fatherronaldknox submitted:
Statue by Sideshow Toys of Heavy Metal Taarna? I don’t know what she is but this is horrifying.
Oh, Sideshow Toys and your intricately sculpted and painted figures of creepily sexualized women, we meet again…
Taarna is perhaps the most iconic character from the
boobalistic
cult classic 1981 Heavy Metal animated anthology.
She’s arguably known best not for being a fierce warrior, but for having the most voyeuristic “gearing up” scene ever, complete with “romantic” music playing as she slowly and sensually dresses up from complete nudity to half nudity.
[imagine a GIF in here, but it would be too NSFW to actually put one]
Even her ComicVine description agrees what’s the character’s most prominent feature:
A strong, beautiful warrior maiden who resolves to avenge a city destroyed by a horde of mutated barbarians.
Ew.
Surprisingly enough, in her final battle she does get seriously injured, so it’s safe to assume her bikini isn’t supposed to be actually protective.
She’s just badass enough to fight while slashed across her exposed flesh. What benefit could she possibly get from wearing actual armor in the first place? NOT duelling a mutant warlord while bleeding to death, huh? Who’d want to see that? </sarcasm>
~Ozzie
According to the statue description, this seems to be a post-Loc-Nar design, as it “includes mechanical elements and earthen details inspired by Taarna’s part in destroying the evil Loc-Nar.” So even after that fight where she dies, nobody batted an eye at giving her the exact same… “outfit.”
Not to mention, those cuts look like something my cat might give me by accident. She has to be a beautiful warrior maiden, after all, and actual injuries are gross.
My favorite part of the description is this, however:
Although she is a silent hero, Taarna’s expression speaks volumes. Her carefully sculpted portrait bears a look of grim determination, complete with the Taarakian mark tattooed on her neck. Her windswept, silvery hair frames her face as she looks towards her next foe with silent fury.
Ah, yes, her expression.
The expression that exists entirely in her eyebrows so that her face can stay unblemished. I guess I should be thankful that her face actually looks like it belongs to an adult.
-Icy
ihearducksaregoingquackers submitted:
This is from a real video game called “Riders of Icarus” and this is what you see during the character select screen. Viewable on many Riders of Icarus review videos that go through character selection screens. These images were obtained from https://www.tentonhammer.com/guides/riders-of-icarus-choosing-a-class
Not only is the double standard very apparent, it’s also extremely inconsistent as well (and of course, 100% illogical because why would a woman wearing full plate reveal MORE than the assassin class??? On top of the, you know, why reveal anything dilemma).
Also, literal bikini armour. LITERAL bikini armour. I can’t…
(Order of classes from top to bottom in captions:
Guardian,
Assassin, Priest, Wizard, Berserker.)
This is the textbookiest of texbook examples of double standard in armor we’ve seen in ages. Amazingly creative!
~Ozzie
I remember how Riders of Icarus released it’s trailer it almost looked like it wasn’t going to this nonsense… for a literal minute.
You have to love their commitment to the novel idea of wings combing out of the lower legs… then going with the most generically awful female costumes…. short skirts don’t really seem compatible with dragon riding.
For bonus points, this is the first female character you’ll come across on their site if you scroll down through the promo images from the top:
– wincenworks
iiphides submitted:
Found in a pop up while I was trying to watch something.
Plus bingo cards! The gal on the left is the green board, while the right is purple.
Wow are those extremely awful (with @eschergirls anatomy on the left one, to boot!), I’d say your scores are very lenient.
Sorry to do a rare bingo correction, but those two are SO over the top physically impossible and ultrasexualized I think they deserve cards as fully crossed out as possible:
(Also, I’m using the most recent bingo card design (1.2), we grew quite tired of the “No underwear” square and discussions on what it means).
Okay, so the left one, with her “Hot Chick With a Sword” aesthetic has a pretense of being a warrior. What the other one’s supposed to be, aside from, well…
…a sorceress? …a cleric? …a double sided tape commercial cleverly disguised as a burlesque strip tease?
~Ozzie
This game’s apparently supposed to be a “Greek Mythology Browser Game.” I don’t think it’s physically possible to squint hard enough to make that come across in any way.
