SKYRIMLE Bijin Wives, Warmaidens, NPCs (by rxkx22)

[RustyLH]

Bijin Wives by rxkx22

Bijin Warmaidens by rxkx22

Bijin NPCs by rxkx22

Toccata Follower by rxkx22 and Kasprutz

Chaconne Follower by rxkx22

Vivace Follower by rxkx22

 

 

I am pretty sure everyone is familiar with these mods, and I am equally sure most see them as not being lore friendly.  The main complaint being that they are too beautiful.  For some people, this may be true, but for some, like me, having them is lore friendly, and not having them is immersion breaking.  I will briefly explain why including them IS lore friendly, and why having unrealistically beautiful women is in fact, realistic.

 

First, we have to understand human nature, and how as a species we are extremely adaptable to our environment, which includes the humans in that environment.  For example, imagine a race or group of women that you do not find the least bit attractive.  If you had been raised among those women, and that is all you knew, you WOULD find them attractive.  In other words, this would be the norm in your mind.  And it would be natural for you to find them attractive.  I personally find women of average height, and average to less than average weight, to be attractive.  However, if all I knew while growing up, had been 6 foot tall women who weighed between 200 and 250 pounds, I would find at least some of them to be extremely attractive.

 

In the early years of the U.S., some authors spoke of how just getting a glimpse of a woman's ankles when she lifted her dress, was highly arousing to men.  Why?  Because they rarely saw a woman's ankles.  Would a glimpse of a woman's ankles do much for you today?  Not likely because you see them all the time.  In other words, what is beautiful, and what is sexy is subjective, and changes with cultural changes.

 

Where, and when, I went to high school, the girls wore plain hair styles, and little to no makeup.  At the time I found many of the girls to be attractive, but now when I look through the yearbook, I am hard pressed to find more than 2 or 3.  Beauty standards have changed.

 

Now, the final piece.  When in college, we learned a great deal about history, and we often heard about women who were supposedly very very beautiful.  Cleopatra for one, but also some Roman and later European women.  But when we find representations...even very accurate representations, they do not look beautiful at all.  In fact, they look fairly plain.  And it is likely they all had some seriously messed up teeth.

 

So here is the point.  While you can replicate how a woman might have looked in ancient Nord times, the problem becomes that the women who are supposed to be beautiful, are not beautiful.  The question becomes how beautiful should they be and how many should be beautiful.  Well, I recently went back to school and I see many many very beautiful women walking around the campus every single day.  So I don't think it would be unrealistic to have a couple of dozen very beautiful women in Skyrim.  These mods only put a tiny amount of very beautiful women scattered throughout Skyrim.  When you enter Solitude, or Whiterun, the two major centers of population in Skyrim, you will come across two or three of these very beautiful women.  I see that as very realistic, and thus immersive.  Elisif the Fair is supposed to be extremely beautiful, thus "the Fair," added to her name.  The Toccata Follower mod as an optional file to give that face to Elisif the Fair, and I did that last time.  It is truly a face worthy of the title.

 

 

 

 

If we wanted to be ultra realistic, you would want 20% of the women in game, who are not children, or old, to be very attractive, with half of them being Bijin beautiful.  And one advantage to his beauties is that they don't all look the same, unlike some mods that generally have the same looking face.  His are modeled after real women with very different looks.

 

This woman, Mélanie Laurent, is the inspiration for the Toccata/Elisif the Fair face, pictured above.

 

So that is my case.  Maybe not so brief, but whatever.  So it would be nice to see this tested and added as an option for the mods that presently alter these NPCs.

 

By the way, I am doing just that.  I am adding these mods.  I will add a post later, once I have met these NPC's in the game.  Presently, I do not have a great video card, GTX 750, so this will be a great test.

[elenhil]

Skyrim has enough beautiful women as it is. Given the same ENB treatment these Bijin babes receive, most Whiterun girls look very good indeed. I for one would have married Warmaiden or Aela right away! :-)

 

These Bijin women look out of place because they are unnaturally, airbrushy, cosmetic surgeryishly pretty.

 

As for your rationale, I find it less than perfect.

 

You don't like high school girls you used to find lovely, now that you're older (and looking at their yearbook mugshots, I must stress, the least artistic or ever flattering form of photo portraiture!)? What a surprise.

 

You don't find portraits of women admired by their contemporaries good-looking? Well, that can only prove one thing: your sample must be woefully small, because there are tons of extremely beautiful portraits in just about every museum. If beauty standards really underwent such a dramatic change while you were in college, these Renaissance portraits, which was a wee bit longer ago than that, would have by now become altogether unremarkable, to say the least.

