Pictured: an unhappy angel getting indigestion from apparently swallowing an entire black hole.

(Cover of Penny for your Soul: Pestilence #6, Big Dog Ink, submitted by anonymous)

Cassie showing off the boobs and butt pose and then seeming VERY enthusiastic about finding out if her lasso would drain her own life. >_>

(Page and panels from Teen Titans vol. 4 #28, DC Comics)

@haveievermentioned submitted:

"Kaine from the NieR promo comics by DC/Wildstorm.  I will defend the outfit as the game  not only justifies it but genuinely ties it into her character development and backstory.  (this isn't me being facetious, go play NieR) however... the rest of it is just so off.  Including the face.  Kaine doesn't ever even get CLOSE to that kind of expression."

This is what happens when you're setting up your display of battle lingerie because corporate says the next big thing is sexy barbarian chic, but also you can't quite get the legs and butt to fit together with the top of the mannequin and you're like, whatever, it's my last day anyway, and it's almost closing...

(Cover of NiER #1, Wildstorm Productions & DC Comics)

Reminder that the April caption contest is still going and will run for another week until Friday!

Winners will be announced on Sunday, so get your captions in if you want to participate!

I was looking through old UK gaming magazines with friends trying to source something, and I ran into this cover which... is something.  Also I think history class misled me about the Magna Carta.  Clearly it was a charter of rights for breasts to be free of their hosts. xD

Anyway, with the art and the game title "Magna Carta" and the magazine title, I figure there's a lot to work from here for a caption contest, so let's have one!

Caption the image.  What's happening? What are they doing?  You can include the text in your caption to make a joke or whatever if you want to play on it, but you don't have to.

Submit your captions here using reblog or reply, by email at [email protected] or on the main site using Disqus comments.

I'll pick the best/funniest captions for winners in two weeks!

Winners can get a choice of prizes if they want, but you don't need to accept a prize to participate if you just want to participate for fun!

Good luck everybody!

(Cover of PLAY magazine vol. 45, Sept. 2005)

madfishmonger submitted:

"File this under "The artist's barely disguised fetish" It took me a minute to realize, but she's supposed to be wearing this style of fetish shoe (ballet heels). To WAR. She's going to WAR. In THOSE."

Nothing wrong with fetish shoes. PROBABLY not a good idea to wear them in war though, but what do I know? I don't exist in the post-apocalyptic space war universe.  Maybe one needs to stand on their tippy-toes to see the entire battlefield.  Maybe having hooves commands respect.  Maybe the soldiers are better motivated knowing that their commanders are suffering as much as they are standing in those things.

Maybe my brain is just melting.  That happens too when I stare at my inbox too long.

(Cover of Warhammer 40,000 - Codex: Sisters of Battle, Games Workshop)

This was shown to me by somebody on Discord and this is apparently part of a review of the game?  And... what... just... what... Everything about this is so cringe.  Like, why even mention Claris just to imply that they would admit to lusting over her if she was of legal age?  That's so creepy, even as a joke. 

And everything about Tillis is just so weird.  Like they call her a cool and strong female lead, but then there's that weird tangent about how hot she is that their Art Editor is drooling over her and just... why... why anything. xD  90s gaming mags were certainly something...

Also, the internet would very much prove this writer wrong about people not being hot and bothered for Amy Rose >_>

As for the picture itself, all I can think of is "We have Asuka Evangelion at home."

(Review of Burning Rangers from Sega Saturn Magazine #31)

Transcript of text:

Burning Ranger: Raunch Factor 10 It's about time that the Sonic Team produced a strong female lead for one of their games. After all, no-one's really got all hot and bothered about Amy Rose from the Sonic games (insert your own hedgehog-based "prick" gag here). And as for the "budding" 15 year-old Claris in NiGHTS... well, we're not saying anything. Not until we've cleared it thoroughly with our legal people. The advent of Burning Rangers brings an end to this sad, sordid tale. Tillis is cool. In fact, our very own Art Editor, Mr McEvoy has this very image on his desktop at work. When we think he's staring at his latest layout for the mag, he's actually drooling feverishly at the picture you're looking at on this page. The words "pervert" and "colossal" spring to mind...

