As a blog focused on criticism, there’s something we come across regularly in responses to our writing – insistence that we’re “never happy” no matter how much better a particular example is than most media we feature on BABD.
Readers (though mostly detractors) question why we can’t qualify something (mostly games) as 100% positive example if it does one thing better than the rest in its medium/genre/etc.
Examples:
Samus Aran is a formidable fighter and legendary female game protagonist, so it’s totally not a big deal that with every iteration of the character she gets designed as daintier, more conventionally feminine and runs around in skin-tight undersuit and impossible heels rather than her classic power armor.
Overwatch has cast with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, therefore we should ignore how, despite that, most of its female characters are a very slight variation on the same “pretty” character mold and have costumes and poses that put gratuitous emphasis on their boobs and butts.
NieR Automata’s creator admits the main character is another skinny chick in high heels and with boob window, because of his personal preference instead of some convoluted lore-specific excuse… and that honesty means her design is beyond criticism?
It’s quite disheartening to have the audience insist that we should settle for media to be tiny bit better than mediocre and call it a day. That a game or its creator not being as bad as they could deserve to be awarded and held up as an example for the rest of the industry.
We refuse to set our standards so low that “her battle costume isn’t a literal bikini” or “has characters who are female in it” or “shows a male butt/chest sometimes” qualify a title as good, equal gender representation with no room for improvement.
Being better than a random asset-flipping game with stolen artwork in their web ads isn’t hard. Being better than your last project and learning from its mistakes should be a given. Simply not makingasinine excuses for poor representation shouldn’t be applauded. No-one is asking for perfection, but all creators should be held accountable for the product they’re selling, with its good and bad sides.
BABD in particular, instead of doing comprehensive reviews, is focused on female costume and character design compared to male ones. Yet even such specific topic can’t be talked about from both angles without someone decrying unfairness. Does it really say more about us being negative and cynical or the fans being entitled and blind to any challenging point of view?
~Ozzie
*The link leads to a satirical @pointandclickbait article, but the satire is not really all that exaggerated. Yes, really.
So there have been a range of reactions to this, ranging from people celebrating that there is finally an auteur who can be honest about their decisions (rather than assuring us of the validity of breathing through one’s skin) to groans about how unsurprising given Taro’s last game (full size):
But really, this misses the larger conversation: In a medium where the people who are investing millions are understandably concerned about what they’re getting, what kind of decisions get approved and what kind get blocked?
Basically there are various creative decisions which will be green-lit without question (literally any excuse is good enough), but others which are dismissed or allowed a brief moment then cut down.
For such a short sentence, it also carries a lot of unfortunate subtext.
Like the implication that sexualizing female characters is okay, as long as you admit to liking girls/women, as if creator’s sexuality made any difference in this context.
Which also suggests that attraction to girls naturally leads to perpetuating female objectification, even though numerous creative people who are into women somehow manage to make projects without it.
Or just the fact that justifying a very generically sexy female design with “liking girls” in general implies that she represents all girls/women, despite the fact that most women look nothing like her.
So there has been a lot of talk that For Honor is a perfect example of how to do female armor. Perhaps the best part about disagreeing with this was it meant a bunch of people who follow for unhelpful reasons ended up agreeing with their nemesis, Kotaku, but the second best part is it let me talk about design and signalling.
Disclaimer
For the people rushing to point out that in 50% of the classes the designs are mostly identical across genders and I agree that’s a pretty good. We also tag For Honor as a positive example.
However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have flaws and that it’s better to talk about them rather than just rubberstamp it as flawless.
Also I feel it’s important to point out that there’s literally nothing in For Honor that suggests that historical accuracy was even faintly a priority. The designs are mishmash of various elements of history and fantasy based off what the developers thought looked cool. Therefore any arguments about obscure theories in history or archaic standards are pretty much irrelevant.
– wincenworks
Default and Deviation from Default
As Lindsay Ellis pointed out in her Smurfette Principle video, media has a long obsession with presenting men as the Default and women as the Deviation from Default. You can see this pretty clearly if you assess the Samurai outfits and look for trends.
The classes available male samurai have:
Expressive masks (2 with helmets, 1 with a decorative topknot)
High profile breastplates
Skirt/fauld plating
The female only class has:
A blank mask with a generic reed hat
A robe folded to remind you there’s cleavage underneath
No plating around the waist (just the shoulders)
This visual language immediately tells the audience that the Nobushi (a term invented for the game) exists outside the Samurai standard classes, one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong.
This is also evident when you look at the female raider that her outfit was originally designed with only a male character:
Now, there is an argument going around that this shows they couldn’t have bare breasts because too many vendors would have issues with that, and that this outfit is better than a gold bikini top – that is true.
