where can I find the original picture in your icon from?
Here: http://luckyfk.deviantart.com/art/Fantasy-Armor-355029113
LuckyFK did also two more pictures with that poor elf lady, this time poking fun at the typical eschergirls poses 😀
Check out the artist’s gallery (NSWF warning, though), guys, for if not for their image, there would be no Bikini Armor Battle Damage!
~Ozzie
That post about “attractive armor without bikini” actually left me wondering: why would you actually want an attractive armor? Sure, everyone loves an aesthethically pleasing armor, but we can’t just forget that armor is mostly made to be, well, intimidating. It’s supposed to make people both safer in combat and also more powerful. Not having to battle – because you look so threatening or even downright unbeatable – is some 40% of the purpose of an armor piece. Why does it need to be attractive?
Regarding: this post
That’s actually a very good question! In short, the answer is (and better get your body ready for that)…
Believe it or not, some of the Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo arguments hold up under specific circumstances.
But let’s set some things straight first: armor is done primarily to be protective.
It sure helps if the design makes the wearer intimidating enough to make the opponents surrender right away, but at its core it was invented as a physical barrier between a person and whatever or whoever threatens their life or health.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for decorative armor in the history. Highly ornamented muscle cuirass (male equivalent of boobplate) was designed to impress and worn by high-standing officers during non-battle special occasions, like parades.
That said, in the world of fiction the distinction between purely functional and decorative armor is not necessary. It’s not real, and unless the setting of choice is gritty life-like naturalism, the armor (and any other design) needs just to be believable, not realistic. We commented on it before.
This is where those two bingo squares come in. Fictional worlds, especially the more fantastic ones, can be stylized, sometimes even to ridiculous degree, as long as all of the world is consistent with its level of stylization.
That’s why it’s not inherently bad to have people fight monsters in G-strings… It just needs to all make sense within its own narrative and preferably not be gendered (which basically never happens).
Hope that answers it.
~Ozzie
Posts I won’t be making
Bringing this back, because many readers clearly have trouble with scrolling a few posts down and reading it, so here:
I am NOT INTERESTED in “Have you seen this particular costume/character/show/game?” messages. I won’t be publishing those asks and my private answers will link back to the post below.
However, IF YOU DO HAVE INTERESTING COMMENTARY on some particular costume/character/show/game and want to share it, then submit it as image post and add your comments in the description. Examples may be positive or negative, as long as there’s something constructive to say about them.
Keep in mind, it must be image + commentary. Chances are, I will not post only images or only comments, because they’re inconclusive on their own (especially if I’m not familiar with what’s submitted, which is not unlikely).
Since the blog almost doubled in popularity since last week, I’ve been getting the same types of asks and submissions, and as far as I’m grateful for attention from you, dear readers, I’ll try to explain why submissions below aren’t what I’m looking for:
voqurnen-jovein submitted:
Posts I won’t be making
Since the blog almost doubled in popularity since last week, I’ve been getting the same types of asks and submissions, and as far as I’m grateful for attention from you, dear readers, I’ll try to explain why submissions below aren’t what I’m looking for:
voqurnen-jovein submitted:
Here’s another one for your Skyrim collection.www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/30616/
voqurnen-jovein submitted:
Another one for Skyrim… this is actually pretty skimpy armor if you really look at it (sideboob, low slung chainmail over leather underwear), but.
http://images.uesp.net/1/19/SR-load-Woe_to_the_unwary_explorer.jpg
You’ve probably already gotten opinions on it, but the female armor in the elder scrolls games is the best because it’s exactly like the male armor. Like there is no difference.
kiwi-disu asked:
I know you’ve brought up Skyrim before but if I may interject one thing I found while browsing YT, the Evil Lair of Hydra mod. Now this may just be a kink thing but it’s very.. unsettling. It’s a dungeon filled with tons of naked women waiting to be killed, most of them in chains,with nooses around their necks, on torture tables, strapped to a post being stabbed, chained on top of a fire, in a battle arena, laying unconscious on a bed, etc. It just doesn’t sit right with me.. : /
ululato asked:
Hi there! Can’t believe I’ve only just found this blog, it’s awesome! Just wondering what you guys think of the armor sets in Guild Wars 2?
dan-heron asked:
Say, have you seen stuff from Capcom’s Monster Hunter? They have 4 types for each armor, male/female and sword fighter/gunner. While there are some obviously fanservice exclusive for females, there are also some nice surprises like full concealing and bulky armor, or more surprisingly the same fanservice for male armors, like chest and midriff exposed and using short shorts
cat-nip-cartel submitted:
Guild Wars 2does this count as a positive example? i mean /most/ of the female armour is structured the same as the male armor aside from vagueboobplates. at least with the heavy armor anyway!
So, for the future reference:
- Please do not send me just bare examples of badly dressed warrior women. This blog is not just collecting examples. Best place for that would be repair-her-armor, where they are collected for reference for future fixes.
- Do not ask me if I find a certain game counts as a good or bad example. Chances are, I’m not familiar with it, so best I could do is to ask readers for their opinions.
Or, if the game is Elder Scrolls V, I talked about it already a few times and you can check the Skyrim tag.
If you want to quantify how questionable any female armor is, compare it with BABD bingo card as a reference.
Things Bikini Armor Battle Damage is devoted to are:
- Poking fun at sexist female warrior costume designs (preferably by putting them in realistic scenarios).
- Analyzing and commenting on the inherent design flaws of sexist warrior costumes (that doesn’t mean I’ll review every armor design you link to me)
- Providing resources on armor design (especially armor for women).
