Important note to the conclusion: We want all these things, BUT we don't want the other things (masculine men, feminine women, ect) removed. We want both, at ONCE!
Pretty much all of this is true, but I think Painwheel from Skullgirls is an excellent example of a female "freak" design who is actually allowed to look freaky and monstrous. I think she deserved to be mentioned here
@@Doople Though Skullgrils' world and theming makes most of them "freaks" by default, there's a huge difference in the visuals accompanying them, which puts some in their own tier of freaky. Painwheel, Double and Eliza (when in her skeleton form) also LOOK totally freaky/messed up in every single way. Compare this to Fillia, Squiggly, or Ms. Fortune who are definitely "freaks" but they're less freaky in their visuals and movements. More conventionally attractive. (I love the entire cast and Squiggly in particular, no hate intended.)
@waow2859 My favorite part about this is that Eliza's skeleton form isn't even her, it's the parasite she bonded with. Actual Eliza is *just a bunch of blood that forms around the skeleton and gives the appearance of a person.* She's beyond a freak, she's an actual horror monster.
I believe that a good example of a female freak character is Hisako, from the Killer Instinct series. She’s creepy, has a great character design and a pretty interesting backstory. God, she used to give me nightmares as a child.
One explanation I think holds true for why we don't have more monster girls that are truly strange/unsettling is the one given by Red of the channel Overly Sarcastic Productions. In her video about strong female characters, she explains that we usually have a template for a completely standard character which includes them being a guy, thus making "female" a modifier to that standard. As such, when we have monster characters who are masculine, they are allowed to be more strange and unsettling because their gender does not interfere in their characterization. People are going to assume the big monster character is male because there aren't enough modifiers to show that they are a woman. As such, if you want to make a character a big monster but also a female, you have to also design this character to be more obviously female, hence the supermodel-looking girls with small deformities and the vagina monsters. In theory, the crazy monster can be any gender or none at all but if you want the monster to be convincing as a girl monster, she has to have traditionally feminine traits. Double herself is a good example of this. If she were a male monster, she probably wouldn't need a dong swinging around but since she needs to fill the "female modifier quota" so to speak, she needs jiggling boobs and large hips to look convincing EDIT: Grammar
@@veevolt492 Yes, and that should be the idea. The character shouldn't need obvious traits in order to be considered female. For example, take Linda, from Psychonauts. She has no gender-specific traits and even her voice could throw someone off as it sounds masculine, and yet, as soon as she introduces herself, everyone treats her accordingly. The problem is that she is an exception and not a rule for feminine monsters
While more masculine the character, chonkier their pecs become. There's no reason for Zato, a man that moves exusively by teleports, flight, and surfing to be that jacked and why Baiken, the least feminine girl has the biggest chest now.
You want more feminine men and masculine women because you want some variety and diversity and representation, I want more of that because I’m bisexual and that’s my taste in men and women, but also representation and variety. We are half the same.
She is a very strong and self confident woman and god I love her personality, just like... in GBF she gets a few focal episodes that explore her a bit more and she has this insanely strong body confidence, to love others one must love themselves and she knows it, she loves her body, her huge strong body that her parents gave her, that gives her the strength to protect and to aid and to love AND TO DO A SICK PILEDRIVER(my words not hers, but)
Bro I love Testament. Literally has a masc voice in English and a fem voice in Japanese, used to be a villain but now they’re just chilling being agender and a chad. Hot goth-them with that gender neutral. I wanna be like Testament.
I will always respect the courage of SNK, which at the time was on the brink of bankruptcy, who not only made an androgynous protagonist, but A WHOLE SAGA FULL OF THEM! That kind of representativeness is rare nowadays, imagine that in 2003! I LOVE IT
SNK was often bleeding edge when it comes to design. King from Art of Fighting was their first one. Then you had their tomboyish women fighters from Fatal Fury. Then Iori's visual kei design, Leona's mil-chic look with tomboyish looks over the years.
@@renren47618 I don't watch nowadays anime so it's good to know. But, whats the androgynous character in Street Fighter 6? In Tekken 7 or 8? In Mortal Kombat 11, is there any? In Dragon Ball FighterZ? Uh... In Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite? Like a real androgynous character like Ash Crimson? 100% of my friends thought that he was a Woman
@@mjmelo9203 SF 6 has Marisa which is an extremely buff woman and Guilty Gear Strive has some characters like these too. In JRPG you see more of this kind of character like in Fire Emblem Engage with Rosado, everyone being *engageable* regardless of the gender and Nill in the DLC
@@renren47618 Marisa just have an different body type than the average woman in fighting games, she's not androgynous. And... Guilty Gear? Really? I don't see any androgynous woman in the roster
I dunno if anyone mentioned it yet but one of Ladiva's more gender positive moments is her Cross-Fate with Cagliostro. Near the end of it Caggy offers to transmute Ladiva into a more feminine body, which she reject. The reason being? She sees her body as the ultimate gift from her parents
There was an interview with the designer where he said that that decision specifically came about due to their worry that America wouldn't like punching women. Though Poisons history is kind of all over the place and its hard to make heads or tails. Should be a link in the description to the article I got me info from
You have gave me a reason to talk about my boy Ash and his Gender! The choice to make a GNC protagonist such as Ash relates to the comparison you made with 90's male villians and their coded homosexuality. Ash was a character DESIGNED for you to HATE him. He is a charge zoner with a proyectile and a flash kick (one of the most hated archetypes). He is in the story basically humilliating all of the long time favorite characters. And his attitude is the one of a really egotistical ***hole. And on top of that, he is this very femenine boy, an archetype constantly being mocked and hated by the average gamer. All of this leads to the finale of KOF XIII, not only is Ash actually a big altruist and genuinely really caring about others. But he is also the good guy all along and the all time favorite chars were trying to stop him out SPITE. He is only allowing himself to truly act freely when he is enjoying stuff lile nail painting with Mature. Otherwise he will take all of the hate necessary to protect his friends from this inminent threat that is taking over. And like, Saiki is super interesting because he is literally a reflection of what people think ash is, and what he does not want to be And what is saiki true form? A big buff guy
By the other hand, I don't think this direction landed well with most of the players lol That doesn't mean it has no merit, but it's a valid concern nonetheless
As a KOF fan, I remember how for years people really thought Ash Crimson was a woman. Biggest troll job SNK ever done. Ash was set up as "a character you'd feel bad to root for." SNK did a good job. He is my favorite of the charge gameplay type characters.
Funny things to point out 1) kum needing to have a large masculine appearance fits in with her story and the overall themes of gender identity and its real world dictation because she isn't allowed to inherit her family job cause she's a girl 2) testament has actually been queer since the first guilty gear game. They went by the Japanese queer pronoun Ryosei which means he/she. The problem with localization is that in English, we don't have a pronoun for both, only one or the other, so they chose male. In reality, they've been a gay icon from the start and we have no clue as to whats in their pants
So the thing with Ash Crimson... A lot of people were pissed, 'cause he just prances up to the actual main character and is like, "I have your powers, now." People were so pissed, that in... I think the second game he was the main character for? Well, he sacrifices his existence in all timelines to do some main character stuff. So, they like, deleted him totally, probably because of how pissed people were. Anyways, he got better.
To clarify, he sacrificed himself in the third game of his saga, The King of Fighters XIII. Also, his "resurrection" in KoF XV makes literally no sense. To explain, in KoF XIV there was a bad guy called Verse who absorbed the souls of all the strongest fighters who had died previously, whether good or evil. After being defeated, all the people who died were suddenly brought back to life, which is why we have Team Orochi, Goenitz and Rugal. Now, why shouldn't this apply to Ash? *_BECAUSE HE NEVER DIED! HE LITERALLY GOT ERASED OUT OF THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYONE FORGOT HE EXISTED!!!_* Just another example of Fighting Games breaking logic to justify the character roster. LMAO
@@BknMoonStudios It makes sense if you get one of the Team edit endings in XV. The reason why Ash was able to survive was because his messing with the time gate in XIII opened the multiverse. There's at least one reality in which Saiki survived. And because of one of these many theoretical realities, Ash's existence was preserved. This also means a great many things for SNK lore going foward, but that's another matter entirely. MechaniCat already explains how Verse came to be.
I will never stop mentioning Atlas Reactor, (the only turn based moba possibly ever) Juno is the perfect example of slightly fat afro momma. And she wears twin cannons on an exoskeleton, and works as a bouncer for one of the 3 major powers in lore. Perfection.
@@Ramsey276one you mean, Isadora? The hamster in a ball with lazorz, it calls Killinator? Or Nev:3, hoop-slinging catgirl? I'm more of a Gremolitions inc, type. Always bickering gremlin bros, riding an artillery tank. Btw, Rad Chad, to somebody their dad, forgot the archetype of "multiple characters". But I don't exactly have many examples in fightings beyond switching pyra/mythra and Ice climbers. And there's Phaedra. It's definitely a she.
Ladiva's story is very simple and effective: She grew up in a bad neighborhood, lots of crimes and violence. She started taking care of orphaned kids and learn how to protect them. And then she got scouted to be a wrestler in a casino (Theres also that one time she punched the shit out of Gran/Djeeta when they feeling depressed with their father left them at 5 year old) Cagliostro story is a bit complex: She was born as a boy with a chronic disease. This was like 1000 years before current Granblue Fantasy time, so medicine is like peepee-poopoo level He was so frustrated with incompetent doctors, he and his sister started researching how to transfer his soul to another body... yes Fullmetal Alchemist-style. Obviously, he is successful with that and established a brand new form of "magic" with alchemy Why he chose a girl body? Because its cute. Nothing else Cagliostro actually offered Ladiva a female body, but obviously Ladiva refused. She love her given body
To expand on that slightly because I don’t think it’s outright mentioned in this video. Ladiva is trans like Bridget, but Ladiva accepts her body is physically male while she identifies as female. She mentions in a story section in GBVS (sorry I have no experience with the mobile game) that she doesn’t want to change her body, even though she is definitely a woman inside.
