Comments on: SFW, if you W as half-naked warrior

SFW, if you W as half-naked warrior

jfuller — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:45:35 -0800

The portrait of Maris, from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, raises yet again the age-old question.
(img, without which this thread is useless, from llbbl.)

By: CitrusFreak12

CitrusFreak12 — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:49:05 -0800

Ok. First Allison Stokke, now Maris. There is something in the water.

By: dogwalker

dogwalker — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:00:00 -0800

those nightstick lightsabers are superbad. the girl: meh.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:08:09 -0800

Cameltoe. Just sayin'.

By: CitrusFreak12

CitrusFreak12 — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:09:40 -0800

I'd like to posit the following query: What good would any form of armor do when you're up against lightsabers? They can cut through pretty much anything, so if you can't keep one away from you, no amount of armor is going to help you. At the very most, armor would help deflect blaster hits but again, lightsabers cover that as well. This is probably why you never see any jedis wearing any armor. The amount of cleavage showing is usually proportional to the amount of armor not being worn. Here is a handy graph. Thus, if it weren't for those shinguards, she'd be completely topless. Imagine the pain of being kicked in the shins by a battledroid. The shinguards stay.

By: yhbc

yhbc — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:10:45 -0800

BEST GRAPH EVAR

By: chowflap

chowflap — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:18:13 -0800

Yes but most of the jedis wear robes, which would help hide where the person's body is and make it more difficult to hit. The less clothing, the easier it is to see exactly where to slice and dice. Wearing bikini-like armor is a mind-bendingly dumb move, unless you were fighting over who has the best abs.

By: weston

weston — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:19:00 -0800

What armor bonus does cleavage give again? This isn't resolved in WOTC's Haberdashery Handbook IV?

By: absalom

absalom — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:20:43 -0800

Maybe you're just that good, and the drag and weight of the robes getting in the way does not offset their defensive benefit. Also: WTF?

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:25:36 -0800

Hee.

By: Cyrano

Cyrano — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:28:18 -0800

which would help hide where the person's body is and make it more difficult to hit. Much like cloud cover hid Alderaan from the Death Star.

By: CitrusFreak12

CitrusFreak12 — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:30:56 -0800

Much like cloud cover hid Alderaan from the Death Star. I'm not sure if that's an excellent counterpoint, low blow, extremely geeky statement, or all of the above.

By: dogwalker

dogwalker — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:31:01 -0800

Maybe you're just that good, and the drag and weight of the robes getting in the way does not offset their defensive benefit. e.g. Yoda in AOTC. Robes are unnecessary due to all the spinny flips.

By: furiousthought

furiousthought — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:34:15 -0800

I think the funnier picture is the splash for The Force Unleashed - the third link - with the center Jedi all HRONK ZREE GNARR and stormtroopers flying around every which way like the Jedi's figured out how to use the Force to summon Invisible Jackie Chan.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:36:43 -0800

Jedi Jihad Juggs.

By: rob511

rob511 — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:50:09 -0800

Niles Crane would've had to be gay to divorce her!

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:53:37 -0800

"...raises yet again the age-old question." Which is "What half-assed web host has a 33MB/day transfer limit?"

By: Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America

Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:10:43 -0800

The people who buy these games seemingly enjoy looking at scantily clad women.

By: TheWhiteSkull

TheWhiteSkull — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:31:17 -0800

Tonfa lightsabers seem like a good way to lose an elbow. And best graph evar.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:31:20 -0800

raises yet again the age-old question Nah, no question at all. 'Shopped.

By: aeschenkarnos

aeschenkarnos — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:34:42 -0800

Surely the ultimate expression of the "dexterity-based fighter" has to be the ninja - who aren't exactly scantily clad.

By: Benway

Benway — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:35:24 -0800

The people who buy these games seemingly enjoy looking at scantily clad women. ROTFLOMAO!

By: exlotuseater

exlotuseater — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:42:23 -0800

geekfilter. old-school. also: Leia's Metal Bikini.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:46:41 -0800

Maris is a boys' name where I come from, so I can't help but see her as a tranny. Of course, the silicone falsies don't help "her" cause much.

By: lonefrontranger

lonefrontranger — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:49:15 -0800

I'd like to posit the following query... goddammit CitrusFreak do you know how hard it is to clean lemonade out of the macbook? well, do you? pfeh. ...secretly wishes she had mad jedi graph skilz.

