Metal Gear Solid 5's best secret: You can play the campaign as a woman

Much has been written about the juvenile design of Quiet, the improbably naked sidekick in the Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. But, for all the justifiable anger about her character, almost nothing has been written about the secret new female protagonist in Metal Gear.

I’m calling her FemSnake.
FemSnake is awesome. She’s on the title screen. Soldiers stop dead in their tracks and sharply salute her. "Thanks for saving those kids, Boss," they say.
Revolver Ocelot speaks to her in reverent tones, reporting on mission outcomes. When she interrogates a prisoner, she demands "Out with it!" and my heart skips a beat.

FemSnake stands in ironic contrast to Quiet. FemSnake wears full military armor, form-fitting, but tough and realistic. Everything about her demands to be treated like a professional and not a sex object. Accompanying her is a sexist train wreck of a design, a woman designed to be ogled while never speaking a word. Quiet is a capable soldier who looks like anything but.
Some people will tell me FemSnake is not really Snake, and it’s true. She’s a prisoner you rescue on a mission, but you do get to play almost every mission as her. She can be your protagonist, and is included in many of the cutscenes. She runs Mother Base. She commands the game’s soldiers. She is fully voiced, and her acting is even more menacing than Kiefer Sutherland’s. This is my title screen, featuring my game's hero:

I’ll tell you how to unlock her. But first, let’s back up. Let’s look at some of the design decisions in Metal Gear Solid V that are meant to make most gamers feel like they’re Snake — including gamers that are not white.

A silent protagonist

I was confused when David Hayter tweeted that he wouldn’t be returning as Snake. As a hardcore fan of the series, I couldn’t imagine long codec monologues with anyone but Hayter. Now that I’m 30 hours in, this design decision makes total sense.
Wanting to capture a wider audience, Metal Gear has gone the Portal route with Snake — our now near-silent protagonist. The story happens around him, with imaginative characters like Ocelot, Master Miller and Skull Face providing much of the personality and voice acting. Snake watches everything unfold around him.

Goodbye, long discussions about nuclear disarmament. Hello, adrenaline-filled setpieces and systems that hint towards for-pay DLC. Just like the Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Call of Duty franchises, Metal Gear is going for a more mainstream appeal. For that to happen, the angst-ridden, talkative version of Snake had to go.
In fact, Snake himself barely even matters in this version of Metal Gear. That’s why the game teases you with changing Snake’s character’s race and face in the opening, a feature that delighted my Asian husband. As the online component comes next month, players will represent themselves as their custom avatar. The technical term for this in gamedev parlance is "player agency," giving you control over your game world.
FemSnake is a design compromise to allow female players to play as a woman. And make no mistake, including her was a feature that took quite a bit of development resources from the Metal Gear team. They had to alter the game’s armor implementation to work with her different body proportions. They had to bring in a voice actress. They had to code scenes so Sutherland’s line reads would appear as captions and not voiceover in many scenes. What they did to make this happen across so much content was neither quick nor easy. Someone cared about this feature.

How to make this happen

How do you unlock FemSnake? Go to Prisoner Extraction 02 in Side Ops, which seems to always spawn the otherwise extremely rare woman prisoners. This unlocked my FemSnake, who was assigned the random codename "Obsidian Mole."
Then, when choosing a mission, go to Character and you’ll be able to play the rest of the game as her. Her combat stats rise as you play, primarily affecting your health pool — but any other differences between Snake and FemSnake were not perceptible to me.
After you’ve selected your new character, you’ll see them in everything but fully-voiced cutscenes for the remainder of the game, including the title screen. This trick can also be used with any rescued prisoner you’d like to represent you instead of Snake, including those of different races.

This is a nice step forward

Metal Gear fans are used to duality in how the series treats women. I was astonished by the excellent portayal of Meryl Silverburgh when Metal Gear Solid came out in 1998. You felt her emotions, you understood her as a person and cared about her. And then, you burst in on her in the bathroom, creepily staring at her butt and watching her change from her uniform.
That’s how I feel playing this latest Metal Gear. I’m both elated and troubled. In researching this piece, I saw hundreds of articles critiquing Quiet’s design. But I didn’t see a single article praising Konami for including an inclusive design compromise that boosts my own enjoyment of the game. You can play through almost the entirety of the game as a woman hero! Or a person of color! This is great news, and needs to be celebrated.
So, to all the team and Kojima Productions, I want to say thank you for this inclusive game design. FemSnake is a huge step forward for the series. None of the core Metal Gear console games have had a female protagonist, and even Metal Gear Online omitted women.
We can’t just critique the steps backwards, we need to notice the steps forward. FemSnake Source==polygon

salutes you.

