The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Natural Selection 2 shuns boob armour in favour of realistic protection.
The female Marine design is awesome, not to mention Unknown Worlds’ amazing response to boob armor.
Finally! A game developer that recognizes problems with gendered armor and purposely avoids it 🙂
Kudos to Unknown Worlds!
danseru-kun submitted:
Ragnarok Online is a MMORPG where you can choose some job classes and level them up. I am actually not a player but this game is pretty popular in my country. Posters of this game is everywhere and I admire the style. This game features really good female outfit but the majority still falls into the sexualized category especially when you compare it to men. This is a sample:
A novice can start as a swordsman. Decent armor for the girl, feminine but tough. Equality ftw
Crusaders looking badass! One of the steps you can choose in the job tree. True warriors of the church! Yes equality for brothers and sisters!
And… then the Crusaders turn to Paladins. Aww look at how the mighty warrior discovered the truth that mini skirts are more functional and you don’t have to protect your belly. The highest class…
And from a Swordsman to a Holy Crusader to a Paladin we get the Royal Guard and… nuff said.
Man: leather clothes and boots -> more protection and boots until the highest class
Woman: leather clothes -> leader clothes with armor -> mini skirt and midriff -> bikini and stilettos (pls fix this one)
All images are official art and can be found in the sites below. The art style changed over the decade hence the inconsistency.
Poor girls had to donate most of their clothes in exchange for better weapons and shields. Now they have to run around in their underwear! ):
UUUURGH
Mod edit: As HohenheimOL observes, not only the costumes change for worse, the illustrated character’s attitude too!
[There’s a] jarring shift in body language between the first and second half. Hell, the characters on both genders look completely different; they start out looking rough, gritty, and battle ready. Come the second half, they look like generic animu “action” protagonists.
But the ‘better’ females is not cool. Definitely don’t approve of that, but I’d say that’s made by quite a young person. There’s a community of custom content makers that don’t sexualise the clothing and makeup etc. of the sims either, it just depends what website you visit (personal livejournals and other blogs tend to be pretty good, Garden of Shadows usually is too). There’s good lingerie though! Sims is a tricky thing to debate because of its user generated nature.
Now you’re going to think I’m a misogynistic girl who defends Sims for her own interests. That’s definitely not what I intended and I’m sorry. 🙁 You can’t really calls sims ‘men and women’ because they aren’t at all. They strange creatures, just simulations. In Skyrim and any other game, they are men and women. If that makes sense? That doesn’t mean Sims should be sexualised though or treated the way they were in the CC you posted about. ‘Female’ is what you’d call a Sim woman though as for male
A long ask referring to the Skyrim mod posts that I intended to answer for some time now.
I’ll always stand by referring to sentient humanoid characters as “men”, “women” or “people” and if the game itself endorses using female/male as noun towards their cat- or lizard-person race… I’m NOT okay with that.
The characters clearly are designed to resemble humans, hell, the ones used to in thumnails for mod pack look VERY HUMAN to me, so there’s no reason to not call them “women”.
As discussed earlier with angercats, mod community is hard to discuss and judge as a whole. But we can agree that every modder should take personal responsibility for their creation, and that includes how it’s presented in both wording and visuals.
You can’t really calls sims ‘men and women’ because they aren’t at all. They strange creatures, just simulations. In Skyrim and any other game, they are men and women. If that makes sense?
Nope, it doesn’t make sense.
A fictional character created in the likeness of human (body and/or mind) is A PERSON, albeit fictional one. And a person may be female or male (or other), but can not be “a female” or “a male” (an “it’) rather than a woman or a man (a “she” or “he”).
And I won’t say that you’re misogynist, because what you’re saying doesn’t serve patriarchy. You just didn’t realize that make-believe characters also have personhood that could be erased through inconsiderate wording.
Note: Please, ergoexistence, next time do not refer to mods as “Sims”, it’s really confusing when we’re talking about a game that’s neither simulation genre nor part of The Sims franchise.
All the mods call women ‘females’, it creeps me out
Ugh, you’re right!
Didn’t notice it before, so your comment confused me (I was worried you were referring to women commenting on this, sorry). Thanks for pointing that out, i-have-a-hunger!
Those are just disgusting :-/
Pro tip: “female” as a NOUN refers to animals, not humans (or sentient humanoids, if we’re talking about fiction). The word is “woman” and please no one ever forget that!
DISCLAIMER: The post below includes severly NSFW links. Click at your own risk!
re: this post
angercats submitted
I agree with you 100%. They are mods, you don’t have to download them. Moders have complete freedom to create whatever they want. It doesn’t have to fit the theme. Skyrim was made to be moded, that’s why they made the Skyrim Creation Kit for users.
But, nevertheless, that’s not going to stop me from thinking that some of these mods are downright creepy. BUT WAIT there’s more!! It’s not just female armor that’s creepy; it seems that you can download creepy armor for men, too. (They both don’t protect much heh)
I don’t really find it offensive, it’s actually funny and almost… sad? I don’t think the whole moding community is like this. There are plenty of mods that can enhance Skyrim’s beauty.
We’re on the same page, angercats. I took the liberty of bolding the point I agree most about.
It’s just saddening how far some people can go to make their mod designs as perverted as possible, as if it added anything to the game experience.
angercats submitted:
So the other day a there was discussion about skyrim on here. And I was browsing through the steam workshop, lookin’ for some good mods and then I found this ~GEM~.
There is this ~BEAUTIFUL~ mod pack called fabulous female collection that’s full of this crap. Why??? It doesn’t fit skyrim it all. It makes them all look like barbie dolls. How do they??? Kill dragons?? Om my god, I’m just laughing so hard.
It’s actually worse on nexus. omg
To be completely honest, I can’t “hate” so much on this bikini mod as you’d probably expect me to, because exactly what it is… a mod.
Bikini Armor Battle Damage, unlike many related blogs, doesn’t have a strict policy of criticizing only ‘official’ art, but we still need to acknowledge how fan creations exist in a bit different context.
Video game mods are created for fans and by fans to enhance their experience with things they personally enjoy, be it My Little Pony skins, functional portal gun or a metal armor. Fitting with the game’s themes is optional when it comes to mods.
Last time we visited a Skyrim mod we talked about it on context of being absolutely ridiculous (spandex chainmail outfit complete with mail boobsocks and nipples poking through). That thing was trying really badly to ‘count’ as an armor atop of being objectifying, while bikinis you sent seem to be created solely for the gamer’s viewing pleasure.
I know it’s really hard to draw a line between a mod that’s there simply to look pretty and one that takes impracticality to a whole new level, so don’t hesitate to send me any example you find questionable. We can always discuss it together here.
