bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Personally I am one hundred percent supportive of orcs being allowed to feel pretty whenever they want.  I don’t understand the final panel, surely it should be full of celebration!

– wincenworks

Oglaf sufficiently proved that orcs do enjoy feeling pretty in skimpy armor, and also provide jobs to the best cosmetic sorcerers! And we won’t shame them, as long as it’s equal across the genders 😉 

The whole above comic, though, we’re throwing back today as a reminder that @thehawkeyeinitiative (as well as @theliberationofmanfire) was a thing because nerds, especially white cishet dudes, are socialized to not question female bikini warriors in media… But as soon as sexy male equivalent is put forward, they suddenly can empathize with how uncomfortable women feel about objectified female characters. 

While the sexy Hawkeye and Manfire blogs are largely archival (and marked NSFW, because Tumblr is a hellsite) these days, there’s always @magicmeatmarch every year 🙂 

~Ozzie 

adobsonartworks:

godloveyell:

thesinlesssinner:

imgoingtogobacktheresomeday:

ain-individual:

simonalkenmayer:

loudaussieunicorn:

adobsonartworks:

The alt-right and conservatives don’t mind strong female characters… so long as those strong female characters are ones they can objectify and ogle. Alita is literally objectified and infantilized by her surrogate father figure in her own movie, whereas Captain Marvel is never seen in a revealing or skimpy outfit. Brie Larson also made fun of trolls who told her she should smile more, and was openly outspoken about harassment she had received over her role. Is it any wonder that the alt-right would not take her side?

PS: I knew the connection to the alt-right was strong, but upon researching this topic again I realized that the guy who created the “alitachallenge” hashtag in the 3rd panel is the same troll who managed to get James Gunn fired from Disney.

So… I made this a week ago, and in that time a NEW story has dropped which only goes to confirm what this comic is talking about.

And yup. Sure enough, the same people who complained about Captain Marvel are now going after Birds of Prey. Why? Because they’re unhappy with how Harley Quinn looks in the film, and because the film is being directed by a woman. Which again goes to prove this point. They don’t mind strong female characters, as long as those strong female characters are dressed in a way that they approve of. Harley’s outfit in the new film is far less objectifying/infantalizing and has a lot more personality.

And here’s some evidence for good measure:

#OP is right and deserves to say it

I think it important to note that the one they considered exemplary of female virtue was literally…a robot designed by a man.

??? They don’t think HQ in Birds of Prey is sexy?

Are they blind and deaf?

Just backwards as all hell and probably don’t wash their butts

Me reading all these idiot men’s comments be like:

Note that the whiny pissbaby fanboys came out in either greater droves for Captain Marvel, amping up their campaign of abuse and vitriol than they did for Wonder Woman. They did embark on a hate campaign for Wonder Woman, but not with the same level as what they brought to Captain Marvel. Why is this?

The reasoning is obvious: with Wonder Woman, they still had the hope that this movie would fail like most of the other female superhero movies of the past and then they could take comfort in knowing that it would be decades before they have to :gasp: suffer the indignity of seeing of seeing a female superheroine in the lead, kicking ass and taking names, her plot :gasp: being about something besides getting a man or being fetish material they could jerk off to.

Because when a male hero fails, Hollywood’s like, “Whelp, shouldn’t have gone with that script/director,” and hero gets a reboot before too long. When a female hero fails, Hollywood’s like, “Whelp, guess people don’t want female superhero-led films,” and women have to wait years, possibly decades before they get another film.

Before Wonder Woman, the last female superhero movies were Elektra and Catwoman. Do the math to figure out how many years separated those movies and Wonder Woman. While you’re at it, count how many male superheroes we got in that time period. Freaking Ant-Man got a film before Wonder Woman, even though Wonder Woman is part of DC’s trinity and is a hella much more prominent character than Ant-Man.

It never seems to occur to Hollywood that maybe people would go to female superhero movies that didn’t suck. Nope, must be the female hero. That’s clearly why the film failed. Women pretty much had to do constant “Please don’t let this suck” prayers/dances to the movie gods because if it failed, it’d be decades before we would ever see another one again.

The whiny pissbabies could also reassure themselves with the knowledge that the DCEU’s quality had been incredibly uneven at best. With all this in mind, they weren’t too scared about Wonder Woman.

But Wonder Woman didn’t fail. Wonder Woman brought audiences in droves, the film critics adored it, and it is still seen as the best DCEU film by many. Basically, it proved their beliefs to be bullshit. People can and will see female superheroes and might, nay, prefer those movies over ones with :gasp: :choke: :pearlclutch: male heroes.

So now they’re running scared and it’s for this reason, they redoubled their efforts to try to sink Captain Marvel. I’m afraid we’re going to have to put up with this for a while.

Here’s hoping Hollywood continues to cram as much diversity into these fuckers’ faceholes as possible. The way I figure, either the pissbabies will scream themselves into apoplexy or they’ll be like, “Hey I like and relate to this character, even though they have [a different gender identity/higher melanin count/orientation] than I do,” and grow the fuck up. Either way, the world would be a much better place for it.

Though frankly I thought that Black Panther was even more radical in its usage of female characters, almost as radical as their usage of Black characters. By virtue of :gasp: :choke: having more than just one character to represent women as a whole, we were able to see, relate to, and understand women with a wide variety of viewpoints.

The multiple female characters was also another reason why Birds of Prey was so great. Having multiple female characters allows them to be actual characters with flaws, ambitions, and actual personalities, rather than token representations of half the world’s population.

It’s insane how rare this phenomenon of multiple female characters is.

In addition to this (which is a spot-on observation BTW), there’s the added fact that Wonder Woman and Alita are presented in a more “conventionally attractive” sort of way. Both Wonder Woman and Alita follow the “born beautiful yesterday” trope, and Alita is infantalized in her own film. While they are strong female characters, they’re also easier to objectify too.

