Can justifying "boobplate" armor in the fantasy genre damage its credibility as a serious setting?
If you are trying to convince readers that women are an important part of war in an alternate world, is sticking them in costumes designed to titillate instead of protect damage the worldbuilding credibility? How could you balance the rule of cool with realism?
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Ah, the good old balance between hard sci-fi and creative liberty question. I can't answer all, as each time this problem occurs, the solution differs.
I did create the somewhat useful Mephisto's Solving Algorithm for Awesome it reads out like this:
- Collect everything you know about the problematic item.
- Go through it, and see if it can be solved, real-world excuses/analogies are what you searching for, for example, an analogy can be drawn between the Quetzalcoatlus Northropi and a dragon, at least I think.
- See if you can discard something to save the rest. (do dragons need to be that big?)
This allows you to keep something that's useful within a context, created in this way.
A dragon from Second Earth (my fantasy setting) will nowhere nearly be as powerful as Smaug, but why should he? He won't be pitted against a Gandalf or a Sauron, or a shooty boi with an infinity +1 arrow.
Applying this to your question:
Why do you need boob plates? A 15th-century gothic plate armor is the medieval equivalent of iddqd. Its weight is evenly distributed, allowing you to do somersaults if you wanted to, it also looks cool.
Joan of Arc, the first and only overpowered female protagonist. She didn't need boob plates, why should you?
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If you only need a few of these half-dressed femme fatales, you could make the exposed parts an illusion. The women might be warrior wizards who use a small part of their magic to bring an element of style and sexuality to the battlefield.
The joke is on all the men. These women are fully armored and completely safe from all but the most skilled of opponents, but they look like they are facing potential death with a courage that the mightiest hero couldn't match.
The illusion might also serve a strategic purpose, as the body parts which it appears to leave bare are actually the heaviest armored. By making the enemy think that leg is exposed all the way up, or that cleavage is visible all the way down, they draw attacks to the points where their armor is best prepared to block.
The illusion might even enhance the face and figure of the warrior wizard. Concubines and sex slaves are among the most prized of the spoils of war. Why not make the prize so appealing that any male opponent hesitates for fear of damaging the merchandise.
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Yes, it can and most likely will damage the credibility if you are aiming for a serious setting.
"Boobplate armor" as you put it would be highly dangerous and useless. Using it will automatically show every reader that has ever done a tiny bit of research into this topic or had some experience with armor that you are aiming for the generic anime/fantasy game genre.
Especially if women are important they should be defended as best as possible.
That being said: this is mostly important in visual media. I can't remember reading any description of such armor and I've certainly read a lot of fantasy books. Maybe it just slipped past me, but I would find such a description to be very weird.
If you are going for a high-power-magic setting you could just describe your female warrior wizards in normal clothes or something like that to show how mighty they are and that they don't even need armor like those poor men without access to magic. I wouldn't try to sexualize their armor. Ever. (Of course it's your decision as the author, but I think you are massively damaging the realism and it's not even cool in writing.)
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