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WridianGrey In reply to JulesFM [2018-05-31 10:39:33 +0000 UTC]

I agree that it's nice how her head doesn't have the disproportionate feel that tends to plague pics of Samus with her helmet off. The only downside is that if she did put her helmet on here, it'd have to be a good deal bigger than in the official art, and as such probably not look as cool. Though Samus is far from the only character to require design liberties to avoid "oversized helmet head," seems like that goes for all fully armored characters. Just saying that there really seems to be no single set of proportions possible for Samus that isn't either weird when you imagine what her body would have to look like under suit, or has head size issues when the helmet is removed. Which is to say, either the helmet looks right but her head is tiny, or her head looks right but then the helmet's too big.

But, with all that said, this is one character that actually kinda has a solution for those problems - maybe her suit actually really does deform her body when it's on. It's kind of a stretch, but I base the idea on the existence of the Morph Ball. Simply put, there's really no good explanation for how her body fits in there or how the suit itself becomes perfectly round except for some crazy sci-fi-magic-tech matter distortion as I see it. And those in-game Space Pirate logs about how all attempts to copy it just crush and mangle the test subject to death support that. So if the suit can scrunch here entire body into a little ball safely, then much more minor shrinking and stretching her proportions between her default body shape and her in-suit body shape would be no big deal at all. Thus, it's not artistic liberty you shouldn't take literally, but is an actual in-story power.

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JulesFM In reply to WridianGrey [2018-06-03 19:36:36 +0000 UTC]

Yes, there are plenty of ways to justify the weird shape difference. I do not care much, though. Not everything needs to be explained, and people accept a lot of things in fiction without a question. It's like a lot of Superman's powers, for example: if you try to explain too much, the wonder kind of fades, or it becomes just plain boring. In Samus' case, for me, I just do not feel satisfied with how she is portraied today without her power suit. It's not only the visual difference, wihich is big, and makes seem like the suit and off-suit Samus are not even the same character, but all of her Zero Suit design. She simply does not not look like a warrior, a badass bounty hunter, from her physique down to her hair. I'm not saying she should not be sexy, by all means, seeing her out of her suit has been a prize for the player since the very first game, but they made her look like some frail japanese very young suimsuit model with blonde hair. It is just too much of a contrast. Even the weird arm/shoulder width would maybe come unoticed if she was made more like Wonder Woman: a big, very strong and athletic, but also very sexy woman. This is pretty close to how she was postraied in the early games, like Super Metroid and Metroid II. Even in Fusion they kept some consistency. But since Brawl made the Zero Mission design widespread, it has become some kind of settled tradition now.

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WridianGrey In reply to JulesFM [2018-06-04 10:45:18 +0000 UTC]

First off, for a little side-track regarding your initial statement, I'd argue that ideally everything should be explained, even in fiction. Fiction can do whatever it wants, but once it sets its own rules, it should follow them. Otherwise you're looking at a slippery slope that ends in stories doing anything they want at any time, and the appeal of random absurdism is pretty limited. With that said though, sometimes a fictional setting will have a detail that just has no good, internally consistent explanation whatsoever, but getting rid of it creates more problems than a mere lack of explanation. (Or it's simply a cool thing you'd miss.) In such cases, a non-explanation still isn't perfect, but it's tolerable as the least bad option. Still, an actual explanation is even better, which is why I like the Morph Ball functionality idea. It allows for optimal aesthetics in all cases and fits into established story rules.

With all that said though, I do kind of share your dislike for Fusion/Zero-suit Samus. Not that I dislike that she looks pretty dang hot that way, it's just... generic. Samus in the Power Suit and its variants is much more unique among the grand scheme of all characters both conceptually and visually. Without the suit she's just another sexy female fighter, which has been done a million times. Samus without the Power Suit is just kinda missing the whole point of Samus as I see it. So seeing the blue body suit more and more dominate her overall image hasn't exactly been a welcome change, even if she is pretty easy on the eyes that way.

However, not liking the generic aspect of the new version is probably about as far as we can get on the same page. As for her not seeming to have a warrior build, I can easily see that as an aspect of her Chozo upbringing DNA. They were supposed to be pretty big deals and they were very lanky and skinny based on what little of them has been shown in statues and whatnot. So here I go with my explanations again, but I figure her Chozo influence makes here stronger/faster/etc than her build would imply by normal human standards. Still, if it were up to me, I would make her a bit more muscular than she tends to look in the latest official depictions. Like, take the modern version about halfway to the Super Metroid physique. Because yeah, she does pretty much look like a generic swimsuit model without even a hint of "tough" as she currently is depicted. Still, I certainly wouldn't want to widen her shoulders "for real," so to speak, her shoulder-to-hip ratio in the suit would not be sexy in the least outside of it. I sure can't think of any depictions of Wonder Woman that had shoulders that relatively wide either. (Though to be clear, I'm primarily focusing on skeletal width, adding width via more muscle to the shoulders isn't as much of a problem. But Samus' standard suit proportions seem to imply a very broad skeletal frame regardless of muscles.)

