Renee_in_Mich's page

Hey all,

I'm gearing up to play a wishcrafter with a small dip into bard, and I'm curious...can I use spells from my bard's list with Wishbound Arcana? My presumption is yes, since I can't see where it says spells can only be drawn from those granted by sorcerer levels, but I want to make sure I'm not abusing the rules (beyond the typical abuse of a one level bad dip :p ).

Thanks in advance!

- Renee

Soooooo, you're basically saying, then, that your beef (no pun intended...) is that men are NOT portrayed naked or semi-naked, as braindead objects for female lust, while women are correspondingly so portrayed?

I wouldn't mind a serious surge in the amount of beefcake shown. It would have a little more Vallejo feel to it, which is not a bad thing in my book. By now, we have a pretty good idea what Seoni looks like nekkid, still waiting for Ezren.

Me personally? Not really. I think clothed people look cool...there's so much more you can do with clothing and adornments to create an interesting image (imo). But it would give Paizo a more defensible position, that's for sure.

Okay, let's look at it like this.

Slavery exists in the setting.
Slavery is bad.
Do we not show illustrations of slavery because it is bad?

That's actually a really interesting question...one that I'm frequently torn about.

The big difference, I venture, is that as a default presumption, we all know slavery to be bad. It always has the context of being bad, at least for those us dwelling in westernized nations.

On the other hand, that is not the presumption when it comes to sexualized depictions of women. These depictions are considered good. People like them. They sell books (or so the thinking goes; frankly, I'd like to see a game company just once put out a line that defiantly stands against this kind of sexism but maintain all the other production values and whatnot associated with a company like Paizo and see what happens).

Additionally, depictions of slavery are rare. Depictions of half-naked women are not. If depictions of women were as infrequent as, say, depictions of slavery, things would be different. In all of my activism, and in all of the blogs I've ever read, I very rarely see anyone say that there should never be any "sexy" pictures of women. Sex is cool. It's just that it's so overwhelmingly slanted towards a heterosexual male gaze that it's impossible to see it as anything but fetishistic objectification, with the aim of selling books to those people. If there were parity in the way women were depicted, on par with the way men are depicted, then there wouldn't be a problem. Or at least, not as much of a problem.

So no, comparing artists' renditions of slavery to artists' renditions of women doesn't work for me...it's apples to oranges. There may be a topic worth discussing there, but the issues are too different to draw many comparisons I think. Furthermore, as a woman I have a position of authority when it comes to discussing sexism (it's a daily part of my reality), but as a white person I'd be reluctant to stand at the front of a discussion about slavery, except as an ally to those with a more personal experience.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Again, you would have them rewrite their campaign setting to remove all misogny and sexism? Gender equality throughout every nation?

Or would you rather have that but never illustrate the consequences? Or worse, make illustrations that do not show the logical consequences of such things?

Still waiting for an answer here.

I don't understand the question. Nothing about Pathfinder illustrations hints at any kind of social commentary about gender, misogyny, or sexism. They're not depicting the logical consequences of those things, they simply *are* the logical consequences of them.

And that logic goes:

Boys like to look at scantily-clad women.
Boys buy role playing games.
Ergo roleplaying games must include depictions of scantily-clad women.

Many game companies consider this a best practice of sorts, in fact.

Ahh the not listen/reading defense.

That is not what I said. It was said that the gaming community it is very prominent and I was just pointing out that is not the case.

Oh no, I know it's everywhere. I've worked as a sexual assault/rape crisis first responder. Hell, I *live* it. I know how prevalent it is.

But it's hugely pronounced in the gaming community. There's almost no product you can point to and say "there, that one is okay"...rpgs, video games, even board games a lot of the time, depend on it. And it's not terribly surprising considering how skewed the community is towards its male population (not necessarily in terms of actual numbers, although it's obviously predominantly male), but in how games/imagery/services are targeted. You would be surprised at the frequency of sexual assaults occurring at gaming conventions (most of which go unreported)...and once you realize that stuff is happening, or especially if you're someone who has experienced it, you start to see everything in a different light. Makes your Pathfinder cheesecake seem not quite so harmless. Makes walking through the dealer hall of any big convention elbow-to-elbow with a bunch of strangers ogling "booth babes" downright terrifying.

Have you looked the iconic cleric?

Have you considered that how the characters dress might have more to do with their culture than 'rampant objectification'?

As much as I don't want to wade into this conversation, these "justifications" are silly. The "culture" you reference is make believe, something concocted by a (mostly male) writing staff to please themselves and their perceived fan base. Yes, they are vaguely recognizable in some cases as "Egyptian" or "Northern European" analogues, or what have you, but nothing *has* to be the way it is. It is that way because the people at Paizo *chose* for it to be that way.

This is about business, pure and simple. Not "authenticity". Not "creative license". Business. It's because they know they can sell books by peddling sex to the boys who buy their games, and they know they'll never have to answer for their decisions because as soon as someone brings it up, the ravening hordes arise en masse to shout down the rest of us.

Sexism is real. If anything, it's even more pronounced in the gaming community. And no one who can change it really seems to care.

I have to jump in and agree with those who say this doesn't belong in the subscription. It looks nice, I'm sure it'll be useful to some people, and it may be really good for introducing new gamers to the hobby. There's also no new content (not even artwork) and nothing that necessitates anyone having it early. The free PDF is awfully nice, but Paizo could offer that to those who pre-order the box set if they also happen to be subscribers...the sort of opt-in that other commenters have described.

I'm a new subscriber because UC was something I just "had to have" early. Without a way to opt-out of this product, I'm going to have to cancel my subscription after just one item and then decide again if the early releases + free PDFs of ARG and Bestiary 3 are valuable enough for me to want to re-subscribe. They may be, I'm awfully excited about those books! But on the other hand, I don't want to be constantly subscribing and unsubscribing, especially since I have to go through customer service every time I want to unsubscribe (something else I'd think could be easily automated). Basically, I'm just not sure the subscriber service is user-friendly enough to make it worth the perks, and this instance is especially telling since it's $40+ worth of stuff I already have.