Why is it that most every female caster I see in fiction (be it D&D or Warhammer) is a gorgeous woman in the prime of her life?
This is more often than not a clear contrast with men, who evidently go out of their way to purposely cultivate the "wizened old man" look to inspire respect or get their enemies to underestimate them.
Why is this usually never the case with women?
Is this perhaps male oriented bias? Or is it a cultural standard based on our own vain history?
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It all boils down to literally every single person ever going "how can you sell products to men if they have women in them who aren't hot????????" to the point that it happens by instinct.
Captcha: Select all the images with skirts.
ugly women get no respect user. Nothing they can do, no matter how much power they have, will earn the respect ofothers. they can inspire terror, fear, or horror, but not repect. Even a matronly woman who is 'handsome' is only given a small token of respect for her skill at being handsome, and not for her experience or her skills.
this is not condoning feminism, but it's simply how human brains are hardwired. Attention is given to women who look beautiful, and it is only given to women whom do not if they overwhelm with other qualities.
...
Evil old female magic users tend towards maintaining a youthful appearance
This. They are probably ancient, and the first thing that they did was deage them wtih their abilities, while males do not give a fuck.
And of course, the /pol/ answer is that all women made a pact with the devil anyway, so they had a shortcut to power.
In many fantasy settings where technology is primitive and the quickest way of getting respect is to be good at killing things, society is stacked in such a way the temptation and sex appeal are one of women's only (and very effective) options for asserting themselves in the world.
Of course this rarely applies to player character themselves, as many games are now pushing more modern views that women (at least when the players are playing them) are generally free of gender roles and stereotypes anyway... but then again even female players want to look sexy, see all the backlash Mass Effect Andromeda's deliberately "uglified" female characters got, even from female players.
There was this lady from Willow
The evil witch-queen was also rather aged in the final fight between the two of them
Men accumulate worth as their get older while women lose it
The male in that isn't so bad.
Female is fucking horrendous.
I don't see it. I think the female one is fine.
Yup, and they did it on purpose because they didn't wana set "unrealistic beauty standards" for women or some shit. There were a ton of topics about that and the "SJW" views of the devs on /v/ for a week. Thank god the popular Tabletop games aren't THAT bad yet.
Bruh, do you even know how human facial proportions are supposed to look? I know Veeky Forums loves it's anime and cartoons, but come on.
don't you talk shit about sara you fuckin bitch nigger REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Oh fuck that's bad
>Why is it that most every female caster I see in fiction (be it D&D or Warhammer) is a gorgeous woman in the prime of her life?
>implying
Old witch hags work a lot better and are a lot more mystical and dangerous than "muh woman in her prime".
>Bruh, do you even know how human facial proportions are "supposed" to look?
I guess not
I think what's more interesting is that you usually don't see old-ish female PCs
FLEMETH
Wasn't Flemeth's entire goal to basically body-snatch one of her much more younger and attractive daughters every time she became old?
I will not spoil anything
...
Because old people suck. The younger the better.
Magic users should be youthful and perfect in appearance.
Because there is nothing more cursed in the entire world than an ugly woman. I would argue that it's better to be blind and crippled than to be butt-ugly.
weeb trash above do not respond to it
See Now fuck off back to /a/
Thanks, now go find another thread to shit up with your anime waifu posting, faggot.
I told you not to respond to it
I'll give you the unpopular answer: because most fantasy and literature in general was and is written by men and men are allergic to the power of male beauty. Despite studies showing clear preferential treatment linked to height and facial attractiveness of men all throughout society, plenty of people remain adamant that beauty is irrelevant for men.
If we're being realistic however it's highly likely that any male wizard would do the exact same thing as those "vain witches" with the exception of staying overtly youthful. A regal, strong look would benefit a man just as much as it would a woman. Same for a strong jaw, deep eyes, etc.
*peeks into thread*
it is almost as if women want to play an attractive power fantasy...
B-b-but if I describe my male casters as beatiful or handsome, my writers might think I have "the gays"!
It's totally fine to do that with warrior-types though, because you know they're getting all the bitches instead of studying books all day. Booksmarts are for nerds and turbo-virgins.
old game. spoil away.
Isnt flemeth a dragon?
Realistically, old wizards would be the norm if you have the power to back up your status.
If our academic past has taught us anything, it's that an older appearance demands more respect in social circles, which would be nigh adamant in wizardly affairs.
But they would still look damn handsome.
Old game, but her motives extend into the sequels.
No spoilers for you!
That is indeed a dapper wizard. Perhaps the dapperiest(not a word) I have ever seen.
anyone noticed how women who play rpg's prefer to play fighting roles? I have NEVER played any game with women where they played casters. It was ALWAYS barbarians, fighters, soldiers and other killers.
which is fine. It is just interesting...
The funny thing in Discworld is that witches go for the old look to catch people off guard, while wizards *want* to look young but can't maintain it.
Discworld wizards should stop gaining so much weight.
