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Lack of male Mythics


FailWood
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Counting Ashera, each of the last 9 Mythic Heroes have all been women.  Between the lack of Male OCs who could fulfill the role and there not being many men with godly/mythical power in the main series, IS has some work to do.  What are some thoughts on this?

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Between Freyr, Otr, and Fafnir, I'm sure we've got some more male mythics on the way. Also, I'd say the most significant remaining candidates for main series mythics (Medeus, Anankos, Athos, Nergal, regular Dheginsea, Lehran) are all male.

The all-female chain will probably get another entry next week in the form of Nott, but past that, we've got 3-4 mythics left in Book 5 and the only female character who looks likely to appear in that lineup is Eitri. I don't expect things to completely balance out, but they should get a bit less extreme than this.

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I think this is mostly due to the OCs overwhelmingly being female, which I find somewhat annoying.  It seems you can count all the male OCs on one hand.

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Pretty much what Othin said, We will be probably geting three male mythic during this year, granted it will be women still winning but it won't be extreme difference.

Edited by Naoshi
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I'm blaming the OCs, which are overwhelmingly female.

2 hours ago, Othin said:

Between Freyr, Otr, and Fafnir, I'm sure we've got some more male mythics on the way. Also, I'd say the most significant remaining candidates for main series mythics (Medeus, Anankos, Athos, Nergal, regular Dheginsea, Lehran) are all male.

The all-female chain will probably get another entry next week in the form of Nott, but past that, we've got 3-4 mythics left in Book 5 and the only female character who looks likely to appear in that lineup is Eitri. I don't expect things to completely balance out, but they should get a bit less extreme than this.

We also have the ancient heroes of each game, like Anri, Artemis, 12 Crusaders, etc. They have plenty more female hereoes where that came from.

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4 minutes ago, Dandy Druid said:

I'm blaming the OCs, which are overwhelmingly female.

We also have the ancient heroes of each game, like Anri, Artemis, 12 Crusaders, etc. They have plenty more female hereoes where that came from.

Those seem like much lower priority. So far, Altina is the only character in Heroes who hasn't personally appeared in the source game. Roland, Durban, and Forseti appeared as spirits, which is points for them, but those are also all guys.

I had to look up who Artemis was - I don't remember ever hearing about her before, lol.

It's possible that they'll dig further into them over time in search of the female characters in those lineups, but I don't expect those to be the main source of non-OC mythics anytime soon.

Edited by Othin
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The mainline FEs are already a bit more female-biased, with the majority of divine beings being female (Naga, Mila, Yune, Ashera, Sothis) compared to male (Duma, Anankos). It also doesn't help that Altina was somehow the non-divine non-OC mythic that made the cut, instead of perhaps Anri or either of the other Three Heroes, both of whom were male.

However, I am totally blaming the glut of OCs for the imbalance. Lif is the only male mythic OC we actually got, because IS currently refuses to give us Freyr and they decided to make all four of the stupid fairies female, AND they decided to give us yet another free female OC AND both of the Jotuns are female. Sure, if/when Freyr, Fafnir, and Otr are added it'll be a little better, but that's a big "if" and "when".

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I'd say, it doesn't help either that a few of those OCs are based on male figures that FEH decided to make female for the game. So the gender imbalance is even more damning.

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18 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I'd say, it doesn't help either that a few of those OCs are based on male figures that FEH decided to make female for the game. So the gender imbalance is even more damning.

This is probably my biggest complaint.  I find excessive gender bending annoying, for Loki, it kinda makes sense, since he was a trickster shapeshifter in mythology, but for gods like Thor, it's just pandering.

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8 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

This is probably my biggest complaint.  I find excessive gender bending annoying, for Loki, it kinda makes sense, since he was a trickster shapeshifter in mythology, but for gods like Thor, it's just pandering.

I feel like book 5 is the most guilty of gender bending so far. I can ... kind of understand Thor along with Loki because it at least differentiates FE!Thor from a certain other famous Thor. Book 5, on the other hand, doesn't have that excuse and they gender flipped several mythological dudes without really doing the same for mythological females to compensate.

