the-midnight-doe – Bikini Armor Battle Damage

September 22, 2019February 19, 2022

Shard Mortal Trespasser

@the-midnight-doe submitted (and Ozzie bingo’d):

Here’s a good example of how “fully armored” doesn’t mean a thing if said armor is still sexualized: this is Shard, Sideshow Collectible’s original character from their ongoing series “Court of the Dead”. The series already has plenty of questionable designs, but Shard here really stands out due to her backstory: she’s a mortal knight Templar that somehow wound up in the Underworld, whose inhabitants then made her armor for her. Highlights include the absolutely bizarre crotch plate (hard to tell if it’s a thong as the cape blocks the back view,) the insignia on her chest that just winds up looking like a literal “stab here” sign, and interesting footwear. It’s a shame, too, because her backstory sounds really interesting and the Court of the Dead series has some pretty beautiful dolls, but also has a metal bony groping hands bra because reasons.

Oh goodie, Sideshow Toys figures, we meet again! ? And this time you guys don’t even have the excuse of adapting someone else’s sexist design – it’s your own all original creation!

Obviously the bingo score isn’t very high, and I stretched definition of “male equivalent” to “all male-presenting characters in the series”. However, while not bikini-shaped or skimpy, impossibly skin-tight armor is still a staple of BABD content.
The fact that metal gives no additional girth to any part of her body made me confident in marking off the “No padding, just bare skin.” square, despite no bare skin at display.
And no, the “fine bone filaments of this protective encasement were woven around her form by the osteomancers and artisans of the dead” Thermian argument doesn’t excuse the sexualized design one bit.

Saddest part is that this is what she looked like in her backstory:

This is so much more interesting in every way: costume, posing, expression, even painting detail. Textbook positive example. What a downgrade!

Thank you for the submission, @the-midnight-doe! Hope you don’t mind me bolding part I found most telling about Shard’s problem.

Considering how other female Court of the Dead characters look, we’re likely to revisit the property, with bingos and/or redesigns, later.

~Ozzie

May 27, 2018February 19, 2022

the-midnight-doe submitted (and Ozzie bingo’d):

And on today’s episode of Doing Women Better™, Blizzard finally granted us the much requested Magician Symmetra. Only instead of going for something super classy like the many fan interpretations out there or even just ladies in suits from real life, they went with…this.

Lack of pants and framing her bust (what is even with those metal plates) aside, the fact that this is a legendary skin and costs 3000 credits when it’s so close to her default skin makes this whole thing very disappointing.

Thanks for submitting this highly requested post, including some quality scathing commentary! The Saga of Pantless Symmetra continues.

This would be insulting enough just by the virtue of being a fetishy leotard instead of a suit, but what the hell are those boob-holder bars?!
They’re some sort of garbage afterthought slapped on to make this look more “sci-fi”, I guess? Why would a costume need that? Because you can’t be science fiction without framing the tits with random pieces of metal?

Since the bingo lacks a “What the fuck am I looking at?!” square, I marked “Boobplate” instead.

Here’s some closeup, to see their full absurdity, provided by @red-queen-on-the-heathen-throne:

Fun fact: a convention I attended last week had an Overwatch: Character design done right! talk that I just couldn’t subject myself to come to, both out of the fear of my brain melting on sight and because I didn’t want to rain on some enthusiastic fan’s parade when the time for Q&A comes.

I’m still amused that at the same time Blizzard made THIS, easily disproving the “character design done right” claim.

But sure, Overwatch is totally ready to do women better. Anytime now.

~Ozzie

#GiveSymmetraPants2k18

January 6, 2018February 19, 2022

January 6, 2018February 19, 2022

@the-midnight-doe submitted:

Here we go again… Kojima posted a new concept art on his Twitter (left), which is apparently a female version of Ludens, the character featured in the Kojima Productions logo (right.) Can’t wait to hear about her tragic skin condition that requires her to wear literally half the armor of her male counterpart

Point and Clickbait totally called it two years ago, and none of us are surprised.