Captain Marvel on the other hand goes out of her way to signal that she’s not “available” so-to-speak. In Captain Marvel there’s literally not a single shot of her that could be taken as objectifying. She is never in a skimpy outfit, shown naked, has her skin exposed…etc. And the actress is vocally open about sexism and misogyny in the industry.

The idea that a woman could be strong and powerful and NOT be openly available to them is the root fear and cause of so much of their outrage. Like I said before, they don’t mind if a female character is strong and powerful… provided that they’re conventionally attractive to men.

This is something we discussed before, in regards to Strong Female Character™/”weaponized femininity”/Fighting Fucktoy trope. Women are basically expected to pay a “female representation tax” by seeing female bodies in media framed almost exclusively through male gaze, even in woman-centric stories. 

Movies that include female characters being badass without objectification are scarse, and the few that exist get cyber-dogpiled by the whiny manbaby alt-right trolls even before they’re released. Often in favor of just another Fighting Fucktoy film that undermines its heroines with creeper-friendly framing, regardless of how well they’re written. 

I think this comic and the subsequent commentary thread (especially @godloveyell’s addition) perfectly summarize the systemic problem of dudebros telling us womenfolk that we’re not allowed to see ourselves in movies (and comics/games/etc.) without their “hot enough for a cishet guy to masturbare to” stamp of approval. And how they insist that the rare media in which women aren’t sexualized just so happen to be much worse… because they say so and no other reason, really. 

~Ozzie 

littlestartopaz:

flavoracle:

probablyindierpgideas:

Knowing how my friends feel about dresses with pockets I can only imagine how incredible this is!

Art by Benjamin Steamroller

I genuinely love this for SO MANY reasons, but one of them has to be the fact that now that we’ve all agreed that terrible skimpy armor that objectifies women is OUT, we can finally focus on what should be IN

@bikiniarmorbattledamage

Two big problems of both fictional armor (boobplate) and real feminine clothing (lack of pockets) resolved in a single one-panel comic! Yay! 

This knight looks super adorable and so happy about her attire, I love it!
Also love the costume design thought put by the artist into incorporating cloth or leather pockets onto plate armor. 

Artwork is available as print on author’s site

~Ozzie 

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

tooquirkytolose:

~And they lived happily ever after~

This was really dumb and a lot of fun to draw 😀

Well, the king is not a very good listener, but at least he allowed the best contest theme ever.
Princesses shouldn’t be prizes to be won, but if they have to, let it always be in a “Design a super rad dress I can wear to beat up dragons!” competition.

Thanks to Ros for recommending this to us!

~Ozzie

Throwing back this adorable comic, because it made it wonder: why do artists spend so much time making metal boob cups when they can give their lady characters reasonable chainmail armor and then decorate it with cloth? That would achieve the feminine look they want, right?

I mean, unless it was all just for cheesecake reasons or something.

-Icy

A while ago, we got a submission of an Aspen Matthews figurine where she only had 2 1/5 pieces of bone armor on. Tumblr flagged the post as adult content, so here’s a picture:

image

Turns out, there’s another bone armor version of Aspen! This one has more bones, though I would still call this 2 1/5 pieces of armor collectively, since that torso piece is not a full piece of anything, besides Disappointment. 

At least she has biceps? Though they seem to be coming out of her boobs.

-Icy

adobsonartworks:

SYAC – NSFW Context.

A lot of people who view my feminist leanings as an “act” always point to the fact that I used to draw fetish art a decade ago as some sort of hypocrisy. But the fact of the matter is that just because I don’t draw fetish art anymore and identify as a feminist now doesn’t mean I have some sort of vendetta against it. The problem that arises when feminists clash with comic/game/geek content is because the “context” for the “sexy artwork” either doesn’t exist or is so flimsy it might as well not exist. There is nothing wrong with NSFW artwork, providing the context makes sense (and that includes the WHERE and HOW it’s being published).

Sidenote: I CANNOT recommend “Sunstone” enough to y’all. It’s amazing and you should check it out! Here’s the link to it on AMAZON.

PS: I genuinely don’t care that Quiet is a mute and can’t talk (that’s problematic in and of itself). I just wanted to make a point.

Huh, who knew there is a time and place to make female characters sexy and that time is not “always”?

We’re also more than familiar with the accusation that we are just fun-hating killjoys who hate sexy women and want them always non-sexual and covered head to toe (extra fallacy points if something islamophobic is added to the last part). That’s why it’s a square on the rhetoric bingo

TL; DR: CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING! 

~Ozzie 

See also: When is it okay to have a female character in less than practical or protective armor? – a helpful presentation by @wincenworks 

followthespottedhyena:

we-are-blacksmith:

we-are-viking:

iamstroodle:

balamist:

that friend is vestal

I appreciate this immensly

@we-are-knight @weareladyknight

…… I mean… Maybe?

@bikiniarmorbattledamage

I think that a couple other characters from the parodies we posted over the years would gladly patronize this blacksmith as well 😉 
Consider: Lyla from the College Humor sketch, the angry Dorkly comic lady, this poor heroine, the Chainmail Bikini Squad, Princess Adrienne… Oh yeah, there’s also this poor dude from Oglaf strip which we never knew how to address on BABD.

What I’m saying is, bad blacksmiths/armor merchants are kind of an recurring subject in bikini armor satire. And it’s nice for once to see one who’s fixing sexist armors instead of perpetuating them 😉

PS: This is what Arbalest and Vestal’s boobplates look like in the original artwork of Darkest Dungeon

image
image

~Ozzie

Not all heroes wear capes.

-Icy