DE: Mirror, mirror

[bjornwilde]

From genarti today:
Is your character beautiful by the standards of their culture(s)? Do they think they are? How does that affect their approach to conversation/flirting/socializing, or is there anything else interesting you want to say on the subject about them?

[And as always, feel free to leave a DE idea here and we'll give credit when used.]

Comments

[the_gene_genie]

Gene - no. HAHAHA, no. And if anyone suggested he was beautiful, he'd assume they were calling him bent, and hit them.

His attitude to this sort of thing is quite odd, by today's standards. All interviews with his PB at the time, or even now; all the press and reviews about Life on Mars vaunted Gene as being appealing because he's so unreconstructed. It wouldn't occur to him to look in the mirror and wonder if he's good-looking, or not. That's what ponces do. He looks like what he looks like, and that's the end of it.

He is, however, aware that women either love his charisma, or hate him for it. He's far more concerned with how much of a room his personality takes up - and when I say 'concerned', it's more like, 'You'll all bloody look at me, and hear what I have to say, because I say so'. The impact of this on flirting/socialising = he says what he wants, only barely modifies himself if he wants to pick up a bird, and that's that. If he doesn't pull, there's always the wife to go back to. At least in the 70s.

He's a little more circumspect in the 80s, mainly because Sam and his wife leaving knocked his confidence a tad, and he's no longer in his natural environment of Manchester. So he's a little different - he still says whatever he wants, but he's a bit...meaner about it, I think. Not as exuberant. And with an edge of loneliness that means he pulls by being the strong silent type, rather than the loudest git in the room. And I suspect, does far better with women because of it.

[ceitfianna]

This is an interesting question.

Will is handsome but in his era red hair isn't a good thing, so he doesn't consider himself as that attractive. Though he is a flirt and confident in himself, his hair is just an issue.

Charles is definitely attractive by his era standards though short for a man, but that's never been an issue. He knows how to use his blue eyes and charming smile and he's a flirt. Throughout the movie, whenever he's in the room, he's the one your eyes go to or at least mine do. Also with his telepathy, he knows exactly what makes him appealing and plays on it.

Sameth is portrayed as attractive in the Old Kingdom, but not a great deal is made of it. It's not a key thing about him and not something that he places a lot of importance on. His titles and what he does is more important to him and defines him more than the fact that he's attractive.

Jane is played by Anne Hathaway and so beautiful, but what's interesting is that this is a movie of a writer's life and part of the history/story of Jane Austen is that she was plain. I think the answer is somewhere between, she wasn't conventionally attractive for her era, but she loves to flirt and focuses more on intelligence. Somewhere between the movie and history is how I think of her, beautiful but not a woman who men of her era were interested in for her beauty first.

William is played by Logan Lerman who is an attractive young man, but he's also someone who looks younger than he is. In the 19th century, he would be seen as I think handsome but not the kind of guy who women gathered around. There's also the aspect of him not having a lot of confidence in terms of himself that way, he thinks of himself as ordinary and canon seems to back that up. My head canon for him is that there are girls who have thought he was attractive but nothing has ever come of it because there's a lot of other issues that come into play. His family doesn't have the best reputation in their town, William's known for having a bad temper and his family doesn't have a lot of money.

Moist's entire schtick is that he's ordinary looking, which allows him to become whoever he wants to. I chose Jude Law for his face because he has a the kind of mobile face that I think works. Moist is someone who knows how to play with expectations and can definitely have every eye on him. I think that's he's attractive by his world's standards, but its something that he only uses when he wants to.

Demeter is a Greek goddess, she can make herself seem unattractive as transformation is part of what she does, but she's always beautiful.

Tumnus is a Faun and the attractiveness of Fauns within Narnia is never approached. It seems like they're characters for which that isn't a consideration. I imagine him to be fairly normal for a Faun.

The Pirate King is played by Kevin Kline, who I think completely owns the role and makes the Pirate King the one character you can't take your eyes off. In the play, it seems like Frederick is clearly set up to be the conventionally attractive male lead and the Pirate King is attractive but not the heartthrob Frederick is meant to be. I think this version of Pirates got that a little wrong a Frederick's actor is definitely buff and handsome but kind of dull, while The Pirate King takes over every scene he's in.

[cantdiequiteyet]

Zooming in on Teresa because it's interesting. She was attractive, as a human but white hair, pale skin, and more specifically silver eyes mark her out as a warrior of the Organization. She is half monster, and therefore something to be feared and hated.

[valiantrebel]

I mean, I think Joe Armstrong is bangin', especially the scruffier he gets -- and he has a shoulder-to-waist ratio that's only not absurd if you're an action figure. But Harry Percy as a teenager, as he is in-Bar at present, oh sweetpea... well, we're all pretty awkward at that age.

Harry lands somewhere between "doesn't think about it," "laughs about it" and "doesn't care," since he's got such a healthy sense self-esteem from his other qualities.

[ceitfianna]

I love that in the image in we're, all you can see is his profile but its obvious that its him.