Given that he’s already over-used (which is to say, he used) the “she breathes through her skin” excuse, and, well, how most of Death Stranding’s promotion has gone thusfar: I’m pretty confident the explanation will 1. make no sense and 2. ensure we receive contradictory responses from his fans trying to defend it.

Of course, the first thing they always tell me is I don’t know enough about Kojima’s work so let’s look at some some of his fans are saying about the deep textual values of this complex piece:

– wincenworks

And let’s not forget that the experience of starting to understand Kojima’s genius ideas, including ~~gratuitous~~ definitely justified and not contrived female sexualization, takes only playing the whole game at least two times, preferably with complete familiarity of all his other work.

Two years later, @pointandclickbait still on point.

~Ozzie

edit: Since it caused some confusion: we don’t know for sure whether female Ludens is just a “fun” variation on Kojima Productions mascot or a future character concept for Death Standing.
It’s alleged she might be the latter, but either way both her design and the commentary about Kojima belong among topics we discuss on the blog.

September 8, 2016March 4, 2022

“Sex-positive” women in gaming (or lack thereof)

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

the-midnight-doe:

Far too often I see people jump at feminists who criticize sexist designs on female characters with, “They’re just showing how confident they are in their sexuality! We need more sex-positive women!”

Yet, these characters never in the game ever make any hint of their sexuality, whether it be through flirting, being unashamed of their sexual behavior, defending the sexual choices of others, or wearing revealing clothing as casual wear (i.e. not wearing battle armor that exposes their entire chest.)

Instead, anytime there are “sex-positive” women in gaming that are vocal about their sexuality and confidence in such, they are almost always a villain. Yet, I never see these people defend these characters, or take note that the only time that a woman in a game is confident in her sexuality, it’s because she’s an ~evil seductress~, and the game developers use it as an exploit rather than a character trait.

How about instead of shouting at feminists that point out the needlessly and nonsensical revealing clothing on female game characters that it’s supposed to be because they’re “sex-positive”, you instead take the energy and criticize game developers that everytime there is a “sex-positive” women in gaming, she’s evil and it is instead seen as a character flaw?

I’ve alluded before that it’s possible to create a female character who dresses skimpily to express how sexually liberated and confident about her own body she is… possible in theory, at least.

I mean, everyone and their grandmother brings up Bayonetta and/or Emma Frost as heroic examples of this trope that actually work. Somehow, they’re basically the only two widely recognized heroines like that. And their depictions of empowerment still reek of male gaze all over (and no, unsolicited reminders that Bayo was co-designed by a woman don’t automatically make her impervious to critique).

Also, as I mentioned in my Stafire-design-through-years article, character’s personal affairs DO NOT excuse what costume she “chooses” to do her job in, particularly when that job is FIGHTING.
Especially while warrior men who are equally, if not more, sexually empowered, somehow don’t go around fighting crime in sexy male underwear. And again, a loincloth* on someone like Conan or Kratos is not the same as battle lingerie.

* unless it’s this semi-translucent loincloth

~Ozzie

I feel like a large part of the FemShep fandom was that while much of the attire in Mass Effect is questionable – FemShep actually comes pretty close to meeting the “sex positive, not sex toy” criteria. Regardless of the options you pick, she’s competent and complicated.

When she goes into battle she’s kitted with armor, guns, badassery and the potential to be saintly or scary… then when you’re in the safety of your ship you can pick an outfit for her and go talk to your favorite crew member:

Making her vastly more sex positive and personally empowered than pretty much any other female protagonist… even if her outfits are not perfectly equal to BroShep’s and tend more towards hideous than hot.

I also feel it’s worth mentioning here that there is this very strange perception that we receive messages over that suggests by criticizing the outfits we “downgrade” these characters and somehow think less of them. This is absolutely not true, the problem as we see it is that they characters are not being given their due.

