I think someone has worked out both how to sell liquid latex and expand interest in Green Lantern…
– wincenworks
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Text post got me thinking. Now, I want a world, or whatever, where the female “bikini armor” really is as strong as normal. Protects with magic or something, I don’t much care. And pretty much every woman wears them. I mean, same protection, but loads less weight? Sign me up! And then over the bikini armor, you wear whatever you want. Cute sundress? Fully protected. Tee and jeans? Fully protected. Leather armor? Double protected? Idk.
Just a verse full of ladies in bikinis with normal clothes on top, so you never know who is a secret badass. It’d be great.
That sounds like the only acceptable reason to excuse the existence of magical bikini armor.
It’s still laughable how a simple logical question like “if the bikini gives her total protection, why wouldn’t she wear it over or under more comfortable clothes?” is always handwaved. Usually with something akin to “but she needs to wear bikini and only bikini for the magic to work”, which translates to “fanservice is mandatory!”.
Dear writers, if you can’t explain that in another way than “cause that makes me (and my presumed audience) horny” (and believe me, you can’t), please stop pretending that your story is something else than dramatized softcore porn.
~Ozzie
DnD Modern Magic
SGG submitted:
I play the most recent Dungeon and Dragons edition (5th ed.) and they release supplemental material on occasion on their website. This is the most recent addition, along with a picture of some modern day/futuristic heroes:
Sadly, I think this poor woman in front might want to take a note from her allies. She seems to have been dealt a serious wound from that bare midriff. 🙁
An Asian girl with weird tattoos blue lipstick in a sexualized version of schoolgirl outfit (with bra poking out) armed with a faux katana… totally fits in with a generic dude and a catguy with a monocle both wearing power armor. That’s not trite and painfully cliche at all…
In this case the “injury” that showcases she’s wires and… green goo inside seems to ramp up the objectification further since it suggests she’s not a person in the regular scene by a sci-fi thing.
– wincenworks
Tidy Up Tuesday #2
Just a quick tidy up this week.
Some titles we’ve been asked about that have been covered before:
- Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2
- TERA Online
-
Ultionus: A Tale of Petty Revenge
- Dragon Age
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
- Monster Hunter
And also… this very sexy piece of high fashion.
Our FAQ got an update over the weekend. A new question appeared and now all the questions are conveniently listed as links at the top of the subpage.
Dissolve magazine recently ran an excellent article, “We’re losing all our strong female characters to Trinity Syndrome”, which talks about the tendency to make a female character to be awesome right until the male protagonist arrives.
– wincenworks & ~Ozzie
So, I have been having this discussion in my fandom, and people defend the bikini armour as being “historical accurate” since some cultures “went naked into battle”. How true is this, actually?
It is certainly true some people went naked or near naked into battle, but not alongside warriors in proper armor and not in battle bikinis. There are some other important factors involved in their choice to do so. Firstly it usually only in cases where they didn’t have access to armor and/or the battles were largely ceremonial or otherwise non-lethal.
Armor is developed in response to weapons and usually the first forms of defense were shields. So if you had no nudity taboo and hadn’t developed armor due to lack of resources or lack of regular conflict, you didn’t really have much choice in the matter. Particularly since your weapons are usually tools that are made for hunting or other work.
In areas where this happened, usually the battles were no war in the sense of systematic killing of the enemy but more demonstrations of strength to intimidate others – usually over a piece of farm land or livestock. It was used to resolve grievances and sometimes even as a regular sport.
Usually this happened where people needed everyone to work together in order to provide essential, which means you also don’t need any more land than you already control and work every day. When you have an argument with your neighbours, you settle it to both sides satisfaction so you can resume living next to one another.
The ability to make sophisticated items like bikini armor (which is surprisingly complicated) comes from civilizations where they have sufficient surplus of resources and people they can have specialists who can trade goods and ideas. By the time you reach this level you also a real incentive to try to obtain more and more land.
At that point civilizations can start developing dedicated weapons, training dedicated soldiers (to expand your nation or defend against invaders) and their battles start to involve countless fatalities. Then it becomes worthwhile to begin the cycle of making armor to protect against the enemies weapons, and weapons to beat your enemies armor.
TL;DR: If you’re in a society that has warriors and the know-how and resources to make bikini armor, you’re in a society where your warriors wear actual armor. There were civilizations that fought nude or near nude, but they didn’t have bikini armor, fancy swords, professional warriors or sophisticated combat techniques.
– wincenworks
Kaguya-Hime
countaile submitted:
Can we talk about how the legendary Kaguya-Hime (a beautiful lunar princess from Japanese folklore) was transformed into this abomination?
I’m not really sure how those garments even work, let alone how she’s supposed to swing that mallet around – I mean c’mon, it’s a beat’em’up game, not a dating sim… Or is it?
Since I can already hear the furious typing of people rushing to assure us that we can’t judge this because it’s Japanese and things are magically different over there, let me just point out this studio not only put their games on Steam for international market, but they started marketing games to the USA and their biggest title on Steam is…. “Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle”
Oddly the game site seems to make a big deal about her bunnies having to play games with her and protect her, but makes no mention of who glues that outfit to her every morning. The bunnies, incidentally… look far more intimidating that the Princess herself:
– wincenworks