Mtg: suff about family and sexuality

The Blind Eternities forum

Posted on April 14, 2015, 2 p.m. by DERPLINGSUPREME

So, I got about ankle-deep into a conversation about MTG being a family game, or not, or whatever, so I moved it.

Let me fill you in. We were talking about how people have alternate art land of almost-naked anime girls. This turned into some stuff about sexuality in MTG, so may I ask:

how do you feel about this?

How do you feel about sexuality in MTG? do you think it should be a family game? How about MTG porn? okay or not? thought, issues, questions, Ideas?

Runlue says... #1

Didgeridooda Rookie mistake bro. XD

April 14, 2015 9:18 p.m.

Didgeridooda says... #2

I don't know the lingos, I will be asking questions on what things mean from now on.

April 14, 2015 9:19 p.m.

FAMOUSWATERMELON says... #3

Yeah, there are much more sexual looking images than Armada Wurm... Glory Seeker anyone?

April 14, 2015 9:21 p.m.

Runlue says... #4

I'm pretty sure the government isn't going to pursue you (they haven't pursued me (yet)), so you should be fine. Just clear your history... and hack into the government, or something.

April 14, 2015 9:21 p.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #5

Now that my roommates decided to come in and have a party, I've completely forgot what I had mentally planned out to write for the alters ... it might take me a little while longer.

April 14, 2015 9:23 p.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #6

That's a sword scabbard FAMOUSWATERMELON. If you notice, it isn't even inbetween his legs.

April 14, 2015 9:27 p.m.

FAMOUSWATERMELON says... #7

Still looks a lot more like a dick than Armada Wurm.

April 14, 2015 9:29 p.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #8

Then that is you, sexualizing something that has nothing to do with sex.

April 14, 2015 9:34 p.m.

Runlue says... #9

Oof, you just got called OUT SON.

April 14, 2015 9:36 p.m.

DERPLINGSUPREME says... #10

Didgeridooda WHEN GOOGLING ANY WORDS THAT ARE ANYWHERE WITHTIN A 10 FOOT RADIUS OF MY NAME, USE THE "incognito" TAB!

April 14, 2015 11:16 p.m.

asasinater13 says... #11

Always urbandictionary slang. Explanation away from sources that will just show you porn.

April 14, 2015 11:30 p.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #12

Okay ... alters. The biggest thing about alters is that one has to realize the main aspects of male psychological sexual response that governs them.

  1. The preference for visual stimuli.
  2. The objectification of said visual stimuli.
  3. The projection of one's self into the situation of which the visual stimuli is in.

Of course, I'll be mentioning the female psychological response and why it pretty much results in the same thing, if a little more sophisticated.

As ChiefBell said, sexual material is harmful particularly when objectification comes in. And as I've stated, objectification mainly comes from the viewers of the material themselves. However in this case, sexualized objectification mainly occurs on this that are already objects and not real people. A card is an object. Paintings are objects. And characters, by this definition are objects. Because they aren't real people we subject them to sexual objectification, whether intended or not.

The fear of boobs also applies here, but there is another fear I want to mention that basically applies the same way. The fear of anime. Quite literally, anime is viewed in a more negative light than traditional artwork like the style of artwork on regular cards. Particularly because we perceive the people who go around with anime art on whatever they wear or have as the stereotypical disgusting nerd/geek, and will occasionally take it further to stereotype them as people who sexually objectify women by watching hentai. So I just want to mention that anime artwork will have the tendency to be viewed in a more negative light than our artwork.

But regardless of all this, anime alters are more often than not worse than our traditional artwork because of what they show. And what they show has the negative impacts that ChiefBell mentioned. Basically, an anime alter is more likely to have sexually suggestive or sexually explicit material (camel-toe showing through panties is a very common one), which goes against the PG-13 thing. Additionally, basic land alters have literally no purpose to having the anime females on them but for psychological sexual gratification, since they quite literally don't fit the purpose of the card.

There is another reason why anime alters are worse than traditional alters, and that's because they aren't realistic. Which you might think is kinda obvious, but considering that the impacts it has, disorders related to body image, this is actually really important. Anime alters have unrealistic boobs in size and form. They are almost always massive and almost always perfectly round, demonstrating improper boobs in real life. Even their eyes pose a problem, as in Japan there are many women who do eye surgery to make their eyes look as wide as an anime girl's eyes. Their figure is almost always an hourglass shape, and always skinny. And not too mention that their vaginas are unnaturally large too, shown as massive camel-toes through their panties.

