Females as males? (Objectifying "males")

Eh... Once you start attaching plots and personality to resin, I still think it's entirely possible to have characters (of either gender and of any sort-) without it having anything at all to do with their creator's anger, or fear, or social conditioning, or fetishism or preferences in terms of sexual objectification. Sometimes a pen is just a pen, right?

Certain character types simply tend to be more useful or more compelling for purely artistic or dramatic reasons. If you want to stage an old-fashioned blood-and-thunder melodrama with your dolls, for instance, you're going to need individuals appropriate to that genre. Fluffy-Bunny Joe Average, with his perfect life and happy suburban backstory, would be a pretty dull choice for that kind of thing... ie: If you're going for a resin version of Wuthering Heights, you want a Heathcliff, not a Beaver Cleaver... The same applies to "girly" boys and "boyish" girls just as easily as it applies to "broken" characters... Sometimes they're just the kind of individual that best fits the theme of the story.

Re: the other issues...

For myself, I don't care for over-wrought rape-and-prostitution backstories. They're so common that they've become a stereotype, and as often as not they just come off as lazy writing; an excuse not to put much thought into the character. It's like "Instant Emo 101... Just add rape and stir."

There are about a thousand and one more interesting ways to put together an Angst-puppy if you absolutely have to have one, but too many people take the easy out because it's become such a rote. 8P

 

And an obelisk is just an obelisk, and someone may hate the colour yellow because they find it unattractive and not because they were traumatized by it as a child.

Sometimes there are deeper causes to our personal preferences, and sometimes it really is just because someone likes it that way. My dolls are rather disconnected from reality and reflect what I personally find attractive in fictional characters.

I don't quite understand why fantasy is often expected to be or has to be an accurate, thoughtful, and sensitive representation of reality. There are plenty of people who enjoy that and there are plenty of people who don't.

 

I could be wrong about this, but I feel like some are saying that it's okay to do anything to your doll/character even if it reaches all the way to abuse, sex, whatever. I mean...I'm hearing people say that abuse, etc. is wrong, but at the same time it's just fantasy? It's not real, so it's fine? Again, I think can pose this as disrespect to the character if you do too much damage to them. Honestly I think it's more the ideas that are the deal here...not much of whether or not the dolls are "real" or not.

Let me use this as an example again. The people involved in creating the hentai stories and such...even though the characters are fake, the ideas represented in them...aren't they...immoral?

I have characters that are not always the "good" type, but there is something that connects my characters in a good way. I wouldn't just release one of my characters to have sex all the time or whatever...besides I still think what the character is like still has something to do with the creator's ideals and desires, no matter how different each of your characters are.

EDIT: Then again...maybe they're doing that to their characters to appeal to the audience? Is this what the audience wants? They want those scantily-clad men and the abusive backstories? Is this bad or not? Is addressing it as just fiction, just fantasy...is that an excuse to cover ones desires?

(lols sorry the last part sounds a bit strong...^^')

 

XD I think this is the way I wanted to address my opinion! I agree with you 100%! X3

 

Fiction... no matter the media... would be a pretty dull and boring place if everyone involved refused to make things difficult for their characters. Can you imagine how All Quiet on the Western Front would read if the characters hadn't been sent to war? Or how dull the average murder mystery would be if the author refused to let anybody die?

Anyway... It *is* okay to do whatever you need to do with your characters. They're figments of your own imagination. They don't exist independantly of their role... So, if the story you're building needs a hero who's had a rough life, you're not "disrespecting" that character (or anyone else-) by giving them that. It may not be in great taste to go into intimate detail about that character's past on a doll forum on the internet, but if that kind of thing is necessary to the character, you're not doing anything awful by allowing it to be a part of the history that shaped that individual's personality.

 

Right, I hear you! People get carried away in discussion threads, & whip out their own personal experiences to use as backup or examples; they don't always realize they're stepping on personal boundaries. This is an unfortunate casualty of internet-anonymity: the loss of control of how intimate you get with somebody right away. Folks, you can tell me what you like, fly the flag of what you're into, and even show me wild things that may illustrate how your brain works... but for the love of pancakes, hold SOMETHING back for your therapist.