– wincenworks

Femshep image source (as immature as you’d expect)

(For those asking: We have the explanation for Quiet’s ridiculous outfit, and information on how her character is handled… a post will be forthcoming!)

Definitely time that we brought this one back since there’s still way too much of:

Ultimately though there’s, sadly, still a long way to go before there’s the general acceptance that since women are diverse and complicated – female characters should be diverse and complicated.

None of that means we won’t have sexy female characters, it just means there’ll be more sexy female characters who act like people rather than one-dimensional fuckbots, and that means they’ll be more interesting.

How terrible.

– wincenworks

September 8, 2016March 4, 2022

“Sex-positive” women in gaming (or lack thereof)

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

the-midnight-doe:

Far too often I see people jump at feminists who criticize sexist designs on female characters with, “They’re just showing how confident they are in their sexuality! We need more sex-positive women!”

Yet, these characters never in the game ever make any hint of their sexuality, whether it be through flirting, being unashamed of their sexual behavior, defending the sexual choices of others, or wearing revealing clothing as casual wear (i.e. not wearing battle armor that exposes their entire chest.)

Instead, anytime there are “sex-positive” women in gaming that are vocal about their sexuality and confidence in such, they are almost always a villain. Yet, I never see these people defend these characters, or take note that the only time that a woman in a game is confident in her sexuality, it’s because she’s an ~evil seductress~, and the game developers use it as an exploit rather than a character trait.

How about instead of shouting at feminists that point out the needlessly and nonsensical revealing clothing on female game characters that it’s supposed to be because they’re “sex-positive”, you instead take the energy and criticize game developers that everytime there is a “sex-positive” women in gaming, she’s evil and it is instead seen as a character flaw?

I’ve alluded before that it’s possible to create a female character who dresses skimpily to express how sexually liberated and confident about her own body she is… possible in theory, at least.

I mean, everyone and their grandmother brings up Bayonetta and/or Emma Frost as heroic examples of this trope that actually work. Somehow, they’re basically the only two widely recognized heroines like that. And their depictions of empowerment still reek of male gaze all over (and no, unsolicited reminders that Bayo was co-designed by a woman don’t automatically make her impervious to critique).

Also, as I mentioned in my Stafire-design-through-years article, character’s personal affairs DO NOT excuse what costume she “chooses” to do her job in, particularly when that job is FIGHTING.
Especially while warrior men who are equally, if not more, sexually empowered, somehow don’t go around fighting crime in sexy male underwear. And again, a loincloth* on someone like Conan or Kratos is not the same as battle lingerie.

* unless it’s this semi-translucent loincloth

~Ozzie

I feel like a large part of the FemShep fandom was that while much of the attire in Mass Effect is questionable – FemShep actually comes pretty close to meeting the “sex positive, not sex toy” criteria. Regardless of the options you pick, she’s competent and complicated.

When she goes into battle she’s kitted with armor, guns, badassery and the potential to be saintly or scary… then when you’re in the safety of your ship you can pick an outfit for her and go talk to your favorite crew member:

Making her vastly more sex positive and personally empowered than pretty much any other female protagonist… even if her outfits are not perfectly equal to BroShep’s and tend more towards hideous than hot.

I also feel it’s worth mentioning here that there is this very strange perception that we receive messages over that suggests by criticizing the outfits we “downgrade” these characters and somehow think less of them. This is absolutely not true, the problem as we see it is that they characters are not being given their due.

– wincenworks

Femshep image source (as immature as you’d expect)

(For those asking: We have the explanation for Quiet’s ridiculous outfit, and information on how her character is handled… a post will be forthcoming!)

Definitely time that we brought this one back since there’s still way too much of:

How terrible.

– wincenworks

April 17, 2016April 23, 2018

April 17, 2016February 9, 2019

September 5, 2015

Sherry

the-midnight-doe submitted:

While we’re sort of on the subject of unlockable outfits, I wanted to bring up Sherry from Resident Evil 6. Sherry was originally from Resident Evil 2, where she was a young child.

