Tidy Up Tuesday #88

Time for some updates! Since last Tidy Up ended up dominated by the topic of Tumblrocalypse and our thoughts on that, we might need to reiterate some points this week.


While Tumblr put its amazingly bad new policy officially to work, we’re still exploring the options of BABD’s move to a website on which we have more control over our content. 

That said, this blog is going nowhere. Even after moving its primary posting to a different server, we will keep on linking new posts on our Tumblr (and it will probably remain the primary place for reader submissions). 

We’ll keep you guys updated on where to find us.


Did you know that Bikini Armor Battle Damage has an FAQ page and had it for a long time? Many people do not! Amazingly, it includes answers to such compelling questions/arguments/critique as: 


~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy

Tidy Up Tuesday #87


Tumblr did something and lately tags and search button on our blog seem to not work consistently, especially on mobile. We’re sorry if tag links in our posts (including this one) don’t work or if you guys have trouble finding stuff on BABD, even when it’s properly tagged.

There’s a big chance that switching to PC would help, but we can’t guarantee that. Sorry there’s nothing we can do about it. 


Tumblr also did a little, more high profile thing where they announced they would be getting rid of all “adult content” to make everyone happier and a better community – starting on December 17.

Summary of our thoughts below:

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If Tumblr actually wanted to improve the community for people then they would could so in the following ways:

Instead what they’re proposing to do is to essentially trust their algorithms to police their community in a manner which won’t address any of the above but, based off what we’ve seen from the flagging on this and other blogs:

Of course they promise this won’t affect “real art” and other content they decide is acceptable, but given Tumblr’s record for this – that means absolutely nothing.

Largely it is ridiculous project designed to make a high profile show of bringing Tumblr more into line with traditional ideas of “acceptable” media (which allow for bikini armor that arouses straight men but not for women to express their own sexuality for themselves) while ignoring the actual problems of the site and the appeal it has had to many people.

It’s terrible and we’re currently looking into options for hosting BABD elsewhere.


Apparently this newest submission from @theoldhack​ that we bingoed triggered a couple responses weirdly obsessed with the fact that those WoW armors are very old, therefore… we should not talk about them on BABD?
So let us unpack it: 

  1. We’ve heard this baffling “logic” before and our FAQ directly addressed it for years now
  2. Those screenshots were made and submitted in September. It’s not even like we should not comment since those armors are discontinued or something. They’re still available in the game. 
  3. There’s no statute of limitations for bad designs. 

Things we addressed before: 


~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy

Tidy Up #86

More notices that wouldn’t make up individual posts, but are worth sharing wholesale here!


We’re sorry to inform our alleged readers that the previous Tidy Up Tuesday post requires to come in with basic reading comprehension. As does the entirety of our blog. Keep that in mind next time before responding.


We were sad to learn that not just Battleborn, but every other game we mentioned as a positive in our last throwback, is either dead (Gigantic), discontinued from further development (Dirty Bomb) or practically dead due to near-zero player engagement (Battleborn). 

Makes it even worse that the only successful diverse mainstream hero shooter multiplayer out there is Overwatch, which seems to have concluded that they already met their melanin and body type variety quota

Overwatch fans, please push Blizzard to actually do women better and to stop releasing more

white

skinny conventionally attractive female characters! Have Overwatch take responsibility for what it set out to do!


Praising media creators for doing things they should have been doing for a long time, let alone the bare minimum of it, won’t get us anywhere. There’s a difference between actual progress and finally getting to something that should be a given, like decent representation

There’s a reason we have both an “improvement” and “improvement?” tags.


Addressed before: 


~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy

Tidy Up Tuesday #85


Redesign streams are very likely to come back this weekend! Stay tuned till Friday for more info!


Some elaboration on the obviously contentious topic of Ashe being the next Overwatch heroine:

  • Arguing over whether she’s a “true” albino or not completely misses the point of the whole discussion. Even if Ashe was (and her design, even when accounted for makeup, makes a shitty job of conveying albinism in person of any ethnicity), this changes absolutely nothing about Blizzard electing to give another pale, thin conventionally attractive woman spot in the cast rather than finally creating a playable Black woman. Especially since she’s clearly not a PoC albino, as many rebloggers pointed out.
  • People claiming that racebending a supposed albino to be Black is somehow taking away from albino representation are concern trolls
  • Literally all “arguments” about Overwatch “already having” playable Black female representation are neatly listed and debunked in this handy masterpost by @geegee-wellplayed​. Please go read it and hand the link to anyone who claims that Symmetra/the Amaris/Sombra/Efi/Lucio is all that Black women need to identify with in the game. 
  • “Ashe is a gang leader, so making her black would be a bad look” rhetoric makes as much sense as any Thermian argumentshe doesn’t have to be made as an antagonistic gang leader or to be (extremely) white. It was entirely Blizzard’s choice to release a character like that instead of literally anyone else. 
  • For some more detailed commentary about overall blandness of Ashe’s character design, please read this writeup by our reader @red-queen-on-the-heathen-throne
  • If you actually think that @darthputa​ or anyone (particularly PoC) doing race-bent redesigns of white characters from predominantly white media is the real racist and you still follow this blog, please unfollow immediately. Or at the very least tell us, so we can block you. 

Since it wasn’t the first time we discussed the matter, with the Ashe post we introduced the representation and diversity tags. We’re still working on re-tagging old posts with them, so if you guys spot in our archives something related to those topics and not yet tagged, please drop us a note!