However, Ubisoft knew that they wouldn’t be able to show bare female breasts from the start – so really what this showcases is that they didn’t consider female characters until they got to a point where their best solution was “just glue some fabric over them” (good luck being impressed by her pecs).
Design Priorities
So every faction has two classes that are available to all genders, one male class and one female class. The general trend is that the male class will fit a conventional warrior mode and the female class will be a designed with a different set of priorities in mind, in the Vikings this is particularly obvious when you consider the Valkyries:
This is also particularly prevalent in the Knights when you consider that their core class (the Wardens) get their armor talked up in a cutscene – making their layered metal armor a defining trait. Knights love their formidable steel armor so much they put steel armor in their steel armor.
Except for the ladies-only Peacekeepers who only seem to use steel for their masks, greeves and the pushup bras to ensure they have a rounded bust under their organic armor.
Now, if you think this is being picky I assure you that this is generous compared to what would be expected of any professional art director. And Ubisoft is a massive AAA studio who expects those assets to look realistic in HD.
You vs The World
So, with those six classes where you can pick your gender, and the option to change your skin tone (in the classes where you will get to see skin) are still held up as a fix for many of the issues. (In the same way people proposed that Saints Row 4 fixed everything with letting you create a wide range of characters then recreate your character at any point).
The problem with this is if you look at everything For Honor pitches at the world it promotes that the default hero in this game is a light skinned man in a world of light skinned men with a few light skinned women.
What this means is any time you select a woman in the classes where that is an option, or you change the skin tone of your character to something distinctly darker – your choice is the not an act of selecting your place in the game’s world, rather it’s an act of individual rebellion: using the mechanics of the game to oppose the fluff of the game. (Not entirely unlike when you make an impossibly ugly PC in games with conventional character creators and offer a variety of conventionally attractive faces as default, or may a virtuous hero throw bottles at random people).
Conclusion
Ultimately what this means is that while For Honor allows a wide variety of people to represent themselves (cosmetically) in the game, it’s still not signalling to the world that is actually “for everyone”
Rather, it’s signalling that it’s primarily for light skinned cis men, secondly for light skinned cis women and then has options for people of color with brown skin. The reason it’s getting so much celebration is because this is, sadly, a lot more consideration than is generally given.
For Honor, like Overwatch, is not being celebrated because it has exception equitable designs (particularly compared to say Dark Souls) and inclusion – but rather because the bar for inclusion in high profile media like AAA games is so low that it should be embarrassing not to easily clear it.
– wincenworks
P.S. If you’re a giant budget developer who is planning to distribute your media to millions of people then you should also look not just to make sure you’re not just setting a default and deviation, but also that you’re not inadvertently reinforcing certain unfortunate stereotypes.
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Orisa
Many excited readers informed us of the new Overwatch tank character, Orisa, as well as her child prodigy creator, Efi.
One thing we can say from the start is that Orisa is easily the first female-identified character in the game to whom “can I fap to her?” obviously wasn’t a design priority. So there’s no robo-ass or boobs to show and sexualize. That said, she’s a modified battle robot, so unless Blizzard lowered their standards to super sleazy, it was a given she wouldn’t have arbitrary secondary sex characteristics.
That said, Omnics having gender in the first place is pretty complicated issue, storytelling-wise, as some are considered non-gendered machines (Bastion) and other are mechanical people (Zenyatta), which makes it akin to “Why does Goofy wear pants, but Pluto doesn’t?” sort of philosophical problem. Though Orisa’s story, given that Efi converted her from one kind of robot into another, seems to explain her being female quite well.
It’s also nice to see how since the open beta, number of female tanks in the game rose from 0 to 3 out of 6, making it the first currently the only gender-balanced class in Overwatch.
Efi herself being an African girl is good in terms of diversifying cast, though we’re still yet to see a black female character who is also playable.
~Ozzie
If we are to engage in the oddity of gendered robots it’s good that the explanation be something outside of gender roles or excuses for literal objectification of women.
It would however, be even better if they remembered that while it’s important to have diversity in your secondary cast, it’s even more important to have it in your primary lineup. That and robots are not (yet) an audience for your games.
So I have this theory, after hearing a lot about false equivalence coming up in discussions about female portrayal in comic books. Every time women talk about being sexually objectified, there’s always at least one dude who shows up to whine “BUT MENZ ARE OBJECTIFIED TOO, LOOK HOW UNREALISTICALLY MUSCLEY THEY ARE!” Attempting to point out the difference between a power fantasy and a sexual fantasy – to say nothing of pointing out that both fantasies are portrayed by men, for men – is typically useless. The two are firmly conflated and no amount of actual logic will penetrate.