And this is definitely not doll-specific, either, this is totally an intarweb-wide thing. Stopping it would be like putting toothpaste back into the tube. Your alternative is to unplug the computer. Not everyone is considerate enough to put "Mayonnaise Fetish" right in the subject line, where you'll know not to click on it. I'm sorry, but that's just really fargnaxing FUNNY.

I think it's because SOMEBODY always has to ride the bitch-seat. It's like you can't have a fairytale without a villain-- somebody has to get roasted in the oven before the story can be satisfying. The impulse to pair up yin with yang, hard with soft, top with bottom, etc. A story/world full of strong, unbroken characters who are always on top... it's fun to look at, but not much happens. You have to have a softie in there. And soft pretty male sex-objects might be much less distasteful for many people to write than female sex-objects.

Besides, I think the mainstream media already has the female-sex-object thing quite covered. This little sub-subculture niche here seems to be taking care of the male end of things. If you are of a very Pollyanna frame of mind, you might even call it Equal Opportunity. ^^

You poor thing! It must make reading books terribly difficult for you-- people are always dying & raping an' stuff!
(Tip: Definitely, for you, don't read Cormac McCarthy. Nobody ever comes to a good end.)

 

No, what I mean is that, yes, they can have those imbalances in life to make the story more interesting, but certain things shouldn't be the basis of the story all the time. Like if a guy was raped and abused when he was a child, then don't make the story based around how he still gets raped and abused even though he's older and more mature (that really wouldn't show any growth on the character's part)...*sigh* I guess I'm not making much sense...^^;

I guess it really depends on subject matter. Like basing a story on how a person's mental stability has gone haywire...well...it be interesting to see as a story, but about a guy that is just so vulnerable in getting raped? I wouldn't be too comfortable in reading something like that.

 

Too bloody right. And then they accuse you of being mean when you go "yuck!"

Glad its not just me there. I've long since stopped looking at the gallery unless it happens to be dolls I know. There's almost nothing I want to see. I don't post there anymore either. My dolls have their own web site and I post pix of them on their LJ.

I also have definitely straight lads who stick out like sore thumbs most of the time at meetups because they look like men, dress like men and are not interested in other men.

What about those of us who aren't writing stories around our dolls?
My dolls all do indeed have personalities, definite likes/dislikes/looks etc but they exist 'in the now' really, rather than as vehicles for outside fiction.

In the fanfic world I've found that most of the people who do this really just want the attention and torment of a popular character will get that for them.

Yes it is. I'm sure control issues are at the bottom of lots of the odd things we see in BJDs. Especially with the younger members who may still be sorting out who and where they are in life.

I'm all for tolerance and acceptance, but really, a little self restraint and consideration for the sensibilities of others would go a long way.

 

Good question... and I suspect that in most cases the answer comes down to the combination of a self-perpetuating stereotype and this hobby's demographics.

It's like the "slutty El" or the "shota-bait" MNF Shiwoo, or the gorey zombie mods that were so popular a few months back... People come into the hobby. That's what they see all over the Gallery. They accept it as the "norm". Then they do it themselves when their own doll arrives in order to "fit in" with the rest of the population.

I'm sure some people do it just to pick on the characters, but sometimes it's also just interesting to look at things from a darker point of view... The Exalted RPG, for instance, wouldn't have rules for Abyssal player characters if a fair few of its fans hadn't expressed an interest in building and playing that setting's tortured anti-heroes on occasion. No one plays an Abyssal to have a happy ending.

When I made the original, tabletop version of the Alabaster Prince of Ashes (My own Abyssal-), I very specificly designed him in a way that I knew would set off my own maternal tendencies. It was the only way I could play a villain character... Essentially, I had to hurt the guy enough to make myself feel sorry for him. I know I'm not the only person whose done that, either as a gamer or as a storyteller.

I admit that I do too... Sometimes, like the Alabaster Prince, I even design my own that way on purpose. And you're right that not everything that's happened to a character needs to be "out in the open" for all the world to see. There's no reason at all to go into every nasty little detail in the course of a simple database backstory...

