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Tropes Vs. Women Episode 2 - Damsels In Distress Part [spoiler warning]

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Heyt

Banned
*checks*

I skipped ahead and saw the ending of double dragon neon, that sarkessian discusses in the new video.

So the guy debunked shit.

I think the DDN ending is in Anita's video just because it made a great case in the debunking video.

The best video responses to Anita's entire production is this two videos episode. It's amazing because he destroys anythig Anita has to say several months before TvsM videos were published and predicts her action soutlines perfectly.

Do not miss this is you are interested in anything Anita has to say:

Video1
Video2
 

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
The video had a list of spoilers for games

It also spoilers a small part of wreck it ralph

SPOILER WARNING LIST: Major plot points or endings in the following games:
Why would you spoiler the list of games being spoiled? Now I don't know what's being spoiled! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
 
Read it again ... we don't EQUATE what we see, but it makes us more "meh, another one" when something happens and THIS is problematic because being flooded by entertainment showing this show us it is normal, it is EXPECTED and THIS is the problem

Perhaps I've missed it during the violence and games debates, did they in fact prove that violence in gaming desensitizes us to real world violence? If so could you link the relevant studies? I only ever saw the increased aggression ones.
 

D4Danger

Unconfirmed Member
I downloaded the 720p MP4 version from youtube before it got pulled (I was planning to watch it later)

I can post a mirror if that's ok?
 
I can't make a statement on that until I played the game. There are many ways to be one dimensional. For all I know, Jenny could be the only woman in the game and she is treated in a unique way due to her being female. My point was that it is incorrect to say that Jenny wasn't "jackie's" because the relationship was well written.



Well, the one scene she showed was the villain saying he's going to take whats his, so that at the very least character does consider her jackie's possession and I don't know if there is anything in the game that disproves that. I wouldn't say that invalidates her position in the narrative as a possession...

but, for my 2 cents, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing, from a narrative perspective, fyi. Jackie is perfectly okay to consider Jenny his possession (which would be misogynistic, but that can be treated as a character flaw), and the best way to counter this would be to show outside evidence that she isn't. For example, find her diary notes where she talks about her life outside Jackie or outright defying him in some way. Something like that.

The exact quote is:"Now I take from you". He talks about how Jackie stole his "trust" and "respect" and now is taking his "love", love as a concept, not as a person. The love that keep him save from his own darkness.

In any way the narrative shows Jenny as Jackie's posession. Is something that is shown throught the game and in the way Jackie talks about Jenny.
 
Yes really.

What would have happened to the villain if the girl hadn't been there.

He would have died because of the fall. So the girl input was nil.

Nice try.


or MAYBE the robot wouldn't have died and survived the fall.

It's just shows how smart AND strong the woman is at the end of the scene.

Nice try.
 
But that does not apply to the final fight with Ganon AT ALL. You fought side-by-side with Tetra as your equal. The fight was SPECIFICALLY designed so that Ganon could ONLY be damaged through teamwork. If not for the team-up, Ganon would have won. That much was obvious.
I assure you she'll give you some rationalization why it doesn't count.
 

Mesoian

Member
3 - Why complain so much about women in videogames when its the same thing - or maybe worse - in movies and TV series? I mean, even J.J. Abrahms admitted that putting Alice Eve on her underwear in Star Trek 2 was completely unnecessary... but he did it.

And he had to apologize for it, because he knew it was stupid, and that people would probably get mad.

There's always room for T'n'A. But CONTEXT is important.
 
Why does Aragorn not dress in black rags at the end of Return of the King? Clearly misandrous writers who want to "lose all his design" and feistyness. He's not even smoking a pipe.

He doesn't even have his sword. Totally emasculated.

You're discussing habits and clothing of an adult. We're discussing a complete personality switch occurring in a 12-year-old girl. It is unrealistic that simply realizing you are a princess, at that age, especially when your life and memories has been rough and tumble, would make you no longer have the personality that you've had for a great deal of your life.