[jjprobert]

Jack West: Erm, I guess so, at least in the 'ruggedly handsome' sort of manner.

Alfred Pennyworth: Not beautiful as such, but respectable, certainly. He moves fluidly through Gotham's 'high society' (such as it is)

Max Epper: Has a tendancy to care less what people think of his looks than what they do his ideas. So, he can put on the suit and wear it well when presenting to funding committees, but otherwise not really.

Bean: Erm, no. tiny little kid on the edge of starvation. Not really a factor in conversations, either.

Erik Selvig: Not really, much like max. He can put on a very respectable look to get funding, but tends not to bother otherwise.

[camwyn]

Gordon is generally kind of pasty and nerdy looking and looks as if a dog chewed on somebody's math teacher. He has got fairly fantastic upper body strength and musculature, if only because the HEV suit is not full power armor, so it has to have been his own muscles carrying the load of all his guns and all his crowbar swinging. But overall, no, not particularly beautiful. Other than maybe his eyes. He's never much cared about his appearance beyond basic hygiene and making sure he looks the way he ought to for rally-the-troops appearances.

Adrian Shephard's another strictly average looking fella. Better overall muscle development, though; he looks better in a swimsuit than Gordon does. He tends to rely on personality and the Marine Corps uniform/haircut when he's flirting.

Ray's vaguely cute in a 'look at the oversized gangling puppy' kind of way by the standards of his culture. He has next to no conception of how he looks, although he does maintain decent personal hygiene (I know there are people who don't care how they look who also don't care how they smell) and will spiff up his appearance for Romana's sake.

Medic's moderately attractive by local standards and he knows it, but he's an arrogant son of a bitch anyway and considers the most important element of his presentation to be that he's intellectually hung like a horse. So.

Arcade Gannon is about average-looking and that is the way he likes it, because it means he doesn't stand out and isn't likely to be remembered for anything other than a very stupid name.

Ellen would have been reasonably cute by her culture's standards if it weren't for spending a year and more on the surface with only marginal face protection in combat. She's got more scars than most people find attractive, meaning she's about average looking (if a bit babyfaced from not having been exposed to weather for nineteen years) to lifelong surfacers, and kind of freaky looking to Vault dwellers whose idea of big traumatic injury involves having fallen down the stairs and cut their lip when they were six.

Varric is a pretty attractive dwarf by surface dwarf standards in his world. Orzammar dwarves would tell him to close up that damn jacket, wear something respectable, and either get a clean shave or grow a proper beard if he wanted to take advantage of the Tethras family's stunning facial bone structure. Varric lives on the surface and couldn't care less about Orzammar, so he exploits the hell out of his looks, especially with the ladies.

Zira is a very appealing young chimpanzee by her culture's standards, in a nerd-chick kind of way. Cornelius, her fiancee, is even more nerd-cute. Of course, this is by chimpanzee standards and does not apply to orangutan or gorilla preferences; by the standards of orangutans she looks like a respectable member of her species, and by gorilla standards she looks ridiculously soft, along the lines of the way a CLAMP manga prettyboy or other overly stylized bishie comes across to an American who favors football players or Tyrese Gibson for their standards of appearance.

Mordin is a distinguished-looking old man by salarian standards. (He's thirty-six or thirty-seven. Most salarians make it to age forty, maybe forty-five at the outside.) His scalp tattoo, broken horn, and facial scar make him look a bit like what an American would think of Paul Newman if Mr. Newman had lost an eye in combat or something.

[hadyougoing]

This whole comment is so great. *_____*

[kd7sov]

Somehow, physical beauty isn't a thing that I think is even mentioned in Golden Sun. Or no, there is that one tree who used to be a beautiful young woman. But anyway... I'd say Felix isn't especially attractive. Certainly he doesn't think of himself that way.

Kain... is. He probably takes advantage of it from time to time, but he doesn't really consider it relevant to how he wants to live his life.

Fluttershy is apparently model-quality beautiful. She'd rather not think about it at all, thank you. That wasn't her happiest couple of weeks ever.

Cranky is cranky. I'm pretty sure it's not possible to be both perpetually cranky and beautiful.

[gorgonfondness]

Mia is definitely beautiful by her culture's standards. To the point that she often gets unwanted attention from Hot Girl News and her fan club, the two biggest sources of pictures of her taken without her knowledge or consent. Heck, you get to see Mia well before you meet her in the game thanks to Nash carrying a picture of her. Mia, who's spent most of her life living in her mother's shadow, had low self-esteem and never really started believing she was beautiful until she started dating Draco.

Lucas, being coddled and kind of baby-faced, probably qualifies more for cute than anything like beautiful or handsome. But the characters that are more interesting to talk about from Mother 3 are the Magypsies, who are essentially magical drag queens. They don't have gender but have rather masculine builds. But honey, they know they're beautiful in their dresses and makeup. Also, Magypsies apparently can't use their magic if they're not wearing their makeup, as Ionia loses her ability to fly when she's sans makeup.

