I spent years on a journalism degree to tell you Homer's nipples have leaked in Fortnite

First, some personal information. My name's Josh. I am 32 years old. I spent several years of my life working towards National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) accreditation that covered media law, responsible reporting, how to sensitively approach victims of trauma, and plenty else that had me up late into the night, hitting the books. I speak Russian to a reasonable level of fluency and have recently been learning Mandarin.

I am here to tell you that underwear Homer's leaked nipples may be the first in Fortnite (via GameSpot).

In what history books will describe as 'the nips seen around the world,' a leaker named Dr Cacahuette posted a "First look at New (Giant) Homer Skin" to X yesterday. The figure, unmistakably Homer, is large, and wearing only a pair of tight white briefs, above which loom a speck of belly button and—there, just visible above the orb of his stomach: two dark, mamillary dots.

Imagine me tremulously removing a pair of glasses like Walter Cronkite telling you JFK just died.

Dr Cacahuette, unmesmerised by the nipples of Homer Simpson, stayed relentlessly on task to also point out that, when he arrives in Fortnite, nearly-nude Homer will also come with "Lego style, back bling, [and] pickaxe."

Which is all well and good, but let's take a second to think about the epochal leap Homer's nipples represent. Up to this point, Epic has been markedly mastophobic in Fortnite. Even its shirtless character skins have been free of the nipple: completely smooth of chest and bearing nary a hint of areola. This omission has tyrannised the Fortnite community since the game's 2017 release.

Interesting, then, that Homer Simpson should be the one to finally free the nipple. Does this mark a new, more liberal era for Fortnite character design? I implore you not to get your hopes up. The fact of the matter is that Homer's low-detail design is inherently nipple-friendly. His papillae can be rendered in the form of two unobtrusive black dots that won't leap out, disquietingly, against the rest of his character design.

I suspect that only when Epic's character artists find a way to render more realistic nipples more unassumingly will other, more highly detailed characters start to also bear their whole chests.

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