Also, is it just me, or do those 2 ladies look like they were made for 2 different art styles? Not to mention, this “promotional material” is orders of magnitude more shameless about the sexy girls than any other art on their website.
Although the “clothes” are still as confusing, so… at least that’s consistent??
-Icy
edit: Readers informed us that art in that web art is stolen. Surprising no-one, game with porny marketing is an asset stealer.
@the-midnight-doe submitted:
Here we go again… Kojima posted a new concept art on his Twitter (left), which is apparently a female version of Ludens, the character featured in the Kojima Productions logo (right.) Can’t wait to hear about her tragic skin condition that requires her to wear literally half the armor of her male counterpart
Point and Clickbait totally called it two years ago, and none of us are surprised.
Given that he’s already over-used (which is to say, he used) the “she breathes through her skin” excuse, and, well, how most of Death Stranding’s promotion has gone thusfar: I’m pretty confident the explanation will 1. make no sense and 2. ensure we receive contradictory responses from his fans trying to defend it.
Of course, the first thing they always tell me is I don’t know enough about Kojima’s work so let’s look at some some of his fans are saying about the deep textual values of this complex piece:
– wincenworks
And let’s not forget that the experience of starting to understand Kojima’s genius ideas, including gratuitous definitely justified and not contrived female sexualization, takes only playing the whole game at least two times, preferably with complete familiarity of all his other work.
Two years later, @pointandclickbait still on point.
~Ozzie
edit: Since it caused some confusion: we don’t know for sure whether female Ludens is just a “fun” variation on Kojima Productions mascot or a future character concept for Death Standing.
It’s alleged she might be the latter, but either way both her design and the commentary about Kojima belong among topics we discuss on the blog.
Battlerite is a recent addition to the growing popular genre of “just fight people in multiplayer” games that continue to come forth with no end in sight. Given the starter line up in this game, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to discover a large portion of their tag on Tumblr is Rule34.
What’s interesting about Battlerite, though, is that it only released on 8 November 2017, it already has two characters added (both female).
The first was Destiny.
She was released with the first patch seemingly as some sort of afterthought that there may actually be people out there who wanted to play a female character who did not look like a child, was clearly recognizable as human, wasn’t in a hyper sexualized costume and appeared to turning up to the fight because was a warrior.
In December, they released Alysia… who looks kind of presentable from the waist up but has weird thigh highs. In her video she spends her time prancing and talking about being an artist. I guess they’re trying to find a magic mix of objectification and actual good design.
It kind of makes you wonder whether someone in particular told them that hardly anyone wants actual badass warrior women or whether they just worried a certain demographic wouldn’t check out the game on opening day unless they were being pandered to.
tl;dr: Not only do they appear to be copying Smite’s core gameplay, they’re also copying their strategy regarding attempting to have their feminist cookie and gratuitous cheesecake too.
– wincenworks
This game seems to go through some sort of visual identity crisis regarding female characters. A reader actually noted us that the white-haired lady, Jade, went through a “sexy” redesign some time ago:
@emissaryofwind submitted:
You already talked a bit about Battlerite’s Freya before, but I was looking at this character named Jade, and noticed this. On the left is her old design, notice how apart from her hairstyle everything is very practical. Low, chunky heels (I’ve been told 1" heels are better for your back than flat heels), a full-coverage coat and shirt, a mask to protect her from inhaling dust, etc.
On the right is her current design, complete with useless-to-dangerous mini armor plates, stiletto heels, boob window, shoulder windows, and a big hole in the back of the coat making it essentially useless.
It’s sad to see that such a good design has been replaced with a generic “sexy” design.
What a waste of a design that was both practical AND much more interesting visually (just compare the silhouette!). The new one could easily just come from some random shovelware web ad. She sticks out like a sore thumb, even next to other sexualized ladies, due to a slightly different (generic and overly detailed) art style.
Battlerite is in a desperate need of rehashing its art direction to something more consistent and not at all dependent on the creepy marketing guy.
~Ozzie
edit: Fixed link to Alysia’s video.