You do know that 99% of female characters in Magic are warriors, right? Giant knockers get in the way of anything from armour to evasion, so it makes sense that most female characters have small to medium sized breasts. Even then, Nahiri and Liliana are generally portrayed as "well endowed".

Frankly, with pretty much every fantasy visual medium being dominated by hypersexualised women, Magic is a good break to see more realistic women. I don't get upset (many , and women are as skimpy dressed as ever after all), but suggesting that more overt sexualisation is needed is kind of ridiculous.

nobody has suggested this

It's debatable whether sexualization of guys can be called equivalent, since it relies on the assumption that women are as simple when it comes to sexual attraction as men are.

Are you saying big-breasted women can't be warriors? That's not very progressive.
I'm pretty sure the numerous non-creature spells, along with the smattering of wizards, shamans, clerics and other magic-oriented cards with females make up a vastly larger number than 1%.

A couple flaws here.

1) unless you count "has combat stats" as warrior, I'm pretty sure there are more than 1% wizards, clerics, shamans, rogues, artificers, advisors, and so forth that aren't part of any martial tradition. A lot more.

2) A hefty bosom is a liability in combat... But can also be a consequence. Not only is a warrior more likely to be eating right (promoting good health and full development all around... Fighters seldom look like body builders in either gender), but muscular development in the pectoral area can result in a certain illusion.

3) nobody in this thread asked for sexualization. Op asked for many some ladies skewing more busty than twig-model or average, but even then didn't ask for or pitch driving sexualization any further.

Blessed Thor... this This THIS.

I love me a couple of big breasted women in fiction (e.g. Mai Shiranui, Shermie... mostly fighting game women) but this recent trend in anime (and FG too sadly) of ridiculous stuff being done with large boobs have irked me, like it's not as insane a decade or so ago.

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As for Magic's current state of sexualization, for me I believe it has sort of reached a balance and they are put into context in apperance. Like, they appear on factions/clans/tribes that are dressed lightly/really lightly, but still is not too blatant as before....

A couple of male card arts have been brought up, but for me they have not reached the earlier years' trend of really blatant sexualization with the women.

True.

I'd like an Amanda Waller type planeswalker



Good backstory, character, and playability trumps figure every time. Meaning, its easier to diversify your offerings than R&D realizes.

Although I agree with the general idea that whether something qualifies as "sexualized" is highly debatable, I don't think that the biology of sexual attraction in women versus men needs to be a large part of that equation.

The only issue that would crop up in Amanda Waller body type is that you wouldn't find it on anyone young as a planeswalker.
I would imagine that there are plenty of that body type in the multiverse, but doesn't the ignition of a spark usually require trauma or events that spike a fear/flight/panic reaction? Most people that ignite at a early age would be much more active and hence fitter since the situations where one would be stressed enough to ignite are usually quite deadly unless you planeswalk out. Then of course finding oneself in a new situation that might be still as deadly since now you are in a place that you haven't BEEN to before with a whole new culture and culture shock. I imagine that new planeswalkers have a pretty hefty mortality rate unless they can think fast enough or find somebody that can teach them.

Usually when folks reach middle age or are in that body type they have reached a level of ...maturity seems right but the chemical changes in the brain that happen as you age can make that a misconception since by that time your really not actively seeking conflict enough to spark out unless your really off from societal norms. They usually are more in a supervisory position than actively putting oneself into danger like somebody in their 20's. Doesn't mean to say there aren't some crazy old buggers out there that cant break folks of any age just they are likely to not have that body type as a rule.

Personally I'd like to see a middle aged walker come up to Jace and cohort and do a Gibs smack and say hey stop messing up the multiverse. Well other than the spirit dragon that was absolutely useless on zendikar, and critiqued them when he had not lifted a finger to you know, actually help.

On the main topic, overall you find a lot of differing body types on females on cards nowadays. Usually you find more chesty on angels and more, I wanna say iconic, but I don't believe that's right. The giant comedy anime boobs we can do without however. Since unless they are implants not many folks that are size 2 and less than 5 FT have enough musculature to actually stand upright without being in horrible pain if they sport DD+ cups. Usually you find very fit to semi muscular to decently toned depending on the artist/look they are going for on any card. Take Lillana, overall pretty statuesque. Nissa is overall a fit and firm body type and Chandra is in the middle really.

I think 'walkers are supposed to age now so no reason a young, adventurous ignition couldn't 'fill out'. Imagine a 'walker aligned with the Orzhov or Cabal.

Also the multiverse can be a calamity-inducing place. No reason you can't ignite mature or even old -- Urza did.

The "hot" seems to make up a bigger part of it with every redesign.


I have some bad news about the New 52.

