/m/ - media

So as someone who has been a gamer for well over 2 decades now, the topic of oversexualized female character designs is something that I've been interested in having honest discussion with. Whenever I've tried talking about it in usual gaming spaces, it gets derailed because moids get so overprotective of their overly sexualized female characters and that it's ultimately "not a big deal" and that any woman who dares critique this practice is just jealous or whatever. And then the handmaidens join in with the men equally trying to demonize or belittle women who have concern for it as well but it's pretty clear where their priorities lie.

I've been in gaming for along time and though have had issue with overly sexualized female characters like Ivy from Soul Calibur, the early Mortal kombat games, and somewhat Bayonetta, I've largely just learned to ignore them but it was still something I've wanted to talk about with women who aren't handmaidens, especially hearing some radfem critique.

A question of mine is if there really can be a middleground of a female character design that manages to look both visually pleasing without her looking like a coomer/porn figure. I feel like Lara Croft in the early Tomb Raider games kinda skirted the line. I'm probably bias because I grew up with the classic trilogy and played them through most of my childhood but ignoring the butt focusing camera angles, I feel like Lara wasn't too egregious a design (even though she should've had longer shorts). Maybe I'm too bias to the patriarchy but I just can't help but think that Lara's classic look was pretty cool looking though I really like her re-design a lot as well as it does look more appropriate for what she does.

I'd love to hear other thoughts on this matter. What do you think of overly sexualized female characters? Do you mind them? Do you think there is a middle-ground? Examples? To any radfem gamers, what kind of female character designs do you think look good?(duplicate thread, l2catalog)