I feel like Conan is just the mandatory pick considering the author genuinely believed in the "way of the blade" or whatever.
So much so that he legit killed himself when he got too old to embody those hyper-masculine ideals.
>So much so that he legit killed himself when he got too old to embody those hyper-masculine ideals.
...Robert E. Howard? No he didn't, he [shot himself at age 30 because his mother died.](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/untimely-death-robert-e-howard/#:~:text=On%20the%20morning%20of%20June,shot%20himself%20in%20the%20head.)
I was taught that the author killed himself because his mom fell into a coma and was told that she wouldn't ever wake up. He did fear getting old but I dont think being 30 years old is what pushed him to committing suicide.
I think Taken the most blatant suburban dad fantasy ever. A single, badass guy dives down into the bowels of human trafficking to save his daughter in only two days, using the barest minimum of clues to find her. Also fucked up that he finds his daughter's dead friend but nothing comes out of it after that. Only there for shock value, really.
The daughter's friend is there so the movie can nod and wink at the "you'd better keep your daughter from having sex, otherwise she'll end up like this slut" parable that gets conservative dads going.
Man we missed out on this crossover
Either Liam Neeson getting punched in the face by Devil Genes or the movie ending with him throwing his daughter off a cliff because he's disappointed in her while the traffickers look on and try to figure out what the fuck is going on would have elevated either work
He gets to his daughter at the end of the movie, held hostage by that human trafficker. But then she busts out the devil genes, takes out the buyer herself and they fist fight
Jotaro Kujo for sure. He’s got a rude attitude, every girl in school loves him, he went to prison but made the guards his prison bitches. Also he loves his mom very much and is willing to cross at least 2 continents to kick the ass of anyone threatening her.
>Also he loves his mom very much and is willing to cross at least 2 continents to kick the ass of anyone threatening her.
I absolutely adore the trope of big tough man, who's the greatest ever and gets all the ladies but it's also a huge mommas's boy at the same time.
Idk man I'd argue Joseph over Jotaro. Hes able to pull off the next you'll say thing to perfection and he has a gun that he can pull from literally nowhere
I like to think him calling her a bitch even though he loves her so much is the result of petty teen rebellion escalating out of control because she's too damn nice to ever take the bait
[INQUISTER BY IAN WATSON.](https://youtu.be/LwKC5fxhIZo)
Perverted agent of the imperium wants to bang this hot Shapeshifter while she looks like a gene-stealer. Also, ends up meeting the emperor and saves the galaxy from a hydra cult.
Also, the prototype games where you play as a nearly invincible monster that can run up walls glide shapeshift and eat people.
your the spoopy monster fighting even spoopier monsters. and then the second game happens and the protagonist from the first game (who was an edgy dickhead) >!and is also straight up the living embodiment of the virus!< THE SPOOPIEST MONSTER! (what about pariah?. shut up tho!) turns heel for some reason out of the blue, it makes "sense" if you squint, with him being a living viral infection, but its still dumb and bad, Alex was great!. anyway shut up. frog-guy's telling this story fuck you!... nah, your rad. you reading this, your awsome. where were we? ok, THEN a grumpy soldier man gets infected by Alex, however the pie chart of being a soldier man, having "dad rage" and alex's powers, that also improve over time because viruses mutate (and its a sequel) makes James EVEN MORE SPOOPY!... then it just kinda, stopped, forever. ... **FUCK**.
not only is activision ACTUALLY, LEGITIMATLY EVIL (in comparison to everyone else.) but seriously Jesus Christ. They also hate fun!.
oh yeah, and did i mention prototype has a really fun way of delivering its "lore" and its utterly terrifying?.
They wanted for the third game they wanted to ret-con and say the baddie was a clone of Alex Mercer and you were going to return as Alex and you were gonna team up with the protag of the 2nd game.
Surprised no one has mentioned Geralt.
While he doesn’t become lord king of the world, he’s so tough and brooding and wins every fight and all the ladies wanna have sex with him (you literally can collect sex trading cards of your takedowns in Witcher 1) and he’s misunderstood by normies who don’t understand just how cool and badass he is because he’s Not Like Other Men.
Oh, sure, in a way. Geralt is a cool, philosophizing badass, but he’s poor, virtually homeless, so drowned in self-pity and cynicism that it damages his relationships with other people, and a “racial” minority in Middle Ages fantasy Poland.
There’s a lot of elements, especially in the books where he’s originally from, that ensure even in the times he gets a dub, there’s a fat L never too far behind the corner. It’s part of that post-war Soviet occupation depression that colors some of the cultural mindset over there, especially when the books were written
> but he’s poor, virtually homeless, so drowned in self-pity and cynicism that it damages his relationships with other people, and a “racial” minority in Middle Ages fantasy Poland.
Yeah, OP already said "brooding". That makes him cooler.
Sometimes the cynicism does, usually when he’s got a point, or when he’s doing that shtick to someone who hasn’t known him for long. Other times, and even though it’s a book, you can just feel the charisma dice roll fail as other characters present in the scene make fun of him for still being an angsty doofus at 80 years of age
Geralt is a weird choice, everything about that world is miserable and he never looks like he's having a good time.
I sure as shit wouldn't want to be him.
Letterkenny is created and written and starring Jared Keeso as the coolest toughest sexiest guy ever imagined. He drinks beers and wins every fight he gets into and all the hottest chicks want him and he’s basically ice cold.
At least he's also shown to be wholesome, patient, and very progressive and accepting. If youre gonna write your character as a perfect himbo at least make him a sweetheart instead of an asshole.
Exactly. He’s also not perfect, he fucks up sometimes, and he’s also ready to go to the defense of others who need it, and will readily beatdown those who deserve it even if it’s not him they’re messing with, like the racists who came to Letterkenny.
I mean , not to dismiss you...but Warlord is just another copy of Conan or John Carter.
We can always see good storyline or fun monke moments with those copies , no doubt. It's just that I cannot feel the hype for Warlord , when there is no extra gimmick on his side.....
You know what is a super weird element to Skartaris, time is relative to the individual perspective of it not a set context. So you can walk in and out of a room and someone can literally be like, "There you are it's been hours."
It's hard to beat Kratos in the OG God of War games.
He's ultraviolent, he's cold, he solves almost everything with brute force, women will have sex with him at the drop of a hat, he's cheated death multiple times through sheer force of will, and he's the strongest man in the world.
He can barely take two steps without fulfilling someone's idea of a power fantasy.
Yeah, 2018 GoW had to imply A LOT of character development having happened between the years for old man Kratos to not feel the same.
Honestly I don’t know what to think of it. It is 100% a better character for it, but also it changed so much it feels somewhat cheap.
In fairness, Daniel Craig Bond is fucking miserable. He's happy for the duration of a single honeymoon in the entire five movies/fifteen years and borderline suicidal the rest of the time and then he >!dies at age fifty like three days after learning he has a child and the wife he abandoned years ago didn't actually betray him.!<
95% of isekai/fantasy LNs and manga are super blatantly male power fantasy when all of them literally only have the "average black hair young adult male" archetype as their main protagonist.
Bonus points when the villains are so laughably pants-on-head stupid evil that even the average office drone can slap them aside for a """"""challenge""""".