I think there are a number of factors at play here. Firstly the D&D made hags an actual separate class of evil creature (Which I guess already existed in myth with creatures like Black Annis, Jenny Greenteeth and so on) meaning that wizened old spellcasting woman tend to be iconically antagonistic in those settings.
The second factor is anime and manga influencing western fantasy settings. Male historical figures and any number of inanimate objects are turned into cute girls or hot women so of course something like witches would never be spared such a treatment.
I think there might also be some degree of push back against the classic old woman broomstick stereotype which has been so prevalent in Western culture until pretty recently. The sterotype was a lot more common than the hot and sexy witch about 20-30 years ago.
On an interesting note Baba Yaga and her various fantasy universe counterparts are pretty much always old and ugly. (Pathfinder , Warmachine and Hellboy being some good examples of this.)
Old casters really make sense. I mean, if you need a wizard or witch, will you go to the young sexy one or the really old gnarly looking fucker?
The gnarly fucker of course, they are obviously higher level! or just look like they are, which is even more important, if discworld is to be believed.
>you usually don't see old-ish female PCs
So your female warlock isn't modeled off Gruntilda or the Black Cauldron witches or the Wicked Witches of Oz?
What are you, a plebeian?
Funny, I've had the exact opposite experience, where every female I've ever played with has been a caster, archer, or sneaky rogue/assassin types.
I've never had a female player play a healer though.
Ikkum Bokkum, bitch
>The second factor is anime and manga influencing western fantasy settings
More like the east has been tarnishing our culture with its disgusting ideals and its weeb fans eat it all up like candy
LOOK WHAT JAPAN DID TO ALEISTER CROWLEY FFS
Wellp. Good thing we are not scientists then.
Japan needs to be stopped.
That's gross
That feel when (female and) and the only female "fighter" character I've ever played has been a monk... and I found it so boring that I switched to a bard halfway through the game.
That being said, I've played a number of MALE fighter-type characters. Don't judge me.
I swear the japanese mutated after the bombs
Are those boobs?
Remember, making an old women ugly is sexist, but making a young woman attractive is also sexist.
Sometimes I think part of the appeal of weebshit is that at least it hasn't been tainted by millenial SJW bullshit turning every piece of media ever into a political battleground (see the anons who mentioned Mass Effect Andromeda earlier).
Not that I disagree with you, but with "*want* to look young but can't maintain it" I was referring to that time in Sourcery where some wizards tried to make themselves young again, but as soon as they stopped concentrating on the enchantment they rapidly reverted, which was quite unpleasant.
Adria (Diablo) was supposedly ruggedly handsome as opposed to traditionally attractive.
>Remember, making an old women ugly is sexist, but making a young woman attractive is also sexist.
More like its gotten clichéd that every old ugly woman must either be evil or a tertiary character, while all other women have to be highly attractive.
(And was there even any backlash against Kreia's appearance?)
Oh man, it's so many years since I read that.
But yeah, I get ya.
is that motherfucking Carmine Di Giandomenico? What book?
No, it's the webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons
playing monk in 3.5? yeah you WILL be bored.
But yeah, I too find RP more fun than combat. But I'm getting old.
Nothing compared to Nasuverse Enkidu, oh-ho-ho-ho-ho
Oh I entirely understand the desire to be rid of the SJW taint. My Hero Academia for example is a far better super hero story than 90% of the shit peddled by marvel these days.
Unfortunately Japan has its own garbage conventions that it overuses. But nothings perfect I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Fate has trashed a lot of real life and mythological figures.
best comic running right now.
This.
Stay mad, westfags.
Absolutely disgusting
I like how Witcher comments on it.
Both are a kind of vanity and desire to project power, in a way. Males maintain the huge eyebrows and beards to deliberately invoke the look of wisdom, while females prefer to play off dominant sexuality.
>Why is it that most every female caster I see in fiction (be it D&D or Warhammer) is a gorgeous woman in the prime of her life?
>implying the quintessential witch doesn't like picrelated
Enkidu is a cute clay boy you shut your whore mouth
Gilgamesh also isn't a pasty white blonde bimbo supermodel with the IQ of a Neanderthal.
Shut your whore mouth.
I dunno if you're playing a game of pretend, but I always heard that Enkidu was really hairy
I actually suspect that Servants like Zero's Rider and Caster are intentional running gags of how of much of a liberal interpretation Saber is of the Arthurian mythos
>Gilgamesh also isn't a pasty white blonde bimbo supermodel with the IQ of a Neanderthal.
Isn't she?
user, you play a dangerous game.
But seriously, Nasuverse's Gilgamesh and Enkidu are super cute together.
Gilgamesh was in fact gay for Enkidu in the legends.
But Nasu will never put that in.
I think most millennial do this because they feel the need to jump in on the ancient battle of good and evil, but as per with every generation the young and eager often jump headfirst.
Sometimes, joining the battle of good and evil makes you evil, because the good went and gone home and only the evil is left fighting, so joining the fight just feeds the flames they try to put out, per say.