Pretty much the same things could be said if you were to put anime men on the alters, but this doesn't normally happen as there still is a heavy male audience over female audience.

Perhaps a reason as to why basic lands have known to be worse off than others and why anime seems to be worse off than traditional is because A) Basic lands are cheap. The creators of these know that there is no point in altering a $10 card just to make it become illegal in tournament play, and B) Anime alters are generally a lot easier to do than traditional art for those who are inexperienced, considering the lack of detail and features needed for them. So it is more common to see the random individual do low quality anime alters than it is to see the high quality artwork required for traditional alters.

I stated that females basically had the same end result that males did, but approached from a more complicated angle. For the average female the basic rundown of their psychological sexual response is that a woman's need for intimacy prompts them to engage in sexual stimuli, which leads to sexual desire and a heightened psychological sexual arousal. This psychological arousal, or sexual cognition increases hormones in women. In other words, sexual thoughts increases testosterone levels which in turn cause physiological arousal.

Basically, this defines why you "talk a girl up" at a bar to get in her panties. You are prompting her to have sexual thoughts which in turn turns her on physically, making her want sex.

This applies to images in a similar way. A woman looks at an image, things of something naughty, her fantasies kick in to extrapolate on her psychological sexual arousal, and then she gets physically aroused. End result, is the same. Men and women use images to sexually appease themselves mentally.

If there is any issue I may have missed or didn't clarify, let me know. I had this one get put off by my roommates friends coming over and them being all "I'MMA SHOUT EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SECOND!" and my soup burning to charcoal to the pan (which I was able to clean up) after trying to get back and forgetting about it.

April 15, 2015 2:02 a.m.

VampireArmy says... #13

Thank you femme for taking the time to give clarity

April 15, 2015 2:14 a.m.

JexInfinite says... #14

I don't get the realism argument. I would LOVE to have an Azusa Nakano alter of Azusa, Lost but Seeking. Sure, Azu-nyan is less realistic, but I don't really think I'm going to care about realism in a game with Vizzerdrix.

But putting naked females on your basics is outrageous. Kids play at FNM, and it serves no purpose. Tokens make more sense, but still, keep it below the line of lewdness. You want a cool looking token, so you aim high, and get that Guardians of the Galaxy green lady for your Voice tokens or whatever the hell you want, as long as it's not explicit, or too lewd.

As for the official WotC artwork, there's basically just Earthbind which is too sexually suggestive. Everything is incredibly tame, and considering that PG-13 movies have WAY more sexually explicit stuff (correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know the foreign rating system) than small drawings, Magic's artwork is pretty appealing for parents, too.

April 15, 2015 3:08 a.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #15

The realism argument is for the portrayal of the human body combined with the studies and points ChiefBell made, JexInfinite. Using anime art instead of realistic art will have a more negative long term impact in terms of developing those disorders because of their portrayal of the human body being a lot more unrealistic.

I forgot to mention that my post covers more than just naked girls on cards, but simply any anime girl on basic lands, as most are in their underwear, which is nearly as bad.

And also, we are more likely to accept something that is realistic versus something that is anime in terms of sexualized alter art, because the anime version most likely has far too much boob. Or just, you know, doesn't look as nice.

April 15, 2015 5:29 a.m.

JexInfinite says... #16

After reading over properly (last time I skimmed for the sake of time), you've covered basically everything, but your attitude seems to suggest you are anti-alters.

You're making an assumption that all anime has the same style as Highschool DxD, which is justified in the alters of basics, but if someone were to alter an Auriok Champion, which is already wearing under-garments, and use a Studio Ghibli hand-drawn style, what would you say? Nothing more revealing than the original art has been added, the only change would be the art style.

How about we use this as an example. enter image description here

Chandra is wearing a 'cutesy' sort of outfit, exposing a lot of leg. It somewhat sexualizes her, but not to the point of ridiculousness, or even Lili. Since it's an anime alter, though, it should apparently lessen the respect others have towards the owner. In my opinion, it looks better than the original Chandra, because she's not just screaming with fire surrounding her (that's boring). It has character, and even with the anime treatment, can be associated strongly with Chandra.