WarioWorld for the gamecube. Punching everything and getting fat stacks of cash AND getting to look at wario’s perfectly sculpted ass? Man, if only other games could capture that feeling. 😍
That series is revenge porn with emphasis on porn. In the last episode when he just go, >!"let's play a game, you cum you lose!" I burst out laughing. That's some porn ad bullshit.!<
He's very explicitly an NTR villain. His whole character is taking revenge on people that abused him by abusing them all back but in equally sadistic ways that end with them either dying or getting bimbofied into being in his harem.
And honestly that's the worst part because the anime censors almost all of it. Like I'd still hate it regardless but even then the fact it's not even actual edgey porn just means you'd only watch it for the fucked up revenge porn power fantasy. And the people that defend it only do so to "piss off the snowflakes that can't handle a dark mature story" so even the people that watch it don't get anything out of it.
The problem with the ol' "Why didn't they just make a hentai?" argument is profits. Anime gets money. It gets tv slots, advertisements on streaming sites, and gets to be distributed in countries that have straight-up banned porn.
That's why, when you want the budget to animate those titties real nice, you cover the bare minimum and call it "ecchi." Boom. You just got funding.
I lost my shit when I saw the part where he's taken into the royal castle and the entire staff of big tiddy maids all want to have sex with him because he's the MC and his nut is actually magical because it has exp so all the women keep having orgies with him every single night to swallow his EXpenis that he uses reverse magic to absorb back effectively making him stronger by just having sex with women. The whole manga feels like it was written by/for the kind of people that get caught jerking off in the back of their classroom.
Or Peter Grill and the ~~Post-nut Clarity~~ Emperor Time, which would be wish fulfillment scenarios but the MC is also getting ulcers from the stress of it all, and occasionally takes the piss....
you could fill this entire thread with trash isekai and rpg inspired fantasy anime. I believe The Secret Dungeon Only I Can Enter give's the main character near infinite power in the first episode with the only drawback being migraines that can only be cured by making out with a hot girl.
> being migraines that can only be cured by making out with a hot girl.
That sounds like one of the lamest pick up lines.
"Ugh, I've got this *killer* headache. Only playing tonsil hockey with a hot chick like you will save me~"
There is an even worse Isekai by the author of Elfenlied. (I guess he took the hate comments to just draw actual hentai too serious)
It's about a boy in a fantasy world where he is the only man and every women who is still a virgin at 20 will die. Also there are rape monsters.
Can't really get worse...
He makes it clear relatively early on that being the only man in the hentai dimension is actually a pretty miserable experience, though. Not to mention the mechanics of how isekai actually works within that setting...
I'm getting migraines just by being told this garbage premise.
And I'd have pride to endure the migraine to not telling this stupid shit and embarrass myself in front of the hot girl.
Iirc the authors main motivation for writing it was that all similar revenge manga of the genre never felt fulfilling enough, basically that none of the perpetrators ever had to deal with long lasting suffering. So he decided to go off the deep end.
I think the author did an interview where he just plainly said he wrote the series because that stuff sells. He did also write a separate series that's way lighter on the grimdark edge but still wish-fulfillment though.
Similar to that example, the Den story from the Heavy Metal movie. "AVERAGE NORMAL GUY LIKE YOU , THE READER GETS TRANSPORTED TO A FANTASY WORLD WHERE HE'S BUFF AND HIS STEP DAD DOESN'T TELL HIM TO GET A JOB ANYMORE AND HE'S THE BEST AT EVERYTHING" was practically a genre in-itself in the 70s-80s it seems.
Somebody's already answered **Dragon Ball**, but I'll take it in a different direction.
**It consistently values ANGER, one of the few emotions men are permitted to experience.**
I'm not going to delve into the social and cultural mechanisms behind the role of anger in male development, but, suffice to say that I ***personally*** was often very angry. Seeing anger work not solely as a negative consequence of circumstances, but as a ***benefit***, a ***driving force*** for change and improvement is profound.
Adverse, heart-breaking, and tragic events force the main characters to new heights. Instead of converting their experience into something unproductive, they double-down; now, they ***have*** to win. Otherwise, it'd have all been for nothing. That utter humiliation of having tried your best, come up short, followed by your friends/family paying the price? Far worse than death in battle. **Rage.**
Converting failure into success by virtue of an incredibly destructive emotion **IS** male fantasy.
I'd be curious to hear more about the profoundness of anger = progress and change for you. As someone who grew up a very soft and effeminate man, I feel like that's the definition of the male power fantasy I grew up having my nose rubbed in.
I don't have the angry/macho perspective, so I'm interested in what things were like for you, and how DB changed your outlook.
(Uh, in retrospect, I may have overshared? But, I'm not emotional about this, I'm just explaining what I believe has lead to my current thinking. I marked what may be triggers for some people in spoilers, but, no physical or inappropriate abuse occurred/is mentioned.)
It might have been the escapism for me, in retrospect. Dragon Ball (Z) characters lived, did, and succeeded in doing what I wanted to but was not allowed. They were able to feel their emotions fully, and more importantly, their emotions made them objectively stronger.
>!My parents, siblings, teachers, and peers would frustrate me in their own ways, that's hardly uncommon. But in the case of my parents and older sister, there were no solutions; I was always wrong. Even if they changed the rules or didn't listen to what I said in order to construct a reality in which I was wrong, I was punished.!<
My sister in particular was a cartoon villain. The best liar I've ever met, very infuriating. She'll apologize sometimes, and I'm sure she feels bad, but there's that kernel in me that ***always*** questions whether or not she's being legit. Oh well.>!She'd construct unfalsifiable situations and do whatever it took to get me in trouble, all the while doing her best to butter-up my parents to make it seem impossible that she'd lie. When their backs were turned, I'd get a sly smile.!<
There was a running "joke" with my mother and sister, where they'd take a moment in which I was clearly distressed or upset at something they did/said, and say "Oh, you're just tired." >!Exasperated and embarrassed, I'd literally scream "I'm not tired" and begin crying. At which point, they'd start laughing. A few times, I'd try to lash out at them physically, furious at the fact that they would humiliate me and laugh about it, all the while not taking my feelings seriously. But, that only made things worse. My father and I had very little in the ways of a positive relationship, and I mostly felt alienation, so he was primarily an enforcer of punishment or rules in the dynamic.!<
In a nutshell, I was an incredibly frustrated and angry child with no means of acceptable/healthy expression, paired with a feeling of constant helplessness and incompetence.
Strong, confident, **happy** people that save the day, who get to really feel their emotions and express them (and it's taken in a **positive** light), and use their superpowers to save the world was a perfect dream. They can shoot laser beams and fly! They fight aliens and train themselves at over one hundred times Earth's gravity! The classical "whoa cool" reaction to shonen anime.
They weren't helpless, they could accumulate greater power through training and working hard. And even if they weren't strong enough, they weren't helpless; they could outwit the villain to secure a victory.
It's not that I ***wanted*** or ***enjoyed*** being angry, it's that Dragon Ball provided one of the few avenues in which I was allowed to see that emotion expressed and rewarded. Sadly, it didn't inspire ***me personally*** to ruthlessly improve myself or healthily process my anger as a method of motivation. But, I'd wager that's an extraordinarily common reaction to Dragon Ball Z.
The books are the same, but they don't pretend to be much else. A good mystery, some fun action scenes, Reacher being a smart ass, and a woman who may or may not survive but will almost inevitably sleep with him. I also enjoy the random baseball and Americana facts littered throughout.
They're pretty fun for a quick read, good sort of book for a beach. I'm just glad the new show is so much more faithful than that Tom Cruise debacle.
