Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

[Chamomile]

Here ya go, took me maybe ten minutes in photoshop, and it's a nightfury that is visually distinct from Toothless-

Fun fact about me: My eyes focus on pictures before words. I don't know if that's something that happens to everyone or just me, but when my eyes roll over a screen, a picture is the first thing my attention will center on, and I'll only focus on words long enough to read them afterwards. All this to say, I saw that picture before reading what you wrote above it, and I thought it was just Toothless. After you said it was "visually distinct" I looked again and thought maybe you had slightly lightened it as part of a "dark blue would've been better than white" kind of point. So, no, this is actually demonstrating the opposite of your point. This night fury is pretty much completely indistinct from Toothless, to the point where if you showed them on camera, I would not be able to recognize which is which without being told in advance what the visual distinctions were and having the character be in focus and mostly still long enough for me to look for them. There's going to be a lot of shots in a movie where one or both of those things aren't the case.

[RobbyPants]

It just bugs me, because it's lazy, and... sexist isn't the right word, but it, and the tendency for female creatures to have softer, less angular designs*, is based on the idea of women being passive, weak, etc.

...

*Ok, yes, at least in humans, women have a higher average body fat, so they actually are softer than men, on average

I don't think that's done just as a strong/weak thing. I think it's more to add feminine traits we'd recognize on humans to non-human forms. It's kind of like adding long eyelashes to a character that wouldn't even have eyelashes in the first place, let alone longer eyelashes for females.

[EightWave]

This night fury is pretty much completely indistinct from Toothless

To be as fair to Prak as possible, that is lightened picture of toothless and nearly a century of color limitations in comic books and animation have trained us to interpret dark blue/purple as black. So absent any context that's really just a picture of toothless. Presumably if we had more pictures of the white night fury (or Prak had more time) the different face shape and head fins might have helped you. But that's still not going to make them visually distinct in motion on the screen.

Also, OH LOOK, a person with degrees in Animation and Animal and Veterinary Science has the same fucking problem with this lazy bullshit.

The female night fury was never going to be fucking brown, you asshat. They want to sell toys of her! Complaining that fictional creatures don't follow bulk biological trends is simply assinine.

Do not answer with links to fucking TV Tropes.

Responding with TV Tropes to say something is bad is like arguing a band is bad by citing their sales numbers. Fuck. The "pink girl" trope references Wonder Woman's mostly red costume making her "the girl" in Justice League when The Flash is literally head-to-toe red.

Having her be an albino makes her chromatically distinct from the original character without having her be a "girl color."

No, he's got a point. Behold! The height of femininity!

Did anyone else notice the tagline for this movie is "the hidden world" and it's clearly set underground? I give it a 99% chance that Hiccouh and Toothless discover an entire community of Night Furies, all of whom are black except the ultra-rare white love interest. And a 30% chance that Hiccough (who is an engineer and explorer, not a fighter) paints her black as a plot point (either to help her be stealthy, or to hide her from some mad hunter who wants a stuffed white night fury head on his wall).

[erik]

This reminds me of a semi recent viewing of The Expanse. I was wondering why the hell the characters weren’t wearing their armored space helmets into battle in space and on a moon base w no atmosphere outside. Then I realized, oh, they were worried we wouldn’t know who is who.

I’m sure they ran focus group tests and found that two dark night furies were not adequately distinguishable.

[Starmaker]

This reminds me of a semi recent viewing of The Expanse. I was wondering why the hell the characters weren’t wearing their armored space helmets into battle in space and on a moon base w no atmosphere outside. Then I realized, oh, they were worried we wouldn’t know who is who.

Space helmets could've been made distinct. With human actors in live-action video, it's mostly the need to display emotion and to show their mildly photogenic faces. Even Matt "leave him there" Damon had to show his face, and he was alone for most of the movie.

[nockermensch]

Prak, are you being dense on purpose? If you want to be angry about the girl dragon's design you could rightfully point to the following, also found on the fucking cover. When compared to the boy dragon, the girl dragon has:

1) rounder shapes
2) smoother skin
3) smaller horns
4) smaller claws
5) a smaller mouth, which is closed
6) a head shape that makes her look up to the boy dragon, despite the two of them having the same size.

^ These are design choices that perpetuate unfortunate gender stereotypes and I seriously hope DSM was ranting about them. Because the girl having a different neutral color from the neutral-colored boy is a non-issue.

[...You Lost Me]

I'm with DSM (and 50% with Prak) here. "Girls are light and boys and dark" is one of those uncomfortable tropes that needs to go, and I would be very surprised if that wasn't an unconscious thought in someone's mind when they were concepting the new nightfury. White / Black might have been the only distinguishable choice here (and it does look good on a poster), but claiming that trope doesn't exist in general is just nonsense.

