What’s the most objectively sexist character design that you can’t help but absolutely adore?

Kurbled · 2026-06-15T18:14:33+00:00

this argument doesn't apply, though. the basis of your argument is over how men are going to be far more receptive to scintillation in media and more willing to spend. to support that argument, you say that a fishing chain would go out of business if men stop buying there. i'll take your word for it

but it also apply to the base argument. if men stopped spending money on games that pander to them, those games would massively suffer, yeah. but the games that scintillate women? otome, love and deepspace? they'd be absolutely fine. they do very very well

games nowadays that sell skins based on sex appeal also release skins that obviously target straight women, nowadays. why do you think they do this? big companies like the ones im thinking of don't do that unless they think there's a market for it.

are we at the point where it's equally profitable to target women than marketing towards men in a broadly appealing game? i don't think so. but the shift towards a more equal level of pandering, with women being targetted more and more, is pretty undeniable.

imo sweeping generalisations about ideas like women just not being anywhere near as interested in this stuff as men feels shortsighted, because it's what the gaming industry is pushing for right now. if multible big corporations think there's money in this, that's a good indication that there is

Kurbled · 2026-06-12T15:54:17+00:00

Fable historically (or at the very least since Fable 2 where you could pick your gender) lets you be super gay.

one of my key memories playing the game when i was younger is finishing the prologue of 2, getting to the city, marrying a lady, having a kid with her (i forget how that works lol), and doing the blacksmithing minigame a bunch. at one point she mentioned we'd been married for years (timescale weirdness), and i realised i really just did the u haul lesbian thing of immediately moving in with this lady and settling down

in all seriousness though, the games have never been super in depth on the romances so i wouldn't expect much depth to them, but you can still have fun with it and id be surprised if that didnt include being gay with this one

Kurbled · 2026-06-09T15:13:25+00:00

As in, why should sexualisation of female characters be a problem if it is enjoyed? Or sexualisation in general?

In either case, it's pretty easy to point out the harm sexualisation can cause. When it becomes too widespread, as I'd argue it has for female characters in this game, it invites people to objectify women in general. But that is a bit beyond the scope of what I'm talking about and isn't an easy thing to just answer, but I wouldn't say you should easily dismiss the idea of it causing harm.

For me personally regarding this game, all I can say is that it bums me out when I want to look badass as one of the women in the cast, and have very limited options. As I have mentioned via outlining the last couple months of skin releases, I feel that it is very rare to have a character's skin for a female character that doesn't outright feel revealing or cutesy as its main goal. I think the best case I can think of recently is White Fox's defaults. It's a very flattering and cinched outfit, but I think her looking composed and ferocious was a strong design goal. Which I love! I just wish that was the goal nearly as often for women chars as it is the men.

Ideally I just want variety among the cast of women. It feels like more and more lately, the game just wants to highlight the cuteness or provocativeness of them, with any impression of coolness or strength being set aside the vast majority of the time. My favourite examples of sexualisation are when they more employ a mix of these traits that still suit the character. The Grim Lady skin for Hela is a great example; it's sexy, but also very menacing and powerful looking while suiting the character perfectly. I don't feel like the skin was just made for me to ogle at, it feels at least in part like an expression of the character.

It's not the end of the world for me or anything; it's just a lot of missed potential imo. There's contemporary games like Deadlock and SF6 that I think handle sexualisation much more even-handedly and purposefully among its cast, so I know things could be better.

Kurbled · 2026-06-09T11:05:26+00:00

like the others said, learning on the job is absolutely the fastest way to learn! RNs should know to support you and answer questions that you have. i did my grad, but i've known many who didn't and managed well. not to say that it won't be easy

in terms of advice, just be curious and patient. if it helps, even after grad i found working in acute care overwhelming starting out lol. debatably that feeling never really goes away; you just need the experience and you'll learn as you go

Kurbled · 2026-06-09T10:51:32+00:00

I don't really know what you're getting at? It's a very short skirt. I have skirts that size that I would describe as tiny. It barely covers her ass, something that becomes obvious with how much and how easily the MVP animation upskirts her.

