Celi's Introductional Thread

[Celi]

I don't think they're fap material, really. The outfits and camera angles are certainly sexual, but I think that's to make them feel vulnerable. Like Drebin keeps saying, Snake is "cleansing" them of their surface emotions to reveal the vulnerable inner selves that the shells were made to hide. (Which really doesn't follow--I don't know how you make a crazy person not-crazy, but beating the hell out of them wouldn't be on my list of guesses--but whatever.) When they come out of their suits (which aren't sexualized at all; they even have male voice actors before they come out of their armor) it certainly isn't titillating in that way; even if you do think "wow, she's hot" more importantly you think "wow, she's pathetic".

But I might just be being generous. This is the game where nearly every female character outside the B&B has her shirt unzipped for no reason.

Thanks, SchildConstruct! Hope it's not too much like an actual asylum, though. Once you get past the novelty of being around crazy people, those places are boring.

Edit: Yay, I can post without permission now! But I'm still wearing a creepy anthropomorphized steak.

[Tarvu]

Three more posts and Reggie will haunt you no more.

[Panzadolphin56]

I don't think they're fap material, really. The outfits and camera angles are certainly sexual, but I think that's to make them feel vulnerable. Like Drebin keeps saying, Snake is "cleansing" them of their surface emotions to reveal the vulnerable inner selves that the shells were made to hide. (Which really doesn't follow--I don't know how you make a crazy person not-crazy, but beating the hell out of them wouldn't be on my list of guesses--but whatever.) When they come out of their suits (which aren't sexualized at all; they even have male voice actors before they come out of their armor) it certainly isn't titillating in that way; even if you do think "wow, she's hot" more importantly you think "wow, she's pathetic".

But I might just be being generous. This is the game where nearly every female character outside the B&B has her shirt unzipped for no reason.

While I'd agree that the whole in a shell/coming out of a shell aspect is a pretty good visual metaphor for whatever sort of complex they must have, I think whatever impact each of the B&B members would have had is ruined by the way the four of them are presented. The crotch shots, the skin-tight costumes, the oversexualised mannerisms, even their stories being told by somebody else, it dehumanises them and makes it more about 'ooo, look at the pretty lady' than their story; obviously I don't have years of experience with people traumatised by war, but I strongly doubt their response is to dress up in skin-tight costumes and rub themselves up against old men when confronted with whatever horrors torture them. Maybe it's supposed to be surreal, I'm not sure, but it just comes off as an excuse to be pervy.

[Celi]

I do agree that they don't really have much impact, mostly because, at least when we see them, they're just simplistic representations of whatever their surface emotions are rather than actual characters, and Drebin's melodramatic, hammishly-voiced biographies aren't nearly enough to breathe life into them.. I was just trying to find some deeper meaning in their outfits and camera angles--they're sexualized to such a blatant, comical extent that I find it hard to believe fanservice is the (only) point, but maybe that's really all it is.

It's certainly bizarre, in any case. I'm sure asylums in the MGS universe aren't boring at all--crazy people are all screaming, murderously violent psychopaths who are cured by getting beaten half to death then sexily hug whoever beat them.

[Panzadolphin56]

Yeah, apologies for the rant, welcome to the forums and all!

[Celi]

Wow, a forum where people apologize? For rants? I thought forums were made for rants! It's like this isn't even the Internet anymore. Seriously, though, you don't need to apologize.

In other news, I have been finally liberated from the shackles of newbhood, here symbolized by a steak apparently named Reggie.

[SchildConstruct]

Confucinoob say, "Once n00b, always n00b."

[Aaron Mxy Yost]

Welcome! I dig the avatar.

[Celi]

But then everyone's a noob on a long enough timeline.

Thanks. I was really liking Saxon for a while, but then he just sort of dropped off the radar. Maybe I'm forgetting something, but it seemed like he was campaigning and then just disappeared. It's funny, because I'm not sure why exactly I'm so fascinated with him, but I'd make that man king of the world if I could.

In other news, I finished MGS4.


Edit: Also, a question: Ho do you guys change the titles under your names? Do you have to reach a certain level first?

[Panzadolphin56]

They're sort of like nicknames, if you stick around long enough somebody calls you something and it sticks and gets suggested as your title.