Dagr is apparently male in mythology. And with the Jotuns being a matriarchal people, would've been interesting to see a male Dagr being salty about how he's just as strong as his sister but being a dude means he doesn't have a shot at the throne. Heck, Reginn is also a dude in mythology and would've been a perfect excuse for us to finally get that male freebie. But nope, Reginn is the only one gender flipped and the only one we get at the start. Predictable.

Edited by Sunwoo
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Just now, Acacia Sgt said:

Eitri was another they genderbent, so once she gets added, that's even one more.

Yup, they sure did genderbent Eitri:

Spoiler

For those that don't know, the right is Eitri as depicted in Avengers: Infinity War.

But yeah to answer the topic, it really is the OCs that are to blame for our lack of male Mythics (also RIP Nemesis for getting denied).

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well i can't but agree, they should make AT LEAST ONE SINGLE male mythic unit

i'm still waiting for our first new book-inaugurating male free unit and Mythic Forseti, but knowing IS, they will most likely never happen

Edited by Yexin
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4 hours ago, Rezzy said:

I think this is mostly due to the OCs overwhelmingly being female, which I find somewhat annoying.  It seems you can count all the male OCs on one hand.

And the reason they do this is because they blow through their canon franchise females like crazy. The rosters of the franchise are less than half female, yet the rosters of banners are more than half female. If they were smart, they'd have counted the gender ratios of each game, but nope. Now we have games like Blazing Sword and SoV with very few women left to sell banners.

 

So they're going to keep introducing new seasonal themes to stall until they shut the game down, because God forbid they add the remaining male characters (or literally anyone from Tellius, cough).

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3 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

And the reason they do this is because they blow through their canon franchise females like crazy. The rosters of the franchise are less than half female, yet the rosters of banners are more than half female. If they were smart, they'd have counted the gender ratios of each game, but nope. Now we have games like Blazing Sword and SoV with very few women left to sell banners.

Despite their name, IS is not an intelligent company. There is no other reason why they'd do dumb shit like making Linhardt a shitty staff demote on the latest 3H banner instead of just sticking a less popular male character as the demote, like Ignatz or Raphael. Or making Melady so meh when she was headliner material. When IS adds characters they seem to burn through all the popular ones or "the most popular of the remaining ones" really fast, which just digs them further into the hole of "so we only have not-so-popular characters left".

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3 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

And the reason they do this is because they blow through their canon franchise females like crazy. The rosters of the franchise are less than half female, yet the rosters of banners are more than half female. If they were smart, they'd have counted the gender ratios of each game, but nope. Now we have games like Blazing Sword and SoV with very few women left to sell banners.

 

So they're going to keep introducing new seasonal themes to stall until they shut the game down, because God forbid they add the remaining male characters (or literally anyone from Tellius, cough).

They should really cut back on the seasonal banners, but they're really hellbent on having one every single month, so 50% of our banners are "special" banners, which makes them not really special anymore.  Then you have the things like CYL and Fallen Heroes, which take up slots that could otherwise go to adding actual new units.

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I am somewhat sympathetic to this complaint, but I honestly feel like some of this is just the pendulum swinging the other way for how bad the series was about this in the other direction pre-Awakening. Like just for a random example off the top of my head, remember how PoR went 4/4 on the laguz rulers being men? (To say nothing of the broader cast which was something like a 3:1 to 4:1 ratio depending on who you count.)

I'm reminded of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's comments on the gender distribution of the Supreme Court.

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Interesting tidbit about the Laguz rulers, considering by RD's end you have all Beorc rulers being women (Elincia, Micaiah, Sanaki) as a counterbalance, and the Laguz rulers are still men (Kurthnaga succeeding Deghinsea, Skrimir set to succeed Caineghis, and the unified Bird nation it was Tibarn who took leadership, no?). I don't count Nailah since she's not a Tellius ruler per se. If not we can counter it with Stefan's eventual country, and as a Branded he's more Beorc than Laguz more or less.

Edited by Acacia Sgt
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14 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Now we have games like Blazing Sword and SoV with very few women left to sell banners.

