Repair her Armor Blog

[Xaryn Mar]

This reminds me of another blog(or maybe it was a different type of website) whose name I forget which was dedicated to posting images of women in actually realistic, stylish and dignified gear. Not just combat armor, but for things like mages, scientists, sci-fi suits and all that jazz. To go on a little bit of a tangent here, I still don't get why the first Ghost in The Shell movie made it mandatory for Motoko to get naked every time she wanted to use invisibility.

That was because the invisibility was integrated into her synthetic skin (she was a cyborg after all) and worked just like the moderne attempts at invisibility camouflage. If she had not removed her clothes she would look like a suit of clothes walking around.

 

[Stu35]

Snip

I disagree with your last point: Arnie does not require armour. Years of steroid use have forged his muscles into a titanium/kevlar alloy, combined with whatever it is they put in modern military vehicles that make them so nails that the people inside are nigh-unkillable (I think it's more of the overall design than specific materials, but lets pretend his muscles have a special shaped hull, and well located and designed seatbelts).

Ahem... Yeah, back on topic, I agree that in games, female armour tends to be on the completely useless side. Not something I'm overly bothered about (I'm very much on the 'pro-tits' of any nudity/partial nudity argument) but it's hard to immerse myself in a battle thinking that the females involved would be getting eviscerated easily by anyone with so much as a small dirk.

Male armour too, in some cases, I suppose... I don't really care, it's not generally something that keeps me up at night.

Christ almighty.

I'll never understand how people can say there isn't a problem here (or in video games & films that do the same shit).

There's no problem here.

Not a real one, anyway. Only the sort of minor problem that some people get far too upset about for the rest of us to truly take it seriously.

 

[Miyenne]

Honestly, I understand why women are drawn like that. It's what sells. Doesn't mean I like it.

I just wish it was realistic. I can't even lift my arms above my head without my bra trying to pop off, and I have average sized boobs. It's just not realistic. Doing even something simple like yoga in underwear? Bits everywhere.

Fighting in a tight bikini? Only if she flops out everywhere. Which I'm sure the target audience would enjoy.

But yeah. I prefer practical armor, which is why I never play a warrior. I always play a rogue/thief type, as they tend to be more covered up. I remember back when I played WoW I refused to wear some upgraded armor because they were dumbass hot pants, and that didn't suit my character at all.

 

[lacktheknack]

... Why did they suddenly put crosses on all her clothing items? Her pants have one, her shirt... is this part of her character or are the new artists just trying to force a message about clothing / religion too?

There was already a cross theme going on, though not as explicit. Plus, it's a religious themed character, so why would it be forcing a message about religion?

A hint can be found in the subtitle of Seraphicide.

I'm sorry, I'm not religious so "Seraphicide" just sounds like someone mashed some words on a keyboard, and you really expect me to believe that comic just from the front page of it is religious with two almost naked girls trying to kill each other? I assumed the person making the change to more clothing was the one forcing religion due to suddenly adding crosses on a comic I had not heard of before while also making it more conversative in the sense of clothing.

Next time I'll read every word in every religious textbook before I read a comic's name again, just to prevent any misunderstandings!

Don't be hostile. It's a Latin word that has more roots in scientific standard than religion.

If I said "hydrophile", you'd immediately know that I mean something is drawn to water, because "hydro" = "water", and "phile" = "lover".

Similarly, "genocide" is composed of "geno" = "herditary, race" and "cide", which is "kill".

Seraphicide is just simple applied Latin. And "seraph" is hardly a "religious exclusive" word. Your average religious person is just going to call them "angels". Every time I've heard "seraph", it's from a pseudo-intellectual trying to impress people, ie. the entire internet.

 

[Angelblaze]

Honestly, I understand why women are drawn like that. It's what sells. Doesn't mean I like it.

I just wish it was realistic. I can't even lift my arms above my head without my bra trying to pop off, and I have average sized boobs. It's just not realistic. Doing even something simple like yoga in underwear? Bits everywhere.