Try to address my points.
 

redcrayon

Member
Overall a lot more even than the first episode. She does a good job reinforcing that enjoying games that follow these examples doesn't suddenly make you a bad person, which is important to downplay the kneejerk reactions people have, and she did an interesting job addressing criticisms made in the episode before. She doesn't get bogged down by one example or the other, and didn't really dig into games that are particularly egregious about the subject at hand (I thought she would spend a full 10 minutes on Shadows of the Damned). It's a lot of examples made with a level headed argument made at the end. It's not bad.

I wish she would stop wearing those hoop earrings though, they're distracting.

And I laughed at the Bionic Commando part, because yeah, that ending is dumb as all hell.

I didn't think her points about games were too bad, but it's a 25 minute video and there wasn't room to say exactly what sources her stats on violence came from? It would have taken seconds and added a lot more credibility to something I thought was fairly well done.

If the central point of a video is that 'this normalises violence against women, in the real world men think women are asking for it' it would be good to back that up or at least not jump between framing it as a global problem one sentence and a US problem the next, it just makes her argument sound poorly thought through and aimed at an audience that would unquestioningly lap it up despite their being shitloads of easily findable resources that would back it up. If your argument is a local one, use local stats, if its a global one, use global stats, don't vaguely mix the two while talking about what some anonymous researchers from one country found and expect it to sound convincing. If the study is good enough to base an argument on, it's good enough (and polite) to give the source. Maybe it's assumed knowledge that her intended audience know what studies she's referring too or something.

I also think it would have been worth exploring the point that perhaps it's not really about treatment of women at all, but that lots of AAA games use ever-more-extreme violence towards men and women as their primary problem-solving mechanic full stop. It gives an easy win/loss scenario, health allows for degrees of loss, and conflict breeds drama. It's just a shame we aren't really moved past the kill-or-be-killed stage of conflict resolution that appeals to teenagers.

It also feeds back to her first video about lack of female characters, and how its linked. Male leads usually mean vulnerable female dependents, (a large majority of male gamers would presumably count a female (or want to) as their significant other) and vice versa. More female leads would mean less damsels in distress as a plot device due to vulnerable male dependents, I would have thought. Game plots (and action heroes/heroines in general) have a problem in that you need to be have to threaten them without removing their agency to act, so that's why dependents get threatened off screen a lot instead.
 
The Wind Waker transforms Tetra into a pure damsel-in-distress. Once she becomes Zelda, her character loses all of the design they worked into her, and she just became a regal princess who gets kidnapped.
Oh, to be honest I wasn't paying much attention towards the end but I guess that undermines the whole other 9/10ths of the game...
This is ridiculous. She isn't kidnapped because she's a woman. She's kidnapped because her true identity - which she had been hiding the entire game - is revealed. She doesn't "lose all her design." And since when is "regal" a pejorative term? Zelda is a princess ... unless you want her to "lose all her design" over the last 25 years.

That's like saying Aragorn "loses all his design" at the end of Return of the King.
Eep I'm complete in over my head here. Sorry
She's is crucial in the final fight against Ganon. But let's ignore it, just like Anito does her arguments.
Yeah this is actually the main thing that brought it up to me. Because she was talking about how in the final moments the character is so passive but in some of the dungeons you are actually using her. Which reminds me of in Uncharted when the girls are quite active and intelligent in how they act. I mean if anything it can come off as a bit condescending the dissonance between the power fantasy while the cute girl sits around and waits for me to work it out.
 

K.Sabot

Member
All this passive aggressiveness in this thread is absolutely delightful.

Does anyone have timestamps for Pandora's Tower / Shadows of the Damned spoilers?
 

Dahbomb

Member
BTW there are more games spoiled than just the games listed in the OP. Be warned. Games like Onimusha, Devil May Cry 4, Max Payne 3, Asura's Wrath, Prototype 2, Dishonored were also spoiled. Someone should do a more comprehensive list than the one she listed herself.


If you're concerned about spoilers of any sort then, I'm sorry, but this video series (and thread) simply aren't for you.

Geez, this would be like me refusing to read literary analysis of any sort for an English Lit class because of fear of any Faulkner spoilers. Get over it.
Sorry didn't realize that people were interested in playing those games. I must have posted in the wrong forum, I thought this was the Gaming Age Forum.
 

