#paramilitary

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 

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

A young boy runs past a loyalist paramilitary mural on Oct. 13 in Belfast, Northern Ireland.