Fighting in a tight bikini? Only if she flops out everywhere. Which I'm sure the target audience would enjoy.

But yeah. I prefer practical armor, which is why I never play a warrior. I always play a rogue/thief type, as they tend to be more covered up. I remember back when I played WoW I refused to wear some upgraded armor because they were dumbass hot pants, and that didn't suit my character at all.

If it sold so much there'd be no reason to not have more female-centric based male heroes in video games and comic books - the gaming population has been in the last two or so years a now 50/50 between males and females and with females quickly rising as being the breadwinners in the home I think games should at least try to keep up here.

 

[Dragonbums]

The thing is, is that as a woman I don't mind "sexy" bikini outfits existing in general.
It only bothers me when it's out of context of the character in question and ultimately what they are doing.
It's just become so common that I am absolutely sick of it.
For instance I saw a comic cover on Escher Girls that featured a bikini armored clad woman fighting a bunch of men in the sewers. The thing that got me was that the men in question were wearing hazard suits because the fumes in the sewage were toxic to breath in. Yet for the heroine she was wearing a golden bikini armor. Apparently the power of sexy prevents her from dying in two seconds. They wanted her to fight in the sewers but were more concerned about whether her tits were out as opposed to her wearing something practical to combat in a toxic environment. So naturally the whole thing just looked like a blatant boner piece.

Or when a woman says "I'm a dragon slayer" and all of her armor does fuck all in even protecting her from a dragons claws, so much as it's fire.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
For some people seeing as how the industry doesn't care to listen to us, we just decide to have a little fun of our own and redesign characters that good still give the boys a boner, but at the very least she isn't a walking sex toy.

 

[Smeatza]

Some of those aren't really improvements armour-wise.
Like going from this

Spoiler: before

to this

Spoiler: after

Yeah it looks much better, is classier and less distracting, but is that little bit of cloth really going to protect anyone? I suppose that's not the point anyway. Especially since most of those redesigns look much better and make more sense.

I also have a slight problem with the mission statement.

The purpose is to show that over-sexualized women is not "empowering",

Correct....well I suppose it depends on the individual.

but clearly offensive and ridiculous

Incorrect, definitely not correct for the vast majority of people.

If that were the case then I would find this guy offensive.

Spoiler: Dude

And I don't. I think he's the best designed villain I've ever seen.

 

[Kyrdra]

[...]
Or when a woman says "I'm a dragon slayer" and all of her armor does fuck all in even protecting her from a dragons claws, so much as it's fire.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
For some people seeing as how the industry doesn't care to listen to us, we just decide to have a little fun of our own and redesign characters that good still give the boys a boner, but at the very least she isn't a walking sex toy.

Actually wearing no armour or at least not much armour when fighting a Dragon would be intelligent. The only thing you provide with full armour is the tinfoil to you being a baked potatoe.
That said I quite like the blog mostly because it gives nice example how you can give a female good armour and still let her be sexy

 

[Dragonbums]

[...]
Or when a woman says "I'm a dragon slayer" and all of her armor does fuck all in even protecting her from a dragons claws, so much as it's fire.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
For some people seeing as how the industry doesn't care to listen to us, we just decide to have a little fun of our own and redesign characters that good still give the boys a boner, but at the very least she isn't a walking sex toy.

Actually wearing no armour or at least not much armour when fighting a Dragon would be intelligent. The only thing you provide with full armour is the tinfoil to you being a baked potatoe.
That said I quite like the blog mostly because it gives nice example how you can give a female good armour and still let her be sexy

That does make sense now that I think about it.
However suppose your fighting the dragon close range? I don't know-
In my headcannon it takes a while for dragons to release their fire breath, and thus they save it for long distance attacks because the time it takes for them to breath fire is the time a warrior could go in and cause some damage. So it's main choice of weapons are it's claws and tails.

 

[the December King]

Yeah, this does just seem a bit prudish to me.

This being fantasy, and all.

Mind you, some of the redesigns are quite nice, but I would rather see the art as it was intended/comissioned, rather than how people who didn't agree with it 'fixed it'. A fun exercise, but not really anything more than that.

