I was quite surprised to find people rushing to comment that a certain terrible screenshot was actually demonstrating destroyable armor (I guess if you already knew about it, and hence knew that her armor had been destroyed… so it doesn’t really help with marketing).
Now we have mentioned destroyable armor before… but maybe it’s best we do a little more talking on it since apparently it’s a thing that’s been sold as making sense. Surprisingly, the first appearance of this trope in video games (that I’m aware of) was inflicted up a male character.
A manly man named Arthur who was on a quest to save his love, Prince Prin Prin (actual name!), from a foe no less than Satan himself (who lives in Hades… just go with it! I promise nothing in the game will make any more sense than this summary. Nothing at all.)
While “soft” armors like kevlar weave and leather will become less protective over time they don’t fly apart for a very simple reason. Anything that hits your hard enough to dislodge armor from your person has hit you hard enough to kill you. Even the force to dislodge regular clothes by impact (rather than deliberate tearing off) will easily kill you in a most spectacular fashion!
Armor isn’t a car, it doesn’t have crumple zones. Your armor being blasted off you and you coming out relatively unscathed means that you are literally tougher and more resistant to damage of all sorts than your armor is.
Missing enamel/coloring, destroyed ornamentation, blood marks, changes in the silhouette on parts etc all convey that the armor is damaged and becoming less and less useful without also conveying that the actual point of the game is to try to see your character naked without them dying.
I tend to think one of the great things about fully enclosed armor like Iron Man’s or plate mail is that it allows for all kinds of bending by virtue of so many types of people being able to imagine themselves in it.
The “sissy villain“ is probably the most common gay-coded archetype in popular media but it’s certainly not the only one. It’s popular in a lot of “family friendly” media as it has it’s roots in the “hero’s inadequate friend” trope and doesn’t really require anything overt.
However, the use of coding of pretty much any “alternative” group (who are only “alternative” due to mainstream society’s lack of acceptance) to flag villains in media is very common. Mostly because these people are “othered” by society and hence the audience is assumed to believe these people are not worthy of human compassion.
Varying degrees of LGBT coding in villains in movies is common enough that there are high profile lists of the best and worst. Game Theory did a video on the vilification of LGBT characters in video games. These are only covering the blatant examples (though notably these characters rarely get to have any romance in their lives). They do however, represent a variety of looks and villains beyond the scheming sissy.
An important thing to understand about this kind of coding is that it is not necessarily done with any intentional malice or even awareness of how the audience might read it. That doesn’t make the end result any less harmful, it just means the creators are often not aware of the harm they’re doing.
Sometimes it happens due to casting priorities (the powers that be insist the primary cast be x, y and z so the only room for diversity with decent characterization is villains). Thus denying these groups the chance to be the hero and instead giving the audience the opposite impression.
Sometimes it’s simply the norm to that creator due to them absorbing so much media where regulations or society in general demanded that “deviant” characters be portrayed in a negative light. Particularly if they’re doing a remake of or heavily inspired by something problematic.
Sometimes it’s just overlap of interests (looks associated with body building and/or fashion can easily overlap into softcore porn for gay men). The further from “normal” they look, the more necessary to ensure they are not “one of” the target audience.
Sometimes these unflattering portrayals are celebrated by members of under represented groups. Sometimes, regardless of how horrible or wildly inaccurate they are absorbed audience and lead to the vilification of innocent people. Sometimes completely ridiculous things become coded due to people’s wild imagination.
Once something becomes “coded” then society only accepts it in media if it’s attached to a member of that “other” or there’s some point made about how this is an exception, etc. So if you want to diversify your cast, society wants you to give the undesirable roles to those in the “other”.
HOWEVER a lot of the anxiety that comes with the acknowledgement of people who are not straight white cis men tends to fade immediately if the “other” is clearly completely different, vilified, dehumanized or even inhuman (the Pillar Men being megalomaniac asexual aliens, for example). They also feel better about it if it’s only “bad guys” who are put in awkward positions due to the presence of the “other”.
All of which is to say that pop culture and modern media in general feel that – if something can be interpreted as not a proper part of straight cis society then the place for it is in the “other” which often means as the bad guys, comic relief or both.
I don’t have a lot of experience in building armor myself, but I reached out to a friend who’s been into extremely enthusiastic for several decades and happens to be a woman. Her recommendation is a globose breastplate with padding for additional support. Something like these:
(Joan of Arc by Albert Lynch (x) and Knightess by TypeSprite (x))
It is possible that one made off a peg suit you, but more likely that you would need one custom made. Regardless you’d be going to a smooth deflective curve such as in the illustrations above. Plate armor like this is actually quite roomy in order to allow movement, so there’ll be plenty of room to add supportive padding.