@@barongrimoire9043 it’s the very progressive idea that one doesn’t need to look it to be it ya know? Like when i had long hair i looked like a woman (gender-fluid though leaning to woman bio male) but for the sake of example what if i was just a purely cis man just because i dont look like a man doesn’t make me not a man just because i was very feminine as a man doesn’t make me not a man it just means im man enough to be comfortable with myself and not fearing ridicule from people who frankly could use therapy
@@campfire9760 Never in those exact words, but her introduction in GBF literally opens with us punching Acceptably Faceless Asshole Imperial Soldier for trying to shittalk her and call her a man, and there's an Episode between her and different Canon Trans girl Cagliostro that addresses her body to a degree, Cags is an alchemist of extreme ego and capability and offers to give Ladiva a new body if she wants, but Ladiva rejects the offer as she has great confidence and acceptance of her own body, its the body her parents gave her, and its size and strength give her the power to protect, to aid, and to love the world around her On the mechanical backside, Ladiva has always been considered to not be Male or Female, but she was also like, year one character in a game approaching 9.5 years old so ya know, attitudes of the time, and the gender mechanism hasn't had actual mechanical weight for most of those years, since it was reserved for all of like, 10 characters who are romantic dumbasses so appearance was definitely considered a factor at the time(including herself, funnily, her original version loves men, but her general attitude in writing has been very open to all love in all forms from all people) So nowadays its just affecting what she's categorized under in the journal of all the characters
A couple days ago I was lookin at SF characters, to see what nationalities are represented and decided to look at Posion's page, worst mistake I've made this week.
@@megaman7424 I literally have a trans flag in my pfp. It details it in the video, that she was made trans because 'You can't hit women' so they made her trans, or halfie as they say in Japan. This demeans the fact she's a woman. Basically it says trans people arent true women so you can hit them.
@QTpitarina That was it way back when. Now you can hit woman whenever cuz it's fighting games. I would say now it's taken more positive but I figured it wouldn't be for some.
I’ve never seen Ladiva before today. Before today, I also thought a woman with a beard would never look right. But today, both of those things changed. She is incredible. We stan Ladiva.
I love how trans characters are becoming more and more common in fighting games esp with strive, but I rlly rlly hope a game comes out with a trans man someday soon. Give us boys some rep!
As a trans man myself, I was worried at first about this video but delighted by the end. I am glad that this showed a very nuanced by undeniable criticism of gender in fighting games. And your ending point, as silly as some may see it, is 110% true! Thank you for making this great video, dad!
A topic I'd love to see explored: Bison / Dictator is HYPER masculine, yet the clone bodies he's tried to create are of both sexes. Non-binary? Nope, his clones are either as HYPER masculine as himself or HYPER feminine. In other words, he seems equally happy being either a man or a woman, but either way they're going to be a fit, sexy m***********. As such, Bison seems to be an example of gender that I don't believe I've seen anywhere else. I don't even know what to call it. Cis-nonbinary? Trans cis-binary?
@@123nicanor you're mentally ill. Trans lesbians exist, YOU want to force them into the closet. The fact you're deluded enough you're screeching all trans people are straight says it all. Stop with the propaganda
@@123nicanor so you're ignoring that gay trans people existing proves you wrong? Way to go freak. Now stop making excuses why you think psychology is a lie and stop sealioning.
I noticed that!! I was watching a lore video and noticed that he was straight up alright after taking over roses body and the only reason he dipped from it was because they prepared him a more muscular body again
The thing that makes Bridget so special for queer representation in video games overall is that we get to see her come out and be met with love and acceptance from other characters. Something I personally haven’t seen in any other big or popular games so far. And I think it’s really special to see something like that.
As a fan of the GBF gacha game, I am glad that more people have discovered Fastiva/Ladiva. She is amazing. I read the event she has with Cagliostro (who was once a sickly boy but after creating Alchemy decided she'd rather be a cute girl in her new body) and Cag straight up offered to make a new body for Fastiva that fits her gender identity, and she just straight up said "Nah, I'm good, I love my body, I love who I am, I'm thankful for the offer but I'm good." She really is life goals poster girl. I would love to be as confident and positive as her.
@@respectfulevil9022 I thought it was only the Latin Americans who could double jump? I could swear transfemmes instead gained omni-comprehension of either mecha, mahou shoujo or astronomy
@@thosebloodybadgers8499 latin americans get a double jump, trans women get an airdash. if you already had an airdash you get a second one before landing.
As someone who also stans Ladiva, the pop ups of her throughout the video like an RKO (“outta nowhere!”) were both hilarious and appreciated. The stuff on poison is still a bit confusing as I don’t think it still has been “officially “ confirmed by Capcom but it’s whatever. Great video nonetheless.
I never understood the stuff with Bridget when the whole spat about her gender started and just resolved to stay out of it, but this funni cartoon man just explained to me in 3 mins what trans activists and nay-sayers couldn't on twitter for the last 5 months
Amazing video, it's the first video I've seen of yours but it's an instant subscribe and notifications bell from me. Although one game I feel you overlooked is Brawlhalla, which is understandable because it is impossible to discuss every fighting game and their characters. While the characters themselves are small and aren't on scale with an actual human body like in Tekken or Mortal Kombat. In the game there are actually a varied selection of body types for both the men and women characters. They range from muscular women, to slender men, to even a slight few androgynous characters. And it makes sense in relation to the game's core designs and mechanics, because the majority of the characters in the game span across different cultures and fictions. Like I said, I just found you channel but would actually love to see you cover Brawlhalla with a similar topic.
As an artist I can confirm that we are only capable of drawing the sleek woman body type and big beef cake male body type. Doing anything different or inbetween will result in crying
A big woman you missed is Tiara from Punch Planet. She has a traditional Female body type but HUGE. She is an alien, but she resembles a human strongly so I think it counts. Also KI has a freaky lady but I forgot her name.
8:00 I feel like the Kum point is a bit of a misrepresentation of her character, its not "she masks as a man so she can be accepted in her role in the game by players," but rather "she masks as a man so she can be accepted in her role in her FAMILY by HERSELF" I see her as a sort of "inverse Bridget" where, instead of trying to prove her family wrong, she's slotted herself into her family's values If she gets added to Strive, I'd like to see the Identity aspect of her character be addressed. Not by Ky, but by Johnny and May since they actually know who she is outside the robot. I don't think she should completely ditch the robot, bc that would require a whole new move set which would piss off a lot of fans, but rather change it to have a much more open design where she's fully visible to show she's finally accepted who she is This could either end with her continuing to identify as a woman, or say fuck it, and identify as a man. While I do think it makes more sense for her to continue identifying as a woman, but knowing Daisuke, it's equally likely she ends up identifying as a man, with the message shifting from "fuck family values" to "u dont need be big ungo scrungo man 2 be man." Whichever direction Daisuke goes with Kum, I think the underlying message will be something along the lines of "don't let peoples' expectations affect how you express yourself, regardless of the gender you identify as." I also want transmasc representation, as it's sorely lacking in any form of media (I also (as an autistic person) think Kum is autistic bc the robot can represent both a mask and a tech-affinity, and the chain which gets repeatedly added to can represent a special interest)
15:54 finally someone gets it and put it up as a video. Tired of hearing it negate her entire story arc while it's quite the oposite. And is even something that happend fairly often and so is a great message to a lot of people. (wow fastest like I ever got literaly 10 sec on a day old video)
I got recommended this video and I was a bit hesitant to watch through given the hot topic, the use of "libtard" and all the Ladiva bits, but I'm glad this is actually a pretty good take on the concept. I believe that this was intentional to grab the attention of people who might be more prone to disliking LGBTQA+ and GNC characters, and if so, I hope those people take something positive away from the video! That being said, I think there is probably more nuance to be had about the way we discuss the sex/gender spectrum and its representation, but this was a great place to start for people!
