Tanukitsune

Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

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Oh, man. I loved the design of EDI. Initially - my kneejerk reaction -  was to be dismayed that she was so overtly sexualised, but then I thought it was a neat throwback to the (dated, retro, sexist) idea of "fembots". If her character was more of a femme fatale, I think it would have bothered me, but she's really dorky, earnest and awkward; the analytical computer crammed into a voluptuous female form. Some of the more humorous conversations in the game stemmed from that.  

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I've been thinking of quitting Luftrausers.

 

I've been thinking the same thing. I want to unlock the final plane, the Urauser. But some of the missions rely on ridiculously unlikely things, like me being able to defeat a special enemy (that I've only encountered twice in 13 hours of play) with a random weapon. I'd personally recommend at least reaching the point where you've unlocked all the main ship parts and defeated a blimp before quitting, though!

 

Oh god, I hated it (I refuse to use the pronoun "her" for a robot).

 

Why? For instance, surely you don't have a problem referring to Bender as "him"?

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 Why? For instance, surely you don't have a problem referring to Bender as "him"?

Bender is specifically a "manbot" which is clear from his moderately sized antenna. He comes from a universe where robots are gendered and even have the complexity to consider their gender assignment correct or incorrect. Also in Futurama canon it's possible for male and female robots to procreate...somehow.

Oh and Futurama doesn't take itself anywhere near as seriously as mass effect 3. I just thought EDI stood out as something utterly ridiculous in that universe. All the other robots/ai had form relating to function, if herfunction was combat and ship diagnostics, why the hell did she look like that? I thought the character design was just poor...like that visor, what was that even there for?

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Oh and Futurama doesn't take itself anywhere near as seriously as mass effect 3. I just thought EDI stood out as something utterly ridiculous in that universe. All the other robots/ai had form relating to function, if herfunction was combat and ship diagnostics, why the hell did she look like that? I thought the character design was just poor...like that visor, what was that even there for?

Oh man, I'm going to defend ME3's story, kinda...I'm sorry.

Edi's body was designed by Cerberus as an infiltration, AI controlled robot to use against Earth research and military facilities. While not stated (I don't think), the assumption is that she was made to be an attractive female as seducing people would have been one of the tools at her disposal to accomplish her mission. So the body does actually follow the "form is function" pattern established by all the other machines.

Now of course, that's not getting into the way female characters were designed, and changed, over time. I'm pretty sure that every single female characters breasts grew in size between 1->2->3. And in 3 at least, both Samara and Miranda are running around in high heels, which is even worse than Edi having them, to me.

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Oh man, I'm going to defend ME3's story, kinda...I'm sorry.

Edi's body was designed by Cerberus as an infiltration, AI controlled robot to use against Earth research and military facilities. While not stated (I don't think), the assumption is that she was made to be an attractive female as seducing people would have been one of the tools at her disposal to accomplish her mission. So the body does actually follow the "form is function" pattern established by all the other machines.

Now of course, that's not getting into the way female characters were designed, and changed, over time. I'm pretty sure that every single female characters breasts grew in size between 1->2->3. And in 3 at least, both Samara and Miranda are running around in high heels, which is even worse than Edi having them, to me.

 

Is there a term for a situation where a torturous in-universe explanation is created almost exclusively to justify what anyone can see is just the male gaze (or something just as uncomplicated and base)? I'm not asking as a criticism of you, Bjorn, but these kinds of explanations are appearing a lot lately with the current social climate of games and I wish there were a way to call a spade a spade.

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Is there a term for a situation where a torturous in-universe explanation is created almost exclusively to justify what anyone can see is just the male gaze (or something just as uncomplicated and base)? I'm not asking as a criticism of you, Bjorn, but these kinds of explanations are appearing a lot lately with the current social climate of games and I wish there were a way to call a spade a spade.

It's a good question, and actually a good follow-up in general, pointing out the writing hoops that the ME3 team had to go through in order to justify Edi's body. And as blatantly sexist content has become slightly less accepted, creators will be increasingly likely to try and justify it in-world.

We could come up with our own. Call it the Booty Backstory: A backstory or origin story which exists primarily to justify the sexualized design of a character.

