I think I may reread the entire comic and pinpoint the exact point where the shark-jumping occured. I think its sometime after the fourth issue.

well, think about it. imagine cale in real life (no, NOT just a fan costume for that blizz event) and then decide lolz
i think he looks feminine XD

You know, actually feminism is often lost in the translation with elves.

Elves are creatures that are essentially like great white sharks, they haven't had to evolve because they are essentially 'perfect'. If you go with the description and statistics of elves (D&D v3.5) they posess no body hair other than their eyebrows and the hair on their noggins. Their eyes are almond shaped and the features of their faces are carved sharp and narrow. Their builds are often somewhat frail and less resistant to a creature's attacks compared to a human or a dwarf. The reason being humans and dwarves have a very low aptitude, even moreso with dwarves, with the arcane and magic. However, dwarves and humans are especially more stocky and muscled, and haired than elves simply by nature of compensation. Elves however are masters of the arcane and more often than not, you find an elven wizard or sorcerer simply because they are so adept with arcane arts. Few elves are not as adept or they choose to take a different path (Sometimes a rarity) and elves are much less likely to take the role of a front line fighter, even moreso with dark elves with their frames even more fragile. Though the elven kind tend to make up in their shortcomings with constitution by nature of compensation, they are more cunning and more agile.

Following their history, elves were never designed as barbaric as humans, dwarves, orcs, etc etc are. Why? Because the gods themselves crafted the elves in their image. (Broken record with the word 'elf' I know) But they were designed and born as followers of magic and lore, casting and intelligence. When men were beating each other with stone clubs, the elven kind were already in advanced stages of arcane craft and lore. (Following D&D 3.5 Lore) It is the goddess Lolth, who betrayed the other gods, particularly Corellian Laurethian (Patron God of Elves) and taught a band of our pointy eared friends how to make weapons of war, how to trick and how to plan against the more barbaric races that she feared would overpower the race made in the gods' image. Though they are perfect in most senses, they are only capable of reproduction every decade or so, whereas... Humans breed like rats. They would overpower elves by sheer numbers.

At any rate, getting back on topic, yes, elves are not as bulky and humongous as a human or as stocky as a dwarf. But that doesn't make them feminine by any degree. Male elves are quite distinguishable from female because they would have more rough edges than women, they would be more muscular (by elven standards of course) whereas females are often very slender and smoother in their curves than the men.

So it's a misconception that male elves are "Feminine" simply because they aren't as bulky and built as a human. With their lack of muscle structure comes dexterity and intelligence that a human could never dream of having. I just think Sohmer rags on Cale's "feminism" because of the common mistake of a male elf being 'less masculine' than a human.

Edit: For those of you who simply say "Elves can't be men, they're too girly", I submit to you that you haven't read any good fantasy books and I would F%^@ an elf any day of the week before a human. They're not rough, not grody with body hair, and they are certianly better mannered than any other mortal being could be.

I still don't like the arguement that elves are femine simply because they are elves. I don't remember reading that anywhere definatly not in LFG which is the only mythos that effects Cale.

Looking at him he's clearly male. He's drawn with harsh square cut lines, overly detailed musculature and a tapered V torso all characteristics artists use to indicate a character is male. Infact not only does he look male he looks like a testostone pumped up, roid junky who would look natural as a pro wrestler or 90's superhero.

In contrast feminine artistic characterizations include soft curved lines, less detail and an hour glass shaped torso like you can see on Benny.

~ merges posts ~
Remember to put your reply to the quote in the post that actually has the quote.

Not many people are aware of this, but Gary Gygax's Dungeons and Dragons set the stage for virtually every fantasy book, game, genre created afterwards. For the most part, it gave consistency that all fantasy books could follow or a base template. I find that LFG is kinda... a bastard child of Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft. (I say that very lovingly by the way, LFG is awesome ) It mixes races and properties here and there. Though he got his inspiration from Tolkien and other sources, D&D has set the stage for many contemporary fantasy realms.

That being said, I tip my hat at you for not following the "Elves are feminine just because" arguement.

Don't forget that Gary Gygax took the majority of his stuff from Tolkien and a few others.

I think you missed that

Oh sorry didn't read that.

It's okay, I forgive you.

...This time... =_=;

Sorry I wasn't really going after anyone in particular a lot of people have made the elf automatically means femine arguement. Dark Wych did put a lot of effort into her explanation though and I appreciate that. Also I'm only just figuring out how to use the quote thing this post. I hope it works.



