The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Month: November 2018
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So, a while ago the ever classy Soul Calibur announced that for #6, there’d be a couple of guest characters: 2B from Nier Automata who you can dress like Kaine and Geralt from The Witcher… who you can dress like generic Geralt.
So why is Ivy* in the bingo? Well, apparently she’s critical to 2B’s… something.
Because it seems that the marketing at Soul Calibur are now so over invested in the generic myth that never pays off that even 2B was not sexy enough, so she doesn’t even get to make an appearance until 30 seconds into her own intro.
And the story is apparently… all about Ivy for some reason? None of it seems to fit with either game, and more importantly none of it explains why we don’t have a “just got out of the tub” Geralt costume.
Not unlike with Arhian, I decided to change character with platinum blonde/near white hair into an older person who grew into this silvery shade. Also Lex happens to remind me a lot of my OC who is an older, handsome gentleman, so I gave him similar facial hair.
As with many other my sexy male redesigns, like Poseidon, Loki or male Witch, I decided to reduce the amount of skin covering without changing the silhouette significantly. I concluded that the little capes on his arms and sides should stay, as the shapes that most define his costume. I also left most of his belts, but had to repaint them a different shade, as they turned out to blend with his skin tone too much.
I’ve spent some extra time and attention on detailing the
thigh muscles, abs and crotch bulge. Also a happy trail linking the latter two.
~Ozzie
Jenos the Tease
We ended up both doing white-haired characters for the stream, but I decided to make mine more shy, by empowered man standards. The biggest edits were to his chest and upper thighs. I removed his shirt and opened up his coat to show off his Hot Bod, but still leaving a bit covered up for that ~mystery~ element. I gave him cutouts around his crotch to show off some leg as well.
Then there were a lot of small changes: A bit of body hair on the legs and torso, longer hair in the front to further frame that collarbone, and blushing cheeks. His face was actually not made of ugly rocks covered by skin, so I didn’t have to change it!
I’m still not sure about the tall underwear, and I could have definitely shown off more of his legs, but this is a more covered-up empowered man. It’s like when boobplate and pants on a woman are considered “good” because it’s not a bikini! You can’t even see his nipples, it’s totally acceptable for combat.
Although it is hilarious to see this, i think it is important to focus on how objectifying either sex is bad rather than how men are finally getting similar objectification treatment.
In the perfect world no-one would be objectified, but since our world is far from perfect the “let’s objectify EVERYONE instead” angle is the tongue-in-cheek alternative for equal treatment.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone should genuinely advocate for treating all people like objects, but we’re absolutely free to make fun of this idea. It’s subversive humor, one of the best coping mechanisms we humans have.
I’ve always wondered the same as marofiron – whether reversing the objectification – or any other oppressive attitude – is a good tactic in solving the problem in the long term.
Particularly if the reverse attitude becomes socially acceptable and hilarious even, whereas the original one becomes taboo.
I’d say it’s not a way of solving the problem rather than exposing it to the public through means of satire. Sometimes it’s easier to see the wrongs of oppressive societal norms if the problem is shown in reverse to touch the privileged group. Like the little gem right here, for example. That’s why projects like, for instance, The Liberation of Manfire or The Hawkeye Initiative are needed. They don’t promote turning men into fanservice, they show through contrast how absurd are norms of portraying women. It’s supposed to spark discussion about parodied problem, not to make it taboo (hint: the problem usually IS a taboo by default).
Part of the reason they’re shocked is because it turns out society has this weird double standard where it is commonplace for commercial media to have hypersexualized and objectifying depictions of women, but goes well out of its way to avoid the slightest hint of such when depicting men.
Thus it helps to remind people that if there is some sort of equality in the balance of depictions, it exists only in the imagination of people who don’t have to deal with the problems the inequality brings.
– wincenworks
Depicting men in the same Empowered is a way to really show how the bikini armor rhetoric is complete nonsense. Sometimes, just explaining that bikini armor is bad can trigger a knee-jerk reaction. People may be attached to a character who’s designed this way, or they just like to look at anime girls, or whatever. They may get defensive about it.
But put a man in that same, or similar, bikini armor, and it’s harder to look past the ridiculousness of it, because of our societal expectations. That’s why we also use the pro-bikini rhetoric language in our Empowered posts, applying it to the men instead. It’s a way to really highlight the double standard, rather than to promote the sexualization of everyone.
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.
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.
While we talked about Indivisible’s design being pretty damn awesome and varied, there were still issues we had to point out, like Phoebe’s whole costume.
Good to see a genuinely sexyfied male character added to the game!
Like, this sort of costume (high heels! underboob! thigh cutuouts!) and animations are very rarely used unironically on male characters.
Same character class, same style of game, three different takes on it.
Stylistic choices don’t exist in a vacuum.
Dirty Bomb really doesn’t get enough credit for it’s walking the walk when it comes to egalitarian character designs and commitment to diversity. Every mercenary has a story, a personality and gear that is suitable to them – on top of that, they’re not afraid to let things get ugly. Have a look at how Proxy (basically their equivalent of Tracer in terms of personality) looks lately:
Needless to say Sparks as a white-clad medic who’s only thoughts on her profession is “Call me Sparks. I heal. I kill. Is ironic paradox. Yadda Yadda.” is a wonderful breath of fresh air in games.
Ambra from Battleborn is certainly not ideal, but as we’ve discussed before her design reeks of the Creepy Marketing Guy influence – but they at least made her a unique character and worked in no small amount of entertaining quirk.
Mercy… oh Mercy.
– wincenworks
Before anyone comes to say we’re taking things out of context or comparing apples to oranges, yes, all those games have their own aesthetic and we should should judge how each character looks within it. Dirty Bomb is quite realistic, Battleborn is very cartoony and Overwatch lies somewhere in the middle.
And we’re still not okay with boobplate on Galilea, even though Battleborn is more heavily stylized.
Speaking of ensemble games with cartoony aesthetic, let’s not forget about Gigantic, which while not boobplate-free (on their healer character, no less), does really good with gender and age balance among their cast.
~Ozzie
This week’s throwback: a reminder that Blizzard’s bland approach to female character design really pales in comparison to competition.
Also that Battleborn never had to be asked to deliver Black (or Black-coded, considering the sci-fi fantasy setting) playable women.
