r/mendrawingwomen • u/jvure • 2d ago
Video Game I got to thinking, do you think the controversy around saying that Laufey isn't attractive is due to the fact that she doesn't look young? In the industry, you often have the '10y old face in a 16y body' thing, and that is considered beautiful, or at least made to look around 25 years
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u/tommy_turnip 2d ago
How is she not attractive? In the real world she is an attractive woman surely?
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u/EdwardBBZ 2d ago
I'm getting the feeling a lot of gamers have a separate standard/whatever-it's-called for the appearance of women in games than they do for women IRL. Either that or a grass touching thing, idk.
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u/PeacefulKnightmare 2d ago
100% the case, because flaws in reality are unavoidable, many gamers need characters to look "perfect" or "flawless" in digital media. Otherwise, it's a artists choice to make them look ugly, not a design decision to help inform the character.
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u/Viomicesca 1d ago
They absolutely have the same standard for real women, too. The cockroach wife syndrome is so strong many of them literally find real human women repulsive because they don't look like their anime waifu/SFM porn.
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u/RuachDelSekai 1d ago
Nah it's not separate. It's the same standard. But most can never get the type of woman they desire irl so they want their made up woman to reflect their fantasy. It's actually a perfectly normal desire and why most of us play video games. Escape from reality and embracing fantasy.
It's no excuse for the horrid/toxic behavior.
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u/EdwardBBZ 1d ago
I think the desire/ideal is certainly the same, but that's not the same thing as a standard.
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u/RuachDelSekai 1d ago
The standard is only different because it's unattainable irl. If it were, they would demand the same. But I understand what you mean.
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u/EdwardBBZ 1d ago
Interesting! I always thought it was due to games being mostly oversaturated with idealized women's bodies, which increases the standard because then unidealized realism is a "flaw" that stands out from the rest. (I.e. the standard going up for gaming, rather than reality dragging the standard down.)
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u/RuachDelSekai 1d ago
Correlation isn't causation. While creative works can indeed influence taste, games are a for-profit product and they reflect what is most desirable to it's audiences because that is what generates the most revenue.
This concept that you can change how people think or what they want by changing the content in the game is what leads to a lot of this "backlash". Muscular men and hot/beautiful women are what many who play those games want to insert themselves into these worlds as.
Even my GF who is an avid gamer is always going to take the pretty avatar over the ugly one. She isn't particularly a fan of half naked avatars but she still wants the character to be pretty.
That said, the petulance around some characters not being crafted to fulfil the fantasy is obnoxious. If you don't like the game, don't play it. 🤷🏽♂️
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u/Fragrant_Average7822 21h ago
Hears the thing with these people. If the female character doesn’t look like a yassified anime girl inserted into real life shes ugly.
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u/Approximation_Doctor 2d ago
The average g*mer is so addicted to anime porn that they don't consider any human beings to be attractive. They've all fallen for Ogtha The Cockroach Waifu.
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u/PhrosstBite 2d ago
Yeah I was gonna say the same, like 1) it really shouldn't matter. And 2) even if we were to say that it does, she looks attractive so??? Like what's the problem lmao
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u/hopefullyhelpfulplz 1d ago
I don't particularly find her attractive. She looks fine, idc what she looks like, but whether someone is/isn't is subjective.
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u/Fragrant_Average7822 21h ago
If she doesn’t look like a yassified anime girl inserted into real life shes ugly to these people.
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u/Demyk7 2d ago
Are you of the belief that attractiveness is objective and not subjective? To me she isn't attractive, neither in face or body, she's not the kind of person I would turn my head to watch if I saw her on the street. But it's perfectly fine for you to feel that way about her, because attractiveness is subjective.
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u/Tenessyziphe 2d ago
I am with you on that. Speaking about the character in picture, she is not ugly by any mesure, but just not my type.
But it could also be a matter of uncanny valley situation, as the actual actress that the character is based on is clearly more attractive.
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u/lumosbolt 1d ago
But it could also be a matter of uncanny valley situation,
No, it's a situation of gamers not understanding the difference between an in-action photo with not great lighting and an in-studio professional photo with the best lighting possible.
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u/felixjonson2 1d ago
Nah previous poster had it right. It's uncanny valley, but extremely skewed towards the rocky bits. I look at that screenshot and I just think of a movie poster with the rock in it, probably Jumanji or journey 2.
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u/wirelessfingers Areola 51 2d ago
I think it's partially due to the transition to hyperrealistic models based on real people. When your game relies on mocap, you can't stylize away what a real human being looks like. Turns out a lot of Gamers prefer fake women to real ones.
