A gentleman values discretion

odilonredon:

martwhim:

Since people often ask “Alright, well this is fantasy! Why can’t we have boob shapes in plate armor?!” I decided to make a post about it. My frustration has nothing to do with historical inaccuracy and I’m all for imagination and freedom— but I’d like to (very quickly)…

Sorry, plate harness works not on deflective principles- that’s early 20th c tank armour and the shot trap issue- but on the imposition of a very strong piece of metal between the warrior and his or her opponent- if one can be arsed with one’s lichtenauer, ARMA, etc, a sword-cut, arrow, crossbow bolt etc cannot penetrate white harness of any configuration, especially if the blow is spent and skittering across the surface. (Other arms are required. They do not feature in most CRPGS.)
Unlike a 20th century APDS tank shell, there is no further potential destructive power in such a blow.

That’s an awful big knee jerk.

I don’t believe they specified CRPGs (just fantasy art in general) and you didn’t address some of their major concerns like “what if she falls over”.

You might also notice that the article is not actually against femininity in armour, it’s against depicting wildly impractical plate armour as something that people would ride into battle with.  While plate armour did have sufficient inertia to simply deflect arrows and light sword blades without incident this does not hold up against:

• Giant clubs like appears in almost every fantasy game
• Shield/head/whatever slams
• Heavy crossbow bolts made to punch through plates of steel
• Lances from cavalry
• Magic spells that hit with force
• Gravity (remember, the more armour you wear and the taller you are the more energy will hit your chest when you fall)
• Maces, heavy swords or virtually any weapon you would expect someone wearing plate armour to be wielding

You see, a pretty consistent part of history is that people take armour to match the weapons they’re going to use.  Thus in a battle between two technologically similar groups, they will have weapons that arm made to deal with each other’s armour and armour that’s made to deal with each other’s weapons.

The assumption, therefore, that there will be no weapons on the field that can escalate the impact is frankly ridiculous unless we’re talking about limiting this discussion to armour used purely for ceremonial purposes or terrorising peasants.  In which case you can have pretty much anything you like because it’s purely decoration.

Now personally I would never look at a book on Renaissance fashion for information on armour for the same reason I wouldn’t look up a book on Haute Couture fashion for information about safety clothing.  The suits you’ve shown are clearly ceremonial, never saw serious battle and were worn by rich men (as the blurbs of the books say) in an era well here’s a quote from the blurb of the book.

During the Italian Wars of 1494 to 1559, with innovations in military technology and tactics, armour began to disappear from the battlefield. Yet as field armour was retired, parade and ceremonial armour grew increasingly flamboyant.

The armour you’ve shown in pics was quite simply, never intended to be used in battle.  It was, at most, intended to be worn by a leader who will be present but not fighting on the battlefield but more realistically, will be worn at special occasions to show off that the wearer is rich and has an interest in warfare.

Yes the pieces in there probably would protect you against a man with a shortbow, a rapier or a small crossbow but they’re not intended as armour as they are pieces of art that happen to appear as armour.

Compare their ridiculously lavish attire to that of say, the Spanish Conquistadors (who were at the start of plate armour’s dying days).

However, if one absolutely had their heart set on having a giant set of tits on the front of their armour because they felt that the androgynous look of plate was somehow misogynistic the obvious solution to this is to put a decorative façade on the top of the plate.

Like the article I reblogged demonstrated:

So in summary, the above and similar to it are good, images like the one below (found by Googling “female platemail”) are not:

And if we want to go “Well in a CRPG they won’t face…” then nothing matters because we can twist reality to suit whatever the game creator likes including having a magic g-string that prevents steel from touching you.

But we still should not consider the above equal to:

Or left is equal to right:

So basically yes, we can have the female equivalents of the purely decorative armour that you posted pics of, but they would look nothing like any female armour I’ve seen in any major fantasy products to date.  We can even have some pieces that don’t go “hurr hurr girls = tits hurr hurr” as well as gender ambiguous pieces.

What we have too many of already and don’t want any more of, are armour where the top half is replaced with a steel bra (which does not fit any sane explanation), which is what the article was opposing.