Handsome is often a quality attributed to knights in shining armor and The Prince and the Raven would likely run on good guys looking good, so I'll say Lohengrin is considered handsome. But probably not as handsome as Siegfried. Siegfried's the Prince, after all. The Knight doesn't particularly care one way or the other.

[hadyougoing]

Oooooh, good one! I'm up and typing before my alarm goes off! (STOP BEING INTERESTING.)

All my characters are pretty because their PBs are all young actors; however, the extent and effects of the pretty vary.

Ava thinks of herself as cuter than pretty, which would be why most of her attempts to manipulate her appearance to get sympathy from people have involved her round, mobile face (faces!!) and short-ish, thin stature. So when Ava is talking to you, rather than draw attention to any physical attributes exactly, she goes more with "hey, I'm all cute and witty-ish and plucky."

Puck is human-pretty in a culture where many are extraordinarily human-pretty, despite not being humans, and where that is often linked to status and power, see also Titania, Oberon. He is mostly smug about his appearance, but in the bar, he occasionally feels some ambivalence. (Prospero, early on, equated "pretty" with "vapid," a theme which Satan expounded on in much greater detail! Not that Puck cares what people say about him, except that he does. Mmmostly he thinks he's got a good deal with Havelock now.)

Aphrodite, as the goddess of love and beauty in the Greek pantheon, knows she is hot stuff and tries not to unfairly flaunt it. Unless she thinks that would be fun. Or she wants to make a point. Ummm.

Wendy, actually, has a really great canonical interaction about her appearance. Another Middleman (the aptly nicknamed 69) comments on her smokin' body or some word like that, and Wendy replies correcting it to "my ass-kicking Sensei-Ping-trained body." Nobody likes sexual harassment in the workplace, but I really respect that Wendy instantly redirected a comment about what her body looks like to what it can do. Since she's a superhero, that's certainly the more relevant point.

[bjornwilde]

Love Wendy's answer!

[death_gone_mad]

Amascut has a streak of vanity in her, and is beautiful even when disguising herself as a beetle. Which is funny considering how much time she spends pretending to look plain. There are descriptions in game of her as beautiful, handsome, statuesque, but always red-haired (or at least red-shelled). I don't know how much it enters into her flirting, other than perhaps as an overconfidence that she will get her man/woman/target. It does figure into her "proof" that she isn't crazy:

• Beautiful people are not crazy
• Powerful people are not crazy
• Amascut is both beautiful and powerful
• Therefore, Amascut is not crazy

Ironclad logic there...

[kd7sov]

Well, the reasoning's fine, as long as we read "all [adjective] people" for "[adjective] people". The premises, on the other hand...

[saphyria]

Yrael: His appearances are all a bunch of masks that he creates himself. He often uses his appearance for personal gain, so when he takes a particular appearance or form, he's doing it on purpose in order to get the desired results. He did find it rather flattering, though, when Death told him he looked his most beautiful when he was in his true shape.

Zelgadiss: Hates the way he looks. It's a problem because he's a rather vain person, and takes the way he is perceived by others very seriously and personally. He often assumes the strangers will assume he's a monster for how he looks (which has happened in the past), and is standoffish and prickly upon first meeting, as a result. His appearance also means that he won't seriously pursue the object of his affection until he finds a cure.

Sunshine: Her only physical description in canon is that she's skinny, wears comfy-not-fashionable clothes in bright colors, often has a fierce look on her face, and has hair that looks better if not brushed too often and that sometimes looks as though it's been tied back by a kerchief. Also, scars. She's pretty without being beautiful - but she doesn't spare much time or thought for her looks.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

Steve is played by this mofo here, who I think is a handsome fella though he's a bit softer than comic!Steve. (Mostly it's the mouth. Comic!Steve's mouth isn't quite so full.) Steve is supposed to be an ideal physical specimen; even more so, he's a strapping blue-eyed blond, as if to say "take your Aryan ideal and shove it, Hitler." And of course in the movie, immediately after his transformation from cute-but-fragile skinny Steve into the Steve we know and love, Peggy Carter's actress barely kept her hands off. It's not in the script.

(It doesn't hurt any that Chris Evans is a sweetheart. I hope we've all seen that behind-the-scenes picture of Chris sweeping up after filming a battle scene while still in costume; and his Twitter account is mostly about basketball and being with his family. He's one of those people who gets more beautiful the more you learn about them, at least for me.)

(I also confess to enjoying the fact that Steve is smokin' hot, and that he's not used to people seeing him that way. It's fun.)

Merlin's attractiveness doesn't get remarked upon in the show, and I think with Colin Morgan it's highly subjective. On the one hand he's got that lovely blue eyes/dark hair coloring going for him, on the other his ears are rather large and he's quite slender to the point of skinniness. Next to Golden Boy Arthur, Merlin must look rather ordinary, and his one love interest didn't seem to like him for his looks, more for his kindness.

(I happen to think he's gorgeous, but I have a type and he fits it perfectly.)