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Israeli Artist Demonstrates How to Create a Realistic Siberian Husky Face With Makeup

Ilana Kolihanov, an extremely talented makeup artist in Israel, demonstrates how to create a realistic Siberian Husky face, using her own dog as a template.

Ilana has also offered tutorials on creating amazing tiger faces, alien faces, skulls along with everyday makeup tips. The commentary is in Hebrew, but the Ilana makes the videos easy to follow along with her deliberate brush strokes.source==========

images via Ilana Makeup Artist

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Happy Baby in a Polka Dot Sleep Sack Flaps Her Limbs Excitedly Whenever the Family Cat Is Near

An adorable baby dressed in a polka dot starfish-like sleep sack, flapped her limbs excitedly when her mom brought the family cat to her crib to visit. While the baby was absolutely elated, the cat was less than impressed.

She’s incapable of controlling her limbs when her kitty is around. The obsession grows every day. P.S. That’s a sleep sack she’s in. Not a starfish outfit. Although I wish I were cool enough to dress my daughter in a starfish outfit.Source==

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California .. Assistant to legalize euthanasia

Lawmakers restored, California, Tuesday, put forward a draft law allows the termination of life with the help of a doctor had collapsed amid opposition from the Catholic Church and activists defending people with special needs, as leaders pledged to Democrats that this issue top priority.In a move that made it clear that lawmakers are seeking to rally support from Catholics Hispanic - who are concerned about opposition to the Church's supporters display a draft law to support senior Catholic politicians Hispanics, Tuesday.Some of them spoke Spanish passionately about the suffering endured by patients suffering from the disease is impossible to recover their doctors say it will kill them inevitably.Democrat Kevin de Leon, said the Council of elders of the state of California: "It is not the people of California can wait more than that."Supporters of the termination of life with the help of a doctor had tried many times to no avail give legislative nature of this bill in California.The renewed debate on the issue after that erupted after the death of terminally ill American Brittany Maynard her recovery from cancer (29 years) last year, which moved to Oregon to take advantage of the application of this law in the state.With the opinion polls, which indicate the continuing support for this action in California more US states in terms of population put Democratic lawmakers draft law after the death of Maynard allows the termination of life with the help of a doctor to hopeless of recovery.The bill met strong opposition at first from hospitals, doctors and organizations opposed to abortion and groups defending the rights of people with special needs, as this law applies in

the states of Oregon, Washington and Montana and Vermont.

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Poland .. found a Nazi train "loaded with treasures"

In Poland, two men claimed they found a Nazi train loaded with gold and precious stones and works of art value, as reported by the agency Associated Press. According to local legend the train disappeared at the end of the Second World War, while the Germans fled the advance of Soviet forces.Says Marika Tocarska, responsible Valpritc in the area where the alleged presence of the train, said that the authorities had received letters from a law firm representing the two men, both Polish and German their names are still unknown, they say they require 10 percent bonus to reveal his whereabouts.She Tocarska The Associated Press that authorities take allegations seriously, and convened a meeting of firefighters and police and other authorities to reveal how safe handling of the train if locate it.Source==

She added that may be locked with explosives.

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Defeating Enemies Increases Your Bust Size in This Game

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D3 Publisher hasn’t always been the most subtle developer with games like the Dream Club series and Metal Gear Panty-er I mean Summer-Colored High School. Their new upcoming game for the PS Vita, Omega Labyrinth carries on the D3 Publisher traditional unhindged libido wackiness with an unhealthy obsession with boobs.

Omega Labyrinth (see the visual pun right in the title logo above?) is a rogue-like dungeon crawler RPG where every time you take an action, the enemies all take an action simultaneously. By going deeper and deeper into the randomly generated dungeon, you can level up and obtain rare and valuable items, but your level is reduced to 1 when you leave, and dying in the dungeon causes you to forfeit all your hard-earned loot.

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As a base system, the game is fairly straight forward, but it wouldn’t be a D3 Publisher game if it was just a “fairly straight forward” game.

The story involves the female students of the Anberriel Girl’s Academy. As the protagonist, you select students to navigate the dungeon to win the Cup of Beauty—a fabled item that will grant the bearer one wish. All the girls of the academy have the same wish: To increase their bust size.

By defeating enemies, not only do you obtain EXP, but you also gain “Omega Points”—the physical manifestation of “Womanly Power.” This power is, and I’m quoting here, “stored in the breasts. By gathering Omega Power, the girl’s breast size increases as well as their stats.”

