The Knight of the Silver Dragon – Tasha Anderson – June 25, 2015
I think I’m in love…
And now, for something positive…
~Ozzie
peaches submitted:
I decided to take a look at the rest of the armor in hyrule warriors. I love the game to pieces, so these may be a little bit biased. The first one is my favorite, obviously, Impa. Looking at her design critically, she has several flaws, but her armor is surprisingly practical (at least, for this game). Some definite improvements can be made on the torso (hello, single, literal boobplate, and bare skin galore), but it seems to match what many male fighters in her genre wear. My main problem with this, and the source of my anger, is a) heels? Why? and b) How come she can’t be bothered to wear a shirt underneath, when a very, very similar character in design and personality, Volga, is so heavily decked out?
His armor is nowhere near practical (especially with all of those sharp edges, ow), but at least he’s wearing some sort of clothing underneath and has actual protection for his vitals.
Either way, neither of them has anything on Zelda, and none of the aforementioned characters are even close to the monstrosity that is Cia’s armor.
Speaking of Cia, Lana, another title-exclusive character thus far, can score a pretty good number of x’s on the card herself.
Note- I added an extra “how does it attach”? Because you cannot convince me that that cape, with the huge, heavy metal piece on the shoulder, will sit politely during combat. Also, it’s not surprising that her costume is less revealing, as Cia disappointingly falls into a vat of cliches- “evil is sexy”, “villainesses want heroes”, etc.
This is a great illustration of the trend of double standards when it comes to unrealistic and impractical designs.
Men get ridiculous costume designs to make them look scary, or powerful, or super intelligent, etc.
Women get them to fit them onto some sliding scale from “sexy” to “ridiculously over the top sexy”.
– wincenworks
If you like Return Of The Jedi but hate the Ewoks, you understand feminist criticism
If you like Return Of The Jedi but hate the Ewoks, you understand feminist criticism
Not only does this article have a brilliant title, it also explains very well the false dychotomy of feminist media criticism.
Notable quotes:
We’ve fallen into an all-or-nothing rut with feminist criticism lately. Battle lines are immediately drawn between movies that are “feminist” (i.e. “good”) and “sexist” (i.e. “bad”). And that simplistic breakdown is hurting our ability to actually talk about this stuff.
Feminist criticism isn’t about ripping something to shreds or making others feel guilty for liking it. It’s simply about pointing out a specific creative weakness and then taking that a step further to explain the real-world social ramifications of that weakness, all in the hopes of dissuading future filmmakers from making the same mistake.
I dedicate this article to every single person who ever implied that by criticizing female character designs, we’re apparently disapproving of the whole product those characters are featured in*.
Cause, again:
~Ozzie
*Sometimes we do, but it takes some special levels of terribad to make us write off the whole product, not only its treatment of female characters.