Video game characters who are absolutely not to be sexualized.

[Samus Aran]

I immediately hated this shit

you hate everything that becomes popular on social media though so that's not surprising

i don't really mind this whole thing

[TooB]

I immediately hated this shit

you hate everything that becomes popular on social media though so that's not surprising

i don't really mind this whole thing

Not everything and you know that.
Just most recent things.

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Bowser

and yet this comic spawned a ton of Bowser fanart in the past couple days: https://twitter.com/ayyk92/status/1042465252221181954

this kinda reminds me of how the Fate series just takes random guys and turns them into standard anime girls

Hmm, yes, terrible. Simply terrible.

I can only hope that these deviant perverts won't think to combine Peach with something like a Boo next. Wouldn't that be disturbing?

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Fan works really don't matter in this discussion though

Oh yes they do.

Ok look you can't legitimately argue that my Samus baby Metroid unbirthing MS Paint art I made back in 2004 has any real indication of my own (or the fanbase's) ideas about Samus's sexuality

lol

but they actually are extremely relevant because:

1. fanworks are difficult to avoid if you're a gamer who also happens to be an avid internet user
2. fanworks can often serve as very clear evidence of how/when/why/to what extent (etc.) a character is or became sexualized

No, I know, and I agree to a point. But there's a such thing as fan works that go against character to intentionally depict a creator's own fantasy version of said character. In fact, most porn is at least partly this, and much of it is this way entirely.

Because of this, I chose to say that fan works don't matter.

But I will admit that they do matter to a point.

i want to illustrate the extent to which they do matter, whether we agree that they should or not:

metroid came out in 1986

in the 21 years between the original metroid and the late 2007 reveal of zero suit samus in brawl, there were just six entries for "samus_aran" on gelbooru, and only three of those are even slightly nsfw

then there were 43 pages of new samus content inspired by brawl lol

she had been basically completely ignored by hentai artists for 20+ years up until she became much more visible in brawl and then just exploded in popularity

and then followed other m, which added a few more pages

and then came her smash 4 reveal around april 2014, which generated another ~70 pages of new content, and now there's a total of 119 pages of results for samus_aran following another boost thanks to ultimate lol

and again this is a character who was practically invisible before brawl (also compare: wii fit trainer's popularity before and since smash 4)

metroid is such a relatively niche series compared to smash that samus' depiction in smash colors the way she's perceived by the gaming community as a whole much more than actual metroid games do, lol

and that is very clearly reflected in 119 pages of highly scientific booru evidence that took me several hours of very hard research

so fanworks truly do matter because:

1. they are difficult to avoid if you're a gamer who also happens to be an avid internet user
2. they can often serve as very clear evidence of how/when/why/to what extent (etc.) a character is or became sexualized

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Ridley.

tec just wants ridley to be more fuckable

https://twitter.com/Viiperfish/status/1044663888527183877

and here's one that predates peachette by a decade:
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/203294

also Zerg-Kerrigan (from Starcraft) is design-wise a lot like a humanoid female Ridley.

kerrigan is fair game though