#bikini armor

Artist :  悠井 浩

Warlocks from Dungeons & Dragons 

Today in evil is sexy, a comparison of the official artworks for the core subtypes of warlock available in the Player’s Handbook.  They’re separated by their type of patron who is respectively: The Fiend, The Archfey, and The Great Old One as they appear in Volo’s Guide to Monsters.

Now, Wizards of the Coast has started to revise materials, so technically the Fiend is no longer confirmed evil - but this artwork predates that decision and there’s a more important factor I want to highlight here.

One of these types of Warlock gains an ability where, by killing enemies they gain temporary hit points and so are unusually well equipped for dealing with.  So one of them is supposed to go up the front while the other two hang out at the back.

Can you guess which one? If you guessed the one that looks like she can’t move or breathe without getting some sort of bruising or chaffing from her absurd bikini armor: You guessed right!

I know that text errata is much cheaper, easier and more effective - but part of the problem with these images is that they also appear in official Licensed platforms such as Roll20 and DnD Beyond.

So please Wizards of the Coast, can we have a new pic for “Warlock of the Fiend”. Pretty please?

- wincenworks

Mara from Call of Duty (Death Dealer and other skins)

Preliminary point: Fuck Blizzard-Activision
Being bought out by Microsoft does not absolve the executives who created the nightmarish work environments and abusive culture and does not magically undo the harm that’s been wrought. There’s a lot of work ahead before that.

Main point: Mara has kind of a unique background in that despite having guns to hold her guns, the body model for her is cosplayer Alex Zedra, who looks more like a conventional model/alt-girl than a killing machine.

While there is definitely a trend for the female characters in Call of Duty to get sexed up skins, Mara seems to primarily exist to facilitate that and her more practical skins being there to incentivize people to pay for a battle pass in order to unlock the look they really want.

The only real upside to this was the brief moment on Alex’s stream where someone using one of the skins went to rescue her and captured this perfect streaming moment:

- wincenworks

Image sources:

https://www.reddit.com/r/modernwarfare/comments/fx34vr/mara_death_dealer_battle_pass_operator_skin/
https://earlygame.com/call-of-duty/hottest-female-warzone-skins/ 
https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Mara
https://twitter.com/Alex_zedra/status/1432485338623119360 

Hag Priestess from Age of Sigmar

While Games Workshop has been improving with Warhammer 40,000 depictions of women (in places) they seem to pretty much have decided that Age of Signmar  (ie the rebranded Warhammer Fantasy universe) is traditional fantasy and that means bikini armorforeveryoneempowered, young afab women (especially if they’re evil),

This seems to apply equally whether the product be RPGortabletop game.

But perhaps most entertaining about this is the use of the term “hag” - particularly given the please that they tend to hold in mythology and fantasy. I have yet to meet a woman who enjoys fantasy and doesn’t take delight in the idea that they grow old and withered, they will attain a special kind of power.

Really not sure what convinced GW that it was a good idea to say “okay, we’ll call her hag… but she’s like… hot and wearing a glued on metal bikini… and she’s holding like a giant cup like blood might spill over her… body at any moment…”

- wincenworks

Image Sources;
Age of Sigmar: Souldbound - Hag Priestess
Hag Queen on Cauldron of Blood

Necromundu: Underhive Wars (2020) by Rogue Factor

Looking at the trailer and promotional material for this video game you would be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of ultra-violent dating reality show where competitors are eliminated through rounds of live ammunition laser/bullet tag.

Collectively the Escher gang tick off a lot of bingo boxes, and so much screen time you would think the game was supposed to be entirely about them and not the *checks notes*  the six core gangs, five or six other factions, and four extra gangs invented for the sequel tabletop game “Necromunda: Underhive”.

This is probably in part because the base game only has three playable gangs, and clearly they chose Escher for the sex appeal angle, and Goliaths for the weird hypermasculinity… but they really… really lean into one of those:

How’s that working out for them…

I can’t help but think that perhaps the fashion bras, skin-tight pants are not really conveying the Escher gang as a people of amazons from a sub-society where their men are generally physically feeble and unable to defend their territory.  Maybe it’s several decades overdue for a reinvention.  Possibly at a conceptual level that forgoes the assumption of patriarchy being the default.

I’m sure Games Workshop is working on that… oh no…

- wincenworks

game heroes happyhour by Gustavo Viselner

when the video games heroes meet for a beer there will always be an awkward moment

There’s a lot of things I like about this piece, a lot of nostalgia invoked, but also I can’t help but love how it showcases how ridiculous JainaProudmoor’soutfit is and have been since she was introduced. She’s so out of place compared with so many other iconic video game heroes, including Lara Croft.

For that reason, I also particularly like that it’s international icon of toxic and fragile masculinity, Duke Nukem, who’s the one who wants to move in.

- wincenworks

Gustavo is on tumblr, @viselner, but hasn’t posted this piece and doesn’t seem to have updated at all since July 2020.

