The devs have done such a great job with gender expression and gender identity up to this point. The team has unlocked every piece of clothing, hair style, and makeup style for both genders. The team has allowed us to choose a masculine or feminine frame for our sims. The team has allowed us to choose whether a sim can get pregnant, can get others pregnant, or is completely infertile. The team has even recently allowed us to customize our sims's pronouns. All of that is great, and I'm very happy to have all of those options...but the presence of all of these wonderful options makes the fact that our female werewolves' bust slider is permanently locked to the flattest setting in beast form all the more noticeable, egregious, and frustrating.
All I want is to express my characters' gender and physical appearance as I like. Don't give me lines about canines having multiple mammary glands, because the lower bodies of our werewolves are (debatably) tailless and have plantigrade feet, neither of which are anatomically correct for canines, but which are anatomically correct for humans. Don't give me that line about the female bust being somehow inherently inappropriate somehow, because 1) we can make the bust of all other types of female sims as large or small as we desire and it's somehow not a problem and 2) for many women, breasts are just a normal part of our bodies that we see and interact with every single day, and there is nothing dirty or shameful or inappropriate whatsoever about them. For some of us, they are even a personally important and meaningful part of our womanhood for one reason or another. Having my ability to express my characters' gender in any of their forms locked because some people are, for whatever reason, uncomfortable with normal female anatomy is just really upsetting.
I'm not even asking for much, just a slider that allows us to pull the bust of a female werewolf out further to show the curve of the chest. Cover the cleavage with chest fluff if you have to, have the linked body sliders not link the bust between the two forms by default if you just must, but let us have a rounded and noticeable bust if we want one. I can't even get through CAS with a female werewolf because I have to keep them topless to preserve the chest floof to keep even a mild semblance of a feminine profile up top, so I can't even enjoy dressing them in these lovely tops, and outfits, and dresses that come with this or any other pack because as soon as their top is covered, the chest becomes an unflattering straight line from the side. I don't want my female sims to suddenly lose all semblance feminine curves up top because I put a dang shirt on them!
I shouldn't have to choose between keeping them topless but (with a ton of posture slider and chest height slider manipulation) having some mild semblance of a bust or putting a top on them but having their chests go total pancake. That's not a position that makes me feel included as a player. It makes me feel put out and upset that on my favorite supernatural beings of all time in this game, I can't express a female character's gender in her beast form, her most powerful, dynamic, and badoars form, in a feminine way because someone thought breasts are not important and can be omitted on a whim in that form, for that occult in particular, so people who are uncomfortable with human breasts on characters who are or look like anthropomorphic animals can breath a sigh of relief that, when they download a female werewolf sim from the gallery, they will never have a bust.
If the team hadn't given us so much creative freedom with our sims' appearances and gender expression so far, maybe this wouldn't be such a huge deal for me. Maybe if our bust sliders were locked at a B cup, and we couldn't have cartoonishly wide hips, and we couldn't have our guys be hulking musclemen out of the gate, and we couldn't change between male and female frames, or pick fertility settings, or customize pronouns, I would more easily be able to accept this design decision...but because we got so much freedom with sim creation up to this point, the werewolf bust issue stands out like a sore thumb and it stings immensely. One occult, one body part...one massive denial of gender expression in a game that has so far been relatively unrestricted in that regard. It's a massive step backward. If I can give a male sim a female frame or make a cartoonishly feminine-looking female sim who can get other sims pregnant...I should be able to give my female werewolves an actual bust in their beast form.
There is a song I hear, a melody from the past...
When I woke for the first time, when I slept for the last.
20
Comments
Thanks for sharing! I already discovered the outlining trick...but I still have to leave the sim naked for it to work. Not being able to retain a bust curve from the side while wearing clothes on the upper body is the real issue, though. Outlining where the bust should be with the paint tool is a bandaid solution unless you prefer your werewolves nude.
