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Comments
When talking about the "sex slave" thing I was refering to ancient myths and epics, which is really the first time the trope showed up. Fairy tales (which are usually in a medieval setting) contain a damsel in distress who is usually of high birth (which implies two things from the perspective of her would-be lover: sex with somebody who's most definitely better "maintained" than your average peasant girl, plus an elevation in social status, which is the more important aspect). The hero is usually a commoner or a knight (low nobility) while the damsel is a princess or the daughter of a major lord. In most, if not all cases, the damsel's father explicitely promises "her hand" to anyone who rescues her, and in the "happily ever after" part the hero becomes his heir through marriage. Women are merely a tool towards reaching another goal - wealth and status.
But getting back to Mario, the "Peach falling in love with him when he rescues her" part is a male power fantasy. Love just doesn't work that way in real life, and even when it does it's usually due to a major cause of internalized patriarchy. The whole thing about a woman's love being a reward for a man's effort to win it is still widespread, and that's why we have "nice guys" turning into rampant misogynists after being friendzoned.
Nitpick: >internalized patriarchy(or whatever)
Unless you're actually qualified to analyze psychological profiles, this is patronizing and creepy. "Knowing someone better than they know themselves" is abuser 101.
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I can understand the whole "nice heroic men are expected a beautiful woman of high birth as a reward" is the mindset of losers. But the stuff I said about Mario and Peach, if we go by Super Mario 64 lore, they were obviously friends before that. I don't know any women who would bake a cake for me and invite me to a castle so obviously Mario is important to her. Again, I haven't played those children's games in forever but even I knew as a kid that there was some kind of hanky panky going on between Peach and Mario when he wasn't rescuing her. She invites him to castle all the time and shit.
^^^ Yeah, it's almost 3 AM, I'm a bit tired and have actually had second thoughts about that part right after posting it.
Granted, I do have a tendency to go amateur shrink on peoples' asses, but I'm not saying it solely based on my own experiences, but theory too. Still, I had seen and known a whole bunch of women believing that the vaguest sign of attraction is in fact love (usually during their teens), entering into a series of extremely masochistic relationships and ending up seriously damaged and disillusioned. It doesn't take a qualified psychiatrist to figure out it's harmful.
But again, I might be extrapolating from my own latest failed relationship. But both her and me aren't exactly paragons of mental health, to be completely honest with you.
^ I never really played Super Mario 64, and wasn't even aware of that part. Ouch.
Okay, Mario might in fact be "OK" when it comes to that (although the "they are childhood friends" thing is probably a retcon), but I'm guessing that Sarkeesian's motivations for critique didn't come from malice or a plain desire for profit, but ignorance of the later-introduced background story, just like mine. The "damsel in distress" trope is still going on large, though, despite that.
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We call those people teenagers(yesterday: 17yo Renfair runaway wants to go after 24yo Redpiller because he looks like a Tolkien elf-more details next Friday).
And this is now a shipping thread. Toad x Peach OTP:
I'm bisexual and this goes against everything I've ever known!
Man now you had me look it up:
This is the letter you get at the beginning of the game as a manner of invitation to come to her castle. I don't think it was a retcon since it happened back in '96
And to the other guy who says I've turned this into a shipping thread, I'm just trying to explain how Sarkeesian is making assumptions about video games that she doesn't even understand herself. Why? So she can start a kickstarter on it and get new $$$ for her "videos"
I mean, I'm not even a Nintendo fan and I can still point out the holes in her arguments
I meant it was a retcon from the 1985 original, where there's not much in the way of backstory apart from "save the princess" wherre it's presumed (though not explicit) that it's the classic fairy tale damsel in distress scenario. It was changed a bit later, yeah, but many people aren't aware of that. Everyone and their dog played the original Super Mario Bros, but not nearly as much played the sequels. So you're definitely being too harsh on Sarkeesian - I made the same mistake of omitting the "retcon" (or whatever the fuck it is) and I'm not getting any cash from zombie!Adorno yet.
Also he's not saying you're turning it into a shipping thread, he's doing a joke derail.
Adorno is worst cultural marxist, go with Benjamin instead. Arcades Project is totes proto-remix culture.
Also, their heir Anita's not actually trying to fight against sexism, she's trying to make videogames less about action/competition to nuke testosterone levels of white male gamers in order to make our race go extinct. Circumstantial evidence: http://blog.ihobo.com/2009/10/testosterone-and-videogames.html
It's a better theory than /v/'s DARPA social engineering conspiracy.
Guys, stop feeding the troll.
I'm reverse Poeing: you can't make up a political standpoint so outlandish that there isn't someone out there who actually holds it.
Look at him not giving a shit.
I do kinda hate Adorno's guts, though, and I made a point to mention him 'cause he reall is the worst and people know it.
Frankfurters in general have some very interesting contributions even though I don't think too highly of their theory. But I have a soft spot for Fromm.
I got the same exact words from the PA forums. Apparently some dude who doesn't believe in leftist propaganda in gaming is a troll. Sad but its true.
As for Poe's Law accusations, my webcomic and I have been receiving those since the beginning of time. Here lemme let you in on a secret; everything I say is my view but some things are exaggerated to be funny. Its better than just giving you my opinions in straight up vanilla fashion. I was around during the Maddox days I used to read his site up all the time. He's inspired me more or less when it comes to the writing of my own.
Still, I think Anita Sarkeesian came onto the scene entirely to make money. She's filling in a niche that didn't previously exist: Woman bitching about misogyny in Mario and Zelda games. Gram Parsons did the same thing with the Byrds and Country Rock back in the 60's.