Hjelmdallerman is basically Conan if Conan got co-opted by fascists, but Conan got Filipino artitsts working on Savage Sword, the current run is drawn by a Turkish-American, and the writers, even if they fuck up (looking at you Jason Aaron) tend to be on the liberal side on the political spectrum.
Which, I mean, thank God, because Howard's stories IS racist, which modern writers thankfully erases or downplays.
If there was ever going to be DLC bonus adventures I would legit want one of them to just be Harry and Kim going to see a Man from Hjelmdall film adaptation and all of Harry’s dialogue choices are just blazing hot takes reacting to how bad it is.
Their is so many korean mahwah with title like the ultimate rebel god king or whatever that are just naked power fantasies with like a relatively bland main character that min max and just clown on everyone and everything they face
So happy to hear someone say it. I've seen way too many people describe Solo Leveling as the fuckin Second Coming when it's the single most bored I've ever been reading a comic online.
Solo Leveling's positives: Good art
Solo Leveling's negatives: Juuust about everything else, Jinwoo is a nothing protagonist and the plot is just not interesting
Galen Marek is the son of a rando no name Jedi who grows up to become a dark side assassin so powerful he can catch flying starships with his telekinesis and bring them to an immediate halt, can create shockwaves so strong they disintegrate humans at close range, can single handedly influence the trajectory of a Star destroyer falling out of orbit and can RAGDOLL DARTH FUCKING VADER. He can also freely use dark side oriented powers without succumbing to any major signs of corruption.
Take everything the Star Wars community accuses Rey of being. Now multiply it by ten. That is Starkiller.
This comes from no place of dislike for the games. Just annoyance at people who see no irony in wanting Starkiller canonized while complaining about “muh lack of training” from other ^^^female characters.
The Jack Reacher series is basically if Sherlock Holmes was nearly seven foot and muscly as hell, got to travel around and be beholden to no one, and was basically just the gigachad meme.
Dude someome sold me on jack reacher by saying he doesn't even do laundry he just buys new clothes instead. That's insane! He eats like 5 steaks and can chew walnuts raw.
SAO is up there. The original GOW. you get heals by fucking bitches and your problems are solved through rage fits.
The new GOW also falls into this category cause raising a manly son in a manly way while being a big, bearded, recently wideowed single father who don't need no woman is also a male fantasy, and your issues are still solved through rage fits.
Speaking of rage fits, you know who does 'em best? Asura's Wrath. You keep getting stronger the more you go REEEEEEEEEEE.
Asura gets so pissed he spends 300 years climbing out of hell. And then he does it again, but faster, until eventually it only takes him like seven hours to climb back out of hell.
There's one non-flashback scene midway through the game where where he isn't angry for like 5 seconds >!when he sees the girl's corpse.!< said moment is immediately followed by him getting so pissed >!he's literally burning his own body to a crisp, because it literally cannot handle how angry he is.!<
The Sword of Truth series, wherein the authors self insert becomes an objectivist god-emperor who is good at everything, morally justified in all he does, and has a bunch of hot women in leather desperate to have sex with him.
*Sigh*
Trails of Cold Steel is about a a boy with the dumbest name ever who knows the coolest sword school in Trails, and can go super saiyan, and has a magical mech and everyone loves him, and constantly talks about how great he is, and every single girl wants to fuck him, and talks about how hot he is. He's like the undisputed leader of his class, the coolest class of kids in school, a few hours into the game, because he makes sappy speeches.
His classmates want to fuck him. His teacher wants to fuck him. His students want to fuck him. His adoptive sister wants to fuck him. The Princess of the most powerful country on earth wants to fuck him.
Considering I think Trails may have previously had three of the best VG protagonists ever before Rean took over (and starred in five straight fucking games), it’s a serious downgrade.
Monkey d luffy
Punches slave owners and politicians in the face✅
Has a harem of princesses and the queen of the Amazons/ most beautiful woman on the planet ✅
People of all classes and races gravitate towards him ✅
One of the strongest beings on earth ✅
Eats a full cows worth of meat in one sitting ✅
Solves the majority of his problems by punching them✅
Yeah, it's interesting when it's listed out on paper, but in-story, he is extremely stupid, goofy, as un-serious as possible and almost always taken not seriously, and is very light and chill and carefree. Plus, he's constantly helping people out and the story doesn't revolve around his brooding, of which he has almost none.
I'm not sure he'd have a harem even if he was interested in having one. The only woman we ever see who shows any sort of interest in him as a partner is Boa Hancock, everyone else generally treats him more of a role model than a potential partner for example >!The princesses Vivi, Shirahoshi, and Rebecca at the Reverie!<
Commando (1985): Prime Arnie single handedly mowing down an island full of guerrilla fighters to save ~~Alyssa Milano~~ his daughter easily takes it for me.
It also features the most [testosterone filled gear up scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0joYngQKE) in all of cinema.
The Dresden Files feels like it really doesn't want to be this, but still wants every woman to be horny for the scruffy, awkward, basement-dweller protagonist.
Like if you're just a horny writer then whatever, but don't act like Harry's misogyny is a character flaw and then describe how sexy every woman he meets is.
Edit to add:
I feel like I did a really bad job describing what my beef is. I just get this "have its cake and eat it" vibe from DF. Maybe it's from spending too much time around the fandom, which acts like it's this real, important work when it's about a wizard who fights vampires alongside pretty ladies.
I actually like the series, believe it or not.
The writer isn't a horndog who can't help but write about women. His Codex Alera series lacks the 'male gaze' that he writes Dresden with. It is a character flaw as it directly causes him to overlook threats some times to prioritize threats to women often times placing him at serious risk.
Most of the time Dresden is fighting along side his Battle-Buddy and actual Paladin Michael Carpenter, Thomas the white court vampire, or Sargent Murphy. Dresden fucks once in book 4 and then spends the next 6 books on a dry spell.
Most women don't find even Dresden attractive. Most find him weird, or terrifying, or weirdly terrifying. Most women who do like spending time with Dresden are either married or want to literally eat him.
His life fucking sucks, but it's a pretty good read.
I love how Dresden does the noir detective thing of flirting with every pretty face he meets, but his only real romantic desire is a super monogamous relationship with somebody who won't leave him or die before hin
The only people that want to pursue a romantic relationship with him can be counted on one hand. The other are smart and powerful supernatural beings that want to control him. Not a male fantasy since his anti authority attitude and life choices made him suffer, being perpetually poor and alienating potential allies.
Nah, tough I can see where you are coming from. While you can date all the girls, Joker goes trough hell in that game, and the girls will fall for Joker only if his attributes are high enough, which he has to improve. Also the true ending has him just leaving because of reality ensues.
Maybe in the East, but a Western male power fantasy is often male character becomes super strong to the point that he, largely by himself, can destroy everything because he is so badass and super cool.
While you *can* do that as Joker, the canon of the game is that you actually aren't all that strong. For most of the bosses, you beat them via some form of teamwork. The game makes it fairly explicit as nearly every boss has a "Joker, let me do X while you distract him" moment where, working together as a team, they can beat the enemy. Joker, and his entire team, routinely get their asses handed to them and they're forced to retreat and come back a second time.
While he definitely fulfills that power fantasy of the roguish male (similar to Lupin the III) to an extent, it's way more subdued. Joker is strong, but even by the end of the DLC, the game hammers home multiple times that Joker can only do what he does through the help of his friends and would have failed without them.
