Should new Sisters of Battle models/depictions be 'Sexy'?

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Monster Rain**

Melissia wrote:
hemingway wrote:Even if that number is accurate (and my lifetime of experience as a gamer tells me it isn't)
Just because you're isolated and secluded from female gamers doesn't mean that we don't exist.

You keep making remarks like this, and its a fallacy. He didnt say that they don't exist, he disagreed with your statement that 40% of gamers are female.

As do I. If the number was even close to that, the programming on G4 would be a lot less man-centric at the very least.

Also, you may just not be able to spot the female gamers when she is among male gamers. Protip: look for barettes in her beard.

**Melissia**

Monster Rain wrote:You keep making remarks like this, and its a fallacy. He didnt say that they don't exist, he disagreed with your statement that 40% of gamers are female.

That's not a fallacy, and hell, it wasn't my statement.

It was the ESA's statement.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17699

Oh, and let's not leave it at just one link!
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2006/10/7922.ars

Just because the industry has not caught up with its demographics does not mean the demographics are therefor wrong... THAT is a logical fallacy.

Woah, deja vu... regardless, these articles are two and four years old, respectively. The number of female gamesr has grown since then.

edit: A more recent study.

Based on video game demographics, women make up a significant 39% of those who play video games in the population. Also, a surprising 40% of online gamers are women. 35% are below eighteen years old.

http://www.learnxpress.com/the-demographics-of-video-game-players.html

**Monster Rain**

Oh boy. I'm not getting into a semantic debate as to what constitutes a gamers, but being a nintendogs enthusiast doesn't fit the bill.

Those articles mean nothing, the games they talk about range from WoW to Farmville with no Indictation as to how many women are playing what.

**Jayden63**

I can promise you that 40% of Fantasy and 40K gamers are not female, maybe 1 in 25 or so. Maybe.

Video games are one thing. Table top and board/stratigy type games are another.

Since we are talking about 40K here, all those girls playing WOW or Nintendogs or even Poker and Gin don't matter.

**hemingway**

Melissia wrote:
hemingway wrote:Even if that number is accurate (and my lifetime of experience as a gamer tells me it isn't)
Just because you're isolated and secluded from female gamers doesn't mean that we don't exist.

Those numbers come from the ESA-- Entertainment Software Association, the trade association of the gaming industry.

You're responding to arguments I haven't made.

Do me a favor. Go into your EB on any given day. Tell me how many of those people are women. Go into your FLGS. How many people playing MtG and Warhammer are women? Go catch up with your local D&D Crew. Go look at the lineup for PAX. Starting to see where this is going? I'm sorry, Mel, but I'm going to accept what I can see with my own eyes, anywhere, any day, within the gaming culture, and have seen for the past 22 years as a gamer in various milieus over a 150 word article on the internet that sites no sources nor how that data was gathered. How many of those women gamers are playing Farmville? How many of those 'women' wow players (which I admit, are somewhat commonplace in Azeroth, to the tune of about 5% based on the guilds I've been in) were actually accounted for by virtue of, for example, the player's mother being the account owner? How many of those female gamers are playing flash apps on their phones in between texts at the mall?

What's more, how does that invalidate my claim that women gamers like to play sexed up characters?

**Iur_tae_mont**

When I first saw this thread I was like

After 11 Pages I'm all

Do girls game? yes.

Does anyone care? Other than other girl gamers, no.

Does this have anything to do with Sexy sisters? Nothing I can see.

more funny posts.

**Psyker_9er**

I agree with the point Gymnogyps and a few others where trying to make. If a man wants to wear a severed head as a cod piece, then a woman should be able to wear a corset with skulls on it.

I also agree with some one, a few pages back, who said the SOB are an extension of the beauty of having faith in the Emperor or something along those lines, thus, they dress beautifully as well as functionally.

Plus, the curvature of bewb armor would be better for deflecting bullets,

where as a flat breastplate would take more damage.

The real debate about sexism here stems from the sculptors themselves. Did these "men" intentionally sculpt said bewb armor with sexist intentions in mind? Doubt it, compared to other fantasy or sci fi figurines, SOB models are mild. Although the uniform is form fitting, they are still at least covered up, nothing hanging out.

Sisters Repentia on the other hand...... nothing modest about them! Well, even they make sense to me in a way. Seeing as how they blindly charge forward to die in battle as a way to repent for their sins; why bother wearing armor or anything that might save you life, and thus, ruin your chance of salvation?

**Melissia**

And yet, my point still stands because they are the only evidence thus far posted on the subject. You merely make assertions without providing facts to back them up. Thus lacking in substance with which to hold themselves up, the assertions fall down, like grot at an Eldar shooting range.