Bilbo's attractiveness never comes up in the books, either. Martin Freeman has a rather Everyman kind of face, and certainly hobbit women weren't swooning over Bilbo. (After the first series of Sherlock came out I was telling a friend at work about it, and found a picture of Martin Freeman to show her, and told her I thought he'd make a good Bilbo because he had a hobbit nose. Wasn't long after that it was announced he would indeed be playing Bilbo. Sometimes I really got it :D.) I think that's kind of the idea with Bilbo, though, is that he's quite ordinary and Everyman-ish, but nevertheless remarkable. But then, hobbits tend to be.

Stuart...oh, Stuart. Part of Stuart's problem is that he's handsome and that's made things easy for him, until it doesn't and he actually has to work to impress someone. I think Dominic Cooper has gotten better-looking as he's gotten older, but there's no denying he's a cutie pie in The History Boys movie.

tl;dr on Victorian standards of attractiveness.

[awesome_binomial_theorems]

Oh dear. The weird contradictory social mores of the Victorians will be the death of me.

This is complicated. This will take a long time to go through.

Moriarty is - not? Except when he is? It'd be more apt to go with not, I think, but Victorian repression and the conflict between public and private that defined the era means that sometimes 'not attractive' is 'desirable' in the right framework.

Victorian standards of male beauty and masculinity were this slightly confused and tangled combination of an Anglo-Saxon gentleman - muscular, sporting (but not a professional sportsman, since the idea of a worthy, cultured amateur was still popular), English and preferably of good standing and wealth, fastidiously neat, tall in moderation, often with a moustache or well-trimmed beard to show maturity and masculinity - and an idealised view of Greek, and especially Athenian, beauty.

So there's that. Which Moriarty is not: He's not especially neat, he's stubbly, he isn't English, he's too tall to really fall within the window of attractiveness, and he's not really of good standing. Society is working against him, in this regard, because the Victorians were big (abruptly big, moreso than either their predecessors or those who came after them) on phrenology and 'racial sciences', and the popular pseudo-science of the time portrayed Irish and Welsh people as simultaneously ape-like and effeminate, so from a sociological standpoint people are inclined towards viewing him as unattractive.

(He does, however, fulfil the requirements for muscularity and wealth, and amateur sportsmanship. So there's that.)

So in general, Moriarty would be considered kind of ugly, in an abstract sense as much as a concrete one, at least in public. In private, or even not in private so much as just outside a certain sphere of respectability, things start getting confusing, because Victorian social mores tended to collapse in on themselves in spectacular fashion whenever scrutiny was eased up - as you may well be able to tell from the sheer numbers of brothels, fighting houses and opium dens (opium may have been acceptable, but it was still something you enjoyed either in your home or in a high-class club, rather than an opium den) in London.

So, in a certain context, Moriarty's attractiveness shoots up in large part because he doesn't fit well at all into the Victorian model of beauty, and Victorians had an insatiable appetite for things which were in blatant defiance of their own codes of morality, decorum and attractiveness. The best way of putting it is that if Moriarty was a character in one of the many, many bad erotica novels aimed at young women of the time (the historical equivalents of Fifty Shades of Grey, which had been both immensely popular and extremely disapproved of since at least Georgian times), he'd be the early 'bad boy' character who was eventually rejected (or maybe killed in some fashion) in favour of the idealised Victorian gentleman.



tl;dr: The Victorians were fucked up.

Re: tl;dr on Victorian standards of attractiveness.

[awesome_binomial_theorems]

That was much longer and more full of digressions than I intended it to be.

[alsoagreengrass]

Well. Scorpius is a Malfoy and is said to look like Draco and Lucius, so that means pale complexion and pointy, sharp features and cold grey eyes and receding hairlines. But, with this being a new era and all, I like to think he's softer in appearance than his father and grandfather. Dressing more casually and smiling a lot helps. He also doesn't have the unattractive attitudes and dirty reputations that his father and grandfather used to have.

That all said, Scorp lacks the confidence Draco and Lucius had/have. He's not the sort to command a room. He's more on the awkward side when it comes to flirting and socializing. He's also not the sort to strut, no matter how fit he actually is. (Which he is, rather physically fit. Because he keeps himself in good shape when he's not being emo and eating cake.) He has gained some confidence after being with Annabeth and now being with Albus.



... Thinking about it, I suppose he would/does strut around Albus. Annabeth kind of intimidates him, so, y'know, no. But Albus? Albus makes him feel like hotstuff, okay?

[ceitfianna]

Scorpius is adorable and I'm now imagining him struting as Albus goes, what are you doing?

[vance_prime]

Alyx is quite beautiful, but thanks to spending most of her life under the Reproductive Suppression Field, she doesn't think of herself in those terms. Her clothing and grooming choices are almost purely utilitarian, and when she picks up on flirting she tends to assume that the flirter is just doing it for politeness's sake. (Gordon, of course, is a big fat exception to this.)

