Female DOOM Monsters

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MetroidJunkie
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by MetroidJunkie »

One problem I've noticed with female versions of demons is they tend to be given human female characteristics like noticeably big breasts. Keep in mind that not every animal on the planet has human anatomy for its females, seems like half the time it's just for some twisted kind of fan-service. There are many other ways you could distinguish them like say removing the spikes on female imps or having female pinkies be not as muscular.
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Arctangent
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by Arctangent »

MetroidJunkie wrote:There are many other ways you could distinguish them like say removing the spikes on female imps or having female pinkies be not as muscular.
More likely, it'd be the other way around; the males would lack spikes and be smaller, or the females would have more spikes and be larger. While humans aren't the only creatures in nature to on average have smaller females than males ( and iirc, I don't think women actually have smaller muscles, it's just the way their fat is distributed that makes the muscles less efficient ) it's still far more common for females to be larger and more survivable. After all, a male in nearly all animals can just walk off and even die after the deed is done and that won't interfere with the reproduction progress; it's the female that has to lay the eggs or carry the child. Even cases where the male sticks around the guard the eggs or raise the children are uncommon, so most animals have evolved for the females to do most of the work and for the males to be basically walking sperm packets.

This is at its most literal with anglerfish, which have a male a fraction of the female's size with very little in the way of lifespan; in fact, his entire purpose is to find a mate, bite on, then digest pretty much every part of himself until he's just some gonads directly attached to his mate.
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SamVision
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by SamVision »

In most mammals the male tends to be bigger than the female.
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MetroidJunkie
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by MetroidJunkie »

SamVision wrote:In most mammals the male tends to be bigger than the female.
Yeah, Arctangent seems to be referring to things like insects or fish, while the Doom enemies seem to resemble mammals for the most part.
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SamVision
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by SamVision »

That reminds me: male and female.
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Devianteist
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by Devianteist »

It's really weird how that this thread, one that I figured would fall into obscurity quickly, has become fairly active. Heh.
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by Gez »

SamVision wrote:That reminds me: male and female.
Okay, so, why not:

Male:
Image

Female:
Image
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SamVision
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by SamVision »

What? No, it is the gnaars in Serious Sam. The female is larger and more dangerous than the male.
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Laggy
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by Laggy »

It's funny how all Gnaars in Serious Sam 2 were male and they were just harmless NPCs. Gnaars in serious sam 3, however, are all huge, vicious ladies.
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by Gez »

SamVision wrote:What? No, it is the gnaars in Serious Sam. The female is larger and more dangerous than the male.
Yes, I got that. I just used the same format for a real world animal.
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Blox
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by Blox »

The joke is that snails are freaky hermaphrodite beasties that have the strangest mating rituals.
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Tech-Mech
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by Tech-Mech »

This thread has supriseingly stayed mature and on topic. I should have more faith when entering new communities as this has provided me with a lot of good reference info.
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Devianteist
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by Devianteist »

I'll second that, Tech-Mech. I am still confused as to how this thread has remained active and so informative. I figured it would have gotten shunted aside pretty quickly as rambling.
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Amuscaria
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by Amuscaria »

As I person that's made attempts on female doom monsters, I guess I'll throw in my 2 cents about my rationale for the "female" [doom] demon/hellspawn.

Since we're debating on the idea of female demons in Doom, let's look at it from several perspectives such as biological, mythological and supernatural, surreal, and simple effective communication of the idea. Doom monsters tend to be a blend of all of these traits, with mostly flesh and bone monstrosities that are perversions of human anatomy. No single perspective accurately represents any monsters in doom.

We can conclude that doom demons are at least partially biological with some form or biochemistry that maintains their living state. They bleed, have organs, skeletons, and can be killed says at least this much. It is reasonable then to say maybe some form of biological reproduction occurs where some division of sex is present. In general, most of the non-flying Doom monsters are tetrapoidal, and mostly humanoid. In terrestrial tetrapods, the difference between male and female (sexual dimorphism) is determined by many factors, although follow some general trends. If a male must hold territory and/or a harem, it is usually much larger than the females. If the female must have many offspring, but also deal with caring for them, the females are larger. If both sexes share about the same responsibility, then they are usually the same size. If one of the sexes must attract the other, then they need to be flamboyant (usually the males). And if intra-species competition is necessary, then some form of such as horns or tusks will be present.

Given the large variety of demon 'species' in Doom, they need not all share the same mode of reproduction or sexual dimorphisms. Not to mention you need not have a sex at all if they are just sexless drones created biologically, but not intended to self-proliferate. Or they have have temporal sexes, where the demon starts out male or female, and turns into the other over a period of time, like many fish species. Or the demons are hermaphroditic. They can even be parthenogenetic, where you only have a female sex but they can reproduce on their own.

Doom demons can be said to supernatural, also. In that case, the male and female sex may not even apply. They may very well be creation in a supernatural way as physical servants of a greater will. They're conjured up and thus reproduction is moot. Demons might not even by able to self-proliferate in this case as they are expendable soldiers. So why give them extra functions that wastes energy? This can certainly be said of the Lost souls, as no gender would be realistic or believable as its just a flying flaming skull.

Several doom monsters are surreal, namely the Pain Elemental. It has a solid body, but have surreal elements where it has a finite volume, but contain a nearly infinite amount of space within to hold the lost souls. For such a being, I'm not sure if having a sex even makes any difference.

Personally, I think the most important aspect would be the communication of the idea. Rather you want male or female demons is quite irrelevant, if the larger audience just don't understand why you're doing it. What's believable is very different if you're presenting to the average person, or a season biologist. Most people will have a simple image of what a "female" should look like - breasts and wider hips. This might not occur to people more familiar with the sheer amount of variation in real living things. As long as the demon's lore makes sense in the context it's placed in, I don't see the need for any form of uniformity, even within the same mod or world. I can very well justify that for the Mastermind species, the females are gigantic while the males are small, at the same time the imps are hermaphroditic, cacodemons are parthenogenetic, and Archviles are sexless dones made manifest by the evils of hell.
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MetroidJunkie
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Re: Female DOOM Monsters

Post by MetroidJunkie »

I theorized that the Pain Elemental somehow creates the Lost Souls in its body, storing up to 3 at a time (since that's how many appear when you kill one) for quick access and replacing them as they're fired out.
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