This is an area I feel strongly about and potentially have something interesting to bring to the table. One thing I would like to be generally more critical about is how whenever Women are allowed to have masculine physical features and present in less high-femme ways, they are still allowed to retain aspects of their femininity through the construction of their features (and it extends to more fictitious ways of differentiating characters rather than just purely bein about their bodies like their eye-shapes, the presence of lashes, and sometimes in the way that their lips are drawn) STRIVE Baiken is a pretty good jumping point for further highlighting what I mean, she has an angular type of face unusual for how women are generally allowed to be presented, and while her lashes are not prominent they are undeniably noticeable (especially on her closed lid) and the size of her pupils are allowed to stay larger (which is notable since shrinking the pupil is a common way to make drawn characters appear more masculine, since it segways nicely Delilah is an example of this as well. Shrunken pupils make her appear more mature, since we tend to equate higher levels of masculinity with being more serious). She is allowed to also have some of the more prominent lips in the cast (I would also like to point out STRIVE being a game that generally allows its men to even have lips at all, a rarity.) that is further differentiated from the others due to their higher level of general detail, despite her not wearing any lipstick that would be the typical reason for drawing the lips this way. In presentation; Baiken is not masculine but rather she is simply *not* feminine. When it comes to fictional characters Gender exists as a spectrum for the Women (even though it is limited by the confines of the general push for them to always be hot) whereas for Men gender simply exists in two modes. On the opposite side of the coin, whenever Men are allowed to have feminine physical features and present in less masculine ways, they are almost unilaterally simply turned into a flat-chested woman physically. For example, you said in the previous version of your essay you used Bridget as an example of a feminine man (and beyond the fact that she is a woman) I still disagree because Bridget was *never* a man, even when she was being misgendered Bridget has all of the traits typically associated with girls - which would not typically be a problem if not for the fact that that is the ONLY way men who are not masculine are allowed to be presented. (Representation and all that), Bridget will never read as anything but a woman unless you are interested in disrespecting trans people. I believe Ash is somewhat revolutionary for this very reason, he HAS masculine facial features, he is even allowed to have facial expressions that are reserved for men (arrogant facial expressions, having the gums be exposed) and you provided the BEST example you possibly could to exemplify this problem in the cropped porn of him. Drawn by an artist who is immediately clockable as simply drawing women with dicks that are NOT supposed to be trans. I have an immense amount thoughts about this social phenomenon that I could genuinely go off about for a long time, but I don't want to get caught on a tangent about the specific relationship we as a society have with Men and their Bodies (You were SO CLOSE to touching upon it when you brought up Guilty Gears two modes for bodies, men have more of an artificial body diversity in fiction but they also are often locked into bodies completely divorced from their real life analogues - as someone who does work on my body for a very particular kind of look, which ISN'T the kind of hyper-masculinity seen in the bodies of these characters it is very clear to me how little people even know about how human bodies work, the complete lack of public knowledge on the difference between muscules, musculature, and muscle definition. A fun little trick is to put a muscled character in a suit, usually their bodies are revealed for the unrealistic deformities they typically are) I would also like to talk about the verbal distinction I am making between "feminine man" and "fem boy" as the later tends to reference a particular kind of fetishization that involves extremely feminine men (or rather 'boys', or 'bois' if you prefer) that fall into the trappings I shed a little bit of light on in the previous section with cultural roots in anime-inspired work (with that extremely glossy skin look, clothes so tight I shudder at the thought of even putting them on, and other typical anime-shit) whereas Ash still remains the only example I can name of a fictional feminine man. He's a twink, but an actual human twink instead of being emaciated, he is so uniquely queer when it comes to men in gaming
Tbf a lot of femboys try hard to distance the term from any particular look, which is important because having a "flare" term to spread acceptance and find likeminded people is really useful. I never got mileage with trying to use the phrase "feminine men" before and was pretty much always misunderstood because the degree of "how feminine" was always assumed to be quite little(like, a womanizer of all things), but once "femboy" became popular it became much easier to use it to convey a level of gender nonconformity similar to how masculine butch women are. And its useful for its connection to "this is something important to me, its part of my core gender identity+exprsesion, just like how butch women emotionally need to be masculine in their own way" while feminine man doesnt really convey that. Ultimately theres no perfect term, some people use "femboy" to mean something particularly narrow, some people use it to mean any feminine man(mostly femboys themselves), and in between... its very contextual. But yes, youre right theres a lot a lot of problems with bodies and how they get slotted into categories, although I think theres a distinction between "what people can envision" and "what people have been ok with in significant numbers up until maybe a few years ago". Feminine men tend to only be *aesthetically tolerated* if they look super clean and nice and very solidly girly, like you alluded to with the Bridget stuff. But in real life up until the last 5-10 years, a guy who was THAT feminine absolutely would receive tons of shit in real life, while a more metrosexual but not crossdressing pretty boy would not receive nearly as much shit. Theres a difference between "viewed as aesthetically concordant" and "actually tolerating the gender norms being broken irl".
Also, while I understand where youre coming from about pre-transgirl Bridget, theres definitely still major value in that sort of "this is a guy" depiction.. One thing that i noticed is that several trans men who identify as femboys find the more stereotypically small femboy characters to actually be very resonant and validating for them, because its like "wait, you can be tiny and very feminine and have a feminine voice and still identify as male???? omg". And you can see a similar angle of benefit for AMAB femboys too- "no matter how fem you are, you can feel solidly male and be heedlessly happy as yourself". While the overused type of hyperfem tiny femboy comes from a place of "this is a more marketable depiction than others" and needs to not be so dominant, it still has a lot of benefits when depicted at all.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I do not actually have much to really say in regards to it since it is simply not my area of passion but I did want you to know that i have read your comments. I should clarify, the distinction I was making was just so that my point could be more easily understood given how language is kind of bastardized during transitional periods when people are trying to put a word to a concept. (A go to example is how 'cute' is only a compliment to certain people *some* of the time - like how you can be dismissive of someone by saying something along the lines of "Okay, cute."). The definitions i were using existed for an extremely specific purpose to try and express a thought in less words than an essay, and that naturally comes with its own faults, I don't even think my usage of 'Femboy' and 'Feminine Man' can even realistically apply to a real person much in the same way that terms like 'Zoner' and 'Grappler' don't map well onto people. (Well, I suppose you could call a pistol enthusiast a real life Zoner and you would be technically correct *in certain situations* but I would still implore one to not use the word in that way) My main interest lies within how there is such a lack of understanding of how a human body *actually* looks and how that translates into fictional characters that exhibit these cultural *ideas* of gender signifiers - I'll use the pupil size point again - that's simply not a thing in reality. We have culturally decided that smaller pupils = more masculine, and larger pupils = more feminine but seldom do those differences exist in actual human beings. Gender as expressed through fictitious realities, these characters don't have agencies of their own, they lack every aspect of a person except for the aesthetic - in other words their gender expression is all they have for their 'expressing' the gender superimposed upon their vessels - and oftentimes that expression is exaggerated and drawn from their creator's own understanding as most fiction tends to be, but without the audience understanding that exaggeration is happening (see; unrealistic proportions) and sometimes without even the creator knowing their understanding is rooted in fiction. Does SF5 Zangief look like a man? Of course he does. Does he look like a human? Only vaguely, and he's not a very accurate depiction of one. (Edited to correct ugly formatting)
@@Midnight_Monday Thanks for reading, it feels nice when I get listened to on this sort of subject since I care about it for personal reasons. ^^ Ahh, yeah, I know what you mean regarding body abstraction/symbolism and then it intersecting awkwardly with people not realizing its at least partially abstracted/symbolized. Or like when I'm looking at characters, a real way I'd evaluate if someone is "fem" is "what choices do they make that are feminine or pursue femininity" but that's often not the main thrust- like for Lio from Promare, a lot of his perceived femininity is from having a pretty face(not a choice unless he used makeup, which is not indicated) and being thin(can be a pursuit, or not), but he's perceived as very fem even though most of it isnt indicated as choice at all. If you gave him a usual masculine body and an average face, he wouldn't come across as particularly fem, but his *noticed choices* would not be any different in that depiction! So its like his unchosen body traits are a vessel for gender indications from the creators.. The pupils thing reminds me that we parse longer eyelashes as feminine but men actually have longer eyelashes!
The ways in which people superimpose gendered expectations on fictional characters is also something that intrigues me - which I think is most telling when it happens contrary to the source material. Such as the tendency to always imbue fictional women with femininity regardless of respect for the text, or even realism. Women in media are almost always designed to be pleasing to the eye in some way, even if that isn't charged by sexuality it is still charged by the gender expression they represent. "I know I'm stranded on a deserted island right now but I couldn't possibly be seen without my eyeliner on, less the audience somehow forget that I am a woman!" The links between aspects of the body that people (at least generally barring the obvious exceptions of surgery) do not choose to have (such as facial structure, like you mentioned) and how we impose sexualization upon them - or what we expect from them in sexual performance is one of the things about characters that I enjoy deconstructing. To characters, especially ones in games - being Fem can be shorthand for simply being less Masculine than a 8'10, Roided-out, Power-Fantasy IN SPITE of literally anything else about you (much in the same way that the opposite is true) Hell, even the ways in which certain playstyles are gendered (like how Grapplers tend to be men, regardless of body type, and Zoners are women or 'weak' men - as their distance from the hypermasculine provides pretext for them taking on an alternative fighting style. What that says about how we view not even the feminine, but rather the lack of rigid western masculinity is an interesting enough conversation on its own.) A character can simply bare slightly too much resemblance to a certain look, and just like *that* they become something other than themselves. An interesting example is keeping an eye on the wildly different attention given to a character's physique based on how masc, fem, or androgynous they are. The masculine is allowed body fat, in a less than realistic way - the feminine is afforded nothing. A character that simply lacks muscle definition while not being too thin can net shockingly diverse 'interpretations' of a literal body based entirely on how pretty one thinks they are. TLDR; Working out made me incapable of enjoying most illustrated media without seeing the patriarchy in everything
I love how you can start an extremely nuanced discussion about a character type, and then blindside me with an extremely raunchy joke. And hell yeah, we stan Testament, Ladiva, and Budget.
Now for the few people i've seen here or there who get confused why representation is an active benefit, think of it like this: rich people dont relate to each other, but poor people do. The more a poor person poors, the more poor people go "they just like me fr fr", while rich people dont care when rich person riches.
