Needs to be said (on body positivity in fan art)
NOTE: This Tumblr is primarily used for gaming tools, doodles, and general RPG stuff. Just fluff content. If you’re following me and the following offends/disagrees with you, I’m sorry. However, I feel that this needs to be said, and is worth saying.
So I’m curating a Mass Effect Art Zine. I’m doing so because Mass Effect is really important to me. It’s one of my favourite games. As such, I’m a big fan of talented artists who present the series in different ways through a variety of aesthetics.
Barbalarga, who’s noteworthy not only for making great Mass Effect art, but for also doing so through an LGBT lens that’s often lacking in videogame fan art.
Sure, there’s a deluge of gay and lesbian videogame fan art (especially in Mass Effect), but most of it is just pandering cheesecake, created through a male gaze for an ostensibly male audience. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with appreciating art like that, I (and I’m sure others) crave variety and better representation of characters in fan art. Characters who are not totally idealized pin-ups, made solely to serve as erotica.
Barbalarga’s art (especially her Mass Effect art) features couples! Partners, no less, of almost every gender and species! Equal representation completely across the board (in most cases. I mean, these are still fiction space aliens, after all). She depicts characters as loving, caring even, of each other, regardless of sex/gender, and she makes it sexy. And trust me, it gets sexy. Barbalarga’s art feels like a force for good. A force for, at the very least, better gender and sexual identity representation in fan art.
So, yeah, I wanted her stuff in my zine.
I requested that she make a piece of art about Mass Effect that featured characters who weren’t Commander Shepard.
This is what she submitted.
It depicts Aria T’Loak (voiced by Carrie-Anne Moss) and Nyreen Kandros in Aria’s office on Omega. There’s a lot going on with these characters in the series, so if you’re unfamiliar, check out this trailer. One important take away is that these two were estranged lovers. This picture possibly glimpses at a happier past between them.
It’s pretty fantastic, I gotta say.
So then this pops up on Barbalarga’s Tumblr feed after she’d posted the piece:
“Unfollowed due to fatass Omega dancer”?!
I’m…I’m seriously trying hard to form coherent thoughts and type…while being clouded by werewolf rage.
One puffed out stomach, one singular extra roll of fat, greyed out and in the background, is what causes someone to unfollow?! Not just unfollow, but go out of their way to tell the artist they’re doing so!
I get that this isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it still irks me something fierce.
This piece is gorgeous. Some might say in spite of the fat stripper in the background. Some might say because of the fat stripper in the background.
I say that this piece is fantastic for loads of reasons, but chief among them is that there’s a “plus sized” dancer in the background. To clarify, she’s probably like 180lbs, 200lbs tops. Does that qualify as “plus sized” in North America and Europe? I’m not sure.
I like the implications of it, in a totally nerdy world-building sort of way. I like the idea of Omega hiring performers of varying body types, to appeal to differing tastes (A galaxy of differing tastes!). I like that a lot.
What I don’t like is that there are people who just can’t deal with fat characters in their fandoms. I cannot understand it! I just strikes me as so close-minded and a little hypocritical at times. Are there people who are so against depictions of fat women in art (in the background, no less) that they’ll unfollow a talented artist that they’ve (presumably) enjoyed up until now?! I don’t get it!
I might catch flack for this, but I’d rather say something as opposed to keeping quiet.
Barbalarga’s right. “Big girls are intensely sexy (and you know, human beings)”. No matter how you might feel about them, I think their inclusion in fan art is a positive thing.