Agnès Oblige
edea lee

While I’ve never fully appreciated Final Fantasy as a game, I have enjoyed it as a cultural phenomenon and a piece of art. I find the hand drawn whispy stuff very evocative. Also the costumes can be pretty cool. Pitty I don’t have a 3DS to try Bravely Default on. Although I suspect that the fighting would be far to slow for me. I played games like pokemon on an emulator on my PC. I constantly had the speed button held down so I could play at a pace that would grip my ADD attention.
What sort of name is Bravely Default anyway? It’s like calling it “Stoic Beige” or “Valiant Sigh”. I guess something was lost in translation.

I’ve just been thinking about chainmail bikinis. That last sentence should definitely not be extrapolated upon, let alone uttered in the first place. I think some people are unaware of the history of it. Many assume it was made up by horny fantasy artists for the covers of 70s paperbacks, usually portraying a muscled bowl cut aryan being clutched by the aforementioned chainmail bikini wearer.
Its first appearance was during the Gothic War (535-554AD) between the eastern Romans and the crude Ostrogoths. The babarian hordes, near the end of the first phase of the war, were running out of supplies and men. Their hardy women stepped up to the plate, and alongside their menfolk, got slaughtered. Although by the end of the war Italy had been devastated and would eventually crumble to the Lombards, another germanic tribe which went on to rule Italy for 200 years. The last fighters were said to be wearing nothing but torn chainmail, resembling thongs and bikinis.
Bikinis as a concept wasn’t going to be popularised until the 1940s but there are early mosaics and art from the Greco-Roman world portraying women in bikini like undergarments, predating the Gothic War by 200 years.
In certain accounts during the wars Roman generals would command their men not to harm the lady warriors because “it boosted morale for pretty much everyone.” and gave rise to the mythos that chainmail bikinis were in fact, pretty good at protecting their wearer, because generally the chicks were the last ones to get shot or chopped in half.
It should be noted, that while the chainmail bikinis are a mainstay in oldschool D&D artwork, running around in your undies in 4th edition earns you absolutely no AC.