For everyone who piles on Avalanche for their covers, please look

[King_Stannis]

that having been said...i await the moderators lock and key.

 

[Nikchick]

Avalanche has made poorly done cheescake their calling card. It's on the covers of their books no matter what the book is about. It's become something that we've learned to expect and come to enjoy despising.

The cover for the print version of The Demon God's Fane shows a larger scene. It does not focus on the scantily clad females. I don't have a thong thrust into my face whenever I look at it. It's much more tasteful, in my opinion.

Sorry, I must object! The Avalanche cheesecake is some of the best done cheesecake to ever grace the gaming industry. Undeniably cheesecake, but "poorly done" it's not.

The Demon God's Fane cover (from the small image I viewed) is not nearly as technically well done, and if that blonde isn't wearing a thong, it's *darn* close.

I recently read a review of the Avalanche Jade and Steel book that slammed the cover because the chick was "overly endowed in the mammary department"--a statement that undermines the reviewer's criticism of the cheesecake cover, because if you give the cover image anything more than a cursory glance it's obvious that the cove figure does *not* have big, fake, melon-sized hooters. She's half naked, she's not dressed in anything resembling asian attire, but unrealistically proportioned? Hardly.

Techinical merits and flaws aside (and not addressing cheesecake art in general) I think King_Stannis has a reasonable point that who presents such things is as much a factor as how such things are presented.

Nicole

 

[Wolfspider]

I have to have the last word

if that blonde isn't wearing a thong, it's *darn* close.

Not any more. Her undergarments now resemble something more like a pair of tighty-whities (well, actually tighty-blackies, but...).

King Stannis, my liege, if you want this thread closed you might want to contact one of the moderators directly or else people will keep responding and I will be forced to do likewise in order to get the last word....

 

[Ruin Explorer]

When I think twice about buying a product because it's cover is that BIZARRE something is going wrong...

SHARK - I'm sorry, has your brain broken?

I was under the distinct impression that there were MORE than two attractive human forms!

Obviously one of us is wrong. You imply that the ONLY good human is A) Skimpily dressed "Fantasy" woman, or B) Skimpily clad "Barbarian" man.

I mean, get a grip.

There are any number of attractive, of "sexy", of "appealling" human forms, not just these two "cheesecake" cliches, and it takes a special kind of idiocy to suggest that they are in some way "The best that can be done, and everyone who doesn't like them is a whiner!". Personally, I find chainmail-bikini-clad uber-menschen warrior-princesses boring and rather unsexy, and I find our muscley barbarian friends to be uninspiring. You say the only alternative is a 150lb wimp.

This is called a "lie", where I come from, or "nonsense", or "a load of hogswash".

The alternatives are infinite. The publishers want the books to sell, right?

Sex sells, yes, we can all agree on that. However, you claim sex = chainmail bikini cliche-town. It does not, an appealling cover featuring people need not feature any degree of scantily-clad-ness, it just needs to have a DISTINCTIVE and ATTRACTIVE image.

For example, I think you will find the average gamer of today prefers his male warriors leaner, wiry-er, and less "Ahnuld" than before. More "Keanu", if you will. Yet the cliche barbarians still appear.

Same goes for women. Even post dozens of different-looking women in hollywood, pop-culture, etc., we STILL see the same boring "bikini princess w/stupid weapon" imagery. The same 5' 8" woman, 38, 20, 34, perfect in every respect to the point of utter boredom (remember the idea of the "beauty spot"? These artists haven't).

I mean, look a Rolemaster. They have had attractive and different imagery on their covers for some time. Their female warrior is not some idiot in a bikini or a few plates, she's as well-armoured as many historical warriors, and not a supermodel, either, but a more "human"-looking, and I'll be honest, far more attractive, far more "sexy" character than the ubermenschen of the bikini...

So, get a clue. There's nothing wrong with attractive covers. We all agree.

There's everything wrong with cliches, boredom, stupidity, and general lack of creativity.

Plus, as has been so much said, the covers of the books in question have SOD ALL to do what is in them. This is stupid, because they are so old-fashioned and sad that I tend to overlook them (the chicks aren't hot, they're a cliche, so my eye doesn't dwell), part of my brain filing them under "Early-mid 80s", which is sad, because a couple of the products have been decent.

Of course, Stannis missed the whole point by his typically huge margin, and it's not worth debating with him...

 

[Nikchick]

Not any more. Her undergarments now resemble something more like a pair of tighty-whities (well, actually tighty-blackies, but...).