 

[Kyrdra]

[...]

That does make sense now that I think about it.
However suppose your fighting the dragon close range? I don't know-
In my headcannon it takes a while for dragons to release their fire breath, and thus they save it for long distance attacks because the time it takes for them to breath fire is the time a warrior could go in and cause some damage. So it's main choice of weapons are it's claws and tails.

Well unless we talk about small dragons i would always prefer having mobility if I want to fight them. I mean let's face it: We are talking about a 10m lizard who can breath fire and has probably enough strength to lift a car I dont want to be hit by that. Regardless if one wears armour or not one will be send flying and then roasted. So yeah if I had to fight a dragon I would prefer wearing as little armour as possible and try to dodge everything.

[...]
I meant it more in the sense of a stylistic choice by the author rather than a 'makes sense within the narrative' sense. I had no doubts it would be logical in the latter, since this is Ghost In The Shell after all.

Although yeah, it's been a long time since I've seen the movie, and given which direction invisibility technology is leaning towards, it makes sense that artificial bodies would have this kind of tech within their very skin rather than a suit if cyborgs were around(although they did change to affecting the suit in the show, and I'm guessing they will again in the upcoming movies). Perhaps it wasn't as gratuitous as I remembered, so I'll give this one a pass. My bad.

Didnt she wear this strange visor/cloth thing in one occasions? I can remember it anymore

 

[ninjaRiv]

It's an interesting blog, to be sure but I noticed a redesign for Tifa; I don't think Tifa needed a redesign at all. But I think that shows the negative sides of these blogs; sometimes they're just fishing for stuff. I think so, anyway. There's one about the design of boobs somewhere, I think it's called "boobs don't look like that" and sometimes they're really reaching when they find examples. That's not to say what's good isn't good; there's some fantastic designs in there.

 

[WindKnight]

Given the "Seraphicide" part of the title, it could well be thematically appropriate. *wikis* ...Yep. The character of Avengelyne is an angel who fights demons and other monsters, and her blood gains special powers by quoting the Bible. Christian symbols fit into the character design rather neatly.

Wait... THAT is the plot of the comic!? And they have her... wearing that in the original cover?

That HURTS MY BRAIN!!

This is why I was originally confused. Now her change makes sense, but the comic still does not. Sigh, oh well.

well, the outfit she wears is sort of shaped like a cross in how in covers the bare minimum flesh possible.

This was the character involved in a story that opens with a dream sequence of Jesus (yes, THAT jesus) having a smack-down with the greek pantheon

 

[Nickolai77]

The re-designed female characters look so much more better and interesting, i really like this blog i have to say.


A few points:

1)A female character in little more than a bikini is sexually boring because they've all got the same identical body shape and it doesn't leave anything to the imagination. I know that makes me sound old, but i think there's a truism behind it- clothes do actually make a female character more sexually interesting, or at least sexually attractive in an alternative way to being just naked.

2) Clothes give female characters character- the fewer clothes they have the more boring they become because there's no hints about their personalities and interests which makes me less interested in playing as those characters.

 

[WindKnight]

Christ almighty.

I'll never understand how people can say there isn't a problem here (or in video games & films that do the same shit).


OT, the redesigns seem to be a lot better than the originals in pretty much every case. Portray women as people rather than whining fleshlights, and suddenly, the comic/ game/ film/ whathaveyou becomes infinitely more logical, mature, & well-rounded! Who'd have thought it?

I'm reminded of how this works by specific comic where a female character burns herself whilst welding in an accident she could not have predicted or avoided. The original script involves her being in full protective gear because, you know, welding is bloody dangerous, but the artist wanted boobies, so put her in a low cut top and no protective gear whatsoever. This ended up making the character looking like a complete idiot, instead of just having had an unfortunate accident.

 

[Silvanus]

There's no problem here.

Not a real one, anyway. Only the sort of minor problem that some people get far too upset about for the rest of us to truly take it seriously.

