Personally, I do view the characters and their actors as separate entities, because they are, after all. They only share the same face and maybe a few other aspects, but in the end, they are different and exist in different spaces/ universes. I think this is the healthy way to think about it and people should absolutely not harass the actors for simply doing their job. But oh well...it's unfortunately something inevitable and actors will have to deal with such people too. It's also understandable that some would take ofense and be bothered by people sexualizing their characters, especially if they grew attached to them and came to identify as them to a point and if people harass them because of a role they once played. But the internet will always do its thing and it can't be stopped. For thr most part, I think sexualizing characters is fine (depending on the context and as long as it's nothing too problematic). They do not exist and can't be hurt. Franchises earn a lot from the gooners' pockets too. But when it extends to their actors, which are real people with feelings and conscience, it's bad. All they did was do their job well. It's not their fault some people didn't fully develop their frontal lobe.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot here lately. I know for the longest time I never knew real people were used for video games/most video games and thought the character’s faces were made up unless it was someone I could definitely recognize lmao. But using face models is very popular now. But to me, many times the video game character still seems/looks different from the face model so I just always see them as two different people completely unless it’s a situation with graphics like Death Stranding. Other than that most of the time I don’t see the face model as the same as the character, even physically.
I also have been thinking about this because I learned Leon Kennedy’s face model hates being associated with Leon Kennedy now bc so many fans started flooding his posts and talking about Leon Kennedy and sexualizing him. Like, Leon’s face model is handsome and kind if resembles Leon but they look very different. And why go for him when you have Leon himself??? And I saw an old Reddit post about the face model and voice actor for Connor from Detroit: Become Human. They said seeing sexual art of Connor made them feel gross because Connor is an actual person. Or people comparing Trish’s face model to her in game design for DMC and saying the model is prettier than Trish, etc.
So, idk I’ve just been thinking about it. Is the video game character and the model the same? Does sexualizing the character = sexualizing the actor? Do you guys view them as two separate entities?