I feel like the main reason why the majority of fighting game characters are either big men or lean women is because most people just have defaults when they create characters. Like if you want a big grappler most people would make it a man since that's just the default. The only reason why someone would make them a woman is if they specifically think that the character being a woman would add something to the story or the character's theme. So that leads most people when they decide to make a masculine woman, or a feminine man to ask themselves: "Why is my character like this?". But if you make a buff man or lean woman you don't have that hurdle, so that leads to a big imbalance of how characters are portrayed. It's even more prevalent with LGBT characters since you have a whole new level to the problem. If you make a LGBT character you're expected to tell a compelling story with them or you run the risk of it seeming like at best, you're a lazy writer who is bad at writing LGBT characters, or at worst you're just slapping labels on your character in order to fulfil some diversity quota.
Mortal Kombat characters are actually realistically and reasonably buff. They are still jacked sure but they arent cartoonish roid gods like street fighter characters and tekken characters
The comment has possibly been made allready, but I'm quite surprised you did not mention the characters Hans the Fox and Mitsuko the Boar from the first Bloody Roar game who were quite the uncommon character depictments around that era.
If there's something I've noticed, it's that Guilty Gear's buff characters became more prominently buff when they moved to 3D (minus Potemkin, he's always been buff). I think Zato works as a comparison, as he looks a lot less buff in his 2D sprites when compared to the 3D models Edit: This also goes for Sin's transition from Xrd to Strive, he was noticeably a lot less buff in the Xrd games.
I kinda made a combo video like this about trans characters because there's always more than people expect who also deserve the love. This entire video has been a very good watch! Keep up the fantastic work.
More people should realize that, in reality, gender shouldn't really be a big matter. Girl, boy, non-binary, doesn't matter, in the end, *everyone will still have to block the same overheads, now stop mashing on my blockstring, dum-dum.*
I had my fingers crossed for Bloody Roar's Mitsuko when the topic was about women body types, yet she's never mentioned. The first fighting game character to ever break the mold of female character for being buffed, a mom, and not conventionally attractive.
Watch out for my conceptual fighting game that only exists in my head where you can choose the main character's gender like it's Fire Emblem (because it is, it's a Fire Emblem fan game) and all options provide the same moderately toned build
Oh hey, a mention of Arcana Heart. I'll add that despite the cast being all women, in addition to the two tiny big bodies, there's two male characters. First, there's Kaz, Eko's imaginary friend who is the one actually fighting while she just hangs out, because she's literally 3. And he's male, a big body, and kinda a monster. Fits right in with what you're saying. The second male character is Yoriko's staff, who is a demon king and literally drags Yoriko into fights.
I like this - very interesting video and I learned quite a few things. I've also been noticing an uptick of more diverse character in fighting games so it's good to see a deeper investigation on it. One game you left out (as others have mentioned) is Killer Instinct, which I think has three examples that sort of break the norms. Others have brought up Hisako, our favorite, undead, horrifying Obake. Everything about her screams (literally) monster. I would also include in these examples ARIA and Riptor. ARIA because, while she has a sexualized form (configuration?) and movement style there's almost an Uncanny Valley partially because of that form since she's also distinctively cyborg, so it's almost like an AI that's learned to be feminine as a means of manipulation? Her story doesn't specifically spell this out except that she very much views herself as superior to humans, which again plays into her acting feminine, specifically like a dominatrix. Riptor's probably the easiest. She's canonically female in every way and she's a cyborg velociraptor - maybe that's "cheating" but you really can't get much more monster girl than that. One other character I'd mention is Seth, specifically from Street Fighter 5. Official lore states Seth is genderless, even though they're usually referred to as he. While very masculine all regards in Street Fighter 4, everything gets flipped on its head when they return in 5 with a very feminine body but the same masculine voice. Again some may say it's "cheating" because Seth is a cyborg, but they're still a gender distorting character in my book.
Jojo All Star Battle R is the only fighting game where you can defeat a 6'5" shredded 15 yrl with a blond paraplegic twink who uses his blue nail as a weapon.
Weird that havent brought up the most based Tekken character: Leo. They give such little fuck about gender classifications that they just state "Leo is Leo". I fucking love Leo.
Ermac as of his MK11 design deserves mention as a male fighting character from a western game that isn't jacked, but still looks extremely menacing despite being emanciated
10:14 The source is Dross for those afraid to ask. I love the description of Baiken and Anji-Mito here. It’s so wonderfully accurate. And I’m always happy to see Testament coming in to grab the non-binary rep, though I agree that I wish they were a bit more androgynous, but more along the lines of their old abs rather than completely jacked Strive arms(Zato wtf get off the juice).
I love baiken because she is a women and knows it but she is a Robin first then a women And even her clothes are kinda thematic because she doesn't "really" care how she looks. She just makes sure it stays on her with the little rope between the left and right of her kimono thing
Important note to the conclusion: We want all these things, BUT we don't want the other things (masculine men, feminine women, ect) removed. We want both, at ONCE!
I want all of it, at the same time
@@123nicanor Hi! I'm woke people. I find women and men, both feminine and masculine, attractive, therefore I do want that. Welcome to reality.
Mfs be like "the left wants to ruin the world!" No we want the world to fuck us in the ass.
It sucks that we have to add this note because the opposition acts like we want a total exorcism of the "normal" characters
which GG has
they/them thighs got us all acting unwise
thussy
@@smol176thock
@@smol176 þussy
Can't help but agree. I much prefer the Testament we have than their concept or earlier designs tbh
thighs got us all acting unwise
How does Testament strike their opponents?
They slash them.
Pretty much all of this is true, but I think Painwheel from Skullgirls is an excellent example of a female "freak" design who is actually allowed to look freaky and monstrous. I think she deserved to be mentioned here
I think peacock could also be a example
All Skullgirls kinda fit into that a bit
@@Doople They all got nothing on Double though.
@@Doople Though Skullgrils' world and theming makes most of them "freaks" by default, there's a huge difference in the visuals accompanying them, which puts some in their own tier of freaky. Painwheel, Double and Eliza (when in her skeleton form) also LOOK totally freaky/messed up in every single way.
Compare this to Fillia, Squiggly, or Ms. Fortune who are definitely "freaks" but they're less freaky in their visuals and movements. More conventionally attractive.
(I love the entire cast and Squiggly in particular, no hate intended.)
@waow2859 My favorite part about this is that Eliza's skeleton form isn't even her, it's the parasite she bonded with. Actual Eliza is *just a bunch of blood that forms around the skeleton and gives the appearance of a person.* She's beyond a freak, she's an actual horror monster.
I believe that a good example of a female freak character is Hisako, from the Killer Instinct series. She’s creepy, has a great character design and a pretty interesting backstory.
God, she used to give me nightmares as a child.
Shes also hot asf though
How dare you make me remember her😭
Not only is she fucking terrifying but fighting her is just as scary, fucking FRAME 1 parry.💀💀💀
Nightmares??!! More like wet dreams🫡🥵😏
Hisako is my waifu. Rad Chad really does need to play KI, though. The character variety in that game is top notch, too.
Was just going to say that Hisako is a great example of a female freak character. Look at her!
One explanation I think holds true for why we don't have more monster girls that are truly strange/unsettling is the one given by Red of the channel Overly Sarcastic Productions. In her video about strong female characters, she explains that we usually have a template for a completely standard character which includes them being a guy, thus making "female" a modifier to that standard.
As such, when we have monster characters who are masculine, they are allowed to be more strange and unsettling because their gender does not interfere in their characterization. People are going to assume the big monster character is male because there aren't enough modifiers to show that they are a woman. As such, if you want to make a character a big monster but also a female, you have to also design this character to be more obviously female, hence the supermodel-looking girls with small deformities and the vagina monsters.
In theory, the crazy monster can be any gender or none at all but if you want the monster to be convincing as a girl monster, she has to have traditionally feminine traits.
Double herself is a good example of this. If she were a male monster, she probably wouldn't need a dong swinging around but since she needs to fill the "female modifier quota" so to speak, she needs jiggling boobs and large hips to look convincing
EDIT: Grammar
Case in point, he included Twelve in the male freaks, but Twelve isn't even human, it's a synthetic life form.
They should make an SMT fighting game where our eternally based dick chariot, Mara, is portrayed as a woman yet again. Throw 'em all for a loop!
Big strong wamen h0t
If the character talks though couldn't they just be referred to as a girl even if there isn't anything obvious in the design?
@@veevolt492 Yes, and that should be the idea. The character shouldn't need obvious traits in order to be considered female. For example, take Linda, from Psychonauts. She has no gender-specific traits and even her voice could throw someone off as it sounds masculine, and yet, as soon as she introduces herself, everyone treats her accordingly. The problem is that she is an exception and not a rule for feminine monsters
I've noticed that when GG characters become more feminine, the artists pay way more attention to their thighs
Really says something about Daisuke's taste in women don't it.
While more masculine the character, chonkier their pecs become. There's no reason for Zato, a man that moves exusively by teleports, flight, and surfing to be that jacked and why Baiken, the least feminine girl has the biggest chest now.
Become more feminine by the faces, but have u seen their beefs?
@@HellecticMojo Zato has thighs and butt too have you seen his xx and xrd sprite
WRITE THAT DOWN WRITE THAT DOWN
"Let's get into Men"
- Rad Chad, The Mad Lad
And to some of us, The Dad.
You want more feminine men and masculine women because you want some variety and diversity and representation, I want more of that because I’m bisexual and that’s my taste in men and women, but also representation and variety.
We are half the same.