I thought this looked familiar.  Apparently it's a modern redux of an old Marvel trading card of Magik (a literal Magik card for those that like puns >_>)

It doesn't look much better cleaned up, and if anything the weirdness of the entire pose is just more visible.  She looks like a centaur angry that you stole her front legs.

(Unknown Comics cover of Astonishing X-Men vol 4 #1, Marvel Comics, submitted by anonymous)

Is Elektra supposed to be like... skateboarding on ice or something?  What is going on with her legs?

Also, that dialogue is very "men writing women".

(Page from Elektra vol. 1 #4, Marvel Comics, submitted by anonymous)

Transcript of text boxes:

A whole bunch of Ukrainian pimps armed to the teeth with ex-KGB hardware... A few home grown allies with customized glocks and berettas... A young girl, scared witless relying on Elektra to get her out of the hole she's in... And my hair's probably gone frizzy, too, she thinks.

So apparently Lyssa: Goddess of Rage, that game that probably uses AI generated art, has rebranded itself to "Lyssa: Goddess of LOVE"?  And that apparently just means taking the exact same picture from the Cammy from Wish ad and turning it into a vacuum-sealed latex Nazi woman???

Also, apparently if you look for Saints Row videos on YouTube, their wise and all-knowing algorithm thinks that means you want AI-generated Nazi waifus. -_o This future sucks.

(Ad for Lyssa: Goddess of LOVE, Panoramik Games)

Flipping through PLAY Magazine's "Girls of Gaming" with my friends a little bit ago, and helium balloon snowboarding girl is back, with both runaway breasts and a boobs and butt pose.  But also, I think the commentary that accompanies this section is interesting too.

First, as my friend pointed out when we were reading it, it's odd to brag that your sports game's women athletes aren't "damsels in distress" given that it's a sports game and those usually don't have like women in distress? (hopefully)

Second, it's also interesting that for female characters, the designer stresses that it's important that they be hot and attractive while also having other characteristics, but when it comes to the male characters, their appearance isn't the focus, and in fact it's even pointed out how important it is for some male characters to be UNATTRACTIVE in order to be more relatable.

Thinking emoji, etc...

(Page from Girls of Gaming vol. 1, PLAY Magazine)

Transcription of article:

Elisa SSX 3 Incept Date: October 2003 Famous For: Snowboarding while laying the back down on anyone within an arm's length and looking California-cool in the process. She also talks a mean game. The game: The quintessential snowboarding game for the ages - fast, loaded with attitude, crazy detail and a wicked soundtrack. Screw laundry lists and race to your heart's content. System: PS2, Xbox, GC, PC; Developer: EA; Publisher: EA Three Questions: Ian Lloyd, Associate Art Director/Character Supervisors SSX3 What do you feel is the single most important aspect of character design? Storytelling - a character tells a story about themselves through their appearance, their performance and their voice. We tend to be pretty straightforward in designing characters that you can get an immediate read on. Once you have this defined, you can start to mess with these perceptions to get the character to perform certain roles within the cast of characters. It's almost impossible to design these characters in a vacuum as they all play a specific role within the cast of characters in the game and ultimately appeal to a broad range of users. It's abundantly clear that you can never please everyone, but I'm pretty satisfied when I hear people strongly promoting their favorite characters from the SSX series and nobody can agree on who those characters are! We've tried to design the characters of SSX to appeal to everyone, and to achieve the goal you need to put enough specifics in there to make the character unique, but you also need to leave some room for a broad spectrum of users of all ages, genders, nationalities, and backgrounds to project their own ideas and specifications on to.  I think too often character designers get all the stereotypes covered but never go beyond that point. It's a tough balance with lots of external pressures on the designers, but I really feel strongly that if you give a character a place to come from, in the form of a history, experiences, preferences and dislikes, the user will pick up on it and more readily engage in the interactive process of bringing that character to life in their mind. These things don't need to be explicitly stated to the audience, which is the temptation; rather, the designer just needs to have the information in mind when designing the character and it will find its own voice through all the decisions that are made along the way. What are you most proud of regarding the girls of SSX? I'm glad that many people seem to react to them in a positive way. We've always strived to make sure we have a good balance between overly appealing female characters and cool characters that happen to be girls. Obviously all the characters are competitive athletes, full of confidence and very much dictating how they move through life. You won't find any damsels in distress in SSX. Again, each character has a role to play so rather than pump them all full of silicone and take the easy way out with a crew of Barbie-esque clones, we've tried to make sure we present a range of female athletes that will appeal to a broad audience for reasons beyond their good looks. The other aspect of presenting a range of character types is that polarities and rivalries naturally emerge and our AI systems help the user engage in and invest in these relationships.