If we ignore the Valentian versions of Palla and Est, as well as the 3 Cipher women who were added as DLC, Tatiana is the only playable woman from SoV to not join the Heroes line up (at the time of typing this).  It might be why there hasn't been a banner for that game in a while.

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28 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I am somewhat sympathetic to this complaint, but I honestly feel like some of this is just the pendulum swinging the other way for how bad the series was about this in the other direction pre-Awakening. Like just for a random example off the top of my head, remember how PoR went 4/4 on the laguz rulers being men? (To say nothing of the broader cast which was something like a 3:1 to 4:1 ratio depending on who you count.)

I'm reminded of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's comments on the gender distribution of the Supreme Court.

I mean

Sure, FE takes place in a fantasy world with magic and dragons and divinity, but it's still a story about war. The universes of the earlier games are also explicitly more sexist and it's not until Tellius that we really have more egalitarian societies (at least in regards to gender). Unless the story cares to explain why in this world women are better suited for war or more accepted as soldiers (which none of them really do) it makes sense why the previous games had a majority male cast. Because it's a war game.

On the contrary, I find the forced gender balance-ness of Awakening, Fates, and 3H more annoying. It's not that I mind having more female characters, it's more that I feel like they only did it to give an approximately "equal" amount of straight (child-producing in the former two) pairings and more options for player marriage rather than happening naturally.

Edited by Sunwoo
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I'm all for appropriate gender representation.  And by that, I mean that I want characters who are female, emphasis on character.  So far, the OCs aren't my idea of strong characters (the last OCs that I liked were Ylgr/Helbindi), and the fact that they're all girls gives the illusion that IS is trying to patch the gender imbalance in the most superficial way possible.

And Mythics?  They're going to have to drop Medeus eventually.  I hope he's irritating.

Edited by eclipse
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I'm pretty sure IS doesn't care about the gender ratio, or at least not about making it 50/50. And while I'm sure we will get more male mythics in the future, some non-OC names that often get thrown around I have doubts about ever showing up. IS doesn't seem too content to dive into lore where only hardcore fans of the older games will recognize the names (Altina was a special exception; she had more to work with to begin with, already had a Cipher card, and is a pretty lady). Books 4 and 5 each adding 6+ OCs means they can fill a lot of mythic slots with them and only add 2-3 main series mythics per year. And of course, new FE games will come and bring their (probably female) mythics as higher priorities.

How do I feel about it? Well, the gender ratio specifically, as it stands, doesn't bother me. But when they announced mythics and described what they should be I was pretty excited to see lore characters get some real spotlight, and at first that seemed to be happening at least a bit, but, uh...yeah.

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1 hour ago, Sunwoo said:

I mean

Sure, FE takes place in a fantasy world with magic and dragons and divinity, but it's still a story about war. The universes of the earlier games are also explicitly more sexist and it's not until Tellius that we really have more egalitarian societies (at least in regards to gender). Unless the story cares to explain why in this world women are better suited for war or more accepted as soldiers (which none of them really do) it makes sense why the previous games had a majority male cast. Because it's a war game.

On the contrary, I find the forced gender balance-ness of Awakening, Fates, and 3H more annoying. It's not that I mind having more female characters, it's more that I feel like they only did it to give an approximately "equal" amount of straight (child-producing in the former two) pairings and more options for player marriage rather than happening naturally.

As you say, FE takes place in a fantasy world which is free to re-write the rules as it sees fit. The number of female soldiers is entirely within the purview of game devs - the culture and biology of the world of Fire Emblem is up to them. And of course, even in those early FEs, there were certainly female playable characters... just fewer than men. One could argue if the devs truly wanted a realistic take on medieval warfare (but with dragons), they'd have made the playable cast entirely or almost entirely male. They didn't. Why? Because the female representation in early FE games was exactly what the devs chose it to be, no more and no less.

We got game after game where the protagonist was male, where most important characters were male, where most important figures in the world were male. Each of these was a choice by the game designers. When people (like me) complained about this on message boards much like this one, we were told: too bad, this is what the players want and/or what sells.

Well, now what players want and/or what sells is different.

