The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Month: September 2018
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So… this latest version of Jeanne D’Arc (aka Joan of Arc) is apparently a dragon (hence the tail) but seems to also have incredibly ridiculous armor. Why does she look like a generic waifu? Um… honestly I have no idea, and I think I’m happiest not knowing – this is what the “main” dragons look like:
I’ve been trying to play the game since it came out, but the ridiculous outfits the ladies have are very distracting, and not in a “battle tactic” way; in a really off-putting way. And that’s without even talking about the game’s depiction of the protagonist’s sister.
Around May 2017 they started using their current iconic line up, the front and center lead of which has such a ridiculous costume it appears their advertising team feels the need to hide it:
Ironically, despite this apparently being less of Creepy Marketing Guy and more part of the studio culture, a lot of the content could be pretty good and they could probably get a lot more female players if they didn’t strive to save the booplate.
Alas, it seems to commitment knows no bounds:
Can’t imagine why they have so few female players…
LoL heroines were among the first stream redesigns by Icy, but this was my first attempt at redoing a lady champion. I chose Ashe, the archer. While she has completely serviceable color scheme and some nice looking shapes in cape, hood and limb departments, her core costume is just a short dress with deep cleavage and fabric belt. Also nipple adornments ¯_( ͠° ͟ʖ ͠° )_/¯
Since LoL fails at giving most female characters distinct facial features, I felt obliged to change this generic oval face with tiny nose and pouty lips into something more interesting. Now her face and nose are longer, with sharper jawline and cheekbones.
I decided that instead of her ghastly pale skin, the design should be broken up white elements that will compliment her hair and belt. You can never go wrong with Elizabethan pants. I’m especially proud of the matching poofy sleeves broken up by golden arm braceletes that were already there. Obviously, I wouldn’t leave ornaments on each of her boobs, so I reduced it to a single one at the center of her chest. And her pauldrons no longer just hover on her shoulders, they (and presumably, the cape) are connected now at the sternum.
Last change, suggested by Icy, was a codpiece, matching the period fashion of her pants. Yes, my redo of Ashe is an openly trans lady, because why not?
All in all, I’m quite satisfied with how I managed to keep the silhouette and shape language relatively unchanged, while adding some more interesting stuff where gratuitous skin displays were before.
~Ozzie
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Return of the Sexy SMITE Gentlemen
After the last time we sexyfied SMITE’s male gods, it was time to get back to it. After all, there was such an inequality among the character designs: the men were almost never allowed to be hot! We couldn’t have that.
Hercules
I decided to go for the easy choice, Hercules (not Heracles, for some reason?), mostly cause I hated almost everything about his original design. Not even from a not-sexy-enough standpoint, just in general. That ugly face, the weird proportions (that lion head is like 4 times bigger than his), even the colors. So I changed all of that crap.
I made his head bigger and made him look younger, more innocent. I took away all of his ugly clothes. There isn’t even a loincloth there. I moved the lion’s head into his hand instead to cover his uh… lion, as it were. I decided to give him a furry little cape in its place on his shoulder so that his beautiful face wouldn’t be literally overshadowed.
In the end, I was trying to shade the lion so that it contrasted against Hercules’ skin, but I should have just made the mane dark brown instead of sticking to the original color scheme. But I think now he’s worthy of his Roman depictions.
-Icy
Loki
The Norse god of mischief was always plenty intriguing, even before Tom Hiddleston made Sexy Loki a thing. So I decided to very unsubtly make it clear with my redesign – by showing as much skin as possible short of making it porn.
In real bikini armor fashion, I got rid of almost all the clothes Loki had other than the sash, loincloth and armoring on his limbs. Made his skin a bit lighter and less sickly colored, because while we’re all for Norse characters being more than just white, it’s less problematic to sexualize a white dude than a man of color. Hope you all like those lovingly rendered muscles, I spent a lot of time painting them!
I also replaced his edgy hood with long fiery red hair, more traditional for the depictions of this character. Another, more subtle touch was the scar on his lips, from the time he was punished by having his mouth sewn shut.
A god who can get himself in and out of almost any trouble by shapeshifting and seducing whoever, including a horse, should really wear his sexuality on his sleeve!
~Ozzie
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So, on top of the other issues with SNK Heroines – it also has this odd quirk where one of the characters is Terry Brogard, who (if you’re ancient like me) you might remember from classic arcade side-scrolling beat-em-up Fatal Fury (first released in 1991).
Now, this design first appeared in SNK vs Capcom: Chaos as an effect that could be rendered by Dark Stalkers (ie Capcom) character Demitri Maximoff. Neither Demitri, nor any other Capcom influence appears in the game. Back in the original… Terry looked like this when changed:
It was 2003, which means this game is possibly older than some of you reading this blog (and probably older than anyone furiously typing a comment to defend this outfit). It was a one off gimmick for a game that was ultimately a transparent cash grab and generally agreed to be forgettable.
But, fast-forward to 2018 and it appears that SNK have decided that just because they don’t have a reason to, doesn’t mean they can’t explore the concept of gender-shifting in a serious, considered and mature… I can’t do this…
That’s right, putting a guy into a female body in a degrading outfit that makes fun of their origin is a “prank (?)”. The fuck did these people get up to in college? Are they considering the whole “abducted, put into a degrading costume and forced to fight your way out” part a prank to? Did anyone think about any aspect of this game before green lighting it?
Honestly if your best idea for a gender exploration/shift in a character is “a macho guy gets turned into a sexy woman, and is angry and humiliated… and just keeps checking their ass and boobs” (which is all Terry seems to care about when notified of the transformation… despite the suspicious lack of muscle tone, their old clothes, etc) you should just take that idea and burn it, then scatter the ashes and rethink your life.
Get this: the “plot” is that the villain kidnapped female characters from various SNK games, forcibly put them in fetishy costumes and makes them fight each other while he is watching as they feel completely humiliated.
Athena Asamiya’s default magical girl outfit is relatively tame in terms of showing skin (fetishization of girlish dresses is another issue entirely), but since there HAS to be at least one bikini-shaped look per character, the game makes up for it by giving her an alternative pre-existing costume of her namesake, Princess Athena from another game. As we all know, there can never be a single Athena in fiction >_>
Thong as a question mark because while the panties do not seem to be an actual g-string, those additional straps sure make it look more like stringy lingerie than comfortable underwear.
~Ozzie
Stay tuned, as one more SNK bingo is on its way… Now with extra trasphobia!