The game will also apparently make use of the PS Vita’s motion sensor and rear touch pad for... stuff. Yes, the game is restricted for ages 17 and above.

Omega Labyrinth is scheduled for release in Japan on the PS Vita on November 19th. No word on an international release.Source==K====

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Yvonne Craig, 'Batgirl' from 1960s TV show, dies at 78

Before Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman, before Joanna Cameron’s Isis, before Scarlett Johannsson’s Black Widow, Yvonne Craig was a pioneer of female superheroes on screen.
As an actress, she originated the role of Batgirl in the 1960s “Batman” television series. As a trained dancer, she did her own stunts.
Craig died this week after a long two-year battle with breast cancer. She was 78.
The cancer metastasized to her liver, and she died Monday in her home in Pacific Palisades.
“She had been in chemo almost continuously for the past two plus years since being diagnosed and that had weakened her immune system as well as her body,” her family said in a statement late Tuesday night.

“This didn’t dampen her sense of humor or her spirit, she intended to fight and win this battle. In the end, her mind still wanted to fight but her body had given up.”
Craig originated the role of Batgirl in the show’s third and final season in 1967, kapowing and zzonking the bad guys alongside Adam West and Burt Ward’s dynamic duo of Batman and Robin.
“I hear from women that I was their role model,” she said in an interview earlier this year. “‘When I was a little girl, I realized that girls could kick butt just like guys,’ [they’d say].”
She also had a memorable role as the green-skinned Orion slave girl Marta who wanted to kill Captain Kirk in a third-season episode of “Star Trek.”
But even beyond those two well-remembered roles, Craig had a long and illustrious career that began as the youngest member of a ballet company.
Accidental actress
Craig explained in news interviews how she got into acting while she was still touring as a dancer.
“I was invited to dinner by a man who was a producer, who wanted to put me in movies and I said I wasn’t interested,” she said.
“[Director] John Ford’s son walked by and asked ‘Excuse me, are you an actress?’ And as I shook my head and tried to swallow, [the producer said], ‘She is and I’m her manager. What can I do for you?’ Typical Hollywood.
“They were doing a movie with John Wayne’s son Patrick, and they were looking for a leading lady. And I became it.”
That was 1959’s “The Young Land.”
She went on to appear in several films, including two with Elvis Presley — “It Happened at the World’s Fair” and “Kissin’ Cousins.”
She then parlayed her success into television roles, guest starring in several series, most notably several episodes of “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” and “77 Sunset Strip.”
Then came her role as Batgirl.
A hero is born
DC Comics was asked to create a new Batgirl to help get the show a third season, and Commissioner Gordon’s daughter, Barbara, took on the identity of the newest masked avenger in Gotham City, both on TV and in the comic books.
“It was a wonderful experience,” Craig said.
“The crew liked one another, the cast liked one another. It doesn’t happen often, and when it does, it’s a joy to go to work every day. I got to work with people that I would never have the chance to work with. We had Ethel Merman, I would never have met Milton Berle, I got to work with him, and he was a delight.”
Craig described the characters of Barbara Gordon and Batgirl as “very close to who I am.”
She clearly had an impact.
“Most of the joy in my current life can be traced back in some way to seeing Yvonne Craig be amazing as Batgirl, my first real life hero,” said Gil Simone, a former writer of the Batgirl comics.
Among Craig’s biggest fans is the man running her website now, Scott Sebring.
“As a kid, I looked up to her as a superhero on television. As an adult, I looked up to her as a human being,” Sebring said. “She and her sister Meridel became these two of the coolest aunts in my life. And our friendship is something that I will never forget.”
Her post-“Batman” TV stint lasted several years and spanned many of the hit shows of the time, including “The Six Million Dollar Man” and the “Mod Squad.”
The later years
In later years, Craig worked as a real estate broker, did voice over work for the Nickelodeon cartoon “Olivia,” and, with her sister, went into the prepaid phone card business.
She wrote a memoir, “From Ballet to the Batcave and Beyond,” and was publicly vocal about her support for free mammograms for women who couldn’t afford them.
“She was one special lady and my best friend, so will be missed terribly,” the sister, Meridel Carson, said early Wednesday morning.
As news broke of her death, fans shared what Craig meant to them.
Craig leaves behind her husband, Kenneth Aldrich; her sister and two nephews.
The family will hold a private service but hasn’t set a date. They asked that, instead of flowers, donations be made to the cancer research and treatment center, the Angeles Clinic Foundation.Source===Fox8===

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