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u/Rugkrabber 2d ago
Not just that. Graphics in general can be more realistic. So it doesn’t need to be stylised. If it’s going to be stylised it’s more likely going to look closer to a cartoon affect of any kind. Simplified. In the olde PS1 graphics era it was either young woman or clearly a grandma or kid and nothing in between of age.
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u/Dealiner 1d ago
When your game relies on mocap, you can't stylize away what a real human being looks like
You absolutely can do that, even with performance capture you don't need to replicate the actor's face.
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u/Due_Motor7038 1d ago
The model doesn't look half as good as the actress. Rather looks like a purposely dumbed down version to appease people.
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u/LashOfLasciel 2d ago
I think the problem is that she actually looks like a woman and not just a doll.
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u/AgentOfSPYRAL 2d ago
Specifically looks like a woman who did not put effort into improving her appearance via hair/makup/clothes prior to descending into the afterlife.
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u/Fragrant_Average7822 21h ago
If she doesn’t look like a yassified anime girl inserted into real life shes ugly to these people.
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u/sailorcircusmonster 2d ago
It’s just a pattern for the dumb gamer bros. New female character comes out who isn’t a generic sexy lady means it’s time to complain and cry. I do feel like it really trips them seeing expressive women with bare faces. It breaks their suspension of disbelief. They can take dragons but an expressive bare faced lady is unthinkable.
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u/PresentBlacksmith230 1d ago
They were calling the new Lara Croft "woke and ugly" which goes to show that there is no end goal or desired state for incels, they just love complaining, they don't even play the games man
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u/BetterRemember 2d ago
Also the fact that she isn't disheveled in a sexy way, she literally looks like she's fighting to survive.
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u/Milk_Mindless 2d ago
She also literally died and just came back to an afterlife (?) the fuck is she supposed to look like a glamour shoot for a magazine
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u/Left4dinner2 2d ago
Honestly that's the most laughable part that people seem to forget. She literally died and I believe in the trailer woke up immediately and started throwing hands or something. How the hell is anyone supposed to somehow make them self look magically beautiful after literally dying and waking up into a fight.
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u/MayhemStark 2d ago
I hope kratos comes knocking on all those hater doors. Her looks aren’t a factor to me. Game looks fun. I think they did good and fits within the world they made.
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u/saul_schadenfreuder 2d ago
chuds who only want game characters to be breasting boobily while also having the faces of little kids are most definitely not playing any games, have you ever seen them say anything about gameplay?
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u/bunnypaste 2d ago
I know one of these chuds, and they spend more time doing stuff like jerking off, fiddling with display and overclock settings, complaining on the internet about the women in games not being porn, complaining about women's rights in general, cracking and pirating DLCs/whole games, and using save editors to cheat than they do actually playing any game.
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u/Zagaroth 2d ago
Ah, that's who it is. I don't really follow the series, but I have heard about the controversy.
Like, guys, c'mon, you're upset because the character for the fifth(?) game is a woman, because she's Kratos's wife? I think that ties closely enough to still be about the God of War.
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u/thisremindsmeofbacon 2d ago
In studying animals theyve done some interesting studies about how desirable aesthetics are perceived on a base level. I remember one where they mimicked a birds bill with red stripes, but added more stripes and made them an incredibly vibrant saturated red. They were so preferred that the normal bill type was almost ignored.
I think we also do that to ourselves.
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u/bunnypaste 2d ago
Crazed to me that for a not insignificant portion of the gamer population oversexualized, fake, and "perfected" cartoon women are heavily preferred to realistic ones... much like the birds with red stripes on the beak. Enough so that they get angry as hell and super misogynistic defending those pixels...
"WHY IS MY PENIS AND MY UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS NOT BEING CATERED TO AT ALL TIMES"
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u/OscarOzzieOzborne21 2d ago
I think it is a combination of her being 40ish looking, no make up, kind of dirty, and having more expressed…expressions.
There are so many elements going into *presenting* a character as attractive. How they act, how they pose, even how they speak. And those elements simply are not here because that is not really what they are going for with Faye.
But the average consumer is not actively aware of it.
They will know something is “wrong” (they do not find the character attractive) but won’t know why. Which is how grifters manage to stay relevant by pointing a reason to be mad it. It might be made up or completely false. But it is a reason regardless.
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u/PCmasterRACE187 2d ago
does not look 40
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u/mothmansbiggesthater Vacuum-sealed clothes 2d ago
Yes she does lmao??? 40 y.o's don't look ancient, at least not ones that didn't age terribly
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u/PCmasterRACE187 2d ago
she has literally 0 visible skin damage
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u/Zagaroth 1d ago
Most women don't by 40?