I figure it all ties back into some of same concepts that underwrite “fake” geek girls, friendzoning, rape apology, and other things of that ilk: namely, that men think the sexual fantasy is a power fantasy.
When creating a powerful woman, men seem to have this automatic jump to making said powerful woman a sex object, because they truly think sexiness is powerful. For them, that’s what female power is: power over men. This is behind all the guys howling that sexy geek girl cosplayers are “preying” on male nerds; this is behind all the men who say women deserve rape for what they wear; this is behind all those “friendzoned” guys who insist they can’t possibly break off the “friendship” themselves because they’re helpless before the objects of their affection. It allows them to disclaim their actions as coerced, shunt away responsibility, and blame women when things don’t go as they like. They “couldn’t resist” the power of attraction.
In comics, men both don’t understand that their male power fantasies aren’t sexy for women (horrendously muscled, bodybuilder physique is NOT typically a sexual ideal), and don’t understand why women don’t derive power fantasy from the sex appeal of the female heroes. “Look,” they’re saying, “you are portrayed as powerful, and men are portrayed as sexy!” This also slots in with the idea that women are only in anything ever because of men – that their desire to attract men is one of the principal driving forces of their existence. That, therefore, the power to attract men should be important to them in a “strong” female character.
I’ve thought about this too much today and it’s goddamn depressing. It’s the same bullshit which says a woman’s only power, her only worth, is in her physical attractiveness, that women are only powerful in relation to men. I don’t really think I can safely contemplate it more right now.
Guh. Need kittens.
MOAR.
(New ILU)
Sorry to reblog myself but okay there’s more. I had to go back to work after I posted this earlier and there’s nothing to do at work but think (monotonous job is monotonous) and even though it’s depressing I couldn’t think about anything else once I got started. /storyofmylife
So inherent in all of the above is the basic concept that men are sexy because they are powerful, and women are powerful because they are sexy. This is predicated on the notion that men have power stemming from something about them as people, whereas women have power stemming from how much they deserve the attention of men. Men not only provide power to women, but they do so by losing power themselves. You guys, maybe this is why men think power is a zero sum game: because they think that women only have power when they are overpowering men with their sexy sexiness.
Fake geek girls, specifically, have an element of dominance issue to them. Look at those hot girls, swanning into fandom, taking away not only attention and material goods (limited fandom resources, such as collector’s editions and etc., has been discussed elsewhere) but also stealing their very wills from them. Better put those girls in their place, because otherwise they’ll be the ones with the power, on account of they have mammaries, and unlike those chicks in comic books they’re not safe paper-and-ink mammaries created solely to be ogled!
Also, since this is all about false equivalence, may I go on a tangent here and talk about realism? Because comics, at least American comics, portray physical dimensions/characteristics for men that are outrageous and close to impossible. Professional bodybuilders can do it but it looks freaking unnatural. No reasonable person expects all men to actually go out and try to become that. However, the way women look in comics is still the way most men, including many who consider themselves quite reasonable, expect women to look. Male superheroes are escapism for men, so they can be as unrealistic as they need to be; female superheroes are also escapism for men, so there’s a limit on how unrealistic they can be. Although niches exist for all kinds of physical-dimension fetishes, women in comics are idealizations of what the men reading/writing those comics would want to have sex with, and so they’re kept pretty close to society’s ideal beauty standards (which, while unrealistic also, are not considered to be such by most men). Let me put it this way: a drawing of a crowded street in which you replace all the men with bodybuilders would look bizarre and ridiculous; a drawing of a crowded street in which you replace all the women with models or even well-dressed porn stars wouldn’t make most people bat an eye, except maybe to wonder what city it is or to make appreciative comments. Women are supposed to look like that, says society. Not just a few, exceptional women – all women, at least if they want to be worth anything.
The above paragraph exists to punctuate this point: when women complain about how they’re drawn in comics, it’s not about realism. The body dimensions of male superheroes are metaphorical representations of their power over whatever they’re up against, whereas the body dimensions of female superheroes are meant to be literal depictions of their power over men.
IDK. This post has wiped me out today and I think I’m done with saddening feminist musings for a little while. Still need kittens and now possibly also schnapps.
Can’t believe I discovered this post just now. It was literally written before I started this blog!
What a nice writeup on false equivalence! Puts the subject of power politics in portrayals of gender we discussed here more eloquently than I ever managed. Possibly my favorite part is:
“So inherent in all of the above is the basic concept that men are sexy because they are powerful, and women are powerful because they are sexy. This is predicated on the notion that men have power stemming from something about them as people, whereas women have power stemming from how much they deserve the attention of men.”
