The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Mom, thanks by
This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.
Oh man, am I ever here for this kind of thing.
It’s really amazing how storytelling you can convey when you focus on the characters and the story itself rather than dipping into cheap tropes that take a lot of work to say thing.
Especially if you’re willing to commit to letting your female characters get a little roughed up and scarred.
Beautiful.
– wincenworks
@universe63 submitted:
So Cartoon Network has a new series called “Mighty Magiswords” about a pair of adventurers who do adventurey stuff. This is an image of one of the two leads,Vambre, as she evolved through the years before the show got picked up.
Far left is her original incarnation around 1996.
Second from left is her look to about 2006.
Then in 2007, someone stole her pants (probably creepy marketing guy) and they haven’t been seen since.
…sigh…
So over the years of design refinement not only did her skin become noticeably lighter, she also acquired a stereotypical leotard that so rarely gets worn by male characters, huh?
The show even makes “you have no pants” jokes, to which Vambre responds “Stop judging my bare legs decision and accept me for who I am!”… With no real satirical twist on it or anything – they just reproduce the cliche and address it’s there, as it that was inherently comedic.
~Ozzie
@universe63 submitted:
So Cartoon Network has a new series called “Mighty Magiswords” about a pair of adventurers who do adventurey stuff. This is an image of one of the two leads,Vambre, as she evolved through the years before the show got picked up.
Far left is her original incarnation around 1996.
Second from left is her look to about 2006.
Then in 2007, someone stole her pants (probably creepy marketing guy) and they haven’t been seen since.
…sigh…
So over the years of design refinement not only did her skin become noticeably lighter, she also acquired a stereotypical leotard that so rarely gets worn by male characters, huh?
The show even makes “you have no pants” jokes, to which Vambre responds “Stop judging my bare legs decision and accept me for who I am!”… With no real satirical twist on it or anything – they just reproduce the cliche and address it’s there, as it that was inherently comedic.
~Ozzie
The 5 Most Ridiculously Sexist Superhero Costumes
An old Cracked list, which, like the last one we featured on BABD, ends with a half-joking #1 entry.
However – unlike that other list, which attempted to claim Bayonetta as a proper example of sexual female character in fiction – this one uses Namor to remind us that, while flaunting his amazing body, he’s still an example of male power fantasy, so it isn’t exactly fair to compare him to female superheroines clearly designed solely as eyecandy.
~Ozzie
The 5 Most Ridiculously Sexist Superhero Costumes
An old Cracked list, which, like the last one we featured on BABD, ends with a half-joking #1 entry.
However – unlike that other list, which attempted to claim Bayonetta as a proper example of sexual female character in fiction – this one uses Namor to remind us that, while flaunting his amazing body, he’s still an example of male power fantasy, so it isn’t exactly fair to compare him to female superheroines clearly designed solely as eyecandy.
~Ozzie
Why are almost all the female characters in games slender and young? We dig deeper into gaming’s problem with body diversity in our brand new Tropes!
You can find a complete transcript of the episode on our website.
While body shape is not technically the focus of this blog, it is a heavily related issue simply because it basically all fits into idea that female characters are only worthwhile if they are conventionally attractive, heavily sexualized and avoid challenging too many perceptions.
For all the talk about how much people like a female character for being badass, there’s a tendency to only support it if it doesn’t clash with other ideals like conventional beauty or sexualization.
This has created an odd situation where many people are more comfortable with a woman built like a fashion model wearing an outfit made of dental floss as being a badass than they are with, well a badass like this:
Which is not only ridiculously limiting from a creative perspective, but also re-enforces the idea that all women should look like these ridiculous fantasies (that look like at best, very few real women, and at worst no real women).
– wincenworks
We touched upon this issue before, especially when talking about Overwatch (particularly this post), but Anita puts the problem of double standards of beauty in character design most comprehensively in this video.
Lots of illustrative examples really drive the point home: There is a noticeable lack of visual diversity among female game characters (and, by extension, in other popular media), while male ones get a variety of appearances.
This limits not only the designer’s creativity, but the female audience’s sense of inclusion.
~Ozzie
more about: character design | double standards | suspicious dimorphism
New video!
As always with HBomb’s videos, he lays down a pretty in-depth breakdown of the topic at hand, in this case – the supposed male objectification of video game protagonists and general issue of gendered false equivalence in game design.
~Ozzie
see also: our thoughts regarding how empowered AND problematic Bayonetta is at the same time | thoughts on how sexualized Kratos really is | what do women find sexy in men? | why “but she’s a badass” doesn’t help
