New Tropes vs Women video is out (Women as Background Decoration pt. 2)

I don't think this is true. I'd consider it the first true female power fantasy. A woman using everything a man 'gave' her, complete and utter control over him because of her perceived beauty, and fucking up the establishment that holds thoughts like Azoth does.

Really? Women identify with a character who kills her enemies by using highly sexualised torture attacks (can be on other female characters).
 
Here's the reason for me not walking away, and I presume plenty of others don't - the gameplay is fun. Why do they put you in control of a monster? Because characters need to come in all shades and hues. Not everyone can be a Nathan Drake or mute character.

So you're either incapable of or unwilling to actual consider the themes of the work? Or it's just so vapid it doesn't even stand up to reading. Well, so long as you had "fun".

Yours is exactly the attitude that inspires her to do these things. You're living the unexamined life.
 
Fair enough, but doesn't it indicate that sexualisation in media goes both ways now, when modern Sherlock is being sexualised while OG Sherlock isn't?

Just watch this clip : Sherlock meets the naked Irene Adler - Sherlock Series 2 - BBC (probably NSFW, as the title suggests).

If they are inadvertently making some girls swoon with the 'non-tradtionally attractive' Sherlock guy, the intention with the Irene Adler character had to be turned up to 11.
 
So you're either incapable of or unwilling to actual consider the themes of the work? Or it's just so vapid it doesn't even stand up to reading. Well, so long as you had "fun".

Yours is exactly the attitude that inspires her to do these things. You're living the unexamined life.

God forbid someone play a game to have fun.

And you asked why play a GoW game with Kratos if you don't identify with the main character and he gave an answer.

The GoW games are visually impressive, fun to play with some epic scale but are narratively shallow with mostly one dimensional characters just there to be violently torn apart by an angry man made god.
 
So a woman is attracted to a man's wit means it's fair game for you to stare at tits? How does this equate? This is what these videos are talking about. You cannot equate a woman thinking a man is attractive because he proved his worth to a man attracted to a woman just because her hair is red.

Yes, i'm sure the girl i'm dating wanted to see the episode where she'd heard he was naked because she was attracted to his wit. And even if she did want to see him naked because he is really smart, how is that any better or worse than wanting to see a girl naked because she's got lovely red hair? I really don't get the part where women drooling over men is inherently better, because they do it for "the right reasons".

Drooling is drooling. And i don't really mind.

Karkador: Well i cant really watch that right now, seeing as i'm at work :)
 
So you're either incapable of or unwilling to actual consider the themes of the work? Or it's just so vapid it doesn't even stand up to reading. Well, so long as you had "fun".

Yours is exactly the attitude that inspires her to do these things. You're living the unexamined life.

So you're either incapable of or unwilling to actually consider that people can play a game just for gameplay? See how that works? I have to ask - did you ever play a GoW game?

By your logic, you can't watch American Psycho or Clockwork Orange without identifying with the character.
 
She's provided a preponderance of relevant examples. It's not like there's some huge opus out there of All Other Games which contradict the framework of her criticism. It's not like she's cherrypicked games here, these are the biggest and most popular and highest profile games that don't involve driving a kart around a track silently or throwing a football silently.

Choosing all the misogynistic and philandristic examples of every AAA game and ignoring any philogynistic and misandristic examples is still cherry picking data to support a polemic cause.

It's no secret that Anita's videos are designed purely to push her cause of disliking perceived misogyny in games, and she has taken virtually no action and shown no intention in representing any other viewpoint, or exploring and/or highlighting any contradictory data.
 
So you're either incapable of or unwilling to actually consider that people can play a game just for gameplay? See how that works? I have to ask - did you ever play a GoW game?

By your logic, you can't watch American Psycho or Clockwork Orange without identifying with the character.

Does American Psycho end with something like "You unleashed hope?" The people behind GOW do not view Kratos in the same light as Patrick Bateman.
 
Really? Women identify with a character who kills her enemies by using highly sexualised torture attacks (can be on other female characters).

Every enemy does nothing but talk about how great Bayo is, while and after she is fucking them up. I can't claim all women will attach to her or even like her, as some educated women believe that the pay gap should be increased to help men's ego which would some how right the economy, but a lot of my friends love her, my girlfriend and her little sister included, and my girlfriend is a microbiologist from an all girls college so it's not like she's ignorant of 'the struggle.'
Yes, i'm sure the girl i'm dating wanted to see the episode where she'd heard he was naked because she was attracted to his wit. And even if she did want to see him naked because he is really smart, how is that any better or worse than wanting to see a girl naked because she's got lovely red hair? I really don't get the part where women drooling over men is inherently better, because they do it for "the right reasons".