Some things are better left vague in public venues.
I think some people forget that... Either it doesn't occur to them that the detail is unnecessary, or they're so intent on shocking their readers that they don't recognized the line between expressing something horrible and going over-board to the point of silliness.

 

I am a fan of shounen-ai, but not necessarily graphic yaoi >_> However, what I've theorized after observating straight romance stories and slash is: when the subject is a girl and a boy, there are certain moulds that are meant to be filled. The girl is expected to be shorter, the boy taller and tougher, the girl's supposed to be more emotional and pretty, all those sorts of things. But when the pairing becomes a boy and a boy, that throws off the tags that we might associate with the gender roles. Sure, we have created the "seme/uke" relationship model, but there are far fewer expectations in a fictional relationship of the same sex.

And why not more girl/girl pairings? Simply because more BJD owners are female, I guess. And generally, while girls think that gay or feminine boy dolls are "pretty!", masculine girl dolls aren't usually that "cute" or "pretty" in a conventional way.

Another thing: people want beautiful things. Why would you buy something that wasn't pleasing to look at, especially something this expensive? And for some people, beauty is a very feminine attribute, and with all the girly-boys on the market, it's very easy to fall into the "bishounen" trap.

 

People on here have been complaining about the rape in fiction. I think that if used right, it can make a very good story. But I am sorry, I don't want to read smut or porn, I don't respect rape when written for that kind of enjoyment. Not all rape is written for this reason, of course I think we all know. I have read a book that takes place in the Middle East. A young boy is raped by another young boy. This can be very offensive, but it's main description was in the emotions and I think the point was that assume that sex is looked down upon there, especially between two men. It also showed that Rape = BAD. I think people get offended when they feel that the rape isn't viewed in a negative light, instead people are enjoying the thought of it. That book is written by a male.

I know this is a completely different area than the current subject, but do males have any appeal to feminine men? In glam metal, the men had long, sometimes gorgeous hair, wore sometimes heavy makeup and brightly colored nail polish, while sometimes wearing spandex. The majority of the fans were male, which is strange in a genre that I find people listen to trying to look tough, sometimes.

I do like men beautiful. I have since I was 9 years old. What influence do you think caused this? There is of course liking metal with guys with long hair. I also am an artist who likes beautiful things. I prefer the female figure to the male figure, but I am in no way bisexual. I have used female models for my male characters. Why can I love a male with a female face but not actually love a female? Is it because I have been raised to think that homosexuality is wrong? It has been declared from tests that everyone is in-fact bisexual, some just more bisexual than others. (Sorry, I don't have any proof of that. Saw it on Discovery Health, I think.)

 

Not necessarily. Haven't you heard of the height rule in yaoi? The uke is always meant to be shorter than the seme. In most yaoi, even in the hardcore ones, the roles and expectations are exactly the same as in shojo. The only difference is that their genitalia is the same.

Venture into forums like Aarinfantasy and you'll see mile long threads asking people what they like in their seme or their uke. You gets lots of the same answers; they want their ukes short, young, cute, easily made to cry and their semes tall and handsome, cool and brooding.

If the roles are often so much similar as in a heterosexual relationship, what makes it so much "better" when it's two men? Not to say that I'm exempt from this, as a yaoi roleplayer since I was 13. I try to avoid the weepy uke stereotype though.

It's why I personally appreciate yaoi mangaka like Naono Bohra. Men with facial hair, older ukes, MUSCULAR UKES?! I love it.

 

lols yeah I'm getting tired of those stereotypical ukes too. XDDD;

 

Sort-of. I think that it's most interesting when wicked characters don't necessarily see themselves in that way, so in Al's case, even though he was a loyal servant of the Deathlords... an "evil" character, objectively speaking... he completely believed that what he was doing was for the best. He really, honestly thought that he was trying to save the world.

The nastiness in his backstory and the death-and-destruction visions that the Malfeans kept subjecting him to even after his Exaltation were essentially the explanation for that disconnect between his very noble motivations and the actual wickedness of what he was doing... They're what broke him to the point of actually believing, whole-heartedly, that the only way to "save" Creation and everything in it from an endless cycle of rebirth and suffering was to destroy it... But they were also specificly engineered to make me, as his player, interested in looking after him. I was willfully manipulating my own response to the character exactly the same way writers and film-makers manipulate their audiences with doomed but sympathetic characters.