Full disclosure, just like Wilson Fisk (The Kingpin), Waller isn't hefty. She's ripped, but her body type is stocky and barrel shaped. So she's certainly active enough.

he was helping.
He just didn't care if people died because they don't matter.
Then the dimwit brigade went and killed the Eldrazi and we have NO CLUE what that might mean.


...this just made me feel like we really need more women in general.

We've got Tamiyo, who's a sortami and pretty willowy by human standards. We had Elspeth, who was over all middle of the road probably kinda hard to say thanks to the plate armor. Narset and Kaya are out there for what it's worth.

Gatewatch is 3/5 female. I think we both know I'd be the last one to object to more female 'walkers, whether they be Amanda Waller or Pinups or anywhere in between, but I feel that's worth noting.

You forgot Saheeli. But it's still about a 1:2 ratio.

Liliana is fairly all over the place too, when it comes to her body type.

I'd really like another walker with saskia the unyielding's build, male or female. Only one we have is Garruk. Those who come close are Koth and Gideon, but they aren't the same kind of broad as the other two.

One thing I've seen certain types of folk ask for is an ugly walker. I am pretty staunchly against someone who is just outright ugly. I don't need every walker to be particularly pretty or handsome, but someone genuinely hard to look at is arguing for the wrong damn thing. Because yeah, we should get more Ape Face.

I never suggested we should have girls who are size 2, 5 feet tall with HH-cup breasts. I never even suggested we should have more over-endowed-in my sense of the word since apparently people here think a D-cup is huge-woman in general. And if I did suggest more endowed woman it would most definitely not be in the form of the character in Occultic Nine.

Yeah, it's pretty hard when 100% of the first impression of a character is 1 piece of art and some mechanics attached to it.

You could do it if you went past ugly to downright horrific. But that would satisfy no one but horror fans. or "take my word for it" goes swaddled/cloaked due to hideousness. But reasonable marketing: there's a dead zone between that and Velma from Scooby Doo (who in most versions would seem to be homely but not unpleasant). The realm of "Unpleasant but not horrific" is not a great one to explore for characters that get a lot of face time.

So, I sort of spent all day deciding whether or not I want to try to weigh-in on this, and figuring out how I would try to say what I want to say... during which time the conversation has sort of morphed a little bit from where it was.

So, if I can be forgiven for doing a quasi swoop-and-poop, I'm going to try to just articulate my thoughts generally, more than I'm going to try to reply to specific thoughts that other people have shared.

Basically, I feel like there's one thing that we have to start with as a fact: the media that we consume has a normative effect on our perceptions of how we think people "should" and "shouldn't" look -- on what we think of as "good" or "bad," "normal" or "abnormal," "attractive" or "ugly." We can't help that. Our brains just work that way.

Yes, some things have a bigger effect than others, and, yes, some people are effected more than others, and, no, we're not slaves to the media portrayals that we consume. I am not trying to straw man any of that.

But it does have an effect. A non-zero effect. And, as such, how people's bodies are depicted matters. We can debate how much, or what ought rightly to be done (or not done) about that. But it does matter. A non-zero amount.

As such, as far as I'm concerned, increasing the number of body types that the characters in Magic and other games have is an unalloyed good thing. That matters. It may mean that some of the characters don't appeal as much to me, personally, because their body types are not the ones that I find most interesting or attractive or representative of myself. But there will be other people out there to who these characters will appeal. And, again, from my perspective, that's an unalloyed good. I want Magic to be as inviting as possible to as many people as possible.

Now, to the original post, does that mean that curvy or full-figured body types should be among those that are represented in Magic? Absolutely! There's a place for that, just as there's a place for everything else. And I would never get behind the idea that those depictions ought to be verboten.

But, leaving aside what other people on the internet might argue -- because I don't speak for them, and they don't speak for me -- saving space for some curvier figures doesn't also mean that we shouldn't keep trying to expand what other body types are represented in the game. It doesn't have to be either/or. It's a big multiverse out there.

And the answer isn't just to make everyone thin and/or athletic, either. That comes with a whole other can of worms attached to it, as has been noted already.

But here's the one thing I would say, and that I would hope that people would keep in mind, as we consider how we feel about the character trends in Magic -- there is no shortage of games or art out there which feature big-breasted and/or statuesque and/or wasp-waisted women. That is not going to go away, nor should it. And there are much fewer games and much fewer art that do a good job of representing other sorts of body types in a positive way. So, to the extent that Magic is making a deliberate effort to expand that space, I am for it.

If Magic can be in the vanguard of expanding what an aspirational character can look like -- especially when it comes to aspirational female characters -- then, God bless it, that is something that I feel very good about.

It doesn't have to come at the expense of shutting anything or anyone out. It's about expanding the realm of possibilities.

