Jade's quest and her in-game model after the quest

[Khornelia]

1 hour ago, Yrkul said:

I would like to know your sources.

The two most documented examples of women on the battlefield are scandinavian shieldmaidens, and the japanese samurai-ko. The existence of shieldmaidens, while disputed, is documented in period literature, backed up by several archaeological finds. No mention, however, of heavily pregnant women on the battlefield. Samurai-ko on the other hand ar more widely documented, both in written and photographic form. And again, no mention of a pregnant samurai-ko strapped into her armour and carving out arching swathes of death with her naginata.

Ancient Rome had female gladiators, but that practice featured more mock combat, training spectacles and possibly... negotiable affection, rather than real fights.

So, I'm really curious where these numerous mentions of strong, heavily pregnant warrior women on the battlefield come from.

Well... A life long practice of martial arts, more than a decade of full contact viking/medieval combat training, and a long friendship with a Kali/FBS instructor gives me a bit of insight into the toll of prolonged combat on the body, as well as what happens when getting hit by axes, swords, knives and other objects typically found on the battlefield. I've also known a number of women who went through pregnancies, and have been told in colourful terms, the limitations it had on their daily lives.

I can tell you, from personal experience, that combat is extremely tiring, even in a semi-controlled environment, and you don't need a lot of force behind a blow, before you start leaking. So movement and endurance is key. Unfortunately, heavily pregnant women are carrying an extra load, which doesn't help with moving about, in any manner. On top of that, it gets really hard to breathe, when the little one is pushing on your diaphragm. And if you get jostled hard enough, jump around or suffer enough physical trauma, you lose the baby.

So, in a combat environment... Yes, a pregnant woman is very fragile, compared to a male opponent. And as it has been pointed out, men are wired to protect women, and even more so, if she's pregnant. That is why so many men balk at the thought of something that even just looks pregnant... ish fighting for her life. I know it fits in certain narratives to point at this reaction and go "muh oppression", but the fact of the matter is, those people retain the instinct to protect. If I was a woman, I would be more worried about men who didn't react that way.

Your "expertise" doesn't apply, warframes aren't human lol

Also not sure what that last paragraph of bio-essentialism has to do with anything.

[Khornelia]

I think it's honestly kinda gross how the first "special" male warframe, umbra, was sentient, while the first "special" female one is.. pregnant. Wow.

Not to mention how once again, the story was about a man with a woman just being there as motivation and her relationship to the man, just like New War. We've had how many extra playable characters now? 4 or 5? And all of them men... DE please! :(

Edited June 23 by Khornelia

[Gandalf_White]

I just want to join the crowd. I was excited for Jade, her ability kit is awesome, the quest was cool and beautiful, but once I crafted her...I just lost all my excitement. I really, really dislike her design as a playable frame. It was fine in the quest, it fit there, but a playable pregnant warframe is just not it... And even if she isn't pregnant, she still very much looks pregnant. It's triggering weird emotions inside me and I just don't even want to level her up to rank 30. It just feels weird to play as her, IDK. I just can't put my feelings into words. The design just disturbs me.

[Yrkul]

18 minutes ago, Khornelia said:

Your "expertise" doesn't apply, warframes aren't human lol

Also not sure what that last paragraph of bio-essentialism has to do with anything.

And I wasn't talking about it applying to warframes. I was pointing out why a lot of players seem to have a problem with an approximation of a pregnant woman thrown into combat. But that explaination doesn't fit, apparently.

[WanderingJoe]

49 minutes ago, Gandalf_White said:

I just want to join the crowd. I was excited for Jade, her ability kit is awesome, the quest was cool and beautiful, but once I crafted her...I just lost all my excitement. I really, really dislike her design as a playable frame. It was fine in the quest, it fit there, but a playable pregnant warframe is just not it... And even if she isn't pregnant, she still very much looks pregnant. It's triggering weird emotions inside me and I just don't even want to level her up to rank 30. It just feels weird to play as her, IDK. I just can't put my feelings into words. The design just disturbs me.

Same. I bought her because I wanted to support DE.... she sits in the back of my arsenal now. This is the longest ive gone from getting a new frame and putting a single level into them.

[ChaqueXR]

42 minutes ago, WanderingJoe said:

Same. I bought her because I wanted to support DE.... she sits in the back of my arsenal now. This is the longest ive gone from getting a new frame and putting a single level into them.

i am not motivated to play warframe right now due to my killed excitment as well..

[L3512]

3 hours ago, Yrkul said:

So, I'm really curious where these numerous mentions of strong, heavily pregnant warrior women on the battlefield come from.

Like a lot of modern sources, it's just lies.

[Circle_of_Psi]

10 hours ago, Khornelia said:

And all of them men... DE please! :(

Is that a problem?

[WanderingJoe]

23 hours ago, ChaqueXR said:

i am not motivated to play warframe right now due to my killed excitment as well..

