i’ve been meaning to do this post for YEARS and i finally managed to dig out all these sketches and put them together.
the sexual dimorphism in WoW has always been sad especially considering blizz had such good ideas at the start but the furious fan feedback always made them redesign these fascinating and monstrous females of the races into much more humanlike. i also remember the uproar of thin male blood elves and the homophobic and sexist slurs that followed which made them beef up the male model considerably.
i tried my best to give a go at redesigning them to make their body types, postures and facial features more aligned.
dwarf, undead, goblin and gnome models on the other hand are great, 5/5.
Screenshot comes from a surreal indie game, Paradigm.
What I truly love about this image is how the hair, bow, handkerchief and cigarette give this character so much personality that none of the bikini armor bingo tropes do.
Though keep in mind that this knight has a masculine voice and is referred to as “sir” in the game, so they qualify more likely for a quirky challenging-gender-norms example rather than a positive female example.
~Ozzie
Ok, but is their grille in the shape of hearts? I want to befriend this person.
male gamers like to pretend that male characters designed, draw/rendered and written by men, made hulkishly muscular and hypermasculine by men for a deliberate target audience of men is objectification and hypersexualisation rather than actively appealing to male power fantasy
and it’s somehow women’s fault of course
My favorite example of this is when people try to invoke this guy as their ultimate trump card of “Men are objectified in video games too!”
The ultimate steroid rager who converses primarily by screaming and murdering. A completely selfish man who, since murdering his wife and daughter, seems to only one emotion (anger) and prone to random acts of violence. A man so terrible that he goes out of his way to incorporate murdering random women* into “puzzle solving”.**
People actually point to this character, created by a man (David Jaffe) and try to tell us this is objectification of men in order to pander to women.
Then, presumably, after throwing a tantrum and destroying random objects in their home, then wonder why women aren’t impressed by this and find them undateable.
* The fact that almost the entire female population, including the monsters, goes to great pains to show off their breasts to the player also never seems to factor into their assessment.
** This sequence featured in Tropes vs Women in Video Games – however please be advised that this sequence along with other parts in the video contain extreme depictions of violence against women. (x)
– wincenworks
So, due to some minor events that gave this myth a shot in the arm, it’s probably worth bringing this back this week, particularly since said event related to barbarians and similarly physically powerful warriors.
The notion that “men are objectified too” really doesn’t hold up under the slightest scrutiny – particularly when so much media insists on asking the audience to cheer for super violent male characters who are often amazingly unlikeable.
This is the newest addition to High-Rez’s hero fighter, “Paladins” who is one of the more interesting characters on their roster as far as her character goes, but that just makes it so much more disappointing that this is the design they ended up going with. This full screen image was the first thing I was greeted with upon logging in after the latest patch.
My biggest question is how she’s going to find the person who stole the rest of her outfit (and mangled her spine?) with that blindfold on, and hopefully that necklace doesn’t impale itself into her chest while she’s chasing them.
The one positive I find in this creatively sterile design* is the fact that Seris, unlike most Paladins champions, isn’t a direct or indirect ripoff of any Overwatch character. Though it won’t surprise me if she was heavily influenced by someone from a more fantasy-oriented franchise, like LoL or WoW… or maybe Warmachine [x]:
I just heard of a new upcoming video game called Battle Chasers: Nightwar which was based on a comic book of the same name. It seemed to be the type of game I would enjoy but first I needed to see if the designs of the characters were good (Bad designs can easily ruin the whole experience for me) so I checked on Gully…
“Wow! That is actually a pretty damn good design!” I said to myself.
How is that you could make one good female character design and then make a terrible female character design in the same fucking series?! HOW DID YOU SCREW THAT UP?!
So based on the promotional materials on their website, Red Monika (gee, her name reminds me of a character to whom she has a striking similarity) is a flirtatious acrobatic pirate/scoundrel type, which really makes me wonder what magical glue she uses to prevent her breasts from falling out. Her boobs also jiggle when she moves, cause that’s totally important when your view of the battlefield looks like this:
I, too, have a sexy swashbuckler character with large breasts, and they wear a sports-bra equivalent even when they decide to flirt and show some cleavage. And they don’t even do back flips in combat.
The lack of creativity here is painful in the most boring way.
But this game is based on an existing property; maybe it’s the fault of the comics that made Monika look this way.
… maybe not.
-Icy
90s comics was once of those amazing periods in history that’s hard to explain to people unless they were there – I kind of hope that one day Martin Scorsese will make a movie about it.
However Battle Chasers did have a ton of interesting material and a lot of promise – by that I mean the cast who were not generic fantasy hero and generic evil sexy lady.
So, let’s take a look at what they chose for their feature video and hope that the game creators realize that and don’t think that a classically 90s comic figure and outfit is what made this comic so interesting…
welcome to video game!!!!!! customize your character; but first, choose your gender:
in case anyone thought this was an exaggeration
TERA is such a bad joke of a game. And not only that, but female characters all wear super-skimpy outfits and lean way the hell over so that you can see their panties when they run.
I mean, nothing against fanservice (although I prefer mine a bit more equal-opportunity). This game, however, is just…tawdry. Like something out of a particularly bad adult manhwa.
Also, I remember a discussion in which the scummy fanboys broke out literally every scummy fanboy derailing tactic in the book (plus a Godwin or two and an accusation of “shaming” the characters). So…there’s also the matter of the brand of fan it attracts.
Ah, TERA Online. Once upon a time, I played (and enjoyed) the closed Beta, up to the point where I had to interact with a female NPC who literally wore a metal bikini (not chainmail, actual solid metal) whose breasts still swayed–with the armor.
I actually have a mixed attitude toward the designs in the game. On the one hand, it’s all very Male Gaze, creepy, and completely impracticalor physically impossible to wear into battle. On the other hand, some of their stuff is actually well-designed (i.e. actually makes use of design principles) and is nice to look at. It’s the kind of stuff I wouldn’t mind seeing at a Haute couture fashion show (though they can’t seem to design shoes for shit).
But the game isn’t Project Runway: TERA, unfortunately.
-Icy
I love how not only is @xylophil’s satire spot-on, but also that @dreamersollux easily found an official game promo pic of exactly what it’s making fun of.
Whenever someone brings up the “you can see Hanzo’s one pec, therefore there is no sexism in Overwatch”, I will always be thinking of this Reverse Hanzo and his glorious butt.
For a character whose model literally has no legs (so she can’t score the ever popular High heels or Thigh-high boots squares), Morgana from League of Legends still covers a decent amount of the bingo.
Fun fact: when we were checking with Icy whether that bra should count as “How does it attach?”, we discovered that Morgana’s buttcrack isn’t all covered:
Guess she should score cleavage double.
~Ozzie
A fallen angel who got her hands on forgotten dark magic to become more powerful. Is that what you guys get from this design? Cause I sure don’t, even though that’s Morgana’s backstory. Definitely one of the more boring designs in LoL, even among the other swimsuit models.