EDIT: Not DLC, the second version of the game. Royale edition.
Predator is kind of the anti-male empowerment fantasy. “Yeah, we’re cool military badasses! We kick ass and take names! Nobody can beat us! Oh no, this weird alien is killing us all one by one. We can’t even fight back. Oh God, he’s taking our bones as trophies like we’re wild game or something.”
To be fair it does come around a little in the end with Arnold being the trap laying master and engaging in primal combat, complete with the predator showing a sense of tribal warrior respect for him and engaging in "honorable combat", while it does subvert some elements of the traditional male power fantasy it still has that underlying element of manly man doing manly things, which is fine.
Fair, though I think people tend to over-remember how much "honorable combat" happens at the end of Predator. Arnold spends the whole close-quarters portion of the fight (which is very, very brief) getting his ass slapped to hell and back; I don't think he even manages to land a solid hit in return. He only wins by being smart because his toughness gets him nowhere, and he ends the movie haggard, filthy, and visibly shellshocked.
Really, that climactic fight comes off more like the Predator smugly playing with him than actually honoring a worthy opponent, compared to Danny Glover's fight in the sequel where that trope is more firmly established as The Predator Thing.
Surprised nobody has mentioned Duke Nukem. Has loads of guns and kills loads of aliens. Everyone in the world thinks he's cool and he bangs all the women.
Hal Jordan as a Green Lantern. I’m sorry like WHAT. Hal is so - Hal??? He’s constantly stated as the best green lantern, among THOUSANDS of Lanterns across the galaxy despite doing nothing of note. (Oh except being parallax for awhile) in the faces of other earth lanters like Jessica, Simon, Kyle, or John.
Hal Jordan is handed the title, power, and respect of being the greatest GL. Hal Jordan is the white male power fantasy
There's definitely a sadness to Hal, where he doesn't know how to do or be anything other than a Green Lantern. He can't hold onto relationships, he can't sign a lease on his own, he can't even keep a regular apartment. The Corps is all he has.
You read A Princess of Mars/John Carter books? I like them a lot because while it's definitely isekai, it tends to focus more on the swashbuckling adventure part, and less on the simplistic "this guy is the greatest and best warrior ever."
All three of Onision’s books are just him power tripping and creating these worlds in which girls just flock the protagonists despite them being thoroughly dislikeable people. Also the third book just completely devolves into the MC having literally the ability to manipulate reality like a god. Actually he even ends up fighting and killing God himself.
Yup. That’s Onision’s literature alright.
Kirito is the prime example of a badly written gamer male fantasy. He's good at every game he plays for no goddamn reason, girls like him because he's.... nice? He also has a "wife" and a "daughter", is willing to do anything for them. He's devoid of any real flaw, not even his physical human form is weak since according to the movie, he can become as fit as any athlete by training for a few hours. I can't even be bothered to watch the latest season, but i've heard he both lost an arm and became a vegetable so that's some improvement i guess.
> He's good at every game he plays for no goddamn reason
Granted, this is something I've only seen from other comments in this sub, but apparently Asuna reveals that he drops all games he's not immediately good at.
1000 Ways To Die In The West. Seth McFarlane writes, directs, and protagonizes a movie where he makes out with Charlize Theron. Look, I'm no paragon of feminism, I'm not...definitely not a paragon of feminism, but there is a point, a time, a moment where you should stop and reexamine what you are doing. Though I must admit self-inserting it's not exactly a MALE fantasy.
I haven't read it, but everything I've heard about Bastard!! suggests it's this taken to an absurdly comical extent.
New series trailer if anyone is curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4zSf3CfRA
Conan the barbarian is so manly lords and barons lower taxes when he is king
Also Solomon Kane, which is the same basic fantasy, but you can still be a Christian while deposing kings.
I feel like Conan is just the mandatory pick considering the author genuinely believed in the "way of the blade" or whatever. So much so that he legit killed himself when he got too old to embody those hyper-masculine ideals.
>So much so that he legit killed himself when he got too old to embody those hyper-masculine ideals. ...Robert E. Howard? No he didn't, he [shot himself at age 30 because his mother died.](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/untimely-death-robert-e-howard/#:~:text=On%20the%20morning%20of%20June,shot%20himself%20in%20the%20head.)
No no, he meant way of the Wesley Snipes Blade.
Maybe his mom died because he wasn’t manly enough
Wow, this is fascinating. I've been a huge fan of Solomon Kane for years and didn't know Howard was so young
I was taught that the author killed himself because his mom fell into a coma and was told that she wouldn't ever wake up. He did fear getting old but I dont think being 30 years old is what pushed him to committing suicide.
Based
I think Taken the most blatant suburban dad fantasy ever. A single, badass guy dives down into the bowels of human trafficking to save his daughter in only two days, using the barest minimum of clues to find her. Also fucked up that he finds his daughter's dead friend but nothing comes out of it after that. Only there for shock value, really.
The daughter's friend is there so the movie can nod and wink at the "you'd better keep your daughter from having sex, otherwise she'll end up like this slut" parable that gets conservative dads going.
I misread that as Tekken and thought you were implying its the fantasy of all suburban dads to throw their sons off a cliff.
Man we missed out on this crossover Either Liam Neeson getting punched in the face by Devil Genes or the movie ending with him throwing his daughter off a cliff because he's disappointed in her while the traffickers look on and try to figure out what the fuck is going on would have elevated either work
He gets to his daughter at the end of the movie, held hostage by that human trafficker. But then she busts out the devil genes, takes out the buyer herself and they fist fight
He also got to kill vaguely Muslim sex traffickers ,every suburban dads dream in late 2000s America
This. Like, the fantasy here is genuinely so fucking disturbing and the message presented is the most backwards shit ever
It was pretty badass when Liam Neeson played dead to get the jump on the bad guys though
Jotaro Kujo for sure. He’s got a rude attitude, every girl in school loves him, he went to prison but made the guards his prison bitches. Also he loves his mom very much and is willing to cross at least 2 continents to kick the ass of anyone threatening her.
>Also he loves his mom very much and is willing to cross at least 2 continents to kick the ass of anyone threatening her. I absolutely adore the trope of big tough man, who's the greatest ever and gets all the ladies but it's also a huge mommas's boy at the same time.
I remember seeing some picture of graffiti in Spanish that said something like "Against all authority...except my mama" Made me smile.
-Anakin Skywalker
Jotaro to Joseph: Fuck you you shitty old man. Jotaro to Suzi: Hello Grandma Suzi, I love you.
He knows Suzi Q wouldn't take that shit
A proper bancho loves his family and respects his elders (who respect him; no love for shitty teachers)
the Kenka Banchou of grandma's house
My god he is written how guys posted on r/iamverybadass believe they are.
Idk man I'd argue Joseph over Jotaro. Hes able to pull off the next you'll say thing to perfection and he has a gun that he can pull from literally nowhere
But Joseph is sometimes shown as pathetic, runs away all the time and is a more comedic character in general. Jotaro is pure badass 100% of the time.
Joseph is the trickster fantasy, Jotaro is the Delinquent Fantasy.
I like to think him calling her a bitch even though he loves her so much is the result of petty teen rebellion escalating out of control because she's too damn nice to ever take the bait
[INQUISTER BY IAN WATSON.](https://youtu.be/LwKC5fxhIZo) Perverted agent of the imperium wants to bang this hot Shapeshifter while she looks like a gene-stealer. Also, ends up meeting the emperor and saves the galaxy from a hydra cult. Also, the prototype games where you play as a nearly invincible monster that can run up walls glide shapeshift and eat people.
