Breast-size joke cliches

[flowerthief]

IMO it would be interesting for you to read S.Freud's "Jokes and their relation to the unconscious".

Do you mean for my sake or for the sake of the character? If you meant for my sake, I doubt I'd find it interesting. I hardly pay any attention to the size of a girl's breasts myself, to be perfectly honest. The biggest reason I want to rewrite these jokes, and which would bother me even more than the cliche factor, is that I'd hate to be reinforcing a stereotype about men's tastes which I disdain myself and which might lead to females feeling insecure.

If you meant for the sake of the character, I don't really intend for him to mean the things that he says consciously or unconsciously. He could be saying those things simply because HE watches too much anime. I'm open to alternative ways to make him slightly immature/mean/socially inept.

[Aetheria]

The way you describe it, I don't think you're in danger of mortally offending female players so much as of making them simply lose interest in the game. Personally, I would think: a) "hmm, I guess the author's trying to set this character up as a massive jerkwad," and b) "why am I supposed to want this character to find love, anyway?"

Thing is, making jokes about breast size (or weight, or similar things) is just super unattractive to women. It's like drawing your female lead with zits, buckteeth and bushy eyebrows and expecting guys to care about her as the main character in a romance - you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. There's nothing stopping you from writing a character with these unattractive traits, and it might well be a good artistic choice in some works, as PyTom pointed out, but I just don't think it's going to produce the effect you want here.

[Alex]

to flowerthief:
Well, I meant that when I read this, I found for myself many interesting things about the nature of jokes in general. So, I thought, that this work might be interesting for you too.

[Aleema]

I approve of the Takahashi couple, so go for it.
So long as they both get hits in. Sounds like an interesting dynamic.

[okonomiyaki]

I pretty much feel like people can write better material than "lol, you doesn't has any titties!"

And like papillon, I can't think of any situation that a boob size joke was made and also drop dead hilarious. You can say that in real life, people aren't comedians, but VNs are a fantasy for a lot of people.

[Taleweaver]

Breast jokes are not A material

Yup. I guess they would be A, B, C or D material, in most cases.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[musical74]

ROFL Taleweaver!

I think I'm going to agree with papillon with this...I can't think of any breast jokes that didn't either A) insult the person or B) embarass someone...myself, I think you would do better not having them...unless this is meant to be a parody, or you are trying to get someone in the game irritated!

[Liminality]

Heh. Yeah, for the most part, "jokes" like that are usually meant to be innocent (because all guys are apparently idiots), or meant to be funny and really do just not end up that way. The sad part is, this sort of thing happens in real life, so I think including it in a visual novel perhaps once or twice could be beneficial...

However, it usually only gets mentioned once. For example, I angrily threatened to kick one of my male friends in the balls. He responded by acting out kicking me back. After I pointed out to him that it really wouldn't hurt as much, he redirected his attack for my chest, then paused and said casually, "I guess that wouldn't really hurt much either, since there's nothing there, right?" It earned him a swift punch to the face and a warning to never say anything like that again or I would personally tear his face off and feed it to rabid sharks.

But that's just me.

Although, I suppose it can happen comedically in the right context. There was a time when two of my male friends were arguing with one of my girl friends about the size of her chest. They frantically described it as "If my eyes are panning from one side of the room to the other, no matter how I feel about you, my eyes are going to go DOWN and then move back UP before they keep moving! It's like an abyss!" We all got a laugh out of that, and from then on, her chest has been affectionately known as the abyss. However, the joke was never blatantly repeated by any male, and we were all REALLY close friends.

[dott.Piergiorgio]

on breast jokes, and aesthetic jokes in general, I'm ashamed that the worst of these are spammed worldwide by an totally inadequate and utterly unworthy PM here, because Italians actually can do really lively and nice jokes on friends's attributes (both male and female), and the self-irony of the petite Italian girls and ladies is simply awesome .

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

[Riviera]

I guess for me it depends on how the girl in question reacts. I'm like that with most jokes. If the person being made fun of is cool with it, it's funny. If they're not or they get their feelings hurt, it's not.

I'm rather immature though, so take what I say with a grain of salt.