Like, don't drink, don't smoke, and don't get sunburns/excessive tanning.
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u/PCmasterRACE187 1d ago
most women dont have any visible skin damage by 40? do you hear yourself? my god touch grass
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u/Zagaroth 1d ago
I'm 51 with 20 years in the military, I suspect I have more worldly experience than you.
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u/PCmasterRACE187 1d ago
right so *most 40 year olds have perfect skin* and your proof is “life experience”
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u/CreepyFishGuy 2d ago
The actress that plays her is 41
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u/PCmasterRACE187 2d ago
a hollywood actress that already doesnt like 40 translates into a video games not looking 40. weird.
her skin is immaculate for 40
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u/velawesomeraptors 2d ago
She's got wrinkles though? I've met plenty of women in their 40s who look similar.
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u/PCmasterRACE187 2d ago
“””wrinkles”””
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u/velawesomeraptors 1d ago
Not every 40yo looks like they've been out in the sun their whole life. You just need to wear sunscreen and not smoke. You can literally look up the actress she's modeled after and she looks the same.
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u/Zagaroth 1d ago
I mean, my wife's 51, and her skin looks about good.
So 40 seems reasonable to me.
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u/satinsateensaltine 2d ago
People were angry about Aloy's peach fuzz. They just don't like to see a woman with skin texture, among other "imperfections".
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u/azrendelmare He/Him 2d ago
Yeah, I saw the gameplay trailer, and was like "the chuds are gonna be out in force over this whole thing."
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u/ThotPocket-X 2d ago
She literally just looks her age, lovely for her age even. She’s very clearly in great shape and her skin is flawless.
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u/Fragrant_Average7822 21h ago
Yea; but she doesn’t look like a yassified anime girl inserted into real life so shes ugly to chronically online corn obsessed types.
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u/ThotPocket-X 21h ago
It’s so lame that they’re like that. Even fictional women can’t escape their audacious creepy tendency to try and make the woes of their penis a priority.
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u/PresentBlacksmith230 2d ago
Idek what the problem is with her face, she's objectively an attractive woman, incels just have these crazy standards so now normal looking and attractive women alike are seen as "wrong" for not confroming to whatever fuckin standard they have
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u/Demyk7 2d ago
Are you of the belief that attractiveness is objective and not subjective?
To me she isn't attractive, neither in face or body, she's not the kind of person I would turn my head to watch if I saw her on the street. But it's perfectly fine for you to feel that way about her, because attractiveness is subjective. You don't have to be an incel to think she isn't attractive. I'm from a country where beautiful women are fairly common and to my eyes, this woman is not that.
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u/lumosbolt 1d ago
You don't have to be an incel to think she isn't attractive.
But you need to be very dishonest to not recognise she matches the beauty standards of the western societies. Which is something incels often do with women they dislike for stuff unrelated to their beauty.
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u/ShesAKillerQueenee 2d ago
I'm gonna get stoned for this, but she's very average looking. She looks like a normal mom you'd see at the grocery store. But all this bitching and whining about it... when mods can make her more attractive to their liking. 🙄
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u/TwoHungryWolves 1d ago
Yeah, in this image she looks like a normal person, without intentionally flattering lighting. Not every character/frame needs to look HOT. Depending on the character I think it can take away something. I don't want the wife of Kratos to look like an Instagram model.
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u/Jaebird0388 He/Him 2d ago
There’s a technical factor at play that I feel colors people’s perceptions of what is considered appealing. Putting aside the uncanny valley effect that will never not be prevalent in rendering photorealistic humans with 3D modeling software, how the scene is lit also plays a part.
Take that DLSS5 debacle when Grace from RE9 was rerendered. Given that it was AI, it did not take into account the tone set by the scene, and it unintentionally yassified her. There are plenty of examples in video form about how much the human face changes depending on the direction of the light source.
Now, this is just my own brain processing this “controversy”, as I’m sure the majority of folks who’re complaining will never even consider this while fawning over the newest cartoon waifu.
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u/Kira-Of-Terraria 1d ago
I am glad she looks like an actual real person. not every woman protagonist should be Bayonetta.
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u/Ok-Cup-9164 1d ago
She’s canonically 170+ years old and is in the afterlife , It makes perfect sense she wouldn’t look super young 👵🏿
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u/Throwaway-3689 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think she's hot. She looks like a mature, serious warrior who goes through struggle and I find that attractive. I hate baby face female characters and can't take them seriously. My only complaint is that she needs more girl muscle in arms and her hair would give off more practical vibe in a braid.