By "the rest of us", I hope you're referring to hormonal male teenagers on the internet, because I've noticed that serious media/ press tends to discuss representations of different groups quite frequently.

I'm reminded of how this works by specific comic where a female character burns herself whilst welding in an accident she could not have predicted or avoided. The original script involves her being in full protective gear because, you know, welding is bloody dangerous, but the artist wanted boobies, so put her in a low cut top and no protective gear whatsoever. This ended up making the character looking like a complete idiot, instead of just having had an unfortunate accident.

Hah, that's classic-- even genuinely relevant plot details are a tier below b00bs in importance sometimes.

 

[Stu35]

There's no problem here.

Not a real one, anyway. Only the sort of minor problem that some people get far too upset about for the rest of us to truly take it seriously.

By "the rest of us", I hope you're referring to hormonal male teenagers on the internet, because I've noticed that serious media/ press tends to discuss representations of different groups quite frequently.

By "rest of us", I mean me.

I'm a bitter mid-20s Yorkshireman, I actually don't give a fuck about anyone else or their problems.


For the record, everything I post is fairly tongue-in-cheek and not meant to be taken seriously. I'm aware that doesn't convey very well in a text based medium.

 

[Blow_Pop]

~Snip~

Spoiler

I mean I love my demon hunter in diablo 3. I mean look at how badass she looks. But to me, those heels look uncomfortable as hell. And they are at least 5 inch heels. This coming from someone with no fashion sense whatsoever and confirmed by those with a fashion sense and the ability to judge heel height.

and yes I know the size quality of some of the photos sucks. Can't help what my phone decides to do.

and that was a gif I made off of a website using my webcam set to show my desktop. It was a pain in the ass to do as my laptop doesn't like doing much of anything. If photo doesn't work, original can be found here: http://gifyo.com/GamerBunny/9279669/

Did you just take a PHOTO of your screen?

You do know there's a printscreen button that does that for you, so you can paste it straight into... I dunno... Microsoft Paint, right?

Except for the fact that my printscreen button seems to not work when I'm in Diablo. It will take a photo of my desktop but not my Diablo screen so yes. That is exactly how I had to do that. And it was a while ago. Cause that was back when I was like level 15/20 ish. And now I'm almost 60 (of course if I played more I'd already be at 60 but oh well). Point is, I'm not an idiot like you're implying. My laptop just hates me and hates doing things I want it to do.

 

[Bertylicious]

This is all very well with the whole upholding progressive womens values and such but sometimes I just want to see a naked woman in a giant washing machine where the water is replaced with semen.

There isn't anything wrong or grotesque about that, no matter what they say in Iceland.

Gaming is about fantasy and I worry sometimes that our concerns about whether or not games are portraying women as anything other than fuck-toys or victims may segue into a movement to take away my chainsaw themed splatter thrills.

 

[DementedSheep]

Areala? MORE LIKE AREOLA LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

*snicker* What? no I'm not laughing. I'm far to mature for that. <.<

I especially like it when they show how the male equivalent looks like in the game.

Many are just recolourings, or people drawing on top of an existing picture, so it doesn't fix the silly posture, but not everyone is an artist. I like it that you can submit reworkings too, in case you aren't talented enough to draw it yourself.

Escher girls is the one that fixes posture and some of the artist that submit are quite good and give anatomy tips (though lately not so much). The comments are often funny though that can get a little over bored at times.
http://eschergirls.tumblr.com/

Posture tends to annoy me more than costume, You can still be bad-ass while not wearing much but breaking you back to show of your tits and ass at the same time with vacant expression on your face makes you look like an idiot. You would be forgiven for think some heroines have an ass made of titanium and are trying to use it as a shield. But this is getting off topic and someone will likely interpret this as angry ranting (it's not) so I should probably stop.

Anyway what are some examples of guys who need their armor repaired?
There's

But Tera's rather low hanging fruit.

I vaguely remember Thor also rocking the chain sleeves but no shirt at some point but I can't remember what issue and think he was lounging around although that's still wtf.