There are two kinds of people.
(made me think of femalearmor, repair-her-armor, and bikiniarmorbattledamage)
My “favorite” part is gotta be
Considering they’re commenting on a video game concept art, not a traditional 2D animation model sheet or a comic book character design. No-one is going to actually draw this outfit over and over again to animate the game; it’s going to be rendered in 3D.
And while CG renders obviously also require more work the more complex they are, the explanation doesn’t apply when only female characters are “too hard to animate/render/draw”.
If fictional men don’t also sport the same suspiciously bodypaint-like clothes as women, the “easier to do” excuse is invalid, no matter what medium the characters are presented in.
As a side note, boobsocks have more polygons than a realistic single boob bulge, so it’s not easier or more efficient to make a 3D “catsuit” model with separate breast compartments.
~Ozzie
(Edit: Added some bolding due to concerns people felt that pointing out the video game/3D comparison was not in line with address the idea of Anime being different due to being a drawn medium. It’s also worth pointing out that anime has been using CG since the 80s and that even anime that shamelessly use every shortcut they can get their hands on still don’t super-simplify simply to save drawing.
– wincenworks)
Fiore
Lucas submitted:
I think i saw Star Ocean 5 here before but i’m not sure. They finally released some in game screenshots and the art for the main characters.
As anyone can see, the green haired girl quite a “unoptimal attire”. Her name is Fiore and here is her art.
I’ve seen a lot of crazy outfits in games but this is reaches around the “i can’t even” tier. Everything looks so glued into her i have no idea how she managed to wear that in the first place.
But hey, i’m sure she must have a “good reason” to walk around like that right? According to one interview with the devs here:
F: I’d like to ask about a newly introduced character, Fiore. Is there a story behind her attire? (laugh)
K: In order to use spells in this world, mages must have a spellmark*** carved somewhere on their bodies. To show off the strength of her own spells, Fiore prefers to wear the kind of outfit that you’ve taken notice to. In Randock, the country that Fiore lives in, there are outfits used specially by Spellmark Mages, and you can customize these in any which way you want. I can ensure you they are far from being indecent (laugh).
Oh, so she needs to expose her skin to use her magic and “chose” to dress like that to show of her strenght!
At least she isnt breathing through her skin.(I wonder if these guys are laughing because even they can’t keep a serious face with this crap)But despite that, he isn’t wrong. I searched a bit and found out that this is “normal” in the Star Ocean universe. For example, this is Nel from Star Ocean: Till the end of time
As you can see, she “needs” to show off her thighs because the “magical marks”. But if that’s the case, then there are some problems here.
First is that, if Fiore really needs to show her marks, she doesnt need to show that much skin, only the necessary. And second is, Fiore doesnt have any marks. I keep looking the screenshots but cant find any.
This is even more disappointing. I mean, if you’re gonna invent a stupid excuse to make the character walk around semi-naked, at least go all the way and try to convince people, don’t lie about it and leave it that.
Yes, we featured that design before on BABD, and now that her special reasons for “choosing” to dress that way are revealed, it somehow got MUCH worse.
To be precise, Fiore does have a mark on her thigh, as seen in this pic of her on EscherGirls:
How does that explain wearing holes all over her body, not just that one spot on the leg? Hell if I know.
Dear Star Ocean crew: if you really want to excuse obvious sexualization with
a diegetic argument, then the least you could do is stay consistent within your own logic. It would still not be valid justification, but at least a less insulting one.
~Ozzie
Fiore
Lucas submitted:
I think i saw Star Ocean 5 here before but i’m not sure. They finally released some in game screenshots and the art for the main characters.
As anyone can see, the green haired girl quite a “unoptimal attire”. Her name is Fiore and here is her art.
I’ve seen a lot of crazy outfits in games but this is reaches around the “i can’t even” tier. Everything looks so glued into her i have no idea how she managed to wear that in the first place.
But hey, i’m sure she must have a “good reason” to walk around like that right? According to one interview with the devs here:
F: I’d like to ask about a newly introduced character, Fiore. Is there a story behind her attire? (laugh)
K: In order to use spells in this world, mages must have a spellmark*** carved somewhere on their bodies. To show off the strength of her own spells, Fiore prefers to wear the kind of outfit that you’ve taken notice to. In Randock, the country that Fiore lives in, there are outfits used specially by Spellmark Mages, and you can customize these in any which way you want. I can ensure you they are far from being indecent (laugh).
Oh, so she needs to expose her skin to use her magic and “chose” to dress like that to show of her strenght!
At least she isnt breathing through her skin.(I wonder if these guys are laughing because even they can’t keep a serious face with this crap)But despite that, he isn’t wrong. I searched a bit and found out that this is “normal” in the Star Ocean universe. For example, this is Nel from Star Ocean: Till the end of time
As you can see, she “needs” to show off her thighs because the “magical marks”. But if that’s the case, then there are some problems here.
