commentary – Page 15 – Bikini Armor Battle Damage

January 11, 2018February 19, 2022

Remember when I said earlier that Kojima reference never gets old? Wish I meant it only as “mocking that tweet about Quiet is always funny”.

NOPE. Media creators actually keep using some variation of “Once you learn why her being half naked has convenient in-story reasons, you will feel ashamed about your comments” to preemptively shut down criticism they know they gonna get for creepy double standards in costume/character design.

So, again, let’s make it clear: designing fictional explanations for gratuitously creepy ideas in fiction does not mean they’re impervious from real-world critique.

~Ozzie

Even before Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle movie came out this winter, its Thermian argument for the “jungle wardrobe” was more or less known: those are video game avatars of the teenage characters sucked into virtual incarnation of Jumanji. Also, Jack Black’s character’s a girl.

Does that explain Karen Gillan’s stereotypical “sexy action girl” look? Yeah, sure.

Does that justify it? Is recreating the problems of the video game industry in a comedy that takes place inside of a magical video game a good commentary on those problems? Not necessarily. Doing satire is very hard.

Did that explanation really warrant a Kojima-style “Wait till you know the plot before criticizing” social media post?

nope.gif

~Ozzie

So naturally when we first posted this a bunch of people rushed to tell us this was a reference to Lara Croft (as though we’d never heard of her). Now, Lara has had many looks in her long career… but literally none of them have included a faux holster that is made exclusively to function as a “lifts and separates” cupless cincher.

So right there, that kind of subverts any claim of “it’s the point we’re making” that was pushed as the explanation for this:

And to be honest, reality already did peak highlighting of the absurdity of the short shorts back in 2008. When, then official face of Lara Croft, Alison Carrol, did a photoshoot demonstrating her gymnastic ability and the shorts’ inability to completely cover her labia majora.

– wincenworks

January 4, 2018February 19, 2022

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

bigbardafree:

female characters

can be

covered up

and objectified

female characters

can be

pantsless

and not

objectified

IT’S UP TO THE ARTISTS AND WRITERS

I dedicate this reblog to anyone who thinks that we object to women showing some skin by principle… No, we don’t. Just as we do not think covering everything up is a universal solution to the problem sexist costume designs.

The way a character is framed (visually and story-wise) makes a world of difference between just having a questionable costume and being outright objectified.

And as much as bikinis, bathing suits, cheerleader outfits etc. remain a silly wardrobe choice for an on-duty warrior/crimefighter, above here we have small sample of evidence that pants or full-body suits can actually look worse.

Let me refer back to @pointlessarguments101’s article that I quoted waaay back:

Putting a female hero in pants does not mean she is somehow protected from an artist positioning her primarily for the male gaze. For example, Marvel Comics recently began a new ongoing called Fearless Defenders which stars Valkyrie and Misty Knight. Both of these characters wear pants and, yet, I lost count by about page five of how many times Misty’s ass took center stage in any given panel. Basically, where there’s a male gaze will, there’s a male gaze way — pants or no pants, tights or bared legs.

Preach!

~Ozzie

more on costume design | more on character design | more about the iconic example: Starfire

This week’s throwback: the significant difference between sexualization and showing skin. Yes, amazingly, they are not and never were the same thing.

We talked lately about how presentation/framing of the character via such things as posing and camera angles is what ultimately decides whether or not the character is objectified.

Skimpy costumes, of course, more often than not also serve female sexualization more than anything. Still, there are certain, very limited circumstances that can justify something as absurd as chainmail bikini.

Not to mention all the various non-bikini forms of partial nudity that are decidedly non-sexual and equivalent to many shirtless male power fantasies.

~Ozzie

January 4, 2018February 19, 2022

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

bigbardafree:

female characters

can be

covered up

and objectified

female characters

can be

pantsless

and not

objectified

IT’S UP TO THE ARTISTS AND WRITERS

I dedicate this reblog to anyone who thinks that we object to women showing some skin by principle… No, we don’t. Just as we do not think covering everything up is a universal solution to the problem sexist costume designs.

The way a character is framed (visually and story-wise) makes a world of difference between just having a questionable costume and being outright objectified.

And as much as bikinis, bathing suits, cheerleader outfits etc. remain a silly wardrobe choice for an on-duty warrior/crimefighter, above here we have small sample of evidence that pants or full-body suits can actually look worse.

Let me refer back to @pointlessarguments101’s article that I quoted waaay back:

Putting a female hero in pants does not mean she is somehow protected from an artist positioning her primarily for the male gaze. For example, Marvel Comics recently began a new ongoing called Fearless Defenders which stars Valkyrie and Misty Knight. Both of these characters wear pants and, yet, I lost count by about page five of how many times Misty’s ass took center stage in any given panel. Basically, where there’s a male gaze will, there’s a male gaze way — pants or no pants, tights or bared legs.

Preach!

~Ozzie

more on costume design | more on character design | more about the iconic example: Starfire

This week’s throwback: the significant difference between sexualization and showing skin. Yes, amazingly, they are not and never were the same thing.

We talked lately about how presentation/framing of the character via such things as posing and camera angles is what ultimately decides whether or not the character is objectified.

Not to mention all the various non-bikini forms of partial nudity that are decidedly non-sexual and equivalent to many shirtless male power fantasies.

~Ozzie

January 2, 2018February 19, 2022

January 2, 2018February 19, 2022

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.

December 28, 2017February 19, 2022

December 28, 2017February 19, 2022

December 27, 2017February 19, 2022

December 27, 2017February 19, 2022

December 21, 2017February 19, 2022

It’s probably fair to say that women in fantasy RPGs are the industry’s most highly endangered species.

I mean, these are women who take on entire monster-infested dwarven mines wearing nothing but a bit of moulded plate metal over their chests and a chainmail g-string.

If it’s not disembowelling, it’s probably going to be some kind of really nasty infection from all that… chafing.

Armour expert calls female boob armour a “design flaw” (via bikiniarmorbattledamage)

This is still probably my favorite summary of why skimpy armor obviously makes no sense.

~Ozzie