Ms. Male Character - Tropes vs Women in Video Games

[recorded]

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Mothership post

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[recorded]

you're welcome =)

[spiritoftherain]

I've had problems with Ms. Sarkeesian's videos before, but I really, really liked this one. It highlights a seemingly harmless issue that nonetheless contributes to a real problem in gaming and culture, and reinforces the hobby as a boy's club.

By the way, Night in the Woods features a female protagonist and friends who are not defined by specific feminizing traits. It's a Kickstarter-backed game with only three days left to contribute to it! Just in case anyone's interested.

Also, an amusing note: The Damsels in Spelunky have a male and a pug variant. I just found that out this by touring the options. Pretty funny!

[bleakwinters]

That Night in the Woods looks pretty fucking amazing, I have to say.

[alryssa]

And that's before we talk about the infantilisation of women, too, when it comes to the Ms Male trope - Batman/Batgirl, Superman/Supergirl, etc. The list is endless; female counterparts aren't even allowed to be women, they have to be young girls, to further signify their lesser status.

[red_pill]

i cant speak for all of the things, but i think the batman/batgirl etc isn't nesserly to do with infintlisation, but with the idea of sidekick. batgirl is batmans sidekick, like robin, and like robin, should, in the eyes of writers, be singled out as younger. batwoman would be an equell, at least old enough to not be a sidekick.

i dont disagree that this is a problem, but i dont think the impulse comes from an urge to make women seem less expreinced then men, then the idea that sidekicks are a less exprinced extention of the superhero, and must be marked as such, male or female.

in super hero comics, anyway.

[lizrocks]

Then why 'bat____' at all? Robin, Nightwing, etc don't have 'boy' attached to their names and their sidekick status isn't questioned.

[red_pill]

i did consider that. but on the otherside, there captin marvel jr, aqua kid, kid flash. personal, i blame a lack of creativity most of the time. robin was created by someone who gave a shit, whilst, aqua kid or batgirl were, prahapse to cash in on the trend (like the sudden apprence of whole stables of animals for some carcters of the success of kripto).

the example ive given are non gendered, however, so that might be anther issue.

[blackjedii]

Hopefully she's used her own footage this time.

eta: and just to explain - I can take or leave her series nowadays. It's got several good points but several wrong facts and generally speaking it's "popcorn academia" to me wherein there's not really a lot of research beyond saying what other people (in this case her target audience) want to hear

I do however find her use of other people's Let's Play footage extremely intellectually dishonest, especially as it's well-known now and she's never said a word about it one way or another and (as far as I know) never credited or asked for permission from the LP'ers. I know it's partially covered under Fair Use but given how much media there is on the Internet and how easy it is to take someone else's time and work, it bugs me.

[recorded]

Wait, so you're not okay with fair use?

[booksforlunch]

Is it fair use to take someone's walk-through footage?

Wouldn't fair use require she takes such footage herself from the source material itself?

It's like taking someone's photograph of an artwork without crediting them in order to illustrate your essay on said artwork. And since you're not critically analyzing the picture of the artwork, but the artwork it depicts, is that still fair use?

[recorded]

It's perfectly legal to use short clips, especially for educational purposes.
The news does it all the time.

[astridmyrna]

Hit a lot of good points with this one. It irritates the shit out of me when there's only one female character and her sole defining feature is being female.