Hmm... well I never could get into role playing. A lot of my friends are confused by that since I'm otherwise a very dorky person but I prefer scripted fiction. Also my love of fantasy his heavily influenced by Conan ( who predates D&D and Tolkien ) heavy metal lyrics and 80's B movies. The only real stereotype for elves I have imbedded in my head is good at archery and Cale manages to not disapoint in that regard.

Someone already beat me to it: but graphically, Cale doesn't look female. Pella and Benny both have the lashes and the lips to be female, and Cale doesn't, so...

It's a neverending debate in any fantasy MMORPG you can ever play that has elves in it, and it's a never ending debate that I constantly have to participate in for my love of elven folk. After arguing something for so long, you just get good at it xP

Wait. Hold the phone here.

Since when is she a dude?

ROFL!

This ain't exactly ElfQuest, you know. Ergo, if Cale was a she-elf, he would be a queen, and not a king.

First off, I voted that Cale does not look feminine.

-

And now on to my argument which I hope is much better than a repeating of my own opinion with no real substance.

Just to provide some credibility: I am an art student who is currently finishing up a semester of Life Drawing II, having already taken Life Drawing I, which is where I stand in a room and look at a naked person for a few hours in order to learn how to accurately portray the human figure. In our drawings we do not put on faces or hair, and are specifically prohibited from drawing in genitalia, and the grand majority do not draw in any secondary sexual organs aka mammary glands. And yet we are still able to tell later on if the model was male or female.
Trust me, I've gotten plenty of lectures on the skeletal differences between males and females. The male torso is either triangular, with the width at the shoulders and narrowing downward, or rectangular. Either way, the hips are narrow and the waist is rather low on the torso, approximately 3/4 down (this is my own estimation). Females on the other hand are narrower through the shoulders and have more curves. Even the most masculine woman with wide shoulders (I personally follow having wide shoulders) has a prominent pelvis and the waist is 2/3 down the torso at most, more often closer to 1/2 (again, my own estimation). Ergo, stating that a figure is feminine because it is not overly muscular is bordering on bigoted, as is stating that a figure is boyish just because there are no breasts or obvious curves.

I personally never saw Cale as being feminine. He may have looked a little girly in the first few close up panels when we just saw his face with a corny smile and a bunch of sparkles, but that was a long time ago ad the artwork has changed some. Cale has always been drawn with the aforementioned upside-down triangular figure with a low waist and narrow hips (to be fair though, this is better seen without the cloak or when it is blown back), so he's always been masculine to me.

-

And now I'd like to make some mention of ideals, as I've also taken a lot of art history and have seen what the masculine and feminine ideals were in different points in history. Some people who will remain nameless seem to think that the only way to be masculine is to follow Michealangelo's ideal of the male figure, aka prominent large bulging muscles, very bulky and solid (I swear he even made his women that way. There are existing sketches of models he used and it actually wasn't uncommon for him to use male models and just slap on some breasts to make it female in the final product). That has actually rarely been the ideal throughout history. The Greeks had two ideals when it came to men. There was the Heroic figure and the Athletic figure. The Athletic figure was always portrayed as younger(say 20's or teens) with no beard and a leaner body. Cale is actually a pretty good example of an Athletic figure (Second thought, his shoulders are a little wide for athletic). The Heroic figure was more like hercules, broader, older(say mid 30's +), and just about always portrayed with a pretty grisly beard. Note that only one of the two ideals was bulky, while the other was lean. Actually the Athletic ideal was more highly favored, though this may have simply been because it was equated with youth.

A lean body has more often been preferred than a bulky muscular body. It's the same as the feminine ideal has changed, at some times almost wraithlike was the preference while at others a shorter chubbier body type was ideal. At some times the masculine ideal has looked downright girly in my opinion. Just look at some Rococo paintings. Much of the time a bulky, muscular frame was considered vulgar and lowbrow.

This has all been leading to the statement that classically Elves and Noble Fey (where a lot of the imagery has come from) were portrayed as embodying the ideal of the time. Unfortunately for a lot of guys, my own brother included(and God how), relatively few women ever have liked for a man/boy to be hairy. Therefore, Elves and Noble Fey were described as having pretty much no body hair and sometimes as beardless, although again this last part could just be because being beardless was equated with youth. As I already said, a bulky frame was considered vulgar and low class. Think of it as a bulky, muscular man would be viewed as an uneducated laborer while a leaner better groomed man would be viewed as a gentleman. Keep in mind that lean in no way means weak. It is easily possible for a lean man to have plenty of muscles and be strong. A lot of knights who rode around in heavy plate armor swinging around heavy weapons were described as being lean. Since the ideal was to be lean, the Elves and Noble Fey were described that way. In other words, the way that Elves and Noble Fey were described was the same description as would be given to the perfect man, same way that the female Elves and Noble Fey were seen as the perfect women. The only reason Elves and Fey are sometimes seen as girly nowadays is because of a change in taste.

