Butts and Bosses

The Great Butt Debate

Note: If you could care less, there's a lighter non-butt related topic (it's boardgames instead) below! :D

So if you're living under a rock, last week a post over on the Blizz forums for Overwatch spawned a huge thing that folks have started referring to as #TracerGate or #ButtGate (and side note, can we just stop with the "gate" crap? It only made sense for Watergate).

The Internet blew up, as it is wont to do and folks started raging on either side of the spectrum about how "SJWs are taking butts away" and "GGs are opressing females yet again" and the rest of us were sitting there in the middle going, "EHHHH?!".

While I don't necessarily agree with the entirety of the original post (I mean, I do oogle on 2D men in otomes), I do agree with what I considered to be the main point of the argument in Tracer's original "over the shoulder" pose.

From a marketing standpoint, she's the star of the show. She's a great hero. When we look at the way she's portrayed in promotional media, lore, and art in game we know a few things about her.
She's Fast.
She's Silly.
She's Kind.
She's a good Friend.
Her body seems to be comprised of about 95% spunk.

...

Then out of seemingly no where we have this pose.

...

What about this pose has anything to do with the character you're building in tracer? It's not fun, its not silly, it has nothing to do with being a fast elite killer. It just reduces tracer to another bland female sex symbol.

I agree that the pose is boring. It's bland. It's taking a typical pose and sticking it on a character, and it feels out of character. The fact that it's "sexy" doesn't particularly bother me (which was a point of contention in the rest of the OP, by my reading?). I just felt "meh" about the pose. Plus the wedgie-factor looks super uncomfortable.

So Blizz removed the pose, and today they announced the new pose.

I don't know pin-up art from my elbow, but @christianmccrea deftly identified the source here pic.twitter.com/RovfwQliYO

— BooDoo (@BooDooPerson) April 6, 2016

The pose is essentially a re-skin of one of Billy Devorss' beautiful pieces of art (though I am unable to find the title of the piece at this current moment). In a way, it feels like Blizz is trying to troll folks, however, that's another topic that I don't plan to delve into. Also, I have to wonder if blatantly copying the pose will result in Devorss' estate to get into it with Blizzard?

Regardless, I love pin-up art, and I can't argue with emulating the style. In fact, even though it's still just as "sexy" (maybe more so?) as the last pose, it's way more in character. It's spunky. It has attitude. It's fun. It's silly. I, personally, am a fan, and seeing the pose that has attitude compared to the last one makes me much more interested in playing and spending money on the game.

Boss Monster

Now that the heavy stuff is out of the way, I wanted to share a neat little game that Chaide picked up yesterday called Boss Monster. We're big into board games, and have quite a few of them. We even have a few LCGs we've collected cards for. But even with games like Dominion and Catan, they're never quiet as fun with two folks compared to even three. They just don't work as well.

Boss Monster is a card game designed for 2-4 players, but includes variant rules as well to implement to change up game-play regardless of how many people are playing. It's essentially a 2D scroller dungeon game out of cards. It's all pixel art, and it's adorkable. It goes by fast, too. Our first game took about a half hour, but our two consecutive games only took about ten to fifteen minutes, excluding some breaks to walk the dog.

It's a rare game where I'm actually looking forward to getting more of the expansions for (and even maybe the epic box?), because it feels balanced as a two-player game. And as much as I love Smashup and Catan, they just don't feel as balanced for two-players.

So if you enjoy tabletop games, or 2D scrollers, or just fun and wholesome games that you can play with a minimum number of people, check it out! And now I'm off to go play some more because the WildStar servers are down.