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58 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

As you say, FE takes place in a fantasy world which is free to re-write the rules as it sees fit. The number of female soldiers is entirely within the purview of game devs - the culture and biology of the world of Fire Emblem is up to them. And of course, even in those early FEs, there were certainly female playable characters... just fewer than men. One could argue if the devs truly wanted a realistic take on medieval warfare (but with dragons), they'd have made the playable cast entirely or almost entirely male. They didn't. Why? Because the female representation in early FE games was exactly what the devs chose it to be, no more and no less.

But this is why your argument about "this is just the pendulum swinging the other way" doesn't make sense. IS decided that they wanted a world that wasn't too grounded in reality, but still couldn't bring themselves to completely divorce their biases on what society is ultimately "like", which is why previous casts (and even Awakening, Fates, and 3H) had more men than women. They had the freedom to create new cultures with new rules, yet stuck with the primarily male-dominated society that they were used to and probably believed should be the "norm". They could've certainly been more creative with the laguz, which are based on animals and definitely do not have the same biology or society as humans do, but still lacked the creativity to give us laguz queens besides Nailah, who appears only in the sequel.

There is no pendulum to swing the other way because the cast of a game has to make sense with its world. If a world happens to justify a larger cast of female characters than male characters (like the Heroes giants being matriarchal), it's not an imaginary pendulum bringing "balance" to the gender balance of the cast of FE as a whole, it's what makes sense for the story they're trying to tell. Aside from giant society being matriarchal, Heroes just has more female OCs to sell waifus.

58 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

We got game after game where the protagonist was male, where most important characters were male, where most important figures in the world were male. Each of these was a choice by the game designers. When people (like me) complained about this on message boards much like this one, we were told: too bad, this is what the players want and/or what sells.

Well, now what players want and/or what sells is different.

Also, you're kind of wrong in that final regard. "What sells" hasn't really changed that much. The most important characters are still male, for the most part. Even Heroes, for all of its women, has this pitfall. Because guess which established OC is still the "main character" and gets all the development. It's Alfonse. The game has long since stopped caring that Sharena was introduced as a co-lord alongside Alfonse or that Anna exists. Alfonse is the star of the show. Heck, of all the other OCs we've gotten the only one who has been intertwined with the plot and really given a lot of the spotlight as an independent agent is Lif. Who happens to be a dude. And is an older, AU Alfonse. It's almost like all the female OCs we've gotten are kind of just window dressing in the end.

Ultimately, that is my main issue with Heroes. It's not exactly that there are a lot of female OCs or that they put in too many female characters. It's because I'm cynical about their treatment of female characters and justified in doing so. The female OCs are not there to appeal to female players or to tell a story from a female perspective or anything like that. They exist solely so that straight male money dispensers will make IS rich, and IS has figured out that they don't need to be deep or even interesting for people to throw money at them. And sure, it sells and IS is a business first and foremost. But let's not pretend that IS is making more female characters out of some "progressiveness" or whatnot. Like most companies, they don't give a shit about progressiveness, they've just figured out that waifus sell regardless of character.

And the female audience is very much allowed to dislike this trend because these female OCs aren't really for us. They're still made for men and it's frustrating to see so many of the female characters be poorly written or underutilized, and straight women get far less "eye candy" then the straight guys do since there are far less male characters and apparently not all of them are guaranteed to be playable. Sure, it's marketing and business, but we're still allowed to complain. During its first year, Heroes didn't give off the impression of being a gacha for the straight male crowd, it was presented as a gacha for FE fans, which is why I'm still complaining because it started off as something that I was part of the target audience for, and then abruptly switched while still holding several of my favorites back. I'll probably stop complaining so much once the characters I want are added in since I'll care far less about what they do afterwards.

Edited by Sunwoo
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5 hours ago, Dandy Druid said:

I'm blaming the OCs, which are overwhelmingly female.

We also have the ancient heroes of each game, like Anri, Artemis, 12 Crusaders, etc. They have plenty more female hereoes where that came from.

