bikiniarmorbattledamage:

baddreamslimbo:

poisonivyys:

@bikiniarmorbattledamage

Speaking of boobs in fighting games

@pointandclickbait as usual has a really great take on the case

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Remember that time when dudebros declared that Fury in Darkseiders III, sporting a (vaguely jiggly) metal boobplate, was “unfeminine and almost no more clearly recognized as woman”

Well, now we have a version of that devoted to sexualization of the undead. How… precious. 

Bonus fun fact based only on what some people in reblogs claim: those OneAngryGamer tweets are supposed to be “satire”. Riiight. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 

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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. 

~Ozzie 

Throwing this post back not because sexyfying the undead is particularly topical* right now, but because of the point it’s making about satire at the end. 

As I explained in the comments under the original copy of this post, “Political Correctness Gone Mad: I Barely Want To Fuck This Zombie” is clearly satire. 
“For the sake of boner culture, hopefully the sexy outfits are still viable option via the gear customization” is really not. 

Believe me, I would not be able to make a whole rhetoric bingo if I haven’t seen a big deal of people unironically defending stuff along the lines of “boner culture”. 

~Ozzie 

* Sadly, it’s always topical to some degree 

Why A Street Fighter ‘Butt Slap’ Was Removed

Why A Street Fighter ‘Butt Slap’ Was Removed

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

So remember the outcry that somehow a zoom in shot of Rainbow Mika (R. Mika)’s butt slap was so critical to the game that it’s remove was an act of vile censorship?  Well we now have the official word from the Street Fighter team on what led to that memorable day:

“We didn’t make any change because of external influences,” he says. “Those changes came up internally. We decided to remove that because we want the biggest possible number of people to play, and we don’t want to have something in the game that might make someone uncomfortable.

The even better news is that those who were enraged that such an amazing act of censorship could occur have pretty much re-affirmed the point.  After a month and a lot of publicity, the petition only gathered 6,300 signatures (and at least one duplicate I noticed).  Most of these guys still don’t seem to believe that the developers actually decided on this change on their own…

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and they’re probably all going to buy the game anyway:

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I can’t imagine why the developers may choose to try to appeal to people outside of this demographic… oh wait, I can.

– wincenworks

Today’s throwback: reminder that “self-censorship” isn’t really a thing and maybe a developer doing the bare minimum to not alienate potential audience pre-release is neither “pandering to the SJWs” nor literally a vile act of censorship? ?

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~Ozzie 

See also: Creative freedom masterpostJimquisition: Editing Versus Censorship | A list of accounts of “censorship” in video games, including Mika’s butt, that this @pointandclickbait​ article applies to:

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kame-tan:

mysweetvilllain:

glorious-spoon:

mortuarybees:

yes i am a big advocate for realistic clothes and armor in media like

this is perfect and? extremely fucking hot

but also ive never seen anything hotter than when geralt is fighting without his armor and instead in tight pants and several of his shirt’s buttons undone and i want every fight scene from here on like that

Put the women in full plate armor, put the men in open-front shirts and tight leather pants.

Seriously. Both are sexy. Give me full plate armored women. PLEASE.

Give me open shirt, tight pants on men who wield a sword.

I will fucking eat that up like it’s my last meal.

@bikiniarmorbattledamage

This ties in quite nicely to a recent fiasco where a guy named Andrew Klavan, who is apparently an author of some sort, made an even more ignorant than usual rant.  It was about about how he hated the show because he considered it “unrealistic” that the women – particularly GoddessQueen Calanthe, were shown as capable of winning sword fights or doing a sword fight (it’s not clear).

Swords YouTube was united in their rejection of this notion – not just for his hilariously inaccurate claims about equipment but also because they unanimously agreed there are three major factors that decide who’s likely to come out of a battle second-best, and who gets to live:

  • Quality of training
  • Quality of equipment
  • Luck

Obviously a queen of a nation that regularly has battles and skirmishes would certainly have access to the best training, and commission the best quality armor – and we can all agree to that anyone who is born into royalty is lucky.

So really, if this author and those like him were upset at having to suspend disbelief about sword fighting, in a world with literal dragons, they’d be mad at these scenes with Geralt kicking ass in just a shirt.

Weird that he’s bothered by a realistic depiction of a powerful woman, but not a comically unrealistic power fantasy of a man.

Links to various YouTube videos discussing the matter below¹.

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– wincenworks

¹ If you’re wondering why one of the bigger, more self important names may be missing, its because hes already made his stance on women pretty clear – and it’s bad.

