Bingo filled by Twitter user @GTPsijic
Since when talking about difference between Wonder Woman movie and Justice League movie Amazon costumes this week we mentioned two articles that praised the former, let’s set the record straight: NOPE.
Amazon armor is not good, let alone perfect, in Wonder Woman. At best, it looks like leather/metal fashion wear with some neat Greco-Roman references for armor history geeks… Given we accept the reality where Ancient Mediterraneans invented boobplates and wedge heels as combat wear.
But now at least we can make an informed guess that those old costumes were some sort of hard-earned compromise between giving the actresses wearable armor and meeting the “sex sells” demand from higher ups.
It’s obviously no coincidence that once there were no women in power over the next movie Amazons appear in, any restraint over shamelessly objectifying them was gone.
I’m still very angry that the new costumes make old ones look so much better just in comparison, making our criticism look weirdly harsh in hindsight. Lowering standards below the ground level doesn’t invalidate the points already made regarding the old standard.
~Ozzie
New SMITE skins
Nais submitted:
So, I was watching the Smite 4.21 patch notes, and I was really impressed by the quality of the skins.
Nemesis’ new skin actually looks like half decent armor, minus the high heels.
Discordia looked cute and mage-y.
And then there was this.
This is “Exterminator Kali”, who is supposed to have a “superhero feel”. She looks like one of those flag girls from car races. Had me going there for a minute with the improvement, Smite…
Ok, that Nemesis skin looks surprisingly interesting and not particularly sexualized in SMITE’s very low standards, especially compared to her default design. It’s not perfect, of course – you mentioned high heels, but there’s also spandex chainmail on her legs and skin-tight material around waist… Though this is probably the closest they ever got to practical female breastplate.
Dicordia could use a longer skirt, but her design at least has some personality, something nonexistent among other goddesses in this game.
As a side note, her lore starts as a coherent story (Eris flees Troy after successfully spreading chaos of war there, reinvents herself as Dicordia) and quickly spirals into something that spits into face of everyone even remotely familiar with Greco-Roman myths and history (she makes a character who is neither the ancestor of Romulus nor
and
Remus the original founder of Rome instead of the twins).
Sometimes I feel this game exists only to troll mythology nerds with blatant disregard for everything that makes those stories and characters special.
Speaking of which, can we ALL, as the humanity, please stop sexualizing the Hindu goddess Kali FOREVER?
What’s video games’ problem with her? There was a super-porny version (NSFW link!) in Rise of the Incarnates (the game doesn’t seem to exist anymore). Overwatch also felt justified in turning this powerful female deity of a living religion into a “sexy” skin for Symmetra, because the character is Indian.
We referenced SMITE’s disgusting treatment of Kali in this 2015 post about exotification and it’s as topical now as it was then:
Other than sporting four arms and blue flesh, that “Exterminator” skin doesn’t even have anything to do with Kali’s default SMITE design. And what’s “superhero” about it, too? The biggest connection I can think of is that she looks like an ultrasexualized Guardians of the Galaxy reject.
~Ozzie
edit: A reader informed us that SMITE Wiki misspells the character’s name in Discordia’s lore: the article says Aeneus, an unrelated Greek mythology character, rather than Aeneas, the protagonist of Virgil’s Aeneid, bridge between Greek and Roman myths and ancestor of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome.
Evelynn
EdwardGein submitted:
Evelynn from “League of Legends” just got reworked. And it is… horrendous.
Her attire was always awful, and her splash art as well. Reworking champions should give Riot the opportunity to fix some of the generic-babe-material they started with in 2010. But here we are. 7 years later and not a thing learned. Let’s open the history book on this one…
This was her original art:
It represented so much being wrong while retaining not an ounce of appeal, at least to most male humans I know. You should get a spooky vibe, but there was just nothing there. Just spikes and leather and… not even a weapon. And those heels. The character even jokes ingame about the fact that it is hard to move in those shoes. NO KIDDING.
Then, a while ago, they updated the art. To this:
I actually like this one a tad more. The outfit is the same (because only the splash art got changed, not the ingame model) but it conveys at least something. Still not much to characterise or read into and escher-esque. But at least stuff happens and you get an idea how the character is going to play ingame. And she seems kind of lethal or at least unhinged and dangerous, which is more than you can say of most bikini-clad-“no seriously she is dangerous and can fight”-girls in video game art.
But now, they remade the character. New abilities! New story! New background! A fresh new page to change things! Aaaaand… this happened:
No. Nope. I’m done. Why? Why succubus all of a sudden? Why ditch the spikes and go just down to lingerie? Does that make it better instead of even more generic? Why not add a tattoo that says “I am a metaphor for sex, you guys” and ditch the whole effort?
There obviously was reason to change things, and good thing that they noticed that. But why did they take it in the complete opposite direction to make it just plain stupid. I am not an artist, who can point out all the little signs where this went wrong, but the moment I saw this, I was even more done with the game than I already was.
Oh and one of her new abilities is named “Lust Dust”.
What’s really amusing about the promotional video is that the opening the sinister assassin would suggest that Evelynn is essentially defined by her power of seduction… but then it quickly becomes apparent she’s more defined by spikes:
Now, spikes honestly makes more sense since League of Legends is basically a video game that more resembles at fantasy tabletop war game than a roleplaying game, but apparently someone at Riot Games just really, really wanted to pay an voice actress to record a lot of innuendo lines and pay an artist to draw boobs.
– wincenworks
Saint Seiya Online makes a comeback to the bingo, again with lots of stabby bits, gendered posing and shameless double standard in design, yay!
~Ozzie
I love how the little lotus posed armor totally just sits there pretending like the woman armor is even close to resembling it. It really shows that they either didn’t realize or didn’t care about anything more than showing some skin. SMH.
-Icy