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[Loud Whispers]

Scythian women warriors were very real - about 1 quarter of warrior graves there are of female bodies, and an army led by the warrior queen Tomyris defeated King Cyrus the great of Persia and killed him - but the Greek stories of self-mutilating, burly Amazons are absolute bullshit designed to make them all look like utter savages for not following the Greek way of men on top. Remember that the Amazon legends ended with them getting thrashed by male Greek heroes, and this is equally nonsense.

See also: Athenian depictions of Spartan women. Different reasons, but same depictions.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Very few people were "muscular" by today's standards in the past. Look at special forces today - very strong, but not built like bodybuilders at all because endurance is as, if not more, important. In a time when food was more scarce, most people were strong, but quite wiry and without big bulk.

Barbarians stripped naked for battle for fear factor and to stop fabric entering wounds and causing infection. Once they discovered armour, they tended to stop doing this.

History knowledge here seems a little lacking sometimes. Nobody's fault, of course.

Thank you, Loud Whispers, that is a good point. Spartan women were of course trained in fighting, but not sent on campaign with armies.

[Caz]

Werty's reposting the argument that blokes will be the main characters of so many vidyas because blokes are disposable and when awful things happen to them no one cares and all is well; but if it's a female character then it's a statement about women and then an infinite shitstorm is born.

Conversely you could say that it's because men are portrayed as people while there's an inevitable shitstorm if a female character is portrayed outside of the mother/maiden/whore archetypes.

No shitstorm was ever birthed from people demanding a stronk female character be reduced to a maiden/mother/whore nor was one ever birthed from people demanding stronk male characters be more than an alpha/beta/everyman; in this thread alone we've had people arguing over whether bad things happening to female characters is allowable and Christ almighty in the original thread that was shouted to hell and back; it is an instant shitstorm button because everyone judges female characters as representatives of women and not people.

What is 'stronk'?

[Urist Tilaturist]

Stronk? I believe it's a deliberate mispronunciation of "strong" in some kind of fake foreign accent.

[Graknorke]

What is 'stronk'?

Serbia Stronk

[scrdest]

Stronk? I believe it's a deliberate mispronunciation of "strong" in some kind of fake foreign accent.

Essentially, yes. It's pretty much a tongue-in-cheek way to say strong nowadays.

[Rolan7]

What is 'stronk'?

The bear-god my DND party's barbearian worships.  He thinks he's a paladin.

Guess which one of these two gets kidnapped by a man and forced into bondage gear as she screams in pain?

Yeah, that's a fair point...  Still, would have been even worse if the other three females didn't exist at all.  One of those other characters starred in the next game, for what that matters!  (It doesn't, since it's outside of BL2)

[Loud Whispers]

Very few people were "muscular" by today's standards in the past. Look at special forces today - very strong, but not built like bodybuilders at all because endurance is as, if not more, important. In a time when food was more scarce, most people were strong, but quite wiry and without big bulk.

Whose special forces you looking at, North Korea's?

Thank you, Loud Whispers, that is a good point. Spartan women were of course trained in fighting, but not sent on campaign with armies.

They were not trained to fight. They were expected to exercise, but their most important role by far was the fact that:

• a. They ran the household, they owned the land.
• b. They were the ones who could shame the Spartan men to be who they were. Dickheads, the lot.

I do like how the Athenians saw them; they were renown for their beauty and their thigh-high dresses, infamous for their sexual promiscuity and maturity. They were characterized as such. They were famed as Greece's best nans who would take no shit from whiny little children. I've never seen any Spartan nans though. They were also depicted as being ubermasculine men manlier than all in comedies, bossy matriarchs who ruled over Spartan men. An odd range, to be sure.

What is 'stronk'?

Tatiana Stronk

[Urist Tilaturist]

When I said "trained to fight" I really meant wrestling and so on for exercise, not as an army, but you are of course right that they did not get formal military training. It is also true that Sparta treated its women with much more respect than Athens did - unless they were helots, of course...

Special forces do not have much more mass than ordinary men. They have far higher muscle density, but they are not built like NFL players and are not all stereotypically burly. Some are bigger than average, others are not. Historical warriors were similar in some ways - high muscle density, but not necessarily bigger in frame than non-warriors. Some were huge, but not most, except in units especially picked for that like grenadiers.

Here is an image of Spetsnaz GRU troops in 1988. They look fairly ordinary in build to me, though they are of course massively strong:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Evstafiev-spetsnaz-prepare-for-mission.jpg

[Loud Whispers]

Pft, silly Urist helots aren't people.

Special forces do not have much more mass than ordinary men. They have far higher muscle density, but they are not built like NFL players and are not all stereotypically burly. Some are bigger than average, others are not. Historical warriors were similar in some ways - high muscle density, but not necessarily bigger in frame than non-warriors.

Every Royal Marine I've ever seen in my life has been at least a head taller than me and I've seen three three heads taller than me; all were walking muscle brickhouses.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Haha, crown copyright. Funny you mention NFL because many of our specs are built like Rugby players because they literally are rugby players.

[Caz]

They have far higher muscle density, but they are not built like NFL players and are not all stereotypically burly.

Muscle... density?

[Urist Tilaturist]

I would still argue that this is only the case in countries and ages where food is plentiful, so would not have been the case in ancient times in many places and not even in some countries today, hence your comment about North Korea.

Muscle density means how some people can be vastly stronger than others while not being bigger or having more mass (see Bruce Lee). It means increasing the number of muscle fibres to make them stronger, rather than necessarily increasing their size.

[Loud Whispers]

They have far higher muscle density, but they are not built like NFL players and are not all stereotypically burly.

Muscle... density?

Bodybuilders work out to gain muscle mass, making themselves look bigger, burlier and more sexually appealing by causing their muscles to fill with fluid. Working out muscle density means focusing on increasing the quantity of muscle fibres to make hard, denser muscles. That'll make you stronger than a bodybuilder but you won't look as burly, which is the point Urist Uristurister is making.

[Urist Tilaturist]

To rephrase my view: warriors can of course be very burly, but they do not have to be and are not usually in situations where food is scarce, like many war zones in history. Steppe nomads like the Scythians had nowhere near the access to food that modern UK soldiers have, so would not have been as big.

[LordBucket]

You want to see what female soldiers look like?

No. And neither does the average gamer.

When there are real examples available, why look for stupid fictional ones?

The whole point of gaming and movies and fiction in general is to engage in fantasy. If you want real life, go outside.

If you want "realistic" combat simulation, why limit yourself to realistic portrayals of fighters? Why not simulate PTSD? What about pain? We could insert pain inducers in our haptic feedback controls. Instead of shaking, the controllers will inject you with something that makes you suffer and paralyzes your limbs. And let's do away with generic hit point systems, and just have everyone die in one hit. Or better yet, simulate amputation so when you get your legs blown off you get to sit around for an hour waiting and hoping for a medic to show up while you slowly and painfully bleed to death.

That would be so awesome, right? Realistic gameplay yay!

Oh, wait. That would be horrible and not fun at all.

Why exactly are we complaining about idealistic portrayals of people in our games?