By: L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg

L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:52:01 -0800

I think it's funny that we're only discussing the outfit from a fighting perspective. Don't Jedi get chilly?

By: chowflap

chowflap — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:57:33 -0800

They don't get chilly, they have the force, which, um... warms up the midichlorians. Or whatever.

By: Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America

Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:00:18 -0800

Leia's bikini is an example of a somewhat different phenomenon. In the context of the fictional world depicted in Star Wars, Leia's bikini makes perfect sense--she was taken prisoner and forced to dress like that to please her lecherous captors. Maris' costume, though, is deeply inexplicable when viewed solely from within the context of the story. There's simply no good reason for a serious warrior to dress that way, and even though Maris is a serious warrior, she dresses that way anyway. No attempt is made to explain this, and for the most part, the other characters don't even acknowledge that she's dressed oddly--even though by the internal logic of the story she is. In contrast, everyone in the story recognized that Leia was dressed absurdly. Her captors knew it, her friends knew it, and she knew it. Maris' costume, though, almost breaks the fourth wall. Her costume isn't dictated by the internal logic of the story, but by the desires of the audience which are unrelated to the story. This is especially clear in science fiction/fantasy, which is entirely made-up anyway, so the author could've easily provided a compelling internal reason for female characters to show however much skin he wished.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:03:05 -0800

Don't spend any time dissecting Star Wars. It will only end in misery. Also, what's up with the asterisks in place of A's in the tags? It breaks the site...

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:13:20 -0800

like the Jedi's figured out how to use the Force to summon Invisible Jackie Chan LOLchan We miss you, IMG tag...

By: Ynoxas

Ynoxas — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:16:23 -0800

So now we're worrying about what characters in video games are wearing? IM IN UR STR WRS GAME OPRESSIN UR ALIEN WOMEN

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:59:37 -0800

Those who enjoyed CitrusFreak's delightful graph might also get a bit of a kick out of this site. [previously]

By: eritain

eritain — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:39:25 -0800

Every time I leave town, when I re-enter I have to stop at a light next to a store that sells computer games. There are three or four monstrous banners hanging on buildings thereabout, advertising for MMORPGs with fantasy art. And I use the term 'fantasy art' advisedly because the graphic decisions are clearly being made by 14-year-old boys. There is one in particular that I can't even look at anymore because it's so awful. I want to take the lady on it aside and give her some candid advice: "Look. Fighting to defend your kingdom is well and good, but we've got some problems here. First of all. I don't know what kind of freaky tightlacing you must do the rest of the time, but when you get into that skimpy armor your waist-to-hip ratio is terrifying. And I don't mean on the high side. Second. Why are you not wearing any armor whatsoever between knee and hip joints? Are you unaware that femoral fractures are unusually prone to become compound, extremely well-placed to sever major blood vessels (or dump bone marrow into them, causing occlusion elsewhere), and are, to sum up, 80% fatal if untreated? Or do you just want to die? Third. Tapering your, er, groin-coverage armor to preserve hip mobility is one thing. But if the taper ends in a point that would impale any horse you tried to ride, and is so narrow that it requires a pubic shave before each battle ... well, is there any other armorsmith in town? And fourth. As you stand there with weapons swirling around you, your facial expression remains, well, glazed. Stoned, as it were. I can't help thinking this may be a hazardous condition in which to enter battle, independent of the other dangers. Friends don't let friends smoke and smite."

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:40:04 -0800

In contrast, everyone in the story recognized that Leia was dressed absurdly. Her captors knew it, her friends knew it, and she knew it. As a bonafide Princess, she has to dress absurd, lest no one know she's a Princess. S'always been that way. Class distinctions, all that.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:01:03 -0800

well, is there any other armorsmith in town? Brilliant.

By: lekvar

lekvar — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:25:39 -0800

Oh god, I can't resist... Metafilter: HRONK ZREE GNARR

By: CitrusFreak12

CitrusFreak12 — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:34:07 -0800

I think it's funny that we're only discussing the outfit from a fighting perspective. Don't Jedi get chilly? Good point, Lore! From the wiki: Her species comes from"Iridonia, a planet located in the Mid Rim known for its inhospitable terrain and fierce predatory life." "Due to the harsh living conditions, the Zabrak were a hardy species." Given this information, I don't think she will get chilly.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:41:56 -0800

Damn. No perkies, then.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:45:28 -0800

Given this information, I don't think she will get chilly. Yeah, like the way that people who inhabit inhospitable, arid desert regions are so hardy that you could plonk them down into a Canadian winter & they'll choose to deck themselves out in metal undies & shinguards. The rest of us are just gonna have to toughen up or welcome our new nomadic desert overlords.

