#double standards

Smitecharacter design principles in two images… men are weird, over the top mixes of power/macho physiques and armor so ridiculous you’d need cybernetics to hold it up… women ridiculous outfits that show off they have hips and tits. (This is actually one of Nemesis’s better skins)

No, really. That’s basically their entire brand. This is the background image for their site, for their game about battling gods and pantheons.

Then if you don’t buy in immediately and want to look at what they got… here’s your first two gods on the roster…. Zeus and the Morrigan.¹

And yes, they’re treating the gods currently worshipped by actual Hindu people today with the same irreverence as for… characters who… at best are at least as much creative license by writers as they are myth (Arthurian figures and Sun Wukong) ²

So, when people try to pretend that stuff like this is okay because it’s based on immodest pagan gods etc, rest assured… if it was about that, you’d know.

- wincenworks

More on Smitehere

¹ This one is particularly bizarre since they have the Morrigan and Cú Chulainn, but do not have the horny/female empowerment queen Celtic (warrior) goddess icon (Queen) Medb, who’s name may mean “she who intoxicates”.
² They’ve actually gone a step worse than this and decided that the actual religion of roughly 1.35 billion people alive today with… an 80s toy ad…

So, looking at the promotions one would be forgiven for believing the remastered Grand Theft Auto trilogy is either a low budget dating/sex game or one where you play a female carjacker who operates literally in a bikini.

This is, sadly, almost pretty standard but actually slightly worse than usual for the serious in terms of marketing.

This includes Grand Theft Auto Online’s expansion pack)

The exception being Grand Theft Auto IV, which was essentially the tittle in the series that deconstructed the rest of the series, and featured female characters less like Candy Suxxx, and more like:

It’s a shame that the leads at Rockstar and the wider video game industry didn’t take notice and continues to treat women as some sort of mysterious commodity that magically make products sellbutaren’t worth further consideration.

- wincenworks

These are little old now, but I can’t help but notice there’s something… different about the ways that PUBG loading screens depict male and female characters. This goes for their marketingtoo:

Now, what bothers me with these is not the lack of practicality - the very nature of PUBG means that two thirds of any game will be populated with players who have worked hard to make the most absurd outfit they could in the name of self-expression and individuality.

What bothers me is that they tend to go to impressive lengths to think of a variety of archetypes and looks for the men.

• Outlook bikers
• Peacocking 80s gamblers
• Tropical vacation guy
• Parody service industry uniforms

Where as pretty much all the looks they create and and promote for female characters can essentially be summarised as “alt-girl”.

• Goth Alt Girl
• Gasmask Alt Girl
• Sex Store Costume Sports Bike Rider Alt Girl
• Fallout Cosplay Alt Girl

There’s never:

• the angry-as-fuck biker girl who wears a jacket over a cincher with a threatening t-shirt and flame chaps
• The music nerd girl wearing three circus tents of fabric in pastel colours with headphones
• The sports girl with her chest protector, knee brace, elbow brace and band-aids across her nose

Or countless other iterations that have more story than “I’m a model”, and I mean… while some of them are kind of cool, none of these gentlemen are truly empowered.

- 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

Gotham Knights is the latest in Batmanvideo games, which takes the bold step of being a Batman game without Batman - instead focusing on Batgirl, Red Hood, NightwingandRobin.

The premier trailer seems to take a confusing approach to the “gaze” where it initially presents all the heroes as unsexualized, then has a panning shot of the line up to assure you Batgirl will be skinny, and have her tiddy on a shelf, and she’s the only one who’s not visibly armoured with anything more impressive than batkevlar. 

Then give each of the characters a bombastic intro, with hers being the most passive and the only one that ends on a chest shot.

It also seems to try to have it’s cake and eat it too (oh god can I say that in this context?) with butt shots.  

For most of the trailer Batgirl  has her butt covered by her cape, like she’s inherited a special power from Batman.  

Then there seems to be some sort of attempt to play into the tradition of always presenting Nightwing the way female characters are, and expand it into some butt shots of the boys… but…well look at these:

With all the light and other nonsense going on, you can barely see the goods.

Where is the delightful curvature? Where is the juiciness? Why are those straps sitting flat rather than loving pushing his buttocks up and together? If Batgirl’s chest armour is curve flaunting, seems only fair the boys’ pants are too!

And then, in the last part of the clip… they rush to use the premise of riding (bat)motorcycles to remind you that Batgirl

Honestly, with all this trend towards comic characters moving away from spandex and into modern racing/sports gear, it’d be nice if we could just move all of it to focus on the action rather than having this weird fan service crap.

And well, if there must be fan service - do not do a disservice to Nightwing, he is an icon of male empowerment.

- wincenworks