The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Ultimately, most things that are offensive are also lazy and unoriginal; because you can’t reach that point of view by looking at the world honestly…You reach that point of view by taking short cuts and by just sort of repeating what someone else told you.
Joseph Fink
Writer from Welcome To Night Vale discussing writing on Citizen Radio 865 (via podquotes)
From now on, this is our universal answer to the supposed “creativity” of skin-revealing armor.
~Ozzie
Save the boob plate! A fight worth fighting for, amirite?
Liliana submitted:
So the Divinity: Original Sin artist is even worse than I thought. Know how the original design was a typical, pathetic, pandering and obnoxious bikini armour? It got changed later (for an obnoxious boobplate, but at least it covered a bit more skin), but apparently, only reluctantly so.
That poor, poor artist, having to censor himself like that. Of course he misses the point of the criticism of these armours completely (“it’s not about realism! also look at Conan!” are among his “arguments”), but that’s to be expected, I suppose.
Apparently that design we bingo-ed and discussed before was done by one of those guys who think that any criticism of their creation is not theirs, but the critic’s problem and feels honestly so attacked right now.
Thierry Van Gyseghem’s “argumentation” is worthy of a Rhetoric Bingo, though keep in mind that most of the linked rant is incomprehensible attempt at bullshitting academic MRA paper through bizarrely broken English (the insistence that “sexistic” is a word is my fav!).
It focuses mostly on how current game journalism supposedly is serving the nefarious pro-women “lobby” (which seems like a thinly-veiled way of referring to Anita Sarkeesian), and how it leads to self-imposed censorship of the game creators (a sure proof he’s one of the people who don’t know what “censorship” is).
Also, (not so) amazingly he seems to be caught up in thinking that bared belly is the only issue in his original illustration, even though it was literally 1 out of 17 bingo squares it checked… mind you, it could have potentially scored more if legs were shown.
So yeah, with such engaging “points” we would need a whole new custom bingo for this guy, therefore please don’t take my attempt at playing with what we’ve got too literally:
Wow, he scored ridiculously high even without a custom card!
TL, DR: There goes any benefit of the doubt we could have had for this artist when it comes to deciding how “creative” the final designs get.
Big thanks to Liliana for submitting!
~Ozzie
Curiously he claims he loves feedback… I guess he means feedback that doesn’t challenge any of his assumptions, privileges, etc.
What I really love about his strange notion though is – can you imagine if it was extended into any other field?
“I am a chef, and the restaurant owner told me we’re not going to serve pale veal any more due to animal cruelty concerns – I implore you all not to self censor your dinner tables!”
“I am a banker and we have been told not to use pressure tactics to get customers to sign up for credit cards – Do not allow yourself to be censored when manipulating others!”
“I am a janitor and we have been told not to use this chemical that upsets some people’s skin – Do not allow others to tell you what you what cleaning chemicals you should use at home!”
My personal favorite snippets:
All of this vitriol because his boss asked him to… do his job.
– wincenworks
You have men yelling: “yay! Boobs in games! Bigger boobs! More boob! Naked boob!”for decades. When female gamers finally got enough of a voice to say: “hey, I kind of wish there were women in video games who weren’t 80% boob by body weight”: those same men utterly flipped their shit.
This whole “why complain? You can’t tell designers what to do!” only seems to come up any time anyone but straight, white men dares make their opinion heard.
Sadly accurate.
Note how whenever cishet white audience members demand changes, those demands are met, or at the very least acknowledged.
Whenever anyone else does that, it’s gonna be called “whining” or “entilement”.
Emphasis mine.
~Ozzie
Video game has a single gay male character who flirts you? Riot against the developers. Protagonist options do not include a white male? Riot against the developers. Age of Conan reduces bust sizes on female characters? Riot against the developers. Didn’t get the ending you wanted? Riot against the developers.
Women who have been gaming for years point out obvious problems?
– wincenworks
‘political correctness kills creativity’ if you can’t create something without furthering the oppression of minorities, you aren’t a very creative person.
Exactly. It is funny how people say this and don’t realize the irony. As in, if you cannot visualize people different from you without using the same old stereotypes, you can’t exactly say you were the paragon of creativity can you?
RE: the insistence that when we ask for costume designs to stop recycling the tired skimpy armor tropes we’re somehow hurting the very idea of creativity.
Fun fact: adhering limitations to a project (like, I dunno, striving to not hurt feelings of large part of the population) actually helps to come up with something way more original than sticking to tropes that are offensive towards lots of potential fans.
~Ozzie
Invariably whenever someone claims that “political correctness” is killing creativity – it showcases a real lack of effort on their part. Even politically incorrect comedians like John Cleese will stress that you can’t expect your first idea to be your greatest idea, you have to refine it and be willing to let it go if it can’t be saved.
If you have an idea that you think is great, but you can’t use it because it’s “politically incorrect” then three possibilities exist:
Regardless of which it is, it’s basically an opportunity to help you improve your creativity and yourself. Passing up on this opportunity just means you’re taking one step towards being more like many, many problematic creators of the past.
So why be an imitation of someone else when you can be a pioneer? Because plenty of professionals are calling for people to drop the use of harmful stereotypes and get creative instead.
– wincenworks