Twilight... I honestly have no idea. It hasn't come up in canon, and it's pretty much a non-issue for her personally. At best, I'd guess she'd be "pre-makeover protagonist of a chick flick" level of attractiveness, but who knows?

Luna is still an adolescent, so her proportions are gangly and awkward, but she is a Princess and carries herself as such, which probably makes her seem a lot more attractive than she objectively is.

The cat is the ideal specimen of felinity, and no one can convince him otherwise.

[kd7sov]

For what it's worth, I kind of have the impression that Twilight is vaguely cute, but Doesn't Care to such a degree that nopony else particularly notices.

I hope that made sense; these kinds of thoughts tend to be particularly hard to fit into words.

[bjornwilde]

This ought to be interesting...
Ben before the accident knew he was a hunk who brought all the girls around. He loved it and was a little vain about it but not too much. Post accident, he thought of himself as a monster and most of the world sees him that way too. Nowadays, people are more comfortable with him and so think of him as more a mascot that anything to be attracted to. Still there are those who find him attractive, but it seems to be more because of his personality than his looks.

Hank is hunky in a nerdy sort of way. Take off his glasses and dress him in a fashionable clothes and watch out. He doesn't see himself this way as all his vanity and body issues are trapped by his mutation.

Thalia is the daughter of Zeus and a mortal woman attractive enough to catch his eye. I have a hard time believing she's anything but attractive. She thinks of herself as "okay" however and doesn't think much about it.

Val knows she's attractive because of her resemblance to her mother. When your mom has attracted the romantic advances of Namor, it's hard not know you are hot. She does tend to tone it down though, coming across more as cute than hot.

Palamedes...I don't know. He was rejected by Isuelt though that might have been due to his foreignness and not due to being unattractive. I use Oded Fehir for his PB, whom I think is pretty attractive so I'll go with yes, he's attractive. He doesn't care at the moment as he's not looking for any romantic involvement.

Andrea knows she is cute heading towards hot and tends to see it as an inconvenience. She refuses to be anyone's belt notch and doesn't have the time for anything serious.

[bjornwilde]

I forgot Jessica, my super hero vamp!

Jess is hot by her societies standards though in the super hero community, everyone seems to be hot, so it's not much of a big thing. She does know she is attractive and knows how to use that to her advantage, it was part of HYDRA training after all. Her emotional beauty, on the other hand, she's not so convinced of. It's hard to trust how people feel about you when you can manipulate how attractive they find you with super pheromones.

[rowanberries]

Interesting question! I'd be willing to bet proportionally yes-answers just due to the laws of fiction, but let's see...

oneman_onevote - In later life Havelock is described as both distinguished and attractive to Ladies of a Certain Age, and presumably that hasn't changed much from his youth, particularly as he's currently at the peak of physical fitness. :D By fashionable standards in Ankh-Morpork, he falls far short of the mark, since he dresses very soberly and practically even when not climbing the rooftops - his isn't a culture in which male beauty is necessary for advancement, and in fact would make him stand out. He doesn't want that. Still, he's a good-looking young man, if you take the time to look. He doesn't make much use of it, and doesn't really think anything of the kind - he figures Puck is just biased.

othercaptjack - Is Captain Jack Harkness. He's beautiful by the standards of every culture he sweeps through, baby! (Or: He's as classically good-looking as a man of his (apparent) age and species can be, and pushes on through to the top of a lot of other lists on sheer determined flirting.)

dreamer_fray - Nnnnot so much? He's physically a sickly looking fourteen-year-old with an unnerving stare. Someone around his age might just about get to 'cute' if he cleaned up and was on his best behaviour? That's about all he could hope for, but being a manipulative little shit he's made the most of even that in the past.

walksindeath - Yes, Sabriel is considered beautiful, although given that she's Queen, she gets extra credit in the Old Kingdom. She has good skin, and very dark eyes which work well for her, but she's often very tired-looking due to a stressful, physical job - and also just being a woman in her mid-forties with no access to cosmetics most of the time. She doesn't mind that, really, although she enjoys dressing up in nice clothes occasionally. The only time she goes for the kill is when visiting Ancelstierre and being diplomatic.

[hadyougoing]

Yes Havelock, Puck is biased.

BY YOUR HOTNESS.




Idk man, it's gotta be chemical.

Or maybe the knives.

[cameoflage]

I think Aradia's pretty! :D

It's kind of a difficult question, really, given Homestuck's heavily stylized art. Also she's 13. (Well, the alien equivalent thereof.) I do know that by troll standards she has bad teeth, as they are blunt like those of livestock. Also I've decided that she has a tall gangly sort of build, but she might grow out of that. And I'm not sure if her large mass of tangly curls is a plus or a minus where she comes from. Physical factors aside, her cheerfulness and confidence are pretty appealing. Trolls don't seem strongly invested in looks, but they do care somewhat.

Aradia isn't too concerned with her looks, but she does wear makeup; I figure she likes having face decorations.

[minkhollow]

Cata is, and trades on it as a good way to lure in her marks.