A few things to tidy up here, a lot of them having to do with For Honor.
Since the armor is a bit complicated and there’s a lot of feedback, there will be at least one more post on the differences and design decisions. It will take a little time to assemble though.
Firstly though, thank you for the many submissions we’ve been receiving lately, with our diminished posting schedule it’s hard to keep but we have some great user-submitted posts we want to share soon.
Back to For Honor (and other games): The world presented by the game devs is at least as much a part of the game as the player customization screen.
Having a skin tone slider that allows your character to be the only brown person in the world (and somehow unnoticed for it) doesn’t make a game above criticism for diversity issues.
If you believe that cultural and ethnic diversity is a relatively new thing and so it’s fine when it’s absent in fantasy, then we strongly encourage you to check out the plethora of material available on @medievalpoc ( facebook | twitter )
If you would like to learn more about issues relating to diversity we strongly recommend checking out and supporting:
(And if you’re still stressing out, remember it is listed as a positive example, however we pointed out issues with it. BABD is a critic blog and no product is ever perfect. Not even our favourites.)
So yesterday, Kelly Thompson released an article for She Has No Head! where she discusses 6 recent Female Superhero costume designs that she feels are an improvement of what came prior.
Amongst the designs that were chosen was my Psylocke design, which is in the company of artists like Meredith McClaren, Ross Campbell, Mark Brooks, Jamie McKelvie, Phil Noto, and Jesus Siaz. Not a bad group of artists to be grouped with, if I do say so myself.
Basically the gist of the article was about costumes should be designed by artists who also know fashion and design, rather than just pencilers who will have to be drawing that character for their book, and how when the right person is tasked to design the costume that it will have a far better outcome. She went through and chose characters who she felt needed the update, and talked about how the redesign was an improvement.
Characters like Psylocke, Glory, Poison Ivy, Ms Marvel, Jubilee, Valkyrie, and Domino.
And as anything involving comics, hatred quickly followed the heels of this article. what else would you expect, right?
But within the comments, a few points were being brought up that puzzled me that I sort of wanted to address, Instead of my initial reaction which was to get into a comment war. Thankfully, that was a path I didn’t go down because I had things I needed to do with my day and I couldn’t waste it in what would undoubtedly become an insult match.
One of the ideas that kept coming up was the notion that there is a trend in current female costume designs that the designer must pander to screaming feminists by covering the character from head to toe and take away all of the characters sexiness and by result make them boring.
Now I’ll be honest, I don’t like being yelled at by feminists. But I also don’t like to be yelled at by womanizers, or kids, or anyone. So I want to just rule that out as a motivation. No one wants to get yelled at.
Secondly, sexiness is subjective. A character can still be considered “sexy” even if it doesn’t fit with your tastes. To say that by giving a Female character a piece of fabric to cover her ass cheeks up is ruining her sexiness, ALL that means is that YOU think that an exposed ass is sexy. There is absolutely no way to make a blanket statement about that. Some people think a baggy shirt on a girl is equally as attractive as an uber skin tight shirt.
Sexiness has NEVER been a factor when I design a character. Sex appeal ONLY comes into play when the characters PERSONALITY dictates that as a factor.
The CHARACTER must be first and foremost the inspiration and guideline for all the decisions made when trying to design the clothing. NOT what you want to see on a characters to get your rocks off. I find that frankly immature, and an insult to the character you are trying to do justice to.
Granted, what is “correct” by the character is also incredibly subjective. Everyone see’s a character differently. This is Fact. This is the exact reason that everyone has different favourite characters, we each see something different that attracts us to them. The best a designer can hope for is that their interpretation can ideally appeal to the largest majority possible of that characters fan-base. No one wants to have a design that fans hate, but you can’t please everyone.
And just to speak for myself, modesty was never a factor. I never approached storm’s, or psylocke’s, or spiral’s design with the sole intention of hiding their skin. The amount of real estate that ended up being covered or not was ENTIRELY dictated by my attempt to respect the character. There was no “psylocke has to be fully covered because it would be indecent for any of her skin to be showing”. I wanted to have her covered because I felt that a character who is performing stealth assassinations would want as little wound-able flesh showing.
My go-to example of a character that should be showing skin is, of course, Emma Frost. Here is a character who prides herself on her looks. She is an incredibly confident character mentally, and likes to show off herself physically. Emma Frost flaunting it works because it works for HER. She likes control, she likes power, and one of the best tools for that is her body. She can turn heads with her body, she can command attention with it. She wouldn’t even need to use her telepathy to have someone lose focus. Emma Frost is incredibly intelligent, she knows what she is doing. There has to be a REASON for the skin.
