I would miss you, even if I had never met you

What I find fascinating about a particular YouTube video I just watched about Genshin's latest character designs is how much one can lean on being "I am not right nor wrong but since likes and dislikes are subjective here's why I am gonna defend why I like it". Which sure, when it comes to pineapple in pizza is okay, but when it comes to how genshin came up with Natlan designs it wasn't a risk taken for the sake of freshness and innovation, but born out of trying to get hi3 og players as target audience back from wuwa and similar games, games that screamed "hey, we noticed that genshin gave you too many males in Sumeru and Fontaine, and couldn't even give you a busty goddess for the region, so why don't you come to my game where male characters are an afterthought and I have all the female characters with body paint instead of bras?". With that in mind, Genshin came up with the perfect solution: and their solution was a goddess with a coochie zipper on a motorbike, a skater/dj/cat girl with long painted nails who is a blacksmith for no reason, and a woman who is wearing just one pant leg while she rides a floating gun.

Yes, I know some people who don't find women physically attractive aren't bothered by models appealing to said demographic, but let's be honest here: that's not the demographic they are pandering to when they come up with those designs. We know it, you know it, let's stop pretending it is.

The greater discussion to be had is why women and non-binary people can "look over" these particular design traits that are not made for them, but a lot of men cannot. Why "designs can be whatever they want" only applies when it comes to more revealing clothes for female designs but not to the flexibility of the other spectrum: if clothes are inconsequential, really truly "not that important" or "not that deep" then why cannot female characters stop having heels or exposed smooth armpits or are increasingly more likely to show they underwear or lack of it with each passing region? Why can't the new region's npc female soldiers wear trousers in the cold winter and instead are wearing booty shorts and thigh high socks, while the male soldiers are covered from head to toe?

I have seen people say "it's a fantasy game so female characters can wear heels while in the desert/wear a coochie flap in the winter it doesn't have to be realistic!" And in the same paragraph say that it would be unrealistic to add more body types bc then "genshin would have to make those characters stop running every 2 yards to catch their breath bc they are fat hehehe".

But we know why they do it, that one right there is their demographic, that is the target audience.

And there are the people who point it out in many varieties of methods, because that doesn't sit right. And there are people who see it and say "this is a game, just a game, I just want a break and if I hear them point out everything that is wrong it will take away this little piece of comfort I have from the cruel real life realities of the world"... While they spend another dollar on the same game reinforcing the same real life issue they dislike, and even then, making a YouTube video justifying how "it's not that deep" and "they have creative liberty to do whatever they want".

"It's not that deep" is a cool, catchy phrase to justify liking chocolate or vanilla ice cream, when one picks fluffy socks instead of plain old white ones, but not when it is used to blind oneself to what is blatantly a sign of a systemic problem that keeps popping over and over again everywhere we look.

"It is what it is, if you hate it so much, go play something else and stop complaining!" Is a common phrase I find every time someone points out the obvious on genshin, and for that matter in any other game, and I know it is a fundamental teaching in some particular countries, which turns anyone that doesn't love every single thing in something into an actual hater who wants to take the whole thing down.

But that is *defeatist* talk and my family didn't raise me like that