Mixing it up some more

[bellatrys]

I'm not the only one out here doing this now - here's kkglinka's redo spoofing a recent Catwoman cover, and I've seen a couple takes on the Tigra Beatdown* and a couple others, which even in rough form have (along with a grisly/implausible real Red Sonja cover which still doesn't come near the usual objectification/eroticization of violence against

Comments

[shininghalf]

::spit, LOL:: In the box-art version, Hiro there would be flashing us! Just look right under the edge of that hip-sash...

snerk

[bellatrys]

I know! I do want to do that one, but I'm lazy and it's going to be a lot harder to set up and get the angles matching. And the wallpaper was helpful in that it reduced the variables, where you NEVER find a guy posed with a sword like that. (I started a project that got out of hand, trying to set up matching images of all the default Poser 5 set poses for M and F figures, and how completely *bizarre* they look when applied to a male figure - the stock "swordswoman" poses (very like this cover), when applied to the guys, create a surreal Conan Chorus Line effect.

[acaciaonnastik]

He's almost flashing us now. ~snerk~

well, there is a sort of Thong on the original

[bellatrys]

But since it's apparently a dark rust color, and in shadow, you only see that if you look really closely - I wasn't 100% certain that she wasn't naked under that belt-armor thing until I took it into photoshop and zoomed in.

So he's wearing a Posing Pouch, just like she is. (NSFW)

[nancylebov]

For some reason, the facial expressions don't work out the same on the female and male versions. She looks serious and a little angry, he looks like he's ready to cry.

In re the game cover illo: Any theories about what men get out of that sort of dangerous woman picture? She's clearly intended to be aiming that big blade at the viewer. Is it like the scarier sort of romance fiction, or something else? (I started reading Nightfever, and put it down when I realized criminal assault/no information guy was supposed to be the love interest. It's a pity, the basic premise wasn't bad.)

Do you ever read Nora Robb? I just read her _Innocence in Death_, and it could be worse, but it's got some interestingly creepy features.

I *suspect* that it has something to do with what's coded as ok

[bellatrys]

for depicted women vs ok for depicted men - we're now used to seeing women portrayed with that up-from-under pout being held up as "badass" even tho' historically in pinup art/old movies/advertising art the up-from-under pout was coded as "seductive"; but when you put a guy into the head down, looking up from under pose, unless he's grimacing and snarling (masculine coded expressions) then the older "seductive" and therefore "feminine" reading overrides the picture. (I went in and *heavily* butched up the face, btw, to try to counteract that, giving him stubble and rugged bone structure, just because the Impression of the up-from-under pout is *so* overridingly feminine, just like the spraddle-legged hipshot pose of the typical supposedly-badass girl-with-gun.) If both of them had been instead looking down haughtily at the viewer, head high and angled, I suspect that many people would read *her* as more masculine and "bitchy," but it would take some heavy-duty editing of the background to test it, due to all the floating hair.

Any

Re: I *suspect* that it has something to do with what's coded as ok

[voxwoman]

I've heard that theory advanced altho' I'm not sure I buy it, but I did come across yesterday something interesting, talking about why *black warrior women* are such a common trope in SF

Did that trope exist before or after Grace Jones did Conan the Destroyer?

Before-- Pam Grier was early '70s

[bellatrys]

and Grace Jones' character was very much a knock-off of her sort of roles, while in the UK there was Josette Simon on Blake's 7.

Damnation

[deiseach]

That Catwoman cover is just - argh. Selina Kyle is tough, smart, dangerous, capable, sexy - and they think this boils down to "nipples like chapel hatpegs" (to quote Lily Savage) when being mauled by a monster-dude

If you zoom in close, she's wearing a thong

[bellatrys]

under that armoured-belt thing - it's rust, or flesh-color, and fades in, but when I zoomed in to silo the clothing it was obviously an undergarment, so apparently a posing pouch is all the well-trained warrior needs!

Have these guys never held anything heavier than a pencil? Oh, wait...