 

P.S. Good luck finding accurate representations of Ancient Roman women (or even Cleopatra, whom no adequate source claimed to be in any way extraordinarily beautiful, by the way. Don't let that Hollywood myth fool you)!

Edited April 23, 2016 by elenhil

[RustyLH]

P.S. Good luck finding accurate representations of Ancient Roman women (or even Cleopatra, whom no adequate source claimed to be in any way extraordinarily beautiful, by the way. Don't let that Hollywood myth fool you)!

At the risk of derailing this...she did seduce not one but two Roman Emperors. OK, well Marcus Antonius was never an actual Caesar, and neither was Julius Caesar.  Marcus Antonius ruled alongside his two allies, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Octavian, and after the civil war, Octavian became the first true Caesar...Caesar Augustus.  Point being, she was supposed to be quite beautiful.

 

As to the point of all of these paintings of beautiful women.  Like it or not, the vast majority of them are plain by today's beauty standards.  It was even noted that Marylin Monroe was not up to today's standards.  The simple truth is that because of cosmetic surgery, make-up, hair coloring, etc...beauty as an art form has likely reached its pinnacle.  I am not sure where it could go from here.

 

 

Also, I would note that the Elisif pictures don't look any different than the model used as the inspiration.  But, you did help make my point.  Our beauty standard today IS airbrushed.  I have seen many women without their make-up, after first getting to know them with their make-up, and most of them were not nearly as beautiful without it.  Now, before you try to go feminazi on me for that, and blame me...I am not the one who put make-up on them.  And don't blame men for it by saying that women only do it because that is what men want.  I will call BS and correctly point out that the mating game is competitive and women do this due to the competition with other women for the prime males.  Hey, many men would love to live in their mom's basement eating Cheetohs and playing video games all day long, but that isn't going to get them a woman.  So they go out in the workplace and compete.  And whether they like or not, they have to compete in the looks arena also, but men aren't socially allowed to cover and disguise their imperfections with make-up.

Edited April 24, 2016 by RustyLH

[elenhil]

I'd be so bold as to claim that, though beauty as a concept is objective, perceived beauty is relative. That is, a woman's beauty in judged against her peers. 

 

So, for Elisif to be perceived as fair, she only needs to be fairer than the other women of Skyrim nobility.

 

Incidentally, the same applies for Cleopatra (though, I repeat, no credible source claims her to be particularly beautiful): she only had to seem a bit more exotic than Calpurnia for Julius, or - Mark Antony being Mark Antony - simply have a ******. Both had her as their concubine, which is not my definition of being seduced (besides, both were habitually unfaithful to their wives, and - Rome being Rome - male faithfulness simply wasn't a thing, so there was no virtue to be seduced into abandoning at all).

 

Back on track, though. Immersion means you judge Skyrim women on their own own superficial merit, not compare them against the modern-day celeb body culture (which by definition ruins immersion).

 

P.S. 

As to the point of all of these paintings of beautiful women.  Like it or not, the vast majority of them are plain by today's beauty standards.

 

Given the fact that the said standards lay a premium on all things artificially exaggerated, they are, indeed, plain - that is, undecorated. Still, I would pity anyone thinking less of, say, Boticelli's sublime Simonetta Vespucci because she was not a make-up or bodywork junkie.

Edited April 24, 2016 by elenhil

[RustyLH]

The point is still the same, and still valid.  In fact, it is the very reason everyone downloads some sort of people replacer in the first place.  The people were horrid looking.  It is hard to immerse in the game when the people looked that bad.  And it wasn't just the inferior textures, it was the entire look.  I've seen far prettier women in other games with similar quality textures.

 

I would totally agree that it is unrealistic to make very last female NPC in the game a Bijin NPC.  But it is also just as unrealistic, in my opinion, not to have at least one or two women in each major location that is well above the norm in beauty.  That's real life.  I can totally understand if a woman would not agree.  But as a man, that is real life.  There are always women who stand out in a big way.  We even at time, define a location by these women.  If there is one that catches you eye in a building you visit on occasion, when think of that building, you also think of her.  But it takes exceptional beauty to cause that.  But you are half right.  Beauty is relative.  But it is also subjective.  More importantly, your perception does alter with your experiences..your environment.  Enter the cliche of the young man or woman thinking that their boyfriend/girlfriend is just the greatest thing since sliced bread...until they go off to college and meet people even more beautiful, and or more exciting.

