Moonshade said:
I chose that Monica pic because I think it's an example of sexy without showing skin, and sometimes the argument seems to be that if a woman wants to play a sexy character she must be in favour of the CMB/half-nakedness, then. But context is important: Monica isn't on a battlefield, risking her life by exposing her stomach. It's a pic in a casual setting and not
this, where her armour must be either intended for ceremony or very heavily enchanted to be of use in battle.
If we're evaluating the shadowdancer, here's my take. First, she doesn't seem to be in combat. Whatever she's doing, she's doing it do look impressive. Perhaps this is an Intimidate check being illustrated. Second, she's a shadowdancer. Don't they usually wear light armour? I think that's leather armour but the colour scheme makes it look like a bronze breastplate. See your comment I bolded, below.
The bottom line, however, is that the thing on her shoulder is about the most ridiculous thing anyone has posted on this thread, including Mr. Soccer up there. At least Mr. Soccer is gay porn, and therefore has a purpose. That thing she's wearing says "accidental head injury" to me. She needs to lose it.
The Monica pic doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is, a showcase for a beautiful actress and her designer dress, and there are magazines that exist just for that purpose: interviews with stars and fashion. If you buy Vogue you know what you'll get but the pic would be out of place in The Economist, same as barely-there armour on a fighter, IMO. Either wear armour that covers your vulnerable spots or leather/cloth that allows freedom of movement. Combining the two defeats the purpose unless it's to be as sexy/revealing as possible at a cemonial event.
Emphasis mine. This character seems to be choosing to do the latter, while covering her torso with some token protection in the form of leather armour, just in case.
And Monica's outfit is far, far classier than
What was the artist thinking?
Well it looks like some kind of monk to me, so I can see why she wouldn't be wearing armour. Since it's not armour, no chainmail bikini complaints apply, although your bolded comment above does, for the same reasons as the first pic. As for her fashion sense, I've seen similar outfits on friends of mine who are dancers. It looks like a performance outfit. Of course, I think it looks stupid, but that doesn't really speak to whether a similar garment with a more sensible layout but showing equivalent skin would or wouldn't be appropriate here. If it were made to look less goofy, and more like what dancers actually wear, it might be good. I think the artist was probably just bored and thought, "hey, let's see how bizarre I can make her outfit and still get it accepted."
This is art with skin that I don't mind. She looks like an earthy druid type, she's not in battle and doesn't need to cover herself for protection, her pose is casual.
Yup. Just hangin' out, enjoying the woods in the clothes she made herself out of some poor critter. Maybe when she gets a few levels she'll be able to take on larger and larger animals, and so her wardrobe will get less skimpy.
But was Cleopatra fighting her enemies on the battlefield? Should I start going through Getty for pics of what Monica herself has chosen to wear at Cannes? I didn't intend to make this the Bellucci Thread, just to provide one example of how it's possible to cover yourself and still be sexy.
And you were presented with counterexamples of how your clothed actress also appears in skimpy garments as well. You're jumping back and forth between arguments here. On the one hand, you're saying that skimpy outfits are dumb because they don't provide protection. On the other hand you're saying that sexy, but skin-covering, outfits are okay, even though they don't provide protection. You're saying that sexy is okay so long as it's fully clothed, but once it starts to show a little skin, it's bad because someone might stab that skin. That doesn't make any sense. Either it's okay to put sexy pictures in the books or it's not. If it is, it's okay to put both clothed-sexy pics and skimpy-sexy pics. If it isn't, then Monica in the black dress is out just as much as Monica in the Cleopatra getup. If we approve of black-dress Monica, then we've tacitly approved Cleopatra Monica, stupid-looking-blue-outfit girl up there, and, by the addition of your bold quote, the shadowdancer.
The only characters that are out are those who are wearing armour that is intended to be their main source of protection, but who are showing too much skin for the armour to be useful. Characters who are the leather/cloth types you mention above don't count, since they're obviously fighting from a more rogue/swashbuckler/duelist basis. Perhaps even Red Sonja falls into this category. Does anyone know if the bikini she wears is intended to stop blows, or if it's intended to say "hey, I'm good enough that I can fight in a freakin' bikini and hand your ass to you"? The offending pieces, therefore, will be ones that are supposed to be tank-style fighters, with plate mail that shows off their midriff. The only pic so far that really matches that is the
one from a previous page that I think is supposed to be an Elemental Savant. That's an arcane caster, so whether or not it's questionable largely depends on whether it's supposed to be a warmage.