To put it simply, I knew that I wouldn't be any good at playing a classical, black-and-white, evil-for-it's-own-sake character, so I had to make an evil that I could have some level of sympathy for. An evil that I could become fond of.

It worked... After the end of that game, I missed the character enough to want a resin version of him. (A resin version that happens to be sitting here, curled up next to the cat in my lap, as I type this- )

Agreed. That's why none of my own have ever been abused in that particular way, including Al. ^_^

Even though he is a very vulnerable personality, and he's the definitely the sort of character that Doll Mage and some of the others in this thread would consider "girly" (Though he's pretty much completely non-sexual and has never cross-dressed, so he misses out on the gay skirt-boy thing- ), and his past is a pretty unpleasant place... rape never came into it. There was no need for it.

I half wonder if people don't get so focused on sex that they forget that abuse and misfortune can take an awful lot of other forms. Or if they just don't recognize that those other events can be every bit as world-shaking for the individuals they happen to as sexual predation...

 

The main issue here seems to not be with girlboys themselves, it seems more to be with the lack of VARIETY in the personality types to go with them. A plight I can feel sympathy for, to be sure. (My own girlboy is standoffish and harsh and likes books better than people. Not the weeping type.)

And let's face it. The fictional world lacks variety. Isn't that why we appreciate something good and inventive, or at least putting a fresh face on an old concept, when it comes along? Yaoi lacks variety, shoujo lacks variety, doll stories lack variety... It's just kind of the way of the world, innit?

(I'm only saying this drivel because there are too many intelligent points for me to say anything new and good. :3)

But I'd also like to add that I agree with the people who have been saying not everything has a Deeper Psychological Meaning. Sometimes you just like stuff because you like it. I don't like tomatoes, but it's not like my parents sat me in front of piles of them and forced me to eat them when I was a child or I don't know threw them at each other when they fought and Little Me watched on in terror! And now I don't like them in my salads. I just think they taste gross.

By the way, for me, I don't see the boys as "girlish" at all. For me it's more about expressing the playful androgeny of youth, when boys and girls all look exactly the same and brimming over with possibilities...

EDIT: Ah! Another point! Perhaps the prevelence of sex (including the unwanted kind) is because the creators of these characters are young, and when you are young like that, sex Rules the Universe. So they already have sex on the brain and just work it into everything. We're also increasingly bombarded by sexual images as a culture from the internet, TV, etc... So that over-sexed mentality that seems strange and offputting to some (and it seems to be lots of older members? correct me if I'm wrong) is absolutely normal to others. We see sex ALL THE TIME, so why not?

 

What bothers me, though, is that rape-- or at least the threat of rape-- seems to be so frequently used, and it's always the female character that's the target.

One example that really sticks with me is Meryl from Metal Gear Solid-- never clearly stated that she was raped, but heavily implied. She gets kidnapped in the terrorist takeover, locked in a cell, shot through the damn leg by a sniper-- but that's not enough difficulty for her. She also needs to be raped.

Can't we create a compelling story for a "feminine" character (I include the more feminine boys here) that doesn't involve them being raped at some point(s)? Another question: if we're going to use rape as a plot point, why not on "strong" male characters?

 

Armeleia, when I shuffle off this mortal coil, can you please be in charge of making sure that my funeral gets a parade of purple-glitter motorcycles with their sidecars stuffed with ditzy Chiwoos?

Thank you.

As you were.

 

That's exactly what I meant when I mentioned the demographics of the hobby... I'm one of the old chicks, relatively speaking (I'm 37-), so maybe it is just that I and some of the others are "over" the Sex-as-Everything phase.

Or it may be a matter of life experience, which can be surprisingly independant of age... Some people may just recognize that there are more possibilities than others.

Either way, I don't think that "girly boys" and rape have to be connected in any way. I don't think less dudely characters necessarily have to have any sort of traumatic background at all... The strong connection between the two in our hobby is entirely a matter of what's popular with owners, not what's required for building a realistic character from a sociological or psychological point of view. ^_^