Tag: commentary

Posted on

dimestoretajic:

mtg-talk:

New legendary creature, plus some other cool stuff. I’m really liking Recruiter of the Guard.

@bikiniarmorbattledamage has to LOVE Wizards… they run the gamut from, well, Adriana to Burning Wish! Endless material from both ends of the spectrum! 😀

Love is… not the descriptor I would assign to Wizards of the Coast, particularly to Magic: The Gathering.  Particularly since their art guide have, for over a decade now, essentially been content with the idea that as long as it’s not blatant softcore pornography and the women are closer to “kicking ass” than being a damsel then it will be fine.

Ultimately the positive examples from Magic tend to fit into one of two categories.  One is that it tends to feed into societal tropes that encourage people to harshly judge women based on their attire, the other is it basically confirms that many artists like portraying women in practical armor and many consumers like paying for images of women in practical armor.

(This, by the way, is something they should be aware of given the history of their franchises.)

All that really holds things back is the plethora of nonsense myths various people are deeply invested in perpetuating.

– wincenworks

Posted on

dimestoretajic:

mtg-talk:

New legendary creature, plus some other cool stuff. I’m really liking Recruiter of the Guard.

@bikiniarmorbattledamage has to LOVE Wizards… they run the gamut from, well, Adriana to Burning Wish! Endless material from both ends of the spectrum! 😀

Love is… not the descriptor I would assign to Wizards of the Coast, particularly to Magic: The Gathering.  Particularly since their art guide have, for over a decade now, essentially been content with the idea that as long as it’s not blatant softcore pornography and the women are closer to “kicking ass” than being a damsel then it will be fine.

Ultimately the positive examples from Magic tend to fit into one of two categories.  One is that it tends to feed into societal tropes that encourage people to harshly judge women based on their attire, the other is it basically confirms that many artists like portraying women in practical armor and many consumers like paying for images of women in practical armor.

(This, by the way, is something they should be aware of given the history of their franchises.)

All that really holds things back is the plethora of nonsense myths various people are deeply invested in perpetuating.

– wincenworks

Posted on

Stop Pretending “Sexy” and “Sexualized” Mean the Same Thing

Stop Pretending “Sexy” and “Sexualized” Mean the Same Thing

An article relevant to the rhetoric we’re often met with in response to our posts – that we’re against anything remotely sexy, or that we’re conflating sexyness with sexualization (even if the author is weirdly fixated on alleged inherent problems with anime culture). 

It also alludes to the problem of distinguishing between nudity and sexualization, which we also addressed recently:

This article is not about how you perceive people; it’s about how they are presented to you. The human body is neutral, not inherently objectified just by virtue of being visible.

As well as the good old “sex sells” argument:

Sexiness without objectification is not some hypothetical or abstract concept […] “Sex sells!” commenters squawk every time this comes up, as if this voyeuristic collage of disembodied lady parts is the only way to make non-erotic programming commercially viable.

Back to clearing up the confusion, important thing to remember is that here at BABD we usually use word “sexy” (as well as “empowered”) in a tongue-in-cheek manner, unless stated otherwise.
For example – in the Overwatch slot machine “sexy” is a shorthand for “objectified and attractive according to conventional Western beauty standards” and replacing it with “beefy” and “curvy” for Zarya and Mei does not mean the two aren’t sexy characters. It means that (slightly) different body type/beauty standard than generic hotness was a priority in their design.

We’ll always firmly stand by the assessment that sexyness is perfectly fine thing to portray in media – the key is to remember there’s time and place for anything, even fanservice – and (in our blog’s case) portrayal of female warriors ain’t that time.

~Ozzie

Posted on

Stop Pretending “Sexy” and “Sexualized” Mean the Same Thing

Stop Pretending “Sexy” and “Sexualized” Mean the Same Thing

An article relevant to the rhetoric we’re often met with in response to our posts – that we’re against anything remotely sexy, or that we’re conflating sexyness with sexualization (even if the author is weirdly fixated on alleged inherent problems with anime culture). 

It also alludes to the problem of distinguishing between nudity and sexualization, which we also addressed recently:

This article is not about how you perceive people; it’s about how they are presented to you. The human body is neutral, not inherently objectified just by virtue of being visible.

As well as the good old “sex sells” argument:

Sexiness without objectification is not some hypothetical or abstract concept […] “Sex sells!” commenters squawk every time this comes up, as if this voyeuristic collage of disembodied lady parts is the only way to make non-erotic programming commercially viable.

Back to clearing up the confusion, important thing to remember is that here at BABD we usually use word “sexy” (as well as “empowered”) in a tongue-in-cheek manner, unless stated otherwise.
For example – in the Overwatch slot machine “sexy” is a shorthand for “objectified and attractive according to conventional Western beauty standards” and replacing it with “beefy” and “curvy” for Zarya and Mei does not mean the two aren’t sexy characters. It means that (slightly) different body type/beauty standard than generic hotness was a priority in their design.

