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| Thread: Heroines of Might and Magic |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 · «PREV |
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Aosaw
Promising
Famous Hero
Author of Nonreal Fiction
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posted February 22, 2011 09:39 PM |
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Your point about representative icons is mainly what I'm talking about, actually. Because ultimately, the designers chose to change the gender of the priest when they made the unit less martially inclined. Not before then; not after then; at the same time.
Are there probably going to be Brothers and Priests within that stack? Sure. But something made UbiHole choose the female character to represent the group. At the same time, they chose only males to represent the rest of the human army. If you think that's a coincidence...
Well, it might be a coincidence. I don't pretend to know what goes on in their heads.  But even if it wasn't a conscious decision, it came from a place of subconscious preconceptions about what a woman should be like in an Angelic society (read: "Christian society").
Those preconceptions don't hold true for the other factions. But those other factions are also not meant to reflect a modern, human ideal. Necropolis is designed to reflect dark wizards; Inferno is designed to reflect Hell; Stronghold is designed to reflect barbaric tribes who can barely think for themselves, let alone form a real society of their own.
The campaign challenges these notions, maybe, and maybe that's why Haven's army is so patriarchal. But make no mistake about it: the prejudice is there.
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vicheron
Known Hero
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posted February 22, 2011 10:10 PM |
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Edited by vicheron at 01:34, 23 Feb 2011.
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Quote:
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Pacification (Upgrade): The Vestals of the Holy Empire walk with a natural aura of purity and truth that brings spiritual pause to the enemies they attack. Their resolve and beauty has been known to strike their enemies speechless. A well-known Elven ballad recounts a battle with Vestals, claiming that each blow they delivered felt like being slapped on the face by your mother.
And what the Sister that is so much more ridiculous than all the other fantastical stuff in the game? How is the ability to turn people into stone, teleport across the battlefield, raise people from the dead, shoot lightning from the palms, etc., more believable than the Sister being protected by magic? This is a fantasy game, magic is the panacea, or do you have some scientific explanation for all the fantastical elements in the game?
And how does this protect the Vestal? The "resolve and beauty" part is ridiculous, the rest is about some form or offensive ability which sounds convincing if you're a whiny emo elf, not, say, a frenzied soldier in the middle of the battle (forget about totally uncaring demons, undead and such which are the often-encountered-enemies of the humans). Still nothing about how will her survive long enough to deliver even a single "slap". And the basic Sister doesn't even have this ability.
Oops, I bolded the wrong part. I should have bolded this part "The Vestals of the Holy Empire walk with a natural aura of purity and truth that brings spiritual pause to the enemies they attack." Anyway, the point is that they have the ability to reduce the effectiveness of enemy attackers.
Oh and demons and undead are not enemies that they regularly face. Demons are only released during eclipses, which happens every couple of hundred years. The Necromancers are a new faction and there haven't been any hostilities with them. Heroes 6 takes place 200 years before the Necromancer purge. So the enemies they normally face are either other people, "emo elves," and possibly dwarves and naga, all of which should be susceptible to the kind of calming mind affecting magic Vestals have. Plus just because soldiers are frenzied doesn't mean they're immune to mind affecting magic, they can be confused and blinded, even demons are affected by those kinds of magic, there's no reason why they can't be pacified by the Vestal's magic.
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As for the magic - you are having the terrible habit of misinterpreting my words. Of course this is a magical world, do you think I failed to notice it? However, you can not explain your poor decisions with "this is magic", it's just stupid and the direct opposite of the desired effect. When you place a cute, nicely dressed skinny lady in the middle of a carnage and say "Hey, don't worry, the magic will protect her" you shouldn't be surprised that some people would say "Yeah, right..."
But again, how is this a new problem? Monks, mages, and druids were just as poorly protected in previous games. Sprites have been waify little creatures since the first game. Peasants have been used as soldiers. The monks/zealots in Heroes 3 and druids in Heroes 1 and 2 are also unarmed and wear robes just like the sister/vestal.
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Jabanoss
Promising
Legendary Hero
Property of Nightterror™
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posted February 22, 2011 10:22 PM |
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Edited by Jabanoss at 22:33, 22 Feb 2011.
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@Aosaw
Quote:
But make no mistake about it: the prejudice is there.
I agree(partly), however is this prejudice a problem?
Sure there is prejudice but I think it's both in the game, which is to say what kind of gender roles they have in Haven and also of course how the developers apart from that decided to design the Sister.
Lets assume, lets assume that Ubihole are a bunch of real misogynists and they decided to only have male warriors in Haven. They only female units they allowed should either be non-human(angel, glory) or healing support units(Sister).
So in this assumption UbiHole is evil and we as feminists ask ourself:
"Well if this is the only human female in the game, do we want them to be portraited as 'weak support units'?". "Would it be it instead be better if the Sister was replaced by a male, so that it in a way becomes more 'neutral'?"
Oh will you look at that, Jaba entered a state of random ranting again...
Anyways the Sister can be male, the pikeman female, the Sun rider female, etc, etc...
To me it just DOESN'T MATTER.
(Hmm I actually like the idea of a female Sun Rider...  )
I like the fact that they have plenty of female units in this game, and I don't really care if they distribute these roles randomly.
And if the Sister happen to be female AND to have a typical "female role"(nurse), then so be it in my opinion. 
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"You turn me on Jaba"
- Meroe
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JeremiahEmo
Bad-mannered
Famous Hero
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posted June 02, 2014 04:36 AM |
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Jabanoss said:
@Aosaw
Quote:
But make no mistake about it: the prejudice is there.
I agree(partly), however is this prejudice a problem?
Sure there is prejudice but I think it's both in the game, which is to say what kind of gender roles they have in Haven and also of course how the developers apart from that decided to design the Sister.
Lets assume, lets assume that Ubihole are a bunch of real misogynists and they decided to only have male warriors in Haven. They only female units they allowed should either be non-human(angel, glory) or healing support units(Sister).
So in this assumption UbiHole is evil and we as feminists ask ourself:
"Well if this is the only human female in the game, do we want them to be portraited as 'weak support units'?". "Would it be it instead be better if the Sister was replaced by a male, so that it in a way becomes more 'neutral'?"
Oh will you look at that, Jaba entered a state of random ranting again...
Anyways the Sister can be male, the pikeman female, the Sun rider female, etc, etc...
To me it just DOESN'T MATTER.
(Hmm I actually like the idea of a female Sun Rider... )
I like the fact that they have plenty of female units in this game, and I don't really care if they distribute these roles randomly.
And if the Sister happen to be female AND to have a typical "female role"(nurse), then so be it in my opinion.
I don't see anything misogynistic with what UbiHole did. They just rather reflect it to the real world. Plus, misogyny's definition is hatred towards women. They don't hate women just because they gave them healing/support roles. Yeah, I know feminists changed the definition of misogyny but I really don't listen/care about what feminists think. I choose to believe the real definition.
What I don't like about Heroes 6 is that they forced their ideas of gender equal representation down our throats. I skipped Heroes 6 by the way. I mean, Heroes 6 is a game, not grounds of political correctness, so they should cater to what their audience wants. Their players are mostly male so removing the cool part of Heroes and replacing them with women, just for the heck of it alienates the very people that's buying their product. That's why Heroes 6 flopped in my opinion.
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