Charon121: That's the thing, artists indeed ARE restricted in what they should portray (...)
You know what? Ask an artist. Better yet - ask him to show you a picture of his. What are the chances of it being pretty? I guess that depends on the artist...
Sure - aesthetic value doesn't always lie in beauty, we have moved beyond that, but it's still a fairly straightforward quality to grasp. Not dissing Duchamps and Picassos here...
Charon121: girls who are "10s", sexually very appealing.
Good grief, the nerve people have. They should be average and modest, shouldn't they?
No, screw that. I like pretty things, I like pretty people, I like pretty games, I like pretty words. Our civilization conflated Truth, Good, and Beauty... Not only that - they basically became aspects of the perfect being known as God.
Charon121: You don't see many obese female protagonists
Thank Logos. If I wanted to see ugly, obese women, I'd move to America.
Also - go look up Helga from Loadout if you dare.
Charon121: Few games still retain the concept of "Everyman" in portraying their main character.
That's THE POINT. I don't WANT to play an "everyman".
Charon121: An everyman is supposed to be someone with whom the readers/audience can identify.
Whenever introduced, they also tend to be the most hated characters, because they're usually clueless, helpless idiots.
Charon121: Since most people are average
Fuck average people... but that's somewhat beside the point, I simply feel antagonistic enough to mention this.
Screw the average. Average people suck. They're not original, they're not interesting, they're not remarkable. They're AVERAGE.
They also mostly exist as a theoretical construct of statistically-oriented minds. There is no "average person", there are only individuals that roughly fit into certain categories.
Charon121: heroes should be average as well.
As respectful as I love to be, I simply cannot glance over this egregious contradiction and politely argue against points raised.
THIS MAKES NO SENSE.
"Heroes" are not "average". Heroes are goddamn HEROES. There is something special and unique that sets them apart from the common clay. They can be charismatic, inhuman, endowed with magical powers, chosen by a prophecy... they are NOT average.
You can have an "average" protagonist in a story. This goes hand-in-hand with the literary styles of "realism" and "naturalism" that have produced some of the most revolting novels known to man.
You can have a character that starts out as
seemingly average, only to learn that it is not so. You can hardly have a character that starts out as average, is average, and doesn't really evolve beyond that. That's not a "hero" story. A hero has a path to follow, as pretty decently outlined in literature. You don't have to follow "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" to a t, but heroes are, by definition, special. If they weren't special, THEY WOULD BE CALLED SOMETHING ELSE.
Charon121: Besides, the dramatic potential is much more pronounced when we have an ordinary individual thrust into extraordinary circumstances than when there's a superman in larger-than-life situations.
As reasonable as this seems - being an outlier, a freak with access to immense power, is dramatic enough in its own right, great peril only intensifies this. When you're helpless, there isn't really much "responsibility" to come with "great power", since you don't have that in the first place. Options begat choices.
Let's leave that, however, in peace. There is a much viler thing that your reasoning seems to rely on. Namely - what the hell do you mean by "ordinary" and "superman"? What was the entire basis of this discussion?
Oh, that's right - looks. Since they're so pivotal, since they define what sort of person you are. Yeah - screw personality, intelligence, views, wit, actions, history, social relations, and motivations - let's focus on how a person looks and establish whether that's kosher according to some standards of modesty (since the avoidance of extremes is exactly that - "modesty"). Sure, that's a civilized and refined way of judging a character.
Charon121: In LotR, people find it much easier to identify with Frodo and Sam than with the supremely wise and powerful Gandalf.
Too goddamn bad I'm not a person, since I'm the sort of guy who has the easiest of times identifying with demigods and heroes, characters like Obi-Wan.
That's also superficial - you're missing the big picture here. Why are people watching these movies in the first place? Why do people play games?
Isn't it BECAUSE they yearn something different, an experience detached from their own? Don't they want to see an epic journey, amazing circumstances, extraordinary characters?
Do grandmas who watch soap operas do so because of old, unattractive people that they can relate to? Do they want to listen to stories of failing health and impending death?
This is even more jarring, since I've been watching quite a bit of Heroes of the Storm recently. It's a mashup of all the absurdly powerful characters from all Blizzard universes duking it out in a nonsensical pocket-dimension. It's AWESOME. It has nothing to do with realism whatsoever - it's pure fiction. That's the appeal.
Why are there elves and dwarves in games? Hell - why are they PLAYABLE at times? Why do women play men and men play women?
Art transports us into another dimension, into a parallel world of fiction where things operate differently, where we are someone else, where we don't know what comes next... These worlds can be so unlike our own, and yet we can travel there and make ourselves at home. Why? Because we have imagination, and becoming someone else is part of this lovely make-believe process that can engross us thoroughly.
I can make claims about "people" just as easily as you. Here you go:
People WANT to play in worlds different from our own. People WANT to embody characters they WANT to embody... NOT necessarily ones similar to the ones they themselves ARE. Not everyone WANTS to be the person one IS. Sometimes this can be done out of pure curiosity and will to explore, other times it's a meaningless choice that is secondary to, say, game mechanics (let's play character X, he's got a lot of hitpoints). It can be a multitude of reasons, but when you bring a Japanese guy into Italy, you don't usually feed him sushi. He can have better at home.
Charon121: Therefore, if artists could choose to portray characters as they see fit without regard to current aesthetic standards
Ah, yes, because we all know that artists, of all people, are the least creative and freeminded. If only they could find it withing themselves to create what they truly want...
Wait, scratch that, maybe they don't even WANT it, but should do it ANYWAY, since this is better than the current aesthetic standards.
Wait a minute - who gets to decide what these standards are? Is it what appeals to the majority? Oh, no, that can't be, since your original point was, I think, that people dislike the current art paradigm in fiction because they can't identify with outlandishly foreign characters... Do the artists decide? Are they forced by some mythical "Man" who chains them their drawing desks and tells them pixel-by-pixel what to create? Is it the mental climate of our world?
Are there really so few free minds that would break through this barrier to see the light? As much as intellectually unfulfilling "argumentum ad capitalism" is - why on earth ARE things the way they are, if they do NOT appeal to the majority?
In conclusion - your post is at least partially absurd.
Charon121: (...) we'd have much more variety in video games, and perhaps they wouldn't be labeled as "sexist" then.
I have an alternative solution to this conundrum: I propose that we label people who utilize the term "sexist" is such a fashion "fucking idiots" and instruct them to proceed to end their lives by letting themselves be enveloped by various exothermic reactions.
