So… Fortnite is supposed to be a game for kids, hence there’s no blood and lots of tactics to make kids scream at their parents that they totally need a skin or a dance.
So it’s kind of weird that when I did a search for best female skins, this weird rip off of Blizzard’s style pops up with her inexplicably bared armpits (do children really care if women shave their armpits?) and overly complicated boobplate.
Oh well, at least this was only the second item on the list… the first is well… I wouldn’t say its great armor but at least I can see how it is for children…
a painting inspired by Bieiris de Romans, a 13th century French poet, who wrote one of the few surviving lesbian love poems of the middle ages to a woman named Mary. A medieval romance.
a stanza from her famous poem to her lover:
Lovely woman, whom joy and noble speech uplift, and merit, to you my stanzas go, for in you are gaiety and happiness, and all good things one could ask of a woman
This artwork is beautiful for multiple reasons and I am glad that featuring a woman in a functional (if ornate) armor and helmet isn’t the biggest one of them.
(NSFW warning for a lot of work by
Felix d’Eon, due to use of artistic nudity).
~Ozzie
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No More Heroes is a series which is generally hailed as being sharp satire on many aspects of the action genre… the one area where it seems to simply lean in hard to reproduction without commentary is female character design. This is from the trailer to promote the upcoming third game.
Which is baffling, because the series very much recognizes the general disconnect between wanting to be a super extra, and also wanting to be able to make no effort (see Travis, the guy in the middle). I feel the need to warn you that reading this paragraph may cause you psychic damage, I know it did to me…
Meanwhile when it comes to imagery and costumes for female characters… the series is full of, well, this….
Because I mean… this is an area of popular media is ripe for satire. Really ripe. So ripe. Over ripe. Riper than balls.
Recently we posted a ringing endorsement of the work of British Youtuber Jill Bearup for her videos exploring theatrical combat and various tropes. In doing so, we accidentally signal boosted someone with an unresolved history of promoting transphobia. We apologise for that.
At the time we were not aware that in 2017 (a month or so after the last time we posted any of her content), Jill made a Tumblr post portraying trans activists as the bullies against TERFs, and essentially calling for them to instead rely upon respectability politics.
As anyone who follows the issue even casually knows this is, to put it politely, bullshit propaganda that transphobes of all sorts use to encourage harassment and violence against trans people. It is deplorable for an influencer to use one of their platforms to spread this kind of hateful nonsense.
It appears that Jill took the offending post down some time in 2019, but we have been unable to find any evidence why she did that, or that she ever apologized, or what her current views may be. She doesn’t seem to have approached the topic in any way, shape or form on her YouTube channel (her primary platform) or elaborated further beyond the one post that got a little over 200 notes.
She also doesn’t seem to have done anything to help trans people or promote trans acceptance either.
Our stance at Bikini Armor Battle Damage is simple:
Trans women are women
Trans men are men
Non-binary identities are completely valid
Trans rights are human rights
TERFs and other variety of transphobes can fuck the fuck off
Sadly, as Jill is one of the less reactionary of the few people who talk about combat and armor in fiction (ahem), we’re at a loss to propose a similar resource. But we definitely will not be further promoting any of her stuff and wanted anyone who might have subscribed to or promoted her channel to be aware of this.
The paladin is a noble warrior. His blessed armor protects him from harm, and his holy vows help him resist the temptations of sin. Those who receive his aid in battle are assured of victory, but those who meet him afterwards consider themselves the truly lucky.
I made this suit of armor for the Magic Meat March challenge (delayed to May this year), which is about putting men into the sorts of costumes that fantasy women get drawn in. Check out other people’s stuff over @magicmeatmarch!
In place of a standard breastplate, this one is built in the form of a corset, providing protection and support while shaping and accentuating your profile. The pauldrons connect to the codpiece with a harness arrangement of straps, tying them together into one cohesive piece, supporting the necessaries and accentuating the assets. The greaves stand on their own.
I made everything by hand–cut, burnished, tooled, shaped, dyed, painted, sealed, and riveted together. The corset-breastplate and codpiece I designed from scratch–you can see a progression of the corset design here. The pauldrons (shoulders) and greaves (shins) I built from patterns by Prince Armory, partly because of time constraints, and partly because I wanted to see how other designers dealt with those pieces. (The greaves I was really impressed by, the pauldrons restrict movement more than I’d like, which was a problem I hadn’t been able to solve previously either.)
This is the most ambitious armor project I’ve tackled so far, both in scope and design, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out! I’m looking forward to making a few more pieces to go with this set in the coming months.
Now that is how you convert some folks to THE FAITH!
Look at his empowerment, gaze upon his confidence and ask yourself – is there anything extra layers could add that isn’t surpassed by the ability and distraction bonuses?
No. No there is not.
I do not know what faith this bold man represents, but I understand it is a powerful one!
– wincenworks
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So, as you or may not have seen the hilarity of brodudes shitting themselves in anger that the new iteration of Lola Bunny which is going to appear in Ready PlayerSpace Jam was designed to be family friendly and appeal to young girls, rather than be a recreation of porny fan art of the character. (They literally claimed a fan art by a smut artist was the “original”) (VICE article here)
This magnificent tweet by InspectorNerd highlights why what we talk about on Bikini Armor Battle Damage is an important and often overlooked aspect of design for female characters (never male characters) and also another brief point I want to cover first.
Every now and again we do get people spamming us with out of context links to quotes from large busted women who, generally speaking, enjoy been seen as attractive but are sick of being reduced down to their bust size. They supply these as though it is absolute proof that the male gaze is perfect, and if you critique the design of fictional characters – you’re attacking these real women.