The numbers are similar no matter where I look-- females make up almost half of gamers. Yet another 2009 study indicated 50% of all pc gamers are female, with a smaller (shy of one third) on consoles. From the ESA's own site, "Forty percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (20 percent)." Yet another study agrees that women over 18 make up one third of all gamers, double the market share of males under eighteen. I could probably do this all night if I didn't have class tomorrow.

I don't think you know the gaming demographics as well as you think you know the gaming demographics. Same with the demographics of those who purchase GW products-- actually, I know more women who collect GW products than who play games, but then personal stories like that don't hold up very well. As I haven't seen any studies on that, I wouldn't say either way, however (and neither should you).

**Monster Rain**

Melissia wrote:And yet, my point still stands because they are the only evidence thus far posted on the subject. You merely make assertions without providing facts to back them up. Thus lacking in substance with which to hold themselves up, the assertions fall down, like grot at an Eldar shooting range.

Lollerskates!

Where do you think we got the Farmville and Nintendogs notions? From your articles.

Unless you're trying to make the point that somehow the Cafe City playing housewife has some bearing on whether or not SoBs in corsets are whores.

Tell you what, post a link to something that shows it's sources and doesn't make such vague statements as "online gaming" and you'll have provided something along the lines of evidence for your claim. Otherwise we're back in fallacy land.

**A Black Ram**

I don't know about you guys, but if they made the armor REALLY gothic looking, as though it belonged in a cathedral (more than so already) and they had shaved heads I seriously would like them better. Sure, the bobs are okay, but I think it would just make them look tougher and less girly( don't stretch how I meant that) than with these bobs which remind me of what a model's hair would look like.

I have nothing to contribute with the girl gamers thing.

So, that's what I think.

**Melissia**

And I got the exact opposite information from the articles.

As for the last statement, because it intentionally misinterprets what was said before I have no intention of giving it a serious response. So joogity boogity woo. I'm going to go pass out.

**Monster Rain**

Melissia wrote:And I got the exact opposite information from the articles.

As for the last statement, because it intentionally misinterprets what was said before I have no intention of giving it a serious response. So joogity boogity woo. I'm going to go pass out.

That's fine. This is a total shoot: I think what I said is a perfect interpretation of what you've been saying.

Those articles were some flimsy evidence to base your 40% of gamers are female statements on, especially in this context. You act as though I don't know how many women play Farkle, Bejeweled Farmville, Zooville etc... If you had an article that cited sources and gave a breakdown of who was playing what, you'd have an argument. Until then it seems like your wishful thinking has clouded your comprehension of those articles you cited.

Women are out there in significant numbers playing MMOs, action games, first-person shooters.

Wow what a vague, unsupported statement! That settles it for me!

**hemingway**

The point is, the percentage of women who play video games isn't germane to the topic--regardless of whether the percentage is .05, 40, or 99.999.

It's red herring. You've taken my comment about gamers and misappropriated it to represent 'online female video gamer players' and then used Google-Scholarship to draw the conclusion that I'm some kind of hermetic neckbeard that can't tell candy apples from crack cocaine and don't know the lay of the land after a lifetime of experience around gaming (which I have to say is pretty DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BYPASS THE WORD FILTER funny)

If that's not bad enough, calling into question your claims about female gamers wasn't even the germane part of the argument, which was that the proportion of gamers' gender is immaterial to the profitability of making models with T & A.

It's common knowledge that sexy/cute women sell to both men and women.

**Melissia**

It's not a red herring. The point was simple-- that most people don't understand the demographics of national or larger groups, as they only know a small portion of the whole in their daily lives, which can be woefully under-representative of the whole. Thus unless there's actual proof of this, you shouldn't make such assumptions. Your assertion about the demographics of GW players was without evidence, and so I compared it to the common misconceptions about women and gaming. Perhaps you can go find an actual scientific study backing your statement up.

I doubt it.

Monster Rain wrote:Until then it seems like your wishful thinking has clouded your comprehension of those articles you cited.

And I would propose that it is male chauvinism that has clouded your comprehension of the innumerable articles. You make assumptions on what kinds of games women play without providing any proof of your assumptions. I made no such assertion of what KINDS of games are played, and would not do so (as you have done) without seeing proof

*mutters something incoherent about typos, insomnia, and spider monkies*

**Skelly**

Make em sexy. Super sexy.

Oh and lol @ 40% of gamers being women pertaining to warhammer.

**AlexHolker**

Psyker_9er wrote:Sisters Repentia on the other hand...... nothing modest about them! Well, even they make sense to me in a way. Seeing as how they blindly charge forward to die in battle as a way to repent for their sins; why bother wearing armor or anything that might save you life, and thus, ruin your chance of salvation?

