake was made in saying liking shotas = pedophile. Can there be someone who appreciates young male characters without sexually desiring them? I would hope so!

...Although going back to the original post and knowing the poster's likes, I think they were using the term "shotacon" to mean specifically the bad portion of shota likers. Which is less questionable, if still somewhat an open question. But what do I know that community?

 

21 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

How did you choose to build them? I gave Naesala Tibarn's A skill, desperation, def smoke 3 and gave him Darting blow 3 seal. Tibarn is base kit but with attack smoke. He has heavy blade seal and uses gale force. Dancers use WoM or chill skills depending on circumstances. Are you going to merge up Naesala and Reyson? 

Mine aren't actually built at all yet, just Iote's Shield and a couple TT rank 1 Sacred Seals. Haven't done a single Skill Inheritance so far. ? Even though by this point Tibarn and Naesala have several thousand SP.

Don't have any spare Reysons, nor do I know what to do with my spare Naesala.

Edited March 24, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[Lewyn]

11 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

And I think a mistake was made in saying shotacon = pedophile. Can there be someone who appreciates young male characters without sexually desiring them? I would hope so!

 

Shotacon means a sexual attraction to prepubescent boys, so yeah both shotacons and lolicons are pedophiles.  That doesn't mean they molest/harm anyone but they are sexually attracted to kids.  A different word needs to be used if one likes kid characters but aren't attracted to them.  

22 minutes ago, GrandeRampel said:

 

More men sexually assault little boys than women.  That's a real fact. But that doesn't prove that there are more males attracted to young boys than there are females. It just proves that mostly males are the ones that act on it. Which makes sense, since culturally, and maybe even on a genetic level, one gender is more prone to impose their own will over another individual's even with violence. And that is the male gender. The female gender is less violent and more used to not act upon their will, even if things are changing on that front.

However the realm of fantasy is just a free for all. In the realm of fantasy you don't have to actually impose yourself over someone else, you can just read shotacon doujins for how long you want, without anyone knowing or judging.

I will admit that this doesn't prove anything, and male shotacons could still outnumber female shotacons, but what I was trying to say is that we cant' rely on your data, since we are speaking of two very different things. We have no data on lolicons and shotacons, and we can't use the data from real life reports of pedophilia because it's like comparing apples and oranges.

How many registered pedophiles we know about doesn't tell us jack shit about how many lolicons and shotacons are out there all over the world. Just like the known cases of sexual harassment on pets doesn't tell us anything about the number of furries out there. 

 

I may have dug a rabbit hole too deep than necessary so, for everyone's sake, let's stop at "we have no reliable data" and call it a day.

Yes not all people attracted to kids commit sex crimes, act on these attractions.  Probably most don't.  However studies show that pedophilia, just the attraction to kids, is vast majority male.  Relatively very few females.  

 

[Othin]

19 minutes ago, XRay said:

In business, successful management takes a hands off approach to marketing, design, and anything creative related. Unless a specific manager has prior experience before hand in those fields before moving to management, interfering in creative work is generally considered a bad practice. You hire creative experts for their creativity and interfering with their creativity not only makes hiring them pointless (you might as well do it yourself if you micromanage them), but the interference may make things worse. Unless they specifically ask for input, the general policy for management is to leave creatives alone.

Basically, just as you would not dictate how your doctor does things, management should not dictate how artists do things.

Hold on, I didn't say anything about management.

Artists are commissioned for specific prompts. Draw this character, in this outfit, probably with some specifications about pose as well. There may be varying amounts of wiggle room, but anything the prompt specifies is something the artist is held to. Those prompts aren't written by management, but they are written by a creative team. There's been talk about female artists, but I haven't seen anyone find information about gender balance in the creative team for Heroes yet. That's one place I'm guessing Heroes is particularly lacking.

[GrandeRampel]

1 minute ago, Lewyn said:

Shotacon means a sexual attraction to prepubescent boys, so yeah both shotacons and lolicons are pedophiles.  That doesn't mean they molest/harm anyone but they are sexually attracted to kids.  A different word needs to be used if one likes kid characters but aren't attracted to them.  

Yes not all people attracted to kids commit sex crimes, act on these attractions.  Probably most don't.  However studies show that pedophilia, just the attraction to kids, is vast majority male.  Relatively very few females.  

 

Okay, I think a fine line still exists between shotacons and pedos, but let's take what you said as true. If that's the case and the shotacon crowd is mostly male it's weird that they don't pander to them. Maybe it's a relatively small crowd.

There's one last thing I want to add, pal. As someone who has hanged out with the lolicon crowd, I can testify that multiple people have told me that they hate kids, they find them annoying to deal with, ugly, evil little snakes and stuff. But lolis and shotas are a different thing entirely.

Besides the fact that, as Interdimensional Observer said, some lolicons like lolis in a more innocent way and would consider holding hands with them and a kiss on the forehead to be their dream fantasy, I believe that even the ones with more perverted minds shouldn't be so easily considered pedophiles. Or to be more clear, every pedophile is a lolicon, but not every lolicon is a pedophile.

If you are attracted to the real thing, obviously you will like a visual representation of it, but if you are attracted to the visual representation you are not always attracted to the real thing. 

Obviously I can speak only about myself, but you can trust the words of someone who has action figures of the loli twins from Persona 5 and yet doesn't feel anything when meeting the female classmates of his little brother.

I don't know if I can call myself a lolicon when lolis make up about 5% of the girls that catch my interest every anime season, and Summer Camilla is still the one I find the hottest among the JPEGs of Heroes. I think real lolicons are a bit more exclusively interested to lolis. But I still know some real ones, and I find them the more heavily criticized among the already heavily criticized anime fandoms.

It's for this very reason that I don't like when people generalize about a group of people, or consider them unredeemable monsters without a concrete reason. There are some bad apples, of course, but that's true of every group of people. Blaming the entire category for the more creepy and disturbing stuff that's made for them is like blaming the entire anime community for the more disturbing rape hentai that exists. I will repeat till I die that the demonization of every little thing that panders to lolicons is an exaggeration born from assuming the worst whenever in doubt.

[Icelerate]

15 hours ago, Zangetsu said:

 I'm sure as hell not going to say someone like Surtr is "progressive"

 

Surtr was progressive considering how liberally he used fire. /s