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This is less an attempt at a coherent post and more a continuation of a discussion that got too long for twitter. Overall this is a lesson in why asking me "my thoughts" is a bad idea, I'm tl;dr enough when asked to answer a specific question :D
So: Tim asked me what I thought of the article Leave FemShep Alone: An Open Letter to BioWare.
EDIT: Why the Mass Effect 3 FemShep vote was the wrong move makes some good points I feel a bit embarrassed for not thinking of.
For clarity: by "default femshep" I mean the pale red headed default female character in Mass Effect 1 and 2. By "new femShep" I mean the pale blonde female character chosen to be used in Mass Effect 3 promotional materials.
First off: like the author, I am a massive Mass Effect fangirl, and really love the way they did the female Commander Shepard. Like a lot of female (and other!) Bioware fans I've always found it a bit off putting that the promotional materials for both Mass Effect games and Dragon Age 2 are all about the default PC, who is of course always a brown haired blue eyed generic grizzled white dude, even though players have the option to make their PC male or female and have a lot of other options for appearance.
My reaction to the new Femshep was not the same as hers, though: I was first introduced to the the idea of female Shepard being used for promotional materials by some friends on tumblr posting links to the then ongoing voting between several different options, and they were all focussed on the possibility of a dark skinned Shepard(*). Which would have been pretty awesome, and in my opinion better than using the default pale skinned red headed femshep. So my reaction to the blonde woman being chosen was more "Oh yay, another white person" not "Why is she so much more traditionally feminine than the default femshep?". I did find the sexy expression and more delicate features off putting though.
When I made my first Shepard in Mass Effect I thought the default Shepard was rather blandly conventionally attractive with impractical hair, given the limits of the character builder. I tend to think all the human models in Dragon Age: Origins and both Mass Effect games look kind of fugly, not because Bioware was trying to go against traditional notions of attractiveness but because they just weren't very good at face modelling. Compare for example Morrigan in promotional materials vs her in game. And then suddenly in Dragon Age 2 all the PCs were pretty, whether I wanted them to be or not.
So, my first thought on reading the article (and what I responded to Tim with) was "But how is she any worse than the old default femshep?" I would say that she's about as traditionally feminine looking as you can get with the character creator you're given in Mass Effect 1 and 2. I disagree that you can make a character who is "incredibly slender, super pretty, and sporting a unrealistic haircut". Red hair is just as associated with female attractiveness as blonde, all the face shapes look about the same, and a bob is about as long as your hair can get. New femshep's hair only seems to be a few inches longer, and that could be artistic license.
Having read Tim's response and thought about it some more, my opinion isn't quite the same.
First: He's right, Liara does have a more traditionally feminine face than FemShep, plus Miranda has that long flowing hair etc. However, I just played around with Mass Effect 2, and I still think default femShep is about as traditionally feminine as you can get with the character creator.
It is significant that Bioware could make characters like Liara etc and chose not to have femShep look similar. The short hair is I think at least partly for practical reasons, bu she doesn't have giant boobs or wear much makeup, and while I'm still not sure how much of her appearance is an artifact of having to be customisable she does have a stronger jaw than the female Dragon Age Origins models, though Dragon Age characters don't tend to look that much like Mass Effect characters in general so I'm not sure how much their underlying models overlap.
I do worry that Bioware are trying to make their female characters more girly. I realise that Dragon Age and Mass Effect aren't the same franchise, but Dragon Age 2 is the most recent game Bioware has put out, and default Hawke from Dragon Age 2 has relatively delicate features compared to the Dragon Age: Origins human models (she also sashays as she walks) and I had some trouble making a femHawke warrior that wasn't really delicate and girly looking. I worry that when I import my Shepard she's going to look like new femShep but with darker skin and shiny hair in a bun no matter how much I fiddle with the sliders. Look at the list of options we were given, they all have very similar features and thick makeup.
However, as I mentioned above, there is often a big gap between promotional materials and what characters actually look like in the game, and it's not implausible that any actual femshep you make in Mass Effect 3 will look much the same as the ones in Mass Effect 2 except better rendered and with more hair options.
Which still brings up why she's drawn that way in the picture. She looks powerful and dangerous, but also rather sultry. I was going to say that all promotional materials make female characters look sexy/pretty, but compare to the blood soaked knife wielding City Elf and fiercely bitter looking mage from Dragon Age Origins. I think using the default femShep wouldn't fix that problem at all, but it's still annoying to compare to promotional materials involving male Shepard.
Having just written a novel about why I think using default femShep (or an updated version of her) wouldn't make any difference to the portrayal of femininity, I find that I do still kind of agree that it's unfortunate that they changed her. I never use default PCs, but a lot of people do, and I still have that association of default femShep as the default from the last two games, even if I didn't like her as much as the author of that article. Keeping her would have provided some continuity and made her feel more on par with default mShep as another Face Of The Game.
At the same time I did like that the voting allowed for at least the possibility of a non-white/POC femshep. Bioware could have made the loose haired white femShep an updated version of default Femshep rather than blonde with fly-aways, and I can't see any good reason why they didn't. If they'd done that and kept the strong jaw and no nonsense body language I'd have been much happier.
And now I have run of brain to have thoughts with. I hope this makes sense!
(*)Plus, of course, "Yay, finally femshep gets portrayed in promotional materials!", a sentiment I share with both them and the author of the article. I'm taking "Ok, since we all agree that having a female Shepard on some of the promotional materials is awesome, how do we feel about the particular Shepard chosen?" as given.