April 15, 2015 6:15 a.m.

JexInfinite says... #17

But if you're talking about incredible over-sexualization, I've got no response. It's just unnecessary and not welcome. The context is important, yes, but you don't context with a single image a lot of the time.

April 15, 2015 6:17 a.m.

asasinater13 says... #18

I'm pretty confident femme was generalizing, not saying that every amine art is horrible and should go unused.

April 15, 2015 8:21 a.m.

OtakulordAndrew says... #19

I'm in complete agreement with JexInfinite on this one I see no problem with using anime style alters so long as it's within reason for a public enviroment such as an lgs and see no reason why the particualar art style would be viewed in a more negative light then any other altered art. It feels like Femme_Fatale is over stereo typing all various anime style arts in to a single category where I will hopefully assume she is only referring to the more over the top works that sometimes appear on cards in which the art would not be deemed viewable by all ages and thusly should not be used at a public event such as an lgs.

April 15, 2015 9:29 a.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #20

Okay, some examples are in order of the card of arts I was thinking of. Beware of explicit material when you click on the links I'll be presenting shortly.

April 15, 2015 10:23 a.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #21

The following images portray 3 things:

  • Unrealistic bodies
  • Explicit images appear more often on basics, with low quality anime work.
  • General bias toward traditional work (which could be just me).

Once again, beware of explicit material.

Concerned

Iffy

Wouldn't Mind

Do I have a bias towards non-anime work? Yes I do, because I enjoy high quality work and enjoy erotica, not porn. Something like that naked Lili, the Baneslayer Angel and their ilk I really wouldn't mind in real life, I would point out that they shouldn't be used, but I would praise them for using good quality art that appeases a more artistic mind rather than just drawing on a girl on a basic land to obviously appease a sexual mind.

Please note that I am one of those girls who would go to FNM with a deck decked out with high quality naked ladies like the Grand Abolisher or the Liliana of the Veil and their ilk. Why? Because I'm sexualized and love to portray it, even though I know it is publicly improper ♥

April 15, 2015 11:23 a.m.

FAMOUSWATERMELON says... #22

I love how some of the links are actually blocked because of nudity...

April 15, 2015 11:25 a.m.

Runlue says... #23

Dude, that Chandra and Jace looks awesome. I WANT ONE. OF EACH.

April 15, 2015 11:41 a.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #24

Oh, right, I have deviantart account.

So yeah, most of you can't see the nude alters because you don't have a deviantart account.

April 15, 2015 11:44 a.m.

GoldGhost012 says... #25

Yeah, DA's pretty good about that.

I would like to say that, ignoring for a moment the oversexualization and the NSFW parts, some of those alters are really, really good.

April 15, 2015 11:57 a.m.

JexInfinite says... #26

I'd be iffy with the Invisible Stalker, but not enough to scold my opponent.

I don't think your perspective on anime alters is very appropriate, except in the case of basics. A lot of alters are not porn, just suggestive. This alter is great, and also relevant to the original card. It's pretty tame, as good anime alters tend to be. Most people are bad, though, and slap Tifa on random cards to obscure everything.

April 16, 2015 3:23 a.m.

Femme_Fatale says... #27

That I would be fine with. I'm saying that most of the naked females you'll find are done in anime art, it's just a general trend I see. I also said I had a bias towards non-anime art, just because they are generally of higher quality. Actually, I just like higher quality artwork, like the Kaalia or the angel of thune, etc. If you do completely obscene alters but they are all really high quality, I'll probably won't say a peep besides things like "be aware that there are kids playing here" and just stare and admire the artwork.

April 16, 2015 3:33 a.m.

Serendipitous_Hummingbird says... #28

I honestly think that it matters who is using the cards. While I would be perfectly comfortable facing a woman who used those cards Femme_Fatale called "wouldn't mind" I would be decidedly uncomfortable with a male using them. Taking control of your own objectificaton and owning it on your own terms is one thing. Rock on with that. But when you try to objectify someone else (and there is a long and lovely history of men objectifying women) that is problematic.

A male is going to play those alters for a very different reason than a female.

April 16, 2015 1:22 p.m.

This discussion has been closed