[ SECRET POST #5551 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5551 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.
[Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao]



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02.



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03.
[Venom]


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04. https://i.imgur.com/M0aDyxc.png
[OP warned for NSFW image]


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05.



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06. [SPOILERS for In Sound Mind]
























Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #794.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. https://i.imgur.com/M0aDyxc.png
[OP warned for NSFW image]

[(Anonymous)]

My feelings are that this is complicated. I'm all for scanty ladies and men but if all the men are dressed relatively normally and the ladies are in bikinis on the battlefield, then I'm going to complain. Now, if a couple ladies are in bikinis but others are in fatigues and others dressed in full body armor, then it becomes something more along the lines of 'does the bikini match the lady's personality' which is a more interesting question to me, because yeah, look at any group of men or ladies. You're gonna get those who are dressed conservatively and those who are dressed practically and those who are dressed inappropriately and those who think every color ought to be worn at the same time and a lot of crossover between every option.

So basically, if the canon has a wide variety of characters and those characters are dressed in a similarly wide variety of styles then... cool. It's all good.

[(Anonymous)]

+1
I really don't mind a female character wearing stupid bikini armor shit as long as it's known that SHE loves wearing it. Sadly we don't tend to get that unless it's Bayonetta.

[(Anonymous)]

Emma Frost from X-Men is another one who wears very little and it absolutely matches her personality (plus these days she can turn into a diamond so nothing's going to hurt her). But then you get shit like Wonder Woman in a thong and high heels and no. There is no way she's going to wear that for fighting. Light armour that leaves a lot of skin showing, sure, she's tough and has an Ancient Greek aesthetic. But not half her butt and most of her boobs showing. I'm a lesbian and I don't mind a bit of fan service but most of it is sexist and super dumb.

Though I do appreciate there's a lot more male characters in skimpy outfits these days! And if it's all around dumb armour that's fine.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I agree. It's one thing if it's straight up female fan service (or really just any ONE group getting fanservice treatment) it's in the an eyeroll inducing Situation in the least (THE LEAST). I'm on board with EVERYONE getting the same treatment.

And much like you, I prefer it if there is a range -- I grew up playing Tekken, and men and woman had variations -- Jin and his whole family generally went shirtless, Eddie had skin tight suits, Christie had the least but I'd play as her sometimes, Michelle and Asuka had cute middle ground outfits, and who could forget Nina and Ana with their femme fatale outfits? But you had options. Both in outfits for each player and players who tended toward one direction or another.

[(Anonymous)]

+1, you said everything I had in mind. I want to have choices when playing!

[(Anonymous)]

Fanservice armor that makes characters look sexy is great and I'm a fan of it but it's shitty when fanservice armor is exclusively a thing for female characters, and it's shitty when wearing fanservice armor and looking sexy is the primary contribution of female characters to the plot. And tbh I think these are all really well established ideas at this point.

[(Anonymous)]

I think at the end of the day, it's still a discussion worth having.
I do appreciate the fan service-y aesthetics! As a woman with curves and as a bi woman, in terms of selling the fantasy of a cool well-rounded character who is also very sexy, I enjoy it! But, I am also very much aware of the harms that come with unreal expectations this brings on IRL women, the concerns over realism and giving better/more realistic representation in media, and in a broader sense, why do we have such an obsession over women's bodies (and policing it), even fictional women?

It is, as someone else said upthread, a complicated thing.

[meadowphoenix]

I think every and any discussion on the visualizing gender is worth having because a) visualization of social constructs of identity is quite literally the first thing brains do to recognize those concepts, that is our main shortcut, and that flows into b) how people creates tropes of social concepts says a lot about where society stands on them.

anyway there's a study out there that where the part of the brain that lights up when men see women in bikinis is the same area that lights up when men see tools, like literally the same area, like literally women are objects, so.....yeah it actually does matter lmao.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you have the link to the study? Because if true then, oh wow, feels bad.

[meadowphoenix]

Here's the one I was talking about:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3801174/

I found a couple that say similar things (and honestly these studies say that both men AND women associate more undressed women with objects so, yay everyone's been poisoned):
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.755 (paywalled sorry)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ejsp.824

[feotakahari]

I don’t really trust that “brain lights up” matches to “thinking about.” The “brain lights up” studies get all kinds of bizarre results.

[meadowphoenix]

yeah, if you don't really believe in neuroimaging as a methodology, this isn't really going to prove anything to you, no. what's an example of a bizarre result?

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously, don't feel bad and don't worry. Even if the study had merit, it's only a small part of the picture of what goes into how men actually view women. Sexy armor on video game ladies may not be 100% pure harmless, but it's virtually harmless, which is almost the same thing. Meadowphoenix has very good points sometimes, but they're a bit of a radfem.

[(Anonymous)]

I don’t know if meadowphoenix is a radfem. They seem like a regular feminist to me, I don’t see radical behavior from them.

[(Anonymous)]

Your attempting to derail Meadowphoenix's valid points by labelling her "a bit of a radfem", in other words, this is a bad argument. You're essentially attempting an adhominem attack. If you disagree with the idea, attack the idea, not the person.

[(Anonymous)]

To me, if the setting is somewhat silly and other combat-inappropriate clothing, like tuxedos or fursuits are common, then a bikini top isn't hard to accept. If all the men are in somewhat realistic armor and the women have their boobs and bellybutton out, it's reasonable ask why the men need the armor. And if all the female characters are young, pretty, and dress sexily, it tells me that the character designers (or the people who approved the designs) were more concerned with fap material than trying to actually design a look to match the character.

[(Anonymous)]

OK, I am going to ask - ON WHAT EARTH THIS IMAGE IS NSFW??

And now into to the secret. Not only constant fanservice is bad especially if it's just for one group - either both women and men should be in their underwear or neither, but bikinis are not sexy:( I mean full body armor is so much more pleasing to the eye, I am sure I am not the only one who thinks so.

[(Anonymous)]

You’re definitely not the only one who finds full body armor pleasing to the eye. But you definitely don’t speak for the majority about thinking bikinis aren’t sexy. That’s such an uncommon opinion, that I’m actually surprised you stated it like it’s a fact, and not just your opinion. Like, it’s not an impossible opinion to have, and it makes sense if the person with the opinion isn’t into women or female presenting people either way, but it’s definitely not the case for most people.

[(Anonymous)]

I have trouble formulating my thoughts, I just mean that people find different things sexy. So I think it would be cool to have more diverse fanservice, because I don't think that even cis straight guys who are supposed to be majority or something have the same taste

[(Anonymous)]

Gotcha, never mind my comment then, I misread what you meant.

[(Anonymous)]

What's so NSFW about that image?

[(Anonymous)]

No idea. I'm the OP who wrote this in the secret maker thread and I didn't attach an image I'd like to go with it nor would I consider this NSFW. Scantily clad, yes, but still not NSFW.

[(Anonymous)]

I just find it funny that OP has to mark the image as NSFW. There's an irony there in that if it was a man being portrayed wearing the same thing, it wouldn't need to be marked as NSFW. That says a lot about the sexualisation of women in video games.

[(Anonymous)]

It wasn’t the secret writer OP that did that though, they specifically said upthread that they didn’t choose an image or mark anything as NSFW. If you’re talking about the secret maker OP, then sure. But it’s not as ironic as you’re saying if you’re talking about the secret maker, and not the original secret writer.

I do still agree with you about the double standard between scantily clad women and men, and how it still does say a lot about the sexualization of women in video games.