Your favourite character from any game? I'd have to say Abe from Oddworld series is the frontrunner, with Jin Kazama from the Tekken series and Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series. All of these characters have been designed to tell a clear story about themselves and their designs engage the user in a way that I find very satisfying. Abe is great because he is the complete package. His voice, motion and appearance work in concert to make him a fully realized character. He's ugly as hell but endearing in a way that so few sexy characters could ever hope to be. The fact that he's an underdog who is capable of greatness is always a satisfying angle with a character but often a tough sell from a marketing perspective. Abe just wouldn't work if he looked like Justin Timberlake. Jin kicks some serious butt. There is an underlying storyline in Tekken that is played out through the cinematics that I think have (sic) a good balance between spelling out just enough of a story and leaving the rest open to the user to speculate on. It's a great way to engage the user and sometimes we get too wrapped up in clubbing them over the head with this stuff. Jin plays well, has tons of attitude and has a dynamic feel to his design. His hair alone gives him a built-in perception of speed and his wardrobe is flashy but primary and powerful. The fighting in Tekken is the most satisfying as the characters really feel like they have weight, speed and generate forces capable of doing some serious damage. Too many fighting games float the characters around all over the place, totally killing the believability. Note the term believability vs. realism. I can accept a completely stylized characters as being believable if the conventions by which he is governed are properly laid out. Realism is usually pretty boring in most video games. This is a medium of pushing reality to something more satisfying. Snake is effectively, from a visual standpoint, a stranded soldier, allowing the user to project their own associations onto him, but there's just enough there to make him distinctive and give him that gritty, world-worn attitude. His voice is gravelly and brooding, his posing and motion heroic and he plays his role perfectly. You become Snake when you play the game and adopt his persona. They might have gone a bit overboard with the cinematics on Sons of Liberty, but having said that, there were a lot of very satisfying and entertaining moments too. It's all about balance.

"Boooobbbbssss annndd Buuuutttssss... rawrrrr"

(Cover of Immortal Red Sonja #8, Dynamite Entertainment, submitted by anonymous)

haveievermentioned submitted:

"Got this Nikke ad! She was talking about a concert she was planning. I hope she can still sing."

I know it's minor and has nothing to do with how anything attaches or anything, but the only thing I can focus on is how apparently she put on her tie before putting on any of her other clothes. xD

(Ad for Goddess of Victory: Nikke, Shift Up Corp.)

I was looking through old UK gaming magazines with friends trying to source something, and I ran into this cover which... is something.  Also I think history class misled me about the Magna Carta.  Clearly it was a charter of rights for breasts to be free of their hosts. xD

Anyway, with the art and the game title "Magna Carta" and the magazine title, I figure there's a lot to work from here for a caption contest, so let's have one!

Caption the image.  What's happening? What are they doing?  You can include the text in your caption to make a joke or whatever if you want to play on it, but you don't have to.

Submit your captions here using reblog or reply, by email at [email protected] or on the main site using Disqus comments.

I'll pick the best/funniest captions for winners in two weeks!

Winners can get a choice of prizes if they want, but you don't need to accept a prize to participate if you just want to participate for fun!

Good luck everybody!

(Cover of PLAY magazine vol. 45, Sept. 2005)

Hi everybody!  

It's a new month, so it's time to celebrate how awesome squirrels are and also to do a site update and to thank our wonderful Patreon subscribers (and adjacent squirrels)!

For a site update, the big news is me and our website designer (Socketwench) are going to revamp the main website (eschergirls.com) and change the overall look, probably so the web version has a grid of post previews rather than just listing the posts in a row because the current setup leaves a lot of empty space since it only previews one line of text.  Mobile users shouldn't see much change except we'll be removing or changing the scrolling menu bar so it doesn't block most of the post on small screens.  We'll also be adding a popular tag cloud so people can more easily browse the blog if they want to casually.