The Repentia are the models I like the least from the current Sisters range. They're not Dwarf Trollslayers and death in battle is not their goal, salvation is. Being more vulnerable should be an acceptable sacrifice in their attempt to make up for their previous failures, not a desirable goal in itself.

If I was in charge of the visual direction of the Repentia, I would have given them something that doesn't look specially crafted for the Repentia with the goal of looking perverted. Maybe a bodyglove of the sort worn under powered armour, with a knee-length robe for modesty.

**Melissia**

I'd also have them be given an invulnerable save instead of an armor save, because giving them a 4+ armor save when they're wearing just strips of paper and scraps of cloth just doesn't make sense, but then that's neither here nor there...

**Manchu**

I don't like the bad press Repentia are getting Those are awesome models and Sisters of Battle would be diminished greatly without them in terms of a fluff concept and a part of their overall aesthetic. I do agree with Melissa that the unit needs A LOT of work. But there's nothing wrong with those models. Jes Goodwin can keep his grubby mitts off!

**CT GAMER**

Witzkatz wrote:what about the Transporter movies? Jason Statham fighting in several stages of being undressed/oiled up? That's definitely homoerotic eye candy for the girls and some dudes, if I've ever seen any.

fixed that for you.

I have never met a girl that admits to seeing/liking this movie.

I know plenty of guys who claim to.

And 300? practically Softcore gay porn really...

**Frazzled**

Melissia wrote:A disclaimer: I'm still recovering from Papa Nurgle's visit. Bear with me as I rant.

There is more to women than TnA, though you couldn't tell from looking at sci-fi sometimes, or fantasy artwork, or miniatures/wargaming. And bringing it up often causes near-violent reactions from some men, because how dare someone desire a female character who isn't there just to titillate the reader/viewer with their sex appeal!

Obviously such a thing does not exist and is not at all interesting. It is quite clear that no man wants a woman whose primary assets are her intelligence and skill rather than her physical appearance, and anyone who says otherwise is completely and utterly wrong. And since female characters can never be interesting and deep characters with a multitude of motivations and complex ideals, there's no point of having them be anything but eye candy.

Apparently, it's a crime to some people for anyone to think that women, too, can be warriors, or soldiers, or philosophers, or leaders, or anything other than someone's ****toy waiting to happen. Hell, sometimes these people think it's a crime for women to be interested in wargaming at all. Suffice it to say that I cannot express my opinion on that belief without violating a few of the forum's rules.

You're going off the deep end here. The minis displayed on the male side are similar. Look at the marines and Crapachans. These are beyond Ahnald size exagerations. Frankly the Nuns with Guns are pretty light in that area. So chill out.

Would you prefer they wear burkhas? Of course in real society, your argument does not hold. Freer societies tend to be freer about images of the body. Its head to toe covering where they shoot you for wearing fingernail polish.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Also, could someone point me to the underwear and high heels on the models? I'm just not seeing it.

Ditto. The cuirass is almost the same as my old Valhallan commander. Frankly its more realkistic than the SPAZZ MARIENS HURR! armor nonsense.
I see the calves/feet and, like the above, my first impression is 1) more realistically proportioned armored vs. the MARIENS above; and 2) reminds me of European plate, which is what I think they were trying for. If they had a proper "ballet" helmet as another poster suggested I'd think they'd be awesome (in plastic).

**Ordo Dakka**

I love their current models. Shira Calpurnia would be damn cool, though.

**Witzkatz**

fixed that for you.

I have never met a girl that admits to seeing/liking this movie.

I know plenty of guys who claim to.

And 300? practically Softcore gay porn really...

Well, I can at least quote one girl that I once met at a friend's house that was all "RAWR! Jason Statham is SO hawt!".

And, just out of curiosity, I looked at a German Statham fan page, which actually had quite a lot of girls in the shoutbox exclaiming how sexy he is. Soo, not only homoerotic eye candy, I think.

I see the calves/feet and, like the above, my first impression is 1) more realistically proportioned armored vs. the MARIENS above; and 2) reminds me of European plate, which is what I think they were trying for. If they had a proper "ballet" helmet as another poster suggested I'd think they'd be awesome (in plastic).

The more traditional/medieval armor look is a thing I like about them, too. Much better than Marine armor from the aesthetics for me. I'd like to keep GW that general idea with the next SoB models, definitely.

**Melissia**

Frazzled wrote:
Also, could someone point me to the underwear and high heels on the models? I'm just not seeing it.
Ditto.

Garter belts and a cup bra. As for high heels, look at the Sororitas "art" (if one can call pieces drawn by him suchq) drawn by John Blanche.... any female "drawn" by Blanche has high heels, even to the point of obsession

People keep claiming his art was the inspiration for Sisters' current look after all.