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:47:59 -0800

um, Maris. That's not Roger is it.

By: dreamsign

dreamsign — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:19:44 -0800

If a lightsaber is going to cut through any armor, then armor is just weighing you down. I don't need to tell you that your AC bonuses above Dex 16 take hits from heavier forms of armor. What?

By: -harlequin-

-harlequin- — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:26:09 -0800

There's simply no good reason for a serious warrior to dress that way, and even though Maris is a serious warrior, she dresses that way anyway. Feminism means that the modern girl can both fight as a warrior AND dress for attention. At the same time. /have your cake and eat it too

By: dreamsign

dreamsign — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:45:30 -0800

Actually, that was my first reaction, -harlequin-, seriously. Who's to say she doesn't want to dress that way? It can be a potent use of the Force. Maris: "These aren't the droids you're looking for." Stormtrooper, staring at breasts: "These aren't the droids we're looking for."

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:12:57 -0800

I've often witnessed and even experienced for myself the mesmerizing lure of this use of the force.

By: cgk

cgk — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:12:58 -0800

This was covered about 27 years ago, Phil & Dixie know the answer. It is funny, when I was reading Dragon I was about the same age as my kids who have noted that the Leia slave costume is a little "inappropriate" for desert combat, among other things.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 03:49:27 -0800

Is the age old question "how much is the bandwidth limit for at&t personal web pages?"

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 03:55:39 -0800

From the site's description of the game engine: Paired with the powerful Havok Physics™ system, these new technologies create gameplay only possible on the new generation of consoles. DMM incorporates the physical properties of anything in the environment so that everything reacts exactly like it should - wood breaks like wood, glass shatters like glass, plants on the planet Felucia bend like plants on the planet Felucia would, and more. And the snozberries taste like snozberries!

By: jfuller

jfuller — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 04:29:15 -0800

> Is the age old question "how much is the bandwidth limit for at&t personal web pages?" I tossed in my puny 33 meg/day of bandwidth or whatever to help the cause. You can also see the image (tho in a form where the caption still needs the editor's heavy hand) on the linked llbbl site up top. Say, since the loss of the img tag hereabouts I've thrown several pics up there to the postage-stamp space that comes free with an at&t ISP account, and linked to them on mefi, and never before exceeded the limit on a post that didn't involve boobies. Is there a moral to this tale?

By: Lentrohamsanin

Lentrohamsanin — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 04:30:51 -0800

In the context of the fictional world depicted in Star Wars, Leia's bikini makes perfect sense--she was taken prisoner and forced to dress like that to please her lecherous captors. Nah, it was just eye candy for the teenage boys. I would expect Jabba to have his letch on for something that looked a bit more like a moldy sofa turned upside down.

By: robocop is bleeding

robocop is bleeding — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:09:20 -0800

Can we tear our eyes away from the Space Mutton long enough to wonder about the increasing goofyfication of lightsabers? Nightsticks? Nightsticks? Sure, I bet someone wise in the way of martial arts can tell me the honored weapon they're based on, but c'mon... Light. Saber. That name implies something pretty straightforward: a sword that uses light somehow. Perhaps a sword that doesn't weigh too much. Either way, it's an apt description for the lightsabers we've seen Luke, Obi, Vader, Samuel L Jackson, Tyranus, Grievous, and even friggan Yoda wave around. Who is to blame? Punk kids, that's who. Kids who simply refused to grow up and accept that lightsaber ='s glowy power sword. It started with "well, if I was a Jedi, I'd have two swords" and continued on in an arc that plots out points like Darth Maul's dual-edged weapon in Ep1 and Darth Sweatermeat's deadly nightsticks here. It is an arc that I am sure will eventually sweep through lightscythes, light-wolverine's-claws, and light-bayonets-attached-to-guns-that-shoot-smaller-lightbullets. People, this needs to stop. Back in Ye Olde Days, people did not sit around nailing swords to just about everything and calling them weapons. No, they simply worked on making better swords. Because swords were effective. Swords set the wielder apart because for the most part, a sword was the sign of a professional martial class. Any peasant could flail about at you with a pointed stick, but if some dude drew steel on you, you knew you were fucked. Thus how it should be with lightsabers. Yeah, I know every saber is an expression of its user, but more and more these days that expression is "I am a dolt more impressed by flash than keeping to tried and true rules." There are still a host of sword varieties out there that could be lightsaberified, from slightly curved katanas to monstrous zweihanders. Let's see some more of those before we even hear the whirling whine of lightchucks, smell the ozone-laden tang of the lightmace, or shield our eyes from the horrible glare of the "I just duct-taped 40 lightsabers to my body" lightgrizzlybear encounter suit. A sword is fine. It's all you really need. It's a classic for a reason. Everything else is needless flash. Well, except for the lightscythe that my alter-ego Darth Deathilicious has. That's totally justified in her character history.