-

As a final note, when have elves ever been described a asexual or hermaphroditic? I actually want an answer to this. In every medium I've ever seen with them (and honestly in a few they were specifically described as all looking feminine) it was always generally understood that they followed the same reproductive process as most animals higher than a slug, copulation between and male and a female (I am ignoring this one story I accidentally came across on the internet where males being able to reproduce with each other was given as an excuse to have yaoi(though, come to think of it, I think those were fairies)). As it has been established in universe that there are male and female elves respectively, I don't see Cale being elfin as a reason to state that he is not male.

As an answer to my question, I want an actual occurrence which I can look up, not just a statement with nothing to back it. I should also like to point out that I am also about 5/8 of my way through a Literature minor on top of my Fine Arts major. As all english classes are writing classes, as are all of the art history classes I've taken, I have done a lot of research essays. Therefore every now and then I pop up with a mini dissertation post like this. I'd like to congratulate all those who have read this whole thing and hope that I didn't lose anyone.

I only posted to say two things.

1. I don't know where this "male and female elves look exactly alike, to the point where there's zero gender difference" thing is coming from. And I don't care about Orlando Bloom, never have and never will, he has zero effect on the world inside this comic, along with 99% of the other examples already on this topic.
As for gender differences...

Erm...
I have a site for you. http://www.eyedoctorguide.com/
Go. Please.
Save us all.

2. In The Ether - that post (yes, THAT one) was made of absolute WIN-SAUCE. Extremely intelligent win-sauce. Practically sentient win-sauce!

*In The Ether uses ability: Wall of Text*
*Ability: Wall of Text hits*
*Wall of Text does 999,999 to the immasculate side of the arguement*
*Dark_Wych uses ability: Combine Arguements*
*Dark_Wych Combines: Dark_Wych's Geek Elven Lore Knowledge with, In The Ether's Reality and History Knowledge*
*In The Ether and Dark_Wych's combine attack hits*
*Combined attack crits!*
*Immasculate Side of the arguement is blasted with a number too high to bother counting in damage*
*Dark_Wych and In The Ether gain +500k exp*

xP

Sorry, felt like doing a combat log thingie.

.....in the famous words of steven tyler, "dude looks like a lady"

Not any more than Steven Tyler himself looks like a lady.

now THATS disturbing

Actually, he does, kinda. XD Steve Tyler, I mean. More so than Cale, anyway.

Yeah unlike Cale Tyler has big full lips.

http://orpheelin.deviantart.com/art/I-am-yours-144091993

i find it quite easy to tell the difference between the male and female elves in this picture. :|

Agreed. The pro-fems have no tenable arguments.

Very true, as do Pella and Benny, among other females we've seen in LFG.

the only real 'feminime' is his long, blonde hair....but I have that too, and I'm not feminime xD

I have to agree. My hair's shorter than his so, does that make me masculine? I think not.

So is it safe to say that this arguement is pretty much over then in favour of Cale not looking like a woman?

I'd say nine pages is pretty conclusive. For my first and last post, I'd just like to say... Any guy... willing to put on a gnome uniform and not be embarrassed by it... is 100% MAN in my book!

Ya know, it only occurs to me so late in this discussion that we should consider Lar's artwork in general. He's pretty good about making it clear who the women are, if you know what I mean. *eyebrow waggle*

should i take that as a compliment or into offense?

Neither, he was addressing Lar's style of drawing women which is on the curvaceous side.

If you look anything like your avatar you could take it as a compliment since it's a picture of a curvy woman. Otherwise like Jonath said their was nothing to indicate the comment was directed at you.

Unless of course Redlego speaks for all women in the world.

No one speaks for all women in the world. Other women always object to that, just like some men will object to any blanket statement about men wether it be made by men or women.

in appearance, Cale is most certainly male. his nose is too big, his cheekbones are too prominent, and his brow is too wide. I also assume that he is well hung, according to benny YOU KNOW.
He just acted unfortunatley like a huge, gimpy pansy around the beginning of the comic. I think that in the fantasy LFG universe, people have stereotypes of species, just like we do in real life (i.e., asians are good at math, whtes have all the power, etc.). I think that they have stereotypes here like, "All elves look like women".
To elves, it's like telling a black joke.
Don't laugh, LFG fans.
don't laugh.

Too late, unfortunately (especially when you use reverse psychology in such a way that we have to laugh, just because you told us not to); we are human beings, and contrariness is in our essential makeup.

I forgive you. If it wasn't for people like that, I'd never get to watch Untamed & Uncut!

