Cheesecake (noun)

1. A pie made of sweetened and flavoured cottage cheese or cream cheese, eggs and milk on a crunchy base.
2. Imagery of one or more scantily clad, sexually attractive persons, especially young women; pin-ups.

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Often in the course of our diversity discussions at the Jedi Council Forums, people will object to what they see as an attack on the phenomenon of male heterosexuality. If people complain about the objectification of female characters (or all too often, characters who exist solely to be objectified), that’s taken as implying that there’s something wrong with finding a given type of imagery sexy, and that men should feel bad about it.

Of course, this isn’t the case—and complaints of that nature generally fall into the category known as “Not All Men” objections, in which people ignore the precise substance of a complaint and choose to argue against gross overstatements instead. But I’ve seen this particular flavor of debate come up enough at this point that I thought it would be helpful to demarcate what exactly can be considered, essentially, “good sexy” and “bad sexy”. » Read more..

Art is subjective.

Let’s get that out of the way, right up front. If you disagree with the perspectives expressed in this piece, I don’t think you’re a bad person. Misguided, perhaps, or even narrow-minded, but still, you’re entitled to like what you like for whatever reasons you choose to like it, and I’m equally entitled to roll my eyes at you.

Which is why I’m frequently exasperated when the Star Wars art of, say, Chris Trevas is regarded as being inherently good, and the art of, say, Scott Hepburn as inherently bad.

Trevas is an excellent artist, in my opinion—as is Tsuyoshi Nagano, the prolific Japanese artist whose name almost never comes up but whose work is goddamned everywhere. Outside of Star Wars, artists like Gabriele Dell’Otto and Greg Land are met with similar near-universal praise. All four artists are seen as exemplars of realism; of producing art that the viewer can almost believe is what a given scene or character would “really” look like. Exactly how well each of them pulls this off is again, subjective, *coughpornfacecough* but that’s fundamentally their shtick—it’s what lands a job in their inboxes instead of someone else’s.
» Read more..