While it may not seem like the initial bingo material – I invite you consider how the fuck she is supposed to do literally anything in this plate armor.  

  • The helmet literally covers her eyes so she can’t see anything past her toes
  • Her exposed mouth and lower face, combined with clawed gauntlets, mean any attempt to adjust it would mangle herself 
  • The armor is form fitted to her torso so she can’t bend, turn or even make big movements with her arms. I doubt she can even breathe with that boobplate.
  • Leg legs are locked into the “maximum thigh gap” pose. so she can’t even walk, let alone engage in combat footwork

This is not armor, this is some next level BDSM shit for people who find vacuum bondage too vanilla. (nsfw)

Bless Unleashed has been around since 2019 but has recently started more aggressive marketing – and um… wow… it’s… marketing… some of it really, really leans into the old myth, double standards, suspicious dimorphism and mistaking satirical parody for a style guide. 

(Honestly glad there is no mantis race… at least I think there isn’t…)

Unsurprisingly a large part of the Steam community screenshots etc is ogling even more ridiculous sets of armor. 

I don’t know which is worse, the weird horny marketing put together by the Creepy Marketing Guy or the more generic, family friendly marketing that tricks people into downloading the game and finding the options for female characters are fighting fucktoy, sexy sorcereress and bad archer..

– wincenworks

So… Fortnite is supposed to be a game for kids, hence there’s no blood and lots of tactics to make kids scream at their parents that they totally need a skin or a dance.

So it’s kind of weird that when I did a search for best female skins, this weird rip off of Blizzard’s style pops up with her inexplicably bared armpits (do children really care if women shave their armpits?) and overly complicated boobplate.

Oh well, at least this was only the second item on the list… the first is well… I wouldn’t say its great armor but at least I can see how it is for children…

Still… can’t find any sort of female equivalent of the John Wick Skin, the Totally Not John WickReaper Skin or… wait are kids watching John Wick?

I’m starting to think that maybe, a large part of their market is maladjusted adult men who throw tanrums at the slight hint of diversity in anything.

– wincenworks

Okay, I think it’s been long enough we can assume people have stopped tag searching for this and thus can contribute to the discussion without getting extra hate brigades. Also the show has rightfully jettisoned Gina Carano for being a reactionary menace.

Obviously the issue of why boobplate is (with very few exceptions) always bad has been covered extensively on this blog already, so I’m not going to go into that other than this scene was massively disappointing because for the first season – Mandalorian really committed to the whole warrior cult thing and had an amazing female character in amazing armor.

(This is why we never just “relax” after a positive example, way too many properties do this kind of back sliding as soon as they are proved successful and execs invite a certain type of devil into the decision making process)

What I wanted to talk about specifically is a rhetoric tactic I noticed with shitbagsbrodudes actively looking to undermine the message by selectively signal boosting women who frequently get left out of these conversations.

I am talking specifically about women who have large breasts and:

  • Are sick of being treated as hypersexual because of their bodies
  • Are sick of having to pay extra or buy alternatives to clothes they want because companies don’t cater for their “desirable” shape
  • Are sick of, at events like LARPs, paintballs, kayaking etc, being given gear made for smaller chested women and having their complaints about it being uncomfortable or impractical for them go unheard, ignored or ridiculed

Because the reality is that as much as capitalism commodifies and exploits women with hefty busts, capitalist society never misses an opportunity to make women feel shitty for their bodies.

Now I said “selectively” above because I noticed that among the group I looked over there was a distinct trend of “liking” posts yelling at Anita, and not liking posts calling for people not to automatically sexualize big boobs – and a lot of liking more misogynistic posts that were very insulting to women in general.

All of this is to say that when we have these conversations, it is important to remember that the goal is to have representation and inclusion in all kinds of fantasies for all kinds of people – and assholes will never hesitate to try to play people against each other in order to try to keep a bigger their overly privileged position.

– wincenworks

vicholas:

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Apparently a lot of people are having… polite conversations [/sarcasm] about the tiddy booplate puppet being 100% okay because not only is this parody, but the design was the idea of her player/voice actress, who’s a woman of color and size (and known for raunchy sense of humor). 

No-one’s here to judge how empowered (and/or hilarious) a performer feels about playing a character with giant breasts and bikini armor, but shielding an uninspired, sexist choice in a mainstream commercial project from criticism with female co-creator is insidious as fuck.

It’s just an iteration of the (Marginalized) Friend Argument

We all know the “Bayonetta can’t be problematic, cause a woman designed her” rhetoric. And this situation gives me flashbacks to Samus prancing around Smash Bros in booty shorts “thanks to the determination of her female designer”

Also, how does unironically regurgitating the decades-old “ladies in Dungeons and Dragons have their boobs spill out of battle lingerie” trope add anything to an officially licensed adult comedy series
Wouldn’t making her topless be a bolder, more subversive choice and more in line with her barbarian class? Oh right, sex sells, but nipples don’t. That’s why you can only name your character after them. ? 

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Hey, Wizards of the Coast, why did you play Shanna’s joke so straight? Who is this supposed to appeal to and for what reason? 