And, if I sound like I'm evangelizing a little bit, then I guess there's a reason for that. I work in the game industry, and, over the years, I've sort of had to come to grips with the fact that the way we represent people matters. I managed character art production on a game where we restricted the player characters (both male and female) to the same, heavily-stylized, stick-thin body type. And it was something that I remember that a lot of us didn't feel great about during production, because we wanted these characters to be part of an aspirational fantasy, but, for any of us who looked in the mirror, we knew that we didn't look like these people, and that we couldn't look like these people. But you talk yourself into these things -- there are technical limitations, and how much does it really matter?

Then you get the letters from people who play your game, and who are disappointed because they can't make their avatars look like themselves. They can't see themselves in your game. They can't be a part of the fantasy. And you realize that it does matter.

Similarly, I remember being at GDC a few years back, and attending a talk by an art director from Riot Games about creating the character art for League of Legends. (And, to be clear, I'm not trying to throw stones at Riot. It's a great company, and they do great work. The fact that I'm choosing this particular example just reflects the fact that I was there; you could find a million other stories like this.)

Anyway, the art director was talking about how the style for how they depicted their champions evolved over time, and the word he kept stressing was "aspirational" -- they wanted to present the champions in an aspirational light, that would make people care about these characters, that would make them want to be these characters.

One way that he mentioned that the style had evolved was that, in the early days, they tended to use classic "hero poses", because they wanted the character's entire body to be clearly visual. But he noted that, over time, they had come to embrace more action-oriented shots, which placed emphasis on showing the characters doing the cool things that players wanted them to do -- less, what does this character look like, and more, how does it feel to be this character?

And one particular illustration he talked about was of Cassiopeia. He though that this piece of art really captured what it would feel like to be Cassiopeia -- to spring out of an ambush, and turn your enemies to stone. And he talked about how, at first, they were worried about using this depiction, because, in it, Cassiopeia's face is partly in shadow, and that got away from the classical "hero pose," always show the character style that they were comfortable with.

Now, I don't play League of Legends. So, I didn't know who Cassiopeia was, and I didn't know what she looked like. But I'll always remember the reaction I had, when he put up the slide with the image in question:



I remember thinking: Well, her face is partly in shadow, but they made sure we could see her tits.

And I left that talk feeling profoundly uncomfortable about the fact that, in art that was supposed to be "aspirational" -- that was supposed to make people want to be these characters, to evoke what it would feel like to be these characters -- the art usually seemed to depict the women in a way that drew the eye straight to their breasts.

I have no problem with art featuring attractive women with attractive breasts. Lord knows, I do not.

But I don't want that to be what defines "aspirational" in my industry. I want us to be better than that.

Later that week, I had the chance to get drinks with a woman who works for a non-profit group that runs coding boot camps for young girls who want to work in game development. She was there trying to raise funds for a program that sponsored female developers to attend GDC, by subsidizing the costs of their passes, hotels, and transportation. And I asked her what she had thought about that Riot talk, because, as I told her, it had sort of made me uncomfortable, and I wanted to know if she'd had a similar reaction, or if she thought I was overacting.

And I will never forget the look on her face when she told me, "I'm trying to convince girls that they can make it in this business. And then they see the way that so much of our business depicts them, and all they see are tits."

So... I don't know.

I guess all I'm trying to say is that, to the extent that we broaden our depictions of what an "aspirational" female character can look like, I am all for that. I honestly think that matters. And I don't think it has to be done at anyone's expense. I don't think anyone has to be excluded in the process.

I don't want game art to exclude anyone. I want game art that makes everyone feel like they can be the hero.

This does raise something that I think is at least partly at the crux of this, and that's the ideas of sexual liberation vs conservatism.
Because I feel there shouldn't be anything wrong with acknowledging sexiness. The problem does exist where that is the sole aspect of a character, but that's, if nothing else, a product of making it such a big damn deal in the first place.

Which does at least partially touchmy earlier point where there are people who exclude others because they are attractive. I'm absolutely against objectifying anyone, but I've personally known several women who wanted to cosplay, but when confronted by others were just as often demonized by some as objectified by others.

There's no question nerds have a reputation for poor social graces, but some women in the group become downright virulent because someone is confident in their sensuality as well. There are guys who clearly have no idea what is appropriate either and I could go on another tangent about them alone. Of course, there's yet another group who don't know what to do and avoid the problem at all costs, which is less harmful, but still a disservice to those who put themselves out there. All of it stems from, at least mildly, how society treats sex to start with.

It's a thorny issue though, because everyone is going to come to the table with their own hang ups and definitions, but the above picture Orcish posted doesn't make me uncomfortable. It might just be because I know the lore, but it shows me a woman confident in herself. And yeah, I think confidence is something a lot of people could aspire to.

I agree with what Barinellos has to say on the subject. I'll add that, you could look at Tamiyo as someone who is unhealthily thin - girl needs to go get some cheeseburgers - and she's still caught on pretty well with the fanbase, it seems.