on a textual level, a female character can dress however she wants and shouldn’t be slut-shamed and hated for what she prefers to wear.
on a metatextual level, she might still have been designed with an intention to provide fanservice.
this means that criticising a design, as opposed to a character, is neither misogyny nor slut-shaming. being displeased about the way a character has been designed is not synonymous with hating her.
have i made myself clear?
CRYSTAL CLEAR.
PS: I love you, durendals. Why didn’t I see this post on my dash ever before? It’s perfection.
A silly, sexualized outfit might as well fit* the character’s personality and preferences within her story. That doesn’t make her design any less silly and sexualized to us, real people consuming that story for entertainment and criticizing it.
~Ozzie
*Keep in mind, though, that just as often it can’t be justified with even that much. Some characters walk around in bikinis or boob and butt windows despite being canonically modest or shy or body conscious etc. because Creepy Marketing Guy put his foot down and demanded for every lady in the story to be poster child of “sex sells”.
If a post of ours includes a preemptive response to “well actuallies” we’re expecting to get for it, be so kind to NOT respond with exactly the “well actually” we addressed within the same post.
In the same vein, the intricacies of lore rarely change our mind or give us a more in-depth understanding of a clearly sexist design (though it might give us more opportunities to make fun of it). If it is interesting to you, that’s great! But to save yourself time and effort, please really think about your motivation if you wish to write a lengthy comment explaining a lore to us. It could be that you’re arguing our own points back at us.
Tumblr’s picture display system crops images that are proportionally taller than others put in the same row, therefore in our newest Fate post you have to click on the third gif of the new Saber to see her ridiculous butt window. Here’s the full picture in its unholy glory:
Two cleavages for the price of one! Love how the animator was confused and so ended up giving her butt window some lace instead of making that white cloth her panties. You can see it when she turns around.
PS: Before you go to ask us whether we shared our thoughts on any character or costume in particular, please use search function.
~Ozzie, -wincenworks and -Icy
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The Monster Hunter series has been a mixed bag when it comes to armor design, and as we’ve shown before, Monster Hunter World has proudly followed in that tradition. We’ve seen that they can do actual armor for both the men and women characters, so what the fresh hell is this? This is high level armor, too. This is what the male version looks like, by the way:
I guess I’m impressed that the characters can hand-mold monster carapaces into boob cups?
-Icy
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Actual Barbarian Women (NSFW)
Seeing as how many “barbarian” ladies grace our blog, we thought we had a great opportunity to see the kinds of barbarian women we actually wanted to see; by drawing them ourselves! Here are our takes on 2 barbarian characters that appeared on BABD before: Belladonna and Arhian. It’s a shame we couldn’t redesign their names, honestly.
Belladonna
So the first thing that had to change was Bella’s boring, impassive face. I wanted her to be formidable, and I decided to play up the dramatic lighting that the cover artist tried to do, in a half-assed way. I removed her makeup and tried to make her look intimidating and experienced, overall, with the obligatory battle scars. I decided to play with the scars a bit, and so ended up giving her a slightly-disfiguring lip scar. Also, messy hair!
As for the rest of her, first thing was to get rid of her awful top. Her clothes in general seemed too manufactured-looking, so I ended up making her kilt into a more ripped and imperfect-looking garment.
I then gave her more muscle and an overall larger frame, and changed the way she was holding the axe, because her original hold on it looks like a nail polish ad pose. The thing doesn’t even look like it’s heavy in the original! Now it has blood on it, too, which was to add to the intimidation factor.
Her face in the background was like a 2-min afterthought I did at the very end cause it looked so goddamn boring. Overall, I’m very happy with the changes I did to her face and attire, though my rendering wasn’t as good as I wish it were now. I should have given her some body scars, too, but at least she has more stage presence on her own cover than none at all.
-Icy
Arhian
I decided to leave most of her skimpy costume as is, just getting rid of the physically impossible bra – Barbarians either go topless or wear something comfortable, not… this thing!
Her platinum, almost white hair inspired me to turn Arhian into a significantly older character. And in the Barbarian warrior’s life, with age come scars. Lots and lots of scars. Most prominent one is the big burn scar tissue on her left breast, which I referenced from real life. Perhaps a “gift” from a dragon?
Then there’s the giant stitch scar above her breasts and some cuts here and there, especially her face. Speaking of which, I made it my priority to give her unique facial features instead of the generic conventionally beautiful supermodel mug.
It’s by far my most satisfying face redo. I drastically changed the shape to be more squat and angular, with strong jawline. He original nose was a disproportionately small vestigial organ, so I have her a schnooze she can breathe through, and also made it broken, to match the scarred aesthetic. Then completed the look by getting rid of her makeup, undoing the obviously tweezed eyebrows, adding wrinkles and scars. I also changed her expression from vacant, vaguely “sultry” stare into a scowl of a veteran warrior.
As for her body, I just made it visibly more muscular, with prominent abs and thigh muscles. Her breasts are bigger in my version, as I wanted to present what time and gravity (and some scorching burns) actually do to the breast tissue. Nipples not only do exist, but they tend to point downwards the bigger the breast is! Also, boob stretch marks are a thing! Who knew?
All in all, I’m quite proud of that redesign. Hope you guys like it too!
