Tag: double standards

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platinumwarden:

Are you sure about that? 

Guild Wars 2 continues to be the textbookiest textbook example of most typical of double standard cliches in video game armors. 

For a game that

can provide occasional (relatively) nice female armor and has a commendably self-aware fanbase, GW2 itself is lacking self awareness of its very obvious shortcomings. It just plays the bikini armor tropes straight and pretends there’s nothing out of ordinary about a lady in metal lingerie being the direct equivalent to a dude in heavy armor.

~Ozzie

Yikesaroonie. This also seems to be the Norn race, which live in a place that’s so cold, they have giant ice statues just standing around in town, as depicted vaguely in those background colors. I can’t even tell where her crotch flap is supposed to be attached? Is it coming from her underwear??

Armor like this becomes even more hilarious when you’re in the super serious story cutscenes, and people are talking about military tactics and loss of life, and your character is just… dressed like that… being a commander and stuff… yeah.

(The color scheme is also Awful, but it’s customizable. I just wish their algorithm was better at picking the preliminary examples for you.)

-Icy 

edit: Corrected the Norn name. Thanks for correcting us, no thanks for the tone, dear rebloggers.

Posted on

What do you think of the argument that women can be “sexy and badarse at the same time”

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

It all depends on the larger conversation and the overall motive behind the argument really.

If someone argues that say, women are complicated people and thus capable being many things and showcasing it as the situation requires – thus one may be still sexy when in full armor and badarse down to her bones.

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If someone uses it as an attempt to silence criticism regarding character design by claiming that since the character is doing badarse things, having her always dressed in sexy lingerie makes it more impressive and empowering?

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– wincenworks

This week’s throwback: a valid argument in favor of complex female characters that is easily warped into excuse for all the “weaponized feminity” of the Fighting F*cktoys/“strong” female characters in media. 

Again, character being sexy while fighting and/or in armor are not mutually exclusive (sexyness can be conveyed in many ways), but character and her armor being overtly sexualized while fighting is at best inherently silly and never really justifiable if played straight. Especially when the only kind of character this happens to is women.

~Ozzie

Posted on

purplepuffle:

What do you think of the argument that women can be “sexy and badarse at the same time”

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

It all depends on the larger conversation and the overall motive behind the argument really.

If someone argues that say, women are complicated people and thus capable being many things and showcasing it as the situation requires – thus one may be still sexy when in full armor and badarse down to her bones.

image

If someone uses it as an attempt to silence criticism regarding character design by claiming that since the character is doing badarse things, having her always dressed in sexy lingerie makes it more impressive and empowering?

image

– wincenworks

This week’s throwback: a valid argument in favor of complex female characters that is easily warped into excuse for all the “weaponized feminity” of the Fighting F*cktoys/“strong” female characters in media. 

Again, character being sexy while fighting and/or in armor are not mutually exclusive (sexyness can be conveyed in many ways), but character and her armor being overtly sexualized while fighting is at best inherently silly and never really justifiable if played straight. Especially when the only kind of character this happens to is women.

~Ozzie

Posted on

Overwatch Halloween adjusted

nibelung2 submitted: 

The reddit user Chattywindow looked at the skins Blizzard gave to McCree (Van Helsing) and Symmetra (naked dragon lady), and made footage of both of them cosplaying each other. I present you Van Helsym and Incubus McCree.

And so the trend of fans swapping gendered Ovewatch character skins continues, this time with the official Halloween 2017 costumes. Nipple rings on Incubus McCree are such a nice touch! And Van Helsym is finally a look Symmetra deserves.

It really is sad how easily modders prove to Blizzard that women do look awesome in non-sexualized outfits, yet official skins barely ever apply to that. 

If fans can do women better in their spare time, Blizzard definitely can do that with their abundant resources. They just don’t want to.

~Ozzie

Is the only way for Symmetra to get real pants going to be through fanart?

-Icy 

edit: The creator of those edits, @otherwindow, put them on Tumblr as well: Incubus McCree | Van Helsym

h/t: @pinguminati

Posted on

Warhammer Battle Bikini Brigade (and more)!

@universe63 submitted: 

From this article

This was the first image in the rotating slides for the article about Warhammer: Total War.  It doesn’t get much better.  Later in the article we have these two Dark Elves.

Even his frickin’ FACE is covered, but for her?  Armor?  NOOOOoooooo. We get… whatever those things are on her boobs that are going to gut her like a fish if she bends over and can’t possibly stay on without glue or piercings.  I guess all her armor budget went into that hat.

OTOH, after showcasing the horrible, I wanted to showcase the one good female armor in there:

…but you have to scroll through tons of images (including more bikini armors) before you can find this one.  And I can’t tell for sure if it’s a trick of the light or if she actually has a bare middrift because reasons. [sigh]

Personally I think the greatest display of priorities in these designs is this piece of concept art which could almost be “spot the difference” game:

(And in case there is any doubt as to whether this is the artist or the studio/Games Workshop’s decision, I invite you to compare and contrast with the other works in Evgeniya Egorova’s Artstation gallery)

Yeah.

As is so often the case with Warhammer (and many other fantasy settings), there’s so many things to unpack in these: Bikini armor. Evil is sexy, and of course: Nipple armor.

The worst part is that I can’t even bring myself to be surprised.

– wincenworks

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shiapolux submitted:  

You know what’s funniest about Saint Seiya? 

Putting the Online game aside, in the original manga and anime the characters belong to a religious order which was originally males only.