Sam is more worried about looking appropriately assassin-ish than whether people think he's handsome.

Claudia isn't that bad, but she is possibly the most likely of my set to go o_O if told she's pretty.

Apollo makes a point of manifesting as a hot guy. XD

Imp is definitely attractive, even though he looks a bit elvish. (He's more than a little sick of that question, too.) If he were actively trying to date his accent might also help a bit.

Regulus is definitely attractive by wizarding standards. How he and Sirius lucked out so much given all that pureblood inbreeding he has no idea. (It's not just physical lucking-out, either, but it's possible Bella absorbed all of that generation's crazypants.)

Red is very pretty! I don't think it's at the forefront of her mind, though; she's got better things to be getting on with, and the one person she's been close to romantically involved with so far was a childhood friend, so Peter was possibly biased in her favor anyway. And now she's hanging out with Snow White. XD
(Ruby, on the other hand, is very aware of her looks and puts them to Use. She's... less aware that she'd look much better if she toned down the high-exposure clothing, though, at least until the curse breaks.)

[varadia]

X is canonically very pretty. Ms Sinister gets super-excited to be able to take possession of a body that has super-fast healing abilities and is also really hot. Ms Sinister has priorities, or something.

Raven is intended to be very awkward-looking. His PBs are not really awkward-looking, and indeed are very pretty. Raven enjoys that, too. But seriously, awkward-looking, at least in movement and carriage.

Galadan is very striking in canon, but his aura of overwhelming vicious pointed evil tends to wipe that right out. He's also got a big red scar on his face, though in Milliways that's had a few hundred years to fade. His PB is very pretty, but mostly I liked the look of his eyes and all the stubble, to make him look rougher.

Dean is very attractive, though as canon goes on and he's more harrowed and exhausted, a lot of that attractiveness is made up with his charm and very awkward people skills. He looks like the bad boy your mom wouldn't have wanted you to bring home for dinner.

Sam Tyler is on the fairly normal-looking bloke side of things, and if he happens to be your type, that works out really well!

Flemeth is more terrifying than attractive. I think the character design choices, particularly the make-up, the horned hair, and the stark colors on her face in DAII go a long way toward enforcing that idea. So.

Michael is too-skinny and androgynous, so when she is not going full archangel at you, I don't think she's particularly prone to drawing the eye. She's got a very nice smile, though, which kind of transforms her face into something like pretty. Even when it looks awkward and hugely unpracticed.

Wonder Woman is gorgeous, thanks to gifts from the gods. Her personality only helps with this!

[venturedean]

My pups tend toward the "geeky cute" side of the spectrum, and for the most part are fine with it.

Shawn went undercover as a model once, although the running gag was that he was a "foot and ankle model." (Which,come on, look at the guy. He cleans up nicely.)

Dean's generally considered pretty cute on the few occasions we see him around girls his own age, but he's so socially isolated it doesn't really come up much.

this icon is pretty much how I imagine Fry actually looking - definitely nerdy, but somehow he makes it work.

Brisco's probably the most conventionally attractive of my four, and ironically probably the one who cares the least about his looks.

[thesupersmeller]

Best thing about that episode? Everyone was convinced Gus was the model. Which... c'mon son... Dule is smokin' hot when he wants to be.

[seat_five_girl]

Y hello thar appearance issues! How have you been?

Ako generally is considered cute, and slightly exotic, by her local standards. (She's not form one of the anime universes with lots of natural strange hair colors.) She also always wears clothing that cover her frankly enormous scar on her back which canon never explains. All things being equal Ako always has sleeves on her tops, backs on her swimsuits and nervous breakdowns when new people find out. Fun times!

[genarti]

River is played by Summer Glau, so yeah, because rules of Hollywood. It's not something she really cultivates or thinks about, but it is something she uses, in that River's default conversational mode involves a lot of "you totally think I'm cute and charming and adorable :D".

She'd use it much more consciously if she hadn't been to the Academy, though, because she'd have gotten much more of the normal socialization of a pretty and rich teenaged girl. Instead, she sort of paused that socialization at 14 for several years, and nowadays she spends a lot of attention and energy on focusing on being coherent and keeping track of what's not a hallucination, and those are spoons she'd have for other stuff without the Academy.

Regan was once quite pretty, and is now elegantly middle-aged. (Again, because Hollywood, although I think she has the personality and cultural context anyway to have cultivated elegance and flattering clothing no matter what her facial structure was.) She was never a vamp or anything, but she does use appearances fairly deliberately in conversations, in a way. Regan's life is one where cultivating appearances is a deliberate statement, and you definitely want your statement to be the one you're trying to make.

Trowa is pretty average-looking. Not ugly, not notably attractive. Reasonably muscular, in a slim acrobatic way, but he hides that when he's not onstage anyway.