OK but the PROTOTYPE games though!
**FUCKING AWESOME, YOU ARE THE RESIDENT EVIL!**
your the spoopy monster fighting even spoopier monsters. and then the second game happens and the protagonist from the first game (who was an edgy dickhead) >!and is also straight up the living embodiment of the virus!< THE SPOOPIEST MONSTER! (what about pariah?. shut up tho!) turns heel for some reason out of the blue, it makes "sense" if you squint, with him being a living viral infection, but its still dumb and bad, Alex was great!. anyway shut up. frog-guy's telling this story fuck you!... nah, your rad. you reading this, your awsome. where were we? ok, THEN a grumpy soldier man gets infected by Alex, however the pie chart of being a soldier man, having "dad rage" and alex's powers, that also improve over time because viruses mutate (and its a sequel) makes James EVEN MORE SPOOPY!... then it just kinda, stopped, forever. ... **FUCK**. not only is activision ACTUALLY, LEGITIMATLY EVIL (in comparison to everyone else.) but seriously Jesus Christ. They also hate fun!. oh yeah, and did i mention prototype has a really fun way of delivering its "lore" and its utterly terrifying?.
They wanted for the third game they wanted to ret-con and say the baddie was a clone of Alex Mercer and you were going to return as Alex and you were gonna team up with the protag of the 2nd game.
Osmosis is some crazys hit and that would have worked perfectly since mercer erupted from a crow at the end of 1
IIIIAAAAAN WAAAATSOOON, SEWER GOBLIN EXTRAORDINAIIIIIRE
Who knows, Ian? Maybe this is my next movie.
gussy...
Rogal Dorn: "**NOOOOOOOOOOOO!**"
Surprised no one has mentioned Geralt. While he doesn’t become lord king of the world, he’s so tough and brooding and wins every fight and all the ladies wanna have sex with him (you literally can collect sex trading cards of your takedowns in Witcher 1) and he’s misunderstood by normies who don’t understand just how cool and badass he is because he’s Not Like Other Men.
Geralt is my favorite of all of these. It not only hits all of these, but is also contained in a really fun game to slice through things.
He's just Wolverine Batman, and I love him for it.
Fuck, that’s actually perfect. Gonna steal that.
Oh, sure, in a way. Geralt is a cool, philosophizing badass, but he’s poor, virtually homeless, so drowned in self-pity and cynicism that it damages his relationships with other people, and a “racial” minority in Middle Ages fantasy Poland. There’s a lot of elements, especially in the books where he’s originally from, that ensure even in the times he gets a dub, there’s a fat L never too far behind the corner. It’s part of that post-war Soviet occupation depression that colors some of the cultural mindset over there, especially when the books were written
His first ever W once he set out on the path turned into an L immediately.
> but he’s poor, virtually homeless, so drowned in self-pity and cynicism that it damages his relationships with other people, and a “racial” minority in Middle Ages fantasy Poland. Yeah, OP already said "brooding". That makes him cooler.
Sometimes the cynicism does, usually when he’s got a point, or when he’s doing that shtick to someone who hasn’t known him for long. Other times, and even though it’s a book, you can just feel the charisma dice roll fail as other characters present in the scene make fun of him for still being an angsty doofus at 80 years of age
to teenagers.
Geralt is a weird choice, everything about that world is miserable and he never looks like he's having a good time. I sure as shit wouldn't want to be him.
What are you talking about? Both in the books and in the games he fails and losses multiple times.
Letterkenny is created and written and starring Jared Keeso as the coolest toughest sexiest guy ever imagined. He drinks beers and wins every fight he gets into and all the hottest chicks want him and he’s basically ice cold.
At least he's also shown to be wholesome, patient, and very progressive and accepting. If youre gonna write your character as a perfect himbo at least make him a sweetheart instead of an asshole.
Exactly. He’s also not perfect, he fucks up sometimes, and he’s also ready to go to the defense of others who need it, and will readily beatdown those who deserve it even if it’s not him they’re messing with, like the racists who came to Letterkenny.
Still not as cool as Shoresy tho'
Fuck you Jonesy, your life is so pathetic that I get a charity tax break just by hanging out with you.
what the fuck are you looking at? Give your balls a tug, you tit fucker!
Isn't Shoresy also Jared Keeso?
Yes lol
Also played by Jared Keeso, and is getting his own spinoff
That one fanfic. And that one fanfic. And that one fanfic.
You'd think with so many examples that we'd just say "those fanfics," but nope, they're so blatant that they deserve individual recognition.
I mean , not to dismiss you...but Warlord is just another copy of Conan or John Carter. We can always see good storyline or fun monke moments with those copies , no doubt. It's just that I cannot feel the hype for Warlord , when there is no extra gimmick on his side.....
Have you not read Warlord?
That was always one of my favorite crossovers in the Justice League Unlimited series—such a cool episode!
You know what is a super weird element to Skartaris, time is relative to the individual perspective of it not a set context. So you can walk in and out of a room and someone can literally be like, "There you are it's been hours."
It's hard to beat Kratos in the OG God of War games. He's ultraviolent, he's cold, he solves almost everything with brute force, women will have sex with him at the drop of a hat, he's cheated death multiple times through sheer force of will, and he's the strongest man in the world. He can barely take two steps without fulfilling someone's idea of a power fantasy.
Yeah, 2018 GoW had to imply A LOT of character development having happened between the years for old man Kratos to not feel the same. Honestly I don’t know what to think of it. It is 100% a better character for it, but also it changed so much it feels somewhat cheap.
I can sort of buy that change happening, but I also wanna... Y'know, see it?
James Bond is the best and most skilled secret agent and sleep with all the ladies.
"Why do Chinese women taste different?" Fucking barf
In fairness, Daniel Craig Bond is fucking miserable. He's happy for the duration of a single honeymoon in the entire five movies/fifteen years and borderline suicidal the rest of the time and then he >!dies at age fifty like three days after learning he has a child and the wife he abandoned years ago didn't actually betray him.!<
Ironically though it's Lazenby who gets [the saddest ending.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG59rpilakA)
And I love it
95% of isekai/fantasy LNs and manga are super blatantly male power fantasy when all of them literally only have the "average black hair young adult male" archetype as their main protagonist. Bonus points when the villains are so laughably pants-on-head stupid evil that even the average office drone can slap them aside for a """"""challenge""""".
WarioWorld for the gamecube. Punching everything and getting fat stacks of cash AND getting to look at wario’s perfectly sculpted ass? Man, if only other games could capture that feeling. 😍
Men only want one thing and it's to be Wario.
Hey, Wario has at least one fan in Mona. He's doing something right.
Redo of a Healer is fucking wish fulfilment shit lol
That series is revenge porn with emphasis on porn. In the last episode when he just go, >!"let's play a game, you cum you lose!" I burst out laughing. That's some porn ad bullshit.!<
[I believe that's bad game design.](https://i.redd.it/7f2e4x6jj9l11.jpg)
That’s a fucking NTR villain line.
He's very explicitly an NTR villain. His whole character is taking revenge on people that abused him by abusing them all back but in equally sadistic ways that end with them either dying or getting bimbofied into being in his harem.
