The “de-lewding” of characters and art to satisfy woke-scolds is, sadly, nothing new. Half-a-decade ago the iconic character Taarna from “Heavy Metal” magazine and movie was redesigned to replace the “bikini armor” with full body armor, with people disagreeing with this invariably declared sexist. Now, the official D&D has reissued an old novel from the 1980s with a censored cover.
Original novel cover art on the left; newer censored novel cover art on the right.
The wokeness of modern day D&D is well established. But this is worse than either the wokification of the game mechanics/setting, or even the redesigning of a character: They censored the original art piece! To make matters even more ridiculous, that “boob window” and “impractical armor” is actually part of the written book itself and to the character being depicted [Warning: Spoilers]:
“While people have mocked the cover of that book for decades, in the context of the book it makes sense when you realize that Alias was intentionally given that armor to weaken her, but she couldn’t bring herself to be rid of it (probably because a major theme in the novel is how controlled she is, and her struggle for identity and independence).
“The ‘boob window’ in the armor is actually mentioned and discussed repeatedly in the novel itself, with it being introduced as an intentional weakness put there by her creator (the character in question is literally a created being) even explicitly saying it was an easy target for a sword, and her companion urges her to wear more practical armor, but Alias insisted on wearing it because it was more comfortable than the heavy breastplate that her companions offered.
“Eliminating it in the cover art, unless they ALSO started rewriting the book to eliminate that part of her character and how it was brought up repeatedly by various characters around her just turns it into another novel cover that doesn’t accurately reflect the actual story being told.”
Oh, and the artist who drew the art is decidedly unhappy about it.