That's more my mental assumption than anything canonical. Canon is animated, so everybody's got flawless skin and suchlike. And while we never see Trowa interact with anyone in a way that trades on appearance in a way that implies he sees himself as notably attractive... he's also 15 in canon, having spent all his life associating mostly with adults, and it's a lot different for a teenaged boy to use sexuality against adults than for someone to use sexuality with peers. That said, it's still true that he never seems to see that as a weapon in his arsenal, and does use fading unmemorably into the background as a weapon all the time. Also, I am contrary, and since canon never says anything I would like to play the odds and make him ordinary-looking. Only in Hollywood does everybody magically have symmetrical features and shiny hair!

Clare is canonically quite pretty. (Again, it's a manga and most people look pretty, but people have commented on it with Clare.)

However, they pretty much only comment on it when she looks human. Because, as Debi said of Teresa, Claymores are seen as monstrous and terrifying. They kill demons, but they're half-demon; they're monsters who are on the humans' side (for pay), that's all. The silver eyes wipe out all the prettiness as most people in her world see it, or maybe it's even a little more unnerving, to have what would otherwise be a pretty young woman turn those inhuman eyes on you.

So, yeah, Clare does not react to people as if she's pretty. Even though Milliways people don't have the same conditioning as people from her world, and thus may well think that she's a) cute and b) not at all fearsome, Clare's approach to conversation is always as a visibly scary outsider, not as a pretty young woman.

Thor, however, is totally handsome. I mean, obviously, Chris Hemsworth is an attractive man who was hired for the role partly because of that, but also I think Thor fits very solidly into attractiveness standards for his culture. Not just because he's Thor, and not just because as the prince he may be part of what defines that; it's also because the one vain and primping character we see, Fandral, looks like a slimmer and more Errol Flynn-ish version of Thor in a lot of ways. Blond, tall, muscular, etc.

Thor isn't vain about his appearance, but he does take his charisma for granted, and his appearance is part of that. Not all of it, but definitely relevant. Thor expects to be respected and heeded, by total strangers as well as by people he knows, and he takes ogling or flirting cheerfully in stride.

One of the foundations of Thor's character, as I see him and play him, is that he's privileged along every possible axis -- with the notable exception that on Earth, he's always a foreigner. But he's strong, he's healthy, he's rich, he's attractive, he's a cis man, he's very masculine-presenting, he's physically imposing, he's got superpowers, he's straight*, he's an aristocrat... all of this is stuff that Thor is vaguely aware of, but he has no real idea how much it smooths his way in life. So he cheerfully counts on it without really noticing he's doing so, because he can always dependably do so.

*Okay, canon actually only says that he likes women and says nothing about men, but I see him as straight. In large part because of the meta privilege thing.

[haole_cop]

Well, let's see.

The only pup I've played who might really have fallen in a different category than the one I'd put her in would have been Anne Shirley, whose red hair and freckles were hardly the ideal and a source of much unhappiness to her. (Gil thought she was beautiful, but Gil was biased.) She is referred to as "relatively beautiful" and often described as preferred by people with more discerning tastes, though she herself thinks Diana's black hair, dark eyes, and fair skin much more beautiful.

For the ones I have now:

I think Scott Caan is super hot. (See gratuitous shirtless icon.) There's no questioning the entire cast of Hawaii Five-0 is attractive in the extreme, but Danny isn't what might be considered, in this day and age, conventionally sexy (particularly next to Alex O'Loughlin, who is like the definition of handsome). At 5'5", he's too short for modern ideals of sexiness, is square-jawed, broad-shouldered, and wears his hair slicked back in a way that goes against the current messy style. On the other hand, he has gorgeous blue eyes, a bangin' body, adorable smile, and wears dress shirts and khakis like nobody's business, so...your mileage may vary. Of all my pups, he is also the one who clearly cares most about his appearance: he is stubborn about looking "professional," leading to things like ties and patent leather loafers in Hawaii.

Emma is called "the sexiest friendless orphan [he's] ever met" by a man in her very first appearance onscreen, but it's the only time anyone (in canon) comments on her appearance. She is 5'5" too, but it works to her advantage in a way it wouldn't for Danny (thanks, societal ideals!). More to the point, while she is conventionally beautiful (long blonde hair, big wide-set eyes, slim figure), she dresses in a way almost entirely against what her physical appearance might seem to dictate. Her beauty is given an edge by skinny jeans, leather, and a hefty dose of attitude, so while she is definitely hot, she might not necessarily be called beautiful or pretty right off the bat. If we're talking feminine ideals (and we are, considering her mother is Snow White and she is surrounded by the extremes of feminine beauty in the form of fairy tale princesses), she doesn't fit the mold quite perfectly. In her world, she'd be right at the top for standards of attractiveness, but I suspect she wouldn't rank anywhere near as high in Storybook Land, due to abandoning typical feminine ideals. She puts some effort in -- wears makeup, does her hair -- but nowhere near the ballgowns and elaborate hair-dos of her fairy tale counterparts.

