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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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Can you name many conventionally unattractive male game protagonists from major franchises?

I went down a mental list, and all I could come up with was Mario, who barely has human proportions anyway. The other one was Link in the classic Zelda games, but that was fixed by Ocarina of Time (one of the developers’ wives famously asked for them to ditch the bulbous nose and the rest is history.

You have a wide variety of looks for male protagonists, but they usually fall into the pretty boy camp (Link, Cloud, 9S in Nier Automata) or they’re more classically masculine (Simon Belmont, Snake, Chris Redfield), or they’re somewhere in between, bishounen who project some masculine energy (see Alucard and basically all of Iga-era Castlevania, or brother Nier in Replicant). This is the way it always was and I haven’t seen much deviation.

Women have frequently fallen into the supermodel camp. You have Lara Croft, Bayonetta, Samus, 2B and the old Harley Quinn as classic examples. I prefer petite and/or cute, personally, so women like Lara Croft and 2B don’t do much for me, but, say, Zelda from Skyward Sword does and a lot of female characters from RPGs fall into that camp (a recent example would be Xenoblade 3, with Mio, and there’s a steady selection of Fire Emblem and Atelier characters over the decades that work fine for me). So my tastes have always been a bit underrepresented. Suffice to say masculine or chunky characters aren’t that popular with guys, and there’s room for guys with my taste but they’ll rarely be the only protagonist in a game outside select RPGs, which is fine. Heck, even Saber from Fate, who would realistically be muscular, doesn’t look like it.

I don’t play many AAA games, so I’m mostly unaffected by the trends I’ve seen. But the trend seems to be that every attractive female character is made less attractive by conventional standards, and every new female character is either ordinary or unattractive, which has never been the case with guys and seems to continue not to be the case. By what rubric in film, television, or popular art could you make the case that Aloy from the second Horizon game, or that protagonist from the latest Fable trailer, or the Forspoken protagonist, or that super-masculine woman from The Last of Us 2 is attractive to men in the general population? Maybe there’s some art from certain periods with large women, but that’s always seemed to be a result of the artist’s proclivities, not overall trends. I don’t recall seeing masculine women being all that popular with men in any period in history. Why have new characters who look like Samus seemingly become so rare? And why have things seemingly tilted away from those female signifiers of beauty, as in the case of Harley Quinn?

How many modern male characters have seen the equivalent treatment? I don’t even recall many recent male protagonists, but does, say, the guy from the latest Assassin’s Creed adhere less to conventional male standards? What about the guy on the art of Baulder’s Gate 3, who at least looks like he fits into the bishounen trope? What about the new Prince of Persia protagonist, who, haircut aside, just looks very fit, the Simon Belmont type?

Regardless, it looks like the principles of female character design have changed, where the principles of male character design have changed more incrementally if at all. I think that’s what people are latching on to.

Can you name many conventionally unattractive male game protagonists from major franchises?

Screw that, I'd just be happy if anyone could name a merely average-looking male game protagonist from a major franchise.

The protagonists from L4D are regular looking slice-of-life type people. Last few GTA's as well.

But to your point I did have to rack my brain for a few minutes to come up with those.

Again, Mario is my go-to for that. Can’t think of a single other example.

If you count Emil as a protagonist in Nier Replicant, that could work, but he doesn’t even look human so would that count?

Kratos and Agent 47 would both be ugly to most attractive young women.

As someone who knows nothing about this subject in general, I had to look these characters up. They may not be handsome, but both are tall, muscular fighting men still. Not exactly average-looking.

And why have things seemingly tilted away from those female signifiers of beauty, as in the case of Harley Quinn?

I don't think Harley is beautiful, but then "vacuum sealed into her costume" isn't appealing to me. I think the character is unappealing in general because of the whole back story, and then Margot Robbie in the movie version of Suicide Squad just sealed the deal about "this is ugliness" for me. But I'm old enough that I think tattoos and dyed hair are signifiers of trashy, not hawtness.

Like I said, I like cute, petite women, and frilly costumes help, so Harley’s classic design does nothing for me, and her persona is repugnant. That’s my taste, but I get that I’m not in the majority.

That said, I do think her curves are in line with what might be considered conventionally attractive, and her face is probably closer to that as well in the old games.