~Ozzie 

PS: Arie is a Dragonborn,

so it’s not just some huge titties in a metal bikini, it’s huge LIZARD titties in a metal bikini. 

h/t: @toastytostada​ 

So the (forty year long) King’s Bounty video game series has had it’s up and downs, the biggest down being the cover art for the ironically named Armored Princess.

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Second place goes to Dark Side:

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Third place goes to Crossworlds expansion to Armoured Princess where they decided to go with an even worse design like it was going to be the core brand:

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So when I saw they had a new game in the works, I was kind of surprised that it appeared relatively low fantasy with costumes inspired by history and… no beyond peasants and nobles… then I saw the Celestial Warrior, which seems to be the only female unit.

Now, this does of course count as improvement… but that’s hardly worth celebrating since the bar for that was so low and… there’s just something about the developer videos and promotions that makes me… concerned about what content they may not yet be showing off…

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…oh dear.

– wincenworks

Disagreeing with Disgaea’s Designs, Part 1: Barbara’s Suit of Armor 

After the Beastmaster bingo, we agreed to do some character redesigns for Disgaea

The game’s wiki lists Barbara’s costume as a minor edit of the female Armor Knight, a rather inaptly named character class. Though yes, this is basically just recolor of their “armor”. 

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Other than reshaping the ugly AF boobplate and patching up all the random skin showing I didn’t have a concept for this until @filipfatalattractionrblog​ suggested using the pin-stripe suit-like elements, which was a stroke of genius.
It ended up being a mix of 3-piece business suit with plate armor, with breastplate as the vest worn on top. 

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While I didn’t manage to keep her proportions stylized like in the original (because, obviously, it was stylized in a very sexualized way),  I am really happy with how Barbara turned out. Hope you enjoy it.

~Ozzie

So, apparently fantasy action figures are a thing that got funded on Kickstarter a while ago and this… was the… “Female Orc Conqueror” and I am… very confused what genre this is supposed to be.  Because it seems like this should be for people who have a very specific vision for being conquered. (And if that’s the case, I ain’t kink shaming… just pointing it out)

Oddly, they seem to have decided in the fluff that she is a “strategist” but I can’t help but think that any strategist would probably start by covering their internal organs.  Maybe this is why female orcs are “rarer” than their male counterparts?

– wincenworks

Powdered Shit Brown Dust Brave Nine, Part 1: Frellea 

Speaking of Brown D… I mean Brave Nine, whatever the changes to the game’s name, story and character roster, it still remains a confusing mess, seemingly made only for the sake of its exploitative waifu art. So of course I proposed to Icy that we stream redesigns from it! We’re definitely alright after staring at them for hours ? 

This character is Frellea, older sister to the backstory comic’s protagonist demigoddess Eda and, I guess, from how well-endowed she is, a very powerful deity. I think, judging by character names (is Frellea a corrupted take on Freya?), they’re Norse mythology-inspired, like Odin’s Sphere’s butt-wing Valkyrie
And of course, literally nothing else about the designs communicates that. 

It was SO HARD to decide what should take priority in fixing this mess, but the mix of boobplate and scalemail boobsocks went first. I reshaped her breastplate into something plausible and decided to extend the scalemail into a long-sleeved tunic (though that one’s tight fit is mostly my artistic license). 

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Next step was to tidy up the messy design composition, including the color scheme. Both me and Icy concluded those huge feathery… trains? tails? were purely decorative, so we got rid of them. 
I decided to balance out the contrast by making that ribbon white (instead of the shade shade of grey as her hair), reusing redness of the other ribbon (and the feathers) on new pants and, most of all, recoloring her non-mail armor to brass color of her bracers.* 

Easily one of my favorite redesigns, but also one of the most work-intensive ones, too. Hope you enjoy it!

~Ozzie 

PS: *In the comic the helmet and greaves are slightly different metal shade from the rest of armor, so it seems like different artists couldn’t agree on the color. Pic below, for the interested. 

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@thegreqtlilac​ submitted (and Ozzie bingo’d):

To be completely honest, Summoners War probably has way worse cases of terrible female armor if you go through their monster collection, but what’s worse about this one is that she is the reward for getting through the second scenario area of the game, which means EVERYONE has her, so you have to see this monstrosity all the time. 

I always feel so weird about the clash of chibi AND “sexy” aesthetic. Trying to have a cake and eat it too.
There’s really not much to add about the costume itself, other than this being too painfully generic to even register. BUT it did strike a rare diagonal bingo, so congrats to Summoners War, I guess?
I am sorry for all the players who are subjected to multiple copies of this running around inside the game. 

Thank you for the submission! 

~Ozzie

denilsonsa submitted and Icy bingo’d:

Bingo-worthy, shows how male and female characters are not treated equally. The contrast is very clear at this game cover art, and it summarizes bikiniarmorbattledamage in one picture.

Y-yeah it sure does…. ughh

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Honestly, what is even the point? You might as well be naked, going into battle looking like that. She doesn’t even look like she belongs in the setting. Also for people not in the know, this is NOT a dating sim where you’re a stud (?) with long flowing hair who’s looking for a sexy girlfriend. This game is about fighting and conquering for your royal family. With troops that wear bikinis, apparently. Fantasy~

At least the dude (the player character) has some nipple accents on his breastplate to even it out?

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Though personally, I would have just taken away 85% of his armor. When will game devs give the people what they want? ?

-Icy