Sexualized? Yes. Overly? No. They're within Kira, Mileena, and Nitara's personalities. Mileena in particular has strong reasons to be an aggressively sexual creature.

I might give you Li Mei's DA alt...on the grounds that she doesn't even canonically wear it in the story, it was presumably only created for that supermodel business card joke in the Krypt.

"Ridiculous"? Only to someone who believes fantasy fiction should be realistic, which is an absurd notion.

Let me give you an example: When Sonya fights in heels, it's wrong because she's Sonya. She should fight in combat boots because she's in the army and heels do nothing to express her image.

Sindel and Skarlet SHOULD fight in heels because they stab people with them. (In Sindel's case, she even killed Kabal and Jax by stabbing them in the vitals with her heel in MK9) Kitana SHOULD fight in heels because heels add to the elegant and regal image of a royal.

"You can't fight in heels in the real world" should never even come into it as it misses the point of fictional costume design (unless you're the creator and one of the goals of your work IS to appear realistic, like if you were doing a "historical fiction" story...but MK is not that). You know what else you can't do in the real world? Make fireballs come out of your hands. It's a fucking STORY. A work of CREATIVE VISION. Creativity is a trait that people who complain about the realism of high heels and "boobplate" armor lack, which is why they can't *understand* how their argument is flawed. Their mind is not accustomed to going to that place, where creators go when they create things, that must by default leave the constraints of what is possible in the real world behind.

Dude, you're so brainwashed.

Don't have a real counter-argument then, I take it?

You think the guys I posted look ridiculous and you think the girls I posted, like Mileena in her peekaboo vag outfit, are fine. That's a sign of society brainwashing you. The only other explaination is you're just being thick because you don't want to admit you were wrong.

Pretty sure I never said that in response to any picture you posted.
Unless you're the guy who posted Heihachi in a sumo diaper-thing on page one and you have multiple accounts.
wdm said your pics look ridiculous. He ain't me. I don't have multiple accounts.

So you have no problem with the guy pics I posted?

The pictures you posted are fan art/mods, are they not?

Fan art done for fun doesn't say anything about anything and is irrelevant to the concept of how characters should be designed and portrayed in a fictional work. It's presumably "out of character" for Chris Redfield to be portrayed as an underwear model and the like...but that doesn't MATTER if the pictures aren't even meant to be taken seriously as part of the Resident Evil canon.

Any criticism I WERE to make about them would have to be in regards to their viability as ACTUAL designs for characters in a story to wear.

Specifically, "could a character in Mortal Kombat wear something like this in-game and have it make sense, given their identity and the setting?"

The answer to that would depend entirely on WHICH character, what is that character's backstory and personality?

Outfits similar to those fan mods on new Kombat characters. That last guy totally fits the fantasy side of MK. Piers Nivans as Tomb Raider looks like a Sonya equivalent.

I could see some of them working on Johnny Cage given he's an actor (which means he might actually canonically DO underwear modelling) and has a strong libido.

Also possibly Smoke, but that might be playing into negative stereotypes given he has a lisp, feminine hairstyle, and slightly flamboyant fighting posture.
Also, if the last one were completely on fire, he'd be MKDA Blaze.
If they were new characters...I couldn't speak to that without knowing the character's story.

Okay, good. Stop there. I'm afraid if either of us says anything else you'll find a way to argue again, lol.

Razor, quick! Say something randomly odd, like:

"Shhh...you had me at 'Hello'".

Just my opinion, but I'd have zero problems if they put in a character that was LGBT and wasn't a stereotype.

The idea that we don't "need" a LGBT character is irrelevant. No one's saying that it'd have to be a big deal or huge point of emphasis. It's also not a moral imperative that some box gets checked.

But if MK did have more of a storyline that portrayed romances? Then sure, why not have a homosexual romance? Not "just to have one" mind you, but because the creators feel like telling that particular story for those characters. Works for me.

Of course, the OPs topic was more "let's have this to even out that." No thanks. Even if there are a lot of women that enjoy the male physique and would also enjoy seeing them in a banana hammock with a large, flopping penis, I personally don't like the skin for the sake of sexuality to sell a game approach on either side.

To me, it makes me think that the people making a game that I love views their audience as sexually immature or stunted. And while "it fits the character" is factually correct for some prior to MK9, I don't personally buy the idea that this is the true motivating factor on the part of the devs. Just speculation though.

Personally, I want my fighting game characters to look like they're about to fight to the death and what that means from a practical standpoint mixed with some flavor from their background. So yes, Jade is Edenian. Mileena uses her sexuality. But no one would fight looking like that, and the pole dance / hands rubbing the body and moaning etc is all meant for the player.

Some people like that stuff. To them, it's just a game and sure it's just polygons and it's all in good fun. Personally, I think it's lame, I think it undermines the female characters a little and it's slightly embarrassing. But that's just me. I'd prefer something slightly more serious and more mature, even in the context of "it's a game" or a game with robots and ninjas and animal men etc.

MK wasn't always this over the top sexual, as has been pointed out. So to me, it's nice to see that they seem to have realized their limit and are now heading back in the other direction. I personally have no problem with sex or sexuality, but the way MK was handling it felt silly and immature; more like it was coming from and was meant for someone much younger and much less cognizant of female exploitation.

