quote:
Originally posted by Darc:
I generally prefer slightly older looking characters, perhaps in their late teens/twenties. I find "mature" characters more attractive, as well as more engaging and complex but I do wish they wouldn't endow them all with blimp-sized breasts. It's almost as if the artists feel the need to inform us of her age by not-so subtlely enlarging her chest by about three times the size of the other characters (whose are usually already pretty huge, so you see the problem).That said, Chain was heaven [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]
Indeed. Darc took the words right out of my mouth on this one, except that the occasional outrageous-busted chick doesn't really bother me as long as the character is rendered beautifully. [I've always thought breast shape was far more important than size whether big or small, and for me that goes for real life as well as art. About the only thing that turns me off are the extremes of comically enormous breasts on the one hand, or boy-flat nonexistent breasts on the other.]
Put me squarely in the Adult (18 - 35) category, though the occasional character +/- 5 years outside of that range is good for variety.
But bottom line for me: The best characters are those written (story-wise) and drawn so well that they seem timeless - where the character's age is only a dim, subconscious detail you never really think about.
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On the other spirited debate on this thread, the attraction to underage girls is something I'm not likely to understand because I'm repulsed by the idea in a sexual context. At the same time it's important to acknowledge that everybody has the right to his own tastes (assuming of course we're talking about fiction and not real life,) and that those tastes aren't necessarily going to jibe with one's own.
What really annoys me is the fact that people who produce artwork depicting underage erotica, are treated under law the same as people who actually use real underage kids to produce underage porn. To my mind it is irrational and unjust for any kind of artwork, regardless of how perverse, to be treated as the legal equivalent of actually molesting children to produce porn in real life. It not only tramples on the freedom of expression, it marginalizes the seriousness of the actual crime of molesting children (which must occur as a matter of course in the process of producing kiddie-porn.) Ink on paper is not flesh and blood.
It's the old issue of the law's proper limit being the case of someone's actually harming someone else in a tangible way. A bishoujo forum may be a weird place to put a Jefferson quote, but...the man said: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others."
I agree. Real life kiddie porn is evil because a kid actually has to be made to perform sexual acts in order for the photos to be taken. But if someone sits down at a drafting table and draws a picture of underaged sex with ink on paper, exactly who has been injured? Nobody. People concerned with the state of culture and with the problem of child molestation might argue that "society is being injured" or some such language, but that's a debate beside the point. Law is force, and unless someone has suffered tangible harm, the law should (must, in Jefferson's view,) butt out.
We clearly have a long way to go before our laws are pulled out of the muck of irrationality. If I can make a plug I'd advise concerned people to write their elected officials demanding that the no-brainer distinction between reality and artifice be finally recognized under law, and that the right of people to create whatever images or words or statues or whatever, be restored unconditionally.
But I'm soapboxing again - sorry.
[This message has been edited by ZaphodB.Goode (edited 01-11-2005).]