More of The Witcher on BABD 

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

adobsonartworks:

SYAC – NSFW Context.

A lot of people who view my feminist leanings as an “act” always point to the fact that I used to draw fetish art a decade ago as some sort of hypocrisy. But the fact of the matter is that just because I don’t draw fetish art anymore and identify as a feminist now doesn’t mean I have some sort of vendetta against it. The problem that arises when feminists clash with comic/game/geek content is because the “context” for the “sexy artwork” either doesn’t exist or is so flimsy it might as well not exist. There is nothing wrong with NSFW artwork, providing the context makes sense (and that includes the WHERE and HOW it’s being published).

Sidenote: I CANNOT recommend “Sunstone” enough to y’all. It’s amazing and you should check it out! Here’s the link to it on AMAZON.

PS: I genuinely don’t care that Quiet is a mute and can’t talk (that’s problematic in and of itself). I just wanted to make a point.

Huh, who knew there is a time and place to make female characters sexy and that time is not “always”?

We’re also more than familiar with the accusation that we are just fun-hating killjoys who hate sexy women and want them always non-sexual and covered head to toe (extra fallacy points if something islamophobic is added to the last part). That’s why it’s a square on the rhetoric bingo

TL; DR: CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING! 

~Ozzie 

See also: When is it okay to have a female character in less than practical or protective armor? – a helpful presentation by @wincenworks 

Time for a reminder that this “sexy women just because” is such a norm that many seasoned creators still want to promote the idea that doing other than is somehow at odds with making a quality product.

Cliff Bleszinski recently got roasted for an Instagram post where he framed putting diversity into LawBreakers as a factor in its collapse, specifically because it did not get the praise that Overwatch did:

Ever since the studio closed I’ve been wracking my brain what I could have done differently. Pivot HARD when the juggernaut of Overwatch was announced. Been less nice with my design ideas and more of a dictator with them.

One big epiphany I had was that I pushed my own personal political beliefs in a world that was increasingly divided.

Instead of the story being “this game looks neat” it became “this is the game with the ‘woke bro’ trying to push his hackey politics on us with gender neutral bathrooms.” Instead of “these characters seem fun” it was “this is the studio with the CEO who refuses to make his female characters sexier.” Instead of “who am I going to choose” it became “white dude shoehorns diversity in his game and then smells his own smug farts in interviews” instead of just letting the product … speak for itself.

It’s okay to be political when your company or studio is established for great product FIRST. But we were unproven and I regret doing it. (This will be quite the doozy of a chapter in the upcoming memoir.)

Chris Franklin (aka Errant Signal) has a different theory:

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Now obviously there were the usual suspects chanting “Get Woke Go Broke” when the game closed, but largely (in places that are not boiling cesspits) it didn’t get a lot of discussion either way because of a wide variety of other, more pressing factors like gameplay, bugs, sever issues, graphical similarity to Overwatch, etc.

But the first thing that springs to mind is “I should have made the female characters sexier” because the conventional wisdom is somehow (despite society’s ongoing oppression of sex workers) female characters looking less than porny is a risky political statement.

This of course, ignores the vast deluge of games that leaned hard into sex sells then immediately crashed and burned spectacularly.

It really shouldn’t be controversial to give female characters the same design considerations that male characters get.

(And also like, I can assure you – there is a demand for very, very sexy men)

– wincenworks

I am going to play Devil’s Advocate…

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

blackoutkick:

and question why majority of the “Gaming Feminist” population cry and moan about “Bikini Armor” in World of Warcraft 

But when it comes to representing a male character in cosplay they decide to strip it all down into a “Bikini Armor”… Contradiction at it’s best.

You want to look sexy… Go for it, But don’t point the finger at “sexist pigs”. 

This is why I can’t take none of you social bloggers serious.

Now feel free to read between the lines and tell me about all the irrelevant crap I don’t need to read while you derail from the BASIC point I’m making here.

So… that “basic” point is “feminist who criticize stupid armor bikinis can not EVER want to look sexy or dress scantily out of their own free will”?

That’s why I have no trust for anyone who starts their statement with “I am going to play Devil’s Advocate”.

~Ozzie

After I finished laughing… which took a while.  I decided I would go out looking for this army of social justice warriors in sexy Rule 63 Warcraft cosplay.  Surely there must have been a legion of them to inspire such vitriol.