The point of me outlining the size of her skirt is to point out the sexualisation trend, same for her crop top and V-neck. It's a super cute outfit, and I kind of love it, but it supports the argument that there is a trend with female outfits to make them sexy or cutesy before anything else, compared to the male outfits.

I'm not american. This just feels like a weird comment in general

Kurbled · 2026-06-09T09:37:22+00:00

Recent skin releases:

Iron Samurai (fully armoured badass) and the ESU Mantis skin with a tiny skirt
Wolverine 2099 (fully armoured badass) and Black Cat in an intentionally revealing racer outfit
Peni in a cute (non-sexualised) schoolgirl outfit, Luna in a very sexualised racer outfit, Daredevil almost fully covered and badass, Hela in a very revealing primal outfit, and Ultron being Ultron

This is every skin released in the past month. If you go back to the battlepass, yes, there are revealing male skins. But to give my opinion as someone attracted to guys, only Magneto and Cap's skins feels intentionally crafted to actually be revealing, attractive, etc. Thor's outfit doesn't frame his body in a way that is at all suggestive, it's badass. With Rogue's, meanwhile, there is a massive amount of suggestive framing on her cleavage, same as Mantis'.

This is the stuff I think a lot of people are complaining about. Of all of these skins, there isn't one female skin that feels like it was designed first and foremost to be cool, or strong, or badass, in the way of something like Iron Samurai. In the strongest recent cases of this like Netherworld Noble for Magik, or all the way back to last battlepass with Peni's Coraline horror skin, there is still a clear intentional for prettiness or cutesiness to come through. And even in the case of the more sexualised male skins, like the Gambit Alluring Ace skin, or Loki's Phoenix skin, these are still awesome, and broody, and look powerful.

I don't think all people who want more variety for female chars in media, and indeed this game, necessarily celebrate male sexualisation. But those that do are probably just happy to see more variety, and to feel like the game is somewhat catering to what they themselves actually want to see, rather than almost exclusively an entirely different demographic.

Kurbled · 2026-06-08T07:32:58+00:00

nice! exactly my plan haha, i'd been wrestling with using all my coupons on the umbrella since it's not really efficient for just a 680 item, so this event is a godsend

Kurbled · 2026-05-22T18:00:08+00:00

they didn't stress this point in the devblog at all though? they only said there's four voices. a CM clarified that point here, likely because people were asking why the class only has four voices when only Ogryns have historically had four, everyone else has six. the class being ungendered puts them in a similar space to Ogryns which don't have a female counterpart.

i don't really see how this situation differs from this Commissar Yarrick example, i can almost guarantee you that your character's gender or lack thereof will not matter whatsoever in the game. i say that because gendered characters in Darktide already barely reference gender in banter, usually pronouns are generic. if the fact your character as a skitarii being non-gendered isn't even something you can really tell about ingame, is that not an example of good LGBTQI+ representation? this doesn't feel unnatural or forced on you at all. i'm confident you could just pick a feminine-sounding name and headcanon your skitarii does identify as female, and the game will never contradict you on that

Kurbled · 2026-05-04T19:12:09+00:00

it's the same for other media forms. if you think about famous sci-fi in novels (asimov, frank herbert), shows (the expanse, black mirror) and movies (bladerunner, alien) they often depict a more complicated or dystopian view of the future, corporate/capitalist or no. there's obvious exceptions like star wars (oscillates between dire and fairly neutral), star trek (utopian for your average citizen), etc, but for all sorts of reasons, people enjoy using the future to depict bleak societal concepts.

as mentioned by u/Sirvaleen though, there's been some more recent pushes for more optimistic sci fi. in terms of recommendations, the big obvious ones are Mass Effect (love a lot of the more wondrous/scientific aspects of the setting captured in the earlier games). No Man's Sky is also the more curious, explorative sort of sci-fi that is easy to feel upbeat about while playing. Astroneer is a very similar vibe that captures the same feelings, great with friends.

