Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5866216" data-attributes="member: 22424">There's more to male sexiness than simply the 'idealised' hulking badass. See Han Solo, Captain Jack Sparrow (or, indeed, Captain Jack Harkness), or Colin Firth's Darcy for examples. Not to mention Spike, Eric Northman, or Edward of "Twilight" fame.I could also talk about posture, and specifically the frequency of 'dominant' and 'submissive' poses in artwork, but I'd rather offer up a litmus test: Dragon #294.That was the issue that tied in to the new 3e "Deities & Demigods" book, and had a "surfer dude" picture of Hermes. It's not the scowling, over-muscled hulk-man, but it was very definitely intended as a 'sexy' cover.And the nerdrage was incredible. You would have thought the editors had come round to subscribers' houses and kicked their pets, for all the vitriol that was poured over that cover.(From the letter's page in issue #296, referring to that cover: "I overheard a group of male gamers saying, "What the hell is this? I can't buy this!"", and "Although the cover art on issue #294 is excellent from a technical viewpoint, showing Ms Nielsen's great skill and panache, it's a subject that frankly makes me a bit queasy. If you're going to show someone in very little clothing on the cover, please make it a lady, in deference to the 98 percent male readership of your magazine.")Anyway, that's my challenge to the WotC art team. If they're going with the standard hyper-sexy, absurdly-posed female characters of previous editions*, then I want to see a reappearance of "surfer dude" Hermes, or similar. Or I want an explanation as to why they feel it is appropriate to portray female characters one way, but not males.* I should qualify that: that sometimes occur in previous editions - not every depiction falls into this mould, of course! Indeed, the majority do not. But enough do to be notable.</blockquote>

Verification