Tag: question

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Hi there! So I’ve been researching female armors lately, and I’d like your help to clarify something if possible. Is the classical woebegone “boobplate” totally unfeasible/impractical in reality, or is it just unnecessary but still functional? What I’m having in mind here isn’t the ice-cream-scoops one with a cleavage but rather one solid steel piece over the chest, like a B-cup armor instead of the A-cup unisex one. Thank you!

There’s been a lot of discussion on how functional boobplate is (barring the most extreme cases of dangerous cleavage), the biggest consensus seems to be that creating breastplate that fits the form of boobs adds unnecessary work for the armorer and no noticeable benefits to the wearer (but lots of potential problems).

As for “unisex” armor being A-cup… it’s really not true. Most of standard combat-ready breastplates include a lot of place for chests of most sizes, especially because there’s lots of padding required unbeneath, which may act as additional binding to the breasts.

For more details, go into boobplate tag, especially posts tagged also as acticle.

~Ozzie

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Am I the only one who’s getting sick of the excuse of “That’s how the artists want to draw, so stop telling them what to do!” excuse when it comes to terrible bikini battle armour? It’s like these people expect all designs to be nothing down to personal preference, and yet never think about the bigger picture of just how many male artists are part of our culture that influence these decisions? Seriously, it’s a poor execuse and I’m sick of hearing ut.

We’re definitely with you there, friend! That’s why there’s the “art shouldn’t be censored!” rhetoric bingo square: cause “creative freedom” should not be a Get Out of Jail Free card of character design.
As femfreq puts it:

imageimage

Yup, it’s all about the big picture of our media, not individual examples. Crying “artistic freedom” (or “stylization”, for that matter) to justify questionable design ignores seeking for the reason artist decided to make such choices.

Publishing this ask cause those points need to be iterated more.

~Ozzie

The other important thing that people should remember is that commercial art (such as covers, character designs, 3d models in games, etc) is not intended to be a purely artistic experience – it’s a product for consumption.

Artists will have to follow briefs that tell them kind of mood to give the work, what characters to put in it, what themes to put in – unlikely that an art director adding “Don’t put the female characters in ridiculous and hyper-sexualized costumes” would somehow break a professional artist’s will to create.

– wincenworks

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hyratel replied to your photo “For the record: BABD is generally not devoted to reviewing personal…”

Costume Design Community Service seems to be either shut down or on hiatus, they’re a blog intended for this kind of review

Yup. I would recommend submitting the designs for to costumecommunityservice if not for the fact that this blog (which I highly recommend, BTW) stopped doing the reviews (went on hiatus with them?). Though it’s pretty understandable why, reviewing art takes a lot of time and effort (that’s why both of my reviews weren’t published right away).

~Ozzie

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Maybe I’m weird, but I always worry about bikini armor girls dealing with menstrual stuff. I know I wouldn’t want to run around in a metal g-string at that time of the month…

Nah, it’s totally not weird to be worried about a legit anatomical problem.

As we learned from The Chainmal Chick, actual panties made from chainmail are out of the question, considering how absolutely uncomfortable (chafy and pinchy!) they would be… It’s safe to assume similarly with any other kind of underwear made of metal or other material not suitable for it… especially if it’s a g-sting/thong.

But then again, we can probably safely assume that any work of fiction conveniently omits certain bodily functions as “too gross” to ever address on-screen/page…

That said, it would definitely be entertaining to see, for example, a video game that decided to acknowledge most of their thong-clad heroines have functioning uteri and thus make them wear something comfortable and conservative regularly for like 1/6 of the gameplay!

You want gritty realism, AAA gamers? Then there aren’t many grittier things about everyday real life than periods! >-D

~Ozzie

edit: Slight rewording of the initial sentence to make it more inclusive.

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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)…

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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

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What is your opinion regarding the Adepta Sororitas’ (Warhammer 40k) armor? The flaws that I can see are their boob-sock-plate-torpedo-things and the general lack of a helmet. Are there any other flaws that you can point out? The ask does not allow links, or I just do not know how to properly add one, sorry. :<

Here’s why I’m not the person to ask such questions, in case you missed the note…
…BUUUUT it just happens that the very first submission to this blog was a very comprehensive article my friend wrote about Sisters of Battle, especially Sisters Repentia.

In short, Warhammer 40k is pretty ridiculous by definition, but regular Sisters have surprisingly decent armor (for the standards of such setting, that is), with the only major fault being the boobplate…
With Sisters Repentia though, as much as the idea of redemption by death is interesting, there is no reason why their death-wish outfits need to be the skimpy, pants-lacking, physics-defying… uh, this:

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Edit: Valuable comments by yanavaseva

yanavaseva

 replied to your post:

And these aren’t even the most blatant sisters repentia outfits I’ve seen. As of regular sisters of battle, sometimes they are drawn with high heels, but on the other hand, sometimes they have helmets and not a boobplate, so this balances it out.

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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

officialryanlewis asked bikiniarmorbattledamage:

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 2
does 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:
  1. 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.
  2. 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:

  1. Poking fun at sexist female warrior costume designs (preferably by putting them in realistic scenarios).
  2. 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)
  3. Providing resources on armor design (especially armor for women).
  4. 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.
PS: kiwi-disu, please check the mods tag. I already discussed how mods should be judged separately from the games, as they’re user-made and, as disgusting as some are, they do not represent the game makers’ opinions or choices.
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I skimmed a couple pages over here and saw a lot of complaining about the way mmos handle things. Tbh, I’d love it if more took the same tact as SWTOR has. With the exception of a few pieces of gear that looks really dumb on both genders, and some female only or male only gear, nearly everything looks the same, male or female, and new gear is constantly being added in each patch. So you can give your Jedi or Agent or Sith proper armor or you can dress them in underwear. It’s up to the player.

Just as with Skyrim before, I have to admit I never played Star Wars: The Old Republic, so I’m not the best person to validate whether or not the game does a good job at keeping costume designs equal. Anyone with specific examples at hand, feel free to submit with your own comments!

And yeah, I will always agree that it should be totally up to the player to decide how their character is dressed (so of course the game should provide as many options as possible).