So: Tim asked me what I thought of the article Leave FemShep Alone: An Open Letter to BioWare.
EDIT: Why the Mass Effect 3 FemShep vote was the wrong move makes some good points I feel a bit embarrassed for not thinking of.
For clarity: by "default femshep" I mean the pale red headed default female character in Mass Effect 1 and 2. By "new femShep" I mean the pale blonde female character chosen to be used in Mass Effect 3 promotional materials.
First off: like the author, I am a massive Mass Effect fangirl, and really love the way they did the female Commander Shepard. Like a lot of female (and other!) Bioware fans I've always found it a bit off putting that the promotional materials for both Mass Effect games and Dragon Age 2 are all about the default PC, who is of course always a brown haired blue eyed generic grizzled white dude, even though players have the option to make their PC male or female and have a lot of other options for appearance.
My reaction to the new Femshep was not the same as hers, though: I was first introduced to the the idea of female Shepard being used for promotional materials by some friends on tumblr posting links to the then ongoing voting between several different options, and they were all focussed on the possibility of a dark skinned Shepard(*). Which would have been pretty awesome, and in my opinion better than using the default pale skinned red headed femshep. So my reaction to the blonde woman being chosen was more "Oh yay, another white person" not "Why is she so much more traditionally feminine than the default femshep?". I did find the sexy expression and more delicate features off putting though.
When I made my first Shepard in Mass Effect I thought the default Shepard was rather blandly conventionally attractive with impractical hair, given the limits of the character builder. I tend to think all the human models in Dragon Age: Origins and both Mass Effect games look kind of fugly, not because Bioware was trying to go against traditional notions of attractiveness but because they just weren't very good at face modelling. Compare for example Morrigan in promotional materials vs her in game. And then suddenly in Dragon Age 2 all the PCs were pretty, whether I wanted them to be or not.
So, my first thought on reading the article (and what I responded to Tim with) was "But how is she any worse than the old default femshep?" I would say that she's about as traditionally feminine looking as you can get with the character creator you're given in Mass Effect 1 and 2. I disagree that you can make a character who is "incredibly slender, super pretty, and sporting a unrealistic haircut". Red hair is just as associated with female attractiveness as blonde, all the face shapes look about the same, and a bob is about as long as your hair can get. New femshep's hair only seems to be a few inches longer, and that could be artistic license.
Having read Tim's response and thought about it some more, my opinion isn't quite the same.
First: He's right, Liara does have a more traditionally feminine face than FemShep, plus Miranda has that long flowing hair etc. However, I just played around with Mass Effect 2, and I still think default femShep is about as traditionally feminine as you can get with the character creator.
It is significant that Bioware could make characters like Liara etc and chose not to have femShep look similar. The short hair is I think at least partly for practical reasons, bu she doesn't have giant boobs or wear much makeup, and while I'm still not sure how much of her appearance is an artifact of having to be customisable she does have a stronger jaw than the female Dragon Age Origins models, though Dragon Age characters don't tend to look that much like Mass Effect characters in general so I'm not sure how much their underlying models overlap.
I do worry that Bioware are trying to make their female characters more girly. I realise that Dragon Age and Mass Effect aren't the same franchise, but Dragon Age 2 is the most recent game Bioware has put out, and default Hawke from Dragon Age 2 has relatively delicate features compared to the Dragon Age: Origins human models (she also sashays as she walks) and I had some trouble making a femHawke warrior that wasn't really delicate and girly looking. I worry that when I import my Shepard she's going to look like new femShep but with darker skin and shiny hair in a bun no matter how much I fiddle with the sliders. Look at the list of options we were given, they all have very similar features and thick makeup.
However, as I mentioned above, there is often a big gap between promotional materials and what characters actually look like in the game, and it's not implausible that any actual femshep you make in Mass Effect 3 will look much the same as the ones in Mass Effect 2 except better rendered and with more hair options.
Which still brings up why she's drawn that way in the picture. She looks powerful and dangerous, but also rather sultry. I was going to say that all promotional materials make female characters look sexy/pretty, but compare to the blood soaked knife wielding City Elf and fiercely bitter looking mage from Dragon Age Origins. I think using the default femShep wouldn't fix that problem at all, but it's still annoying to compare to promotional materials involving male Shepard.
Having just written a novel about why I think using default femShep (or an updated version of her) wouldn't make any difference to the portrayal of femininity, I find that I do still kind of agree that it's unfortunate that they changed her. I never use default PCs, but a lot of people do, and I still have that association of default femShep as the default from the last two games, even if I didn't like her as much as the author of that article. Keeping her would have provided some continuity and made her feel more on par with default mShep as another Face Of The Game.
At the same time I did like that the voting allowed for at least the possibility of a non-white/POC femshep. Bioware could have made the loose haired white femShep an updated version of default Femshep rather than blonde with fly-aways, and I can't see any good reason why they didn't. If they'd done that and kept the strong jaw and no nonsense body language I'd have been much happier.
And now I have run of brain to have thoughts with. I hope this makes sense!
(*)Plus, of course, "Yay, finally femshep gets portrayed in promotional materials!", a sentiment I share with both them and the author of the article. I'm taking "Ok, since we all agree that having a female Shepard on some of the promotional materials is awesome, how do we feel about the particular Shepard chosen?" as given.
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