Comments on: Naked and Sticky: Gaming’s Favorite Female Characters

By: Bonnie Ruberg

Bonnie Ruberg — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 10:14:51 +0000

The gender-switched fan art is pretty interesting stuff. That one Link picture in particular is, well, particularly interesting. I wonder if the desire to turn male characters into female ones before sexualizing them comes from some sort of homo-erotic repression? You want to sexualize the characters you love, but you feel it’s unacceptable if they’re male. Then again, giving an obviously male character a female body sounds pretty “unacceptable” too. Fascinating stuff!

Personally, my favorite find on Rule #34 is all the House/Wilson slash. I wasn’t thinking it before, but now I sure am :).

By: Halfassured

Halfassured — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:43:06 +0000

Oh, your link reminds me — as regards genderbending porn, I’m really interested in how much there is there. It’s nearly all M->F of course, and it runs the gamut from silly (http://rule34.paheal.net/post/view/71126) to disturbing (http://rule34.paheal.net/post/view/57440) to actually-hot (http://rule34.paheal.net/post/view/4086), but still.

By: Halfassured

Halfassured — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:31:45 +0000

Well, the flippant answer is that people are really interested in sex, and amateur media allows them to indulge in that interest without needing to appease censors or interest a general audience. But there does seem to be a lot of sex in fandom even by those standards, so it probably is more complex than that.

Exercising creative control over a character is a heady power, especially if it’s a character you’re already invested in. It’s easy to see how this can lead to sex, in the same way that if you had robots or hypno-zombies that could be programmed, they’d inevitably get used for sex, but I think it’s also the core of Mary Sueism and other literary indulgences.

By: Bonnie Ruberg

Bonnie Ruberg — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:16:16 +0000

Relationships which seem cleanly and clearly to segue into sexual ones are left unfulfilled, with the heroes and heroines vanishing into their respective sunsets.
That seems like a really good point, Calladin. If fan art takes up where the original leaves off, you can see why it feels the need to fill in the sexual gaps.

I think amateur participatory media is just really sexual on the whole.
Why do think that is, Halfassured? Because there’s something sexual in taking control of characters?

As for Rule 34, did anyone else see the Luigi/Samus cross-gender spliced one? Freaky! Thanks for the link, Halfassured :).

By: Scott Jon Siegel

Scott Jon Siegel — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:52:55 +0000

Wow. Just… wow.

And that guy’s fooling nobody claiming it’s being done for humorous purposes.

By: Halfassured

Halfassured — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:40:15 +0000

I think amateur participatory media is just really sexual on the whole, and so fanart gets the same treatment. Well, that and it comes with fully-realized characters on whom you can drape your sexual predilections.

On the topic of sexualizing characters in general, there’s now a website — http://rule34.paheal.net/ — made with the specific intention of amassing porn of every character ever. It’s done for humour purposes, of course, but the idea stems from the phenomenon you’re commenting on.

By: Cadallin

Cadallin — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:23:53 +0000

That really is an excellent explanation in the specific case of Resident Evil 4, Scott.

I should have made my example more generic, as it is really the repetition of sexualized interaction followed by sexual denial that I find so absurd.

If that explanation held in all cases, then the plurality of heroes in pop culture would have to be gay. I just don’t think that matches up with either the intent or popular interpretation.

By: Scott Jon Siegel

Scott Jon Siegel — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:21:39 +0000

“In Resident Evil 4, however, we are supposed to believe, after all the blatant flirtation and innuendo, and Ashley outright tossing herself at Leon at the end, that he doesn’t take her up on it? Preposterous!”

Actually, the reason Leon doesn’t take Ashley up on her offer is because he’s gay.

By: darkpen

darkpen — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:54:59 +0000

I loled

By: Cadallin

Cadallin — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 02:20:56 +0000

I am going to persist in a naive belief that the ooze is intended to be a mixture of sweat, natural skin oil, and KY jelly supplied by a 55-gallon drum located just out of view.

It’s the little things that let me cling to what small touches of sanity I have left.

As for why fan art is so sexual, I have some intuitions on this I think are somewhat logical. One of my favorite observations is that real life is rated NC-17. That the media around which fandom most often develops is so sterilized, especially in the United States, leaves it lacking.

Relationships which seem cleanly and clearly to segue into sexual ones are left unfulfilled, with the heroes and heroines vanishing into their respective sunsets. The choices made in plot development often make this far worse in games and related media.

Contrast “The Lord of the Rings” and “Resident Evil 4″ for example, Tolkien as repressed as he was, at least acknowledges that Arwen and Aragorn had sex, at least once; if only by acknowledging that they had a child. In Resident Evil 4, however, we are supposed to believe, after all the blatant flirtation and innuendo, and Ashley outright tossing herself at Leon at the end, that he doesn’t take her up on it? Preposterous!

In Anime, and other Japanese derived media, I suspect this is quite intentional. The relationship between official, corporate sponsored writing (which is censored) and the Erotic Doujinshi circles (which is anything but censored! Definitely in ideas if not in artwork) is one of active miscegenation. With writers frequently moving from one side to the other over the course of their careers.

However, that explanation doesn’t really account for the extent of the phenomenon in America.