That's why I specifically referred to the *small image that I saw* when I replied. I think it's great that Monte had higher standards and asked that the butt crack be covered in the final printed version.

Does that suddenly make it "all better" and not cheesecake anymore? Well... sort of, but there's still plenty of leg and flashes of boobies. It's *less* cheesecake now (and I like Monte's definition of "fantasy realistic"), but c'mon, it's not so pure as to make the original point moot.

Clearly someone out there (be it the art director for the project, or the artist himself) thought that boobies, butt cracks and thongs were a good idea at some point in the process. And as of today, you can still access that original image on the company's own website. Someone who doesn't have a copy of the actual printed product in hand as James did can still draw conclusions from the image that was put up in webland. K_S's questioning whether or not the source of said cheesecake cover matters is still an interesting one, imho.

I recently saw a beautiful sketch for an upcoming Green Ronin cover that included a female figure in what I would say fits "fantasy realism" (no big melon-breasts, not dressed in strips of electrical tape) and the one comment we had for the artist was "Please make sure she's wearing pants." You just can't be too careful, as Monte's experience illustrates.

Regards,
Nicole

 

[King_Stannis]

...Of course, Stannis missed the whole point by his typically huge margin, and it's not worth debating with him...

Good to see you Ruin! As always, you've added immensely with your well thought out and courteous post! Man, it's hard to imagine what this place would be like without your gentle good wit.

wow... an 11th hour blindside.....from you, ruin? tell me it isn't so.

Moderators...for the last time....shut this thing down.

Then shoot me.

 

[Kichwas]

Re: Rewriting history...

First...Are you seriously inferring that Victorian England was the first society to treat woman as "fraile, guileless and needing protection" and that this treatment of women was rare? Seriously? Have you not been watching the news for the last 4 months? Have you not seen the way they treated woman in Afghanastan? They aren't allowed in public without a man to escort them. They couldn't go to work outside the home. Etc. They are treated as weak and in need of men to guide and protect them

You need to re-examine that example.

Those women are beat down upon and treated harshly. They're left out to die if they have no men to shelter them.

They're not put up on a pedistal and equated to a flower with all kinds of analogies of weakness.

They are oppressed. And that has been a norm in history.

But the dainty flower of feminine beauty and fragility and mental follishness was not the norm of human experience.

In most societies the women were simply brutally oppressed for reasons of religion or even misplaced ideals of social order (as in China). Victorian England and the societies around it that used the same model were an attempt to find a scientific reason for female oppression. Starting out with a hypothesis that they were a weaker sex needing to be chatteled and cared for with tenderness.

There's nothing tender about the oppression in Afghanistan. Nothing that would lead any of those women to grow up sickly and fraile. Which was common in Victorian england. In a society were they thought a woman who engaged in physical activity risked being made barren in the womb. And then tried desperately to find science to back them up for it.

The women of Afghantistan grow up hard. Survivors. Which leads to a very different result. It produces women who tend to be very strong of body and soul but also very bitter. A lot like their men in that case as the men go through much the same thing in different ways.

Second...what the heck does Victorian England have to do with the topic?

I see you failed to read the entirity of my post.

 

[Kichwas]

Re: Re: ahh, such is life.

i try to leave any differences buried with the thread. as i said, i have a short memory.

We'd be a lot better off if that policy was more common.

I seem to have a bane of atracting people with very long memories and dark hearts.

People who come at me for things said months or even years ago.

The internet can be annoying at times. Too easy to say something in haste and it's too easy for it to stick around long past the point of or need for it's original meaning. And all too easy for it to be taken way out of context.

 

[King_Stannis]

Re: Re: Re: ahh, such is life.

We'd be a lot better off if that policy was more common.

I seem to have a bane of atracting people with very long memories and dark hearts.

People who come at me for things said months or even years ago.

The internet can be annoying at times. Too easy to say something in haste and it's too easy for it to stick around long past the point of or need for it's original meaning. And all too easy for it to be taken way out of context.

agreed

in fact, i think me and you might have tangled over something a long time ago on the old boards. but thankfully i didn't let it cloud my opinion of your future posts, many of which i thought were very well thought out. indeed, when it comes to DM'ing, i think we share very similar views.

 

[Warchild]

Re: The Last Word...yeah right!

(I was going to say "lame," since it's my word of the week, but that seems to have offended some lame people.)[/B]

Okay, i get. People aren't allowed call you a hypocrite. But you think its perfectly fine to call people lame.

Huh...i guess you are a hypocrite after all!