The tropes "girls are sparkly" and "girls are smaller / weaker" are also bad tropes that need to go. I'm bothered a lot more by those.

[Longes]

I'm with DSM (and 50% with Prak) here. "Girls are light and boys and dark" is one of those uncomfortable tropes that needs to go

Why? Why does it need to go? What is wrong with color coding your characters and giving audience visual cues about them? Is anime industry badwrongfun for having calm introverted characters have blue hair?

[...You Lost Me]

If you're equating "in anime, some introverts are X" with "across most media, most women are X" then you're going to have a bad time.

[Longes]

If you're equating "in anime, some introverts are X" with "across most media, most women are X" then you're going to have a bad time.

I take it by "most media" you mean specifically "american media". Because as Frank has noted multiple times, the visual language is not homogenous across the world. And you are yet to explain why it is bad to have visual language.

[...You Lost Me]

Yeah definitely a western media thing. I'm not going to comment on anime because I'm not inundated by it. I'm not sure that's the killer gotcha you seem to think it is, though.

Again, if you think this is just about visual language (and you think it equates with "blue hair introverts sometimes in anime") then you're going to have a bad time. In the future, if you feel like making an argument more honest than something I could find on a Trump fan club subreddit, I'll indulge. Otherwise I've said my piece.

[Longes]

Yeah definitely a western media thing. I'm not going to comment on anime because I'm not inundated by it. I'm not sure that's the killer gotcha you seem to think it is, though.

Again, if you think this is just about visual language (and you think it equates with "blue hair introverts sometimes in anime") then you're going to have a bad time. In the future, if you feel like making an argument more honest than something I could find on a Trump fan club subreddit, I'll indulge. Otherwise I've said my piece.

It wasn't a gotcha at all. My point is that film and animation, as visual mediums, have codified details to visually convey information about characters. That language isn't homogenous across the world, but it exists in some form in all visual art. "Blue hair in anime" is an example of that.

What I am asking you and what you are refusing to answer is why it is bad to convey information in such way.

[deaddmwalking]

Regarding anime characters, I think Longes is specifically referring to dark blue hair which tends to be a replacement for black hair in 'traditional characters'. Light blue hair (like Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo) is anything but calm!

There are other visual clues that are typically related to hair color - for example, blonde characters are usually trouble.

Ultimately, this derives from the 'visual medium' - realistic characters in Japan would almost universally have black hair and the narrative requires that you easily (visually) tell characters apart. Connecting those characters to traits certainly allows you to convey information in a form of shorthand. Western movies do these things as well - shortcuts to establish a character in relation to an existing trope so you understand the character without a complex backstory being presented.

I think if you took Prak's position to the logical extreme, you would never portray black males with white females. That seems a tad bit racist to me.

Regarding black males and white females, that isn't something that I consider more common than white males with black females. Like, that's been something in James Bond movies my entire life. Black males with white females has often been presented as a more...fraught relationship.

[Maj]

...and only became ossified as girls in pink and boys in blue because color photography in the 40s made boomer culture perpetual.

This part of your larger quote just explained so much of the world view problems in this country that I feel like my brain exploded. I mean... Intellectually, I had all the pieces in there, but you strung them together in such a way that it makes Christmas and Thanksgiving, the concept of family, girls/boys, etc all make so much sense.

[Longes]

Regarding anime characters, I think Longes is specifically referring to dark blue hair which tends to be a replacement for black hair in 'traditional characters'. Light blue hair (like Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo) is anything but calm!

There are other visual clues that are typically related to hair color - for example, blonde characters are usually trouble.

Ultimately, this derives from the 'visual medium' - realistic characters in Japan would almost universally have black hair and the narrative requires that you easily (visually) tell characters apart. Connecting those characters to traits certainly allows you to convey information in a form of shorthand. Western movies do these things as well - shortcuts to establish a character in relation to an existing trope so you understand the character without a complex backstory being presented.

I think if you took Prak's position to the logical extreme, you would never portray black males with white females. That seems a tad bit racist to me.

Regarding black males and white females, that isn't something that I consider more common than white males with black females. Like, that's been something in James Bond movies my entire life. Black males with white females has often been presented as a more...fraught relationship.

I mean this

[Prak]

Oh and by the way:

Apparently there may be some "oh, she's just albino" ass covering, but that's bullshit, too, what with the fucking blue eyes.

https://www.albinism.org/information-bu ... -albinism/

A common myth is that people with albinism have red eyes. Although lighting conditions can allow the blood vessels at the back of the eye to be seen, which can cause the eyes to look reddish or violet, most people with albinism have blue eyes, and some have hazel or brown eyes. There are different types of albinism and the amount of pigment in the eyes varies; however, vision problems are associated with albinism.

Huh, didn't know that. Ok, at least the albinism ass covering is scientifically accurate.

