BeWitchered by the abs, Part 1
A day late, but hope you guys don’t mind!
After quite a few requests and significant consideration of our own, we set off to sexify The Witcher male characters, starting with the eponymous hero himself.
Thing about Geralt of Rivia is that, unlike most female characters in the franchise, he’s allowed to be something more than just a male power fantasy action-adventure hero. He is sexy… while engaging in sexual relationships! How novel! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
To fix that awful practicality of him looking like a warrior while warrioring and sex icon while sexing, I merged his official model sheet/cosplay reference with objectively one of the best Witcher game screenshots (barring ones from actual sex scenes):
Did my best to match up proportions of two Geralts, but the end result came up a bit too top-heavy. I guess he’s more pecs, abs and biceps than legs guy now.
Speaking of legs, it’s the one area in which I employed my own creativity instead of photo-manipulation. His codpiece is more prominent (though, once again, not exaggerated – Geralt has many issues, but definitely isn’t a type insecure in his own junk’s size) and I modified the seam stripe design to now expose some of his delicious thigh flesh.
One last change was replacing his waaay too practical boots with high-heel ones from his adoptive daughter, Ciri. Sourced from her official cosplay guide.
Poor girl is one of the very few women in the franchise who aren’t framed as (potential) sexual conquest for Geralt, yet CD Projekt designers can’t help but put her in costumes that remind us of her femininity rather than badassery.
Hope that putting Ciri’s papa in her fashion-only shoes levels the playing field at least a bit!
As I mentioned, not my most creatively-free redesign, but one that definitely needed to be done. Did you guys like it?
~Ozzie
Weekly BABD Stream # 72
It’s WIP week! Join us while we work on some redesigns that could use some more time in the oven Photoshop.
We’ll be streaming at our regular time on Saturday at 10 AM PST / 7 PM CEST.
~Ozzie and Icy
Sometimes when I’m watching a review for a Marvel movie and they start talking about how hot the female lead is, I briefly think “Seriously? Gross pigs”. But then I take a look at my desktop and see screen caps of almost all of Chris Evans’ ass shots from his Marvel movies, and I realize I have absolutely no right to judge. I am no better. That’s not to say nobody else has the right to judge, because they do. Just putting it into perspective so both sides can understand one another better.
Not really. Who even cares about objectifying Steve Rogers when he gets 3 of his very own movies and there isn’t even a SINGLE movie for ANY female character. Who cares about women on tumblr objectifying him prettyyyy much harmlessly when entertainment shows/sites seen by millions gush about Steve’s character development or Chris’ acting, while the only thing they say about the SOLE woman is her new hair/her weight loss or gain/how hot she looked. Sometimes, women are ONLY put in movies to be the token “eye candy”, (regardless of whether or not she’s underage) and this happens a lot. Look at the massive franchise that is Transformers.
It’s not the same thing… Men objectify women and it leads to real life violence against women—fuelled by already rampant misogyny. Women objectify men and it leads to gifsets of Chris Evans’ ass.
Yuppppp
And no one respects sexy men less for being “objectified” if you can even apply the term the same way to a guy- if anything, being objectified is glorifying for men.What’s that thing Joe Mangianello said about how he doesn’t feel like men can be objectified? Cuz women are viewed as sex objects, but men are viewed as power objects?
A guy who takes off his shirt and shows off his buff bod in a movie has power, he’s displaying his value and attractiveness
I mean, the culture isn’t NEARLY the same; I’ve been thinking lately about how no matter how much we “objectify” men, it’s always an empowering thing for the man.
He’s sexy: it’s an achievement.
And a lot of our attraction is also about fawning over the man’s personality, his expressions, the nuances of the character he plays- cute jokes about Doritoes….
I can go from posting ten close-ups of Chris Evan’s ass (accompanied by praise and self-deprecating jokes)
To a picture of him in a sweater-vest, looking pensive and talking about his love of golden retrievers in the same ten minutes (with commentary about what a darling angel he is)None of it is demeaning or objectifying in remotely the way female objectification is, and your point about Chris Evans starring in three Cap solo movies is really right on….
…while women can barely scrape past the damn Bechdel test half the time, and half the time are reduced to T&A and get assaulted or fridged or show up in their undies for no reason…Some wise words about gendered double standards and false equivalence between objectifying male and female characters.
~Ozzie
Following yesterday’s post about the far-from-perfect female costume designs in MCU, throwing back this week some nice analysis of the asker’s blatant false equivalence in regards to objectifying female vs male movie superheroes.
Keep in mind that this post is at least five years old and since then we had barely two mainstream superhero movies with female leads released, one of which was about Wonder Woman in an unmistakably sexualized costume.
~Ozzie
Yes! …and no. While not overtly sexualized, they all have femminizing features that…become impractical. If I remember right the WASP suit had heels instead of flats. Valkyrie’s outfit is, just bad? It doesn’t seem to fit her and is guilty of boobplate and worse. I agree that these are great steps in a direction, like holy hell it used to be worse, but these are not without their faults.
Maybe @bikiniarmorbattledamage could explain better?
We touched on Marvel and their love of boobplate before, as well as the fact that coverage of skin does not mean nonsexualized by default. Now, we’re not saying that all femininizing aspects of costuming are bad. However, for a warrior to wear heels, or clothes so tight that they can’t properly move (to get that perfect Ass and Legs look, etc)… that’s just not practical, and will probably lead to injury.
Of course some of these costumes have positives; it’s not often we see a lady character wearing a helmet, for example. But we can definitely do better, and we should! And hopefully, we will.
-Icy
desided to try my hand at redesigning something that isn’t winx, so here’s sketch of lux from league of legends
i wanted to make her look more like her brother, and to give her more serious vibe – after all, she is member of religious order.
What a nice redesign! And I feel like you made her face resemble her brother’s more, which I appreciate. Is it me, or does it seem like LoL has some sibling issues… I like the changes to the breastplate and boots, and of course the fact that she actually has mass now. And her armor isn’t a painted-on afterthought! I also find it interesting how just the shape of her belt can make her look that much more like she knows what she’s doing. Or maybe it’s just me.
(That belt is seriously, like, the Zero-Suit-Samus-shoes of belts.)
-Icy