On the topic of Cale's masculinity, I really think he's one of the most masculine characters in the series, and so that I don't get someone snapping at my heels for lack of credibility, I'm going to attempt to show evidence based on the character as personified in the comic. I will do this through the use of stereotypes associated with masculinity.

Again, these ARE stereotypes, do not apply to all men, and are highly exaggerated, but LFG thrives on stereotypes, and so does fantasy, so I don't want to hear any counters on that point.

Men are stereotypically tough. Cale, time and again, has had to make the tough calls. Killing a kid for example; that was a tough call for a good-aligned elf, and it stayed with him, but when it came down to the wire, he did what needed to be done. That aside, he's the essential elven hunter. That's hardcore, outdoors, man-of-the-land TOUGH.

Men are stereotypically loners. Now, you may ask yourself, "How is Cale a loner traveling with that many companions?" but think about how often he goes off on his own to pursue some goal or simply hides information from his allies. This could be countered if we consider that his allies are mostly immoral and basically neutral, but the point is Cale has no problem striking out on his own when he needs to and that's manly enough.

Men are stereotypically fighters. Sure, he comes off clean enough, and has his shiny morals to hold him back, but I dare anyone to tell me there aren't points in the comic where Cale really gets into killing things. They seem to be getting increasingly frequent too, so I'd speculate he's just been coming out of his shell so far.

Okay. I probably shouldn't be replying to you, Zekage, because you're blue an I'm supposed to be green according to that What Is Your Colour thing (eco-bunny / warrior all over, that's me), but I'm going to anyway and fwoosh the rules .

The only way men are stereotypically loners is in fantasy. All the fellas around here travel in packs, to my annoyance (makes getting a date for the college social hilarious, though). You will not find one without at least three others close by, if not almost on top of him. Wierdly, it's the girls who go about by themselves. Sure, we get together for the occasional chat, but that's about it.
Mind you, I'm a Heavy Metaller, so maybe different rules apply ? Don't answer that one.

I've got to admit, the first time I saw Cale in the comic, he was pretty girly. All those pretty sparkles around his face put me in mind of the makeup you can buy that has glitter in it and is hell to get out of your favourite cushion cover when the baby cousin spills the bottle (trust me on this one). Still, he's better now (Bess actually thinks he's kinda cute, which is wierd considering how he's a. got a girlfriend and b. is 2D). Like Benny said, he's sure getting better at his entrances.
He's not a bad guy. Emphasis here on GUY. I've long since got over the "he's a girl" attitude.

Please, drop the subject. Cale's an elf, sure, but that doesn't mean he's not male. I kind of doubt that Benny's a lesbian - couldn't tell you why. It might just be something to do with her attitude. Besides, the dead giveaway is the way he talks. He's definitely a guy - only men talk about laying down their lives for a just cause .

I've known quite a few women who would talk the same way, too. Our approach to it could very because of location, and so forth. I've known an equal number of guys who walk around without posses too, and gals.

The "Cale's masculinity" thing is a funny conversational topic. It may be just about dead though, especially since that "roll in he hay" thing soem time back.

You don't see too many men with hair as blonde as Cale's. My hair was that color until my teen years when it darkened considerably, and that holds true for most men, I believe. Certainly for all men in my family. My sister's hair, meanwhile, did not darken.

Since his hair is also long, it does look very feminine. I could see mistaking him for a woman at a distance or if looking at the back of his head.

I'm not sure if anyone has pointed this out, there are ten pages of posts to go through and it is 6:00 in the morning with no sleep but.. the Elves of Gamlon seemed to have quite a few figures of masculenity about them, usualy with beards I'll admit but still, they were male, especialy when you look at their king, or the fellow with a bandage over one eye.

Elves can be masculin but the problem I think is that all elves are YOUTHFULL, all around being slow to age at all. And since when we are younger there is less to distinguish between the male and female, confusion may come to be common.

Near the begining of the comic cale did have a more narrow face with less distinguishable jaw bones, aswell as being seen smileing and happy more of the time, as compared to now when he is somber and his facial structure seems to have slowly changed over time to give him more of a guy look.

Strike me down should you see fit! I have made my bid for clarity :<

Edit: I would also like to point out, that richard made the first judgement on cales gender. He has spoken! and you are all fools to defy him D:

true, but I still like Benny's first judgement. *giggle*

I like the theory that somewhere, deep down, Cale could be both. >.> That would explain the gender confusion.

Exactly.

There are cases where men have female sex chromosomes (but are completely male) and vice versa but I doubt that's what you are referring to. If Cale had a trapdoor instead of a pecker it would have come up when Benny revealed she was a bondage enthusiast.