Also, Edi's design can get worse, but it only happens when you put on one of the alternate outfits. Someone on the design team straight up took the time to give her a highly visible camel toe. Because artistic integrity.

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I'm pretty sure that every single female characters breasts grew in size between 1->2->3. And in 3 at least, both Samara and Miranda are running around in high heels, which is even worse than Edi having them, to me.

Also known as One Piece Syndrome, which I just made up because it's the first time I ever saw it happen, and also the most egregious.

 

SUAQoOY.jpg

 

I love that anime for a lot of reasons but this has always bothered me.

 

Gormongous' torturous in-universe explanation - which I will call the Booty Backstory because Bjorn is a goddamn genius - for this is that she "grew older" and so OF COURSE her breasts are now twice the size of a watermelon.

 

EDIT: What's it take to start a TV Tropes page? There's got to be enough examples of the Booty Backstory to justify it. Of course, there's probably already a page on there somewhere, we just don't know what it's called.

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What's it take to start a TV Tropes page? There's got to be enough examples of the Booty Backstory to justify it. Of course, there's probably already a page on there somewhere, we just don't know what it's called.

 

You have to register and have a posting history, I think, which is not particularly hard to get (or borrow). There's probably a term for the "fig leaf" backstory for sexy female characters, but I went through the tropes tagged "sexuality" and didn't find one, so if it does exist (and you're right that it probably does) it has an obscure and hard-to-find name. "Boob Backstory" is so much better.

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Good discussions!

 

Anyway, there are a bunch of games I've quit playing within the last month or so.

 

Dark Souls 2 - Decided I straight up didn't like any of the new changes to the formula, and the game was starting to feel like a slog. Quit it.

 

Metro Last Light - Despite this game feeling like it was hitting all the same beats as the first game, I was enjoying playing this quite a bit. The shooting and stealthing in the game felt a lot better, and oh man is it one of the best looking games I've played in awhile. But then I hit a wall during a chase scene where I kept getting murdered and couldn't figure out how to stop that from happening. Bummer.

 

Hack n Slash - After agonizing over enough coding puzzles I started getting this gnawing feeling that I couldn't shake that my time would be better spent struggling with actual programming problems in like Game Maker or Unity or something.

 

Just Cause 2 - Dumb stupid fun that was great on nights when I would get home from a bar and be a little too drunk to play anything that might involve decent skills or decision making. But also after a few hours I realized I had experienced just about everything cool the game had to offer.

 

Darksiders 2 - Another game I was playing that felt pleasant enough to play, but was nothing great. Got confused in some dungeon towards the end of the game (I think?). Gave up.
 

Deus Ex: HR - Started replaying this. I never finished it the first time around (got stuck at the 2nd boss, became impossible to progress despite obsessively reading strategy guides and the like). This time I got close to the 2nd boss, but not quite there. I have a ton of points for upgrades that I haven't spent because I am so nervous about doing a wrong build again that will make the 2nd boss impossible. Despite wishing that I wasn't done with this game, realistically I think I am. :-(

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Do you have the new Deus Ex: HR: Director's Cut? Supposedly, it completely reworks the boss battles to ensure you can't get stuck in the same way. I haven't gotten that far in it myself, so I can't guarantee anything.

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Yeah I did pick it up, and that's what I'm playing. As far as the first boss fight went they added a couple of rooms and vents that you could hide in, so that made things a little easier I guess? My real problem is just trying to decide how to upgrade, and it's causing me a lot of anxiety.

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Gormongous' torturous in-universe explanation - which I will call the Booty Backstory because Bjorn is a goddamn genius - for this is that she "grew older" and so OF COURSE her breasts are now twice the size of a watermelon.

 

EDIT: What's it take to start a TV Tropes page? There's got to be enough examples of the Booty Backstory to justify it. Of course, there's probably already a page on there somewhere, we just don't know what it's called.

You have to register and have a posting history, I think, which is not particularly hard to get (or borrow). There's probably a term for the "fig leaf" backstory for sexy female characters, but I went through the tropes tagged "sexuality" and didn't find one, so if it does exist (and you're right that it probably does) it has an obscure and hard-to-find name. "Boob Backstory" is so much better.

