LET MOM CHARACTERS BE ATTRACTIVE & BADASS WITHOUT BEING OVERLY SEXUALIZED-
Sindel has such an interesting concept?? But then they tried to make her like… god, I can’t. I did this in like 20 minutes on my phone. No cruelty intended, but if you can’t design a scary older woman to where she’s hot without wearing a leather monokini, you’re not doing it right.
I emphasized the royalty motif with the jewelry & corset (so her impossibly tiny waist makes some semblance of sense). Hope you guys like it.
Emphasis mine, cause I agree 100%. For 20 minutes on your PHONE, trying to work around that disaster, this is such a huge improvement, it’s kind of embarrassing for the original. I wonder what other designs were on the drawing board before they picked this one. At least she seems to have abs in the original…. but damn, was this the worst way to show them? The answer is yes. Check out our bingo of the original “outfit” here.
The way I see it, this is one of those designs where you have to just scrap everything, except for that shrug thing maybe, to redo. I don’t think the corset is a great look (or great for fighting), but honestly, I wouldn’t be able to come up with any ideas in 20 minutes, as anyone who has watched our livestreams will confirm. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I think this is a good example of just how easy it is to not give your character an ugly double-sided-tape-requiring swimsuit made out of that puffy coat material. But this was Mortal Kombat 9, where clothes went to die.
-Icy
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Mortal Kombat Post-11 Sexy Fix, Part 2
Sub-Zero, the Blue PecNinja
As my name might imply (it’s subtle, I know), I love me some icy bois. And who better to give an empowered cold-weather outfit than Sub-Zero himself!
Basically, I just used what he already had on, except I took away…. most of it. He looks so much more comfortable now though. I did take some inspiration from MK9, for that corset look. Of course, Sub-Zero is a bit more conservative in his dress than Scorpion, so he covers his nips.
I also changed his mask, face, and hair. The mask I made more sensual, so that people he’s fighting are distracted no matter if they look at his Hot Bod, or his face. I also removed his face wrinkles, because we can’t have men be wrinkly. Gross. And I let his hair down to give him that mysterious look. I can just see his entrance being like, flipping his bangs and flexing his pecs, with little snowflakes popping out from the cleavage. ???
At the time we streamed this, I couldn’t find a good full-body picture of him, so I had to do with this hips-up one. I did take his pants away, and gave him a bubble butt, but feel free to add your ideas for what he’d wear on his leggies.
-Icy
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Mortal Kombat Post-11 Sexy Fix, Part 1
Since “real fans” demanded for Mortal Kombat11 to bring back the sexyness, we decided to succumb to the demands and fix some disappointingly unsexy characters. If women in martial arts games are titninjas, it only stands to reason that male equivalent is a pecninja, right?
Scorpion the Yellow Pecninja
This design was surprisingly generous in showing us his oblique muscles and a tasteful sideboob sidepeck, so I had something to work of off! I reduced the top only to two strips of cloth forming a V and definitely-not-useless pauldrons that don’t even reach his lovingly rendered biceps now. And, of course, the male-presenting nipples clearly on display!
Since I went for the aesthetic that female characters sported for the last couple MK games, he ended up with long, laced stockings and arm warmers. Also obligatory zero pants.
The last fix was, of course, giving Scorpion an attractive face. Since the hood concealed most of his head, the look had to be redone from scratch. I went with Icy’s suggestion of stylish wolf’s tail as a hairstyle and paired it up with bold eye makeup, to give him a striking gaze.
I’m quite happy with the result and how much of his original costume’s silhouette and color scheme I managed to preserve.
Welp, I struggled with this one. This is Mileena, an evil (?) clone of Kitana, a princess of some place, which was then conquered and absorbed into another place, and thus adopted by the warmonger who conquered her initial homeland, becoming the princess of the imperialist land. Was that confusing? Don’t worry about it, it doesn’t play into either of the ladies’ designs in MK9.
The main takeaway is that, because of the cloning thing, she has monster teeth, hence the mask. That’s about all the “personality” we get out of this particular design.
Step 0 for this stream was to fix her poor spine, which is why her legs are shorter in the redraw.
For the actual redesign, I decided to take inspiration from MK11′s male designs, and use references of samurai and, later, ninja. I also thought it would be cool to give her an oni mask, as an act of rebellion. Like, she hides her scary teeth because “she has to,” but it’s with a mask that has the same teeth on it. (I also changed her face a bit, and took her eyeshadow away.)
I tried to give her slightly more variation in her (awful) color scheme, too. I made black the main color, with pink and white as accents. I gave her a combination samurai/ninja outfit, cause she seems like the “strike from the shadows” type, from what I read about her backstory. I initially had different ideas, but we all know by now how well those work out.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with it. I inserted the white shirt to break up the black shaped, but I’m still not a huge fan of how it looks. And yet, I feel like I put more thought and effort into my concept than the original artist.
-Icy
PS – The lack of shading in the black of the outfit is on purpose.
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Mortal Kombat Pre-11 Fix, Part 1
This particular stream was inspired by the fact that Mortal Kombat waited until game 11 to take even a step back from portraying its women as progressively draftier titninjas. We concluded that while we generally enjoy the official fixes many female characters got in MK11, we could look into the worst designs from earlier games and put our own spin on them.
Skarlet, the Red Titninja
content warning: blood mention
Since all MK ninja ladies are color-coded, of course the red one turned out to be a vampire master of blood magic. And, of course, when you mention anything about her original outfit design, the furious fappers Capital G Gamers would insist that her skin needs to be exposed, so that she can absorb blood of her defeated enemies through her skin, for power. Very valid, totally not contrived reason for oversexualized costume! Poor MK11!Skarlet, she will starve!