Just so everyone can hate me, I'm going to weigh in.

Prak, in general, it makes sense that you're bothered by this trope. There are situations (like the female rabbit in Bambi) that didn't HAVE to go that way, but they did. However, in this instance, it's really not justified. As a series, How to Train Your Dragon has done a good job of portraying females in a positive way. Give them the credit they're due for mostly getting it right and give them a little leeway.

That's what bothers me about this particular case. They have been really good about female character designs and portrayals. Ruffnut is given a gigantic chin you'd never see on a Disney female character design, and is more of a gross, awkward teen than her brother. Astrid is only portrayed in a sort of bombshell way because we first see her through the eyes of Hiccup, her eventually love interest, and it doesn't take away from the fact that she's the most capable trainee in the first movie, in fact that's part of her appeal to Hiccup.

And when they have to design a female nightfury to be Toothless' partner to save their species in a way that totally won't lead to a genetic bottleneck, they decide to round her out, give a ton of markers that imply she is younger than Toothless, and make her literally the lightest color possible, when she's an nocturnal aerial ambush predator and would have fucking starved before Toothless could ever meet her.

I mean, compare this dragon to the Shrek dragon...

I mean, sure, this is also better than the girl rabbit in Bambi, which has fucking makeup. But that's like saying rotten lettuce is a better thing to find in your salad than dogshit. It is, but it still shouldn't be there.

[deaddmwalking]

I'm going to see the movie, so eventually I'll be able to make a truly informed position, but I think you're conflating two things - the over-feminization of anthropomorphized animals with the need to distinguish similar characters in a visual medium. I think this case doesn't qualify on the first one.

I don't get a strongly feminine vibe from 'not-Toothless'. As far as the need to be a dark color, we don't know that is the case. If the 'hidden world' is subterranean, it wouldn't be uncommon to lose coloration - even if you're not albino - and prey might not be able to see. I live near a cave in Tennessee that stocks the underground lake with Rainbow Trout. People think the fish are albino - they're not, but they 'fade' in the perpetual darkness. I'm not sure why, but I know it to be true.

So, there's a chance that there are some ecology elements that are immersion-breaking, but the series has a strong enough track record in that regard despite the obvious fantasy elements, that they certainly deserve the benefit of the doubt.

If not-toothless was pink or purple or wearing makeup, you'd have a basis of complaint. Appearing as a reverse color-palette of Toothless isn't consistent with the other ways feminine animals have been portrayed.

[virgil]

I found the first two dragon movies to be only fair at gender. The main characters (Hiccup & Toothless) and a large majority of the relevant cast are male; one of the two female characters of note in the first film being the love interest. Hiccup's mother was introduced as a strong, impressive, and dynamic character...who promptly did jack and crap in the actual conflict of the film.

[deaddmwalking]

I mean this

Maybe Cyan doesn't count as blue.

[Prak]

I found the first two dragon movies to be only fair at gender. The main characters (Hiccup & Toothless) and a large majority of the relevant cast are male; one of the two female characters of note in the first film being the love interest. Hiccup's mother was introduced as a strong, impressive, and dynamic character...who promptly did jack and crap in the actual conflict of the film.

Yeah... sadly, that counts as progress in kids media, especially properties that, traditionally speaking, would be aimed at boys.

[Chamomile]

I, too, am not certain why having lighter fur/scale/skin tones usually be indicative of non-human female characters is bad. Having already discarded a connection to human races earlier in the thread, why is it a problem that we have an established shorthand for discerning the sex of a non-human creature, especially something like a dragon whose sexual dimorphism is something the audience couldn't be familiar with in advance no matter how many of them are zoologists?

[erik]

Just so everyone can hate me, I'm going to weigh in.

I wanted to do this at work, but my phone was having a shitty time capturing the image url.

[Username17]

Prak, seriously, shut up.

Imagine for the moment that the new HtTYD movie introduced a new night fury and it was a dude. What color would it be?

Chances are very high that it would be white. Because you still need to visually distinguish it from Toothless and the only way night furies aren't black is if they are albino. The logic for making the new night fury white with blue eyes is the same whether the new night fury is a love interest or a new evil brother. Either way it has to chromatically distinct and white is the only color option that isn't black.

If a new character would be the same color as a male as it is as a female, the choice of color isn't a gendered choice. Because fucking obviously.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I just think Girl Toothless kind of looks boring. I couldn't tell you why this is because I only know this from that chick that sleeps in my bed and lets me slap her anytime I feel like it but a lot of albino reptiles do have interesting color combinations from what I've seen. (doesn't make sense to me but I don't know reptiles like I do tarantulas).

It's not really enough for me to be upset about though.

[Stahlseele]

Where did this even come from to begin with?
In nature, the female is often the bigger, hardier etc. of the species.