 

It's simply a fact that if we went back in a time machine, we would find the woman to be quite plain, and maybe even hideous.  Think about it...it's not unrealistic to find a fair young woman with a face like the one above...but what about those HD Smiles?  I don't think they had pretty, straight, gleaming white teeth, and yet this in on the list of STEP mods.  Make sense?  Not really.  Where are the people with the totally wrecked grills?  Furthermore, the effect is not drastic when they are left in their normal clothes.  Women get pregnant in real life yet all of the women are never pregnant.  Some men and women are very fat.  None here.  When it comes to an argument of realism, there is no valid argument against including these mods.  But they should not be CORE, obviously.

[Ondrea]

Someone correct me, but I think STEP's intent is not so much how lore-friendly, but is it still close to vanilla but just enhanced.  While many of them sure are pretty, most are not recognizable from their original characters.  Skyrim is harsh.  Aside from some nobles, most of these women are fighters and workers and I would expect them to not be so flawless with styled hair.

 

But I do agree there are some that are supposed to be considered pretty like Camilla that I've personally tweaked to be more fair in face.  I've used the vanilla hair version of Inhabitants of Skyrim in the past and thought it was well done and mostly in keeping with vanilla.  But I think most STEP users found even that far too pretty.

[RustyLH]

Someone correct me, but I think STEP's intent is not so much how lore-friendly, but is it still close to vanilla but just enhanced.  While many of them sure are pretty, most are not recognizable from their original characters.  Skyrim is harsh.  But I think most STEP users found even that far too pretty.

 

 

Which makes you wonder about the smiles in HD.  I find it far more realistic that a woman could have a flawless face than flawless teeth in such a world.  I can also agree that hair styles could use tweaking for a more STEP friendly appeal.  The one exception being Elsisf the Fair.  I see no reason the Toccata follower version of her should not be the STEP version.  If they don't want the Toccata follower, I am sure they could figure out a way to get around that.  However, she is a healer/mage, so how battle scarred should she be?  Not very in my opinion.  I can also understand maybe not including the Warmaidens mod.  Either way, I am including the whole set so I will let anyone know if I have any problems.  I don't expect any as I had them all in before.

[Shadriss]

1) Have you considered that 'the Fair' may not be a reference to her looks, but to her application of the Law?

 

2) As noted, so far as STEP is concerned, the metric is Vanilla. As close to vanilla as possible, while looking better than vanilla. The one exception to this is with regards to items that we (collectively) believe to be bugs or errors, in which case the mod that makes the most sense to fix the perceived bug (and has best compatibility) wins.

 

3) All that said, I run a slightly modified version of the Bijin set myself (modified to prevent nudity and for mod compatibility). I've gotten used to them over time, but even so, as compared to the vanilla, they are a severe departure. I like them (obviously), but I am also well aware it doesn't come even close to the STEP mandate. The great thing about STEP, however, is that it's a baseline... not a take-it-or-leave-it affair. By all means, keep your women un-naturally pretty - that's your affair and your choice. But to petition for these mods inclusion in STEP is... well, just not going to happen, I'd say.

[RustyLH]

1) Have you considered that 'the Fair' may not be a reference to her looks, but to her application of the Law?

Ah, but if it were her application of the law, she would be Elisif the Just.  Fair, when applied to a young lady meant "pretty."  And then...mirror mirror on the wall, whose the fairest of them all?  Why Elisif of course.   

 

 

 

2) As noted, so far as STEP is concerned, the metric is Vanilla. As close to vanilla as possible, while looking better than vanilla. The one exception to this is with regards to items that we (collectively) believe to be bugs or errors, in which case the mod that makes the most sense to fix the perceived bug (and has best compatibility) wins.

 

Point taken, but I guess I see this as no different than something like HD Smiles, and making the Septums look like they came out of a modern coin press...but that's just me.  And let's be honest, the people of Skyrim were one of the most glaring problems, starting with the clone children, identical voices, many characters having the same face, etc...  Anything that alters that is good in my opinion.  Thus I had RS Children last time.  It bothers me that so much time was spent on mods for nipples and panties, and so little effort put into making a few fat people, pregnant women, babies, teenagers, ex-soldiers missing a limb, altering a lot of faces, redoing voices for more variety, etc...  Would have made a great mod...could be called, Realistic People of Skyrim.  And in that could be some ultra beautiful women...as that has always been real life.  Obviously the Smith's wife should not be, but a few of the young 18-28 year old types could have, especially those that you would expect to have an easier life than most.  Some of the Bijin NPCs make sense for this, many do not...I grant you that.  IMHO, Camilla, Ysolda, Elisif, and Taarie make sense out of the Bijin wives.  Sylgja, and Temba Wide Arms do not since they work arduous jobs.  Of the War Maidens, I am not familiar with all of the characters and their stories, but I am sure there are some who make no sense being so beautiful, while some do.  Lydia, for instance was already one of the more attractive NPCs, and you get the feeling that she wasn't a true warrior...more like a show warrior, thus becoming your house carl...though she does fight well enough as a follower.