~Ozzie, – wincenworks & – Icy

Tidy Up Tuesday #84

You might have noticed that lately, especially two weeks ago, we neglected to post on our regular schedule. Some personal issues fell on us and took more attention than we could spare for the blog. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep the queue going now. 


Unfortunately though, our schedules still do not permit to come back to weekly redesign streams. If anything about that changes, we’ll announce it as soon as possible! 


We’re currently reviewing our approach to posts of sexy male armor that are essentially gender flips/bends.  It’s a complicated topic and we certainly agreed that there’s a very, very wrong way to gender bend a character – so we’ll be looking at the best way to handle it going forward.


Things we addressed before:


Related to the above, please, before

submitting, messaging or tagging us

use search function to check if we posted on your subject matter already. 

We’re grateful for all submissions, messages and mentions BABD gets from readers, however the amount of repeats we’re sent makes it exponentially harder to sift through all of them and preparing posts with new topics. 


~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy

Tidy Up Tuesday #83


Please remember to always provide sources with any submissions as there is no guarantee we’ll be able to trace the origin of any images without some help.


OP of the throwback post from three weeks ago,

thaumaturgists (formerly durendals) actually rephrased its old text after a couple of years to have better wording regarding the notions of individual character agency: 

on a textual level, a female character can dress however she wants and shouldn’t be shamed and hated for what she prefers to wear.

on a metatextual level, she might still have been designed with an intention to provide fanservice.

this means that criticising a design and the person/people who created it, as opposed to a character, is not misogyny. being displeased about the way a character has been designed is not synonymous with hating her. it is impotant to recognise that character designs don’t exist in a vacuum. 


On related note, “slut shaming” is a term that refers to being shitty to real people who posses their own agency, not fictional characters. For further commentary on the matter, read any of those posts


Casual reminder that our blog does have a Frequently Asked Question (or rather, Frequently Screamed Arguments) section.


Things we addressed before: 


~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy

Tidy Up Tuesday #82

A couple things from the last two weeks:


If a post of ours includes a preemptive response to “well actuallieswe’re expecting to get for it, be so kind to NOT respond with exactly the “well actually” we addressed within the same post


In the same vein, the intricacies of lore rarely change our mind or give us a more in-depth understanding of a clearly sexist design (though it might give us more opportunities to make fun of it). If it is interesting to you, that’s great! But to save yourself time and effort, please really think about your motivation if you wish to write a lengthy comment explaining a lore to us. It could be that you’re arguing our own points back at us.


Tumblr’s picture display system crops images that are proportionally taller than others put in the same row, therefore in our newest Fate post you have to click on the third gif of the new Saber to see her ridiculous butt window. Here’s the full picture in its unholy glory: 

image

Two cleavages for the price of one! Love how the animator was confused and so ended up giving her butt window some lace instead of making that white cloth her panties. You can see it when she turns around.


Things we addressed before: 

PS: Before you go to ask us whether we shared our thoughts on any character or costume in particular, please use search function.


~Ozzie, -wincenworks and -Icy

Tidy Up Tuesday #81


We were sorry to find out that Tumblr mobile app doesn’t respect the “Read more” feature (funnily, Tumblr viewed through mobile Internet browsers does!). Apologies to readers who saw “defeated” Kanpani Girl pics on their dashboards.


Speaking of Kanpani Girls, as far as our research can tell, that game was not considered porn/hentai/NSFW by its publisher’s standards (they do sell a lot of that stuff, but on a separate web portal). 

Also, it was discontinued in April of 2017, proving, as couple other closed down games we talked about before, that “sex” doesn’t sell.


Some people rushed in to explain to us that Warhammer 40k is supposed to be ridiculous and not taken seriously. 

To them we gotta say: tell that to all the geniuses who sincerely think that female Space Marines are literal blasphemy


Things we addressed before: 


-Ozzie, -Icy & ~wincenworks

Tidy up Tuesday #80

For those who personally dislike our stream redesigns aesthetically – please just say that instead of trying to justify your negative opinions with character lore.

Using Thermian arguments to validate your dislike of someone’s artwork is not a flattering look.

Regarding our reference to the Jessica Price controversy in last week’s throwback: Even if we believed that she grossly stepped out of line (she didn’t) or that Deroir didn’t mansplain to her (he did), or that Peter Fries firing proves it’s not about sexism (it does not) – we do not and will not support the actions and statements of Mike O’Brien, and by extension: AreaNet.

A couple days before that post we made a reblog about Mike Choi telling his critics to go fuck themselves and listed a couple other male professionals displaying similar behavior and keeping their jobs. That tells you everything you need to know about double standards in the industry and is, by far, the critical aspect of the conversation. 

For in-depth analysis of the Price case, we highly recommend this comprehensive Twitter thread by John Teasdale.

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy

Tidy Up Tuesday #79

Things to address this week: 

When submitting a bingo, please make sure you’re also submitting the image of its subject.

Yes, we agree there are some problematic aspects with the recent Hanzo pic,  specifically the idea of masculine Japanese men being yakuza and the depiction of dominance of a Chinese and Korean woman.

The artist made questionable choices, however we find it difficult to put the blame entirely on them. Blizzard has created Hanzo as a combination of samurai, ninja and yakuza with essentially no supporting cast – to the extent the female East Asian characters are Mei and D.va.

But hey… we have the diversity of hamster version of D.va now so…

image

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy