Tag: article

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She-Ra Reboot

Something a lot of readers asked us to chime in on is the recently revealed artwork for rebooted She-Ra cartoon. 

Considering the showrunner for it is Noelle Stevenson, aka @gingerhaze, the author of Nimona and co-creator of Lumberanes, and from whom we reblogged a couple times in the past, it’s quite safe to assume it will be much more interesting and diverse than the original’s “exactly like He-Man, except looks like a Barbie doll and rides a flying unicorn.”

First off, judging from the EW interview, Stevenson intends to take full advantage of the heroine’s backstory, in which she was kidnapped and raised from infancy by the Evil Horde before she turns against them as She-Ra. That leaves a lot of story potential for internal conflict and development of relationship between princess Adora, her antagonists and friends (some of whom will likely be one and the same). 

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Second, and more relevant to BABD, her character design is pretty damn solid mix of stylized magical girl elements (long hair, barely any armoring) and some practical choices, like comfortable looking shoes, short pants under her tunic and breast piece without the original’s cleavage. This is what we mean when we say a warrior design can be feminine without being objectifying. 

And yes, since we need to address the elephant in the room: there is a vocal minority of entitled manbabies crying that their childhood icon got snatched by the evil gay SJW agenda. 
That Adora/She-Ra, a teenager, is deliberately unsexyfied and that is bad because sexyness is totally what original show’s intended audience (young girls who wanted a He-Man’s feminine counterpart) liked about her. Not to mention allegations that the story is going to be “forcibly” turned into a queer narrative by the lesbian showrunner, which would be a bad thing, because…? 

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[Because Diverstiy & Comics dude is a raging bigot, that’s why]

Also, people who who think that She-Ra or He-Man can be suddenly turned gay clearly didn’t rewatch either of the 80s shows lately. 

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Here’s hoping that if this series catches on, then maybe a He-Man reboot comes next, this time turning all the gay undertones into overtones and angering  dudebros even more. 

~Ozzie

see also: Original She-Ra’s co-creator calls bullshit on claims that she was supposed to be “an idealized woman” | The Backlash Over She-Ra’s Redesign Is Why Girls Can’t Have Nice Things 

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“Sex sells. Deal with It.”

“Sex sells. Deal with It.”

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

castleintheairwaves:

Recently, a friend sent me this image. It had been passed on by her boyfriend; it had reminded him of me. One might expect that connection to fill me with satisfaction, that I, a game designer and writer, am instantly associated with forward thinking and feminist ideals. Instead, I felt humiliated.

This is a great article that does a good job of explaining exactly why arguments excusing ”sexy armor” are invalid and altogether ridiculous.

This awesome article not only thoroughly explains why there’s no way to logically justify sexualization of female characters in video games, but also highlights the struggles that women in the industry go through:

The thing is, in this industry, you don’t want to be “that girl.” The world has communicated very thoroughly, with Anita Sarkeesian’s death threats, with so many comments on Kotaku, and with comments in the hallways of the workplace and the podiums of conventions, that being “that girl” is bad. Real bad. Potentially end of career bad.

But it’s not just dangerous for potential ramifications on career trajectory. There’s also a social component of how “that girl” is insufferable, annoying, and should be punishable by shaming. 

Many female game designers, anonymously and publicly alike, confess how they have to deal with sexist standards of the industry, just so they can keep their jobs. It’s a legit problem that men, especially the ones chanting “sex sells!” or “it’s intended for male gamers!”, are either blissfully unaware of or willfully ignorant (my bets are on the latter option, though).

Please guys, read the whole thing.

~Ozzie

People are often quick to dismiss arguments against the conventional wisdom that “sex sells” as “politically correct” idealism.  But one of the most compelling argument against the slogan comes from the other side of the political spectrum.