I found: One woman doing a single sexy WarCraft crossplay… and found no references to Social Justice, social justice issues or “sexist pigs” on any of their profiles (Indeed Google returns no results for their screen name + “sexist pigs”)

So not only did they miss the point – but this argument exists only in their imagination.  That reminds me of something…

– wincenworks

Time to remember why we put the Devil’s Advocate in our FAQ

Post otherwise worth bringing back, because we’re never free of hilariously oversensitive dudebros crying HYPOCRISY at straw feminist SJWs for somehow simultaneously hating bikini armor and… wanting to personally dress up as sexy male characters in said bikinis? Okay. 

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Which totally happens. With frequency… not. 

And even if that did happen, we have a tags about agency and false equivalence which address such unfair comparisons. Have a good read!

~Ozzie 

Today (well on 22 November I suppose) in fragile masculinity * – concerns that they won’t be able to immerse themselves as a female character in a game where your exposure to the character:

  • a voice
  • a pair of hands

(The poster would later update to advise that he thinks any VR protagonist having a gender was “bad” while spouting ignorant opinions on gender – without ever really addressing his assumption everyone reading his post would be male)

The main marketing material showing Alyx Vance doesn’t show much about her.. except for she’s got junk in that trunk.

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This is kind of ridiculous given that Merle Dandridge, Alyx’s original (not returning) voice actor talked in the director commentary about how important Alyx was for representation.  Valve seem to be toning back on it but the worst people are leaning hard into it:

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(Unsurprisingly this member was also banned from the Wolfenstein: Youngblood community hub… in case you wondered if they are really dedicated to being terrible in every way they can be)

Thankfully there is at least one quality wallpaper available if you go the official site… and scroll down… past the butt shot and way down to the bottom.

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– wincenworks

* For those of you who skipped reading this to write a comment about how outraged you were at this being anti-man, anti-masculine, etc. I assure you I am a very masculine cishet man who happens to be secure enough that he doesn’t have to get upset at a game having a female protagonist.  It’s pretty great.

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

As a follow up to HBomber’s excellent video discussing how popular media (especially games) doesn’t objectify men I thought it was worth pointing out that the double standard is especially obvious if one looks at novelty superhero costumes (using the above examples or any of those featured at @fucknosexistcostumes)

Male costumes commonly come with the padding to simulate the muscular physiques, because they’re to make the “every man” feel like a superhero without having to work out or diet.

Female costumes commonly are sized with the assumption the wearer will fit within conventional beauty standards commonly assigned to superheroes.  The “every woman” is expected to diet and exercise to look like a drawing in a comic book.

On top of that: women who don’t fit within the very narrow, artificial beauty standards will find that the family pets get better costume options than they do.

It’s really amazing how much of reality you have to willfully disregard to try to support the “men are sexually objectified too!” argument.

– wincenworks

Halloween throwback time! Reminder that to wear a mass-produced superhero novelty costume, ladies need to come in conventionally sexy size and shape (and usually ready to show more skin), while guys get the outfit to compensate their everyman figure with foam abs. 

~Ozzie 

I suppose I should be grateful that the girl costumes don’t compensate with foam boobs and butts, cause we all know that’s the Woman Power Fantasy: being slim thicc. ?

-Icy

See also: Our other post about Halloween superhero costumes, especially how womens’ and girls’ versions are always sexified or feminized beyond recognition of what the original looked like! 

Tidy Up #98

There is one primary topic for this tidy up, but one that we thought was very important on many levels.

If you haven’t already – please consider not sending any money to Blizzard.

(Yes, I say this as someone who has purchased multiple copies of Overwatch due to competitions and playing it with friends)

In addition to their general awful representation (and claiming cookies for improvement while getting worse), in the past few weeks Blizzard has:

At this point, it’s pretty safe to say that Blizzard is not only comfortable with supporting authoritarian regimes, but actively courting them in the hopes of increasing revenues… basically they’re the bad guys in all their properties.

But, to ensure that this isn’t completely a downer we do also want to draw attention to:

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Please consider letting this inspire you to be more politically aware and active in your life. Starting by declining to spend in a manner that leads to that money going to Blizzard.

(And of course, since there’s capital G gamers involved: please do double check any commentary you see on this that seems suspicious. Particularly if it is targeting the workers at Blizzard rather than the company’s controllers)

– wincenworks, ~Ozzie & -Icy

h/t: https://mad-maddie.tumblr.com/post/188284451402/article-october-11-2019-article-october-11-2019