When Samus was in armor, guys respected her (and even said they wanted her armor). But girls didn’t give a damn. They still don’t give a damn about her in armor, whenever I see fanart of it, the artist is almost always a guy. But now that Nintendo is pushing her as a big-breasted latex model with a nice butt, fangirls are drawing her, saying they idolize her and want to be her (and saying they want her SHOES). Care to weigh in on what’s up with that?
So… since I haven’t heard anything like this… I went and asked one of my gamer friends who happens to be a woman what she thought. Here’s how she started her response:
“Please provide sources, if you’re going to attempt to tar girls with the same brush that is clearly lubricated by entitled male gamer tears, then you must provide the burden of proof.”
From there the rage intensifies and it gets kinda nerdy, so I shall just share the highlights:
“You’re referencing art of ZERO SUIT Samus, which rose to popularity with Super Smash Bros, which has targeted a younger demographic. It’s become commonplace to see Samus OUT of her suit rather than in it, despite it being an iconic image of Metroid. Back in itty bitty pixels, we saw as a bonus at the end of a game that Samus was a girl, thats it.”
“If they’d spent any time actually IN the gaming community of tumblr … then they’d be aware that the community ISN’T vocal in favour of Samus’ new look”
“She’s 6 foot 3 too, mind you, and weighs 90kg. The recent sexualisation/slimming of Samus is a move on NINTENDO’S part, not the gamer fangirl base.”
So to make sure this wasn’t a one off, I asked another friend:
“Firstly, Dudebro McFedora, you have no basis to say that women don’t like Samus. The odds are that you’ve probably never talked to a girl that’s played the games.”
From there the rage intensifies – so I will just share some of the highlights:
“I will say that I particularly want her shoes. They’re spark shooting death heels to beat up people. It’s wonderful; who wouldn’t want that?
They are not appropriate for SSB though BECAUSE THEY’RE FUCKING PUMPS. You can’t run around in that shit!”
“Samus in her armor is fantastic because it creates this unique position where anyone can play her and entitled ‘macho boiz’ never think to say, “Oh shit I don’t want to play as the girl” or “Sweet, the girl character is fucking hot.””
“Samus Aran is my role model.”
Also, I seem to recall seeing amazing fan art by women:
And amazing cosplays:
This is not to say there aren’t female gamers who only discovered Samus when they announced her high heels of doom, female gamers who really want to cosplay Samus in heels because they’ll look cute and sexy or female gamers who like the Zero Suit better than the armors for other reasons.
I say this theoretically because I did look to try to find some of them, and between quick searches for them and searches to find choice examples of art and cosplays… I didn’t find a single woman who suggested that she only became interested in Samus due to the Jet Boot heels.
So if you have come across women who only got into Samus due to the high heels, it’s still quite ridiculous to decide those particular women are somehow representative of women or female gamers as a whole. Particularly since the character first appeared in 1986 – so has had quite a while to grow a diverse fan base.
Trying to dismiss and/or erase huge numbers of female fans just so that you can try to pretend gender stereotypes are facts is pretty much the reason why the rage intensified.
Bringing this old ask post back, because I couldn’t help but be reminded of it while browsing through other people’s reblogs of the Kitana/Jade redesign post.
Once again, all the props to @wincenworks’ friends for how eloquently they described the nonsense of the asker’s (and, by proxy, all the other Dudebros McFedora’s) “logic”.
TL;DR: People who obviously never spoke with any woman sure do feel the most eager to mansplain what women really want from female video game characters. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
~Ozzie
notice: This is a reposting of this throwback, due to Tumblr queue being a total goober and initially publishing the Throwback Thursday post on Wednesday.
New rule for female armor: if you design female armor and you wouldnt be willing to cosplay it, you’re making a mistake.
I’d like to propose an expansion of rule:
If you’re a guy and you’d wear it because “it’d be funny” but you wouldn’t respect a female cosplayer who wore it: You are a mistake.
– wincenworks
Another caveat to the rule, inspired by an article we linked in the past: if a costume is (near*) impossible to replicate or too uncomfortable to wear for cosplayers – it fails as a costume.