**Frazzled**

Melissia wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Also, could someone point me to the underwear and high heels on the models? I'm just not seeing it.
Ditto.
Garter belts and a cup bra. As for high heels, look at the Sororitas "art" (if one can call pieces drawn by him suchq) drawn by John Blanche.

I still don't see the garter belts.
High heels-thats an issue for you? Seriously?
Its the same thing for chaos knights in WFB, chaos in WFB, and Dark Eldar Cold Ones. The have heels. If you wear boots you have heels. It adds to the Renaissance Age plate armor look.

**Witzkatz**

I did a google search on John Blance and keywords like Sisters and Sororitas. I could only find this one piece of art that apparently once was a codex cover, where some kind of canonness wears high-heels and ridiculously thin, shining-black leg armor. I agree that this looks a bit stupid on a battlefield.

However...the models. No model I've seen has high heels. And the "cup bra" seems not to be made of silk, but ceramite, so it's not underwear but (slightly oversized) armor. And, not owning any SoB models, I looked very closely at all models I could find, be it GW homepage or google...and I wasn't able to see any garter belts. Are those only present in artwork, too, maybe?

**Melissia**

Frazzled wrote:I still don't see the garter belts.
High heels-thats an issue for you? Seriously?
Its the same thing for chaos knights in WFB, chaos in WFB, and Dark Eldar Cold Ones. The have heels. If you wear boots you have heels. It adds to the Renaissance Age plate armor look.

No, the reason mounted knights wear heels is because it facilitates horseriding. High heels in a combat zone is EXTREMELY unpractical.

The garter belts are present on some of the models, though not all.

As for the corsets and bra cups, it's just unnecessary and doesn't mix with the rest of the armor. Certain people like to quote sound-bites, as it were, and misrepresent what I said, but basically I merely said I believe the chest and abdomen parts of the armor look stupid and do not represent the crusader knights the Sisters are supposed to be (IE, Knights Templar, Knights Hospitalier, Knights of Santiago, Gothic Knights, and so on from the medieval period). A single piece breastplate with a single curved bulge at the chest region could still look feminine while also looking more like platemail, and a "scalemail" style abdomen could similarly look quite distinct from other forms of armor, and the armor would look is if it was one coherent set instead of a hodgepodge of pieces.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Witzkatz wrote:I did a google search on John Blance and keywords like Sisters and Sororitas. I could only find t

Yes, it was the second edition codex cover. And yes, I'm glad that it didn't transfer over into the models.

**AlexHolker**

Manchu wrote:I don't like the bad press Repentia are getting Those are awesome models and Sisters of Battle would be diminished greatly without them in terms of a fluff concept and a part of their overall aesthetic. I do agree with Melissa that the unit needs A LOT of work. But there's nothing wrong with those models. Jes Goodwin can keep his grubby mitts off!

We'll have to agree to disagree. While I have no problems with the concept, I do not like how it was implemented.

Melissia wrote:The garter belts are present on some of the models, though not all.

Then please, show us one. There is a Repentia that has one, but I do not hold that against the rest of the line. Neither do I hold John Blanche's art against the line.

**Melissia**

I wouldn't either, considering I doni't even like calling what he produces art in the first place. But people still claim that his... material masquerating as art is the inspiration for Sisters, so...

The canoness model has an example of a garter belt. Celestine's model gives that impression, though what with the fleurs it's hard to tell. On the image of Battle Sisters in the troops section of GW's website, there's a model with it on the top row, third from the left (The one pulling the pin out of the grenade with her teeth... a pity I don't actually have that model myself, as it's one of the more dynamic ones).

Aside from not having a scanner or digital camera to begin with, I can't provide examples of that because I tend to try and paint my Sisters models in such a way as to make sure their armor looks like actual armor

**Witzkatz**

The canoness model has an example of a garter belt. Celestine's model gives that impression, though what with the fleurs it's hard to tell. On the image of Battle Sisters in the troops section of GW's website, there's a model with it on the top row, third from the left (The one pulling the pin out of the grenade with her teeth... a pity I don't actually have that model myself, as it's one of the more dynamic ones).

Are you referring to the strip of metal around her left thigh? That's the only thing I can see that I think you could refer to on that model. Come on, at least from the perspective of the GW picture, I really don't see how that could be interpreted as a garter belt. It...it has no belt. No one that I could see. And, no, I don't even see a hint of a garter belt on St. Celestine.

**Melissia**

*shrug* Having worn them myself (on a completely off topic note, I wonder if they call it cosplay if you're at a renfair?), it very much reminds me of them and the models would look better without it.