I say shit happens.
Meh, unsounded is better
>Maggie Smith
>Not gorgeous
Admittedly this says more about my tastes than anything else.
Literally 90% of characters are attractive dickweed.
There's something utterly pathetic about a company full of grown-ass men and (presumably) women who intentionally make their female characters ugly because the mere thought of an attractive female character gives them the heebie-jeebies.
I can't imagine, I just can't imagine that kind of person existing.
All aboard the black ships witches...
I'll probably be eaten alive for this, but I honestly agree. The sheer amount of beautiful people paraded in media has created an extremely skewed view of what real human beings look like, creating increasingly high sexual standards for both genders. At this point completely plain looking people now register as horrendous, while striking beauty is now ho-hum and expected. I enjoy my sexy power fantasies as much as the next guy, but it all starts seeming bizarre when every character of importance in any given story is at least an 8/10. Maybe it's just human nature to be unable to give a shit about ugly people, but it just makes a lot of things seem...unauthentic to me I guess.
What if I like the young looking witch and the old looking witch and the cackling hag witch?
I figure they need to start somewhere then they get old.
>What if I like the young looking witch and the old looking witch and the cackling hag witch?
Maiden, Mother and Crone is a very ancient triple aspect and one the typical Witch will embody.
>He wrote all this
>All of this
>Without remembering they made EVERY woman ugly, and MOST men beautiful
It's almost like people have fantasies to escape from the mundane boring parts of reality. There's no reason to start pressing all this "realism" shit in fantasy. Especially when it's done for retarded "social justice" reasons.
Yeah well the ME case is clearly some bias SJW horseshit, but the concept behind it is not a bad one.
I hate that you can't talk about this shit anymore without immediately being assumed to be an unreasonable lunatic and thus completely ignored whatever the content of the argument.
The old woman broomstick stereotype has always had negative connotations. Witches were not women to be desired or trusted. I think it just goes back to basic societal expectations and gender roles. If anything the modern sexification is just a result of them no longer being considered innately evil, thus they're allowed to have more positive feminine traits.
The concept behind it is a bad one, because their conception of beauty and the portrayal thereof is completely against the one you're trying to give. This wasn't some attempt at "realistic" beauty, if that was true the men would be generally average as well, and as The Witcher has shown us you CAN make an average-looking woman without resorting to uncanny valley facial molding.
That's what makes me completely disagree with your point. ME's heart *and* spirit were in a completely different place, they wanted "ugly" women because either or your own given hypothesis that Bioware cannot allow their ugly female audience to be reminded that pretty things exist.
>Witcher has shown us you CAN make an average-looking woman without resorting to uncanny valley facial molding
Witcher is largely full of beautiful women and plain to ugly looking men, even among recycled npc faces. You don't see any chinless, crooked toothed, big nosed, lumpy peasant faced women in witcher 3 yet they have men like that every left turn. Even the important male characters like Lambert aren't really lookers yet every female of significance, by the very lore of the world, has to be beautiful. It's the opposite of the ME situation. They both fail for opposite reasons.
And really, I don't think the ME chick looks that bad. She's like a 5-6/10. There are porn stars uglier than her. A lot of the uncanny valley effect is from the godawful animations and rigging.
Power fantasies.
Men get power by undergoing hardships to prove their worth to the tribe and gain status; women get it by looking hot.
Hence powerful men are old if their power source is knowledge or young to middle-aged if it's physical/social; while powerful women are rarely over 25.
Why don't women get power by gaining status and knowledge? Isn't the entire concept of wise old casters the power through knowledge fantasy?
>the reason I can't find a gf/bf is that the media set unrealistic expectations!
You can dress up you whining in however many layers of social/political discourse you want, but it will never stop sounding pathethic.
>oh thats a weird graph
>I spy bell curves, physical peaks across average populations?
>SMV
>sexual market value
>google
>mgtow wiki, 'therationalmale', reddit
Imagine inventing a pseudoscientific metric purely for the purpose of creating graphs.
Ive never thought of that. Right now the most prominent mage's college has an elderly female archmage. She's shaved bald and has runes tattooed around her head to constantly protect her mind from intruders.
>it's simply how human brains are hardwired.
so what you're saying is we need to electroshock babies into a progressive mindset until evolution makes it stick.
>Even the important male characters like Lambert aren't really lookers yet every female of significance, by the very lore of the world, has to be beautiful.
That's because theres a big difference between sorceress that can change their appearance and 100 year old monster hunters
Lambert's just an ugly son of a bitch. Geralt's a fucking Adonis and even Eskel is at least a 7, and they're both older and more scarred up.
And yet somehow witchers are infamous sluts. I suspect women in that world just have no taste.
Old witches are the best
This. All the wizards would be trying to look distinguished 40-year-olds, maybe into 50s if they want to cash in on the appearance of authority within their circles. All the women would be trying to look 20s (which sucks because milfs are my fetish)