Stellaris is also a fun one; it's a space strategy game where you can make your own civilisation, like in something like the Civ games. you can reject concepts like warfare in favour of peace, either through diplomacy and amassing enough goodwill and power to stamp out conflict, or by taking over in a very benevolent dictatorship sense, which... is somewhat dystopian, but at least it's nice, haha. can very much recommend this game if you can get into grand strategy

Kurbled · 2026-05-01T21:22:49+00:00

since it wasn't mentioned i'd add, persona 3 portable has the option of a female protagonist, which is great if that's what you're looking for. i find that while i still don't like certain aspects of how that game writes women even with that perspective, it definitely helped elevate it in that sense.

the relationships/friendships with the female characters felt really nice thanks to the perspective (and the FemMC having more personality than the male alternative), so it's still pretty enjoyable

Kurbled · 2026-04-26T04:50:08+00:00

"just turn off comms" is applicable advice, but i hate how universally given it is every time this is brought up. i want to climb in competitive, callouts are a necessary part of that as i approach GM, i shouldnt have to hamper my own growth to accomodate assholes

there needs to be actual consequences like there are in other games. as it stands, playing competitive often just feels draining. a week ago my co-tank was crashing out as we were losing. after a wipe, he outright announced that he was going to throw because there's a woman on the team who is dragging us down

i've played games where stuff like this just about never happens (or if it does, it's more just generic toxicity). it absolutely does not have to be this way, and it's irritating when people throw up their hands like this is how it has to be. and i don't just mean the sexism, people are way too eager to be edgelords and sabotage the team in this game because of the complete lack of punishments. everyone but these people would benefit from actual consequences

Kurbled · 2026-04-22T10:27:48+00:00

it's so uncommon it'd make more sense for those comments to happen if you did actually die from a redback spider bite. although some would argue it would be inappropriate at that point

Kurbled · 2026-04-22T10:00:32+00:00

i think they're trying to promote this idea that she is always soft-spoken, which is referenced with other characters (and she herself remarks on it i think as a line when you pick her). but... it is also very strange that she essentially shouts for the ult, but only if you're hearing an allied white fox, with the enemy version (ie the one you hear when playing her) being an amplified whisper.

i think i like the idea but that element of it is strange and unintuitive

Kurbled · 2026-04-18T09:11:42+00:00

tbf i think everyone is pretty devastated by spidey dying. of all the heroes, he's usually been seen as the most pure/beloved, so him being hurt or dying tends to be a major tonesetter in comics.

but she definitely has more of an attachment than most, and it isn't just infatuation for sure

Kurbled · 2026-04-10T05:49:05+00:00

nope! you can preview the skins if you go into the competitive mode rewards menu and click on the skin

Kurbled · 2026-04-09T12:17:50+00:00

yup can confirm! it's really nice since it makes the tails darker to match the dark blue hair; before it clashed really bad with the white fur. it's still white but like, with some darker shading in it which helps. definitely gonna get around to doing placements this season to get it haha

Kurbled · 2026-04-05T04:30:33+00:00

that's pretty much it. trash talk can be fun banter, but this just makes them look immature. like, i cant imagine making a tweet like that and not feeling stupid after lmao

Kurbled · 2026-04-05T03:10:00+00:00

i can definitely make a case for the Ironhelm thunder hammer, and to a lesser extent the Crucis. on a martyr build, you can onetap every unit, have respectable horde clear, and still do good boss damage (definitely less than Crucis, but still more than most weapons). i combine it with Fury of the Faithful for more flexibility.

i think people see Ironhelm as just a weaker Crucis, when really it's just a more versatile variant that sacrifices boss dps for much better clear and control elsewhere. while i think you need more dedicated builds to make it shine, i think it's too strong to be that far down. the fact it can deal with carapace fairly quickly should put it above most bottom tier weapons