~Ozzie
Honestly, if a cosplayer would need to use double-sided tape in order to maintain their decency while wearing your costume, maybe just… don’t.
-Icy
*”Near impossible” only because cosplayers are amazing and can somehow make even the most absurd shit work on human bodies somehow. But at what cost?
Fantasy does NOT have to follow real world rules. Fantasy does NOT have to relate to some real world event, country, concept, law, or history. Fantasy does NOT have to mirror any particular time period or country, even if you’re basing your world on a real world one. There is NO SUCH THING as “historical accuracy” in fantasy as it relates to the real world.
THE ONLY THING Fantasy has to do to be believable is follow the established rules OF ITS OWN WORLD. Fantasy can literally be anything you imagine it to be.
If your fantasy world excludes people of color or those belonging to the LGBT+ community, if it’s grossly misogynistic and white cis-male centric, that’s because YOU made it that way. Stop blaming “historical accuracy” or “believability”. It’s not the genre; it’s YOU.
@bikiniarmorbattledamage I believe this is highly relevant to the rhetoric you guys often combat.
Indeed all of this relates to all the stuff we talk about on BABD.
Ultimately, no matter the justifying rhetoric, it’s the creative decisions that will be under scrutiny, not some superficially “objective” rules regarding a fictional setting.
~Ozzie
The cool thing (that people sometimes forget), is that a fantasy setting, rather than being historical fiction (somehow), instead illuminates the values of its creator. Sure, it feels bad to be called out, but it really does make you a better creator if you ask yourself: why are all my characters light skinned/skinny/cis/straight/male/etc?
Sometimes, there are good reasons, like if the story is about (to use a basic example) race-based oppression, and all the characters are on one side of that. But sometimes the reason is just “cause that’s what i like.” And honestly, besides being a bad reason, that’s just boring.
If I hadn’t gone through this process myself, I wouldn’t have my favorite Pathfinder OCs! Just sayin’.
yeah but, cartoon women, any drawn women, aren’t wearing those skimpy and sexual clothes out of choice, they’re wearing it because someone drew them that way, normally for a reason. so so don’t go “oh maybe she chooses to fight crime in a bikini and high heels” bc a man sat at a desk and decided she was gunna wear those clothes, for a reason, for the audience or his gaze. so no, its not slut shaming, its creepy man shaming
*applause* A point that sadly needs to be constantly reiterated. I’ve been saying exactly this for a long time now!
We’d appreciate never again having this nonsense rhetoric thrown at us.
~Ozzie
As a well-known cartoon woman once said:
I get it; people get attached to fictional characters. I do it a lot, too. But that doesn’t mean that they’re real and sentient. All I think of when I hear a creator justify a character design with “she chose to dress that way,” is that they probably only sees the character as an object with no actual motivations.
Bonus fun fact based only on what some people in reblogs claim: those OneAngryGamer tweets are supposed to be “satire”. Riiight. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
If this is that dude’s idea of “satire”, I prescribe him reading more Point and Clickbait before attempting again to commit his comedic genius to a keyboard.
The quotes near the bottom are what concerned me the most…
“Anyway, as it turns out, a female martial arts instructor I was talking to recently revealed to me over a Skype chat that ‘no matter how much you try to prevent it from happening, you can’t stop them from jiggling’.
‘They’ll jiggle?” I inquired.
‘Yes, they will,’ she replied, ‘in my case, they absolutely will jiggle.
‘When they jiggle, how is the movement like?’ I inquired further.
We went back and forth like this for about 15 minutes, before I was forced to conclude that, no matter how much you try to control it, it’s only natural for them to jiggle.”
I feel like this kind of stuff entitles the developers from Namco (They make Tekken and Soul Calibur) and other companies to add over the top and ridiculous breast physics.
Some of the comments on that page from the users also made me pretty uncomfortable…
I can’t get over the idea that comical jiggle physics in Tekken are for “realism” but none of the realism advocates want the female characters to dress in that would have a chance of containing their boobs.