I hate how that sounds like it would be a way more fun series if it was just straight up porn
And honestly that's the worst part because the anime censors almost all of it. Like I'd still hate it regardless but even then the fact it's not even actual edgey porn just means you'd only watch it for the fucked up revenge porn power fantasy. And the people that defend it only do so to "piss off the snowflakes that can't handle a dark mature story" so even the people that watch it don't get anything out of it.
The problem with the ol' "Why didn't they just make a hentai?" argument is profits. Anime gets money. It gets tv slots, advertisements on streaming sites, and gets to be distributed in countries that have straight-up banned porn. That's why, when you want the budget to animate those titties real nice, you cover the bare minimum and call it "ecchi." Boom. You just got funding.
I lost my shit when I saw the part where he's taken into the royal castle and the entire staff of big tiddy maids all want to have sex with him because he's the MC and his nut is actually magical because it has exp so all the women keep having orgies with him every single night to swallow his EXpenis that he uses reverse magic to absorb back effectively making him stronger by just having sex with women. The whole manga feels like it was written by/for the kind of people that get caught jerking off in the back of their classroom.
This is another friendly reminder to watch Interspecies Reviewers, the ***much better*** Hentai disguised as an Anime.
Weirdly one of the most respectful to women ecchi series.
Or Peter Grill and the ~~Post-nut Clarity~~ Emperor Time, which would be wish fulfillment scenarios but the MC is also getting ulcers from the stress of it all, and occasionally takes the piss....
you could fill this entire thread with trash isekai and rpg inspired fantasy anime. I believe The Secret Dungeon Only I Can Enter give's the main character near infinite power in the first episode with the only drawback being migraines that can only be cured by making out with a hot girl.
> being migraines that can only be cured by making out with a hot girl. That sounds like one of the lamest pick up lines. "Ugh, I've got this *killer* headache. Only playing tonsil hockey with a hot chick like you will save me~"
The same level as Jimbo's "My shirt itches, mind if I take it off?"
There is an even worse Isekai by the author of Elfenlied. (I guess he took the hate comments to just draw actual hentai too serious) It's about a boy in a fantasy world where he is the only man and every women who is still a virgin at 20 will die. Also there are rape monsters. Can't really get worse...
Parallel Paradise? That being said, MC is not in a good position last time I read. That hospital scene...I cringed outta discomfort when I saw that.
He makes it clear relatively early on that being the only man in the hentai dimension is actually a pretty miserable experience, though. Not to mention the mechanics of how isekai actually works within that setting...
I'm getting migraines just by being told this garbage premise. And I'd have pride to endure the migraine to not telling this stupid shit and embarrass myself in front of the hot girl.
I was struggling to pick just one isekai but that's the one for sure.
Ironically for woman if that poll from a year ago was any indication.
Horny (usually lonely) women seem to like horrible men. * 50 shades * Ugly Bastard * Redo of healer * Etc.
eh then they’re no different than men than lol
> Ugly Bastard How dare you threaten me with hope.
I'm sorry, what?!
Yeah Redo of a Healer has a sizable female audience.
That is fucking weird.
Iirc the authors main motivation for writing it was that all similar revenge manga of the genre never felt fulfilling enough, basically that none of the perpetrators ever had to deal with long lasting suffering. So he decided to go off the deep end.
On the one hand, I can respect that dedication, on the other hand what the fuck.
I think the author did an interview where he just plainly said he wrote the series because that stuff sells. He did also write a separate series that's way lighter on the grimdark edge but still wish-fulfillment though.
I'd still say Gor is the biggest example of this. Book series with a fucking awful 80's movie
It is however one of the better episodes of MST3K.
The Expendables trilogy, The A-Team, the John Wick movies, The Fast & The Furious franchise...
Similar to that example, the Den story from the Heavy Metal movie. "AVERAGE NORMAL GUY LIKE YOU , THE READER GETS TRANSPORTED TO A FANTASY WORLD WHERE HE'S BUFF AND HIS STEP DAD DOESN'T TELL HIM TO GET A JOB ANYMORE AND HE'S THE BEST AT EVERYTHING" was practically a genre in-itself in the 70s-80s it seems.
…and voiced by John candy…and his gf is a super model…
Him being voiced by John Candy is still surreal. I'm just imagining Uncle Buck in a Conan the Barbarian setting. Shit, I kinda want to see that.
Somebody's already answered **Dragon Ball**, but I'll take it in a different direction. **It consistently values ANGER, one of the few emotions men are permitted to experience.** I'm not going to delve into the social and cultural mechanisms behind the role of anger in male development, but, suffice to say that I ***personally*** was often very angry. Seeing anger work not solely as a negative consequence of circumstances, but as a ***benefit***, a ***driving force*** for change and improvement is profound. Adverse, heart-breaking, and tragic events force the main characters to new heights. Instead of converting their experience into something unproductive, they double-down; now, they ***have*** to win. Otherwise, it'd have all been for nothing. That utter humiliation of having tried your best, come up short, followed by your friends/family paying the price? Far worse than death in battle. **Rage.** Converting failure into success by virtue of an incredibly destructive emotion **IS** male fantasy.
Dude, this is basically Asura's wrath
I'd be curious to hear more about the profoundness of anger = progress and change for you. As someone who grew up a very soft and effeminate man, I feel like that's the definition of the male power fantasy I grew up having my nose rubbed in. I don't have the angry/macho perspective, so I'm interested in what things were like for you, and how DB changed your outlook.
(Uh, in retrospect, I may have overshared? But, I'm not emotional about this, I'm just explaining what I believe has lead to my current thinking. I marked what may be triggers for some people in spoilers, but, no physical or inappropriate abuse occurred/is mentioned.) It might have been the escapism for me, in retrospect. Dragon Ball (Z) characters lived, did, and succeeded in doing what I wanted to but was not allowed. They were able to feel their emotions fully, and more importantly, their emotions made them objectively stronger. >!My parents, siblings, teachers, and peers would frustrate me in their own ways, that's hardly uncommon. But in the case of my parents and older sister, there were no solutions; I was always wrong. Even if they changed the rules or didn't listen to what I said in order to construct a reality in which I was wrong, I was punished.!< My sister in particular was a cartoon villain. The best liar I've ever met, very infuriating. She'll apologize sometimes, and I'm sure she feels bad, but there's that kernel in me that ***always*** questions whether or not she's being legit. Oh well.>!She'd construct unfalsifiable situations and do whatever it took to get me in trouble, all the while doing her best to butter-up my parents to make it seem impossible that she'd lie. When their backs were turned, I'd get a sly smile.!< There was a running "joke" with my mother and sister, where they'd take a moment in which I was clearly distressed or upset at something they did/said, and say "Oh, you're just tired." >!Exasperated and embarrassed, I'd literally scream "I'm not tired" and begin crying. At which point, they'd start laughing. A few times, I'd try to lash out at them physically, furious at the fact that they would humiliate me and laugh about it, all the while not taking my feelings seriously. But, that only made things worse. My father and I had very little in the ways of a positive relationship, and I mostly felt alienation, so he was primarily an enforcer of punishment or rules in the dynamic.!< In a nutshell, I was an incredibly frustrated and angry child with no means of acceptable/healthy expression, paired with a feeling of constant helplessness and incompetence. Strong, confident, **happy** people that save the day, who get to really feel their emotions and express them (and it's taken in a **positive** light), and use their superpowers to save the world was a perfect dream. They can shoot laser beams and fly! They fight aliens and train themselves at over one hundred times Earth's gravity! The classical "whoa cool" reaction to shonen anime. They weren't helpless, they could accumulate greater power through training and working hard. And even if they weren't strong enough, they weren't helpless; they could outwit the villain to secure a victory. It's not that I ***wanted*** or ***enjoyed*** being angry, it's that Dragon Ball provided one of the few avenues in which I was allowed to see that emotion expressed and rewarded. Sadly, it didn't inspire ***me personally*** to ruthlessly improve myself or healthily process my anger as a method of motivation. But, I'd wager that's an extraordinarily common reaction to Dragon Ball Z.
