@recklessprudence submitted:
So, I was reading your past Warmachine commentary, and got to the part where you said that ‘Skarre comes from an army where the female commanders are always sexy ladies – and the male characters… significantly less attractive’, and I thought “Surely not! I read Master Necrotech Mortenebra’s lore and remember her disdain for the flesh she escaped by becoming the
undead horrormasterpiece of engineering and magic she is now, and I vaguely remember the model, she’s just an only-partially humanoid robot with her soul animating it, there’s no reason for her to be like that”…and then I looked up her model.
Yes, that is boobplate. On a spider-robot-lady who barely has a face. Why was that the crucial aspect one of the greatest masters of combining Necromancy and Engineering the world has ever seen focused on?
Especially when a focus on her sex appeal was nothing that was in the lore, and in fact her disdain for the weakness of flesh (not anything in particular, just the fact that bodies need food and water and fairly narrow climate tolerances and time to heal and whatnot – the whole organic thing)
Hell, even her subordinate necrotechs are undead for the most part, grotesque monstrosities of necromantic technology that look like this:
PP, I love your game, but… really?
…On the plus side, she has no ribcage under that to be broken, like a normal undead, just more mechanisms of her robot body? But then, it’s still going to guide both ranged fire and melee strikes into a spot, repeatedly. And I don’t care what you’ve built your new body out of, or how thick the forcefield generated by your will married to sorcerous technology surrounding your body is, you don’t make your third century by making things easier for your many enemies!
I personally have this theory (that I cling to out of desperate fear of the alternatives) that armies like Cryx end up with sexy undead because the creators have trapped themselves into using boobs, wasp waists and thongs as their signals that a model is female. Particularly if they’re “evil”.
Once you’ve set that convention, or simply decided to adhere to it in order to conform with market expectations – you paint yourself into a corner with the designs. Doing the undead horror who’s more machine than flesh as a different attracts attention to the convention and breaks the “language” of their visuals and opens it up to criticism.
Sticking with the conventions, however limiting and silly that ends up being, invites people to respond to anything ridiculous as “it’s just fantasy”. That of course, only holds up so long as lots of people stick to the same conventions – so they all find themselves trapped in an unspoken agreement.
– wincenworks