I can't be the only one disappointed it
I can't be the only one disappointed it wasn't just ponies cosplaying as DC Heroines.
Great post, Eschergirls, and your critique is on-point on multiple levels.
When I first saw this, my first thought was “fun, someone drew the MLP crew as comic heroines, as in, them cosplaying as DC or Marvel Heroines.”
Then I skimmed the writeup and I saw “voluptuous” and rule 34 nightmares filled my mind. Thankfully, this turned out to be far less toxic than feared. It is still bad tho.
I’m going to start off by saying I’ve seen a bit of this cartoon. I enjoy it, though I am not a “Brony” and will not use said phrase to describe myself. If any cartoon on the hub speaks directly to my soul, it is Dan Vs. That said, it’s a funny, entertaining cartoon that’s fun to watch while puppetbuilding, sketching and so forth.
Beyond the general oversexiness of the concept, this art misses the mark on multiple levels.
First, the obligatory good job statement. There’s room for organs and only one boobs-and-butt pose.
Now on to the bad. Warning, continuity wonkery and over-analysis to follow!
The problem with the “sexiness”, is more than just the typical assumption of ‘superheroine=lingerie model”. It kills the whole point of the piece. A little background: I come from the Transformers fandom, so I’ve seen a lot of ‘humanized’ fan art of non-human characters. Some if it good, some of it isn’t. The core link in this change is the philosophy behind the adaptation: capturing the personality of the characters in the human form. The drive for sexy drops this in favor of MLP themed stripper outfits.
A lack of research could explain this, but you’d have to do a whole lot of unresearch because the personalities of the characters are expressed in the theme song. The only one who really works is Pinkie Pie and that, I suspect, is because the manic nutball girl is a ready-made comic book trope. All of them have the same build, the same proportions and almost the same face.
There’s no studious or practical in the Twilight Sparkle adaptation and neither the costume nor expression express the character. Fluttershy looks unsure, but is wearing an outfit designed to draw attention. This is a character who routinely hides in her own hair and usually speaks in a whisper. I don’t think ‘gauze and lycra’ makes sense. Pinkie Pie kinda works, as stated. Rarity is the second runner up for working, because she’s the fashionista and ‘lady’ of the group, I guess. The costume works but the personality isn’t there. Rainbow Dash should be radiating daring-do and devil-may-care thrillseeking. I guess the runner’s outfit kinda works, but the personality is lost. She’s one of two tomboys on the team and that doesn’t come across in the slightest. Finally, Applejack is wearing a stripper’s outfit. The others are wearing stripper-esq outfits but this is a literal stripper’s outfit.
Google image search for “cowgirl stripper” netted this. Along with Jessica Alba from Sin City, of which there’s some similarity in costume design as well.
This is the tough, kicks-apples-out-of-trees-for-a-living, wanted-to-wear-galoshes-to-a-formal-ball, stubborn and ungirly tomboy character. This design misses the point, entirely.
I’m not against sexy ladies in art, not at all. I don’t mind Emma Frost, for instance, I just wish that the other X-Women dressed less like her so she was the exception and not the rule. That way she’d be special and the others could make sense in the story.
We hit another stumbling block here as well. If the purpose is to titilate, this fails, at least for me.
The sameness of the character designs hurts this. There’s a lot of different kinds of sexy. Athletic and tough can be sexy. Voluptuous and plump can be sexy. Nerdy and smart can be VERY sexy. Gentle and nurturing can be sexy and so forth. Here sexy is conveyed entirely by “large tits, lots of bared skin”.
This fails to deliver on even the lazy porn archetypes. You have a librarian, a vulnerable waif, a princess, a party animal, a corn-fed farmer’s daughter and the adventuresome lady athlete. This would require varying builds and personalities to make work, though.See, when I think “human superhero version of Applejack”, I’m imagining a tough looking girl, maybe a bit on the plump side, dusting off the remains of the building she just punched a badguy through with her horseshoe-shaped brass knuckles. Gingam blouse, cowboy hat, bluejeans and a mask. A cowboy/girl outfit isn’t a superhero costume? DC’s Vigilante would have words with you! I don’t have specific visions for anyone else, but they certainly wouldn’t have the exact same build and mostly the same face.
They’re not really the base characters, they don’t communicate “superheroine” well and the crass forced sexy means they aren’t. I can’t fault the illustrator for technique, he seems quite skilled. I just hope he’s not always so limited in his character designs because it is a waste.
I really didn’t mean to make the last post become a discussion about whether the fanart was any good at capturing the MLP characters, but a lot of people had a lot to say, and also a lot of interesting discussion and thoughts spun out of it, and this is one post I wanted to share in the vein.
What I especially wanted to highlight was this:
The sameness of the character designs hurts this. There’s a lot of different kinds of sexy. Athletic and tough can be sexy. Voluptuous and plump can be sexy. Nerdy and smart can be VERY sexy. Gentle and nurturing can be sexy and so forth. Here sexy is conveyed entirely by “large tits, lots of bared skin”.
THAT. That is one of the big complaints a lot of people have with the video game/comic/etc idea of “sexiness” or defenses of Escher Girl art, that anybody who doesn’t like it is against sexiness. But as the above person points out, there’s more to sexiness than “big breasts, no clothes”, and there’s a lot of ways to express sexiness while having characterization and keeping things in contexts. Athletes can be sexy. Doctors can be sexy. Teachers can be sexy. Superheroes can be sexy. And all of them (and all of us) can be sexy without having the same body type, being white, and being nearly naked, or wearing a stripper’s version of their uniform/outfits.
The one single body type of sexiness and having certain kinds of outfits is basically like the Michael Bay idea of sexiness, it is big, and obvious and loud and visceral, but like Bay’s movies are not the only way to make an action movie, big breasts, small waists, skimpy costumes, are not the only way to do sexy. This is not that that way is WRONG, or BAD, but that “sexy” can be expressed in many many ways, and you can have a superhero that doesn’t have just that one body type in a stripper’s version of a superhero outfit, and she can be powerful and heroic and action-oriented and still end up being very very sexy. :)