Tag: throwback

Posted on

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

ria-rha:

killerlolita asked:

How exactly does covering up a character show that sexy outfits aren’t empowering exactly? That and how does dressing up male characters in sexy outfits making a point?

It’d be easy to ask the inverse: how does dressing up female characters in revealing outfits make them empowered?

To answer this question we’re going to do an exercise that anyone familiar with the internet can participate in. First: imagine an adorable kitten (if you’re having trouble, Google images is rife with them… like I said: internet). Now, imagine that adorable kitten wielding a weapon (oh hey Google). Are these cats now empowered? Or has the situation gone from visually appealing to funny?

That’s what most female character design does: creates a juxtaposition of eye candy that thinks just because it’s started wielding weapons and calling itself tough, suddenly it’s empowered. It isn’t. It’s a cat with a lightsaber.

As for how dressing up a male character in clothes usually reserved for their female counterparts makes a point, well, mostly it helps show how ridiculous these outfits (and also the way the women are generally posed) are. We’re so used to seeing our female characters looking (and acting) this way, that it often doesn’t register. It helps get people asking why it’s okay for a woman to go into battle like this, but it’s funny when a man does.
-Staci

PREACH!

Throwback Thursday time!

Today’s throwback: repair-her-armor‘s sideblog, ria-rha, makes the most apt comparison to explain why bikini armors are inherently silly and not really empowering.

Bolding mine.

~Ozzie

Posted on

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

ria-rha:

killerlolita asked:

How exactly does covering up a character show that sexy outfits aren’t empowering exactly? That and how does dressing up male characters in sexy outfits making a point?

It’d be easy to ask the inverse: how does dressing up female characters in revealing outfits make them empowered?

To answer this question we’re going to do an exercise that anyone familiar with the internet can participate in. First: imagine an adorable kitten (if you’re having trouble, Google images is rife with them… like I said: internet). Now, imagine that adorable kitten wielding a weapon (oh hey Google). Are these cats now empowered? Or has the situation gone from visually appealing to funny?

That’s what most female character design does: creates a juxtaposition of eye candy that thinks just because it’s started wielding weapons and calling itself tough, suddenly it’s empowered. It isn’t. It’s a cat with a lightsaber.

As for how dressing up a male character in clothes usually reserved for their female counterparts makes a point, well, mostly it helps show how ridiculous these outfits (and also the way the women are generally posed) are. We’re so used to seeing our female characters looking (and acting) this way, that it often doesn’t register. It helps get people asking why it’s okay for a woman to go into battle like this, but it’s funny when a man does.
-Staci

PREACH!

Throwback Thursday time!

Today’s throwback: repair-her-armor‘s sideblog, ria-rha, makes the most apt comparison to explain why bikini armors are inherently silly and not really empowering.

Bolding mine.

~Ozzie

Posted on

There was a very strange article I recently read on video games that involve fighting and “jiggle physics”

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Cal submitted:

http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2014/mar/19/harada-breast-jiggle-physics-were-originally-banned-tekken-games-designer-sneaked-it-5th-game/

The quotes near the bottom are what concerned me the most…

“Anyway, as it turns out, a female martial arts instructor I was talking to recently revealed to me over a Skype chat that ‘no matter how much you try to prevent it from happening, you can’t stop them from jiggling’.

‘They’ll jiggle?” I inquired.

‘Yes, they will,’ she replied, ‘in my case, they absolutely will jiggle.

‘When they jiggle, how is the movement like?’ I inquired further.

We went back and forth like this for about 15 minutes, before I was forced to conclude that, no matter how much you try to control it, it’s only natural for them to jiggle.”

I feel like this kind of stuff entitles the developers from Namco (They make Tekken and Soul Calibur) and other companies to add over the top and ridiculous breast physics.

Some of the comments on that page from the users also made me pretty uncomfortable…

image

I can’t get over the idea that comical jiggle physics in Tekken are for “realism” but none of the realism advocates want the female characters to dress in that would have a chance of containing their boobs.

Rooster Teeth did a video testing the “realism” of costumes in Tekken’s competitor Soul Calibur.  Why yes they did to put censor bars up to block accidental nudity, how did you guess!?

And to think, there are people who wonder why video games aren’t taken seriously as an art form.

– wincenworks 

Acknowledging that real boobs do, in fact, jiggle doesn’t make video game jiggle physics pass as “realistic”…

Ask any boob-haver who takes part in athletic activities (like, I dunno, martial arts? that thing Tekken is about?!) and they’ll confirm that to freely move around, breasts need to be bound with something like a sports bra… or two… or three.

~Ozzie

We decided to introduce Throwback Thrursdays to BABD! From now on, one of the Thursday’s post is going to be something brought back deep from bikiniarmorbattledamage‘a archives, to promote older posts that are still very much on point.

Today’s throwback: Why jiggly boobs, while real, are not realistic in games. Also why it’s important to reduce the jiggle while performing sports and martial arts.

~Ozzie

Posted on

There was a very strange article I recently read on video games that involve fighting and “jiggle physics”

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Cal submitted:

http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2014/mar/19/harada-breast-jiggle-physics-were-originally-banned-tekken-games-designer-sneaked-it-5th-game/

The quotes near the bottom are what concerned me the most…

“Anyway, as it turns out, a female martial arts instructor I was talking to recently revealed to me over a Skype chat that ‘no matter how much you try to prevent it from happening, you can’t stop them from jiggling’.

‘They’ll jiggle?” I inquired.

‘Yes, they will,’ she replied, ‘in my case, they absolutely will jiggle.

‘When they jiggle, how is the movement like?’ I inquired further.