Anyways, that's pretty much all I have to say on this. Except to say this:

"These are the same people who invented the phrase "fat shaming", because they'd rather force the world to stop calling being out of shape "unhealthy" even though it scientifically IS, so they don't have to do the hard work of having willpower and changing their poor lifestyles or have to feel bad about how lazy they are anymore."

I don't come to a Mortal Kombat website to read stuff like this, but it was brought up so... Razor, as someone that's been fat before and worked his ass off to lose weight, I found this comment by someone whose opinion I respected on this site to be shockingly ignorant.

If you've been on or are on the receiving end of what can feel like an endless stream of reminders, insults and assumptions based solely on your weight, I wouldn't think that you'd make such a statement.

I can take it, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to "be a bitch" or whatever indoctrinated bullshit expression passes for sucking it up. But the whole idea permeating several points in this thread that people should just turn the other cheek (as if that's the only way to show courage, maturity etc) is one of the reasons why shit like this gets tolerated by society at large to begin with.

You might object to that, but anyone foolish enough to make assumptions about someone based on their weight, their skin color, their sexual orientation or their socioeconomic status drops a few notches in my estimation.

I know, you'll live, but I still felt compelled to point out what a truly slimy comment this was, and how much respect I've lost for you, even if it's one anonymous internet name to another.

If you put in the work to lose that weight, then you're not the kind of person I was talking about. I'm not referring to all fat people, I'm referring to a specific subset of "social justice warrior" you find on the internet.

And I don't think it's right to defend people whose sloth is so immense that they'd rather attempt to use bitching and whining to force change upon the language and behavior of an entire society instead of physically making a change in themselves.

Hell, you don't even have to be trying to exercise or lose weight really, as long as you simply aren't so selfish that you respond to criticism with "I'm not wrong, the world is wrong! The universe should revolve around me and change so that nothing that hurts my feelings ever exists."

You're assuming that this term was only coined by lazy fat people. You're also assuming that lazy fat people are the only overweight people that get shamed, insulted, etc by people.

I was that person you were talking about. That's my whole point. I was fat for various points and there were times that I gave up. So I have fallen in to that "sloth" category before. I'm not sure why you seem think that these insults and assumptions are valid just because I was down. It's not a PC police thing to me, it's a human being thing.

You don't know me, you don't know how many times I tried and failed and regained weight I'd lost. It's a struggle that I'll probably deal with my whole life, and American food culture centers around getting people to buy more beer, more salt and more sugar, etc.

So yeah, large portions of this country deal with these issues and sometimes they give up, sometimes they think it's easier to throw in the towel and be what people like you apparently assume about them. But that's no reason to fat shame them, to insult them or assume their lazy just because they're down or they're not trying enough at a given point in time.

I quit smoking a few years ago and I can honestly say that eating right and exercising to the point of sustained and maintained weight loss is WAY harder than not doing something (smoking) that's by most accounts as hard to quit as many hard drugs out there.

Sorry if I came off like a dick, but your comment kinda caught me off guard. Fat shaming is very real, and justifying it by saying you're only referring to the truly lazy doesn't wash with me. Most overweight people, from my experience, know what they look like and how the world sees them, because they see themselves in far worse a light, which only adds to the difficulty of motivating yourself. They don't need people that are tired of tip toeing around calling them out on what they already know. Just sayin.

Alllllright close the thread now.

please! this is getting downright embarrassing.

even as a gay man myself....

Mick, close this shitstorm of a thread. It made for some interesting discussion at first but has long run its course.

We get it Dark, you're the good gay that people like because you're comfortable not having things change. I'm the annoying activist who wants equality and representation. Yadda yadda yadda...

Baraka, if I could give you an award for your posts I would. Well said!

My problem lies with the language, not the sentiment.

If people would just say "I'm a human being, please treat me with dignity", I've got no quarrel with 'em. How could I?

If you use a term invented by tumblr slacktivists, however, you imply, perhaps unintentionally and inaccurately, that you are one of them or agree with their philosophies, and there's an inherent fascistic "I demand that you behave the way I want or else" between the lines in everything they say and do.

And opposing them and their toxic politics sometimes means opposing the twisted little terms they invent for themselves to use on others like a weapon. That's where I stand.

It would be good if someone like Kano turned out to be gay, but like Willem Dafoe from The Boondock Saints. That would be a tasteful way to introduce a gay character. I'm also going to point out again that the fan art ^ up there looks ridiculous. It looks ridiculous because men dressed like that look ridiculous. The first two look like Abercrombie & Fitch has some army themed clothes out right now and those are two of the dudes on the posters around the store. The other ones look like Dr. Frank-N-Furter's creation. If NRS could do it in a way that works, like they did with Shao Kahn and Goro, then I would be okay with it. But this isn't WWE, not every dude needs to be wearing a speedo.

Flirts with female enemies too much. I think they were even trying to imply in MK9 a relationship between he and Sonya existed before she found out he was a mole. "He used me" is, at the very least, loaded language when coming from the mouth of a female character.

I said someone like Kano, someone you wouldn't really expect.

How bout Jarek? He's brave enough to come out of the closet while being thrown off a cliff.

Please stop antagonizing people who disagree with you. It's why long shit like this starts is because you feel that whoever isn't with you is against you. Wanting a new character who happens to be gay and avenge their same sex lover is fine, if NRS wants to do that, I support it. But you can't just call people brainwashed because they disagree with you. And yes, close this thread, please.