XXX STRICTLY LADIES XXX

/\ that song is AWESOME, I fell in luv with it

author=Sana
(Also, Highschool of The Dead would be another example of fan-service. xD)

It's japan. HoTD is Eroge. It has pretty much always existed, and it always will. I don't find it to be particularily wrong, it's a niche. and it's funny as hell
Problem lies when it breaks out of the niche and then suddenly every living thing has three big, bouncing tits and is having a constant "NYAAAAAAH!GASM".
Rikku for example was an extremely awesome character, BOTH in FFX and FFX-2.
And with her we can actually see how forced the fanservice was. I mean, she basically strips for you in FFX. Then she's treated as a cute little girl for the rest of the game, without any sexual innuendo.

Then comes FFX2 and takes its toll on having a hundred thousand Rikku pantyshot scenes. Yet she remains awesome and strong, without sacrificing feminility. I really like Rikku. A lot.
It's just that market is extremely wicked.
Though I didn't know what they were thinking, since men actually obviously were afraid of becoming less manly by playing this game

EDIT: whoa, thousand simultaneous posts

author=JosephSeraph
Terra Branford.

While that may be true, FFVI didn't necessarily have a true main protagonist. Not that she is any less important, just that Locke for example could've been chosen to represent the game instead of Terra, especially once the World of Ruin comes into the picture.

I think this might be relevant to the topic.

I think it would be more telling if there was a way to track how many hits this thread got from people being mislead by the thread's title. Alas, I don't think there is such a method!

To answer the OP : I think women have it fine this day and age, they just like to complain, either due to sensitivity or insecurity. I am not saying that there are no legit complains, but just not most of them. :| Wanna talk about stereotypes in American media ? See how Asians are often portrayed a few years ago. :D

author=JosephSeraph
I think this might be relevant to the topic.

Girls... Give me my heart back...

I mostly posted the Lightning video because I wanted to make some point about flourishy, acrobatic movements vs. "masculine" powerful, strong movements... or something.

Lightning fights like a girl. That doesn't mean anything negative. Yeah, that.

Nothing wrong with looking sexy. You spend a long time looking at the characters, they might as well look attractive. The game will be less enjoyable if looking at the screen is less enjoyable. Plus, I never really understood the concept that sex appeal is somehow a negative thing.

I don't really "get" the complaint in the OP about female main characters on TV shows being sexy brainless stereotypes. I find that the opposite is the case - if the main character of a show is a completely generic stereotype, no one will watch the show because it'll be totally uninteresting. I can name the following TV shows off the top of my head with female main characters: Bones; Mob Doctor; Castle; Law & Order: SVU; Covert Affairs. Only the last of those has a ditzy boob-brained main character, and I hate that show. Not to mention, most of the men on the show are just as shallow, the entire show has too many affairs and not enough covert. I don't really see that sort of thing as bad, though, just as not the type of show I enjoy watching. Some people enjoy saucy romance and some people enjoy espionage; I'm in the latter category.

If I watched much other than crime dramas and action shows, maybe I'd see more of what you're talking about. The main characters of crime and action shows are necessarily proactive and resourceful regardless of gender. Also, maybe you meant supporting characters, which is absolutely true - supporting characters are often one-dimensional, because they don't usually get enough screen time to be anything else, and because they were probably added to serve a specific purpose in the plot. And while I don't pay a lot of attention to gender patterns, I could probably believe you if you told me that it's statistically worse for the women.

Not really a big deal either way, though. Like, okay, there are fewer good female characters on TV. But if you really believe gender shouldn't matter, then you won't pay any attention to the character's gender when deciding which characters to cheer for and identify with and idolize. I certainly don't, at least. I had to stop and actually think which shows I watch had female main characters in them, and probably forgot a couple. I mean, which shows have left-handed or curly-haired main characters? Do you know? Do you pay attention? Maybe there's a disparity in character quality! Would you care if there were? I can basically guarantee you wouldn't - because you don't consider left-handedness or curly-hairedness a meaningful part of your identity. Why do you consider gender any more important to someone's identity? Don't tell me you don't - if you really didn't, you wouldn't take offense to how genders were portrayed. You'd be too busy complaining that Bones is a negative stereotype of anthropologists and that SVU is a misleading portrayal of victims of child abuse, because those issues would matter more. Yet this gender topic keeps coming up instead, and I'm not sure why. Why are negative portrayals of genders more important to people than negative portrayals of the things that actually define us? I can only guess that there must be a lot of women out there who define themselves by their gender. Personally, I'm defined by my love for video games, and will get offended if people say they're ruining society. But if you insult my gender or race or even my religion, no big deal, those aren't super meaningful to my identity.

Nah @LockeZ gender does have an enormous weight in character delevopment and depth. Think of it, women and men are treated differently by society, have different rights, different organisms, different brain functions, the very functions they share are actually treated in reverse by their brains... As a result, it's obvious that generally male and female have different overall weaknesses, strengths & overall characteristics. But I do get your point.
Although also there's another factor in here: Gender, why is media so lock-minded with it? Human gender, as well as any animal or plant that features gender, isn't binary, even if it seems so. Not-So-Recent studies have proved that gender is actually a gradient, a scale, with hermaphrodites (and their EXISTING specific reproductive organ, wich thankfully doesn't work) right in the middle. This is leftovers of an era where life didn't know gender. Insects if I remember have the female have the different chromossome. Our female is XX. (might have reversed it)
So many, in fact the amassing majority of animals are not gender strict, being hermaphrodites or changing genders through life. Why would us humans be different? Why would there be a binary function that can 100% lead us to a female or male existance, if the hormonal aspect has such a heavy weight in pregnancy and gender, for example?
My point is that people should slowly focus off of what is a gender and stop trying to attach each character to a single one. Most people have traits of both genders.

And I sadly completely agree with Kyrsty.

author=LouisCyphre
I mostly posted the Lightning video because I wanted to make some point about flourishy, acrobatic movements vs. "masculine" powerful, strong movements... or something.

Lightning fights like a girl. That doesn't mean anything negative. Yeah, that.

I found Martial arts actually like this, especially if you see how they move the spear so effortlessly making it look like it's as light as a twig or how they use Tiger Hooks or or... Well point is, men can have this too. So I was like, what's special about what Lightning was doing <:D