We went back and forth like this for about 15 minutes, before I was forced to conclude that, no matter how much you try to control it, it’s only natural for them to jiggle.”

I feel like this kind of stuff entitles the developers from Namco (They make Tekken and Soul Calibur) and other companies to add over the top and ridiculous breast physics.

Some of the comments on that page from the users also made me pretty uncomfortable…

image

I can’t get over the idea that comical jiggle physics in Tekken are for “realism” but none of the realism advocates want the female characters to dress in that would have a chance of containing their boobs.

Rooster Teeth did a video testing the “realism” of costumes in Tekken’s competitor Soul Calibur.  Why yes they did to put censor bars up to block accidental nudity, how did you guess!?

And to think, there are people who wonder why video games aren’t taken seriously as an art form.

– wincenworks 

Acknowledging that real boobs do, in fact, jiggle doesn’t make video game jiggle physics pass as “realistic”…

Ask any boob-haver who takes part in athletic activities (like, I dunno, martial arts? that thing Tekken is about?!) and they’ll confirm that to freely move around, breasts need to be bound with something like a sports bra… or two… or three.

~Ozzie

We decided to introduce Throwback Thrursdays to BABD! From now on, one of the Thursday’s post is going to be something brought back deep from bikiniarmorbattledamage‘a archives, to promote older posts that are still very much on point.

Today’s throwback: Why jiggly boobs, while real, are not realistic in games. Also why it’s important to reduce the jiggle while performing sports and martial arts.

~Ozzie

Posted on

Why do a lot of people forget that boobs aren’t here for you. They are supposed to produce breast milk, not be sex objects.

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

It’s the question I ask myself all the time.

Of course being aroused by breasts is natural and by no means bad in itself, let’s make it clear. But our culture skewed the perception of breasts by overemphasizing their arbitrary* sexual value (*boobs are not necessary for sex to happen, after all). They’re treated like some kind of secondary genitals, while tabooing the actual function they’re designed for (feeding babies).
That’s the sad reason why on one hand a bare female breast is considered “indecent” to the point of shaming women from nursing in public places, while on the other hand they’re used as a shortcut for what straight male audience would (allegedly) instantly find appealing.

And as (horny) hetero men are somehow the default audience for most of entertainment media, boobs need to be bared, or at least emphasized beyond any logic (and beyond how science works) on every possible occasion, even when it makes little to no sense in context.
Frustration with above school of thought is one of the major reasons that this blog exists. You know there’s something wrong when it’s more important to show that a warrior character happens to have boobs than to apply some practical battle wear for them.

Bringing this back, cause according to SOME people corenthal’s Power Boy’s crotch-window is a proof that we agree boobs to be equally sexual in nature with dicks… To which I say: wow, go learn what a strawman fallacy is!

The fact that a satire works within the system it makes fun of doesn’t mean it promotes the system. It’s basically required to take a thing we’re ridiculing to an extreme to even count as a satire in the first place!

And in the culture that treats flaunting women’s boobs like a something inherently sex-related (as if female breasts were genitals) but is completely okay with male pecs and nipples, flaunting what part of a man’s body would be comparably sex-related, huh?

As I said before, satire that reverses the oppressive status quo is very important and potentially eye-opening to privileged groups.
And since mere shirtlessness of a male fictional character doesn’t make cishet men uncomfortable in the same way as pointless boob windows make women, a penis-shaft-window should work.

~Ozzie

Posted on

Anonymous:

Why do a lot of people forget that boobs aren’t here for you. They are supposed to produce breast milk, not be sex objects.

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

It’s the question I ask myself all the time.

Of course being aroused by breasts is natural and by no means bad in itself, let’s make it clear. But our culture skewed the perception of breasts by overemphasizing their arbitrary* sexual value (*boobs are not necessary for sex to happen, after all). They’re treated like some kind of secondary genitals, while tabooing the actual function they’re designed for (feeding babies).
That’s the sad reason why on one hand a bare female breast is considered “indecent” to the point of shaming women from nursing in public places, while on the other hand they’re used as a shortcut for what straight male audience would (allegedly) instantly find appealing.

And as (horny) hetero men are somehow the default audience for most of entertainment media, boobs need to be bared, or at least emphasized beyond any logic (and beyond how science works) on every possible occasion, even when it makes little to no sense in context.
Frustration with above school of thought is one of the major reasons that this blog exists. You know there’s something wrong when it’s more important to show that a warrior character happens to have boobs than to apply some practical battle wear for them.

Bringing this back, cause according to SOME people corenthal’s Power Boy’s crotch-window is a proof that we agree boobs to be equally sexual in nature with dicks… To which I say: wow, go learn what a strawman fallacy is!

The fact that a satire works within the system it makes fun of doesn’t mean it promotes the system. It’s basically required to take a thing we’re ridiculing to an extreme to even count as a satire in the first place!

And in the culture that treats flaunting women’s boobs like a something inherently sex-related (as if female breasts were genitals) but is completely okay with male pecs and nipples, flaunting what part of a man’s body would be comparably sex-related, huh?

As I said before, satire that reverses the oppressive status quo is very important and potentially eye-opening to privileged groups.
And since mere shirtlessness of a male fictional character doesn’t make cishet men uncomfortable in the same way as pointless boob windows make women, a penis-shaft-window should work.

~Ozzie

Posted on

Fetishizing ‘power’ in women characters – having them kicking ass and always being ready with a putdown – isn’t the same as writing them as human beings.

Jack Graham, in Stephen Moffat – A Case For The Prosecution, a guest post on Philip Sandifer’s blog (via linnealurks)

This is applies double if your reasons for making a female character “powerful” are so that she can wear less, thus hopefully generate bigger profits and showcase true originality.

– wincenworks