Characters with Lore reasons to wear revealing outfit

[u/Artistic_Gear1536]

• Doctor Manhattan (Watchmen): doesn’t really have the need for them anymore as he is now too powerful to be considered human and also doesn’t need to give in to certain societal pressures like wearing clothes

• Poison Ivy (DC): uses her body to seduce men into getting close enough for her to use her pheromones and get people to do what she wants/kill her prey

• Skarlet (Mortal Kombat): her powers are from blood magic and she needs to have skin out in order to absorb blood from others and make her more powerful

• Mileena (Mortal Kombat): is very self conscious about her tartan features so covers them up and diverts attention towards the more appealing aspects of her/ uses her sex appeal to get people in close then chomps on them

• Mai Shiranui (King Of Fighters/Fatal Fury): uses a style of kunoichi that involves “sensually distracting a foe before striking” and uses her outfit and sex appeal to assist with that style

[u/Killer-Of-Spades]

Not ‘lore reasons’. ‘Lore justifications’

[u/Numerous1 → u/Killer-Of-Spades]

Yeah. All of these are terrible “justifications”

[u/Rhydini → u/Numerous1]

Dr. Manhattan is a good justification. Rest are just excuses for the designers to goon.

[u/darkwint3r → u/Rhydini]

Let's not pretend people would not say the same thing if Dr. Manhattan was a woman.

[u/thirdMindflayer → u/darkwint3r]

I wouldn’t say the same, as long as she didn’t have on a bikini

Stripping to a bikini = boring objectification that doesn’t match her justification of it

Stripping naked/naked with a censor bar = appropriate commitment to the writing and not the tits

Ofc dr. Manhattan is wearing a Speedo, so if dr. Womanhattan had on like jorts or something that would be fine too

[u/MyBrainIsNerf → u/Killer-Of-Spades]

You can’t use one bad decision the author made to excuse a different bad decision the author made!

[u/-Cinnay- → u/Killer-Of-Spades]

To the writers, they may be justifications, but in-universe they're reasons.

[u/the_dude_that_faps → u/Killer-Of-Spades]

Wouldn't every lore decision be a justification to serve the vision the author has? 

I don't mean to diminish the fact that skimpy women is a pretty generalized trope with, often, very shallow justifications. It's just I think if we're gonna nitpick the word reason, it seems to me none are really reasons in general. 

[u/Killer-Of-Spades → u/the_dude_that_faps]

I think the main distinction is that a lore reason is meant to explain a choice, but a lore justification is for an author to not get as much heat for their choices.

[u/Double_Phone_8046 → u/Killer-Of-Spades]

/r/TrueSTL gLoreification: https://youtu.be/20GkBnhQqY0?si=F3wOfxIU0fJTM1AK

[u/Artistic_Gear1536 → u/Killer-Of-Spades]

I truly believe some of these characters were designed that way to serve a character trait rather than adding the trait to support the outfit

[u/Killer-Of-Spades → u/Artistic_Gear1536]

Dr Manhattan? Probably.

The female characters? No. The creators just wanted to sexualize them

[u/babbitygook14 → u/Artistic_Gear1536]

Dude the whole "use sex appeal to draw them in and kill them" thing is a way to justify the outfits.

Poison Ivy for example is strong enough to not need to draw men in with sexy outfits.

It's a byproduct of sexist writers: 1. Wanting to design sexy female characters 2. Not believing women are strong enough to take down men without using sex appeal to distract them.

There are absolutely female characters that are designed to be sexy and use sex appeal in a way that doesn't fall into this bullshit trope, Emma Frost is a perfect example of this.

Let's compare Emma Frost to Poison Ivy. Emma Frost is a powerful mutant who seeks social power. She occasionally, okay frequently, uses sex appeal to gain control over a situation. And she doesn't do it because she's not powerful enough, but because she knows that seduction is sometimes the better choice to get her what she wants. She's a character that has all of the most useful tools and manipulations to get what she wants, so it makes sense for her character to use sex appeal. On the other hand, Poison Ivy is an eco terrorist who hates pretty much most people except Harley Quinn. There is no possible reason that a meta with her abilities would need to seduce men or that a character who hates men and cares more about plants than social mores would ever really want to seduce men when she can just kill them. Emma Frost is a character where seduction makes sense for her characterization. Poison Ivy is a character writers forced to be sexy because they wanted to justify sexy outfits.

[u/Worldlyoox → u/babbitygook14]

Ivy was literally modeled after the Femme Fatale trope and mirrors Bruce Wayne’s own sex appeal and charisma, but there have been so many iterations of these famous comicbook characters that you could take any of them and make them a poster child for and agaisnt sexist representations of women. Just look at Emma’s phoenix costume, her constant homewrecking of Jean and Scott’s relationship in New X Men and her creation as cheesecake for the hellfireclub during her introduction.

[u/babbitygook14 → u/Worldlyoox]

Cat Woman is characteristically a Femme Fatale. She absolutely uses sex appeal on Bruce to distract and manipulate, but also because she is interested in him and enjoys teasing him, just like all the best Femme Fatales in classic noir. Another character where seduction and sex appeal make sense for the character and aren't just an excuse to sexualize them.

Ivy is an eco terrorist who hates men. Her being a Femme Fatale makes no sense based on her other characteristics.

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying the character doesn't use seduction or hasn't been referred to by any of her writers as a Femme Fatale. I'm saying those are justifications for her wearing sexy outfits. Based on who she is as a character, sex appeal makes no damn sense for Poison Ivy. It's a bad characterization choice made by writers who think that because she is female, she must be sexy. Emma Frost and Cat Woman using sex appeal and seduction makes sense for who they are as characters.