Cool filler blog (maybe nsfw)

Note for the weak of heart & easily offended: there are drawings of guys in lingerie in here, showing off their butts and video game characters in their underwear. You've been warned.

The Hawkeye Initiative is a tumblr where people take images of sexy superheroines and draw Hawkeye from the Avengers doing those same poses in the same skimpy stuff. If you know about Rocky Horror Picture Show, you'll get the idea very quickly. If you don't know, keep looking (and don't say I didn't warn you at the beginning)...

Not the best art, but "empowerment!"

Hawkeye's eyewear is very close to what the Monarch's henchmen wear.

...shiny.

As we've heard about time and time again, lady characters in video games (and comics) have that cool quality where the more they're armored up, the more their clothes fall off, as if their armor is actually some sort of slippery clear-coat (see above). Dudes, on the other hand, get more covered up as they acquire armor. (Also, the sky is blue and water is wet.) But how many dudes in games are allowed (by the developers) to pull a Rocky Horror and bust out the high-heels? Maybe not that many.

A cursory google search for "crossdressing video game characters" showed me this article from Destructoid. This article, entitled Crossdressing and Cross Gamers is about how three different games deal with the issue of crossdressing, and each game is coded to allow it, but only to allow it in the world of the game to varying degrees.

In the first, a game called Space Quest IV, male-bodied characters CAN buy ladies' clothing, but an NPC will call them a "sicko," and then the way the player/character chooses to react to it affects their choices later in the game. Sounds a bit like life. Some have apparently argued that it is true, that crossdressers are sickos, and unnatural, and [fill-in-the-blank]. The author, Jim Sterling, counters this with, "clothing is by its nature a very unnatural thing," and that crossdressers are no more unnatural than normal people - if Eddie Izzard can do it, the author could do it. (That said, Sterling then sort of shoots himself in the foot by saying that he won't crossdress because "nobody wants to see John Candy in a dress." Dude, it's a big Internet out there, I'm sure someone out there would dig that.)

In the second game, Final Fantasy VII, Cloud has to run around a town gathering makeup and girly clothes to infiltrate a brothel bathhouse to save his friend. Cloud is at first stunned when Aerith suggests it, but goes along with it, with Aerith essentially being his wingman to get all the things he needs to look like a "real girl," which include a silk dress, blonde wig, sexy cologne, and diamond tiara (apparently it's cool to go barefoot in this town?) The townspeople are totally cool with all of this, by the way - they make the dress and give him the supplies as rewards. Cloud gets all that he needs and goes into the brothel where he meets a crew of burly men and gets his drag show on the road to save Tifa. (In this second video is all that, and a little blurb from the poster about how women who wear makeup are unattractive, which seems irrelevant.) It's like the village that all of this is taking place in within the world of the game is part of an ideal world, where you can present however you want and nobody will act like that NPC from Space Quest IV. 

In the third game mentioned, Saints Row, people have the power to create the characters they want - so if I play it, my dream of playing a game as Dr. Girlfriend may come true! Sterling says (wall of text):

This game has actually received praise from more feminist-minded gamers due to portraying female custom characters exactly the same as males ones. While this does impose latent lesbian tendencies on the character whether the player intends it or not, it's still a fantastic example of a game with an open mind, because as well as men and women, players can make both crossdressers and transgendered characters by playing with the in-game settings. Want to slap a dress on your thugged out gangster? Feel free! Want to create a female character with a male voice? Go wild! You can approximate almost any lifestyle that reflects yours, and Saints Row II won't judge you for it. That such a crass and tasteless game could be so culturally open is pretty encouraging, I think. 

The customization process is in-depth - what game lets you control your character's forehead depth? (Rhetorical question, as some of you could spew lists of games that do.) I guess this is one of those games that relies on people bonding with the game so much that they make characters in their own likeness or the way they'd like to see themselves (or other people). This must make it more exciting when you go badassing around in the game. But how many people actually make crossdressing characters?

The female character creation videos I found are more oriented towards creating "the perfect woman," while the male character creation videos seem to be more about goofing around with the controls to see what happens.

Male to order.

I wish changing my hair color was that easy...

I think it's cool that some games are being progressive, even if they don't actually *mean* to. People can crossdress in Saints Row 2 because the developers gave players more control over their appearance - it's not like they're making players create characters in drag or look a certain way. What do you guys think?