By: dreamsign

dreamsign — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:47:36 -0800

Back in Ye Olde Days, people did not sit around nailing swords to just about everything and calling them weapons. No, they simply worked on making better swords. *cough* Also: a light-scythe? Awesome, dude. You could, like, harvest during new moon n stuff

By: i_cola

i_cola — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 06:02:20 -0800

Mara Jade is fond of the skin tight jump suit which is... OK. I'm stopping there. You nerds can carry on as you were. [Backs slowly out of the room.]

By: Foosnark

Foosnark — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:38:32 -0800

Yes but most of the jedis wear robes, which would help hide where the person's body is and make it more difficult to hit. Pro tip: aim somewhere roughly near the middle of the robe. Generally I'm annoyed by stupid armor -- like full plate that bares the midriff as well as lifts and separates, or the "stab here" model -- but I'm not sure Jedi really fall into this category. Sure it's blatant fanservice, but there are much more egregious cases of it... i.e. the classic Star Wars poster with Leia's dress slit all the way up and the phallic lightsaber, for instance.

By: mephron

mephron — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:39:41 -0800

Foosnark: that armor was lampooned in the rather lamented 'Forgotten Realms' comic that DC Comics put out in the late 1980s. That character appears in the comic and this piece of dialogue occurs: Halfling: "So, that armor... how does it protect you?" Alias: "It's magical." Halfling: "Of course it is. Especially when fighting men." That a man wrote that issue and felt compelled to snark about it amused me terribly. That comic tended to have smart villians (the first bad guy found out about a prophecy that his plans would be stopped by a particular guy, and went to disable him years ahead of time, and only literally a Godly Intervention stopped him), smart dialogue, and people who didn't dress stupidly. They then had an Enforced Crossover with D&D novels, and that killed the books.

By: mephron

mephron — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:41:40 -0800

Also... WHAT IS THE AGE-OLD QUESTION? You can't LINK to something with an age-old question, blow the bandwidth, and NOT TELL US what the question IS. For the love of God, Montressor.

By: I, Credulous

I, Credulous — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:01:53 -0800

eritain wins! thanks so much for the link to the Phil Foglio stuff... I remember nearly peeing my pants as a teen, reading his adaptation of Robert Aspirin's "Myth" stories. further geekyness: the .cgi script at the Foglio site is called "growf.cgi" that level of commitment needs to honoured, man.

By: zoogleplex

zoogleplex — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 14:02:14 -0800

Will it help the general understanding of this phenomenon to know that something like 99.5% of entertainment concept artists are guys between the ages of 21 and 45? Most of whom don't get out all that much? (including myself, naturally) Phil Foglio is a demigod among us. :)

By: Durhey

Durhey — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:51:06 -0800

Recently I worked on a game in which the "battle bikini" was a piece of unlockable armor, for a male character. Unfortunately, that game's not coming out. Working in an environment in which this sort of nonsense is commonplace, it's funny that it's not really seen so much anymore as the overt sexualization that it is, but simply as standard. If I fire up a game like Cho Aniki, where males are hyper-sexualized in this way, many guys will cringe, which is a perfect chance for me to ask them, "But you don't think it's odd to do the same thing with all the women in these games?"

By: tehloki

tehloki — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 21:25:38 -0800

Wait, I never found out what the age-old question was! WHAT IS IT? stupid.. bandwidth..

By: L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg

L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:00:12 -0800

"Should I declaw my cat?"

By: tehloki

tehloki — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 13:16:00 -0800

Seriously, I've read every single comment in the thread. The best similacrum for the question I can come up with is "Why all the cleavage?".

By: Auz

Auz — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 14:52:50 -0800

"um, Maris. That's not Roger is it." Piper.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:40:05 -0800

What the game might be like on a Wii.