 

As to it not being Vanilla enough, I have a hard time swallowing that.  As you stated, many things do get changed, and drastically, away from what was Vanilla.  But the idea being that it has to be because the Vanilla way is broken/immersion breaking.  As I said, the Vanilla people are broken/immersion breaking.  Thus if any area needed a severe tune-up it's the people.  As I said, having some fat people, teenagers, kids that don't look like clones, etc...would be more immersive.  It's something that actually needs FIXED.  I hope they do a better job on TES6 in this regard.  So if the people were to be fixed, what is realistic.  I mean come on...this is a world with Magic and Dragons...Elves and Trolls.  Do you honestly think it is unrealistic that women with access to magic, and wealthy women who could afford it, would not have beauty potions?  And make-up?  That has been around for as long as man has been recording history.  A Roman wrote that his wife's face did not sleep with him.  It slept in jars on her vanity.  In other words, she wore make-up.  So no, i don't think it would be immersive for every last woman to be Bijin, and maybe not even all of those who are in the Bijin mods...but I think it is actually more immersive if some are.  When has there ever been a world where some women didn't stand out above the others.  My gosh, even the Bible spoke of this being the case among the Jews after their exodus from Egypt.  It noted that men favored some over others b for their beauty...and this was not thought to be a good thing as looks over character is not a virtue.

 

 

3) All that said, I run a slightly modified version of the Bijin set myself (modified to prevent nudity and for mod compatibility). I've gotten used to them over time, but even so, as compared to the vanilla, they are a severe departure. I like them (obviously), but I am also well aware it doesn't come even close to the STEP mandate. The great thing about STEP, however, is that it's a baseline... not a take-it-or-leave-it affair. By all means, keep your women un-naturally pretty - that's your affair and your choice. But to petition for these mods inclusion in STEP is... well, just not going to happen, I'd say.

I am interested to know more about your set up.  I never worry about the naked or not because I don't undress them.  I also don't put them in bikinis, or lingerie.  I kept it at mostly lore friendly armor, though I did put Jenna in the Witcher 3 outfit as I thought it was a good match for Faendal who I had in the Crimson Archer outfit from Immersive Armors.  Totally lore friendly?  Obviously not, but I looked at it as she was not from Skyrim so it was OK for her outfit to not look like it was from Skyrim.

[Shadriss]

With regards to your second point, you misrepresent what I said. At no point did I say 'broken or immersion breaking'. Broken or bugged only - immersion is a distant second in consideration. I understand where you are coming from, but my problem (and, I believe, most others) isn't the fact that it makes them 'beautiful', it's rather the style that it uses to make them so. You point out that beauty is relative to the people and time - I don't disagree. The problem is you are applying 'this' time's and 'this' era's standards to 'their' time and standards. While this obviously doesn't account for the portions of the population that should be overweight or what not, the standards of beauty you say should apply already exist in the game - we just wouldn't see it as such because our own standards are so much different from what those living in that world's standards are.

 

It's all moot, really... I don't think this debate is ever going to change the base reply as to it's inclusion in STEP - it simply does not meet the mandate. Despite that, as I also mentioned, STEP is a place to start from, not an end goal, and there is nothing preventing us from using it anyhow.

 

With regards to your third question, what, specifically, did you want to know about my load order?

[RustyLH]

While this obviously doesn't account for the portions of the population that should be overweight or what not, the standards of beauty you say should apply already exist in the game - we just wouldn't see it as such because our own standards are so much different from what those living in that world's standards are.

Right, that was my point, which is important for immersion, but I see that each person has a different idea of what immersion is, and what is immersion breaking.  As I said, for me, the idea of immersion is to imagine myself actually being in that world, being that guy, doing those things.  So when a woman is supposed to be, or should be seen as beautiful, then in my opinion, she needs to be beautiful.  This means, that she needs to be beautiful to me...not beautiful to a Nord put into a time machine and brought to the present.

