keiiii

Cool stuff you've got! I especially like the first one. It's nice to see more fellow visual artists around these parts.

In the meantime, I'm still around as a visual artist and will be contributing a few more artworks.

I'm gonna go ahead and finish that group pic I emailed you!

A Fire Emblem project? How can I NOT be a part of that? Visual artist here. Can't get much done for this project right now, as I have a ton of prior obligations to get through first. But hopefully that shouldn't be a problem as the project seems to be in an early phase? Do we know what kind of time frame we're looking at?

Thanks! Just cut my cake and ate my slice. Yum. Happy birthday to the other cool b-day people too!

So I'm in NJ, and Sandy took electricity from me for 140+ hours. Got power back a couple of days ago, and internet back late last night. I am alive and back to work!

Recovering from a very ill-timed hand injury. I can type (slowly) as you can see, but can't draw for the moment. So excited and curious about everyone else's contributions!

I am ALIVE, but will be out of town for a few days. When I get back, though, wooo watch out! Can't wait to hear rBm's Decision Bell track! The source is one of my favorites from the soundtrack, and having listened to rBm's other works, everything just adds up to awesomeness in my book.

Rozo, if I don't get any objections in a few days, I'm just gonna go ahead and finish that one WIP.

Haha, that's fine by me; you know *I* can be slow as well. Probably slower.

Did you get my email, Rozo? Just checkin'.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I need more time to finish the arts

Reincarnation 0:03-1:38 NOT Reincarnation

IIRC Reincarnation does not play during the ending; rather, it plays when the corobockle guy tells you to go to the corrdor of wind and find Djinn. Hang on, gonna go looking for my OST.

I have the physical OST somewhere in my garage and can check the tracklist if needed.

Japanese games tend to objectify characters of both genders. It's just that female-catering male characters are sometimes (but not always) very subtle. Even the most blatant offenders can be subtle compared to their female counterparts. I present to you THE most blatant example I can think of: Hisame Shizumaru from the Samurai Spirits series. A shota-flavored pretty boy, polite and kind, BUT suffering from amnesia as well as some kind of rampaging evil persona (fangirls love pretty boys with psychological baggage). His ideal type is described as "an older sister who could take care of him" (i.e. the age group of females to which he's designed to appeal). One of his taking-hit-screams is this incredibly moany, uke-tastic "yamete." Seriously, the first time I heard him say it, I lol'd so hard. But if you just look at his character design, nothing really screams HI I EXIST TO PANDER TO FANGIRLS. Compare to Iroha, a female character from the same series. I think part of the reason for this subtlety is that skin-tight garments and/or excessive skin baring of male characters don't really appeal to the majority of females. I know that's certainly true for myself. Think of the male characters with the biggest female followings -- Link, Sephiroth, etc. None of them walks around in a skin-tight body suit or a thong speedo. Raiden from MGS series is an interesting case. He wears a tight body suit, and he does have a decent (not huge) sized female following, but his character design was produced/directed by a bisexual male. The following scantily clad males were also designed by a bisexual male artist: note them exposed cheeks dude needs new pants EDIT: I'm not claiming Shizumaru is less objectified than Iroha. Just saying the objectification is harder to see at first glance.

You're asking the wrong questions. The presence of oversexualized female characters is not the main factor that drives females away. Look at the covers of women's magazines. Airbrushed photos of models in bikinis are not uncommon at all. Those may not be as sexualized as typical sexy video game characters, but 'sexiness' and 'over-idealized' factors are definitely present. The key is this: It's not the presence of oversexualized females. It is the SHORTAGE of characters/ elements designed for females. It's the imbalance.

Let it be known for the record that I have XX chromosomes. I really don't care about door holding (though I can imagine exceptional cases, like if some crazy dude insisted how all females were fragile ladies to be treated like noble ladies or whatever), but I do have an opinion on objectification of characters of both sexes in fiction.

Has been proven wrong by countless generations of slavery and extreme male dominance in many parts of the world throughout history. Concepts like "sexism" didn't even exist back when people took sexism for granted. I agree that overdoing the awareness thing can do more harm than good, but just shutting up and ignoring it entirely isn't the answer, either.

Right, sometimes it doesn't matter. As an extreme example, hentai game developers don't have to worry about offending or appealing to females. The thing is that there could/would be a lot more females playing games if more games were (successfully) designed to appeal to them. Japanese games tend to "solve" this problem NOT by de-objectifying female characters, but by including objectified MALE characters in the cast that genuinely appeal to female gamers. It doesn't exactly promote realistic/ empowering portrayal of either gender, but it works as far as garnering female fanbase is concerned.

Chick flicks are a form of female power fantasy (where "power" is not physical, but social/ interpersonal).

Interestingly, even Dead or Alive tried to provide something for female gamers with Ein ("pretty boy with psychological baggage" which happens to be amnesia in this case). Didn't quite succeed for obvious reasons, but it was something. XD Even though Japanese games are infamous for ridiculous objectification of female characters, Japanese games tend to have greater female followings because both genders are objectified.

That's unrealistic, but is not sexist because characters like those are male empowerment fantasy. They hold no appeal to the majority of actual female consumers.