While we occasionally comment on contorted female anatomy, we urge our readers not to submit or tag us in posts that deal only with that issue. Please hit up our dear friend Ami @eschergirls when you see some atrociously twisted female character bodies in media.
Some historians have expressed concerns that people may over estimate the prevalence of warrior women, nobody can dispute that it’s pretty sweet that DNA testing has confirmed that history’s old system of just assuming if a skeleton has weapons it’s a dude has been debunked.
Long post this time around as there’s a few issues:
If you know female developers working on indie games and incorporating bikini armor or similar tropes is to, at the appropriate opportunity express your concerns as concerns for their production – and let them decide on how important it is to them.
If they’re interested that’s great, if not, then it is very unlikely that their production will have a profound impact on the market and she could very well have her own personal reasons for it. Personal projects are just that, personal.
However, if you are creating a game or similar production and you want to make it as accessible and welcoming as possible to as wide an audience as possible then we recommend researching the works of those talk about these things already.
And many others. Also if your production is to feature someone from a marginalized background that is not your own and be prepared to pay them. Consultants are generally not as expensive as you might think but can add massive value to your production.
In terms of actually working for a company in the industry and managing to be a positive influence, then that’s the very complicated balancing act of expressing yourself and respecting your employers. (If you work out how to master that, please tell me how).
But largely the best advice I can give if you happen to be in a company meeting is to be prepared to talk about ways they add or detract value to the production and be eager to show your working. Example:
We are aware that the blog is apparently flagged as restricted/adult content by Tumblr… though because it’s Tumblr it’s still unclear what this does everywhere.
Thanks to everyone who sent this tumblr thread our way. We agree 100% with the points made there regarding false equivalence, though since it’s a long post reiterating what we have said on the blog before, and starts with a gross publicity stunt by Milo Namara and Frank Cho, we most likely won’t be reblogging it.
Something we should cover in this post about Female Armor Bingo’s purpose: the square placement, while not completely random, is largely incidental. All Ozzie was aiming for when putting it together is giving highly visible squares to most prevalent tropes and putting related tropes close, but not close enough to guarantee too-easy bingo rows.
We certainly agree that it is important to interrogate all media for harmful messages such as supporting imperialism. However, we do not support only taking this approach with media you don’t personally enjoy or expecting everyone to disregard all other aspects.
There is no problem-free content available for consumption, and it’s perfectly possible to enjoy media without supporting the politics of the creators. The only way to improve the mediascape is to encourage creators to keep the positive techniques and leave behind as many of the problems as possible.
Some readers gave us heads up regarding Tumblr mobile app going buggy with links to tags that end with /chrono, so we’ll try to avoid them in the future. With that in mind, from now on we’ll be linking our most discussed topics as the newly created masterposts (work still in progress) that list the most significant posts in each category.
When submitting/recommending a bad design to BABD, please always make sure it’s from a commercial project, not an artist’s independent/personal exercise at character design.
If you’re like to ask for design advice, we recommend checking out:
Or drop in to @how-do-i-armour-and-stuff and send in an ask or submission (it doesn’t update as often as wincenworks would like, but he will happily review any questions/requests etc)
Please, do not ever submit to BABD something, especially an image, completely context-free. We do not feel comfortable with publishing uncredited, unsourced works (and not all can be tracked back by us with a search engine). Always remember to credit where the artwork comes from and, if they’re known, who’s the author. That goes for every sort of post, especially bingo’ed designs.
Quick reminder that Female Armor Bingo, as per rules and terms of its use, is only intended for the critique of commercial media made for mass consumption. It is not to be used for the critique or shaming of original independent works or fan works such as: fan art, fan fiction or cosplaying.
When messaging us with a question whether we saw/formed opinion on some specific piece of media, please always do include its full name, source or, if possible, link to where we can check it. Often a reader’s message is the first time we hear of something, and a lot of things are hard to find just by vague description like “that new comic/trailer with x and y”.
