People calling Maleniaās body type muscular, athletic, broad shouldered makes me lose it. Thatās a flat skinny girl with almost no fat / muscle at all. She is good at fighting because of magic. Her design is not athletic. Or Im fucking stupid and I overestimate women
Malenia probably only has a higher muscle than fat content because she works out constantly, but that woman is not muscular. She has had a chronic illness her whole life thats been barely held back by magic, gold, perfume, and sheer will power, like she cant maintain the calorie input needed to put on any body weight
Double so because like, while still skinny because all the player frames are, we know fromsoft is willing to put abs on a girl meant to be muscular? Nepheli Loux has the same body rigging as everyone else, but she has the muscle feature on that gives some toning to the arms and abs
Malenia doesnt have that, that women has been having any extra calories she eats go to getting rotten off for her whole life. Like, I love the idea of "oh yeah Malenia without the Scarlet Rot would be buff as hell," but as is her bodies not athletic, its "this person is probably doing all the exercise and diet of a weightlifter on a bulk when not too sick to eat just to keep her weight high enough she can keep fighting through the fact shes chronically ill and literally has parts of her rotting off"
Right, her model is simply not designed with muscle tone. Sheās got the abs you get just from being skinny, and no real definition in her legs or arms.
Itās a lovely design. Itās just not a muscular, athletic, bulky build whatsoever. Sheās a skinny girl. Her strength in-universe comes from her training and armaments as well as magic abilities. It makes total sense, in-universe, that she is by no means bulky, but the fanbaseās conception of her as some big muscle mommy or curvy pinup girl is revealing of the associations and expectations audiences have based on gender and performance.
On another level though, fromsoft clearly likes very skinny girls as they keep depicting them prominently, whereas weāre hard pressed to find representation of muscular and/or fat women, and almost impossible to find any who are depicted as feminine and attractive while having such a body type. So I would be remiss not to mention that while we can explain Maleniaās thinness as having a diegetic logic, and her unrealistic success in combat at such a lean state is explicable by fantasy magic, thereās no such allowances made to engender the existence of fat characters in these works as anything but a punchline.
Bottom line- itās really cutes that malenia is disabled and rotting. Makes sense that sheās malnourished. No need to draw her jacked or with huge tits. But we should have more, other female characters who have muscle and fat on them, who get their own reasons for it
