The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Tag: sniper
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SAO/GGO Figurine Redraws, Part 1: “Bulletproof Armor”
This one was Ozzie’s idea, as she’s heard a lot about Sword Art Online and then got me in on those videos. I decided to stay in the franchise but go to a different fictional MMO. This is Sinon from the in-anime game Gun Gale Online, which is about characters with guns running around doing… stuff.
I was doing some Googling trying to find the online store where I first found this thing and am now regretting I didn’t go for this picture instead:
Just kidding, I don’t regret it at all. This is a totally Serious Action Anime, not about girl butts at all.
Anyway, I’m stalling because my redesign is pretty boring, I think. Most of my time was spent trying to fix her posture. Is this another casual, confident pose? Oh sorry, the description says she “marches along the battlefield.”
Apparently she is supposed to be wearing “bulletproof armor” in the original?????????? Where is it??????? So I gave her actual coverage that would allow her to lay on the ground and snipe without getting dirt and sand inside her clothes (also known as a Yikes). Honestly, I was so distracted by her pose that I couldn’t really think of any cool design elements to give her. I even kept the stupid boob-supporting buttons on her shirt.
Maybe one day I’ll go back to this and do it some justice. At least now I can believe she’s actually a sniper wearing bulletproof armor.
-Icy
PS – God, I forgot what the back of her looked like…. enjoy!
I re-read the comic in question and beside the helmet, back armor and part of arm guards, there’s very little detail of how Widomaker’s then-costume actually looked like. So, most of the awesome stuff in this design, like the reasonable breastplate, seems to be @artbytesslyn‘s invention, not Blizzard’s.
In the official comic we can see an outline of her boob from the profile (first panel here) and what seems to be her blue cleavage (second panel), so it definitely lacks chest protection:
Ironicaly, in the story Widow is almost killed by Ana, whose bullet shatters part of this helmet…
(And no, no available info suggests it’s an erotic/porn game)
The game itself looks dreadfully dull. And since only footage I could find of it seems to be sponsored by the publisher, it’s safe to say that sex doesn’t really sell, otherwise this would have had fans.
Okay, yes, baby steps, Blizzard has got a long history of being terrible and a lot unlearning to do. But they could at least try to show some self-awareness of this.
And it’s not only body diversity which seems to be a challenge for female Overwatch characters, so is their AGE!
D.Va is actually the youngest in the whole ensemble (19). Female characters don’t get older than 34 (Mercy), while male ones range from 20 (if you count Zenyatta, a robot) or 25 (Junkrat) all the way up to 61 (Reinhardt).
The overall design of D.Va is perplexing on so many levels, too. What new is she supposed to contribute? Yet another young, thin, conventionally pretty woman in a catsuit… something the game (and the industry as a whole) so totally lacked before! Even her silly pseudonym rubs in that she’s a diva. The idea of a Korean professional gamer-turned-mecha pilot is very cool (even if the backstory rips off Evangelion/Pacific Rim), but why make her look so generic… and paint her mech pink?
My most optimistic guess: one of many Blizzard’s CreepyMarketingGuys saw Zarya and said “So, we’re doing female tanks now? Okay, but next one is gonna be the SEXY tank! And make her more PINK!”
Remember when Blizzard was doing female characters better in Overwatch?
Yeah, me neither.
We will be doing a full post about the new Widowmaker skin, but until then, we just wanted to throwback to this post about all the effort Blizzard is putting into their diversity. It still doesn’t make sense for Widow to wear those clothes because,
a) she is a sniper and that top just screams nip slip; and
b) she’s a sniper, who’s she going to be ‘distracting’ exactly from 2 miles away?
It also just looks really ugly? It really looks like someone designed a practical suit for her, and then Creepy Marketing Guy walked in and told them to cut a third of it off, so they just did, without any design adjustment.
-Icy
edit: Since a lot of replies ignore that the original post is almost 1,5 years old and mentioning newer characters is beside the point Icy is making about Widowmaker, let’s quickly address this: We do acknowledge how Ana Amari is a cool non-sexualized old lady (even if squarely within OW’s established beauty standards) and Orisa is a cool female robot. That said, there are still problems with how old characters continue to be depicted and adding new heroes doesn’t change that.
~Ozzie
PS: Mercy is 37, not 34 – my bad. She looks neither age, regardless.