Red Sonja Valentines Special (2022)

BURNING LOVE! Red Sonja’s temporarily developed fire powers… which is handy, since she’s in a land where warlords possess deadly ice powers. Sonja finds herself amidst a lovers quarrel, in which someone exchanged their heart and soul (quite literally) for overwhelming power. Can Sonja defeat a greedy cherub ogre and restore peace to the freezing lands?

If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you’ll know that one of our favourite forms of comedy is seeing maladjusted man-childrenscreamthatConanwears less so he must be equally, if not more sexualized than Red Sonja.

Can you imagine a comic company, even one as shitty as Dynamite Entertainment, ever putting out a Conan Valentine’s special where they him on a cover like this, and inexplicably give him magic powers for a story like this!?

The next time someone claims this, please, invite them to find the comic where Conan has this kind of this happen.

Because this ain’t the first time it’s happen to Sonja, and believe it or not… last year’s was actually worse:

Red Sonja Valentines Special (2021)

Red Sonja’s Hyrkanian habitat is turned upside down as her greatest enemy becomes… her greatest admirer?!?! You thought Kulan Gath being evil was frightful, wait until you see him head-over-heels in loooove!!! Sonja will face her greatest challenge resisting the urge to kill a love that Can. Not. Die!!!! 

But won’t someone please think of poor Conan!?

- wincenworks

One of the funniest things about toxic sludge pool masquerading as a comic company, Dynamite Entertainment, continuing to try to flog money out of the license of Red Sonja as a warrior woman in inexplicable bikini armor is the the constant need for the comics to maintain “selective physics”

Sonja jumps down for a dramatic fly kick to the neck of her opponent, her hair flies up so we can see the energy of the movement - but her breasts and weird scalemail loincloth sit unmoving because otherwise it’d necessitate a wardrobe malfunction that’d impact their ability to sell on regular, “family friendly” markets.

And I must stress, they’ve been flogging the title to the extent I’m starting to worry that their favourite part is killing off the titular character.  They’ve experimented with hiring renown feminist writers, veteran comic writers, going back to classic plots, reinventing the character, crossing over with other characters, doing short stories, putting the character in the modern day…

…damned if I can tell any difference between most of them by looking at the promo covers though.

- wincenworks

mcnostril:

I have discovered the truth about chainmail bikinis, and it is imperative those wearing such armor do not think about it too hard or they may inadvertently cross the line between Sexy Hero and Homicidal Pervert.

This four panel comic presents a much more interesting exploration in to the impacts of the kind of magic that would facilitate bikini armor than novel, movie,graphic novelorvideo game I have ever stumbled across.

Though I have long held that if the argument is the armor is unnecessary/ornamental etc then the heroine would be more inclined to wear something comfy (like pajamas) or even go nude, I had not considered the homicidal pervert angle.

I hearby move that this should be licensed for use in every textbook on fantasyworldbuilding.

- wincenworks

h/t: @guardingtheacewolf

Working on this blog a real cost to my sanity and personal shopping experience, particularly in regards to comic books.

Though I do want to point out that these kind of recommendations do come in waves, and usually my recommendations are more like this:

Because the titles that rely on fairly small groups of reactionaries who fund their projects to get started less for the product itself and more for the political stance that the market should cater to them.  And even then, not particularly well.

They fall off recommendations quickly because they don’t have any wider appeal and because most of the people who were interested in them already pre-ordered their special nine variant covers to own the libs.

The ones that show up more frequently like Princeless are ones that definitely have political messages, are stories all sorts of people can enjoy and find lasting appeal in.

And this is why media industries both need to drop the myth of sex sells, and everyone should read Princeless.

- wincenworks

So, despite having made no grand claims of being for everyone, it seems King of Fighters XV is going to have a playable black woman before Overwatchdoes.

Her costume is clearly a trainwreck which can be summarized best as “As fashion: Yes. For combat: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?” As such, while I would love to rant about every aspect of this costume… I feel there’s some more important bullshit that needs to be called out here.

Unsurprisingly for a series where a signature feature was the ability to blast the front off a female character’s top, there’s… there’s… a lot going on here, not the least of which is ultra-spiritual  psychic from Mali is named… Dolores, teamed up for a full contact tournament with a foreign mercenary and a (probably) underage girl and has “interview” answers like this:

So baffling amount of exotification and a bafflingly impractical outfit who seems much more inspired by Bayonetta than anything relating to black culture - making attacks mostly through dance moves and summoning mud instead of magical hair… even though her hair does seem… magical.

All of which is to say… this is all rather secondary to what’s going on in the background…

Nothing about this is okay.

- wincenworks

King’s commentary generated via The Death Generator

by PINTA@kiwoterau

by zefra@zefrablue

生きた心地がしてきたので爽やかにBLACK!!!by 小武@『女主任・岸見栄子』単行本発売中@xiao_woo

[Android 18]: “Umm… where did you get this outfit from again?”

Twitter:https://twitter.com/BriggBragg

Took a break, drew some more bikini armor.

I don’t like MMOs that much but the art of TERA is inspiring. So I wanted to draw some bikini armor.

2 more new monster girls :3
a slime that hardens into concrete for armor and support
and a slime with symbiotic plants for clothing and fluff