David Ogilvy was one of, if not The great iconic Ad Men of the 1960’s.  Unsurprisingly he was deeply invested in the idea of gender roles and claimed “I am less offended by obscenity than by tasteless typography, banal photographs, clumsy copy, and cheap jingles”.  He also (literally) wrote the book on how to create effective advertising and measure the effectiveness of your advertising. 

He was, amazingly, admantly against introducing sex to sell any product that wasn’t inherently sexual in itself for one simple reason:

All his research and experience in advertising told him it would not work.

What did Ogilvy very sincerely believed was the first step in creating effective advertising an massive sales? To create a high quality product.

That way all that was required was to sincerely show the customers why it was a great product and the rest would take care of itself.

So when developers distort their products (comics, books, movies, video games, etc) by cramming sexualised imagery into them with the mentality of “sex sells” so “more sex will sell even more” they are actually sabotaging their product’s reception, reputation, sales and it’s marketing campaigns.

At least according to an old white man from the 1960s who always assumed women should be house wives… and also happened to be one of the greatest thinkers in advertising.

-wincenworks

This week’s throwback – an article analyzing the very dubious idea of “sex selling” everything, including decidedly non-erotic properties, in video games. 

Bringing it back particularly because it mentions how it is a professional suicide

for women in the industry to call out sexism in game design and narrative.
And, in light Jessica Price’s of ArenaNet firing, we learned how even talking back to a male gamer community member can lead to the same. 

Sadly, we still operate firmly in the reality where “sex” (or rather: erosion of female self-esteem) is considered a marketing booster and women speaking out for themselves in any way get shoved aside, so we don’t have to have the uncomfortable conversation that maybe they have a point.

~Ozzie

Couldn’t help but make this joke out of the accompanying image from the Jessica Price article linked above.

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Don’t know if the writer did it on purpose or not, but thanks!

-Icy

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fantasticalfascination:

muchymozzarella:

The thing about how women in comics used to be drawn and sometimes are still drawn, you can only really understand the difference between an action girl being forced into unrealistic sexual, sensual positions, and an actual strong and well posed, empowering but still sexy female character, when you see what it looks like to have male characters depicted in overtly sensual poses

And I’m not talking about the Hawkeye Initiative or any given parody

I actually want to draw a comparison using art by Kevin Wada

Kevin Wada is a proud part of the LGBTQ+ community and he has this unique ability to sexualize mainstream male heroes without it looking like a parody. He draws covers for multiple big comic companies and his style reminiscent of old fashion magazines, drawn largely in traditional watercolor, has made him a stalwart of the industry.

He also draws a lot of naked Bucky Barnes.

Anyway, I want to talk about how interesting his art is, the difference between his power poses and his sexy poses for male and female characters.

A typical power pose for a male comics character would look like this

Whereas every so often with female heroes you get something like this

Not all the time, of course, but it happens and it happens in the wrong places. You wouldn’t be posing like a cover model in the middle of a battle, you really wouldn’t.

But when it comes to Wada and male and female characters, the difference is pretty clear.

When he draws male characters, they more often look like this

Sensual, in a pose you wouldn’t usually see a big, muscular hero doing. If not that, then playful, sexy, for looking at, but nothing about their anatomy overly exaggerated

How he draws women is also very clearly different from many other artists, from sexy pose to power pose.

Still posing for the camera, still to be looked at, but very, very different from how we’ve seen female characters portrayed in mainstream comics in the past.

And I guess it’s really just a matter of variety? Objectification in art is a long time debate and appears everywhere always, but for all that we can argue about its impact on popular media, there are a few things I know for sure:

1) having a female character pose like a playboy cover girl in the middle of a battle scene is just Bad Art and y’all need to find better references

2) female power poses will never look quite as right as when they’re drawn by people who know the value of expressing personality through pose (it’s basic animation principles and some artists still need to learn it) and who actually know what a female character’s personality beyond “sexy”

3) Iron Man or Batman posing like they’re about to beat somebody up is 100% not the same as a fashion drawing by Kevin Wada where a Typical Beefy Action Guy gets to pose like a flirty pretty boy

4) the MCU films have figured out the value of pandering to female audiences by sexually objectifying all their male action heroes while simultaneously appealing to the male demographic’s action movie power fantasy. Quoting Chris Hemsworth and Taika Waititi: “I’m not a piece of meat” “Uh, yes you are.”