Saaaaaame
Relatable
Base as fuck
frrrrrr
Real
Something I love about Ladiva is that her femininity is never taken into question, everyone loves and respects her for who she is and that's that.
she's so awesome ❤
She's very good character, I love her
She is a very strong and self confident woman and god I love her personality, just like... in GBF she gets a few focal episodes that explore her a bit more and she has this insanely strong body confidence, to love others one must love themselves and she knows it, she loves her body, her huge strong body that her parents gave her, that gives her the strength to protect and to aid and to love
AND TO DO A SICK PILEDRIVER(my words not hers, but)
@@syrelianhey, if I had to choose between looking normal and being able to do a *sick* piledriver, then the choice is made for me
Guys, I think rad chad likes ladiva a healthy amount. This is a really good video btw, love your art style a lot.
Bro I love Testament. Literally has a masc voice in English and a fem voice in Japanese, used to be a villain but now they’re just chilling being agender and a chad. Hot goth-them with that gender neutral. I wanna be like Testament.
Not to mention that since testament literally has nothing to do in the story, they have 35 hobbies, all more amazing than the last.
I will always respect the courage of SNK, which at the time was on the brink of bankruptcy, who not only made an androgynous protagonist, but A WHOLE SAGA FULL OF THEM! That kind of representativeness is rare nowadays, imagine that in 2003! I LOVE IT
SNK was often bleeding edge when it comes to design. King from Art of Fighting was their first one. Then you had their tomboyish women fighters from Fatal Fury. Then Iori's visual kei design, Leona's mil-chic look with tomboyish looks over the years.
It's so rare that most anime and Japanese games nowadays have a femboy/androgenous character in the roster.
@@renren47618 I don't watch nowadays anime so it's good to know. But, whats the androgynous character in Street Fighter 6? In Tekken 7 or 8? In Mortal Kombat 11, is there any? In Dragon Ball FighterZ? Uh... In Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite?
Like a real androgynous character like Ash Crimson? 100% of my friends thought that he was a Woman
@@mjmelo9203 SF 6 has Marisa which is an extremely buff woman and Guilty Gear Strive has some characters like these too.
In JRPG you see more of this kind of character like in Fire Emblem Engage with Rosado, everyone being *engageable* regardless of the gender and Nill in the DLC
@@renren47618 Marisa just have an different body type than the average woman in fighting games, she's not androgynous.
And... Guilty Gear? Really? I don't see any androgynous woman in the roster
I dunno if anyone mentioned it yet but one of Ladiva's more gender positive moments is her Cross-Fate with Cagliostro.
Near the end of it Caggy offers to transmute Ladiva into a more feminine body, which she reject. The reason being? She sees her body as the ultimate gift from her parents
Ladiva is unironically one of my favorite characters in Gbf.
And cag is actually a reeeeeeeally old alchemist who just decided to give himself the body of a young girl
@@samuelbutler3332*herself
The only thing you got wrong was the origin of poison because even in her concept art in Japanese. It says "new half" meaning she's always been trans.
There was an interview with the designer where he said that that decision specifically came about due to their worry that America wouldn't like punching women. Though Poisons history is kind of all over the place and its hard to make heads or tails. Should be a link in the description to the article I got me info from
@@RadChad apparently that wasn’t enough, as some localizations made her a cis male
@@RadChad bet. Also forgot to say great video. But my dumbass forgo.
Funnily, years ago Poison's concept would likely be scrutinized and banned in some states
@@hafirenggayuda it would as well if it came out now
You have gave me a reason to talk about my boy Ash and his Gender!
The choice to make a GNC protagonist such as Ash relates to the comparison you made with 90's male villians and their coded homosexuality.
Ash was a character DESIGNED for you to HATE him. He is a charge zoner with a proyectile and a flash kick (one of the most hated archetypes). He is in the story basically humilliating all of the long time favorite characters. And his attitude is the one of a really egotistical ***hole. And on top of that, he is this very femenine boy, an archetype constantly being mocked and hated by the average gamer.
All of this leads to the finale of KOF XIII, not only is Ash actually a big altruist and genuinely really caring about others. But he is also the good guy all along and the all time favorite chars were trying to stop him out SPITE.
He is only allowing himself to truly act freely when he is enjoying stuff lile nail painting with Mature. Otherwise he will take all of the hate necessary to protect his friends from this inminent threat that is taking over.
And like, Saiki is super interesting because he is literally a reflection of what people think ash is, and what he does not want to be
And what is saiki true form? A big buff guy
Oh my god….. I never even realised that.
By the other hand, I don't think this direction landed well with most of the players lol
That doesn't mean it has no merit, but it's a valid concern nonetheless
Well said, bro. I'm one of those few who played Ash Crimson and this is exactly how he represent, yet ppl still don't understand him :(
The Ruler of Everything reference caught me quite off guard, Rad Chad, the Mad Lad, and to whomever it may concern, their dad.
What time?
@@DarthMolgy 12:04 or so
oh yeah that is kind of a shock
As a KOF fan, I remember how for years people really thought Ash Crimson was a woman. Biggest troll job SNK ever done. Ash was set up as "a character you'd feel bad to root for." SNK did a good job. He is my favorite of the charge gameplay type characters.
Funny things to point out
1) kum needing to have a large masculine appearance fits in with her story and the overall themes of gender identity and its real world dictation because she isn't allowed to inherit her family job cause she's a girl
2) testament has actually been queer since the first guilty gear game. They went by the Japanese queer pronoun Ryosei which means he/she. The problem with localization is that in English, we don't have a pronoun for both, only one or the other, so they chose male. In reality, they've been a gay icon from the start and we have no clue as to whats in their pants
I chuckled unreasonably hard at hearing Baiken being called Bacon
So the thing with Ash Crimson... A lot of people were pissed, 'cause he just prances up to the actual main character and is like, "I have your powers, now." People were so pissed, that in... I think the second game he was the main character for? Well, he sacrifices his existence in all timelines to do some main character stuff. So, they like, deleted him totally, probably because of how pissed people were. Anyways, he got better.
To clarify, he sacrificed himself in the third game of his saga, The King of Fighters XIII.
Also, his "resurrection" in KoF XV makes literally no sense.
To explain, in KoF XIV there was a bad guy called Verse who absorbed the souls of all the strongest fighters who had died previously, whether good or evil. After being defeated, all the people who died were suddenly brought back to life, which is why we have Team Orochi, Goenitz and Rugal.
Now, why shouldn't this apply to Ash? *_BECAUSE HE NEVER DIED! HE LITERALLY GOT ERASED OUT OF THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYONE FORGOT HE EXISTED!!!_*
Just another example of Fighting Games breaking logic to justify the character roster. LMAO
@@BknMoonStudios Elisabeth never forgot.
@@BknMoonStudios If I recall Verse was actually the direct result of the time paradox Ash's existence vacation caused. The dead people was a bonus.
@@BknMoonStudios It makes sense if you get one of the Team edit endings in XV. The reason why Ash was able to survive was because his messing with the time gate in XIII opened the multiverse. There's at least one reality in which Saiki survived. And because of one of these many theoretical realities, Ash's existence was preserved. This also means a great many things for SNK lore going foward, but that's another matter entirely. MechaniCat already explains how Verse came to be.
I will never stop mentioning Atlas Reactor, (the only turn based moba possibly ever)
Juno is the perfect example of slightly fat afro momma. And she wears twin cannons on an exoskeleton, and works as a bouncer for one of the 3 major powers in lore. Perfection.
Finally the name has been found again!!
Here kitty...
(I forgotten His name)
XD
@@Ramsey276one you mean, Isadora? The hamster in a ball with lazorz, it calls Killinator?
Or Nev:3, hoop-slinging catgirl?
I'm more of a Gremolitions inc, type. Always bickering gremlin bros, riding an artillery tank.
Btw, Rad Chad, to somebody their dad, forgot the archetype of "multiple characters". But I don't exactly have many examples in fightings beyond switching pyra/mythra and Ice climbers.
And there's Phaedra. It's definitely a she.
@@TheOblomoff I forgot the name of the game so I couldn’t google it. I was joking about Claw Cat Guy
XD
RASK! (Found him)
And now there’s a triceratops too?!
Okay then
XD
never forget Lex, fun to play but dropped like two months after the game started dying
Ladiva's story is very simple and effective:
She grew up in a bad neighborhood, lots of crimes and violence. She started taking care of orphaned kids and learn how to protect them. And then she got scouted to be a wrestler in a casino
(Theres also that one time she punched the shit out of Gran/Djeeta when they feeling depressed with their father left them at 5 year old)
Cagliostro story is a bit complex:
She was born as a boy with a chronic disease. This was like 1000 years before current Granblue Fantasy time, so medicine is like peepee-poopoo level
He was so frustrated with incompetent doctors, he and his sister started researching how to transfer his soul to another body... yes Fullmetal Alchemist-style. Obviously, he is successful with that and established a brand new form of "magic" with alchemy
Why he chose a girl body? Because its cute. Nothing else
Cagliostro actually offered Ladiva a female body, but obviously Ladiva refused. She love her given body
To expand on that slightly because I don’t think it’s outright mentioned in this video. Ladiva is trans like Bridget, but Ladiva accepts her body is physically male while she identifies as female. She mentions in a story section in GBVS (sorry I have no experience with the mobile game) that she doesn’t want to change her body, even though she is definitely a woman inside.
