Tag: Tidy Up Tuesday

Posted on

Tidy Up Tuesday #99

It’s been a while since we did one of these.

For who saw the recent Madalorian post and were curious about what better plate armor for busy women might look like – we’ve covered in a previous post.

Generally speaking, accommodations in armor are made for everyone – its just when you standardize your army, you standardize the accommodations and create the illusion that its “normal”.

The reason most armor like this is painfully uncomfortable to busty women is because in our extremely misogynistic society, the “default” armor designed for fairly flat chested men. (Military generally issues female soldiers “small” sized male armor, for example).

(Yes that one fairly flat chested vest was the entire catalog for women on that site with four separate categories for men)

“form fitting” is pretty much never a suitable accommodation for overt armor (ie not concealable) armor because it creates problems with energy transference and denting. The reason the female Mandalorians gear looks more comfy is it’s the sort of thing you’d expect under the plate armor.

The reason they settled on that the outer layer instead of more innovative solutions is the same reason why the female Mandalorians are smaller and have narrow waists. because once a show takes off, Creepy Marketing Guy inevitably wants to get involved.

-wincenworks

Posted on

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:

image

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 

Posted on

Tidy Up Tuesday #97

Here’s a reminder that skimpy bikini armor is not the be all end all of sexism and double standards in character and costume design. Unchallenged uniform conformation to gender norms is a problem in of itself. 

If each and every single female character in a franchise has to have at least one overt conventionally feminine feature, while male ones have a whole range of appearances, then yes, it’s still deserves to be criticized for double standards.  

Also, please consult  this point in our FAQ if you question why we’re not critical only of the most egregious female character costume designs.

~~~~ 

Guess what milestone we passed las week? 

image

~~~~

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy

Posted on

Tidy Up Tuesday #96

Time to wrap up all stuff, mostly what’s stuffing our inbox.

~~~~

If you’ve ever been told by an Internet Ranty Man that curves on breastplate don’t matter because hardened steel is just great – there’s recently been an awesome video created by experts talking about arrows vs armor that talks about the importance of the curve and the subtleties in design.

It turns out that armor was in a constant stage of development through all of history because it’s complex and every little bit helps when the stakes are literally life and death.

~~~~

Please, instead of sending us asks saying “Do you want me to submit XYZ?”, send the submission, even if it’s a short one. 

~~~~

In the same vein, “Have you bingo’d/talked about XYZ?” or “Please talk about/bingo XYZ!” messages rarely get our attention, unless we were already planning to talk about their subject. 
We’re way more likely to make a requested post if sent pictures and/or commentary. 

~~~~ 

If we already talked about something on our blog, it is likely available via search option or an appropriate tag. Please consider checking for obvious variations before messaging us.
(tip: PC browser version of Tumblr is more reliable for searching/looking through tags)

~~~~ 

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy

Posted on

Tidy Up Tuesday #95

Reminder to all first-time readers (who likely won’t even see this post) that questioning the very idea of criticizing any costume design isn’t a good look when you’re reblogging from a costume design critique blog. 

~~~~

Please stop linking us that ignorant “armor expert” YouTuber’s videos about boobplates. 

Even casual scroll through our resource and reference tags would lead you to really good (often older than the videos in question) debunks about boob armor from people who, unlike him, make and/or wear armor for its intended use. Some of which, unlike him, are women and maaaybe have more expertise on what it’s like to have boobs under a breastplate. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ 

Read this one, for starters. 

~~~~

You’re welcome to use our Female Armor Bingo to play bingo with the characters you see in media. Make sure to read the rules, and to tag us in the posts!