Shinta

Banned
You're discussing habits and clothing of an adult. We're discussing a complete personality switch occurring in a 12-year-old girl. It is unrealistic that simply realizing you are a princess, at that age, especially when your life and memories has been rough and tumble, would make you no longer have the personality that you've had for a great deal of your life.

Try to address my points.

Try to address mine. They are exactly the same.

You don't think Aragorn acts more passive, and regal in the ending of RotK when he's crowned? It's a total personality shift. For most of the trilogy he specifically avoids being king.
 
Oh My God, but complaining about spoilers in something like this is childish.

Regardless of what you think of the quality of her work here, this series is designed to be an in-depth dissection of the video game medium and how it relates to women, particularly their depiction.

If you're concerned about spoilers of any sort then, I'm sorry, but this video series (and thread) simply aren't for you.

Geez, this would be like me refusing to read literary analysis of any sort for an English Lit class because of fear of any Faulkner spoilers. Get over it.

Except isa very superficial analysis of various video game plots... that also ignores contexts between games.
 
Do it with female family members like in Max Payne and God of War?

BAD. Sexist. Women In Refrigerators.

But do it with a male family member like in Heavy Rain?

It's no longer sexist.

At best I could see that the use of victimized women is WAY overused, but I don't think she was implying that dead male characters were worth less than women.
 

ElFly

Member
or MAYBE the robot wouldn't have died and survived the fall.

It's just shows how smart AND strong the woman is at the end of the scene.

Nice try.

We can show by physics that the force of the punch barely adds to the force of the impact on the floor.

If the girl was smart she wouldn't have punched the robot like that she could have hurt her back.

Nice try.
 

D4Danger

Unconfirmed Member
You might get Content Match and a ding against your profile.

I wasn't planning to put it on youtube or anything. It's in my dropbox so I can just make a public link for a little while until it's back.

I imagine they're getting ad revenue from these videos so I don't want to step on anyones toes.
 

GamerSoul

Member
That's a lot of examples. I never even heard of some of those so it was interesting. Sigh I think writers are just catering to their main audience and imo its just uncreative writing on their part but its no worse then movies in most cases. And the medium is still maturing. Women can symbolize a lot of great things too so hopefully she puts some positive examples in eventually.
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
I feel like a lot of dumb criticisms of this would go away if half you folks actually watched the whole video instead of skipping around.
 

Veelk

Banned
The game is more focused on Jackie (he gives long monologues and stuff) and is not trying to build up the world like a BioShock or Mass Effect is. This is a weird ass solution to a problem that may not even exist. The only reason you are even looking at the Darkness weird is because OTHER games don't have enough female protags doing the same thing.

I'm not talking about building up the world, just building up characters. There is a difference and giving other characters their own actual character wouldn't take away from the main character. It wouldn't have to be obtrusive, just establish Jenny as her own person outside of Jackie.

It's been a while, but I think Alan Wake does this.
Alan definitely thinks of Alice as 'his' but it's made clear that Alice has her own character outside of Alan. It's even implied that Alan made Alice his by writing the story that way. It added to Alan's character rather than took away that she has her own character.
 

Alienous

Member
ITP: "I like the games Ueda makes, therefore he is a flawless human being who can do no wrong in my eyes."

1. If leading a defenseless woman around - a woman who seems pretty arbitrarily defensive considering that she could probably have pushed Ico around pretty handily - was the only thing questionable about his games' content, you'd have a great point there.

2. Or that a woman can't make music that would appeal to men.

3. Except that there exists many, many examples of strong women, women strong enough to do anything in The Last Guardian, in all kinds of fiction - ESPECIALLY video games. No way Ueda didn't observe those games. He made a conscious decision to state not that it was less believable, that the idea of a strong female character was SO unbelievable that the player would not feel invested in the game if they were playing as a female character who could climb. By the way, it's pretty curious that you suggest a need for Ueda to explain why a strong female character can exist, as if every - or hell, ANY - video game featuring a strong lead female had to do anything of the sort. And quite frankly, if Ueda's POV is that females need to be able to prove that they can climb around on ledges, that's just further proof that he is sexist.

You also didn't address the skirt issue.

