Tag: bikini armor battle damage

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But is it really porn?

So now and again we get people insist that x title shouldn’t be counted because it’s intended to be viewed as porn (especially if that product is from a country outside the English speaking world… because reasons).

Reasons for this assumption often include:

  • The presence of explicit fan service or sex scenes
  • The inclusion of ridiculous double standards
  • Fans having labelled it as an erotic product on their own wikis
  • The publisher having actual porn products in their catalog

But generally this just assumes that by shoehorning in some sexualized content a product immediately becomes excluded from criticism.  Very few products exclude all content from their own genre (plenty of action movies have a romantic subplot for example).

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Generally a lot of the cross genre trends have a pretty basic premise behind them, it helps improve the audience investment:

  • Comic relief in horror and thriller helps avoid the audience becoming desensitized or burnt out from the tension
  • Having a love interest can humanize a protagonist (or an antagonist) and increase your ability to get invested in them
  • Mixing a little mystery with your modern fantasy story reminds the audience of how little we really notice or know about the world around us and makes them more accepting to the idea of secret magic

So, what purpose does having ultrasexualized costumes for female characters and regular arbitrary fan service?  Well, mostly it’s because of the general belief that certain demographics need a lot of reassurance that some products are okay for them, and in fact made exclusively for them:

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It’s been covered before, but I really feel the need to restate that the main reason for this is a very simple reasoning: x genre is a for (straight cis) men so we need to market exclusively to them and make sure they know we’re doing it (even if they think it’s already being overdone and kind of insulting).

(Evidence suggests this works… but only in the sense that it does make a lot of people think that the product is not for them and hence don’t buy it. Or just have more fun mocking it than they’d have playing it.)

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That’s not to say that there aren’t products or stories where including sexual content gives it a boost, but generally you’ll want to do it in a way that makes sense and does actually improve the product and that still doesn’t make it porn.

You can physically eat a lot of things, but just as you wouldn’t call it food unless you buy it specifically to eat it, you shouldn’t call it porn unless you buy it specifically for sexual gratification.

– wincenworks

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@kimarous submitted (and Ozzie bingo’d):

Ai-yi-yi… found this monstrosity while exploring the Sacred 2 wiki: the High Elf’s “Frozen Gems” equipment set. Double bingo at least, maybe even a triple. Bottom two rows for sure.

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I’m only surprised her buttcheeks are covered properly. Going by the rest of this design, battle thong should be a given.

~Ozzie

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A note about Female Armor Bingo Sundays

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

We have previously updated some bingos after they have been posted, however we will not be doing this unless there is an important reason.

Here’s why:

  • Female Armor Bingo is intended as a fun way to encourage critique of popular media and thus draw attention to troubling tropes. Too much pressure to make every bingo perfect takes away the fun and derails the conversation away from the intended purpose.
  • Many of the terms are deliberately vague so as to cover the many forms the trope takes and thus it can become very subjective.
    Nitpicking over details again derails and also encourages the mentality that “No one can criticize you for x, provided you do y.”
  • When people submit bingo cards to us, they’re marking off the points they see – if they miss a point or two on a card that’s already over half full then it doesn’t really diminish from the core point: The armor is disrespectful to women in general and part of a prevalent and harmful trope.
  • Sadly, Female Armor Bingo is not an empirical measuring device – we’ve had absurdly objectifying outfits that didn’t score bingos either due to technicalities or how the squares happened to be filled out. They were still objectifying and deserving ridicule.
    Just like the famous Bechdel Test, the bingo is supposed to shed light on a bigger trend in popculture, not to meticulously analyze who and what “passes”.
  • Finding new content for the blog, checking submissions, researching and writing posts, etc. is time consuming and a much higher priority than tweaking bingos that are already entertaining and on-point.

While it’s great fun to joke about the exact score and keep a tally of the highest scoring bingos it’s not essential for every bingo to be 100% accurate and correct.
So from now on we’ll be limiting edits after posting to important and noteworthy events – like that time we discover that against all odds, Fran’s outfit was worse than we dreamed.

~Ozzie & – wincenworks

As the Female Armor Bingo is nearing its third anniversary next month, it’s good time for a reminder that the game’s main goal is to help the audiences observe and point out prevailing harmful tropes of female warrior costume design. Not to narrow down definition of sexism, let alone judge which outfits are “sexist enough” to criticize based on the score.

That said, as updating the board is our unofficial yearly tradition – do you, readers, think some squares should be changed or adjusted to reflect any common design problems that aren’t addressed yet?

~Ozzie

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I feel like if this is Google Image search’s best guess for your tabletop wargame promo image then you either need to go back and revise your design or change the type of tabletop games you’re making.

– wincenworks

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As you can see, some of the details are a little unclear based off this promo art, I guess I’ll have to look at the in game sprite…

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Oh…

– wincenworks