Fantasy Armor
Oh boy...
The short version of it is that some people involved in game designing (both traditional and video games) tend to design female armor to be more sexually attractive than functional. This topic can lead to lively debates, as seen below.
Categorization
Here's a brief rundown...
- Category Zero: A female character is simply clad in regular armor that is identical to what male characters have and is purely functional in design. If it has any ornamentation, it is simply the sort of ornamentation that is common for that region. Some examples include chainmail shirt and a helmet, a suit of plate, gear worn by modern female soldiers in combat situations, etc.
- Category One: Armor is specifically made to be worn by women, but is still functional. Ornamentation, if present can be more feminine. Think of the difference between a man's and a woman's suit. Cat One armor is either as good or better for a female wearer than Cat Zero armor.
- Category Two: (Boobplate) Specific to plate armor, this involves a pair of boobs being hammered into a breastplate. This will direct a sword blow (or worse: a bullet) inward towards the heart. A simple raised section in the armor to accommodate breasts would fall into Category One. Special note has to go to the real world Greek Muscle cuirass which had sculpted boob plates, only it was worn by men (ie the Sanguinary Guard), and further only by officers, making it a rare case of male Cat 2 or 1. That said, since a six pack and abs is flatter than a pair of boobs it's much less of an issue.
- Category Three: Female armor which is really, really tight fitting, thus making it hard to put on or take off, decreasing its effectiveness as armor, and making it hard to move comfortably in. In most fantasy settings, form-hugging catsuits are typically the most popular example in this category (Although the suit itself is designed to allow the user to move with ease).
- Category Four: Armor with exposed cleavage, midriffs and similar, leaving portions of the body exposed for blades, spears and arrows. Also appearing at this point are high heels, and not the kind intended for riding. Category 4 is mostly the mainstream for settings where it tends lean on the fanservice side of things and is pretty much the staple for modern most animu female warrior types (I.E: The armored seifuku look).
- Category Five: Chainmail and plate bikinis. At this point we are not dealing with armor but rather armor-themed stripper costumes whose only purpose is for pure fanservice and nothing else. The male example is Roman gladiator armor which usually only consisted of armor on a single arm and a belt, and, like lady Cat 5 armor, was intended for spectacle rather than utility.
White Hot Skub on Skub Action
It's not that it's silly. Lord knows, where would we at /tg/ be without deeply silly things presented in very earnest fashion? It's that it has, effectively, become the norm rather than the exception. Even supposedly "realistic" tabletop and video games like Dragon Age or Pathfinder will usually have the ladies prancing about in something better suited to a very different kind of roleplaying, if you know what I mean. (I mean sex!) And that's definitely a bit weird, you know? It doesn't necessarily create the most welcoming environment for roughly fifty percent of the population, and gives the hobby as a whole a kind of juvenile "boys club" reputation that's just not going to be healthy in the long term.
But, on the other hand... dude. It's called fantasy, right? Gritty realism isn't really the order of the day most of the time! If it looks cool, who cares? And, just as the vast majority of male gamers don't blow their tops when a slender, graceful elf dude gets drawn lounging around all shirtless and ripped, so too do plenty of everyday girls just not have a problem with the whole thing. And that's not even counting the camp of paranoiacs who go into fits of terror that the feminists are going to personally confiscate all their porn every time someone brings up the issue. They've got as much right to their games and arts as anybody?
The closest thing to a solid answer here is that whether or not you want to go for the lady-armor is a matter of tone. If footsoldiers are marching in pike formations and phalanxes supported by companies of volley-firing missile troops as cavalry probe the wings for weaknesses, maybe leave the chainmail bikini on the rack, you know? If, however, burly men and orcs are fist-fighting against a landscape that wouldn't look out of place on a heavy-metal album cover, wearing nothing but loincloths and boots, go ahead. Things're already over-the-top enough to justify it!
Gallery
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Jenette Vasquez from Aliens in Category Zero. As seen with Hudson as a comparison, her armor looks exactly like that of the male marines use, apart from the extra equipment used to wield a Smartgun system.
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Elspeth Tirel shows off an ornamental suit of Category One. (For the purposes of this discussion, just assume she'll take off that stupid cloak and put on an actual helmet if she were headed into actual combat.)
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Sister Miriya of the Sisters of Battle in Category Two. Category Two armor is generally the most acceptable form of female armor for most fantasy fans since it looks like something that's both recognizably feminine and reasonably protective.
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An Eldar Farseer in Category Three. While eldar armor mesh removes many of the problems of this type of armor, sculpting the navel is probably a bit much. Also, even the male Banshees have to wear the boobplate.
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One of the more popular fantasy characters in the olden age, Xena's a pretty popular example of Category 4. Its armor.....but by the gods, there are about a dozen ways to easily circumvent that.
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Lelith Hesperax in a Category Five. Again, in the context of 40k's fictional universe, this is somewhat justifiable: Lelith is not only neigh-supernaturally fast and entirely focused on dodging rather than tanking, but a female gladiator taking part in highly-ritualized combat games intended to sexually titillate the crowds.
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A male Cat 2 cuirass. It has largely the same problems as female Cat 2. They even went to the trouble of hammering out nipples and a navel.
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A male Cat 5 gladiator's armor. The exposed chest is considered to be the combatant's badge of pride. If you've pierced that, you've stabbed him right in his honor. No, his other honor!