Drooling is drooling. And i don't really mind.

Karkador: Well i cant really watch that right now, seeing as i'm at work :)

So what you're saying is that if a woman gets to know someone over time, it's bad when she becomes attracted to him? My girlfriend hated the first episode of Sherlock, because of Cumberbatch's face, and now I have to remind her there are only 3 episodes a season, so we have to space them out.

Compared to a guy who will look at a woman on mad men, where the women are, granted in a period piece, being treated like sex objects, there is no equivalence.
 
So what you're saying is that if a woman gets to know someone over time, it's bad when she becomes attracted to him? My girlfriend hated the first episode of Sherlock, because of Cumberbatch's face, and now I have to remind her there are only 3 episodes a season, so we have to space them out.

No i'm not saying it's bad. Quite the opposite. I would have thought that evident of my posts.
 
I just can't understand why people are so defensive about her videos. I mean, holy crap.

Public perception is the cauldron that legal and social action is made in.

People are defensive about her videos, because they feel half of them are full of **** and skewing public perception too far away from the truth, which would result in undue or overreaching legal/social action.
 
Public perception is the cauldron that legal and social action is made in.

People are defensive about her videos, because they feel half of them are full of **** and skewing public perception too far away from the truth, which would result in undue or overreaching legal/social action.

Lol, come on now.

Are we arriving at the "she's gonna take our videogames away!" core of your argument?
 
No i'm not saying it's bad. Quite the opposite. I would have thought that evident of my posts.

No because you're trying to say that it's the same as you oggling a girl because of her figure. They are not the same at all.

The man eared the admiration of the girl by showing he was more than just an ugly dick, but the woman just has to show.
 
God forbid someone play a game to have fun.

And you asked why play a GoW game with Kratos if you don't identify with the main character and he gave an answer.

The GoW games are visually impressive, fun to play with some epic scale but are narratively shallow with mostly one dimensional characters just there to be violently torn apart by an angry man made god.

God of War is not shallow, it's reprehensible. And yes, God please forbid someone thinks ripping off heads and crushing women in gears and whatever the fuck else happens in those games is "fun".

Unless your approach is "well I'll just enjoy the parts that make me happy and completely ignore the parts that are gross". Which is that's a Big Damn Problem. That's an essentially immature method.
 
Public perception is the cauldron that legal and social action is made in.

People are defensive about her videos, because they feel half of them are full of **** and skewing public perception too far away from the truth, which would result in undue or overreaching legal/social action.

Can you elaborate? What form would this take. Are you worried that there will congressional legislation mandating playable female characters in games or something?

I see a lot of people who seem to think that their favorite game genre will go away something and I just don't get it. Gone Home will be its own thing, it's not going to cancel the next CoD.
 
Lol, come on now.

Are we arriving at the "she's gonna take our videogames away!" core of your argument?

Uh, no. She's fairly powerless.

Because so many people recognize how ridiculous her videos are, that she has to turn the comments off 'lest she get laughed out of room for telling male demographics what they should and shouldn't be buying or playing.

But the question was Why do people respond harshly to her.
 
Having studied frontier America, I would say Red Dead Redemption's depiction is pretty accurate for a video game.

"Historical accuracy" doesn't mean I'm saying John Marston is based upon a real person. I'm referring to the setting.

You can laugh it off if you want, but that's not an argument in anyway. It's just a childish response.

This is ridiculous. It's not about whether or not sexism is historically accurate--it still exists today, and any game based on modern times that contains it could be considered historically accurate. It's the fact that developers add it to games claiming it's for realism or accuracy, when that's usually never the case.
 
I just don't get it. I played a shit ton of games and her videos don't bother me a bit, even when I want to nit pick examples.
 
Uh, no. She's fairly powerless.

Because so many people recognize how ridiculous her videos are, that she has to turn the comments off 'lest she get laughed out of room for telling male demographics what they should and shouldn't be buying or playing.

But the question was Why do people respond harshly to her.

Yeah, I mean, why would anyone turn off YouTube comments that will amount to nothing but misogyny, racism, homophobia and further harassment of Sarkeesian herself.
 
Does American Psycho end with something like "You unleashed hope?" The people behind GOW do not view Kratos in the same light as Patrick Bateman.

Yeah, I'm sure that the creators of Kratos and the GoW series knew that this is exactly how game #4 in the series would end up with. Especially when the 4 games has had 10 different writers and 4 different directors over the 4 games. Come on now - surely you see that.
 
Really? Women identify with a character who kills her enemies by using highly sexualised torture attacks (can be on other female characters).

I liked the game Bayonetta.

But I don't like the character that much. Especially some of the torture attacks.

