The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Tag: Positive Examples
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Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Speaking of the Sengoku period, this ultra-violent game set in that period has a variety of female warriors with different ages, backgrounds, etc and they all look amazing.in their own ways. Their particular natures showing through.
Of course, FromSoft has an amazing history of positive examples in Dark Souls and Bloodborne, but its particularly interesting that they did it with this game given so many other creators treat the period as free license to go completely off the rails with designs and the game taking the historical context seriously.
Now, the Last of Us 2 is (assume spoilers in all the links)
a very contentious piece of art – with a wide spectrum of opinions about the role of violence (1,2), depictions of a trans character (1, 2) and so much more. However, there are some parts are indisputably positive: the graphics are amazingly beautiful, the accessibility is leaps and bounds ahead of so many AAA titles, and the outfits for the female characters are excellent.
Someone is frantically typing a comment about how “they’re just clothes” but they’re really so much more, these are outfits specifically chosen and tweaked to reflect the world the characters live in, and the demands of their lifestyles.
The outfits and the way they change to reflect the changes in the mood and the characters – all without distracting from the rest of the narrative. It’s a great example of how much story telling potential you can get out of clothes when you’re not limiting yourself to the most T&A possible.
– wincenworks
edit: fixed first Polygon link (right after spoiler warning)
I was originally going to feature Siobhan largely due to excitement about the consistency applied to celtic imagery (including using braids instead of locs).
However I felt this selection of his work showcases how once you get away from the expectation that your female characters must be sexy and wear poorly observed/designed bikinis.
a painting inspired by Bieiris de Romans, a 13th century French poet, who wrote one of the few surviving lesbian love poems of the middle ages to a woman named Mary. A medieval romance.
a stanza from her famous poem to her lover:
Lovely woman, whom joy and noble speech uplift, and merit, to you my stanzas go, for in you are gaiety and happiness, and all good things one could ask of a woman
This artwork is beautiful for multiple reasons and I am glad that featuring a woman in a functional (if ornate) armor and helmet isn’t the biggest one of them.
“And I shall return to my homeland, through fire and waves. I shall return to the mountain.“
An OC painting, finally!! Dhin is a very meaningful character to me, so I’m excited that I had some free time to do her justice.
Dhin was blessed by the Elusive Sun, a deity that reaches out to those who go through hardship. She longs to return to the North and her home, to reunite with her family. On her way she’s joined by a merry bard who steals her heart (tho she wouldn’t tell him that…)
Fantastic blend of fantasy and practicality. I really like the purposeful design of the armor – it gives a feeling for how the character would move on the battlefield.
I also really like the fluting that looks both decorative, and like it’d enhance the ability of the plates to take a solid hit.
Obviously the issue of why boobplate is (with very few exceptions) always bad has been covered extensively on this blog already, so I’m not going to go into that other than this scene was massively disappointing because for the first season – Mandalorian really committed to the whole warrior cult thing and had an amazing female character in amazing armor.
(This is why we never just “relax” after a positive example, way too many properties do this kind of back sliding as soon as they are proved successful and execs invite a certain type of devil into the decision making process)
I am talking specifically about women who have large breasts and:
Are sick of being treated as hypersexual because of their bodies
Are sick of having to pay extra or buy alternatives to clothes they want because companies don’t cater for their “desirable” shape
Are sick of, at events like LARPs, paintballs, kayaking etc, being given gear made for smaller chested women and having their complaints about it being uncomfortable or impractical for them go unheard, ignored or ridiculed
Now I said “selectively” above because I noticed that among the group I looked over there was a distinct trend of “liking” posts yelling at Anita, and not liking posts calling for people not to automatically sexualize big boobs – and a lot of liking more misogynistic posts that were very insulting to women in general.
All of this is to say that when we have these conversations, it is important to remember that the goal is to have representation and inclusion in all kinds of fantasies for all kinds of people – and assholes will never hesitate to try to play people against each other in order to try to keep a bigger their overly privileged position.