Apparently they've never stood in front of a mirror and tried to hold a pose, either! Someone I saw around the net did for one of these covers and managed with great effort to get her spine into it for long enough to get a sketch, but complained that she almost fell over and her back muscles hurt for the rest of the day.

I don't think Bats would be very happy seeing his friend treated like that, guys. If some night a masked vigilante swoops down out of the darkness and duffs up the artist, well...

Oh, yes. Then there's this, which is getting defended around the block on the grounds that Lex is a villain, so of course he's going to do something like this! Oh yeah, that's getting regendered, all right.

It's driving me nuts

[deiseach]

Because I've seen some clips of the game and dang it, there's no way that costume works for all the leaping and jumping and turning and running and fighting and slicing and superkewl moves with the god-sword that can be one humongous sword of doom, or divide into two blades of flashing death, or be two extendable sharp cutty things of slice'n'diciness on chains

also, unbalanced

[bellatrys]

I noticed how Implausible - shoot, Impossible - the swords were when I had to clone the hilts and fingers out into separate layers, and I realized there's no bloody way that they're not going to slip right out of the hands, given the disproportion between the size of the blade, the length of the grip, and the fact that the hafts are so flimsy and don't have any proper pommels. And yeah, no way is Miss Twiggy there going to be able to haul ass with not one, but *two* BFS.

It's a very good costume

[bellatrys]

It looks like she could move in it, without "wardrobe incidents," and she still looks "feminine" while clearly being a fantasy adventurer - interestingly enough, it coincidentally looks a bit like this character design by Brian Ching, one of the KOTOR artists who's also a comics penciller, where he specifically said he wanted the chara to not be sexed up but to look like a practical fighter.

[ext_59120]

I thought I'd posted about heavenly sword(s) but I guess I only commented on it. Anyway the thing that pisses me off the most about her, is that she falls into a whole bundle of cliches, yet still has potential, but it's not used.

Spoilory for the game:

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So she's the chosen child from some prophecy (hey I did write about this, but in relation to prophecies) that seems to have no real origin. And there's absolute shite to be had when she's born "A Worthless Girl'. Then her father changes his mind about killing her as a baby, but she grows up as her clan's scapegoat.

Then in the game she does all this shite, endures all this muck to fulfill the goal of her people. But fullfilling said goal is slowly killing her.

Then she has the bag guy in her clutches (serious bad dude - Andy Serkis in Bizzaro World) but she doesn't final move him. He gets to live, while she dies. And as she's fricking dying, she tells folk/her father that she doesn't believe she was every their reborn Heavenly Warrior anyway and that she was a

PS

[ext_59120]

If you go to the game's website. You'll see all I'm talking about in prequel animation episodes. Plus hear the behind the scenes vignettes where her body actor (and possibly also voice actress) is happy that she's a kick ass female in a skimpy costume.

Though truthfully she might just be happy that it's a female protagonist even if she's in a skimpy costume. But it still irked me.

http://www.heavenlysword.com/

oh wow. boooo/hisss

[bellatrys]

And yeah it could have been way cool, IFF they'd only let themselves think outside the gender role box beyond "chick w/a big fucking sword" - you can do all kinds of messing around with the prophecy tropes like we were talking about, you can subvert them and be self-referential to the cliches like the Evil Overlord LIst, but that's not it. It *would* be cool to have someone be supposed to be the Chosen One, only not - and end up doing it anyway. ("I chose *myself*" - how badass would that be, to have your Heroine say?) And why on earth would she let him go? if she's goddamn Samus with a sword, how come she doesn't get to kill the Final Boss? Oh right, girls can't be winners.

Grr, now I'm all angry too - it's really pathetic that a game like Tomb Raider is actually a *better* example of female power fantasy than this, what, ten years later? More than that now, I think--

*headdesk*

[nenya_kanadka]

Yargh. Way to hit all the Mary Sue fanfiction notes in your original story, guys! And of COURSE she has to die tragickally for the love of Legolas some random reason... Good grief.