- Highlighting examples of fully-protected female warriors and realistic scenarios for fighting half-naked.
^Please try to keep your submissions and questions generally within above rules.
I don’t know I never understood worrying about uncomfortable on a character that doesn’t show it on their face nor when it doesn’t seem to bother anyone else in the story. I also feel like you can’t simply say that a character with partial nudity is automatically nothing but ogle bait. I don’t see why looking at the characters actions overall and how the story treats her not artstyle wise but event wise isn’t more important. Then worrying about her back breaking despite her moving around fine.
I literally answered everything you’re trying to argue about in my last post. You’re trying really hard to be the smart one here… by blatantly ignoring everything I wrote.
Go read my previous answer to you. Ten times. If that doesn’t help, have someone read it to you.
Reading comprehension is your friend. I can not help you otherwise.
You know these kind of things always make me go “What?” when i see them because I don’t play mmos to be restricted to full covering and boring plate armor.I rarely play guys because of that and I enjoy having non practical armor in game. That’s another thing I never get the need for practicality in something where non of the weapons are practicable, the damage isn’t realistic and non of the actions that characters can take are even close to those in real life.
First of all, should I assume that by “these kind of things” you mean this site? Uh, okay?
I feel like you missed the whole point of this blog.
You personally prefer bikini armor and find it more interesting than full-covering, realistic one? More power to you! Then again, it’s not about you and your personal preferences.
It’s about pervasive trends of how media depicts women almost exclusively in objectifying ways and offers no alternative to this objectification. Even if said media is supposedly interactive and customizable (video games, especially RPGs of all kinds).
BABD blog is devoted to the fact of how those trends are especially obvious when combat-based female characters are depicted.
I’m not advocating for covering every female warrior from head to toe (if you haven’t noticed), but for some logic and consistency.
You see, there is such thing as Willing Suspension of Disbelief, the untold agreement between the author and the audience that helps to experience immersion in the fiction.
The audience intuitively agrees to overlook unrealistic/fantastic aspects of experienced fiction as long as they make sense in the narrative. It does not mean they uncritically assume everything out of ordinary to be normal.
If the author doesn’t create consistent rules for their world of fiction, the illusion of reality fails and the audience can not suspend their disbelief anymore.
So really, there’s no “It’s just fiction, so don’t expect gritty realism from it” card to play. Again I’m going to refer a reply I reblogged some time ago from simonjadis:
A naturalistic story tells a story that is completely plausible in our world. No wizards, no dragons, no secret vampires, no alien invasions. Telling a realistic story is telling a story that is logical and consistent and makes sense (even if the setting is in a fictional world or in a reality very different from our own).
This is usually the case with skimpy armor. The point of armor is to provide physical barrier, protection from bodily damage in combat.
For instance, a bikini made out of chainmal (or any other armor material) is just a weird (and possibly uncomfortable) bikini, not an armor. It serves the purpose of a bikini (cover nipples and crotch!), not of the amor (protect everything that can be slashed or stabbed!).
So in the setting where people wear armor for the same reason as in the real world, a knight in a metal bikini looks simply ridiculous, and, again, probably can not move without major discomfort.
As for the settings that justify skimpy battle outfit with magic/science/whatever that can create protective barrier… Yeah, makes sense AS LONG AS EVERYONE’S COSTUME IS LIKE THAT. If the same magic armor looks completely regular for guys, but takes form of underwear/bikini/whateverthehellthisis for women, then we face a double standard which can not be justified in-story.
There’s also the issue of skimpy armor supposedly symbolizing empowerment or badassery of a female character.
The thing is, there’s nothing inherently empowering (or sexual, but that’s another story) about partial nudity. There’s a bigger issue of cultural context behind it.
If you stop to think why most half-naked warrior women look like lady on the left, not like one on the right, you’ll understand how female nudity is used to be ogled; not to symbolize power, like male nudity.
Then again, some heroines may be characterized to feel empowered by being sexual (Emma Frost and Bayonetta are most frequently brought up as examples), but the message fails through if everyone around them is designed to look equally sexual, despite having different personality and views on that.
Just like those characters, you personally are completely free to read non-practical costumes in MMOs as attractive/empowering, but those who have different opinion should be given the choice between any level of practicality, especially since character customization is a big part of roleplaying game experience.
killerlolita asked:How exactly does covering up a character show that sexy outfits aren’t empowering exactly? That and how does dressing up male characters in sexy outfits making a point?It’d be easy to ask the inverse: how does dressing up female characters in revealing outfits make them empowered?To answer this question we’re going to do an exercise that anyone familiar with the internet can participate in. First: imagine an adorable kitten (if you’re having trouble, Google images is rife with them… like I said: internet). Now, imagine that adorable kitten wielding a weapon (oh hey Google). Are these cats now empowered? Or has the situation gone from visually appealing to funny?That’s what most female character design does: creates a juxtaposition of eye candy that thinks just because it’s started wielding weapons and calling itself tough, suddenly it’s empowered. It isn’t. It’s a cat with a lightsaber.As for how dressing up a male character in clothes usually reserved for their female counterparts makes a point, well, mostly it helps show how ridiculous these outfits (and also the way the women are generally posed) are. We’re so used to seeing our female characters looking (and acting) this way, that it often doesn’t register. It helps get people asking why it’s okay for a woman to go into battle like this, but it’s funny when a man does.-Staci
PREACH!
Bikini Armor Battle Damage: marofiron replied to your post: NSWF image under the cut! Although it…
Bikini Armor Battle Damage: marofiron replied to your post: NSWF image under the cut! Although it…
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).
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.