I also skirted (ha!) past the definition of sexism. He chose to go with a male composer because he felt he would be better qualified to appeal to men, as if men are more able to make music for other men. He made a game with a stereotypical lead female character, who is too weak and helpless to defend herself for some reason. And the biggest one, of course, is replacing a character because he didn't think it appropriate for her to not wear a skirt, and didn't feel that females would be able to realistically climb well, which can be disproven using real life examples.

1. Go on then, what else?

2. Fair point, but an alternative interpretation.

3. "By the way, it's pretty curious that you suggest a need for Ueda to explain why a strong female character can exist, as if every - or hell, ANY - video game featuring a strong lead female had to do anything of the sort."

Now, which hasn't? Sitting here, I can't think of any. Powersuit? Super-powers? Being a god? I can't think of any female characters being presented with comparable physical strength to a male, without exposition being needed.

(Also, I updated my post shortly after posting it to deal with the skirt issue).

Yorda is weak, not for "some reason", but to serve a narrative purpose.
 

unbias

Member
You're discussing habits and clothing of an adult. We're discussing a complete personality switch occurring in a 12-year-old girl. It is unrealistic that simply realizing you are a princess, at that age, especially when your life and memories has been rough and tumble, would make you no longer have the personality that you've had for a great deal of your life.

Try to address my points.

Have you played JRPG's? Men, women, boys, girls, all of them have this weird attitude shift halfway through a game. Go through the most popular shonen, you see this all the time in Japan, with personality shifts.
 
Oh, to be honest I wasn't paying much attention towards the end but I guess that undermines the whole other 9/10ths of the game...

Eep I'm complete in over my head here. Sorry

I'm guessing you're trying to be funny with your post, at which point I say, "I agree!" I agree wholeheartedly because A. that's not 9/10ths, it happens in the middle of the game; and B. instead of establishing that Tetra was Tetra, and not Zelda (which they did eventually in Phantom Hourglass, one of the few qualities of that game), they made her change. It is so unrealistic and unbelievable.
 

Optimus Lime

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
I'm amazed that nobody seems to be picking up on the fact that Anita's work is undergraduate-level, non-scholarly analysis. She doesn't draw on a single piece of literature, and while she may want to play the 'Oh, this is a space for the layman!' card, it seriously damages the integrity of her arguments.

This is all a storm in a teacup. What we have here is 25 minutes of 'But, here's what I think!', and her analysis consists of smugly talking over the top of game footage, declaring various things sexist based on little more than her opinion.

Perhaps the majority of the gaming community have no prior experience with research, or have never done a literature review, but - honestly? People are getting steamed up over content that would be laughed out of any serious journal, conference, or postgraduate department.
 

Zoe

Member
Have you played JRPG's? Men, women, boys, girls, all of them have this weird attitude shift halfway through a game. Go through the most popular shonen, you see this all the time in Japan, with personality shifts.

It's not just J-RPG's. Now that I think of it, that matches Ozma in the Oz series pretty well.
 

MormaPope

Banned
Shadows of the Damned and misogyny?

There's a gun called The Big Boner, the main character's name is Garcia Hotspur. The game is lacking quaint and sophisticated ideas on purpose.
 

Alienous

Member
I'm amazed that nobody seems to be picking up on the fact that Anita's work is undergraduate-level, non-scholarly analysis. She doesn't draw on a single piece of literature, and while she may want to play the 'Oh, this is a space for the layman!' card, it seriously damages the integrity of her arguments.

This is all a storm in a teacup. What we have here is 25 minutes of 'But, here's what I think!', and her analysis consists of smugly talking over the top of game footage, declaring various things sexist based on little more than her opinion.

Perhaps the majority of the gaming community have no prior experience with research, or have never done a literature review, but - honestly? People are getting steamed up over content that would be laughed out of any serious journal, conference, or postgraduate department.

It's mainly because, given the price tag on this analysis ($160,000), people have the expectation of something less personal, and more analytically orientated.
 

kejigoto

Banned
I find it funny how the whole point of this series is to generate a discussion about Tropes vs. Women in Video Games yet everything being done seems to work against the very notion of having any level of discussion at all.

First of all comments are disabled on Youtube which some will believe is a good thing but I see it as a blockade for direct responses to her videos. You can't submit reply videos, you can't point out holes in her logic, and you can't engage anyone through her Youtube channel. So your choice is to head to a forum like GAF where most will have the same outlook on the subject and no real discussion can be had.