It's hard to find a female character who isn't "sexualized." Which means...it's hard for me to find a female character I can relate to. >___>
 
Yeah, I mean, why would anyone turn off YouTube comments that will amount to nothing but misogyny, racism, homophobia and further harassment of Sarkeesian herself.

The comment sections of my videos get along quite nicely. :]

But then again I don't post a bunch of ridiculous videos of overblown, cherry-picked polemic. So there's that.

It was a wise decision on her part, though. When you are attempting to enact change as a vocal minority, it helps to silence the majority as much as possible.
 
Uh, no. She's fairly powerless.

Because so many people recognize how ridiculous her videos are, that she has to turn the comments off 'lest she get laughed out of room for telling male demographics what they should and shouldn't be buying or playing.

This is like a children's book version of the reality of those comments, where something like "get raped, bitch" becomes "and she got laughed out of the room"
 
God of War is not shallow, it's reprehensible. And yes, God please forbid someone thinks ripping off heads and crushing women in gears and whatever the fuck else happens in those games is "fun".

Unless your approach is "well I'll just enjoy the parts that make me happy and completely ignore the parts that are gross". Which is that's a Big Damn Problem. That's an essentially immature method.

No need to try and force your opinion of us. If you wish to censor violence in entertainment media, just say so up front.
 
This is like a children's book version of the reality of those comments, where something like "get raped, bitch" becomes "and she got laughed out of the room"
Exactly. Those comments being shut off is also the best thing that could happen to Anita's less vicious critics, because the insane people posting in them make the whole gaming community look like a band of raving lunatic psychopath man-children.
 
I liked the game Bayonetta.

But I don't like the character that much. Especially some of the torture attacks.

It's hard to find a female character who isn't "sexualized." Which means...it's hard for me to find a female character I can relate to. >___>

Don't worry, it's hard for guys to find male characters to relate to as well.
 
Why does she constantly refer to the trope as appealing to the "straight male" but not gay female? I know they game itself is usually played as a male protagonist but surely the content within the game would appeal to both?
 
Señor Coyote;127099058 said:
Why does she constantly refer to the trope as appealing to the "straight male" but not gay female? I know they game itself is usually played as a male protagonist but surely the content within the game would appeal to both?

...It doesn't work that way. The game is designed for them, anyone else getting catered to is lucky. It's like when people complain that everything is getting turned into something catering to the CoD crowd. And equating gay female to a male isn't that great either.
 
Señor Coyote;127099058 said:
Why does she constantly refer to the trope as appealing to the "straight male" but not gay female? I know they game itself is usually played as a male protagonist but surely the content within the game would appeal to both?

this is so laughably myopic it hurts.

are you seriously suggesting that lesbians are basically just straight men with a different set of genitalia?

I think on the one hand it's good to show all the shit in games that is lazy and just sexualised or against women for the sake of it (amount of prostitution in games etc and how it's used as a mission or location but not actually saying or doing anything related to prostitution) but on the other hand it's just a list of tropes that depict women in a negative light. You could do the same for men, or children or animals. Just going down a list of negative or harmful tropes and pulling examples from games.
none of this amounts to any valid reason to think less of her arguments or the project at large. as she routinely mentions throughout the series, despite the fact that many games allow heinous acts of violence and objectification to happen to any NPC, regardless of gender, the point is that men (as a gender) do not stand to be thought less of as a result of their objectification. men can be sex objects, victims of rape, and literally anything else. women are not given that same breadth of possibility.
 
I just can't understand why people are so defensive about her videos. I mean, holy crap.

I think on the one hand it's good to show all the shit in games that is lazy and just sexualised or against women for the sake of it (amount of prostitution in games etc and how it's used as a mission or location but not actually saying or doing anything related to prostitution) but on the other hand it's just a list of tropes that depict women in a negative light. You could do the same for men, or children or animals. Just going down a list of negative or harmful tropes and pulling examples from games.
 
Señor Coyote;127099058 said:
Why does she constantly refer to the trope as appealing to the "straight male" but not gay female? I know they game itself is usually played as a male protagonist but surely the content within the game would appeal to both?
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Yeah, I'm sure that the creators of Kratos and the GoW series knew that this is exactly how game #4 in the series would end up with. Especially when the 4 games has had 10 different writers and 4 different directors over the 4 games. Come on now - surely you see that.

Yes, all of them are aware of it, save maybe the first game. There's a reason why Kratos is routinely encountering a whole lot of shittier people than him. Zeus' actions in God of War 2 are nonsensical in order to provide motivation. If they were fine with just having their Hulk yell "SMASH" they wouldn't need to set that sort of stuff up. But they do. Why? Apparently nobody likes Kratos, so, why bother making Zeus a suddenly insane dickhead? Why not just have him say at the start "I want to be the king of the gods! ARRRGH!" and go after him? They were constantly throughout the series framing his actions by painting most of the other gods as crazy or villainous, with a few exceptions (usually misguided fools under orders from those others).
 