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JulesFM In reply to WridianGrey [2018-07-13 02:40:20 +0000 UTC]

Anything can be looked as a slippery slope, to any direction. "Too little of this can lead to X. Too much of it can lead to Y." This kind of thinking only lays out general possibilities, and doesn't really tell which one is more or less probable, nor helps to describe what actually happens. Of course that a minimum level of internal coherence must exist in a work of fiction, otherwise the suspension of disbelief would be broken, or might not even come to be formed, but you can have many different degrees of detailed, explicit layout of such fictional setting rules. You can have from just a simple short story without any form of worldbuilding, as Poe's works, to Tolkien like fantasy or Star Trek science fiction level of deep exploring of internal structure. One is not better than the other inherently, it depends on what is the purpose of the work. If the author is writing a novel that happens on the real world, he only needs to explain what is directly related to the plot, the characters, or the general message his work is trying to say. Fantasy and science fiction need more explicit setting of internal rules just for the general context and background alone, yes, but there's always a point where the explation is unnecessary, for any type of work. No one needs to know exactly how Superman's cells turn solar energy into heat vision, or how Achilles was invulnerable, to accept and apreciate their stories. When said detail or inconsistency is not important enough to risk the coherence of the work, it may be cool to adress it and give it a reason, and it might also just draw the attention of the public to something problematic that was ignored until the moment, crippling the work instead of solving the problem. Explaining is not always the better thing to do. Sometimes, it is done just for fun, just because it is cool to know how a lightsaber works, which always is a luxury, so to speak. Too much of it can become a huge distraction from the center of the experience, be it the plot of a narrative or the gameplay of a videogame. In Samus' case, her armor looks disproportionate because it is aesthetically better for its purpose: to look cool, intimidating, and alien. And gender ambiguous for the most part. If it does that in the end, it's what matters the most, and it comes down more to personal preference wether or not it badly needs a stated, in universe, reason. Many visual media characters have odd proportions just because of the aesthetics, and aesthetics are not trivial. They are also a narrative tool. The Joker's face is the way it is to tell something about his character just by looking at him. In some continuities he is not even stated to be disfigured. The Penguin also is not always stated to be born deformed, just a chubby guy with a pointy nose in a smoking suit. Their looks themselves are more important than the fictional reason behind them.

This leads to the next point, of wether Samus' Chozo DNA backs up the frail, too ordinary looking physique of hers. The point is her physique tells something about her character. If she is said to be one of, if not the fiercest bounty hunter in the galaxy, capable of wiping out entire planets alone, defeat monster after monster of the likes of Mother Brain and Ridley, and being genetically modified on top of it all, but doesn't look very much like it, it weakens these traits of the character. It seems forced, like we are told to believe that despite of what we actually see. Oh right, some characters pull this trope, of the unassuming powerhouse, but it is not the case here. Samus is not some Omega level mutant with mental or energy based powers unrelated to physical condition. Colossus is super strong, as the Hulk, and they show it even if their strength is not a normal effect of muscle size. They show it because it would not be very harmonical to portray them without a muscled physique, making their superpowers less believable. The Flash is super fast for entire fictional reasons, and still he is not buff or fat, but lean. It's the same thing with Samus. If she does what she does, even with powers, her lifestyle would demand a lot of her body nonetheless. And it is not only about how to harmonically portray a character's powers, but his or her personality as well. If she looks like a model, it tells, even if only implicitly, that she is more like a vain girl than like a warrior, and so it gives conflicting signals about her in the end. What should we believe in, the textbook backstory, in how she acts as we play as her inside the suit, or in how she looks outside of it? You are right, generic sexy fighter is not what her character is about, and vain girl who kicks ass also is not. I just don't think her alien genes shrug off that easily this kind of visual contradiction.

As to the Wonder Woman vs Swuimsuit Model figure, I didn't mean to say that Wonder Woman's shoulders were that wide, but they are generaly a bit wider than those of any normal woman, without looking un-feminine, and that kind of artistic proportion might seem less contrasting to the armor. We don't disagree much on how she should look. I would leave the armor as it is, and only narrow the contrast with a more amazonian/Super Metroid figured Samus. At least her height should be roughly the same as the armor's, unlike in Other M, where she gains an entire head inside the suit, like those size changing transformers.