Anri I could see at some point, but Artemis is just too minor. Like sure she has some artwork in Shadow Dragon, or rather there's a female figure near Anri that's probably Artemis, but it's just too limited for me to really see getting into Heroes. Everything from her weapons to her personality to even the bulk of her design would be original. It'd basically be the name and that's it (this goes for Iote and that thief guy who founded Archanea too). The 12 Crusaders have more going for them with at least having usable weapons, but their artwork wasn't even featured in the game and none of them really carve out a niche large enough in the backstory that elevates them above the others. Granted that's true for Altina vs Soan too, but I expect we will see Soan some day, if only because we need more armoured beasts. Even though we're back to the no artwork issue, I would actually prefer to see Galle as a Genealogy Mythic, showing us what Loptyr was like at the height of his power (and actually giving us a decent Loptyr unis as Julius was underwhelming even in his debut). Outside of your mentioned examples, the Elibe legendary characters have a bit more going for them as, aside from us already getting Braimmond and Athos being an outright palyable character, Roland, Durban and Elimine all show up in the games in some form. So with 2/8 of them likely to be playable and 5/8 of them having something resembling characters and artwork to draw from, finishing off the last 3 isn't too difficult, especially when one of them is Hartmut, the most important of the group.

5 hours ago, Rezzy said:

This is probably my biggest complaint.  I find excessive gender bending annoying, for Loki, it kinda makes sense, since he was a trickster shapeshifter in mythology, but for gods like Thor, it's just pandering.

Well Thor did a wear a dress that one time. So maybe Heroes Thor is male. Would certainly be a twist XD

3 hours ago, Rezzy said:

They should really cut back on the seasonal banners, but they're really hellbent on having one every single month, so 50% of our banners are "special" banners, which makes them not really special anymore.  Then you have the things like CYL and Fallen Heroes, which take up slots that could otherwise go to adding actual new units.

Well we have gotten one new character from CYL, that being the Gatekeeper. Though I can understand someone having a be careful what you wish for attitude to that. Overall though given CYL is a popularity contest and they're going to put the most popular character in the game first, outside of any meme victors, we are unlikely to see new heroes from CYL. Fallen Heroes could be used to introduce some new characters though. Morva I think being the prime example, as he works better as a fallen hero than a regular hero given what limited content he has to work with in his own game. Marla and Hestia likewise I think could work as Fallen Heroes while struggling to get in as regular Heroes. So there are choices out there (Sumeragi and Arete to name another two, hell Hardin got in as a Fallen Hero and we're still waiting for his regular self), but it's hardly surprising they're going to go for the more popular characters that are already in the game first.

3 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

Despite their name, IS is not an intelligent company. There is no other reason why they'd do dumb shit like making Linhardt a shitty staff demote on the latest 3H banner instead of just sticking a less popular male character as the demote, like Ignatz or Raphael. Or making Melady so meh when she was headliner material. When IS adds characters they seem to burn through all the popular ones or "the most popular of the remaining ones" really fast, which just digs them further into the hole of "so we only have not-so-popular characters left".

Demoting Linhardt wasn't the wrong move. Make him utterly useless was the wrong move. If they've even introduced him with a new skill like Heal+5 to reference his crest, then at least he'd have some use as inheritance fodder. With prf staffs finally becoming time, we're well past the time where Wrathful Staff and Dazzling Staff should be considered premium skills. If they'd given Linhardt one of those two as a demote then people would have loved him.

3 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I am somewhat sympathetic to this complaint, but I honestly feel like some of this is just the pendulum swinging the other way for how bad the series was about this in the other direction pre-Awakening. Like just for a random example off the top of my head, remember how PoR went 4/4 on the laguz rulers being men? (To say nothing of the broader cast which was something like a 3:1 to 4:1 ratio depending on who you count.)

I'm reminded of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's comments on the gender distribution of the Supreme Court.

Aside from the comments about it making a bit more sense to have a higher ratio of men cause war and all that, it's obvious it's not a sense of egalitarianism that's driving them. It's really softcore porn. If they actually cared about equality and representation, we'd have Niime now along with a bunch other older and less conventionally attractive characters. But *shrug* that be capitalism for you.

Edited by Jotari
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