Globose breastplates are held on with a harness, so with firm padding should be able to restrain even the mightiest bosom. Similar armoring techniques were often used when making custom suits for rotund nobles, Henry VIII of England armors show a gradually increasing girth throughout his life.
(Photo by Chuck, King Henry VIII’s armor in the Tower of London’s Royal Armouries.)
Okay, see now what I don’t get is people who say they love Babs’ redesign because “finally a practical female costume in comics!!”
Because it’s absolutely true that impractical costumes are a problem that plague superheroines, but this is what Babs’ New 52 costume looked like before they redesigned it:
I’m purposefully using a picture that has her next to Batman – her costume was just as “practical” as his. Full body suit, sturdy-looking flat-heeled boots, no unnecessary details beyond the Bat symbol and cape (both of which Batman has too) – what exactly was so “impractical” about this?
For that matter, this is what Babs’ original Batgirl costume looked like:
That’s from the 1970’s, and her costume looks as practical as can be. Actually, I’d argue that Dick’s the one with the impractical costume, here.
So why are we acting like this is such a big deal that Babs “finally” has a practical costume?! She’s had one since practically the very beginning (once they stopped drawing her original costume with high heels, anyway).
Superheroine costumes are certainly lacking practicality on the whole, but Babs was never really an issue there. So giving her a practical redesign doesn’t really do anything to change the status quo – it just “fixes” what wasn’t broken to start with. Why not give Starfire a redesign where I don’t have to wonder how her top stays on, instead?
Also they made a huge deal about her new costume not being spandex, but I thought the whole batfam wore kevlar.
It’s not, it was never identified by name, but it’s apparently some sort of next gen bulletproof material, even BETTER than kevlar.
why they would choose to replace that with a cheap $20 leather jacket is beyond me
I don’t think anyone argued Barbara’s current costume was specifically one in a desperate need of redesign (let’s face it, she’s always been the one DC superheroine with consistently full body-covering suit: no cleavage, no 5-inch heels, not even bared midriff).
Her new costume is a breath of fresh air compared to the DC/Marvel female design STANDARDS, not compared to what she wore before.
But as far as the kevlar (or rather “batkevlar”) argument goes, it doesn’t really hold ground when the artist’s attempts at conveying her suit to be armor are so half-assed and inconsistent that the chest piece looks either painted on or too small to wear, let alone breathe in (see: middle images here).
Also, what Batgirl’s new outfit is praised for is how it’s not sexualized and how it actually resembles the materials it’s supposed to be made of, not how objectively good in combat those customized boutique clothes will be compared to Wayne Industry’s patented armor.
Does it make sense that after losing her old costume she assembles a new, cheap one, instead of asking Bruce to give her another armor? Yeah, probably not. Especially since she’s a regular human, not a superpowered alien or an Amazon or a magic user that can wear even a skimpy costume without caring for consequences. But that’s the issue of pulling it off with writing, no different than pulling of the existence of miraculous better-than-kevlar material.
For what it’s supposed to be, the new costume is designed awesomely.
It really says something about fantasy art that the thing people seem to remark most on in my work is the fact the female armor I draw is ‘functional’ with out and sexy bits out there showing. Something I just think of as “well you wouldn’t want to get stabbed in the navel… so lets put some studs and leather there” is so foreign to some that it sticks out. But, it really shouldn’t stick out. People shouldn’t even notice that. And that kind of pisses me off about the other artists out there. Look I am not saying every character has to be all covered up and armored, if it is a female/male rogue who uses her god given talents to subvert, distract, and get what s/he wants by all means show some skin.. .but if it is a paladin, warrior, anything that needs to be heavily armored then put some damn good armor on them! And despite what some art directors think, a girl can look pretty damn hot in some nice, functional, armor with out her tits flopping about. And if you are an artist and the only way you can make a female attractive is by showing her ass or cleavage, you are a BAD ARTIST, go practice.
Bolded for emphasis.
It’s really a painful realization that bikini armors are so ingrained in the collective consciousness that actually protective female armor stands out as novelty.
Which also proves just how bullshitty the “skimpy costume design is creative” excuse is. If it was so, people would be more surprised by it than by costumes that do provide cover. Yet here we are and no-one’s shocked by the sight of bikini armor anymore.