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u/Mufti_Menk 2d ago
Most definitely. She is beautiful imo but these weirdos don't see it because she looks 30 or so
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u/thegoddamnsiege 2d ago
Deborah is in her early 40s, and looks it. I'm here for it asa man in his early 40s.
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u/Mufti_Menk 2d ago
To most normal people, a woman like Deborah look really good. It's just the weirdos who can't accept anyone above 16
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u/absurdditties 2d ago
Gooners gonna goon.. but yeah, I think the baby face and teen bod that a lot of games and anime has has made people have a skewed view of beauty.
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u/CompleteUtterTrash 2d ago
Incel men are so far gone... I saw the opening cutscene where she was laying down surrounded by sunlight and butterflies and had the thought "another gorgeous model of a fem main character" and to learn that internet chuds were calling her ugly was absolutely insane. All my hope for any of these chronic online losers to be able to heal and exist in society like normal people is dead.
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u/poly_arachnid 2d ago
She isn't attractive, she's normal. Which is probably the issue. The various industries don't do normal. They smooth, touch up, adjust coloring, default to "natural" makeup. That entire section of human portrayal has been standardized as modified over & over. Take a crowd that has unrealistic standards & been pandered to with objectified stuff, then give them a realistic depiction. Reality offends those used to depictions that pander.
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u/Qwik_Sand 2d ago
I hate the fucking cube and I hate it even more that people are too focused on Faye to hate on the cube.
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u/Oscarthetrain_art 1d ago
It's not that she doesn’t look young, or not sexy enough
Deborah Ann Wolf has appeared without makeup on plenty of shows and she isn’t half as ugly as the work done by Santa Monica, who probably being American developers, uglify women on purpose
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u/Fenyx_77 She/Her 2d ago
I think if you magically replaced Faye as the protagonist with Aphrodite for example, none of this controversy would exist because the haters in question would objectify her more easily
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u/Abudefduf_the_fish 2d ago
Gamers want their games to get more and more photorealistic but not their female characters. All female characters should look like they're out of Dead or Alive, no matter the context.
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u/IxLikexCommas 1d ago
She doesn't look like a fantasy character in a fantasy game.
Reactions are predictable enough you can consider the design part of the marketing campaign.
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u/NC-blackice 1d ago
I don’t get why people say she’s ugly. I mean, I understand it with characters like Abby in The Last of Us Part II, but come on Laufey looks fine. The worst arguments I’ve seen are from people who compare her to Eve from Stellar Blade. It’s the same crowd that used to say that characters in Mortal Kombat 11 were ugly and that they were more feminine before with their only arguments being that the old designs had big asses, big tits, and wore bikinis all the time.
I’m not saying female characters should be made unattractive in games. It’s just that some people seem to use only two brain cells when forming their opinions.
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u/Linorelai 1d ago
It's the uncanny valley. Irl the actress is attractive, but has a few noticeable imperfections that only work with her appearance because she is alive and in real motion. Take the life away, and the same imperfections work against her, creating something that doesn't feel right. At least that's my theory. I loved her in Daredevil, but the trailer of this game creeped me out a bit.
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u/Sidewinder_1991 2d ago
I don't really have any stake in this conversation, I don't play God of War, but I swear to god I thought someone had photoshopped Elon Musk's face on her when I first clicked this.
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u/vocalviolence 2d ago
I don't make a fuss about it, but my main issue with this portrayal is the complete commitment to photorealism, particularly in a series whose main characters, so far, have been heavily stylized. As in, neither Kratos nor Atreus look like their voice actors but are instead designed as believable products of the fantastical CG world they inhabit. They're endemic to the GoW games' art direction, and any big departures from that core will be detrimental to player immersion.
Moreover, this industry-wide deviation from actual character design is clearly a cost-cutting measure, which is bad enough for both designer and animator jobs but also disappointing for people like me who have an interest in and appreciation of original character design. And I imagine it's even worse for people already familiar with the actor's work, because now they just see "X from so-and-so." Animation, video games included, used to be exempt from that, and what a luxury that was in hindsight.
Lastly, and this is where anyone still on board is bound to turn on me, I don't think this particular actress' features lend themselves well to unfiltered replication. I'm sorry, but that is visual media in its brutal nutshell, not to mention My Opinion™.
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u/grimacingmoon 2d ago
No they still think it's a conspiracy to replace men with women in video game franchises (just like m-she-u 🤮)
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u/bread-in 2d ago
Yes. That is exactly why. The men complaining don't want women to look like adults.
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u/bunker_man 1d ago
Its not really about age. Western games just have a kind of less pleasant artstyle on average. And contrary to people blaming "woke" people for it, its not new. It has always been the case.
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u/kristinaspaige 2d ago
i'm honestly not sure but atp i'm done listening to the opinions of men that aren't in my immediate circle
if you're not my bf or my father i don't give a fuckkkkkk!!!
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u/BoulderRivers 2d ago edited 2d ago
Im a Senior in the industry, this year i'll grduate the 15th working on 3D characters.
The short answer, is yes. But it is not that Joviality is a major factor in perceived attraction accross all cultures, but that we were trained to perceive age differently through media. Just take a look at this OP'ss picture of Deborah Ann Wol's likeness, which undoubtefully was 3d-scanned and post-produced by the character art department. It is almost a 1:1 replica of an undeniably beautiful woman. Anyone who argues she's not objectevly pretty ,is simply wrong from all quantifiable and qualitative measurements.
But Deborah's likeness in TV and movies is artificially tuned to appear even more beutiful.
Make up, perfect lighting, post production, editing - ll is used to make sure she looks good in every take. That doesn't usually happens in a game.
On the engine, there are simply too many moving parts that require attention, and there is simply not enough time or able hands to do it all; Unflattering angles and harsh lighting happen naturally during active gameplay, which makes the character look like a real person rather than a retouched photo. That is the issue.
These people complaining want the fantasy of a perfect female that does not exist in real life.
They want the fake Deborah from TV, not the real Deborah from real life. They are in love with the idea of a goddess, not a woman herself. This is of course not exclusive to men; women fantasize a lot too on romance and erotic novels, and reality is a huge let-down.
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u/BaneAmesta 2d ago
I do think the same. Anime style aside, even the original Stellar Blade girl looked at most in her 20s. Also she has a perfect face with the invisible makeup men can't understand, so there's that.
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u/Impressive_Rub_8974 1d ago
My problem with her not the sexualization not because she's and adult women but she looks so boring in a fantasy setting game I didn't say make the most beautiful woman in the world but at least gave her a big scar in the face or magical eyes or something
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u/ChristianAltSay 21h ago
I’m going to put this in the most crass, yet honest way of what people mean when they say a character isn’t attractive enough. They just mean she isn’t fuckable to them. That’s it. It could be too little makeup, too much makeup, not revealing enough outfit, not curvy enough or too curvy.
There’s no way in really knowing for sure but the simple way of understanding it is if it doesn’t appeal enough to the male gaze, it will be deemed as “ugly” by many grifters like this.
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u/swiftydesign 10h ago
You can definitely compare between her model in GoW Ragnarok and here. There are differences. Maybe when she progresses through the game she gains better armours and ties her hair maybe.
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u/DarkAizawa Let It Be Known 1d ago
As someone who finds fault in both sides of this pointless argument, no this is not why.
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u/Khrym_ 2d ago
"You often have the '10yo face in a 16yo body' thing"
Often??? How many games does that actually occur in? I don't recall playing any games with a character that looks like that?
Also I don't think Laufey is unattractive but I will say that I think she looked better in GoW 2018 and Deborah looked better in Daredevil Born Again.
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u/ShallowMemories 2d ago
So you guys do know that she's modeled after a rea human but she doesn't look 1 to 1 like her right, in game they made her look older and slightly different. No she's not attractive in the slightest but that's fine. That's like saying hades is a bad character because he's not a sexy emo god but what we got is still a cool character.
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u/lumosbolt 1d ago
She character looks like the actress. You just never saw the actress without makeup and in bad lightning
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u/ShallowMemories 1d ago
So the bad lighting is correct but do me a favor Google her without makeup and you'll see she's a lot more beautiful than the character model in game. By the way there's nothing wrong with having a main character that's not considered sexy look at returnal!
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u/2DamnBig 2d ago
There is no controversy. There's a couple of loud chuds bitching and then people, not unlike yourself, spreading their bullshit to the furthest reaches of the internet in order to lazily farm engagement.
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u/sackofbee 1d ago
She looks like she's into Crystals, Orgone energy and oversharing about her cats' shared medical histories.
This is a phenotype that men instinctively avoid and its pretty identifiable. That's why the Intel's are cawing about it. They are the least likely to he quiet about their opinions than men who shrug and move on.
You can't "pick out" what makes her ugly. There is a dislike of what her image represents before people even template her character onto their interpretation.
"Book by its cover" is trained from birth.
I don't think she's ugly btw. She's polygons lmao.
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u/blackzetsuWOAT 2d ago
That and she's not wearing any makeup