You're not alone. She's just sitting in the back of my arsenal at level 0.

[Luigispikachu]

I love how the people (like me) who are uncomfortable with jade's playable design, were posting respectfully and voicing their concerns, and then the people who don't agree barge in here and their counterarguments are mostly bad faith and insults. Honestly out of pettyness I hope DE just completely removes the preggers aesthetic, purely because the bad faith arguments and insults want her to stay pregnant.

[Pneumanoultra]

4 hours ago, Luigispikachu said:

I love how the people (like me) who are uncomfortable with jade's playable design, were posting respectfully and voicing their concerns, and then the people who don't agree barge in here and their counterarguments are mostly bad faith and insults. Honestly out of pettyness I hope DE just completely removes the preggers aesthetic, purely because the bad faith arguments and insults want her to stay pregnant.

I expect we'll hear something about how they will respond at Tennocon. It'll be radio silence until then.

[Gandalf_White]

5 hours ago, Luigispikachu said:

I love how the people (like me) who are uncomfortable with jade's playable design, were posting respectfully and voicing their concerns, and then the people who don't agree barge in here and their counterarguments are mostly bad faith and insults. Honestly out of pettyness I hope DE just completely removes the preggers aesthetic, purely because the bad faith arguments and insults want her to stay pregnant.

The same happened with the Dante incident. At first people were reasoning with quite lengthy posts with tons of good, logical points being raised as to why that particular Dante nerf was not needed and nerfed the wrong areas of Dante. Then people who disagreed came, with the exact same behavior as seen here. The silence from DE team paired with these individuals caused people to lose temper and express the same behavior back at them, and then these people went on social media other than warframe forums and twisted the situation so people thought the average person who wants Dante nerfs reverted is a childish crybaby who only demands and provides zero constructive criticism.

Edited June 24 by Gandalf_White

[WanderingJoe]

Hold the line people.  Being civil is always the way to go if you don't want people to dismiss your side of the discussion out of hand. Keep speaking in good faith to your reasons behind why you feel Jade needs a change. I encourage anyone posting to support this topic to post as though you were appealing to DE. You have nothing to gain from trying to convince other people how you feel. You know how you feel and they can't gaslight or guilt you into feeling differently, they can only shame you into being silent. If you let them, that is.

Edited June 24 by WanderingJoe

[Pneumanoultra]

53 minutes ago, WanderingJoe said:

Hold the line people.  Being civil is always the way to go if you don't want people to dismiss your side of the discussion out of hand. Keep speaking in good faith to your reasons behind why you feel Jade needs a change. I encourage anyone posting to support this topic to post as though you were appealing to DE. You have nothing to gain from trying to convince other people how you feel. You know how you feel and they can't gaslight or guilt you into feeling differently, they can only shame you into being silent. If you let them, that is.

Seconded. Most arguments never have a winner. If you have a reason you'd like to see Jade's design changed, say it. If you have a reason you like her design the way it is, then say that too. This doesn't need to be a fight.

[(XBOX)AnnabelleNewell]

On 2024-06-22 at 2:30 PM, p_silveira said:

Even if you repeat it ad nauseum until you convince people of this (you probably won't, but you can try) most people don't care if the Jade we build is or isn't canonically pregnant, people are complaining because she looks very pregnant, and for varied reasons playing as a very pregnant frame feels off-putting to them.

Then thats a THEM problem. I personally am not squeamish over a fictional character looking pregnant.

There are others that don't care about it either. I don't see anyone crying about Grendel having a big belly though. Such a silly thing to be upset over.

[(XBOX)AnnabelleNewell]

On 2024-06-24 at 2:58 AM, Luigispikachu said:

I love how the people (like me) who are uncomfortable with jade's playable design, were posting respectfully and voicing their concerns, and then the people who don't agree barge in here and their counterarguments are mostly bad faith and insults. Honestly out of pettyness I hope DE just completely removes the preggers aesthetic, purely because the bad faith arguments and insults want her to stay pregnant.

Respectfully, if a pregnant frame repulses you, and you are pushing DE to change the design, you're no better than the people disagreeing with you.

[Luigispikachu]

 

1 minute ago, (XBOX)AnnabelleNewell said:

Respectfully, if a pregnant frame repulses you, and you are pushing DE to change the design, you're no better than the people disagreeing with you.

bruh. you didn't even read my message. don't pretend you're trying to have a good faith discussion if you aren't even going to read the other side.

Edited June 25 by Luigispikachu

[(XBOX)AnnabelleNewell]

On 2024-06-22 at 9:17 PM, L3512 said:

Like a lot of modern sources, it's just lies.

Might wanna actually do your research.