[sidenote: googling for image comparison of the two designs without coming across anti-SJW whining and islamophobic memes is downright impossible]
So, on to my own fix of MK9!Skarlet. Her original aesthetic was basically just “tiddy and ass out, with random ninja bits”, so I tried committing better to the ninja aesthetic. Plus much poofier pants, to stay on brand ?
Extending her top made it blend in with facial covering and with her red hair, so I had to reverse the mask’s colors for proper contrast. It looks so much better in dark gray. Pro tip: bare skin shouldn’t substitute for color and shape breaks in costume design.
I don’t even know why someone thought that wearing arm guards straight on bare skin was a good look. Adding long fingerless gloves under them makes both for practical padding and matches the shoes, especially after I converted them from knee-reaching high heels into toeless stockings.
Other minor fixes: short hair, so that ponytail doesn’t get in the way, torso girth that would fit internal organs inside, a hint of red tint in her eye.
Also, while you can’t see her kunai arsenal anymore, I assure you she’s no longer storing unsheathed sharp knives in a way that stabs her leg. That would be dangerous even if ninjas didn’t dip their blades in poison and/or excrement! ?
I am really proud of the color- and shape-breaking in this design. I think it’s as decent job as could be done without completely rehashing her look, like MK11 did. One of my rougher fixes, painting technique-wise, but it has some aesthetic appeal. Hope you enjoy it too!
So a new year is upon us, it’s a good time to reflect on our best and worst of the past year. There’s always plenty of good stuff in our positive examples, and sexy male armor, tags of course.
This movie was a great start to the year and addition to the dialogue regarding the Marvel movies. Representation of women and same-gender relationships were great discussions sparked by it, and it smashed a box office record in the process.
Weird, compelling and a whole lot of destructive fun – the adventures for Jesse Faden warrant almost infinite exploration and interpretation – all without needing to engage in exploitation of women.
The iconic game of killing Nazis provided as with the new and exciting opportunity let the players co-operate as a pair sisters killing Nazis for themselves.
Battle Royales are a big market right now, and it’s nice to see one that embraces diverse characters and provides the female characters with interesting roles and equipment (that is also practical looking)
And because I’m not too proud to admit to schadenfreude:
Mortal Kombat fanbase highlights general toxicity in gamer culture
So, Mortal Kombat 11 came out and it’s… well it’s a Mortal Kombat game, but a few changes to default designs and made a few female characters have less conventionally sexy outfits… and well, capital G gamers did not take it well:
League of Legends studio, Riot Games, confirmed as misogynistic cesspit
Throughout the year various details came out about the studio being a horrendous to female staff – to the point where a judge ruled they have to pay ten million dollars compensation to female employees. It’s good that they received some compensation, but it shows how the video game industry still has a long way and how if a studio’s products look like it doesn’t care about women… it probably doesn’t.
Media and platform capitulation to Nazis
If you’re wondering why you hadn’t seen more on Wolfenstein: Youngblood or Control, it’s because pretty much the vast majority of platforms such as Steam and rating services such as MetaCritic still want to take a hands-off approach to their communities because they just don’t care. Of course, there’s also the issue of how Kelly Marie Tran was all but written out of Rise of the Skywalker.
Well the game is out now and while it was celebrated for its nostalgic qualities, it sadly also carried along all the nostalgic ideas on how female character’s costumes should just be generically sexy without anything thought on… anything else at all… not even whether the clothes can even exist.
(Article does link to some tweets that, unsurprisingly, contain particularly sexist, racist and islamaphobic statements)
That’s right bros, the Red Menace is back and it’s already taken your fighting fucktoys from Mortal Kombat. Though if you’re wondering how, I’ll save you time – none of them have any theory on the how or why beyond buzzword salad.
Companies making or localizing games in a way that does not cater to the way a particular (insensitive, misogynistic) audience demands are not engaging in censorship; they are simply marketing to wider audiences. Ironically, the same people who claim to be fighting for free speech in video games are now trying to punish NetherRealm Studios for making a game they’ve deemed offensive. But what they consider “offensive” is reducing a character’s visible cleavage and slightly changing her facial structure.
Ironically, as the article points out – it seems that Netherrealm did make some backsliding in terms of their (minimal) LGBT+ representation.
But to finish on a positive note, finally Sheeva actually looks like a demon warrior who could break you in half:
And don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that the 2 ladies have some breast support now, but their breasts are still very clearly accented by their clothes for some reason. The designs are getting better, sure. It’s definitely an improvement from a Child’s-Small-size Halloween costume with shoestring (not even a better version than Ozzie’s Green Arrow), but we can do better.
I do hope that Brendan George continues to work hard with his team toward getting that “more mature and respectful” aesthetic that he wants. He’s not all the way there yet, I think.
-Icy
Definitely looking forward to more positive changes to Mortal Kombat character designs in the future, but so far it’s merely a step or two ahead of writing checks they cannot cash for “Doing women better”. Especially when the bar was set that low.
Because are we really supposed to celebrate an exchange of a giantboob window for a smaller boob window on Kitana?
Once again, I’d encourage our readers to not settle for the smallest, safest improvements in female (and/or otherwise marginalized) representation. I get it, we’re starved. But we have the right to ask for more.
Bonus fun fact based only on what some people in reblogs claim: those OneAngryGamer tweets are supposed to be “satire”. Riiight. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
If this is that dude’s idea of “satire”, I prescribe him reading more Point and Clickbait before attempting again to commit his comedic genius to a keyboard.
