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[smeeprocket]

Only because women have not developed enough games yet! There is more to life than pop culture and games.

You made a claim countering mine. The onus is on you to provide a source as well. Guess what, reputable sources on drug use or lack thereof in pornography are hard to find.

no that is not how debates work. Otherwise we could all just deflect people questioning our arguments by demanding they find a source instead.

I don't know how the rest of life is relevant to games or pop culture in the sense of a female power fantasy. However, I, as a female gamer, can not picture what a female power fantasy would look like. It definitely doesn't show up in even games with female devs.

[Urist Tilaturist]

A female power fantasy would look like  - guess what - a powerful woman, likely not too sexualised, dominating her foes and maybe seducing attractive men if she wants to. Same as a male power fantasy, but female. Try any "mary sue" fan fiction written by a woman -  Mary sue arrives, wows the crew, defeats all their enemies, then has a threesome with Kirk and Spock.

You are not finding a source instead, but as well. We both made opposing claims, now we both have to support them, or they both stay just claims. That is how debate works.

[Xantalos]

no that is not how debates work. Otherwise we could all just deflect people questioning our arguments by demanding they find a source instead.

The hell kinda debates have I been watching then?

[smeeprocket]

You're basically saying "women disagree with this" so yea, prove to me that women gamers want to be objectified and play characters that are highly sexualized and 1 dimensional.

So... sexy characters cannot be 3 dimensional?

I am reminded when I complained about huge breast sizes on a comic website and what they did is they showed a pin up that featured every major DC character at the time (this is before the New 52).

What I found was that there was a range. As well even though some characters were highly sexual with generous proportions, they were often well written as well.

Sex and character is nuanced.

There is no such thing as a female power fantasy. I don't even know what you are on about there. What would that even look like?

Wait what?

A Power Fantasy is just that a Power + Fantasy... a Power Fantasy. It doesn't literally refer to muscles it can be anything.

Lara Croft used to be the titular female power fantasy for videogames. They actually did many documentaries and found that female gamers didn't just "put up" with her looks, they actually found the fact that she was also attractive to be a benefit to their experience. They wanted to be as adventurous, strong, and powerful but also look great while doing so. Yet that is just one example.

Lara Croft is definitely not a female power fantasy. She is heroic, but... I don't think you understand what I'm talking about even though it is everywhere. A male power fantasy would be what a dude wants to be in this case, as in super buff, kicks the enemy's ass, rescues the fair maiden (who is inevitably short on fabric for her clothes.)

Lara Croft got around the ridiculous proportions because she has more depth to her character. But her proportions are, in fact, ridiculous. It's just that the depiction of a strong woman mattered more to females. But, that doesn't make her a power fantasy. Because then every male hero would be a male power fantasy and that isn't how it works.

And yes, as a comic book fan, there are quite an array of breast sizes to appease all male comic book readers. I will not argue that. I would argue that outfits like Power Girl's with the boob window, which they actually weakly tried to explain away in the comic, are prevalent and insulting. I'm not even referring to comics like WItchblade which exist entirely to be masturbation material. There is a place for that.

[smeeprocket]

A female power fantasy would look like  - guess what - a powerful woman, likely not too sexualised, dominating her foes and maybe seducing attractive men if she wants to. Same as a male power fantasy, but female. Try any "mary sue" fan fiction written by a woman -  Mary sue arrives, wows the crew, defeats all their enemies, then has a threesome with Kirk and Spock.

You are not finding a source instead, but as well. We both made opposing claims, now we both have to support them, or they both stay just claims. That is how debate works.

no that is still a male fantasy. Geez women don't walk around thinking about how they can seduce men. Also I don't think sexual fanfiction counts towards any argument.

We do not exist to pleasure men. Our thoughts don't revolve around it.

I suspect this is sometimes different for guys.

If I could picture anything it would be a woman who could beat the fuck out of guys even though she has the bone structure and muscular density of a female. But that's so vague.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Does the thought that women might actually want to have sex with men and enjoy it for their own pleasure occur to you? Take a look here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_Great
Enjoyed seducing and fornicating with her male officers, even promoting them in exchange for their favours. She was more powerful than they were and certainly did not have to do so.

Like it or not, those Mary Sue fictions were largely written by women. It must have been at least some woman's fantasy, just not yours.