@@barongrimoire9043 it’s the very progressive idea that one doesn’t need to look it to be it ya know? Like when i had long hair i looked like a woman (gender-fluid though leaning to woman bio male) but for the sake of example what if i was just a purely cis man just because i dont look like a man doesn’t make me not a man just because i was very feminine as a man doesn’t make me not a man it just means im man enough to be comfortable with myself and not fearing ridicule from people who frankly could use therapy
How open is the game (or whoever makes the game) about her being trans ? Like does she ever say "I am trans" or is she just 'quirky' ?
@@campfire9760 Never in those exact words, but her introduction in GBF literally opens with us punching Acceptably Faceless Asshole Imperial Soldier for trying to shittalk her and call her a man, and there's an Episode between her and different Canon Trans girl Cagliostro that addresses her body to a degree, Cags is an alchemist of extreme ego and capability and offers to give Ladiva a new body if she wants, but Ladiva rejects the offer as she has great confidence and acceptance of her own body, its the body her parents gave her, and its size and strength give her the power to protect, to aid, and to love the world around her
On the mechanical backside, Ladiva has always been considered to not be Male or Female, but she was also like, year one character in a game approaching 9.5 years old so ya know, attitudes of the time, and the gender mechanism hasn't had actual mechanical weight for most of those years, since it was reserved for all of like, 10 characters who are romantic dumbasses so appearance was definitely considered a factor at the time(including herself, funnily, her original version loves men, but her general attitude in writing has been very open to all love in all forms from all people)
So nowadays its just affecting what she's categorized under in the journal of all the characters
The moral of this video is that...
_...we need more Ladiva!_
Yes
A couple days ago I was lookin at SF characters, to see what nationalities are represented and decided to look at Posion's page, worst mistake I've made this week.
What do you mean? The fact she's trans?
@@megaman7424 I literally have a trans flag in my pfp.
It details it in the video, that she was made trans because 'You can't hit women' so they made her trans, or halfie as they say in Japan.
This demeans the fact she's a woman. Basically it says trans people arent true women so you can hit them.
@QTpitarina That was it way back when. Now you can hit woman whenever cuz it's fighting games. I would say now it's taken more positive but I figured it wouldn't be for some.
@QTpitarina I didn't mean that in a bad way. I was genuinely asking cause people don't know.
@@megaman7424 no worries, my comment was pretty vague
I’ve never seen Ladiva before today. Before today, I also thought a woman with a beard would never look right.
But today, both of those things changed. She is incredible. We stan Ladiva.
*PERFECTION*
Heck yeah, we stan Ladiva in these parts~ She has such good energy in GBF too
oh boy, i wanna hear him talk about femenine boys
As someome of the lgbt community, I just want to say, you are incredible based, Mr. Rad Chad, the Mad Lad, and I would be honored if you were my dad.
"It is commonly seen throughout history that men like to hit eachother over the head with big rocks!"
I mean have you TRIED it? It's REALLY fun.
I love how trans characters are becoming more and more common in fighting games esp with strive, but I rlly rlly hope a game comes out with a trans man someday soon. Give us boys some rep!
Leo from tekken
We totally need more trans man representation
rad chad is truly the ally-est ally of them all, he even knows and researches stuff even more than any lgbtq+ i know INCLUDING ME ON THAT LIST HOW TF
As a trans man myself, I was worried at first about this video but delighted by the end. I am glad that this showed a very nuanced by undeniable criticism of gender in fighting games. And your ending point, as silly as some may see it, is 110% true! Thank you for making this great video, dad!
i was really happy to look in the comments and see such positive reactions. i expected some anti sjw cesspool
@@PainxSorrow yh...and?
Battyboy fi ded
hard agree. the intro made me scared this was gonna be awful but the rest was very good.
Yo same, as a trans woman, I was like, "this is either going to be great or mega problematic"
Ended up being pretty solid
A topic I'd love to see explored: Bison / Dictator is HYPER masculine, yet the clone bodies he's tried to create are of both sexes. Non-binary? Nope, his clones are either as HYPER masculine as himself or HYPER feminine. In other words, he seems equally happy being either a man or a woman, but either way they're going to be a fit, sexy m***********. As such, Bison seems to be an example of gender that I don't believe I've seen anywhere else. I don't even know what to call it. Cis-nonbinary? Trans cis-binary?
I think the term you're looking for is gender fluid.
@@123nicanor you're mentally ill. Trans lesbians exist, YOU want to force them into the closet. The fact you're deluded enough you're screeching all trans people are straight says it all. Stop with the propaganda
@@123nicanor so you're ignoring that gay trans people existing proves you wrong? Way to go freak. Now stop making excuses why you think psychology is a lie and stop sealioning.
I noticed that!! I was watching a lore video and noticed that he was straight up alright after taking over roses body and the only reason he dipped from it was because they prepared him a more muscular body again
Their gender is "Dont care as long as I'm hot" and Im here for It
ASH CRIMSON LETS GOOO.
Very Hot.
100% overly precise combos, 0% of the lifebar taken
Well this is gonna end well.
For we are under the Holy Protection of *Rad Chad* _"The Mad Lad"_ (or to some of you, the mad lad).
The thing that makes Bridget so special for queer representation in video games overall is that we get to see her come out and be met with love and acceptance from other characters. Something I personally haven’t seen in any other big or popular games so far. And I think it’s really special to see something like that.
It's cool as well that her theme song amplifies that to an entire level on her thoughts. It's all just so perfect.
Yeah that gives May a special feeling to me, cause May was a friend to Bridget both as a femboy and as a trans girl. Thats a comforting feeling
As a fan of the GBF gacha game, I am glad that more people have discovered Fastiva/Ladiva. She is amazing. I read the event she has with Cagliostro (who was once a sickly boy but after creating Alchemy decided she'd rather be a cute girl in her new body) and Cag straight up offered to make a new body for Fastiva that fits her gender identity, and she just straight up said "Nah, I'm good, I love my body, I love who I am, I'm thankful for the offer but I'm good."
She really is life goals poster girl. I would love to be as confident and positive as her.
Right? Like fuck both those girls are a pile of goals in different ways
Once again,Rad Chad with the based video essay. As a trans woman I am very hopeful for current and future fighting games.
have you figured out how to double jump yet?
@@respectfulevil9022 By default the double jump should be bound to the x button, but you should be able to rebind it somewhere
@@respectfulevil9022 I thought it was only the Latin Americans who could double jump?
I could swear transfemmes instead gained omni-comprehension of either mecha, mahou shoujo or astronomy
@@thosebloodybadgers8499 latin americans get a double jump, trans women get an airdash. if you already had an airdash you get a second one before landing.
@@GenghisConnThr333 Snowflake
Someone mentioned it but Painwheel from Skullgirls is a perfect example of a freaky female character.
As someone who also stans Ladiva, the pop ups of her throughout the video like an RKO (“outta nowhere!”) were both hilarious and appreciated.
The stuff on poison is still a bit confusing as I don’t think it still has been “officially “ confirmed by Capcom but it’s whatever. Great video nonetheless.
I never understood the stuff with Bridget when the whole spat about her gender started and just resolved to stay out of it, but this funni cartoon man just explained to me in 3 mins what trans activists and nay-sayers couldn't on twitter for the last 5 months
Another certified Rad Chad, THE mad lad, and to some of you: Your dad classic
I like how ky Is a better dad to Bridget than he is to sin
As a trans man i can confirm very epic video 👍
As a trans woman I agree
As a person this is a very epic video
@@cappytan7694 as a trans woman I appreciate the person representation in this comment section
As a trans lil man,,,, i indeed agree
I don't think I've ever seen a video essay where the speaker goes "you know what you know this already you dum dum" and then drops a concept
I love it
Amazing video, it's the first video I've seen of yours but it's an instant subscribe and notifications bell from me.
Although one game I feel you overlooked is Brawlhalla, which is understandable because it is impossible to discuss every fighting game and their characters. While the characters themselves are small and aren't on scale with an actual human body like in Tekken or Mortal Kombat. In the game there are actually a varied selection of body types for both the men and women characters. They range from muscular women, to slender men, to even a slight few androgynous characters. And it makes sense in relation to the game's core designs and mechanics, because the majority of the characters in the game span across different cultures and fictions. Like I said, I just found you channel but would actually love to see you cover Brawlhalla with a similar topic.
As a Transgender girl i can confirm this video rocks lmao
There's another aspect I've noticed. Age. I can think of many badass old men characters, but no badass old ladies.
As an artist I can confirm that we are only capable of drawing the sleek woman body type and big beef cake male body type. Doing anything different or inbetween will result in crying
A big woman you missed is Tiara from Punch Planet. She has a traditional Female body type but HUGE. She is an alien, but she resembles a human strongly so I think it counts.
Also KI has a freaky lady but I forgot her name.
About big muscular women in fighting games, i can recall this two: Angela Belti from the Power Instinct series, and Rila from Breakers
8:00 I feel like the Kum point is a bit of a misrepresentation of her character, its not "she masks as a man so she can be accepted in her role in the game by players," but rather "she masks as a man so she can be accepted in her role in her FAMILY by HERSELF"
I see her as a sort of "inverse Bridget" where, instead of trying to prove her family wrong, she's slotted herself into her family's values
If she gets added to Strive, I'd like to see the Identity aspect of her character be addressed. Not by Ky, but by Johnny and May since they actually know who she is outside the robot. I don't think she should completely ditch the robot, bc that would require a whole new move set which would piss off a lot of fans, but rather change it to have a much more open design where she's fully visible to show she's finally accepted who she is
This could either end with her continuing to identify as a woman, or say fuck it, and identify as a man. While I do think it makes more sense for her to continue identifying as a woman, but knowing Daisuke, it's equally likely she ends up identifying as a man, with the message shifting from "fuck family values" to "u dont need be big ungo scrungo man 2 be man." Whichever direction Daisuke goes with Kum, I think the underlying message will be something along the lines of "don't let peoples' expectations affect how you express yourself, regardless of the gender you identify as." I also want transmasc representation, as it's sorely lacking in any form of media (I also (as an autistic person) think Kum is autistic bc the robot can represent both a mask and a tech-affinity, and the chain which gets repeatedly added to can represent a special interest)
11:50 fun fact: Bacon is only like 5'4"
9:17 Hisako from killer instinct is a good example of freaky monster lady
15:54 finally someone gets it and put it up as a video. Tired of hearing it negate her entire story arc while it's quite the oposite. And is even something that happend fairly often and so is a great message to a lot of people.