First is that, if Fiore really needs to show her marks, she doesnt need to show that much skin, only the necessary. And second is, Fiore doesnt have any marks. I keep looking the screenshots but cant find any.
This is even more disappointing. I mean, if you’re gonna invent a stupid excuse to make the character walk around semi-naked, at least go all the way and try to convince people, don’t lie about it and leave it that.
Yes, we featured that design before on BABD, and now that her special reasons for “choosing” to dress that way are revealed, it somehow got MUCH worse.
To be precise, Fiore does have a mark on her thigh, as seen in this pic of her on EscherGirls:
How does that explain wearing holes all over her body, not just that one spot on the leg? Hell if I know.
Dear Star Ocean crew: if you really want to excuse obvious sexualization with
a diegetic argument, then the least you could do is stay consistent within your own logic. It would still not be valid justification, but at least a less insulting one.
~Ozzie
Let’s talk about Quiet, and attempt to answer the question:
Can you slut-shame a fictional character?
And in case anyone reading our blog still doubts whether or not Quiet (or any other woman in fiction) can be slut-shamed for her choice of attire or behavior, here’s Sursum Ursa’s concise video explanation.
Spoilers: the answer is no.
~Ozzie
As a side note, since we’re on the topic of Quiet and sexualzing characters, I feel this is an appropriate point to touch on something related:
If your argument is the men are sexualized too, but you have to comb through all the individual games to try to get together enough material to try (unsucessfully I might add) to match how much Quiet is sexualized in ONE game – you’re not going to be very convincing.
There is a massive difference between depicting a character who is many different things throughout their arc (tough, vulnerable, protected, naked, etc) and happens to be sexy at some points and creating a character who is primarily and overwhelmingly sexy all throughout their arc and happens to get to be some other things during it.
One is creating a character who’s like a person so the audience can relate to them, the other is creating a sex object and calling them a character.
It’s kind of important.
– wincenworks
more about character agency on BABD
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Brought to our attention by superheroineworld (thank you so much for linking it in a reblog!)
This video sums up pretty damn well why any sort of “makes sense in context” justification for absurd and creepy things in fiction (like, say, bikini armors) is invalid by default.
Quotes worth highlighting:
Writers routinely alter the rules to suit their interests and the needs of their story. So, in the world outside of the diegesis, in our world, only the implications and impact of that fiction actually matter.
It’s basically a circular argument to expect that the fictional rules created specifically for the narrative will shield the narrative from being criticized on the meta level.
Criticism of a creative work is, ultimately, criticism of the decisions that people made when they were putting it together.
Which is also why “you’re slut-shaming that character" is a fail at responding to criticism. Characters are fictional constructs with no agency and the “choices” they make can be blamed solely on their creators.
You guys might have noticed, but around half of the Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo is made from Thermian arguments. That’s how popular this circular logic is among skimpy armor defenders. And I’m glad we now have this video to explain why it doesn’t work.
~Ozzie
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Daniel submitted:
Jim Sterling’s take on Quiet from Metal Gear
~*~
Amazingly~*~, we’re not the only two people in the world
who do not “feel ashamed for our words and deeds”
and don’t think Quiet’s design is justifiable in any possible way.
Not with “she HAS to uncover her skin, because narrative reasons”, not with “Hideo Kojima can do no wrong”, not with “MGS is a silly franchise, so ANYTHING absurd is acceptable”.
Here are some of my favorite things Jim says in the video:
I’d have been so much cooler with the situation if [Kojima] just said “The secret reason for her exposure is that I just wanna get a gigantic fucking hard-on with my big Kojima cock.”
Indeed. If you guys were wondering why BABD is so hung up on Quiet compared to many similarly bad designs, it’s because how straight-up disingenuous (and inconsistent) her creator is about the character’s conception.
What Kojima promised would be the “antithesis to the women characters appeared in the past fighting game who are excessively exposed” is instead the embodiment of characters in the past who are excessively exposed.
As we covered before, the “it’s criticism of harmful status quo” argument doesn’t apply when the status quo is simply reproduced. “Kojima is trolling everyone” also falls under this.
If you explain away everything with “It’s a Metal Gear game, it’s always silly and you’re stupid if you criticize it”, then you ultimately do Hideo Kojima himself a disservice as a writer.
Interestingly, another baffling excuse we’ve been hearing again and again since we started criticizing Quiet is “The Boss is awesome, therefore every MGS heroine is just as good”.
And while Jim agrees about Boss being great, he knows she’s just one character, and therefore should be upheld as a model for women in the franchise, not as a proof that female representation is okay already in MGS.
Also, predictably, this is the sort of replies the video gets:
Apparently not being able to go back in time and complain about two characters in military uniforms with absurdly deep cleavages, while he currently complains about another military-themed character clad literally only in a bikini and fishnets makes him a “hypocrite”.
~Ozzie
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)