Secondly she constantly glosses over certain issues while hinting that there is a far deeper issue that she could get so much more out of but won't because reasons. If you're going to open a discussion then go all out or don't bother. This isn't an attempt to explore ideas but rather a soap box for her to push her agenda.

Thirdly she doesn't approach the subject matter in a serious way. She never explores the deeper context behind games and story lines seeming to only glance through games looking for things that fit her purpose. This becomes apparent when you see games like Child of Eden being presented as a damsel in distress when the entire game is about fighting off a computer virus inside virtual space. Then you have points where she openly laughs at plots from games such as Bionic Commando.

So she can look down from her ivory tower and scoff but we aren't allowed to do the same? Interesting.

She also never talks about how these games are received by gamers and their overall success or lack there of. Again Bionic Commando wasn't a good game and it didn't perform well at retail but she's quick to use it as a shining example of gamers being all for the dis-empowerment of women in video games. Other titles such as God of War which is based around the Greek Gods, which were always heavy in tragedy, never have their origins explored or even remotely touched on.

Things really start to derail when she talks about the player having to kill the damsel and somehow misses the point that these are characters that are suffering. Prey is quite funny because during the video when Anita says that Tommy's girlfriend is begging for him to kill her you can clearly hear her say "Get away from me Tommy!" and "Don't shoot!" Anita though in the same breath says these characters are literally asking for it the entire time.

I don't know about you but if I was transforming into a monster or something like that I'd want someone to shoot me in the head to keep it from happening. Doesn't matter what sex you are I doubt anyone wants to be deformed and mutilated to any degree.

I think I'm done with this video series. Not only does Anita take forever and a fucking year to turn out these videos but they don't seem to have much thought put into them or very much research either. She constantly presents her side but never allows the other side to represent itself. Everything about this seems designed to stifle discussion leaving only her voice to be heard.

Also I think this is something that needs to be talked about but not by someone who has an agenda to push and isn't wiling to have a discussion with those of us who want to. Sure Youtube comments can be pretty bad at times but isn't that what this is about? Taking the good with the bad?
 

Basketball

Member
Shes cutting deep, max payne 3 and darkness 2 were great games

On Max Payne games .....Its titled max payne for a reason the game is clearly going to be about max payne and HIS struggles.

I hope companies continue to make games however they want using whatever plot device they feel is necessary.
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
I'm amazed that nobody seems to be picking up on the fact that Anita's work is undergraduate-level, non-scholarly analysis. She doesn't draw on a single piece of literature, and while she may want to play the 'Oh, this is a space for the layman!' card, it seriously damages the integrity of her arguments.

This is all a storm in a teacup. What we have here is 25 minutes of 'But, here's what I think!', and her analysis consists of smugly talking over the top of game footage, declaring various things sexist based on little more than her opinion.

Perhaps the majority of the gaming community have no prior experience with research, or have never done a literature review, but - honestly? People are getting steamed up over content that would be laughed out of any serious journal, conference, or postgraduate department.

here we go again

she's not making anything for serious journals, conferences, or postgraduate departments

she's making a series of basic youtube videos

i'm not going to go around complaining that this video about the UK wouldn't stand up to rigorous scholarly review, because who gives a shit?
 

Platy

Member
For a lot of that you can replace "women" with "human" and it would basically be saying the same thing. The difference would be that it wouldn't fit under this hot topic and would be an overall critique on videogames being violent. She more or less makes this her point by the time she starts naming indie games.

The differente is that 95% of the time it is a women and we live in a world where violence against women is common place because "she was asking for it".

Lets imagine people X is not a racist, but it would not be a little bit problematic if he does not employ ANY people of color in his company even if he receives lots of good curriculums ?

If we live in a racism free world nobody would think it was racism and would believe that all those curriculums were bad so there would not be a problem.
If he hired the good ones it would also not be a problem because he would treat everyone equaly
 

casmith07

Member
Unfortunately she continues to fail to address real life problems: discrimination against women and minorities in the industry.

None of the shit you see on your TV when you insert a disc into your console matters if people are still discriminated against in REAL LIFE.

But whatevs.
 
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