(wow fastest like I ever got literaly 10 sec on a day old video)
I got recommended this video and I was a bit hesitant to watch through given the hot topic, the use of "libtard" and all the Ladiva bits, but I'm glad this is actually a pretty good take on the concept. I believe that this was intentional to grab the attention of people who might be more prone to disliking LGBTQA+ and GNC characters, and if so, I hope those people take something positive away from the video!
That being said, I think there is probably more nuance to be had about the way we discuss the sex/gender spectrum and its representation, but this was a great place to start for people!
This is an area I feel strongly about and potentially have something interesting to bring to the table.
One thing I would like to be generally more critical about is how whenever Women are allowed to have masculine physical features and present in less high-femme ways, they are still allowed to retain aspects of their femininity through the construction of their features (and it extends to more fictitious ways of differentiating characters rather than just purely bein about their bodies like their eye-shapes, the presence of lashes, and sometimes in the way that their lips are drawn)
STRIVE Baiken is a pretty good jumping point for further highlighting what I mean, she has an angular type of face unusual for how women are generally allowed to be presented, and while her lashes are not prominent they are undeniably noticeable (especially on her closed lid) and the size of her pupils are allowed to stay larger (which is notable since shrinking the pupil is a common way to make drawn characters appear more masculine, since it segways nicely Delilah is an example of this as well. Shrunken pupils make her appear more mature, since we tend to equate higher levels of masculinity with being more serious). She is allowed to also have some of the more prominent lips in the cast (I would also like to point out STRIVE being a game that generally allows its men to even have lips at all, a rarity.) that is further differentiated from the others due to their higher level of general detail, despite her not wearing any lipstick that would be the typical reason for drawing the lips this way. In presentation; Baiken is not masculine but rather she is simply *not* feminine.
When it comes to fictional characters Gender exists as a spectrum for the Women (even though it is limited by the confines of the general push for them to always be hot) whereas for Men gender simply exists in two modes. On the opposite side of the coin, whenever Men are allowed to have feminine physical features and present in less masculine ways, they are almost unilaterally simply turned into a flat-chested woman physically. For example, you said in the previous version of your essay you used Bridget as an example of a feminine man (and beyond the fact that she is a woman) I still disagree because Bridget was *never* a man, even when she was being misgendered Bridget has all of the traits typically associated with girls - which would not typically be a problem if not for the fact that that is the ONLY way men who are not masculine are allowed to be presented. (Representation and all that), Bridget will never read as anything but a woman unless you are interested in disrespecting trans people.
I believe Ash is somewhat revolutionary for this very reason, he HAS masculine facial features, he is even allowed to have facial expressions that are reserved for men (arrogant facial expressions, having the gums be exposed) and you provided the BEST example you possibly could to exemplify this problem in the cropped porn of him. Drawn by an artist who is immediately clockable as simply drawing women with dicks that are NOT supposed to be trans. I have an immense amount thoughts about this social phenomenon that I could genuinely go off about for a long time, but I don't want to get caught on a tangent about the specific relationship we as a society have with Men and their Bodies (You were SO CLOSE to touching upon it when you brought up Guilty Gears two modes for bodies, men have more of an artificial body diversity in fiction but they also are often locked into bodies completely divorced from their real life analogues - as someone who does work on my body for a very particular kind of look, which ISN'T the kind of hyper-masculinity seen in the bodies of these characters it is very clear to me how little people even know about how human bodies work, the complete lack of public knowledge on the difference between muscules, musculature, and muscle definition. A fun little trick is to put a muscled character in a suit, usually their bodies are revealed for the unrealistic deformities they typically are)
I would also like to talk about the verbal distinction I am making between "feminine man" and "fem boy" as the later tends to reference a particular kind of fetishization that involves extremely feminine men (or rather 'boys', or 'bois' if you prefer) that fall into the trappings I shed a little bit of light on in the previous section with cultural roots in anime-inspired work (with that extremely glossy skin look, clothes so tight I shudder at the thought of even putting them on, and other typical anime-shit) whereas Ash still remains the only example I can name of a fictional feminine man. He's a twink, but an actual human twink instead of being emaciated, he is so uniquely queer when it comes to men in gaming
Tbf a lot of femboys try hard to distance the term from any particular look, which is important because having a "flare" term to spread acceptance and find likeminded people is really useful. I never got mileage with trying to use the phrase "feminine men" before and was pretty much always misunderstood because the degree of "how feminine" was always assumed to be quite little(like, a womanizer of all things), but once "femboy" became popular it became much easier to use it to convey a level of gender nonconformity similar to how masculine butch women are. And its useful for its connection to "this is something important to me, its part of my core gender identity+exprsesion, just like how butch women emotionally need to be masculine in their own way" while feminine man doesnt really convey that. Ultimately theres no perfect term, some people use "femboy" to mean something particularly narrow, some people use it to mean any feminine man(mostly femboys themselves), and in between... its very contextual.
But yes, youre right theres a lot a lot of problems with bodies and how they get slotted into categories, although I think theres a distinction between "what people can envision" and "what people have been ok with in significant numbers up until maybe a few years ago". Feminine men tend to only be *aesthetically tolerated* if they look super clean and nice and very solidly girly, like you alluded to with the Bridget stuff. But in real life up until the last 5-10 years, a guy who was THAT feminine absolutely would receive tons of shit in real life, while a more metrosexual but not crossdressing pretty boy would not receive nearly as much shit. Theres a difference between "viewed as aesthetically concordant" and "actually tolerating the gender norms being broken irl".
Also, while I understand where youre coming from about pre-transgirl Bridget, theres definitely still major value in that sort of "this is a guy" depiction.. One thing that i noticed is that several trans men who identify as femboys find the more stereotypically small femboy characters to actually be very resonant and validating for them, because its like "wait, you can be tiny and very feminine and have a feminine voice and still identify as male???? omg". And you can see a similar angle of benefit for AMAB femboys too- "no matter how fem you are, you can feel solidly male and be heedlessly happy as yourself". While the overused type of hyperfem tiny femboy comes from a place of "this is a more marketable depiction than others" and needs to not be so dominant, it still has a lot of benefits when depicted at all.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I do not actually have much to really say in regards to it since it is simply not my area of passion but I did want you to know that i have read your comments.
I should clarify, the distinction I was making was just so that my point could be more easily understood given how language is kind of bastardized during transitional periods when people are trying to put a word to a concept. (A go to example is how 'cute' is only a compliment to certain people *some* of the time - like how you can be dismissive of someone by saying something along the lines of "Okay, cute."). The definitions i were using existed for an extremely specific purpose to try and express a thought in less words than an essay, and that naturally comes with its own faults, I don't even think my usage of 'Femboy' and 'Feminine Man' can even realistically apply to a real person much in the same way that terms like 'Zoner' and 'Grappler' don't map well onto people. (Well, I suppose you could call a pistol enthusiast a real life Zoner and you would be technically correct *in certain situations* but I would still implore one to not use the word in that way)
My main interest lies within how there is such a lack of understanding of how a human body *actually* looks and how that translates into fictional characters that exhibit these cultural *ideas* of gender signifiers - I'll use the pupil size point again - that's simply not a thing in reality. We have culturally decided that smaller pupils = more masculine, and larger pupils = more feminine but seldom do those differences exist in actual human beings.
Gender as expressed through fictitious realities, these characters don't have agencies of their own, they lack every aspect of a person except for the aesthetic - in other words their gender expression is all they have for their 'expressing' the gender superimposed upon their vessels - and oftentimes that expression is exaggerated and drawn from their creator's own understanding as most fiction tends to be, but without the audience understanding that exaggeration is happening (see; unrealistic proportions) and sometimes without even the creator knowing their understanding is rooted in fiction.
Does SF5 Zangief look like a man? Of course he does.
Does he look like a human? Only vaguely, and he's not a very accurate depiction of one.
(Edited to correct ugly formatting)
@@Midnight_Monday Thanks for reading, it feels nice when I get listened to on this sort of subject since I care about it for personal reasons. ^^ Ahh, yeah, I know what you mean regarding body abstraction/symbolism and then it intersecting awkwardly with people not realizing its at least partially abstracted/symbolized. Or like when I'm looking at characters, a real way I'd evaluate if someone is "fem" is "what choices do they make that are feminine or pursue femininity" but that's often not the main thrust- like for Lio from Promare, a lot of his perceived femininity is from having a pretty face(not a choice unless he used makeup, which is not indicated) and being thin(can be a pursuit, or not), but he's perceived as very fem even though most of it isnt indicated as choice at all. If you gave him a usual masculine body and an average face, he wouldn't come across as particularly fem, but his *noticed choices* would not be any different in that depiction! So its like his unchosen body traits are a vessel for gender indications from the creators..