They definitely struck some kind of balance there.

Also, more important than this entire post: y’all should follow @kevinwada on Tumblr and give him love because his art is divine and his talent beyond words

@bikiniarmorbattledamage

Really good writeup, @muchymozzarella, and deserved feature of a great artist, thank you! Though I wouldn’t say *all* MCU films are truly balancing things out with the male objectification, especially not until their mixed-gender teams start posing like this [source]: 

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We featured @kevinwada‘s Naked Snake last year and mentioned (as a couple times before) that if you really want to see the principles male gaze applied unironically to masculine characters, you gotta find pinup done by a male artist who’s into men. And Wada’s artwork is a great proof of that, without resorting to pandering exaggerations (which belong more to parody art). 

~Ozzie 

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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

kaldannan:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

wintergrey:

garrettbrobinson:

I got real petty over on the Facebook page and IT WAS GLORIOUS.

This is me, going to check out Legendary Books now…

Publisher: We think that the way the fantasy genre treats women is problematic so we’re going to try and do better

A Fool: If you don’t like it why don’t you make your own!

Publisher: That

That is literally what we just said we are doing

@bikiniarmorbattledamage I think this is right up your alley. Ha!

Yes, it is! Thank you for sending us this 🙂

@garrettbrobinson‘s apt and continuous snark here beats even the famous concise answer Star Wars Facebook gave to the dudebros “concerned” about Captain Phasma’s feminity.

Please everyone read the article and all of those comments, it’s quality content. 

It’s also massive evidence that certain kind of people (who believe in such logic as “instead of having an opinion about a product, go make one yourself!” or “shirtless men = hypersexulized”) just plain do not care to acquaint themselves with an article/blog/video if it looks even vaguely feminist before replying to it.
We find it pretty amazing how they’re typing preemptive, uninformed responses to something they didn’t even read and, at the same time, expect its author to prove their own credentials.

~Ozzie

more commentary about rhetoric on BABD

Time to bring back this awesome article, its amusingly ignorant backlash and A+

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to detractors from @garrettauthor​ (the OP), as the saga of snark continues… This time against some dude who “doesn’t care” about sexuality of fantasy book characters. Who indeed cares so little that he needs to openly inform a publisher how they shouldn’t advertise their books for having LGBTQ+ themes. 

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[more context and excepts from that Facebook thread under this link]

Also, if you’re interested in getting the first novel in Garret Robinson’s Underrealm series as a free e-book, here’s the link!

~Ozzie

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So, for those not away – about a year and a half ago the YouTuber known as H.Bomberguy made a video which highlighted the absurdity of claiming men were equally objectified in video games, specifically called out Taki as a bad example of female character design and proposed God of War would be better if Kratos actually acted like a character rather than a screaming murder machine.

Coincidentally, less than a month after where we get a God of War game where Kratos acts like a character with feelings instead of a screaming murder machine… a trailer goes live (and then is taken down) for Taki and… they’ve managed to actually make it worse.

Of all the options to expand her outfit… they chose to add some sort of weird fetish mask that looks like someone designed a classic Hannibal hockey mask but for a sex doll.

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Look if I can’t unsee it, neither can you okay.

– wincenworks

H.Bomberguy on YouTube

(Hey you, the one typing up the explanation for the mask: no, it looks exactly nothing like a traditional samurai mask)

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It’s been some time since last we visited @pointandclickbait​ to binge on some quality, totally serious game journalism.

Since then, they touched upon such important issues to us as: 

Also good to announce: Point and Clickbait launched a Kickstarter to publish print version of their best 2016 articles! 