Please don't exclude sexual fanfictions from a discussion about fantasy. That is throwing away something very close to the matter indeed. This all smells a little of "exclude the evidence that doesn't support my argument".

[Glowcat]

I am telling you in pop culture (because I guess on an individual basis we all have some definition of what would make us powerful) and in games, there is no female power fantasy. It does not exist.

Eh. I've seen some disagreement on that front over battlelines like Bayonetta (of course divided over whether she unnecessarily panders to the male gaze, is an expression of female empowerment, or can be described in both categories).

There aren't many games that I could consider "female power fantasy" (character options are more of "pick your power fantasy typically involving the ability to apply violence") and I can't think of any that are purely such, overwhelmingly being complicated by sexualization rather than being allowed to stand on their own, but I guess a lot of that rides on what one considers a power fantasy. In the sense that male power fantasies are marketed it would probably fall in line with Urist*3er's Mary Sue example where physical power, domination, and sexual success are all expressions of achieving a (desired) fantasy state.

But that's more a problem with the overall narrative being pushed as power fantasy. It does not appeal to pacifists, or asexual (or aromantic) people, and as such has its own limitations.

[smeeprocket]

Does the thought that women might actually want to have sex with men and enjoy it for her own pleasure occur to you? Take a look here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_Great
Enjoyed seducing and fornicating with her male officers, even promoting them in exchange for their favours. She was more powerful than they were and certainly did not have to do so.

Like it or not, those Mary Sue fictions were largely written by women. It must have been at least some women's fantasy, just not yours.

...

ffs

So you picked a woman of... rather interesting sexual tastes and are saying all women want to seduce men because she is a woman?

Mary Sue fictions were written by women, but they were not written by the majority of women or even a small sampling of women. They are irrelevant.

Look, I am telling you, as a woman who is attracted to men, that is not what we are looking for. I have talked to many other women,some of whom are also sexually attracted towards men. We do not want to be depicted as seductresses because that is old and tired and is something that appeals more to men.

You're being obtuse.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Catherine did not have sex with horses. That is nonsense spread by her enemies.

It is not irrelevant if even a small number of women think something. It means that no general statements about "all women" and "no women" can be made. Of course most women do not want to seduce every man they meet. But some women do have a power fantasy that involves seducing some men attractive to them, so saying that female power fantasies are unimaginable is plain wrong.

[smeeprocket]

Catherine did not have sex with horses. That is nonsense spread by her enemies.

It is not irrelevant if even a small number of women think something. It means that no general statements about "all women" and "no women" can be made. Of course most women do not want to seduce every man they meet. But some women do have a power fantasy that involves seducing some men attractive to them, so saying that female power fantasies are unimaginable is plain wrong.

omg

Never said anything about horses.

Look, we can play semantics all day and bog the conversation down, or we can debate the issue.

It's not honestly that hard to seduce most men. It wouldn't be a power fantasy. I guess being a dom would be a power fantasy, but that isn't relative to gaming, and honestly, a dom character would be targeted towards dudes more than women, anyway. That has been done, usually alongside women with ridiculous proportions in bikinis in games targeted specifically at males.

The current state of things is that there are no examples of female power fantasies in gaming, unless we start getting ridiculous and counting every individual's personal preference, but in that case I guess some women, somewhere is going to find objectification powerful or something.

[Xantalos]

One thing I don't quite get is why do you say there's no female power fantasy? Females being unable to imagine themselves having power over other people implies some bad things about the gender and you of all people wouldn't say that, I think.

[smeeprocket]

One thing I don't quite get is why do you say there's no female power fantasy? Females being unable to imagine themselves having power over other people implies some bad things about the gender and you of all people wouldn't say that, I think.

I'm saying there are no real examples of it in game, not that it can't exist.

[Xantalos]

I am telling you in pop culture (because I guess on an individual basis we all have some definition of what would make us powerful) and in games, there is no female power fantasy. It does not exist.

Am I misreading this then, or...?

[smeeprocket]

I am telling you in pop culture (because I guess on an individual basis we all have some definition of what would make us powerful) and in games, there is no female power fantasy. It does not exist.

Am I misreading this then, or...?

as I said, in pop culture and games, it does not exist. I can hunt for it, but I will not be able to find it.

In retrospect, it does exist in pop culture somewhere I'm sure, that's a fairly broad field. But not in games.

[Xantalos]

Then what would one be?