Peebee (Official Thread)

Yeah, looks like your poll thread got merged with the "(why) asari is ugly" thread. Your former OP starts here:


bsn.boards.net/post/86857/thread

Thunderdome ... two gods enter, one god leaves ... take pictures.

I like the way she looks. She looks fine by me.

Because BioWare is getting pretty shitty and they want to fix where it's not broken.

I don't get the ugly complaints, she looks like every other Asari, and it's not like she's the ugliest Asari the series had to offer.

Warning: long-winded bloviating ahead. 

I don't think Hamburglar's ugly at all. She's actually kind of cute, and I really like what I've seen of her personality. The only complaint I have is that stupid hopping thing she does when running from the things attacking the team. Seriously, who the hell does that unless they're being deliberately goofy? When something is trying to kill you, that's not the time to be screwing around. About her outfit, I actually like it, though the bare midriff isn't exactly practical for field operations. But then, maybe she didn't expect to find herself in a situation where more protective clothing would be needed. Guess we'll find out more soon enough.

The face paint is a little odd because we've never seen it on an asari before, but there's probably an in-story reason for it. Maybe she chose that paint job just for the sake of being different from every other asari. Maybe it's common among her family or clan or whatever. Maybe she chose it for the same reason some humans decide to get a mohawk or spikes or some other punk 'do. I actually like the idea that she might've done it out of impatience. Most asari seem to put a lot of time into their face paint (assuming it isn't naturally part of their skin pigment), but maybe she just decided, "Who has time for that?" and grabbed a can of black spray paint. *psssssst!* "There. Done. Moving on." 

As for her having eyebrows ... eh. There are humans born with mutations and oddities and whatnot. An extra finger, an excessively hairy body, going bald while still a teenager. It's possible that Hamburglar has something fucked-up in her genes that caused her to be born with eyebrows, though I doubt anything like that is the actual in-story reason for it. Could make for an interesting conversation if something like that were explored in the game. In fact, I can see that being a reason for the raccoon paint job -- to draw attention away from the eyebrows, if she's self-conscious about them.

What'd be amusing is if another character nicknames her Rocket and she has to research some old entertainment vids to figure out what the hell they're talking about. 

Anyway, whether she's attractive or ugly is a matter of opinion. What bugs me is when people have a conniption about it and start ranting that she's ugly or looks like a man or whatever, just because she's not a supermodel, or that BioWare is "shoving an agenda down our throats" just because every female character in the game isn't the hottest woman they've ever laid eyes on. The idea that if you don't look perfect, then you're hideous, is something that's always bugged me. If you're not pretty enough or not thin enough, then you shouldn't even be seen in public, shouldn't be seen wearing a bikini, etc. In real life, there are people who are attractive by society's standards, and people who are "ugly" ... and the whole range in between. I think that kind of range in video game characters, movies, etc., would just make it more interesting, not to mention more believable. I'd applaud BioWare if they were choosing to move away from the stunning supermodel look for female characters.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be any "beautiful" characters in the game. But there should be a wider variety. The farther I got into the first game, the more I noticed that everyone had the exact same body type. After a while, that just kind of became an elephant in the room. It would've been interesting, for example, if Bakara had been a romance option in ME3 (as I mentioned in another thread) just to show the characters connecting on an intellectual and emotional level, without physical attraction being a factor at all. Or if it is, it happens much later, long after they've already gotten together.

I dunno, maybe my standards of beauty are way off, but I never really found the asari attractive aside from Samara (except that strict Justicar code of hers was way too creepy for me -- it reminds me of the Operative in Serenity ... a "true believer") and Aethyta (who I consider the sexiest asari who ever appeared on screen). I actually find Bakara kind of alluring based on her personality alone. Well, that and her ability to use a shotgun. I always thought Liara was kind of bland and boring, and she only became interesting during the Shadow Broker DLC, though I still don't find her physically attractive. I pretty much fell in love with Tali from the very beginning thanks to her personality and her voice, though I never knew what her face looked like (and I refuse to acknowledge that quarter-assed Photoshopped image as canon).

But anyway. This idea that a female character in a game, or a movie, or what have you, has to be absolutely gorgeous just irritates me. Plus, there seems to be a bit of a double standard, with male characters who are not conventionally attractive, or all scarred up, or downright ugly hooking up with women who look like supermodels. I didn't see the Warcraft movie, but from the trailer, it looks like male orcs are kind of hideous, but the females are a lot more human-looking. At least, the one most prominently featured in the trailer was. And FemShep has Garrus, who's not human looking at all ... while MaleShep has Tali, who has a nice-looking body and, if you accept that lazy Photoshopped picture, looks almost human.

For me at least, it gets boring and predictable after a while. "Oh, look, the hunk is romancing another beauty queen." I guess that's why I tend to swap the genders on those sorts of relationships in my novels and whatnot, because it puts a fresh spin on the concept. One of my current works in progress has a female protagonist with a badly scarred face hooking up with a hot guy, among other pairings in my other works. It's just automatically more interesting to me than the way it's usually shown. Got the idea for this character when an image in the old Borderlands cinematic trailer kind of jumped out at me ....



I look at that image and think, "Y'know what? She's beautiful anyway." I think it'd be awesome to have a female protagonist in a game who looks like that just because it's something we never see. But it'll probably never happen as long as so many people have such a narrow idea of what a female character "should" look like.

Anyway. Didn't expect to go on and on about this. It's just one of those topics that kind of sets me off just a bit. 

It depends on what you mean with indignant. I'm perfectly fine if some people don't find her attractive or, as you say, drop dead gorgeous (I don't either). I'm puzzled if someone calls her ugly or manly, because she doesn't definitely appear to be either in the tech demo. Though I'm not indignant about this either.  Not liking eyebrows and the tattooo/face paint is another thing, and it's normal to have different opinions. 

I completely agree on the outfit, at least in the part of having different combat outfits so that I can choose one that it makes sense to me. I don't have a problem if she wears a similar dress in the Tempest though. 

I would love to have an option in the character creator to have scars like this.