The pupils thing reminds me that we parse longer eyelashes as feminine but men actually have longer eyelashes!
The ways in which people superimpose gendered expectations on fictional characters is also something that intrigues me - which I think is most telling when it happens contrary to the source material.
Such as the tendency to always imbue fictional women with femininity regardless of respect for the text, or even realism. Women in media are almost always designed to be pleasing to the eye in some way, even if that isn't charged by sexuality it is still charged by the gender expression they represent.
"I know I'm stranded on a deserted island right now but I couldn't possibly be seen without my eyeliner on, less the audience somehow forget that I am a woman!"
The links between aspects of the body that people (at least generally barring the obvious exceptions of surgery) do not choose to have (such as facial structure, like you mentioned) and how we impose sexualization upon them - or what we expect from them in sexual performance is one of the things about characters that I enjoy deconstructing.
To characters, especially ones in games - being Fem can be shorthand for simply being less Masculine than a 8'10, Roided-out, Power-Fantasy IN SPITE of literally anything else about you (much in the same way that the opposite is true)
Hell, even the ways in which certain playstyles are gendered (like how Grapplers tend to be men, regardless of body type, and Zoners are women or 'weak' men - as their distance from the hypermasculine provides pretext for them taking on an alternative fighting style. What that says about how we view not even the feminine, but rather the lack of rigid western masculinity is an interesting enough conversation on its own.)
A character can simply bare slightly too much resemblance to a certain look, and just like *that* they become something other than themselves. An interesting example is keeping an eye on the wildly different attention given to a character's physique based on how masc, fem, or androgynous they are. The masculine is allowed body fat, in a less than realistic way - the feminine is afforded nothing. A character that simply lacks muscle definition while not being too thin can net shockingly diverse 'interpretations' of a literal body based entirely on how pretty one thinks they are.
TLDR; Working out made me incapable of enjoying most illustrated media without seeing the patriarchy in everything
man revived an old essay just for an excuse to stan Ladiva
I love how you can start an extremely nuanced discussion about a character type, and then blindside me with an extremely raunchy joke.
And hell yeah, we stan Testament, Ladiva, and Budget.
13:23 I swear everyone who is about gender also abides by the strictest gender roles
i like how one of the three unique body tipe in strive is just straight up BED
Now for the few people i've seen here or there who get confused why representation is an active benefit, think of it like this:
rich people dont relate to each other, but poor people do. The more a poor person poors, the more poor people go "they just like me fr fr", while rich people dont care when rich person riches.
What.
I feel like the main reason why the majority of fighting game characters are either big men or lean women is because most people just have defaults when they create characters. Like if you want a big grappler most people would make it a man since that's just the default. The only reason why someone would make them a woman is if they specifically think that the character being a woman would add something to the story or the character's theme. So that leads most people when they decide to make a masculine woman, or a feminine man to ask themselves: "Why is my character like this?". But if you make a buff man or lean woman you don't have that hurdle, so that leads to a big imbalance of how characters are portrayed.
It's even more prevalent with LGBT characters since you have a whole new level to the problem. If you make a LGBT character you're expected to tell a compelling story with them or you run the risk of it seeming like at best, you're a lazy writer who is bad at writing LGBT characters, or at worst you're just slapping labels on your character in order to fulfil some diversity quota.
Mortal Kombat characters are actually realistically and reasonably buff. They are still jacked sure but they arent cartoonish roid gods like street fighter characters and tekken characters
Missed opportunity to mention Kinoko for representing monstrous girls
YOU ARE KINOKO
Congrats on being an actual Chad, rad. You made a based claim and you backed it up with information! This was an awesome video, great job dad!
The comment has possibly been made allready, but I'm quite surprised you did not mention the characters Hans the Fox and Mitsuko the Boar from the first Bloody Roar game who were quite the uncommon character depictments around that era.
Seth is also another good example of something ouside of the norm since they're a robot and really don't care about their gender.
1:24 This will severally affect the trout population
If there's something I've noticed, it's that Guilty Gear's buff characters became more prominently buff when they moved to 3D (minus Potemkin, he's always been buff). I think Zato works as a comparison, as he looks a lot less buff in his 2D sprites when compared to the 3D models
Edit: This also goes for Sin's transition from Xrd to Strive, he was noticeably a lot less buff in the Xrd games.
"What's a gender? Does it taste good?"
Sin Kiske probably
3:02 except Bob from tekken. Bob is the lad
i am amazed it took this long for me to realize that anji's design is basically a direct inversion of baiken's, good shit
"Evade taxes" instantly jumps to the person who lives in the forest
I kinda made a combo video like this about trans characters because there's always more than people expect who also deserve the love.
This entire video has been a very good watch! Keep up the fantastic work.
I love the really poorly drawn laser kiwi on your avatar's shirt
More people should realize that, in reality, gender shouldn't really be a big matter. Girl, boy, non-binary, doesn't matter, in the end, *everyone will still have to block the same overheads, now stop mashing on my blockstring, dum-dum.*
No matter what you identify as, you're still getting mixed 🙏
@@demidevilqueen this post was made by the collective consciousness of millia mains
@@BlightestBlight you guessed correctly on my main. I'm impressed lmao
@@demidevilqueen millia mains are a hivemind 🤝
I expected a video essay and got Rad Chad simping for Ladiva for 20 minutes. 10/10, me too
1:18
Congrats, you are the most skilled chef in Britain.
Can we also talk about how there's no transmen in fighting games? Your video is very good and correct of course
JP devs be like: "Equal rights, equal (final) fights!"
5:02 "Where is all the muscle for the ladies?"
*Shows Chun-Li and her horse legs*
I had my fingers crossed for Bloody Roar's Mitsuko when the topic was about women body types, yet she's never mentioned.
The first fighting game character to ever break the mold of female character for being buffed, a mom, and not conventionally attractive.
A lot of people missed out on Bloody Roar sadly.
Fox was also one of the first playable trans characters.
Watch out for my conceptual fighting game that only exists in my head where you can choose the main character's gender like it's Fire Emblem (because it is, it's a Fire Emblem fan game) and all options provide the same moderately toned build
Oh hey, a mention of Arcana Heart.
I'll add that despite the cast being all women, in addition to the two tiny big bodies, there's two male characters. First, there's Kaz, Eko's imaginary friend who is the one actually fighting while she just hangs out, because she's literally 3. And he's male, a big body, and kinda a monster. Fits right in with what you're saying.
The second male character is Yoriko's staff, who is a demon king and literally drags Yoriko into fights.
Unknown was a freaky female final boss all the way back from Tekken Tag Tournament in 2000.
You should talk about the entire skullgirls cast and how they manage to make a mostly feminine game work
For those who want that 5 minute image sauce, Sol and Leo have a friend named Rennik
I like this - very interesting video and I learned quite a few things. I've also been noticing an uptick of more diverse character in fighting games so it's good to see a deeper investigation on it.
One game you left out (as others have mentioned) is Killer Instinct, which I think has three examples that sort of break the norms. Others have brought up Hisako, our favorite, undead, horrifying Obake. Everything about her screams (literally) monster.
I would also include in these examples ARIA and Riptor. ARIA because, while she has a sexualized form (configuration?) and movement style there's almost an Uncanny Valley partially because of that form since she's also distinctively cyborg, so it's almost like an AI that's learned to be feminine as a means of manipulation? Her story doesn't specifically spell this out except that she very much views herself as superior to humans, which again plays into her acting feminine, specifically like a dominatrix.
Riptor's probably the easiest. She's canonically female in every way and she's a cyborg velociraptor - maybe that's "cheating" but you really can't get much more monster girl than that.
One other character I'd mention is Seth, specifically from Street Fighter 5. Official lore states Seth is genderless, even though they're usually referred to as he. While very masculine all regards in Street Fighter 4, everything gets flipped on its head when they return in 5 with a very feminine body but the same masculine voice. Again some may say it's "cheating" because Seth is a cyborg, but they're still a gender distorting character in my book.
Jojo All Star Battle R is the only fighting game where you can defeat a 6'5" shredded 15 yrl with a blond paraplegic twink who uses his blue nail as a weapon.
Weird that havent brought up the most based Tekken character: Leo.
They give such little fuck about gender classifications that they just state "Leo is Leo".
I fucking love Leo.
Ermac as of his MK11 design deserves mention as a male fighting character from a western game that isn't jacked, but still looks extremely menacing despite being emanciated
10:14 The source is Dross for those afraid to ask.
I love the description of Baiken and Anji-Mito here. It’s so wonderfully accurate. And I’m always happy to see Testament coming in to grab the non-binary rep, though I agree that I wish they were a bit more androgynous, but more along the lines of their old abs rather than completely jacked Strive arms(Zato wtf get off the juice).
The part with johnny joestar and dio over heaven had me laughing
I love baiken because she is a women and knows it but she is a Robin first then a women
And even her clothes are kinda thematic because she doesn't "really" care how she looks. She just makes sure it stays on her with the little rope between the left and right of her kimono thing
12:02 TALLY HALL MENTIONED
This was legitimatly funny, It wasn't preachy or prideful, and you did a good job laying out your points.
The first time I ever saw myself represented in a fighting game was when Ash Crimson was announced for KoF 2003
I think Hisako from Killer Instinct is a good example of a freaky character
Ferra/Torr in Mortal Kombat. Their ending implies that, whenever the small one gets old, she turns into the big hulky one.
I genuinely wanna sit n read the entire original essay. Please give