Some thoughts on women's fantasy armor

 I hate the argument that “women aren’t strong enough to wear armor” or “women are agile, not strong.” First off, this is stupid. Secondly, besides the fact that armor is more maneuverable than most people assume, female armor mostly shows up in fantasy, a genre often known for its poetic or cinematic breaks from reality. A man can cleave his foe in twain in slow-mo, but a woman with good upper body strength breaks suspension of disbelief? Wut?

Besides, fantasy isn’t about what people “should” do. If you think about it, an illiterate, but pure-hearted peasant really shouldn’t become the king. Maybe the heroine should have learned a more agility-based fighting art. But she didn’t, because she must be a knight, like her father before her!!!111 Well, why not? If you can use “it’s not real life” to justify skimpy armor, you can use “it’s not real life” to justify a 16 year-old waifish elf girl in full plate one-handing a zweihander.

Playing the devil's advocate, yes, skimpy armor occasionally allows people to "dodge," though not as often as video games would have you believe. Real life sometimes imitates art. There’s an Indian martial art called Kalaripayattu that emphasizes flexibility and flying leaps. It’s amazing to watch. Weapons include swords with shields, daggers, and a whirling, whip-like sword. The male practitioners fight in thongs or loincloths, and give each other therapeutic oil massages as part of their Yoga practice! If these were ladies in D&D, people would be screaming “sexist”. Ironically, the women practitioners IRL are more modestly dressed due to religious conservatism. So yes, in certain traditions, fighting naked or in little clothing is perfectly feasible. But I’d still rather have a woman be unarmored than stupidly armored.

I personally dislike the idea that skimpy female armor is to distract men. Not from a realism perspective but from an artistic one. A good action hero has agency. His badassery stems from doing things, not in the influencing of other people to do things. If a lady warrior wears impractical armor to mess with men, it’s exactly the same stupid, sexist argument that was mocked in a widely-linked anti-feminist bingo card: “Women have all the power over men- you can reduce us to an uncontrollable jelly of lust!” I’m not like, outraged that a woman warrior is sexy- that’s appealing also- but I like to see a female warrior, when she’s on the field, rely more on her skills than on head-gaming men.

In a non-sex-related example, sensitivity is important in a female surgeon, both as a doctor and as a woman. But in her professional life, more emphasis should be placed on the job’s primary medical skills, not secondary social skills. If some medical drama about her only showed how damn NICE she was and didn’t show much actual surgery, I’d be pissed.

An anthropologist once noted that in all societies she’s observed, little girls aimed to please. Little boys aimed to excel. I want my women heroes to excel.

Jose Needs to Get In On This Action

Hey guys! Today I found some D&D Style Porn!

It's pretty well-written, actually. And hot.

The author is a developer for White Wolf now.

...

I fear for Stone Mountain.

I have bought four used books for 25 cents each from Aspen Hill library, meaning I spent a dollar altogether. Two are really corny fantasy choose your own adventure books... like D&D for the antisocial. I bought them for amusement value. There are blank sheets in the front where you can write in your own stats. Apparently the previous owner of this book had a bow and an axe, a rope, a lantern, a potion of.. I can't read this.. lognospian?? .. a quiver with six arrows, five fireseeds, a psychic ring, a signet ring and a war hammer. I like reading other people's character sheets- it's kind of like peering into someone else's life, like in archaeology. You take a look at the inventory and it's like, this is an exact snapshot of what was in this guy's backpack five, ten, twenty years ago when some other fantasy dork was reading this book. I wonder where he is now.. college, a career, marriage, children, a house?

Also.. I have a Forgotten Realms book (first in the Avatar Trilogy; you know a book is trashy when it has an excerpt in the front) and some children's book about a guy with plague. Hurray.

Have finished Terry Goodkind's "Pillars of Creation," which, despite having a promising beginning, severely blew chunks. This is my thirty second recap of Pillars of Creation.. "I'm running away from soldiers! I'm running away from soldiers! I'm having kinky sex! I'm running away from soldiers! Oh, wait, there aren't any soldiers. The end."

Dragon's Heart was the dorkiest thing I've ever been to in a long time. Yes, it is D&D and yes, this was the first meeting. Actually, roughly half of the people there were girls.. I didn't know anyone though, except for Mary, a Generic Brown-Haired Girl From Archaeology, and John Barkmeyer. We also had a bunch of people stop in who thought it was a video gaming club.

Oh, apparently we aren't allowed to bring dice to school because they're "gambling" so we have to use randomized dice programs on our calculators.

Quote of the Day:

"I LIKE LYCANTHROPES!" -chubby boy with glasses.

Did you know that RM has a..Dragon's Heart Gaming Club... what?? I saw the ad in the upper English hallway. It sounds like a D&D club or something. You know it has to be when the ad reads "bring a love for fantasy and adventure" and written in that really campy "medieval" Diablo font.. Either that or Magic.

BTW, speaking of ads, I think that when we're considering what plays to put on, we should come up with plays that have titles that aren't easily turned into obscenities. Sort of how last year there were a bunch of drama posters for the nonexistant plays, "Fags," now we have a bunch of posters promoting, "Splendor in the Ass." I don't know who these people are.. while I was rather offended by the first conversion, this year I sort of admire their ingenuity.

New Fine Lines ads are up with photo-realistic outlines of people I know. It's creepy. I went to Fine Lines yesterday for the first time. Like English class, it seems rather pretentious.

Has anyone noticed the Dorkiness Effect? In Star Trek, or in any other franchise traditionally considered to be dorky, any person considered to be hip by the people and the standards of that universe, are ten times dorkier when judged by Earth standards. This is the same principle that makes perfectly fashionable young women look dorky when they attend comic book and science fiction conventions in costume. For example, Princess Leia is considered to be blindingly hot by guys on the Star Wars universe. But if someone were to walk down the street looking like that, you'd be like, "oH.. my.. gawd! Lose the dress and the cinnabons, girlfriend!" Also, Star Trek and ilk aren't dorky just because their fans are dorks, because even when you take perfectly normal Beautiful People With Social Lives and make them fans or star them in the franchise, the franchise doesn't become any less dorky. In other words, the nature of Dungeons and Dragons makes it dorky, even if nondorks play it. (I think this dorkiness phenomenom is often due to the fact that the dorks who are creators of these dorky enterprises try to write "cool" people by making them stunningly beautiful, but their dorky personalities still come out when they say things like, "Phasers energize!" or "That is quite a broadsword, is it not, young elf?")