It’s funny how when you have a female character who has magical or supernatural protection, and thus can “wear whatever she wants”, that “whatever” always turns out to be lingerie.
Glock H. Palin, Esq.
Yeah, funny that… It’s almost as if Thermian Argument and false assessment of agency had an ugly baby. And that baby kept turning up everywhere.
~Ozzie
(via bikiniarmorbattledamage)
Personally I am still waiting for the invincible badass woman who battles evil in her sweatpants, t-shirt and a bath robe… fuzzy slippers optional.
Because if the Saints Row games have taught us anything, it’s that true heroism is engaging in spectacular acts of destruction while wearing whatever the fuck you want, no matter how ridiculous.
– wincenworks
skimpy soldier
@bikiniarmorbattledamage finally the armor men deserve
So sassy and empowered! Loving that belt jockstrap on the left, we really need more of those, what with crotch belts apparently being in-season right now. I really like seeing these two side-by-side, the simpler armor on the right, and the more elaborate, detailed one on the left. It’s kind of like seeing the high-ranking knight next to the common city guard.
You can check out the artist’s tumblr for more cute characters of all kinds!
-Icy
@fingersareoptional replied to your post“I’ll be done with my damn term paper later today. So… What armor needs…”
Athena from Smite! All she’s wearing is some kind of dress thing with boob plates stuck to it somehow? Anyways, a goddess of war deserves more.
I don’t know what that tiddy armor is even supposed to protect. I was tempted to fix the amazon armor but honestly that would work better with Artemis than Athena.
I never played Smite so I hope I got it right!
We had some technical difficulties with our stream this weekend, fret not! We got a great SMITE goddess redesign right now.
This really is a lovely armor fix that actually uses the original’s shapes and motifs effectively! I like the breastplate and collar in particular. The headgear looks better as well, and I’m so glad her WoW-esque pauldron got shrunk to a reasonable size.
The only change I would make is to either give her a white tabbard or something else under the belt, just to break up the 2 different browns.
Even though we’ve featured @enecola on the blog before, I will continue to recommend that you check out their blog for more cool redesigns and original character designs~
-Icy
The Laura Croft game we all deserve
It’s 5am and my eyes were so blurry that I legit thought “wow look at Shia LaBuff”
I love the smell of male empowerment in the morning
As our previous reblogs prove, empowered male equivalents to Lara Croft are always welcome on BABD!
~Ozzie
h/t: Way too many loyal BABD readers to count! Thank you all for the heads up!
Y’know, even if there wasn’t a single woman in all of history who had fought in war or a single example of real, historical female armor, there would be no problem in pointing out fantasy armor is unrealistic because the complaint is not based on what women DID wear but what women WOULD wear.
Came across this amazing comment while archive binging our positive examples tag.
I think it perfectly sums up the basic flaw in the “women warriors aren’t historically accurate, so realism doesn’t matter when portraying them in media” kind of rhetoric.
~Ozzie
(via bikiniarmorbattledamage)
Much like… most of the angry ranting we receive, the plea “not proven historically accurate” tends to ignore the key reason why “sex sells” doesn’t work.
In fiction, armor is a costume, and a costume is a statement about the wearer. It is the creator’s opportunity to tell the audience about the world, the society the wearer is from and the wearer of themselves.
If a creator’s most compelling message they can think of is “she’s got sexy bits” then not only is every female character going to be yet another addition to an already over saturated nonsensical trope.
However, if you decide to actually communicate some things like… what the armor is made from, what it’s supposed to protect against, what’s happened to it since it was made, or how the wearer would decorate it: you open up the doors to infinite possibilities.
Some of which may be heavily influenced and inspired by history.
– wincenworks
on a textual level, a female character can dress however she wants and shouldn’t be slut-shamed and hated for what she prefers to wear.
on a metatextual level, she might still have been designed with an intention to provide fanservice.
this means that criticising a design, as opposed to a character, is neither misogyny nor slut-shaming. being displeased about the way a character has been designed is not synonymous with hating her.
have i made myself clear?
CRYSTAL CLEAR.
PS: I love you, durendals. Why didn’t I see this post on my dash ever before? It’s perfection.
Throwback this week: the character’s agency argument in a nutshell.
A silly, sexualized outfit might as well fit* the character’s personality and preferences within her story. That doesn’t make her design any less silly and sexualized to us, real people consuming that story for entertainment and criticizing it.
~Ozzie
*Keep in mind, though, that just as often it can’t be justified with even that much. Some characters walk around in bikinis or boob and butt windows despite being canonically modest or shy or body conscious etc. because Creepy Marketing Guy put his foot down and demanded for every lady in the story to be poster child of “sex sells”.