Ask any boob-haver who takes part in athletic activities (like, I dunno, martial arts? that thing Tekken is about?!) and they’ll confirm that for a person
This week’s throwback: the totally scientific assessment that boobs have to excessively jiggle in fighting video games because realism… But no-one is wearing any sort of sports bra (or any bra, really) because… realism?
~Ozzie
PS: People who reblogged it while the post still had two redundant parapgraphs: PLEASE delete and reblog the current version. This is what I get for blogging while sick.
Posted on
So… this incredible encapsulation of so many things wrong with “gamer”culture actually happened. An “esports apparel” shop somehow managed to make a dress that was more cheerleader outfit (or chair) and in order to “show respect” to “female gamers” (also known as women) and decided to brand it as a “new identity” as though none of them have worn a dress before. Unsurprisingly, more people liked this amazing parody than the real thing.
But needless to say, they learned an important lesson about women’s clothing and considerations to make. Certainly not considerations like wanting gaming gear to comfy for hours of sitting around playing games. They learned about marketing, specifically “delivery of tweets”:
So of course, as of the time of this post their ratio’d tweet is… pinned and their most recent “likes” entry was… more like “yikes”.
Yes, literally all they actually learned after a full 24 hours of free feedback is that “female gamers” are women… and frankly I’m not convinced they’re going to remember that when they sober up.
– wincenworks
Yikes indeed. There’s… so much to unpack in this and I don’t even know where to start.
I suppose what amuses me the most about this case is that Cranium Apparel somehow could not be assed to involve any women in creating that outfit, yet once called out on casual gender essentialism of selling a cheerleader dress as their exclusive piece of “female gamer” apparel… THEY NOW ASK THEIR FEMALE CRITICS to do the job of marketing team for them for free (and calling feedback they dislike “hate”).
All the while shamelesslyclaiming that they did their market research beforehand and none of the “few females” they asked foresaw the backlash.
This company desperately needs to replace its PR and marketing departments, preferably with an all-female staff.
Speaking of My Hero Academia, the official stage play costume designers also agree that Momo would not dress like that if she was a real person.
It’s almost as if suspiciously many of female comic/cartoon character outfits were not designed to be worn by actual humans…
And for those already furiously replying how her power set requires exposed skin, note the life-action version’s most crucial improvement: a zipper. Wow, now she can just unzip to do the freaky shit with her chest and belly skin and just zip back after she’s done? Who would have thought? ╮(╯ل͜╰)╭
PS: We didn’t bring attention to that in our last MHA post, because the OP, @bumbleshark, already said in in their part – but most of those characters are middle-school aged. Let that sink in.
i wanted to fix some things that made me uncomfortable…also it was fun kinda redesigning these ladies from bnha cuz god damn their original suits are shit and dont make sense according to their quirks….
first off: shutup omg. yall forgetting these are fictional women written by a man. “they design their own outfits” is a dumb argument. these women dont exist and didnt decide anything. the artist/writer did. get smart.
second. the only thing different with momo is i took away the tittyshow of a 15 yr old. she still has a window on her chest and tummy but a lot of the shit she forms from her body comes from her back and limbs. there’s an inch long difference between her weird ass skirt and the shorts i gave her– i think she’ll make do.
ashido is a disaster. her quirk is secreting acids so why are the parts of her body that show as much skin covered? legs take up a lot of the body. the only other difference in her uniform is–once again— i took away the tittyshow of a 15 yr old. i literally gave her MORE skin to show.
let me wrap it up with nemuri since yer argument to this was by far the dumbest. nemuri can still rip off her clothes. she is STILL showing the same amount of skin as the original. I just changed the color and design so it looked like this bitch didnt just roll outta bed and throw over a hot topic lingerie set over a white lace onesie.
Those are very awesome redesigns of some of the worst female costumes in current mainstream anime. Thank you, @bumbleshark, for saving those poor heroines.
And it’s not like My Hero Academia can’t do female costumes well. It just seems to mysteriously give up when a certain threshold of boob size is crossed ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
~Ozzie
Well yeah, Ozzie; at a certain boob size, you gotta give them a window to breathe through. Thenyou strap them in with your boob sealbelt. And MHA’s got both!
