Got in another internet fight.

[mcity]

JRPG fan says that people denigrate JRPGs for featuring androgynous prettyboys "if any character even vaguely resembles any other character who has ever existed.", while they themselves fawn over shooters "in which the main character is Unshaven Snarky Muscley Thirty-something White Dude with a Past #172."

I just quoted the two bits and added "Um.", so the person who made the post just responded "Shooters." Apparently, it's okay, because they're more specific in their generalizing.

Also, from person #2, a new challenger.

To display the hypocrisy of an argument, it is good to sho0w why it is hypocritic. In this case, if people keep complaining about the sameness of RPG characters, yet praise shooters (who also have the exact same "issue", if not stronger than RPGs do) then hypocrisy is pretty blatantly there.

MCity: It's kind of hard to say RPGs don't have an overabundance of androgynous prettyboys. I do note, however, that Cloud Strife has become the posterboy for such, when the androgyny didn't set in until Advent Children. In FFVII proper, he was pretty masculine.

That said, more shooters feature Generic Military Protagonists than Snarky Unshaven Guy. Gears Of War, for instance, seems to have deliberately gone with the 80s/90s hypertrophic tough guy in grim-n-gritty backs-to-the-wall all-hope-is-lost universe where assault rifles have chainsaws on them. Very few people seemed to realize it wasn't exactly being played seriously.

person 2:
hypertrophic tough guy Snarky Unshaven Guy.

I think this really is the issue here. To me, these types sound pretty similar, actually. You'll say they're very different, and I'll believe that you see it that way, even though I can't imagine them to be noticeably different.

The same difference claim can be said for various types of these supposed "androgynous prettyboys" (whatever that even means: I wasn't aware that not being hypermasculine/having more than a buzzcut for hair was being androgynous, for example), too, though. People who dislike RPGs just don't tend to bother.

And then turn around and claim that similar types of guys in shooters are totally different.

It's all in how you look at it. You can always make up additional categories for the stuff you like, and pretend no categories exist for the stuff you don't.

In other words, her subjective opinion is more valid than the subjective opinion of others. Also, she can't see any real difference between this guy and this guy, and then complains about others generalizing, and then goes with ye olde passive-aggressive "don't tell me-" after presenting ye olde facade of reasonableness and respecting the opinions of others earlier.

Fangirls. Gotta love them.