Jack is never described as particularly handsome in the story Brokeback Mountain, but he's portrayed by Jake Gyllenhall, who definitely embodies Hollywood-esque attractiveness. I think Jack is maybe not quite rough around the edges enough to be considered the pinnacle of attractiveness in his day and age: he gets a lot more love in a softer world, where the fact that he's a dreamer and not totally independent doesn't count against him. But then, I just love me a cowboy. Hats, boots, jeans, mmf. So he's definitely got that whole look going for him.

Caspian is described at least once as "handsome," and that fits with the archetype of fairy-tale prince. He is idealistic and adventurous, and described as the Narnian ideal: tall, fair, golden-haired. It doesn't hurt that Jeremy Sumpter is painfully pretty.

Wolfwood is too scruffy to really be considered attractive, maybe, but looks don't seem to count for much on Gunsmoke. His features are maybe too sharp, and his whole demeanor sort of scary. Even if he were conventionally attractive, his personality is far too rough-edged to put him at the top.

[thenewblack]

Her beauty is given an edge by skinny jeans, leather, and a hefty dose of attitude, so while she is definitely hot, she might not necessarily be called beautiful or pretty right off the bat. If we're talking feminine ideals (and we are, considering her mother is Snow White and she is surrounded by the extremes of feminine beauty in the form of fairy tale princesses), she doesn't fit the mold quite perfectly.

Artemis wants to see if they can get t-shirts for the club of something, because when your 'den mother' is Black Canary and your female teammate is a shape-shifter.... yeah.

[aberration]

Elle is very pretty. Kristen Bell is conventionally attractive, and in canon Elle tended to act and dress in a way that, erm, we'll say accentuated her beauty. She's aware that she's pretty, both personally and in how it affects those around her, and she's capable of using it if she needs to, both as a distraction and as a way to make others underestimate her. In that vein, though, while she's aware of beauty and likes to indulge in it, her view of it also isn't necessarily typical. A lot of the time, with regard to her own beauty, she tends to see it as a tool more than anything else - she's not modest about it because she sees it as something like effectively using her ability or a weapon of some sort. She's also very open-minded about beauty herself - there are very few people whom she doesn't think of as attractive in one way or another. (In fact, I can't think of anyone off the top of my head.) So while she recognizes herself as beautiful, it's not because she's seeing herself through conventional standards of beauty.

Asami is canonically very beautiful. It's indicated through her always perfect hair and makeup (seriously, Avatarverse has some amazing never-smudging or fading makeup, apparently), and a lot of the characters comment on it. She's aware of this - I tend to think she started getting attention for it pretty young - and, well, she likes being pretty. She likes wearing makeup and nice clothes and caring about her appearance. She just also likes driving and mechanics. Her beauty, coupled with her notoriety due to being such a wealthy heiress, tend to mean those who don't know her sometimes make a lot of assumptions about her (that she's "Daddy's helpless little girl" and the like), but she has enough self-assurance that this just doesn't bother her. She's also used enough to flirtatious attention that it doesn't bother her, either, and she's become pretty comfortable in participating/responding to it. Though it's a little weirder when coming from a five-year-old. (Yep, that's canon.)

Manny... is a skeleton! Though apparently there is some level of attraction between souls in the Land of the Dead, as they enter romantic relationships with one another. I don't think Manny is quite the Humphrey Bogart his character homages at points during the game, but as he seems to get some attention from others, I think he is more attractive than he himself realizes. Regardless, he can be a little flirtatious, but I think he tends to see it as more of a... social paradigm, than a real expression of romantic interest most of the time.

Lesile - well, I am in love with Leslie. She's my biggest fictional crush. I guess Amy Poehler's not supermodel conventional attractive, but I think she's very pretty. Leslie herself, well - I think when it comes to her appearance, she puts effort into looking professional, but not necessarily "pretty." They're not mutually exclusive by any means, but I think her focus is in appearing in such a way that she will be taken seriously when she needs to be. Most of the other interests she has in her appearance tend to be more like... things she'd like to do for fun (like when she decided she wanted to get a perm). She didn't think of herself as that "pretty," per se, a lot because she'd had so many bad experiences in romantic relationships that it really wore down her self-confidence in that regard - but I think that's changed a lot since she's had some healthy relationships during her canon, including the one she's in now, which pretty well qualifies for "madly in love." But she still often thinks of others (e.g., Ann) as prettier than she is.

Marceline is from Ooo, so beauty is kind of hard to quantify, given that everything is weird as hell and so whatever scale there is for beauty is kind of... well, impossible. But as a narrative song at one point calls her "that sexy vampire lady," it can be assumed that she is meant to be beautiful. (I tend to think of this as a more 'realistic' image of her.) Marceline knows she's pretty, but her self-confidence generally is a lot more mixed, given that she has some severe abandonment issues and has been in some pretty awful relationships. So while she acts self-assured and often even flirtations (e.g., after they have a nasty all-out brawl, she kisses Finn on the cheek), it's usually a front for her insecurities. She likes to flirt and mess around, but I'm not sure in the context of Ooo, her beauty is that relevant to it, and she rarely does it with the specific intent of pursuing a romantic relationship.