 

This is a good idea, and I support this. If it involves an actual quest in a game, it could be called Side (Boob) Quest.  I don't have a TV Tropes account, but amongst us, I'm sure we can find or make one that is eligible to make a new article.

So what's better, Booty Backstory or Boob Backstory?

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Yeah I fall on the side of Booty Backstory. It's got some nice flow!

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It's a good question, and actually a good follow-up in general, pointing out the writing hoops that the ME3 team had to go through in order to justify Edi's body. And as blatantly sexist content has become slightly less accepted, creators will be increasingly likely to try and justify it in-world.

We could come up with our own. Call it the Booty Backstory: A backstory or origin story which exists primarily to justify the sexualized design of a character.

Also, Edi's design can get worse, but it only happens when you put on one of the alternate outfits. Someone on the design team straight up took the time to give her a highly visible camel toe. Because artistic integrity.

 

 

This is a good idea, and I support this. If it involves an actual quest in a game, it could be called Side (Boob) Quest.  I don't have a TV Tropes account, but amongst us, I'm sure we can find or make one that is eligible to make a new article.

So what's better, Booty Backstory or Boob Backstory?

 

Sorry I'm a bit late to this, but c'mon guys. It's obviously "Baby Got Backstory".

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well yeah of course that's obvious i was just waiting for someone else to say it

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Sorry I'm a bit late to this, but c'mon guys. It's obviously "Baby Got Backstory".

 

Nice!  I kept trying to think of something like Back(side)story and couldn't make it work.  You win the TVTropes naming game.  Now we just need to come up with some more examples and put an article together.  So, we've got ME3 and between Twig and Gorm, I'm sure they can come up with some anime examples.  I haven't played either Bayonetta.  Would her hair magic fall into this?

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I would say yes for sure to the Bayonetta example (though I also have not played it - yet).

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As a reason for her being naked a lot, yes. As a reason for her general appearance, no. I guess it depends on what we're trying to justify.

 

Also from Mass Effect, we have Miranda who has been genetically engineered to have a perfect ass (not even kidding). Kojima's got a few of these too, notably Quiet from the upcoming MGS5. At least, he's claiming the backstory will make you empathetic to her appearance. Right now, we don't know exactly how much backstory she's got. I feel like we need some RPG experts to really dig into this. Not because the portrayal is worse in RPGs, but because they try harder to hide it.

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Yeah Miffy that's what I was going on re: Bayonetta.

 

Does running around as Naked Raiden count? I think it does!

 

Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite wearing the low-cut dress because she's supposed to be a sort of "trophy"?

 

Now that I'm being pressed I'm actually having a hard time thinking of any good anime examples besides Nami from One Piece. D:

 

Oh, oh, any time a "one-with-nature" type of character wears very little clothing? I'm specifically thinking of Eve from Freedom Force, but there are countless examples of this trope.

 

---

 

It occurs to me that I suppose it's important to make the distinction between people being naked/sexily-dressed for story reasons, and people's bodies just being modified (not explicitly, just like "hey she's sexy because:") so as to be More Attractive for story reasons. The first few examples we came up with were body-mods, but Bayonetta and the few I just presented are more the naked-getting types.

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"She's really 700 years old" seems related to Booty Backstory

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Now that I'm being pressed I'm actually having a hard time thinking of any good anime examples besides Nami from One Piece. D:

 

I'm planning to comb my list of anime I've watched this weekend for characters who are super-sexy cheesecake but totally in service to the story, honest. I'm not anticipating any issues finding some.

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Knights of Sidonia. The humans are able to photosynthesize (except for the main character because he isn't part of the genetically engineered crop, so to speak), which gives the anime an excuse to showcase lots of naked ladies. Not one naked dude in sight ever, though.

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"I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."

 

I think we could make a thread for this in itself, mostly because I like the idea of seeing a Baby Got Backstory thread title appearing for people who haven't been in this one.

 

EDIT: Also how has Mass Effect come up twice without anyone mentioning the race of non gendered bisexual blue ladies that will literally mate with any species of any gender to "gather useful genes from any source."

 

I love Mass Effect but the creativity behind the characters is the worst.

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