 

As for lore friendly...I am not sure what lore friendly really is.  I think it is a much grayer area than some think, because after all, while these are "Nords" they are not actually "our Nords." This is really just a group of people who are loosely based on our Nords...and from a medieval time period.  But, if we are looking for a realistic feel, I have already covered the fact that there is much that is not realistic, such as no fat people, and no teenagers, and the kids all look the same...like they all have the same parents.  In addition to that, we should see a decided difference between people living alone in the country, those living in small villages, and those living in the major cities.  The differences should be how clean and nice the clothes are, how nice the hair styles are, and even things such as make-up and jewelry.  The same could be said of how friendly the people are.  A person living alone is not likely to like people, and thus be less friendly, while people in small villages would be more wary of strangers, but people living in the bigger cities would be more used to dealing with strangers, and thus more open and friendly, though also more likely to be a con artist.

 

 

 

It's all moot, really... I don't think this debate is ever going to change the base reply as to it's inclusion in STEP - it simply does not meet the mandate. Despite that, as I also mentioned, STEP is a place to start from, not an end goal, and there is nothing preventing us from using it anyhow.

 

I agree.  It is maybe a better option for GEMS.

 

 

 

With regards to your third question, what, specifically, did you want to know about my load order?

Well, I am having to reload everything because somehow, my game file got corrupted.  So I am going to redo this.  I am going to reload all the mods for the extended patch.  I hope my computer can take it.  I do want to add ll of the Bijin women, and CBBE.  But I think I am going to do the extended patch first this time, where as last time, I was tossing in this and a few other mods before finishing the extended patch.  After I have everything I want in the game, I will do the DynDOLOD patch.

 

So I am looking for advice on how to add the mods without messing up the STEP process.  I do know that just for insurance, I am going to copy the game file after finishing the STEP before adding the extra mods.

 

So I want to add the Bijin stuff, and do the Bijin All-In-One, and then do a player home or two.

 

This is what I know I would like to add.

 

• All things Bijin
• Wyrmstooth
• Falskaar
• Legend of the Eagle's Nest
• Ebonvale
• Helgen Rebuilt
• Lakeview Extended

 

 

Also, there was an armor pack that I will load along with the Extended patch because the armor is lore friendly, and the mod that fixes the eye holes on helmets said to load it first if you are going to use it because it patches that mod.

 

So I am wondering what advice you have for adding these, and other mods after STEP.  I saw that the guy who made Bijin A-I-O said that if there is a mod that modifies the Bijin women, then they will look bad with Bijin.  This is why I want to add this after STEP, and after a saved game, including new character creation and a save, immediately post Helgen.

 

I am open to any suggestions that I can use to add anything to make the game better, and while "close to lore friendly" is OK, I am not necessarily looking for hardcore lore friendly.

[Nozzer66]

If I were you I'd look more at Neovalen's SRLE and Darth Mathias' SRLE Extended. Extended does include the Bijin Mods and Helgen Reborn. SRLE includes Falskaar. SRLE Extended builds on the SRLE base install.

 

As a general thing, though, always do a base install of any guide and ensure you're stable and not a crashy mess before you add anything on top of that.

[Shadriss]

What he just said. I was actually surprised to see a post in here again - though I can now obviously see why. :)

[RustyLH]

What he just said. I was actually surprised to see a post in here again - though I can now obviously see why. :)

 

Yeah, the thing is, I never even started up the game with STEP.  I was just about to do that, but I was going to see if I could fix a broken mod, "Fort Heljachen," and add that instead of Lakeview Extended.  I want to have just one player home this time, and likely not buy any of the other houses.  I want just one that will allow me to display all of my loot (masks, claws, Thane Weapons, etc...), and allows for beds for several followers, and maybe beds for up to 6 children.  Gah, I can't stand having to break the little kids' hearts by telling them I cant take them in.  haha  Oh, and while I do want to display the Thane weapons, I am severely disappointed in how boring they are.  You would think that there would be something special about each one, but they are often basic weapons, and some are repeated.  I wonder if there is a mod that corrects this.

 

Anyway, back on topic...I was going to try to mod this, but for some reason, the CK was not opening up, so I thought, yeah, I will just delete it and download it again.  Next thing I know, my game file is Vanilla.  I was able to back it up to an earlier version, with most of STEP still there, but a couple of the files said something about the name being too long, and so I just said heck with it, deleted the entire game file, and started again.

If I were you I'd look more at Neovalen's SRLE and Darth Mathias' SRLE Extended. Extended does include the Bijin Mods and Helgen Reborn. SRLE includes Falskaar. SRLE Extended builds on the SRLE base install.

 

As a general thing, though, always do a base install of any guide and ensure you're stable and not a crashy mess before you add anything on top of that.

 

What is SRLE?  Skyrim R____ Legendary Edition?

[Greg]

Skyrim Revisited: Legendary Edition