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If you’re interested in quality game  journalism in print form (or PDF, because Australia Post’s shipping costs are intimidating), there’s a week before the campaign closes.

~Ozzie

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Brigitte and Overwatch’s continous female design problem

We talked already about Brigitte’s costume, but there’s a whole lot of other issues about her character design that shouldn’t be overlooked. Again, it’s a nice idea to have a new lady in actual armor in the game, though we wouldn’t be BABD if we didn’t point out some obvious and less obvious problems that can be spotted with her. 

She’s, after Moira, another white European lady in a row, while still the closest to black female representation among playable heroes is Orisa, a robot (and before anyone says it – nope, none of the dark-skinned female characters are black).
For a game that prides itself in having diverse international cast, Overwatch can not imagine people of color color coming from places that wouldn’t be POC-dominant already (also lots of their heroes of color somehow happen to be morally dubious compared to white ones). And just because Brigitte is a pre-established character doesn’t yet excuse prioritizing adding her to the game over someone with different background. 

It’s kind of funny how after being unnamed for no reason in her last major media appearance, the Reinhardt animated short, now Brigitte got elevated from a supporting lore character to one of main heroes. This, paired with ridiculous lack of consistency in her cross-media appearances gives us a strong feeling that no-one at Blizzard is overseeing writing and art direction of Overwatch as a franchise. Fans who spot constant retcons in the story would agree.

Speaking of no visual consistency, seems like from comics to the animated short to the actual game Brigitte finished her long journey from a unique-looking person to another standard issue pretty face. 

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And no, different artists working on each of those appearances isn’t an excuse for how only her hair and skintone remain relatively consistent. Her crucial features like jawline, freckles, nose shape and size, how big her eyes are and how strong her chin is shouldn’t alter so widely just because of art style change. Blizzard is perfectly capable of making and using style guides – and when they don’t, it’s either by choice or negligence.

And if you wondered what we meant by “standard issue pretty face”, this pic, for obvious reasons, has gained some major mileage around the Internet: 

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Congrats, Blizzard! You officially care about diverse female appearances as little Disney does! (image sources: [x] & [x]) 

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Or maybe the jokes are true and the (weak) excuse for looking like clones is the same as for the Frozen ladies? Mercy is Brigitte’s real mom!

Not to mention that Blizzard can’t make up their mind on what Brigitte’s body type is supposed to be. Is she thin and curvy as virtually every other Overwatch lady? Is she almost as buff as Zarya? Something inbetween? Who knows.

I saw some fans trying to excuse her twig arms from Christmas comic as being possibly earliest in the timeline, but no official channel would confirm or deny any speculation. Overwatch is pretty satisfied with fans using their headcanons to justify whatever information the story canon won’t commit to. Why make an effort when fans can do your job for you? 

~Ozzie

“Brigitte Lindholm, squire to Reinhardt Wilhelm, is a former mechanical engineer who has decided to take up arms and fight on the front lines to protect those in need.”

If I didn’t know anything about this character and was just reading her background blurb, I would be imagining a character design more akin to this:

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Why build a regular armor and shield when I can pilot a 12-foot-tall exoskeleton? Her father builds turrets during combat, it would have been cool if she had skills related to building and adjusting her own armor in-combat.

Her design doesn’t inform me of her character at all, which is a problem with several of the Overwatch cast (mostly ladies, I wonder why that is). She wears armor, but so does Pharah; is she also a soldier? She has no welding mask or a tool belt that would indicate that she’s a mechanic type. I get that she doesn’t want to just fix things on the sidelines, but she does throw out armor for her allies. It isn’t a stretch to flavor it as her fixing her team’s equipment in the heat of battle, and she does get a welding mask in a different skin but not the primary one?

Her color scheme is almost the same as Mercy’s, with silver (instead of white), yellow and black being the core, which really isn’t helping that same-face problem, Blizzard. Not to mention the shapes are very similar to Pharah’s. There’s just nothing new here design-wise, and I am disappointed.

-Icy