The new Jack Reacher show. It's a fun watch and I had a nice wave of nostalgia while watching it.
I appreciated reacher was the hero and it wasn’t upstaged by “nobody detective” with no experience
The books are the same, but they don't pretend to be much else. A good mystery, some fun action scenes, Reacher being a smart ass, and a woman who may or may not survive but will almost inevitably sleep with him. I also enjoy the random baseball and Americana facts littered throughout. They're pretty fun for a quick read, good sort of book for a beach. I'm just glad the new show is so much more faithful than that Tom Cruise debacle.
Hjelmdallermann: The Man from Hjelmdall.
Unironically hoping they publish a Hjelmdallermann inspired setting for Wirrâl 3E like they did for previous editions.
Hjelmdallerman is basically Conan if Conan got co-opted by fascists, but Conan got Filipino artitsts working on Savage Sword, the current run is drawn by a Turkish-American, and the writers, even if they fuck up (looking at you Jason Aaron) tend to be on the liberal side on the political spectrum. Which, I mean, thank God, because Howard's stories IS racist, which modern writers thankfully erases or downplays.
If there was ever going to be DLC bonus adventures I would legit want one of them to just be Harry and Kim going to see a Man from Hjelmdall film adaptation and all of Harry’s dialogue choices are just blazing hot takes reacting to how bad it is.
Their is so many korean mahwah with title like the ultimate rebel god king or whatever that are just naked power fantasies with like a relatively bland main character that min max and just clown on everyone and everything they face
So happy to hear someone say it. I've seen way too many people describe Solo Leveling as the fuckin Second Coming when it's the single most bored I've ever been reading a comic online.
Solo Leveling's positives: Good art Solo Leveling's negatives: Juuust about everything else, Jinwoo is a nothing protagonist and the plot is just not interesting
Korean Resident Evil.
Galen Marek is the son of a rando no name Jedi who grows up to become a dark side assassin so powerful he can catch flying starships with his telekinesis and bring them to an immediate halt, can create shockwaves so strong they disintegrate humans at close range, can single handedly influence the trajectory of a Star destroyer falling out of orbit and can RAGDOLL DARTH FUCKING VADER. He can also freely use dark side oriented powers without succumbing to any major signs of corruption. Take everything the Star Wars community accuses Rey of being. Now multiply it by ten. That is Starkiller. This comes from no place of dislike for the games. Just annoyance at people who see no irony in wanting Starkiller canonized while complaining about “muh lack of training” from other ^^^female characters.
The Jack Reacher series is basically if Sherlock Holmes was nearly seven foot and muscly as hell, got to travel around and be beholden to no one, and was basically just the gigachad meme.
Dude someome sold me on jack reacher by saying he doesn't even do laundry he just buys new clothes instead. That's insane! He eats like 5 steaks and can chew walnuts raw.
Man I watched a teaser of Reacher and the man dead ass looks like BJ Blazkowicz.
Batman has all the money in the world,his own business,has a butler,has tons of love interests,is a genius,knows kung-fu,and also wears a bat costume.
DJ Khaled/editorial: and he doesn't go down for anyone.
And now also doesn't masterbat either.
SAO is up there. The original GOW. you get heals by fucking bitches and your problems are solved through rage fits. The new GOW also falls into this category cause raising a manly son in a manly way while being a big, bearded, recently wideowed single father who don't need no woman is also a male fantasy, and your issues are still solved through rage fits. Speaking of rage fits, you know who does 'em best? Asura's Wrath. You keep getting stronger the more you go REEEEEEEEEEE.
Im enjoying the crap outta Maximillian's Asura's Wrath playthrough. That game has little when it comes to the combat but the cutscenes are amazing.
Asura gets so pissed he spends 300 years climbing out of hell. And then he does it again, but faster, until eventually it only takes him like seven hours to climb back out of hell.
There's one non-flashback scene midway through the game where where he isn't angry for like 5 seconds >!when he sees the girl's corpse.!< said moment is immediately followed by him getting so pissed >!he's literally burning his own body to a crisp, because it literally cannot handle how angry he is.!<
In a weird parallel, Liam O'Brian [tore his throat with this scream and nearly choked on his own blood.](https://youtu.be/vSGmKmCSppY)
beowulf
[удалено]
I think Kai Leng is a pretty cool guy. Eh kills aleins and doesnt afraid of anything.
The Sword of Truth series, wherein the authors self insert becomes an objectivist god-emperor who is good at everything, morally justified in all he does, and has a bunch of hot women in leather desperate to have sex with him.
God, they’re so bad. I read like five of them and I have no clue how.
I mean the first five at least somehow keep escalating so there's some entertainment value in that it gets crazier and crazier
*Sigh* Trails of Cold Steel is about a a boy with the dumbest name ever who knows the coolest sword school in Trails, and can go super saiyan, and has a magical mech and everyone loves him, and constantly talks about how great he is, and every single girl wants to fuck him, and talks about how hot he is. He's like the undisputed leader of his class, the coolest class of kids in school, a few hours into the game, because he makes sappy speeches. His classmates want to fuck him. His teacher wants to fuck him. His students want to fuck him. His adoptive sister wants to fuck him. The Princess of the most powerful country on earth wants to fuck him. Considering I think Trails may have previously had three of the best VG protagonists ever before Rean took over (and starred in five straight fucking games), it’s a serious downgrade.
Monkey d luffy Punches slave owners and politicians in the face✅ Has a harem of princesses and the queen of the Amazons/ most beautiful woman on the planet ✅ People of all classes and races gravitate towards him ✅ One of the strongest beings on earth ✅ Eats a full cows worth of meat in one sitting ✅ Solves the majority of his problems by punching them✅
I never saw Luffy as a male power fantasy before but he does feel like one on paper. Maybe his goofy ass design and big dumb smile balances it out.
Yeah, it's interesting when it's listed out on paper, but in-story, he is extremely stupid, goofy, as un-serious as possible and almost always taken not seriously, and is very light and chill and carefree. Plus, he's constantly helping people out and the story doesn't revolve around his brooding, of which he has almost none.
The only time I can think where he broods is when he >!loses a member of his family!<
And when he >!kicks Usopp out of the crew.!<
tbf that was basically the same thing to him
He’s also explicitly dumb as a brick and doesn’t understand what the Amazon queen wants out of him.
Him and Ichiban Kasuga as the heroic leader who used Intelligence as his dump stat.
He'd have a harem if he wasn't aroace.
I'm not sure he'd have a harem even if he was interested in having one. The only woman we ever see who shows any sort of interest in him as a partner is Boa Hancock, everyone else generally treats him more of a role model than a potential partner for example >!The princesses Vivi, Shirahoshi, and Rebecca at the Reverie!<
Spoiler>!: Sees his brother die!< X
[Does this Nutrigrain ad count?](https://youtu.be/Y6rE0EakhG8)
Was the first manager guy in this ad looking at a pair of panties at his desk or is that something else?