You know how women managed to get allowed to join? They have to wear these stupid and totally impractical masks (hello? How does she even see? Or breathe? how does that shit attach? They live in GREECE, for Gea’s sake, who decided putting metal against DELICATE bare skin under such punishing sun was a good idea?) to “give up” their femininity so men won’t feel guilty hurting them.  And besides that, if a man ever sees them without the mask they have to either kill him or love him.

They literally made female warriors cover their faces 24/7 so “dudes wouldn’t get distracted” and then threw some metal lingerie at them. Yep, so much less distracting, sure thing… Thankfully we only ever see about three of them, so the other literal 85 male warriors won’t need to feel pressured.

Even funnier. This particular armour is supossed to be a second tier one, which for males supossedly protects more than the third tier ones, while hers… well, has barely any protection at all.

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(Second tier)

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(Third tier)

Didn’t you know? Weird mask and Madonna bra are totally less distracting than just being a regular knight, like your male peers are! 

So I guess, in a very sad way, Saint Seiya Online is a questionable improvement over manga and anime, since the ladies at least are allowed to show their faces (and see and breathe)… For the low low price of trading ridiculous boobplate for skimpy bikini armor full of sharp, stabby parts!

~Ozzie

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So, Divinity: Original Sin 2 started off looking kind of promising.  Despite their head animator throwing a public tantrum on deviantArt, Larian Studios did seem to be making a fairly attempt to improve next time, after all someone had instructed Thierry to fix the artwork (to his great upset) in the first place.

So on 1 October 2015, their Kickstarter finished successfully.

On 11 February 2016, they published results of a survey they did which showed completely unsurprising results for a studio where creative leads can post rants about their right to be paid to objectify:

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On 10 August 2016, it became pretty clear that Larian Studios decided the thing to do with this information was to double down and go back to their regular double standards:

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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:

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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.

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Alas, it seems to commitment knows no bounds:

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Can’t imagine why they have so few female players…

– wincenworks

Posted on

Why is “no helmet” in the bingo, I fo mock battles all the time and have little need of a helmet even though I own 3.

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

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There is an extremely critical difference that you need to remember between mock battles and real battles.

People in mock battles are not only not trying to kill you, they’re actually take deliberate steps to make sure you aren’t injured!

In a real battle your head is particularly vulnerable and a high priority to protect for a variety of reasons:

  • Head wounds bleed really strongly, between blood in your eyes and problems from blood loss – a relatively light cut can be a death sentence
  • Your head is relatively unprotected compared to your other vital regions.  Even a glancing blow can do serious damage to organs like your eyes, nose, etc
  • Because it is on top of your body, your head is vulnerable to attacks from pretty much every angle except directly below it so it has more ways to get hurt
  • As well as being the end point for the common carotid arteries, your head also contains a vital organ known as the brain.  Serious harm to this organ can result in life long crippling and/or death.

Not wearing a helmet as part of artistic license is often employed with characters who are either not normally in armor, or who need to be recognizable as unique among many armored figures.

However it is also often employed with female characters because of the idea that unless a character has long flowing locks, warm kissable lips and a dainty little nose clearly on display – men won’t be able to tell the character is female (and hence they’re supposed to be attracted to her).

Basically prioritizing the sexualization and objectification of female characters over portraying them as competent, interesting people, etc.

image

– wincenworks

So there’s been a few more people asking why we would include no head protection on the bingo card…

image

I know, I know…

But it probably also bears repeating that generally speaking, that part of the reason it’s a bingo card is because is that singular elements (even completely nonsensical) rarely ruin a design (most people don’t even notice Pharah’s battle thong). 

So if a something tends to skip on helmets for men and women alike for the purposes of giving character’s distinctive appearances and expressions it’s unlikely anyone is going to take issue.  It’s more about stuff like this:

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Or this

– wincenworks

Posted on

bacon—pancakes:

Why is “no helmet” in the bingo, I fo mock battles all the time and have little need of a helmet even though I own 3.

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

image

There is an extremely critical difference that you need to remember between mock battles and real battles.

People in mock battles are not only not trying to kill you, they’re actually take deliberate steps to make sure you aren’t injured!

In a real battle your head is particularly vulnerable and a high priority to protect for a variety of reasons:

  • Head wounds bleed really strongly, between blood in your eyes and problems from blood loss – a relatively light cut can be a death sentence
  • Your head is relatively unprotected compared to your other vital regions.  Even a glancing blow can do serious damage to organs like your eyes, nose, etc
  • Because it is on top of your body, your head is vulnerable to attacks from pretty much every angle except directly below it so it has more ways to get hurt
  • As well as being the end point for the common carotid arteries, your head also contains a vital organ known as the brain.  Serious harm to this organ can result in life long crippling and/or death.

Not wearing a helmet as part of artistic license is often employed with characters who are either not normally in armor, or who need to be recognizable as unique among many armored figures.

However it is also often employed with female characters because of the idea that unless a character has long flowing locks, warm kissable lips and a dainty little nose clearly on display – men won’t be able to tell the character is female (and hence they’re supposed to be attracted to her).

Basically prioritizing the sexualization and objectification of female characters over portraying them as competent, interesting people, etc.

image

– wincenworks

So there’s been a few more people asking why we would include no head protection on the bingo card…

image

I know, I know…

But it probably also bears repeating that generally speaking, that part of the reason it’s a bingo card is because is that singular elements (even completely nonsensical) rarely ruin a design (most people don’t even notice Pharah’s battle thong). 

So if a something tends to skip on helmets for men and women alike for the purposes of giving character’s distinctive appearances and expressions it’s unlikely anyone is going to take issue.  It’s more about stuff like this:

image
image

Or this

– wincenworks