No one is down for censorship, but could I hear the argument for violence in media, other than that people like it?

Lots of people are down for censorship. Which is why people must be vocal in opposing it.

Criticizing is not advocating censorship but keep trying to frame it that way

"I don't like this game because ___" is criticizing.

"Other people liking this game is a problem" is advocating censorship.

re:
Unless your approach is "well I'll just enjoy the parts that make me happy and completely ignore the parts that are gross". Which is that's a Big Damn Problem.

You're free to like whatever you want, but if you start trying to tell me what I can and can't like, I'll gladly tell you where you can place your opinion.
 
No need to try and force your opinion of us. If you wish to censor violence in entertainment media, just say so up front.

I wish people were better than they are, that they didn't make garbage and that they recognized garbage for what it is when they see it. I wish people took more responsibility.

That's not censorship.
 
God of War is not shallow, it's reprehensible. And yes, God please forbid someone thinks ripping off heads and crushing women in gears and whatever the fuck else happens in those games is "fun".

Unless your approach is "well I'll just enjoy the parts that make me happy and completely ignore the parts that are gross". Which is that's a Big Damn Problem. That's an essentially immature method.

GoW is a game especially made to release tension. It's a really empowering game and I think it has an important reason for existing, the same way any other game does.

But...it's certainly failing on the Anita scale.
 
I wish people were better than they are, that they didn't make garbage and that they recognized garbage for what it is when they see it. I wish people took more responsibility.

That's not censorship.

Yes, wishing they didn't make that thing you call garbage is the definition of advocating censorship.

Your opinion is not absolute. Many people don't care what you think, and until you respect that, you have a lot to learn.

"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
 
Yes, all of them are aware of it, save maybe the first game. There's a reason why Kratos is routinely encountering a whole lot of shittier people than him. Zeus' actions in God of War 2 are nonsensical in order to provide motivation. If they were fine with just having their Hulk yell "SMASH" they wouldn't need to set that sort of stuff up. But they do. Why? Apparently nobody likes Kratos, so, why bother making Zeus a suddenly insane dickhead? Why not just have him say at the start "I want to be the king of the gods! ARRRGH!" and go after him? They were constantly throughout the series framing his actions by painting most of the other gods as crazy or villainous, with a few exceptions (usually misguided fools under orders from those others).

Well, Zeus was an insane dickhead in Greek mythology. Why change that? Is there any reason why you want Zeus to be changed?
 
Señor Coyote;127099382 said:
I don't understand your argument.
i'm not surprised.

Señor Coyote;127099382 said:
Are you seriously suggesting only a man could find sexualized violence appealing?
no i'm suggesting you made an ignorant and sweeping generalization about the lesbian community based on the fact that straight men and gay women both happen to be attracted to the same gender and then somehow extrapolated that to mean "sexual violence against women must be made to appeal to both these groups".

is it your opinion that women, especially those who are attracted to women, want to see images of other women being denigrated and violated?
 
I wish people were better than they are, that they didn't make garbage and that they recognized garbage for what it is when they see it. I wish people took more responsibility.

That's not censorship.

So, you wish for people to not make games that you don't like and that others view as garbage what you consider garbage. Got it. You're right - that's not censorship.
 
And that's stupid and academically irresponsible as well! Tropes have no cultural meaning outside of their context. Tropes are a terrible way to make moral judgement on media because tropes are neutral. What's important is HOW those tropes are used and the context of the narrative and game they fit. I can go on for a bit concerning a post-modern Jungian interpretation of database theory, but not even there do archetypes and "tropes" exist without context. Without the context, a trope is meaningless, a tool that must be used for a purpose before anything. Not making that distinction with kids is seriously damaging to their cultural and media literacy.


To your average joe blow? Neither. To an academic fifty years ago? Guernica. To an academic today? Call of Duty.

Remember, the media is the message. Even if Infinity Ward didn't intend any deep messages of the ravages of war, the very act of the media is itself a statement of the game's content of war and context of the modern age, and becomes open to interpretation within the context of its media, and to say the least, CoD DOES make statements on the civilian toll of warfare. Are we forgetting "No Russian" so soon? Even hamhanded, it was a statement of the value of civilian life to the warmongering and evil.

This.
The biggest flaw of these videos is the serious lack of context, both on the media side and the actual "videogame culture" one. It's almost as she doesn't understand how media work and how videogames work. For someone who loves to repeat "nothing exists in a vacuum" it's kind of ironic, really.
 
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