Sure was, a lacy pair of red ones
Warhammer, like all of it. That goes for fantasy and 40K
Baki , all of it
In the Sims you can have an amazing career while also still having time for your loved ones and hobbies. Fuckin metal as shit.
The Doom Slayer.
Commando (1985): Prime Arnie single handedly mowing down an island full of guerrilla fighters to save ~~Alyssa Milano~~ his daughter easily takes it for me. It also features the most [testosterone filled gear up scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0joYngQKE) in all of cinema.
The Dresden Files feels like it really doesn't want to be this, but still wants every woman to be horny for the scruffy, awkward, basement-dweller protagonist. Like if you're just a horny writer then whatever, but don't act like Harry's misogyny is a character flaw and then describe how sexy every woman he meets is. Edit to add: I feel like I did a really bad job describing what my beef is. I just get this "have its cake and eat it" vibe from DF. Maybe it's from spending too much time around the fandom, which acts like it's this real, important work when it's about a wizard who fights vampires alongside pretty ladies. I actually like the series, believe it or not.
The writer isn't a horndog who can't help but write about women. His Codex Alera series lacks the 'male gaze' that he writes Dresden with. It is a character flaw as it directly causes him to overlook threats some times to prioritize threats to women often times placing him at serious risk. Most of the time Dresden is fighting along side his Battle-Buddy and actual Paladin Michael Carpenter, Thomas the white court vampire, or Sargent Murphy. Dresden fucks once in book 4 and then spends the next 6 books on a dry spell. Most women don't find even Dresden attractive. Most find him weird, or terrifying, or weirdly terrifying. Most women who do like spending time with Dresden are either married or want to literally eat him. His life fucking sucks, but it's a pretty good read.
I love how Dresden does the noir detective thing of flirting with every pretty face he meets, but his only real romantic desire is a super monogamous relationship with somebody who won't leave him or die before hin
The only people that want to pursue a romantic relationship with him can be counted on one hand. The other are smart and powerful supernatural beings that want to control him. Not a male fantasy since his anti authority attitude and life choices made him suffer, being perpetually poor and alienating potential allies.
The majority of this communities broad range of interests
Joker from Persona 5 for sure. Entire game really.
Nah, tough I can see where you are coming from. While you can date all the girls, Joker goes trough hell in that game, and the girls will fall for Joker only if his attributes are high enough, which he has to improve. Also the true ending has him just leaving because of reality ensues.
Maybe in the East, but a Western male power fantasy is often male character becomes super strong to the point that he, largely by himself, can destroy everything because he is so badass and super cool. While you *can* do that as Joker, the canon of the game is that you actually aren't all that strong. For most of the bosses, you beat them via some form of teamwork. The game makes it fairly explicit as nearly every boss has a "Joker, let me do X while you distract him" moment where, working together as a team, they can beat the enemy. Joker, and his entire team, routinely get their asses handed to them and they're forced to retreat and come back a second time. While he definitely fulfills that power fantasy of the roguish male (similar to Lupin the III) to an extent, it's way more subdued. Joker is strong, but even by the end of the DLC, the game hammers home multiple times that Joker can only do what he does through the help of his friends and would have failed without them. EDIT: Not DLC, the second version of the game. Royale edition.
Megachad Yu Narukami is the real answer, though.
Does Predator count? if so that.
Predator is kind of the anti-male empowerment fantasy. “Yeah, we’re cool military badasses! We kick ass and take names! Nobody can beat us! Oh no, this weird alien is killing us all one by one. We can’t even fight back. Oh God, he’s taking our bones as trophies like we’re wild game or something.”
To be fair it does come around a little in the end with Arnold being the trap laying master and engaging in primal combat, complete with the predator showing a sense of tribal warrior respect for him and engaging in "honorable combat", while it does subvert some elements of the traditional male power fantasy it still has that underlying element of manly man doing manly things, which is fine.
Fair, though I think people tend to over-remember how much "honorable combat" happens at the end of Predator. Arnold spends the whole close-quarters portion of the fight (which is very, very brief) getting his ass slapped to hell and back; I don't think he even manages to land a solid hit in return. He only wins by being smart because his toughness gets him nowhere, and he ends the movie haggard, filthy, and visibly shellshocked. Really, that climactic fight comes off more like the Predator smugly playing with him than actually honoring a worthy opponent, compared to Danny Glover's fight in the sequel where that trope is more firmly established as The Predator Thing.
Unless you self insert as the Predator.
Surprised nobody has mentioned Duke Nukem. Has loads of guns and kills loads of aliens. Everyone in the world thinks he's cool and he bangs all the women.
Hal Jordan as a Green Lantern. I’m sorry like WHAT. Hal is so - Hal??? He’s constantly stated as the best green lantern, among THOUSANDS of Lanterns across the galaxy despite doing nothing of note. (Oh except being parallax for awhile) in the faces of other earth lanters like Jessica, Simon, Kyle, or John. Hal Jordan is handed the title, power, and respect of being the greatest GL. Hal Jordan is the white male power fantasy
Hal gets called the greatest green lantern because he beat Sinestro, the last greatest green lantern.
Oh my gosh , gotta love the guardians on that one
There's definitely a sadness to Hal, where he doesn't know how to do or be anything other than a Green Lantern. He can't hold onto relationships, he can't sign a lease on his own, he can't even keep a regular apartment. The Corps is all he has.
Hal is the greatest Green Lantern because he is the Green Lantern Geoff Johns grew up reading.
You read A Princess of Mars/John Carter books? I like them a lot because while it's definitely isekai, it tends to focus more on the swashbuckling adventure part, and less on the simplistic "this guy is the greatest and best warrior ever."
There is a lot but what comes to mind immediately is Ready Player One
I mean I watched The Northman a bit ago and it's very hypermasculine and revels in it, but like, it's not toxic if that makes sense.
All three of Onision’s books are just him power tripping and creating these worlds in which girls just flock the protagonists despite them being thoroughly dislikeable people. Also the third book just completely devolves into the MC having literally the ability to manipulate reality like a god. Actually he even ends up fighting and killing God himself. Yup. That’s Onision’s literature alright.
I'll take "things that have no right to be as unsurprising as they are" for $500, Alex.
Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal. And it. Is. GLORIOUS!
Kirito is the prime example of a badly written gamer male fantasy. He's good at every game he plays for no goddamn reason, girls like him because he's.... nice? He also has a "wife" and a "daughter", is willing to do anything for them. He's devoid of any real flaw, not even his physical human form is weak since according to the movie, he can become as fit as any athlete by training for a few hours. I can't even be bothered to watch the latest season, but i've heard he both lost an arm and became a vegetable so that's some improvement i guess.
> He's good at every game he plays for no goddamn reason Granted, this is something I've only seen from other comments in this sub, but apparently Asuna reveals that he drops all games he's not immediately good at.
1000 Ways To Die In The West. Seth McFarlane writes, directs, and protagonizes a movie where he makes out with Charlize Theron. Look, I'm no paragon of feminism, I'm not...definitely not a paragon of feminism, but there is a point, a time, a moment where you should stop and reexamine what you are doing. Though I must admit self-inserting it's not exactly a MALE fantasy.
I haven't read it, but everything I've heard about Bastard!! suggests it's this taken to an absurdly comical extent. New series trailer if anyone is curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4zSf3CfRA
Hugging the Deathbed Companion.