90s Lara Croft, for instance, was a lot of things, but "sexual" wasn't really one of them. I mean, think about it: Did she ever express romantic or sexual desires of her own? Only vaguely at most, and this is extremely deliberate:
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If she was shown, say, making out with a dude, it would have made straight male players uncomfortable, both because they themselves don't want to make out with a dude, and because it interferes with the idea of Lara being THEIR fantasy, of her belonging to them in a sense.
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I mean, as recently as 2013 (!!!) there were big concerns about playable female characters being at all romantic or sexual with male NPCs because of how it might make some male players feel! https://www.engadget.com/2013/03/20/publishers-rejected-remember-me-because-of-female-lead/ …pic.twitter.com/eertd4u5zd
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Lara Croft being "sexual" in ways that felt rooted in what she wanted for HERSELF probably only would only have made the character way better and more interesting, but it was with great intention that these traits were avoided.
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Generally speaking most of us who advocate for better representations of women in games actually consider sexual identities & desires that serve to complicate & humanize those characters something we want to see a lot MORE of, not less. But sexualized definitely does not = sexual
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Tomb Raider 2 was pivotal for me. Maybe it’s because I was 17 when it came out, but I adored her. I adored that she was a bombshell. I loved that she didn’t have a love interest. I dressed as her that Halloween in NYC with cardboard and gaffer tape garter pistols and I loved it.
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Maybe I’m naive or maybe I don’t care what the purpose was to the developers. I don’t presume to know. But she was awesome to me because she was sex/y/ual/ized. Maybe I’m subjugating myself for being okay with the “male gaze” but I think it’s okay if you are authentic about it.
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