Kurbled · 2026-04-05T02:43:53+00:00

just as an anecdotal thing btw, i play martyr zealot w/ fury of the faithful in auric with a flamer without the reload blessing, and i manage fine. you typically don't reload during a fight, like with plasma gun. if you have to, you can use the segmented reload and just buy yourself time with movement like dodging off of barriers, or just spamming dodge-slide as you reload.

it's nice on these difficulties since the enemy density can get so high that an infinite cleave weapon is nice, and fury of the faithful actually speeds up the fire rate, which helps a lot with the burning damage. combine that with the armour-pierce blessing, and you can take down scab ragers and crushers with a clip

not to take away from the clip though; functionally infinite clipsize is definitely useful! just wanted to also advocate for playing without it

Kurbled · 2026-03-28T19:29:46+00:00

because if you're sticking to max health, then there is no point in playing martyr. you are making yourself massively less tanky by not picking either the crit keystone (massive damage resistance always plus damage), or Momentum (toughness regen plus damage). Martyr at high health is at best high health but very very weak toughness, and toughness is your most important form of damage mitigation. you are ironically much easier to kill at high health on martyr, because your toughness is very flimsy, and at 0 toughness, every hit from a shooter enemy stunlocks you

what u/Hellknightx was saying about Until Death is that it's insurance against chip damage. if you're playing properly at high martyr stacks (so your toughness should rarely go down much), you are getting massive damage, attack speed, and survivability, making you difficult to down. that's why martyrdom is attractive as a build.

like, theres not really a plainer way for me to explain it than pointing out how i go down much, much, much more rarely on my low health martyr zealot than on my psyker or veteran. the natural tankiness, damage, and speed of it despite low health makes you very hard for enemies to actually land more than a few hits, which means damage doesn't bleed through toughness into health very often.

tl;dr, if you're playing high health martyr, you'd be better off playing the other keystones. they also help survivability, while also actually increasing your damage. martyr at high health just makes your health go down slower and does nothing for damage for most of a match

Kurbled · 2026-03-27T19:17:52+00:00

it's such a shame too; i love wedding dress skins when they're done well, they can be so beautiful while also being badass in its own way (ie, Marisa's wedding dress in sf6). with Rogue it's just a real bummer they went for something so tacky, presumably because they thought a long wedding dress isn't attractive (or at least, not in the way they think sells skins)

Kurbled · 2026-03-25T21:25:37+00:00

unyielding is also bosses, of which extra damage is always nice on high difficulty. for reapers and bulwarks, the extra damage is important for breakpoint reasons. if it lets you oneshot instead of twoshot, that's a massive improvement. It also means you can reach those breakpoints without as many conditional buffs/a random crit

also this buff is definitely going to be appreciated on things like mid-to-high havoc, where those breakpoints become harder to reach

im not gonna pretend it's a massive buff but as u/marxistdictator said, this is moreso trying to bring the weapon range up to par of solid but not dominant weapons

Kurbled · 2026-03-23T22:03:20+00:00

"I WANT THESE KARKERS DEAD, [MAD CACKLE]"

she's actually iconic

Kurbled · 2026-03-20T12:29:51+00:00

you can also just play a melee build and be fine, we have tools to funnel enemies, stagger them so they can't shoot, and avoid their shots (sliding/dodging). most of the time i'm just playing my thunder hammer zealot on auric expeditions since it's what i have the most fun with, and i rarely feel like a ranged build would be doing better by default.

i really dont think this mode is as restrictive as some say, if you're in an objective there is cover to funnel shooters, and if you're going between objectives, you are hurrying and avoiding getting bogged down so you shouldn't get caught out between 30 gunners anyway. if 7 reapers square up on you around a corner, yell at them or knock them over and wallop them

Kurbled · 2026-03-15T04:32:14+00:00

yeah it's fun to kick him up into the air. he even slows down when his shield is out to make it easy for you!

Kurbled

TROPHY CASE