~~~~

Things we addressed before: 

~~~~

~Ozzie, -wincenworks & – Icy

Posted on

Tidy Up Tuesday #94

Back to addressing some stuff that accumulated over the last month! 

As always, please don’t submit (or tag us under) content that isn’t credited and can’t be easily traced back to its author(s). 

It should REALLY not need to be said at this point, but bikini armor or otherwise sexualized female outfits are the absolute opposite of a costume that enhances the wearer’s mobility. That’s the kind of nonsense that gave us the Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo in the first place.

image

If that was actually the case, you’d think there would be more museums showcasing metal speedo armor.

Check out this sweet redesign of the mushroom lady who previously had a serious case of suspicious dimorphism (which we posted before) by @deliciousboondollarsandwich!

Things we posted before: 

~Ozzie, -wincenworks, & -Icy

Posted on

Tidy Up Tuesday #93

Re: Demon Hunter redesign 

Some readers notified us that redraws which include crotch bulges for characters I reimagined as trans women are fetishistic and transphobic. I should have known better than to depict trans bodies in that way and I apologize sincerely. It goes directly against BABD’s philosophy of not reducing people, especially members of vulnerable groups, to body parts. I promise to do better in the future. 

~Ozzie 

Re: Harley Quinn design deterioration 

We have to disagree strongly with the idea that she (or any other fictional woman) needs to show a lot of skin while in combat to express that she’s a sexually liberated character.

As a commenter on one of the old posts on that said, great thing about the original Harley in Batman: TAS was that instead of being a 24/7 femme fatale (like most other villainesses), she dressed and acted sexy specifically for the occasion of having actual sex. 

image

Compare also to our critique of Starfire, another superhero comic woman known for being openly sexual in her private life whose “sexy” costumes make zero sense in context of fighting. 

PS: If you can’t find Harley’s original bodypaint skin tight catsuit sexy enough without removing 80% of its coverage, we’re really worried for you. 

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy 

Posted on

Tidy Up Tuesday #92

Time to answer some more recent and returning inquiries! 

Just heads up: we’re less likely to make a post based on a “Can you talk about XYZ?” question in our inbox than on a submission that includes image(s) and even most laconic description on what the design/character is. 

Speaking of which, any sort of submission, positive or negative, is welcome, as long as it’s sourced and if the negative ones come from commercial projects. 

Casual reminder that if you think that criticizing how fictional characters are designed is the same as slut shaming, you either a) didn’t read enough of this blog or b) you made up your mind before coming here and this site is not for you. 

Other things we addressed before: 

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy

Posted on

Tidy Up #91

A few more things to address, as usual

PLEASE, before messaging us about something “not working” under a link we left to another part of our blog, check it on desktop computer first. We do our best to make sure that any link we provide works at the day of publishing. And we do not take responsibility for Tumblr screwing it up. 

Tumblr mobile app basically refuses to show tags, subpages or to do searching properly. Just please keep that in mind when viewing BABD (or any other Tumblr blog) on mobile devices. 

As we said in our last Tidy Up post, YES, we have seen that one YouTuber’s video about boob armor (and many others, like ones regarding Barbarians in bikini). And NO, he does not know what he’s talking about. 

We implied that back during debunking of MatPat’s “argumentation” for distraction bonus, but having a YouTube channel does not yet make one an expert and/or a qualified educator, especially on matters requiring some actual expertise, like armor design and history. 

For better sources (a.k.a. people who can do minimal research before sharing strong opinions about fantasy and historical armor or women warriors’ role in society), check our reference and resource tags.

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy 

Posted on

Tidy Up Tuesday #90

Just a quick one this week.

Yes we are aware that a certain YouTuber has made a video giving their predictable “I like it because as a man it doesn’t effect me and I like sexy women” opinion via a video in which they also defend their “men are sexualized too and women are supposed to be sexy while men are supposed to be strong” video.  We’re not going to link to it directly since pretty much it says nothing new and its entire contents can be summed up in one helpful bingo card.

If you’re still unconvinced however, we do highly recommend this video by Ian Laspina (apparently not watched by the YouTuber) on how breastplates are actually designed, along with these comics (1, 2) from years ago explaining some of the realities of the terrible designs.

If you are curious about us addressing a long time existing title of some sort, please do try the search function as odds are good we have and we do try to tag everything as completely as we can.

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy