houseoffantasists:

Warning: Some Content NSFW

So, your female character is a warrior, yes?

So, she’s alive because she’s bloody good at it, yes?

So, you can get away with armour like this, yes?

No?

Okay, so, what about this?

A few of you are probably thinking, “Yeah, that’s more like it.”

I’m here to tell you that no, that’s not more like it. This stuff isn’t designed to protect anybody, it’s what I call ‘barely concealed porn’. It’s designed to be sexy. If you’re living in my brain, it’s designed to ensure that warrior women maintain some level of femininity, because God forbid a woman does something that doesn’t appeal to men. Ahem.

What’s wrong with this?

It’s not overtly sexy. But she’s probably more likely to be alive at the end of the battle.

So, unless you’re designing your warrior-woman to ‘sexy people to death’, it’s about time we started looking at how armour can be made to fit a woman’s shape.

Let’s start with the obvious; boobs. Some ladies are blessed with very small breasts, and some are blessed with very large breasts. Whatever the case, cleavage is a no-no. Exposing cleavage means exposing access to your heart (the physical, beating heart, let’s not get mushy). That means that anyone can see an all-too-easy way to kill your warrior-woman before she’s even uttered a hentai sigh-come-moan whenever she swings her sword.

The next frequently exposed place is the midriff. Another area you really don’t want somebody to poke with something sharp. The likelihood is that her guts will fall out, or she’ll experience a very slow death by bleeding profusely.

Thighs. Entire legs, in some cases. The femoral artery runs through your thigh. Cut it, and you stand a very good chance of bleeding to death. This artery actually begins its path through your thigh from your pelvis, so guarding the groin and hip are also very important.

In short, there’s nothing different about women that means their armour isn’t required. In fiction, your characters don’t have HP and little life lovehearts. If they get injured, they’re injured. There are going to be consequences. And she’s going to be looking at you, and asking why the Hell you gave her armour that wasn’t much more than a bikini.

Below, there’s a list of different kinds of armour and how it’s made. Once you know how it’s made, you can piece together how it might fit your warrior-woman’s particular figure.

What is important to remember is her style of fighting. Armour typically weighs a great deal. It’s heavy for big men and it’ll be heavy for women of whatever size. When considering what armour you want your lady to be wearing, consider the following:

- Which weapon she primarily uses. Before you answer this, consider her build and the weight of the weapon itself. The reality is that a small woman is not likely to be able to wield a zweihander effectively.

- How she fights. This will be based on weaponry, her physical size and what her advantages and disadvantages are. Manoeuvrability is important when considering armour, as she’s going to need to be able to move in certain ways. A woman relying on being able to be quick on her feet isn’t going to benefit from plate greaves.

- Her strength and stamina. Be realistic. A woman built like Nigella Lawson isn’t going to manage fighting for long periods of time in chain mail. It’s just not feasible. If you want your lady to be wearing plate armour and able to fight for a good while, she’s going to need to be muscular and have the training to manage it. She’s probably not going to have the ideal, sexy body we’d all like.

- Her body shape. One thing that men often forget is that breasts get in the way. Large breasts more so. Try strapping four bean bags to your chest to get an idea of what it’s like to have that weight present and how often it’ll inhibit your movement. Women have learned to move around it, but there are still moments where they’re just plain irritating. Equally, strapping them down makes them tender. Ask any woman whose bra is too small. After a while, they start to feel bruised inside. That’s the meaning of ‘tender’. We really mean ‘bruised’.

Women also walk differently to men, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, which changes where their centre of balance is. Women generally have better balance than men because their centre of gravity is slightly lower. They also carry more weight below the upper hips than men do.

Muscularity is something we think happens differently for men and women. Actually, it doesn’t. Muscle development will happen for women in the same way that it does men, though they may experience different physiological changes. Ever notice that a lot of female body builders tend to have breast enhancement surgery? That’s because this is what happens to the breasts when women become muscular:

This happens because the pectoral muscle has developed and essentially put the fatty tissue of the breasts on a platform. Women get bigger and their breasts either stay the same size or shrink (it depends on the kind of exercise, a lot of women experience their breasts shrinking to the point of being non-existent because fatty tissues are often the first thing to go once you start an intense training regime).

So, consider build. Their natural shape, lifestyle and fighting style will affect this and you need to be realistic about what these things would do to her body.

Once you’ve established these things, you need to figure out what kind of armour is best for your warrior-woman.

Scale Armour

Scale armour, contrary to what MMORPGs will tell you, is not made out of reptile skin. It just looks like reptile skin. It’s actually made out of whatever you can get your hands on; leather, seeds, horn, rawhide, bronze, iron and even paper, in China. The individual scales are stitched onto their backing (typically cloth or leather) by at least one edge and overlap one another much like roof tiles.

This kind of armour is not as flexible as chain mail but, given the backing being fabric, it can be shaped to the wearer and is a strong choice for women who need some mobility but largely, protection from blunt attacks.

Lamellar Armour

Lamellar is made out of rectangular pieces of leather or metal that are laced together in horizontal rows, often over some kind of jacket or padded shirt. Lamellar differs from scale armour in that it does not require cloth or leather backing, it exists as a single piece of armour as it is.

It doesn’t restrict movement as much as scale armour but neither does it provide the same kind of protection. As its usage progressed through time, people began using it as an enhancement to chain mail rather than a standalone cuirass.

The realism of whether a woman would find this comfortable is probably down to her build. A woman with larger breasts would struggle with something like this; it’d probably bunch up around her chest and shoulders and cause her to be unable to move her arms too much.

Laminar Armour

Horizontal, solid pieces of armour make laminar armour. I’m not going to go into the details of this one too much, because the likelihood that a woman could wear this comfortably is extremely slim. Men fit horizontal patterns because their bodies are designed in a Y shape that can be accommodated easily by the banding. The difficulty with women is in their hips, which are frequently much wider than their waists. This would cause both weakness and clumsiness at the waist as the armour has to change its shape too severely. Bending laminar armour too much takes away its strength. A Y shaped woman might be able to pull it off, however, and if she did, she’d most likely be using it to complement a shield and shortsword/spear.

Chainmail

As you can see, chainmail is a very viable option for women. It’s made up of teeny tiny little metal links and research done by Leeds Royal Armouries suggests that it was virtually impenetrable by medieval weaponry. It’s not lightweight, as you can imagine, but it does bend and provides excellent protection. About the only thing that would get through it would be heavy blows, as flexibility doesn’t allow for protection from broken bones. So, avoid impact weapons (maces, hammers, clubs, etc.) and she might just make it through that big battle in this. Might.

Plate Armour

Another one that has evidence enough that it could work for your warrior-woman. Plate armour is exceptionally heavy, more so if your character has decided to wear chainmail underneath to ensure that any weaker areas have their bases covered. It’s heavy and difficult to move in, but she will be kept safe from a whole array of weapons and it can be fitted, if one has the money, to one’s own shape. The only real problems this armour presents are that its weak spots are obvious, because the pieces have a defined shape, and it’s not the most elegant, flexible stuff.

Ladies wearing this type of armour are probably looking at wielding large close-combat weapons such as broadswords, warhammers and war-axes. This woman is going to be one big lady after a while of wearing this stuff, and she’d have to learn to get through the sheer exhaustion of trying to move from inside 65lbs of metal (that’s about 30-35 bags of old-fashioned sugar).

In short, do some research yourself. Figure out how she fights. Figure out why she fights and if she’s going to be mostly naked, give her a damn good reason to survive (I recommend hiding, that’s a great way to avoid being stabbed when you’re in your birthday suit).

It just doesn’t wash any more, guys. It’s not realistic, it’s not cool and frankly, it’s a little bit sexist that women should have to flash their bits whilst trying desperately to live, just so that they look good for that cute boy in the full-plate over there.

Write your warrior-women real. They’d be tough and scarred, strong and bent out of shape (or into shape, depending on your perspective).

Glorified rant over. 

- LSG

fuckyourwritinghabits:

fictionwritingtips:

I always have difficulty visualizing how a room is set up or I just don’t put that much attention into it. I quickly realized how wrong this was because you want your readers to see a space, especially if it’s an important area. If you ignore how it’s set up, you’ll only confuse and frustrate your readers. They want to visualize the spaces you create, so you need to make a conscious effort to plan your locations.

Having weak locations might seem like the least of your worries when it comes to writing, but it’s all part of being a descriptive writer. Describing a house or building might be moments you want to rush, but you need to give them care and attention.  Using this description—brown, single family, two-story home—is not exciting. It’s not even really worth reading, to be honest. We need to experience the house with all of our senses. What does the house smell like? Like fresh cotton? Or musty? Obviously, these two smells are very different and will lead to a different understanding of the house.  Is it dark inside? Does natural light stream in through the clean glass windows? These descriptions are off the top of my head, but you need to take the time to think about how you want your locations to be perceived and what you’re trying to say.

Everything in your story should matter.

So, how could you improve how you build your locations? Keeping those visualizations in your head works for some people, but you can get creative. If you’re a competent artist (which I am not), you can do some sketches and refer back to them. However, for detailed space building, I recommend this site—Room Sketcher.

Room Sketcher allows you to easily build rooms and the program is free. If you’re looking for help, I think this is a great idea. Otherwise, find a good way to plan your spaces and keep them fresh in your mind. Take the extra step.

HOLY SHIT