We’ll always firmly stand by the assessment that sexyness is perfectly fine thing to portray in media – the key is to remember there’s time and place for anything, even fanservice – and (in our blog’s case) portrayal of female warriors ain’t that time.

~Ozzie

Posted on

Gender is messier than a singular point on a two-dimensional line

Gender is messier than a singular point on a two-dimensional line

It’s worth bringing up that while the vast majority of content we cover is direct comparisons of depictions of cis women to cis men, and the main reason for this is frankly it’s very rare for popular media to create engaging characters that aren’t cis and/or don’t conform to the gender binary.

The complexities of gender along with the complexities of trying to incorporate signifiers in your designs are perhaps yet another great reason to instead focus on other aspects in armor/costume design.  Concepts like:

  • Practicalities and priorities in combat/adventuring
  • Personality traits and personal histories of characters
  • Unique or special traits of the world in which the character exists

Basically all the stuff that often gets considered with cis male characters design processes in most media.  Then we can have all kinds of characters created with the same sort of depth and respect.

Kind of amazing that we have people who are opposed to this.

– wincenworks

Posted on

Gender is messier than a singular point on a two-dimensional line

Gender is messier than a singular point on a two-dimensional line

It’s worth bringing up that while the vast majority of content we cover is direct comparisons of depictions of cis women to cis men, and the main reason for this is frankly it’s very rare for popular media to create engaging characters that aren’t cis and/or don’t conform to the gender binary.

The complexities of gender along with the complexities of trying to incorporate signifiers in your designs are perhaps yet another great reason to instead focus on other aspects in armor/costume design.  Concepts like:

  • Practicalities and priorities in combat/adventuring
  • Personality traits and personal histories of characters
  • Unique or special traits of the world in which the character exists

Basically all the stuff that often gets considered with cis male characters design processes in most media.  Then we can have all kinds of characters created with the same sort of depth and respect.

Kind of amazing that we have people who are opposed to this.

– wincenworks

Posted on

Tekken 7 producer slams ‘ill-informed’ critics

Tekken 7 producer slams ‘ill-informed’ critics

Let’s end this week right, with a discussion of the most desperate and hilarious attempt at comparisons between double standards to date – even more desperate than when he claimed jiggle physics were just realism.

During the interview Harada claims that Tekken contains a character (Ganryu) who is a sumo – and that people might think that he was just an inappropriately dressed man if they didn’t understand Japanese culture.

To understand how hilarious this is, we first need to recognize a few facts:

With all that we’ve just considered, let’s briefly remember that the most immediate Tekken scandal was a swimsuit pack, that Harada seems to be unsure about himself and can’t seem to link to Japanese culture in any way, shape or form.

Since Harada wouldn’t elaborate more on how it’s cultural other than to rant about “SJWs”,  let’s look at a previous Tekken 7 scandal (from 2014) and that involved a distinctly Japanese character that was poorly received by many people assumed to be “uninformed critics”:

image

It’s important to remember: Lucky Chloe did make it into the release of Tekken 7, but despite the name drop in the interview Ganryu didn’t! At least not to date, the game still hasn’t had it’s really-final-for-sure release, but Harada’s latest comment on his beloved sumo character?

image

It’s almost what he’s really upset about is that he’s not receiving unconditional praise for making something (that’s supposed to be a widely distributed commercial piece of media) just for himself at the expense of others…

image

Oh…

– wincenworks

Posted on

Tekken 7 producer slams ‘ill-informed’ critics

Tekken 7 producer slams ‘ill-informed’ critics

Let’s end this week right, with a discussion of the most desperate and hilarious attempt at comparisons between double standards to date – even more desperate than when he claimed jiggle physics were just realism.

During the interview Harada claims that Tekken contains a character (Ganryu) who is a sumo – and that people might think that he was just an inappropriately dressed man if they didn’t understand Japanese culture.

To understand how hilarious this is, we first need to recognize a few facts:

With all that we’ve just considered, let’s briefly remember that the most immediate Tekken scandal was a swimsuit pack, that Harada seems to be unsure about himself and can’t seem to link to Japanese culture in any way, shape or form.

Since Harada wouldn’t elaborate more on how it’s cultural other than to rant about “SJWs”,  let’s look at a previous Tekken 7 scandal (from 2014) and that involved a distinctly Japanese character that was poorly received by many people assumed to be “uninformed critics”:

image

It’s important to remember: Lucky Chloe did make it into the release of Tekken 7, but despite the name drop in the interview Ganryu didn’t! At least not to date, the game still hasn’t had it’s really-final-for-sure release, but Harada’s latest comment on his beloved sumo character?

image

It’s almost what he’s really upset about is that he’s not receiving unconditional praise for making something (that’s supposed to be a widely distributed commercial piece of media) just for himself at the expense of others…

image

Oh…

– wincenworks