Even with male characters. Namor doesn’t need to cover up anything because he is indestructible. Armour would give him no benefit, and would probably hinder him. In fact, having Namor show off skin actually helps to tell a lot about him as a character. It shows his confidence, it shows he isn’t afraid to be attacked, and it largely makes sense given he lives in water.
Colossus doesn’t need full covering, because all he has to do is become metal, and he has his own protection.
There has to be a REASON.
To what tactical function would a spy need her cleavage hanging out? Does it help a character who is an acrobat?
There is nothing inherently wrong with cleavage, but it needs to be based on either the characters personality or by what they do. I cannot stress this enough. It cannot just be cause the artist felt like drawing a zipper down.
Fan-Service is no longer a logical reason to do anything. The Story should be the Fan-service by being a good story and doing the character justice, and the art should support that.
And, an Artist’s tastes are an entirely defendable reason for something, but dont try to pass it off as anything else. You can argue that it makes sense for psylocke to wear less clothing because she wants less covering her to hinder her mobility, and that does hold some water to it. It does make sense to a point. But to say the stripes of clothe on her serve any other function that just for appearance sake is laughable. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong about just saying something is drawn that way because thats what the artist likes. I do it all the time. There are things that I draw a certain way, that Ross draws a certain way, that Mark draws a certain way. It’s one of the weird double-edged swords about comics, but a lot of the audiences participation with the comic is determined by the artist and their tastes. It’s just one of those things where the artist holds a lot of power in their hands, and as such, there is a level of accountability that the artist owes the readers, but the readers arguments must come from a place of logic, rather than just “You ruined her because I want to see more tits!!”. No one has time for that
Covering characters works. Uncovering characters work. The character determines what will or will not work. There is no mandate. There are no threats. At least there weren’t for me when I designed X-force. I had incredible freedom to design as how I saw fit. As I assume how it went for the other artists that designed the marvel costumes.
I find it funny that out of the 6 costumes in that article, 5 were designed by guys. I think that just goes to show that there isn’t this gender mental block that makes men unable to design practical costumes for the opposite gender.
Anyone can design any costume for any gender as long as they approach it with with respect and understanding.
And thats my rant on that haha
Excellent commentary about priorities and goals in character design.
It’s baffling to me how some creators can spend time pondering over the exact history of a character, or how to compose a shot to homage to a classic work, then turn around and decide that it is VITAL that a female character has to be as sexy as possible even if it goes against all other aspects of her and her story.
I mean really, I would think the way they dress would be considered far more important an aspect about the character’s expression than the occasional line they drop about what school they went to.
– wincenworks
Took the liberty of bolding the most relevant parts for emphasis (and to break down the great wall of text that this article is).
~Ozzie
As a followup to the article about X-23′s newest costume, it’s time we brought back this comprehensive post explaining how superhero costumes have to be designed with a character-driven purpose* in mind. And “sex fanservice sells” is no such purpose.
Oh look, Liz got me a bingo. And Mordred was soooooo close.
I decided to do some Female Armor Bingo for my least favorite designs in FGO. I don’t think it’s really worth it to write any pieces on these armor selections because I don’t wanna tire myself out on something no one else is going to read, so this is a much simpler way of venting my opinions.
For the ‘no head protection’ bit, I just went with ‘the character has stuff in their hair that serves no purpose as armor’, rather than ‘they aren’t wearing a helmet’ or anything like that (or, in the case of Mordred, ‘they used to have a helmet and now it’s gone). Liz should technically have that, but I don’t know if her horns are decoration or not, so I decided might as well leave that be.
What an impressive collection of all flavors of terribad! Not that we’re surprised, seeing what bingos Fate/Grand Order served us before (especially how it ruined Saber/Artoria).
Incidentally, “I don’t think it’s really worth it to write any pieces on these armor selections […] so this is a much simpler way of venting my opinions.” is one of the reasons Female Armor Bingo exists. Those skimpy female warrior outfit tropes are so boring and prevalent it’s not worth wasting lengthy explanations on. Just fill out a bingo card and link to all the others we’ve had here for comparison. The point about the creativity of bikini armor makes itself.
~Ozzie
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Spooky Ladies competition entries Part ½
The gallery of the Spooky Lady category from our Overwatch Halloween Contest will come in two halves. Huge thank you to all the participants!
Artist credits are on the caption of each image. We appreciate and encourage all the creativity and ideas that went into those non-sexualized Halloween skin designs.
PS: We’re withholding Female Armor Bingo posts this week to properly display and promote all the contest artwork. Bingo Sunday will come back next weekend!
