Kahunaburger said:
Therumancer said:
Matthew94 said:
Grivahri said:
Matthew94 said:
1/2 of these aren't gimmicks... anyway
7. Didn't you know that the amount of exposed flesh is directly proportional to defense stats. The only reason they aren't nude for 100% defense is due to complaint #1.
Emiscary said:
Don't you mean inversely proportional?
No, directly. It's obviously why we see so many characters with barely any clothes cutting through swathes of enemies.
The thing is that most people really don't "get it" here, and tend to overlook that it's not gender specific. Conan, Brak (John Jakes), Sojan The Swordsman, John Carter, Tarl Cabot, and tons of others are all macho sword swinging heroes who ran around naked, or next to it, through 99% of their careers due to barbarism, or the nature of their setting. People seem to forget about Conan wandering around in his furry bikini briefs, a pair of boots, and a sword belt and the artwork by guys like Frank Frazetta.
The odd thing is that if your making a female version of one of these classic characters, why would she be dressing sensibly? On some levels the arguement seems to be almost victorian that it just isn't ladylike so shouldn't be permitted or encouraged. At the same time that's also probably why most of the rage by nerds who think that this point somehow makes them more attractive to women is so hilarious, since the female writers and artists tend to be as bad, or worse than the guys when it comes to describing, rendering, and writing their characters.
RE: Barbarians and the character design thereof, here's a helpful infographic from Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor explaining exactly this issue.
Actually I'd consider Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor to be inherantly biased starting with the name. Their picture of the sexualized woman isn't technically wearing anything wrong for fighting depending on the time period, and setting. It's basically briefs, boots, and breast covering, assuming spandex doesn't exist that's reasonable given the female form. Fabio's costume is arguably worse, but mostly because it supposed to be a Viking and that really doesn't work given the setting. Conan and John Carter wore similar outfits in more temporate climates.
As far as "Gor" goes, the first thing I'd ask is if you've actually READ Gor, especially the first few books?
John Lange (John Norman) did a huge amount of research for his books. People tend to look entirely at his sociological/erotic writing about the true nature of women and how to handle them, but not into the rest of the details of his writing. He did lengthy research into weapons and armor, engineering, and similar things and for all the sex and fighting, it also focuses on everything from combat techniques and weapons (even if the choreography is... lacking) to how coins are minted, to the construction and function of ships. While not historically accurate, it's interesting because it shows what could be done with a combination of modern knowlege and primitive tools and materials, given how a number of the people in Gor are from 20th century earth, but in a world intentionally kept stagnant and at a fairly low level of technology by it's true masters that control the actual super science used to travel between worlds and similar things (it's pretty complicated and in depth).
John studied at Princeton where he got his PHD in philosophy, and held a couple of differant professorships, and a lot of the stuff in his books came from various professors and students he knew and who helped him with research.
While I'm not going to take any paticular social queues from John, in terms of say women being happiest when brutally enslaved, oppressed, and then sold to another master when they become content with thier situation, when it comes to things like armoring, weapons, and similar things, he's not a terrible source. What's more people tend to forget that he did write a number of "table turning" chapters in the Gor series, like early Jason Marshal, or some of the bits involving Amazons like the Panther women, that I remember getting into practicality and what styles of fighting work for them. Yeah, granted this is usually the prelude to a bunch of guys about to be hotly dominated by gorgeous babes, but that doesn't really change a lot of the surrounding material.
Now granted, he is NOT perfect, and there are probably guys who are better at this than him, Robert Adams (Horseclans) impressed me a few times, but I used him because he's been around long enough to be considered a classic writer and contributor to fantasy. Artwork based on his stories has a lot more reality behind it than you might give it credit for, and that comes through in some of the artwork.
Your "sexy" lady picture there seems to be being portrayed as at least visiting a temporate climate, going by the leopard skin. Given what a lot of the high tech ladies wear throughout say Africa, India, and other places (and we've all seen National geographic), and how the warriors generally ran around without much clothing themselves, it's not totally out of line.
In Fabio's case, I'd imagine any real viking would freeze to death, but at the same time having not read the book I don't know where he's supposed to be. If he's a viking that just arrived in a temporate climate, yeah he might go running around in his shorts. Especially seeing as he's unlikely to have packed a huge wardrobe into his longship (well then again, being the Fabio version he might have... he's probably got a fan on there somewhere to blow through his hair constantly).