What if it turns out that the set of people who like quality gaming has a significant intersection of the set of people who are attention whores?
...I'm not sure what to say about this analogy, other than it is probably the poorest one you could have come up with.
And I'll gladly go join them.
...wait, you meant that they're not the "real gamers"? Then what are "real gamers"?
And they're not the only ones using it as a social posturing tool. People who make a big deal about "real gamers" are doing the same thing.
...I think you need a basis for your positions that doesn't involve phrases like "overly PC", "social justice", etc.
Funny how I've been enjoying videogames all this time. I don't mean to be harsh, but maybe it's because I don't give enough fucks about all these supposed controversies about the gaming medium.
From what I've read, I'm pretty sure Depression Quest isn't that great of a game, though has some value to some people, especially some (though not all) people who suffer from depression who've found it helpful. But none of this has ANYTHING to do with who the developer is, NOR what the press has to say about it. I got this from reading Steam reviews, actually. Which I was doing because I wanted to upvote those reviews that gave me relevant information about why this game is good or bad, and downvote those reviews that just couldn't shut up about "Five Guys".
Wait, I thought all videogames were for kids.
[/snerk]
Better question: what do you mean by "children's games"?
I will say this.
I've never been fond of the likes of Patricia Hernandez, Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian because their professionalism and integrity are sorely lacking, and they don't seem to have ANY real investment at all in a medium they want to see change in, let alone they don't seem to have the best intentions in mind with it anyway. The fact that they're women and feminists does not play into my severe dislike of them.
And a couple of death threats or humiliation attempts, real or not, will not change the fact that their work thus far has been shoddy, poorly researched, poorly presented, and heavily biased. So, on their lack of professionalism alone, they have neither my support nor sympathy by default.
And I'll say this again: "Tropes vs. Women" is a silly, provocative title, regardless of the content. (I am NOT familiar with the content, since I haven't watched/read/otherwise consumed it.)
It's silly NOT because it has to do with feminism, but rather because it paints with a broad brush AND implies fault right out of the starting gate.
It's not feminist because the videos are sexist(slut shaming language, violence as inherently masculine and negotiation as inherently feminine). I mean, I'm the first to rally against herpity-derpity postmodern relativism-über-alles, but how the hell do you survive college with such binary thinking?
I could get simplifying examples in order to get the message out and wanting to include only negative examples to sound the alarm bells, but this just goes utterly against the grain of a largely third-wave audience, methinks.
First off, can we stop treating death threats as something trivial? Just because it's harder to catch on the Internet doesn't mean it isn't a criminal act.
Secondly, what would be considered good feminist critique to the participants of this thread, keeping in mind the inherent bias of a male-dominated forum? The focus of this thread is bad behaviour in people who play video games, and after we mostly established that gamers should deal with the problematic elements within, I'd like to keep discussion constructive (especially InsanityAddict).
Third, what the heck does "professional" even mean? I'm pretty sure people who throw around that word have never read newspaper editorials in their life, since all sorts of invective gets spewed on a regular basis.
It means exactly what I said. It seems they don't know how to conduct themselves as businessfolk and I don't support bad business. Least of all bad business that wants to change something I love when they don't seem to be very big fans of it themselves, and are doing some very precise, hypocritical and conniving things to see their way through, proper conduct be damned.
Yeah, you really do lack perspective, because that paragraph sounds like your average industry shill talking down protesters (for example, most pro-Northern Gateway arguments). Talking down their intelligence with respect to the topic? Check. Framing it as an assault on a way of life? Check. Framing criticism as coming from radical outsiders despite much of it coming from regular citizens? Check. Vague and unsubstantiated conspiracy accusations? Check. Putting business above all else? Check.
If gamers want to have their corruption accusations taken seriously, they should stop sounding like sycophants for the industry itself. It's worth reading what Wicked223 just posted above.
just dropping in again, Zoe Quinn's been hanging out in some very interesting IRC channels lately
I saw that. I'm not sure if the IRC mentioned here had much presence in the larger controversy, but it is quite suspicious.
^^It's Marblecake all over again, although the chat logs are edited up a bit: http://imgur.com/a/Mfh61 Disappointed if they're actually MRA feminism-will-take-over-the-world conspiracy nuts, hoping the rabbit hole goes even deeper to a Gawker Media corporate rival.
Anyway, the thread jumped the shark with Brew showing up, so going full randumXD felt better than being one of the other five people arguing against someone who was really not on the same level of enlightened intelligence as the rest of us. Things seem to be returning to normal, so of course I'll behave.
As for what constitutes a good feminist critique according to my mansplanations: balance between narrative and design, and especially show when they undercut each other. In-depth over a quick rattling off of examples(perhaps show a list of games that make issue of the trope in a shit manner for those wanting further examples), and samples that work within the context(no Hitman stripper quatsch), along with examples of that did it right/subverted the paradigm(reader letters about how these right examples inspired/touched a girl somewhere as a sledgehammer for social relevance) that can also be used as a platform to highlight undervalued games and designers. Gender essentialism as quoted in my previous post goes out the window. Possibly demarcating the schools of feminism she adheres to at the start of the series, along with a further reading of those schools for those interested. I believe this is very much possible without becoming too academic.
I'm not surprised that #gamergate was astroturfed. The whole thing sounded too Tea Party to me.
THREAD NECROMANCY GO
Looking at the dude's Twitter Feed, he may have been real after all:
wut?
Re Moose: I don't doubt that he's real.
^um...see Wicked's link?
Anyways, what do we do with Moose guy now?
Even if he's really who he claims to be, that doesn't make him not a troll.