(Yes, FYI, these images are paintings on the walls of buildings, in an MMORPG)
You’ll note though, that the people who are unimpressed by Blizzard trying to distract from their ongoing lawsuits don’t want the decision reversed, they’re just upset that:
Blizzard is using trivial changes like this to distract from real harm they do to real women on an ongoing basis.
Blizzard could actually have approved these and many meaningful changes at any time – but didn’t do so because they didn’t care about anything but feminist cookies.
The ones who are raging and want the changes reverted on the other hand, well they are worried about two other things.
The sanctity of the sexuality of fictional women who just happen to be appealing to their sexuality as self-absorbed cishet men.
Their validation as the only people in the world who matter, and that their whims are more important than anyone’s needs or interests.
(Not the lack of concern for people who’s sexuality is empowered men, or who prefer to play their fantasy adventure games without tits and ass in their face)
My main thoughts on this were already summarized very succinctly by Jack Saint in a single, evergreen tweet:
So, my recommended guideline for distinguishing between to two types – since the shitty ones will always claim to be the well meaning ones when called out is:
Are they disappointed that Blizzard has not yet done anything meaningful to help real people who have been suffering due to their obscene behaviour, or are they concerned the imaginary people are no longer interested in helping them fap?
Because trust me, the latter were going to have this reaction regardless.
– wincenworks
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While it may not seem like the initial bingo material – I invite you consider how the fuck she is supposed to do literally anything in this plate armor.
The helmet literally covers her eyes so she can’t see anything past her toes
Her exposed mouth and lower face, combined with clawed gauntlets, mean any attempt to adjust it would mangle herself
The armor is form fitted to her torso so she can’t bend, turn or even make big movements with her arms. I doubt she can even breathe with that boobplate.
Leg legs are locked into the “maximum thigh gap” pose. so she can’t even walk, let alone engage in combat footwork
This is not armor, this is some next level BDSM shit for people who find vacuum bondage too vanilla. (nsfw)
(Honestly glad there is no mantis race… at least I think there isn’t…)
Unsurprisingly a large part of the Steam community screenshots etc is ogling even more ridiculous sets of armor.
I don’t know which is worse, the weird horny marketing put together by the Creepy Marketing Guy or the more generic, family friendly marketing that tricks people into downloading the game and finding the options for female characters are fighting fucktoy, sexy sorcereress and bad archer..
– wincenworks
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This Instagram account, mind_flayer_meltdown has been re-titling classic Dungeons and Dragons covers with hilariously accurate commentaries. These particular examples are glorious.
Of course, sometimes they get political and it’s justperfect.
It’s easy to dismiss this as “product of its time” or just something of by-gone days, particularly as the current management of Wizards of the Coast and the connected companies have been very actively trying to do better – but its important to remember that these are essentially formative works both in tabletoproleplayiing games and fantasy in general.
That’s… that’s a problem.
– wincenworks
(h/t: Slovenly Trulls for drawing my attention to this gallery of masterpieces) Specific sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Apparently a lot of people are having… polite conversations [/sarcasm] about the tiddy booplate puppet being 100% okay because not only is this parody, but the design was the idea of her player/voice actress, who’s a woman of color and size (and known for raunchy sense of humor).
No-one’s here to judge how empowered (and/or hilarious) a performer feels about playing a character with giant breasts and bikini armor, but shielding an uninspired, sexist choice in a mainstream commercial project from criticism with female co-creator is insidious as fuck.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker may not have the most inspiring splash art…
But it did produce some fantastic positive examples of female warriors and spellcasters, art by Valeriy Vegera! It’s just a shame that the Pathfinder property seems to have such a tendency to bounce up and down when it comes to this kind of thing.
– wincenworks
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Queen of the Spiders Re-Covered
We decided to try our hand at a combined redesign, where each of us picked a character in the same picture and redesigned them. And we thought this image, the cover of an old Dungeons and Dragons adventure called “Queen of the Spiders” would be a good candidate (blame for throwing it at us goes to @theoldhack).
This is where the infamous drow race is introduced, where I guess they were just… evilwomen of color. ? Unfortunate. We decided to make them purple-skinned like they are in more modern lore.
At first, Icy thought the “queen” in the title referenced the lady in the middle there, but it’s actually one of the names for Lolth, the spider goddess whom the drow venerate, so…. We’re sure the drow on the cover are important mini-bosses somewhere in the adventure, probably, maybe.
Full write-up and close-up images under the cut.
What’s-her-Face on the Right
Just gotta say that it’s a huge pet peeve of mine when (usually male) writers write a matriarchal society as, air quotes, “sexually liberated,” otherwise known as “an excuse to draw them in lingerie because I can’t imagine women’s bodies not catering to me personally in any scenario, while still drawing men in full body armor.” Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Okay, so…. I’m not sure what she’s supposed to be… besides a swimsuit model, which maybe the drow do have. Is there a quest where the players go to the underground beach to play underground beach volleyball? Cause if not, why is she like that???