Pretty standard stuff. For Resident Evil 6, Capcom surprised fans by bringing her back as a (really awesome) playable character, where she became an agent for homeland security after being inspired by Claire Redfield’s actions in the second game.

Her design looks great, and it makes practical sense. This still holds true for later in the game, where all the characters have an outfit changes due to the game skipping six months ahead in the story.

And then…we get to these outfits.

The one on the left is an unlockable outfit that players can use in the Mercenaries mode, essentially a survive to the end with an increasing amount of zombies type of minigame. The developers thought it would be cool to give Sherry her original outfit…and I guess they meant the actual outfit, because wow that is really small.

The context of the one on the right is even worse, and pretty disgusting (RE6 story spoilers to follow:) at one point, Sherry and her partner, Jake, are captured by the villain organization and are experimented on for six months. Apparently they had absolutely nothing for Sherry to wear while in the facility, so they took a few rags and tied them together. Meanwhile, her partner was just shirtless with some sweatpants on.

This is also the point of the story where the clothing swap happens, and even though the outfit is fine, the changing cutscene is shot in a veeerrrryyy particular way.

Resident Evil has some particularly great women, but recently they’ve been going a little downhill with how they’ve been treating them (and the franchise in general.)

Some say we shouldn’t criticize bonus video game character outfits (unlockables/DLCs/pre-orders), because they’re optional and therefore even more in the vaccum of “just fiction”/”just fanservice” than the default character looks.

We gotta keep in mind that optional costumes, unlike, say, fan mods, are still intended by the developers to be the part of the experience, sometimes even the selling point for some specific edition of the game. It’s just as valid to be critical of them as of the game’s marketing, even if (or rather, especially if) they’re not faithfully representing the game as a product.

As @femfreq puts it in their newest video, the double standard of defaulting unlockable female outfits to “sexy” is especially harmful when the character is otherwise appropriately dressed for her job. And Sherry is just one heroine on the long list of Resident Evil’s capable-women-turned-eyecandy.

Maybe, just maybe, the idea would be more valid if male unlockable costumes were also all about sexyness and showing skin. And if the rare cases where this actually happens weren’t getting revoked as soon as possible.

~Ozzie

edit: Something’s very wrong with tumblr lately and it has been repeatedly deleting the first two paragraphs the-midnight-doe wrote. Apparently they didn’t make it into a single reblog of this post, of which I’m sorry both to the submitter and the rebloggers.

~Ozzie

September 5, 2015

Sherry

the-midnight-doe submitted:

While we’re sort of on the subject of unlockable outfits, I wanted to bring up Sherry from Resident Evil 6. Sherry was originally from Resident Evil 2, where she was a young child.

Pretty standard stuff. For Resident Evil 6, Capcom surprised fans by bringing her back as a (really awesome) playable character, where she became an agent for homeland security after being inspired by Claire Redfield’s actions in the second game.

Her design looks great, and it makes practical sense. This still holds true for later in the game, where all the characters have an outfit changes due to the game skipping six months ahead in the story.

And then…we get to these outfits.

The one on the left is an unlockable outfit that players can use in the Mercenaries mode, essentially a survive to the end with an increasing amount of zombies type of minigame. The developers thought it would be cool to give Sherry her original outfit…and I guess they meant the actual outfit, because wow that is really small.

The context of the one on the right is even worse, and pretty disgusting (RE6 story spoilers to follow:) at one point, Sherry and her partner, Jake, are captured by the villain organization and are experimented on for six months. Apparently they had absolutely nothing for Sherry to wear while in the facility, so they took a few rags and tied them together. Meanwhile, her partner was just shirtless with some sweatpants on.

This is also the point of the story where the clothing swap happens, and even though the outfit is fine, the changing cutscene is shot in a veeerrrryyy particular way.

Resident Evil has some particularly great women, but recently they’ve been going a little downhill with how they’ve been treating them (and the franchise in general.)

~Ozzie