If anybody has any other suggestions to improve the main site's usability and readability, please let me know!!!  I'm very interested in feedback.  I'm also working on the glossary and index, so people should be able to search the tags by category of character, series, genre, etc... and the glossary should explain what some of the terms like "boobsocks" (clothing that encases each breast separately like socks), "boob flounder" (both breasts on one side of the body), etc... mean.

Also, as usual, I've been working through the archives and fixing up all the old posts to match the current way I'm formatting my posts and to fix posts that were broken during the Tumblr export.  I also add alt-text to every post I restore so people who use screenreaders can access them.  This month, I fixed this post involving Marvel's Magik on an old trading card, the two posts with Boundless Comics' Ember (1, 2), and these old PLAY Magazine "Girls of Gaming" pages (1, 2, 3). I also fixed up this submission about how video game magazines used to advertise contests where you could go on a date with Lara Croft and stuff, and I edited the post to include an update with a link to an interview with one of the models who portrayed Lara for those ads, for those interested! 

I'm still working my way through the Tumblr inbox backlog, so if you submitted a post a long time ago, you might see it pop up soon.  Unfortunately, the way Tumblr does its inbox means the older it is the longer it'll take me to reach it. :\  I apologize sincerely for how long it takes me to get through the inbox sometimes.

I'm also still appealing the many incorrectly flagged posts on Tumblr, and the arbitrary algorithmic flagging, sudden rule changes, and other issues, are why I'm trying to fix up the main site to try to get it as usable for everybody as possible so Tumblr isn't the only way to view the blog, or the only place where it's archived.

I know it's repetitive, but it's also why I really appreciate everybody who supports us on Patreon and Ko-Fi.  It gives me much needed help to pay for server costs, upgrades, domain hosting, and just keep the site going in general. :)  I really appreciate that people think what we do is worth supporting <3

So I want to thank everybody who supported Escher Girls on Patreon in March!

Thank you so so much to:

Anne Adler Cat Mara CheerfulOptimistic  Chris McKenzie Em Bardon First Time Trek Greg Sepelak Ian Cameron Ken Trosaurus Kevin Carson Kim Wincen Kristoffer Illern  Holmén Leak  Manuel Dalton Mary Kuhner Max Schwarz Michael Mazur Miriam Pody Morgan McEvoy randomisedmongoose Rebecca Breu Ringoko  Ryan Gerber Sam Mikes Sean Sea SpecialRandomCast  Thomas 

And a special thanks again to PJ Evans for donating on Ko-Fi last month! :)

Also a huge thank you to everybody for reading, submitting, and generally commenting and engaging with Escher Girls!  It makes running the site so worth it. :)

For those who want to follow us without using Tumblr, we have an RSS feed. (For newbies, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is basically a feed you can read using an RSS reader. Simply copy and paste https://eschergirls.com/rss.xml into an RSS reader and it will keep you up to date on Escher Girls!)

Thanks so much to everybody, and see you next month!

Ami

If you have any issues with the site or suggestions to improve it, please do not hesitate to contact me and let me know!

If you wish to support Escher Girls, you can subscribe to our Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/ami_angelwings or donate through Ko-Fi at: https://ko-fi.com/amiangelwings.

They are a canon lesbian couple, so that's good at least.  I do like them as characters.

But also, ow, their poses, especially Rain's (the blonde one) in the final panel.  And also the "you can join in!" thing is... very of the time, for the demographic they're aiming for (i.e. unfortunately not lesbians).

(Ads for Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix, Eidos Interactive, submitted by ConfusionGrows)

She looks like a kite being hit by a strong wind.

Also WHAT is happening with her hip/leg/pelvic area.

It looks like she has 2 different legs, one of which is coming out of her crotch? Is she giving birth to a leg?

(Cover of Elektra #19, Marvel Comics, submitted by anonymous)

Hell hath no sexy like a woman in a boobs, butt, and crotch pose.  Also her wings look like they're coming out of her hair, although it could be worse.

(Cover of Hellwitch: Forbidden #1, Coffin Comics, submitted by anonymous)