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WridianGrey In reply to JulesFM [2018-08-02 11:04:50 +0000 UTC]

First things first, even if I don't necessarily agree with everything you said, I very much appreciate your in-depth, reasoned reply. I still don't fall on the same point of the sliding scale of what needs an in-story explanation that you do, but I respect your stance. Personally, I've never really worried too much about how precisely Superman's Kryptonian biology generates his super powers from our yellow sun either, and the magical dip in the river Styx was enough explanation for me regarding Achilles, but Samus's body deforming when she puts on the Power Suit isn't something I see as equally easy to overlook and/or unimportant. Samus's physical alterations seem like a stranger property than what Superman or Achilles has going on, because Superman is an alien species and Achilles was magically enhanced, whereas Samus is explicitly stated to be human. Kryptonians are pure fiction so they can do whatever, magic is also mysterious and unknown if it exists at all, but humans are real and we definitely don't have shape-shifting skeletons. Changing how real life elements of a story work deserves more explanation and acknowledgement than the fictional elements do, as I see it. So ignoring Samus's proportional alterations seems like a much steeper part of the ol' slippery slope than those other things to me. But again, that's simply my opinion on the matter, no more or less objectively valid than yours.

Continuing with opinions though, while I certainly see some validity in your point that a character's design should have some connection to what they do; that their visuals alone should communicate their story to some degree; I also believe that aesthetics, which is to say, making a character pleasing to the eye, matters most of all. So while I have no problem with Samus looking strong and deadly, in keeping with the relatively abstract traits of being an extremely effective warrior, her essential physical reality is that she is a human woman. As such, her key aesthetic foundation is being a human woman, and she should have an appeal on that basis first, than additional design details should reflect other character character specific. Or in other simpler words, looking hot takes precedence over looking tough if the two conflict. And, call me a sexist monster if you will, but a woman can only be so muscular before it starts working against them visually, and a proper shoulder-to-hips ratio is absolutely VITAL. (And in my defense, if Samus were a guy, I'd still expect her to be a handsome guy who was easy on the eyes first and foremost, but I will admit that my idea of a good looking man is more compatible with looking strong and deadly.)

With that said though, this isn't just a matter of differing opinions on design aesthetic priority. I'm not saying Samus is a physical slouch at all, or that she isn't physically superhuman, but I always took Samus's battle prowess as being far more about the Power Suit and her mental traits than her inherent or Chozo DNA boosted physical traits. I mean, no amount of muscle would contribute to her Power Beam functionality or surviving trudging through molten magma or space jumps, and raw strength hardly factors into her combat capabilities at all, unless I'm forgetting all those Space Pirates she punched to death. And In Zero Mission when she lost her suit entirely her capabilities weren't amazingly superhuman. So I don't really see her not looking like a powerhouse outside the suit as in any way conflicting with what she's known for doing: Murdering armies of space monsters with her iron will, quick thinking, and her super awesome power armor. Still, to be redundantly clear, I think she could and should be a little more muscularly built than modern official depictions portray. Doing so to the right extent wouldn't impact her attractiveness as I see it, and better communicate her bounty hunter warrior aspect, thus achieving the optimum potential combination of an aesthetically pleasing design and a character trait relevant design. And for one last point, I seriously never even remotely thought her generic modern swimsuit model figure ever made her seem vain or spoiled or weak or any of those things. I'll grant it isn't the toughest look around, but negative traits like those previously mentioned never even crossed my mind regarding the current design. Perhaps we have different underlying associations with that look that are contributing to our differing design opinions?

Ultimately I think we just have some different opinions here, and we probably will never agree entirely, but at least we definitely agree about one thing: Leaving the armor as it is. And considering that I assume we're in agreement that Samus in her Power Suit is the most important, character defining portrayal of all, we probably have more common ground than disagreement in the end, when weighed in practical terms. ...Well, unless some future Metroid game just goes 100% Zero Suit, but I doubt that'll happen.

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peter83 In reply to WridianGrey [2017-11-19 20:44:37 +0000 UTC]

Hah I just added it to get something behind of her. No deeper point in that

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peter83 In reply to xiestman [2017-07-26 14:01:17 +0000 UTC]

Sure

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xiestman In reply to peter83 [2017-07-27 20:17:54 +0000 UTC]

Thank you!
Here is the link: fandom-artworks.tumblr.com/pos…

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peter83 In reply to EnergyPhoenix [2017-07-24 18:30:19 +0000 UTC]

Hah.

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peter83 In reply to Arppis [2017-07-24 11:21:27 +0000 UTC]

Ty m8.

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peter83 In reply to Antsstyle [2017-07-24 11:21:20 +0000 UTC]

Thnx

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peter83 In reply to Allymewcat [2017-07-23 22:43:05 +0000 UTC]

Thanks

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