I decided to make her a mage (this was a 1st edition book, so that’s all we got). I ended up changing…. everything, really. I think the only thing I didn’t change was her nose shape. It’s not my fault though, the redline for her original pose was an unsalvageable eldrich nightmare.
I gave her a more confident pose, more comfortable magic-user-friendly clothes (with the spider motif, cause spider god), and even different hair. The original hairdo just wasn’t doing it for me. I wanted her to look cool enough to have her own illustration in the book. She even has a little magic flame (mostly cause I didn’t know what to do with her hand lol)!
Her hair didn’t quite turn out how I wanted it to, but overall, I think it’s a good redraw. She’s got lots of fun shapes, an actual color scheme, and an attitude. What else do we need?
-Icy
Queen/High Priestess Crotchleg
The composition was so awful that I had to actually largely re-do it by changing the third lady’s position from right to left and recreating large parts of the throne… some of which ended up covered by the main drow’s dress anyway (probably for the better).
Speaking of which, boy was she hard to fix without just throwing everything away and starting over! First of all, the way she sits on the throne seems like a product of an alien who never experienced what a chair is… which might also explain the throne’s uncomfortable-looking design. I actually ended up giving it a bigger seat and more lumbar support.
The pose, of course, got changed to something less concerned with showing off her immaculate Brazilian and more with looking comfortable and intimidating in the authority position. I also noticed her neck was disturbingly short, so I moved her face a tiny bit up. Now her spider crown is more of a tiara than a hat. And she got a golden choker to match.
A lot of questionable physics of how she actually sits got covered up by roomy, relatively simplistic clothes I gave her. Maybe I’d consider something more elaborate if the rest of the painting didn’t require so much fixing. What matters is that it’s not a painted-on swimming suit anymore. I’m overall satisfied with the design of her top and the spiderweb skirt. Hopefully the golden spider jewelry (the legs are thin chains!) gives it some regal feel.
The original shoes were quite stylish, but looked neither comfortable nor matched the fashion sense I went with for the character (also didn’t match the angles at which I redrew legs). So I ended up giving her sandals with golden ornamentation, matching her gauntlets. Sorry not sorry for half-assing the legs. One has to prioritize while on a deadline*.
I’m generally happy with the results, considering the sheer scale of changes we had to apply to have it meet BABD standards for positive example.
I usually keep the silhouette roughly the same for male characters, just uncovering as much of skin as possible, but this was a special case, cause male wizards tend to dress in tons of unsexy layers. I had no choice but to recreate his legs, arms and abs from scratch, without much indication of how ripped he should be.
No sleeves, no coat flaps, a crop top that reaches juuust above his male presenting nipples. Now that’s empowerment.
Hope you also liked the new stylish shoes I designed him from scratch.
Everyone knows that when fighters and barbarians go topless, it’s to display their physical strength, right? Clearly, when squishy magic user does the same, it’s a sign of magic power making up for their vulnerable bodies! At least that’s what we usually hear when a witch or a sorceress of some kind runs around in a bikini.
To be completely honest, Summoners War probably has way worse cases of terrible female armor if you go through their monster collection, but what’s worse about this one is that she is the reward for getting through the second scenario area of the game, which means EVERYONE has her, so you have to see this monstrosity all the time.
I always feel so weird about the clash of chibi AND “sexy” aesthetic. Trying to have a cake and eat it too. There’s really not much to add about the costume itself, other than this being too painfully generic to even register. BUT it did strike a rare diagonal bingo, so congrats to Summoners War, I guess? I am sorry for all the players who are subjected to multiple copies of this running around inside the game.
Thank you for the submission!
~Ozzie
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So, the creators of Divinity 2: Save the Boobplate … sorry Divinity 2: Girls don’t play video games… sorry Divinity 2: Original Sin have shown off a couple of hours gameplay for Baldur’s Gate 3… and this is the iconic character in the intro sequence before you pick/create a character.
Which means aside from being in this atrocity, she also gets the dubious honor of being the character who we see as a fellow prisoner having a parasite implanted via her eye (then the first person scene implies its happening to you, even though she is playable as one of the pre-generated characters).
Aside from the obvious mountain of baggage to unpack about women as victims, ridiculous armor for women – accurate for men, etc. There’s something else I’d like to point out which is probably not going to be obvious for anyone who isn’t a huge Dungeons and Dragons nerd.
Lae’zel is a githyanki, basically a near human but not human “alien” race from another dimension with a long history and pile of lore which actually makes the whole scene worse. However, what I wanted to cover is this is what female githyanki look like in the current 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons art:
So for this character, Larian Studio’s entire design process has been:
Remove all muscle tone and threatening aspects of appearance
Make the worst armor more ridiculous but cutesy and hyper-feminine
Great job at depicting a race where all members are raised as warrior from birth.
Why are people calling the people story tellers again?