I don't want to be able to tell a male vs a female werewolf apart and I feel like the chest area being bigger on a female than a male, just like a human, makes them look even more like a furry and not a werewolf.
I'd like the option to remove the chest completely in the werewolf form so they look like the males (as female wolves vs males doesn't have that noticeable of a difference in chest area IRL).
I really don't like the female wolves as they are with their furry glory, they already look like a furry in the face (males as well obvi) and they sound like humans imitating wolves, but the female chest just accentuates the fact that it's a human with a suit and not a were sim.
Don't get me wrong, I like the pack so far even though the running is a little cringe, but the gameplay seems nice. I just wish the wolves looked more similar in terms of male vs female and not feminine as they do now with their shape, it just makes them look more like a furry in my opinion.
I hope there will be an update and we can both get the option to get what we want, but I'm pretty sure we are stuck with what we got
I brought up Skyrim in a similar thread, but like the Sims 4, werewolves in that game have no difference between male and females. (Other than height) Something that was fixed by modders.
Werewolves aren't as customizable body-wise but even something as simple as adding a bust, slimming the waist and widening the hips is enough for anyone to tell that werewolf is female. Now, these werewolves are more beast-like than human like Sims 4's but you can imagine the difference it makes.
(*using a troll avatar makes me think they might just be trolling, but I'unno)
It really puts me off from the pack, to be honest. Once I saw the trailer I thought it'd be cute if I could make a matriarch werewolf that leads the Moonwood Collective, but any ideas I have for this sim are soured when I know she won't look feminine in her feminine clothes when she transforms.
If we can assign masculine and feminine body shapes to any gender for normal sims, we should be able to do that as well for werewolves. If I want a typically feminine girl to become a feminine wolf I should be able to do so.
Of course, keeping the option to have a masculine or neutral beast form even if their sim form is feminine would be a good thing to have. But it shouldn't be at the cost of taking away feminine forms from sims who want to present as feminine all the time. Dresses should still have all the curves you would expect in both sim and wolf form if the sim presents that way.
I completely agree with this.
It has always annoyed me in pop culture when female werewolves still look feminine when they are supposed to be wolf monsters. I don't want a cutesy or sexy or curvy werewolf, I want a terrifying monstrosity. It's insulting when males can turn into monsters but females still have to be women.
While I would have preferred yet more wolfish and bestial features overall, with larger heads and jaws and legs, I get that they still have to be Sims for mechanical reasons so I'm fairly happy with the design. Would have liked a little more customization in the head and face though. But at least they don't look like the wolfmen/women from previous games.
Both these, very much the same To me those genders should look as similar as there can, after all game wont go to details. However, adding totally optional sliders to those who want their ladies on were beast form to look more female would be fine to me.
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
Female werewolves should be allowed female body frames because
a. Sims werewolves have human proportions and postures. Arguments like real wolves don't have breasts makes no sense because they have a 4 legged body, very different from the upright humanoid werewolf
B. Females (or people who feel female) should be allowed to express this. With all the attention for custom pronouns and gender identity, it feels like a very weird design choice to make all werewolves have a male body. For many women breasts are a normal part of their body and part of their feminine identity.
I agree, but the upper body may have to be covered even if they have breasts as normal Sims cannot walk around without a mosaic covering them.
All they really need are bumps. All the female bits could be fur covered. Just the suggestion of a feminine form would satisfy me . There is a mod for werewolf dimorphism that improves it somewhat, and it just fixes the form and frame.
Pretty much. I doubt that if a bust is added that they'll make them detailed to the point they need to be covered.
Exactly, just the shape you would see when a woman wears a shirt would do. With all the fur covering the body, a mosaic is not need (just like it is not needed 'down there')
That may have worked.
Do you think it'd be helpful to have this as a "bug" report on EA's website? I'd totes add a "me too" on it if you did make this a post there. I think it's fair to suggest body shapes not matching up are a bug.