[WanderingJoe]

Saying that pregnant women aren't fragile, saying they have served in wars... Noone is saying these topics are untrue. the bad faith comes in to taking the personal choices of these strong women during times of desperation and strife as an excuse to say we need imagery of pregnant women in combat scenarios. That its strong and brave. No. it the women who choose to be there that are strong and brave. There were also plenty of women who made the choice to leave the battlefield for the safety of their unborn children. I think you trivialize the decisions these women had to make by using it as an excuse for why people should just shut up by saying we don't want to be forced to partake in pregnant imagery in this scifi combat videogame most of us use to relax and unwind without having to be confronted by internal questions of right and wrong. 

Noone here really believes the genie can be put back in the bottle with this one. Nor are we asking for this to be removed from the game because we recognize that some people like yourself Annabelle Newel, like the appearance she has. We're just saying that its not to us, and in the spirit of co-existance with the rest of the community's opinions, we're asking for it to be optional.

[SirKeksalot]

Does any of this fact-checking or attempting to rationalize the reasons for our opinions matter? Jade makes players feel a certain way. This is entirely about the emotional reactions people have to the Warframe, and that's never going to be justifiable by facts and logic. This hinges on whether or not a large body of players care about it and what they want, not the lore behind Jade's own large body, or what have you.

I like Jade for very personal reasons I stated in my own thread. The option to play a pregnant character helps address my dysphoria as a trans person. Other people have their own experiences that shape their take on Jade, and others still don't even have a concrete reason beyond just knowing what they feel about her. They don't need one any more than I do, and if there's a way to meet in the middle so everyone gets the Jade they want, then I see nothing wrong with that. Short of actual bigotry, any reason or opinion is a valid one as long as it's honest.

Edited June 26 by SirKeksalot

[WanderingJoe]

Oh hey Keksalot! I think I visited your thread. Welcome to the other side of the discussion. Happy to have you here.
 

[SirKeksalot]

35 minutes ago, WanderingJoe said:

Oh hey Keksalot! I think I visited your thread. Welcome to the other side of the discussion. Happy to have you here.
 

I appreciate the welcome. I chimed in here because, without pointing fingers, I feel like there's a lot of bad faith being thrown around and a lot of it seems to be coming from people who also like Jade, and I don't want this to just be a split between people who make an entirely fair complaint versus people who are, for whatever reason, against making the game less disconcerting for some at no cost to everyone else just because they don't have the same perspective. That's unfair and I don't get it when the people who don't like Jade aren't even calling for her removal, just a qol feature.

[Yrkul]

7 hours ago, (XBOX)AnnabelleNewell said:

Might wanna actually do your research.

Good! Now we got one out of a claimed multitude.

You might also want to do polish up on your own methodology. Your link was to an obviously biased source, linking to another biased source, linking to another biased source, which finally mentioned its references. Of these, only one was written by someone with journalism/historian training, one was a novel written by a pair of fiction writers, and one is obviously biased judging from the title alone. Again, modern sources written by people with their own baggage/bias/motives.

A wiki exists for Solitude, if anyone wants to go any further with that research. Just be aware, that a lot of... interpretation is going on in later years.

[L3512]

1 hour ago, Yrkul said:

Good! Now we got one out of a claimed multitude.

You might also want to do polish up on your own methodology. Your link was to an obviously biased source, linking to another biased source, linking to another biased source, which finally mentioned its references. Of these, only one was written by someone with journalism/historian training, one was a novel written by a pair of fiction writers, and one is obviously biased judging from the title alone. Again, modern sources written by people with their own baggage/bias/motives.

A wiki exists for Solitude, if anyone wants to go any further with that research. Just be aware, that a lot of... interpretation is going on in later years.

Thank you for your reply, even the historical sources are pretty bleak here.

"The only recorded mention of Solitude comes from Auguste Lacour in his book Historie de la Guadeloupe" (good job on the spelling of Histoire here lol.)

Issue here is that Histoire de la Guadeloupe is four volumes ranging from 1635 to 1869, now we are of course only interested in the third volume, 1798 to 1803 (found here, page 311) but the earliest published date I could find was 1858, Auguste Lacour himself being born three years after Solitude's execution, an interesting analysis as well as a better translation of the situation can be found here

Given that the rebellion ended at the end of May and Solitude was executed at the end of November we can say with some accuracy that she was around late 1st trimester, hardly heavily pregnant.

 

11 hours ago, (XBOX)AnnabelleNewell said:

Might wanna actually do your research.

You have not brought anything new to the discussion, just another example of those pesky modern sources lying again.

[Yrkul]

2 hours ago, L3512 said:

Given that the rebellion ended at the end of May and Solitude was executed at the end of November we can say with some accuracy that she was around late 1st trimester, hardly heavily pregnant.

Good find. I was wondering about how far she was during the fighting, but I have a lot of things on my plate already.

It might be worth writing a paper on the problem with historical revisionism/embellishment, using this as a case study. If we keep "adjusting" history to comply with current... sensibilities, we're moving into 1984 territory.

But again, good work following up on the sources.