So how about that video game news.
Uhhh... femshep poll round 2.
Spyda says:
Ugh. Saw your thing on Twitter, haven't seen it yet.
Kaz says:
The proportion of votes hasn't changed.
Like... is the fact that redhead Shepard is winning a sign that not as many people voted for "blonde bimbo Shepard" as voted for that specific hairstyle or face, or what happens when all the people who didn't want blonde Shepard are able to enact their revenge without their votes being as split, or both?
Spyda says:
I guess I understand the idea of voting style, then color, but... fuck people for being such haters for blonde. Some of the comments actually were kinda offensive.
Kaz says:
I think if nothing else it's a clear sign that not as many people voted for blonde Shepard BECAUSE she was blonde, or because she was "the hottest one", as have been accused of that.
Or else blonde Shepard would still be the one with 10,000 votes, rather than redhead Shepard, which just cleared that number.
Kaz says:
Someone made the point that ME has a canonical reason for so many people having dark hair, which is that humanity has cross-bred into a big ol' mongrel race...
But they also mention that changing skin and hair colour is as easy as applying nail polish in the ME future, so I dunno where that leaves us.
Spyda says:
Yeah... A natural blonde or redhead in ME is probably as rare as a male calico.
Kaz says:
This puts my femshep's red hair and freckles under serious scrutiny.
Still, it certainly makes Shepard stand out. And it wouldn't kill us to have one significant blond character in ME. Although we could do with some more non-whites first.
Spyda says:
"Shepard. Wake up. This facility is under attack. Your scars haven't healed up yet, but we need you to get moving."
"Wait, you didn't have time to fix the glowing wounds on my face, but you put on my favorite black lipstick and green eye shadow?"
"Well... we were bored."
Spyda says:
Ugh, I wish I had more data to back up my claims that there haven't been many female blonde characters in the past few years, and that there've actually been quite a number of redheads.
I feel like that's been the case. Mostly in secondary characters, but still.
Kaz says:
Do you refer to blondes in video games or movies or both? Because I could swear the same thing is true of movies.
Spyda says:
Mostly vidjas.
I don't feel like I could make an accurate statement about movies in either direction.
Kaz says:
Yeah, we still get the blonde bimbo, but it's mostly in comedies these days. In a lot of big-budget movies we've actually gotten a lot more brunettes and black-haired women, and when a blonde is the lead/love interest, she tends to be intellectual. In my somewhat limited memory and experience, anyway.
Or if not intellectual, at least pretty tough and independent.
Spyda says:
Just thinking of BioWare games from the last 5 years. Basically ME and DA 1 and 2.
Default femshep had redhair, but we're not counting that.
DA actually had a lot of blonde men. Alistair, Anders, Varric...
Aveline and Leliana were redheads...
Mass Effect had a few minor red and blonde NPCs, but most of your characters worth noting were brunettes.
The humans, of course... the caucasian humans. >_>
Spyda says:
Lesse... Notable video game blondes...
Well, there's the big 3 from Nintendo: Peach, Zelda, Samus. Who all actually weren't blonde in their original NES sprites. Go figure that one out.
Kaz says:
Hmm. Maybe Japan thought they needed to be more exotic? Or something?
When did Peach first become blonde? Super Mario World?
Spyda says:
I think so. MAYBE Mario 3?
Nope. Red in Mario 3.
So yeah, it was pretty much SNES for all 3.
Kaz says:
Huh.
Spyda says:
Fighting games... boy, if you're a white American, you're blonde in a lot of fighters. Ken, Guile, Cammy, Rufus, uhhh...
SNK side: Blue Mary, King, Boggards Terry and Andy...
So, Japan makes a lot of white people blonde. But that's because they make their asian people look white, so you have to find a way to make them look different.
Hell, in Dead or Alive... well, let's not get into THAT mess.
Kaz says:
I think for Japan blonde is just shorthand for American. So boisterous, boastful, rude... well-endowed...
Money-grubbing...
Spyda says:
Since blonde seems to be interchangible with white.
And monster people.
Kaz says:
And neanderthals!
Kaz says:
I'll admit we Westerners tend to oversexualize our blonde female characters a lot. Although they're usually not weak as characters. Shallow, maybe, but not inherently weak. Unless they're a princess or whatever.
Although we get a thousand points for Elena from Uncharted.
Spyda says:
Yeah, I was about to bring her up. I feel like I thought of another good example of a blonde who fit that character type.
Maybe it was Anya.
I don't even know where to put her. GOWs 1 and 2, she was just a pretty lady voice who did tech stuff and so that you didn't have to listen to gruff dudes through the whole game.
But now I guess she's a tough, battle-hardened whatever.
Kaz says:
But when I think of blonde characters in games today, what I mostly think of are characters like... uh... Archer, from Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes.
Anwen.
Spyda says:
Yeah...
Again, something about the natural blonde just makes me think "down to earth" and not... shallow and superficial who wants to be in Playboy.
Kaz says:
It just makes me think of elves. Or Eowyn from Lord of the Rings. Who wasn't an elf, but shut up.
Spyda says:
In the 90's, we had the big stereotype about blondes being dumb. The character Kelly from Married With Children was a big ...I wanna say lampshading of that, but it wasn't even doing it to be satirical. And shows like Baywatch contributed to the stigma.
I hear that it becomes a lot more true if you live near Hollywood, or other places in California where fake tits and bleach blondes are the norm...
But it feels really stupid that some people still propagate this stereotype of hair color having any affect on personality or intelligence.
Kaz says:
Part of the reason for me that I'm okay with more blonde characters in general, is that I feel like we actually go too far in the other direction sometimes. Any time we set out to make a female character who is meant to be taken seriously, we automatically say "Well, she should be black or brown-haired, obviously, and single, and living alone, and..."
And we often end up creating characters that, to me, really feel like non-entities and cliches. Carla from Indigo Prophecy. Madison from Heavy Rain. What's her name from Still Life. Women who are just as one-dimensional as bimbos, except instead of boys and makeup they obsess over their work, and they never joke or relax like real people.
That's a deeper issue than hair colour when it comes to our difficulties writing layered, believable female characters, but damned if there isn't a correlation.
