derparoo:
E3 is nearing and that means its TRAILER TIME!
yup! its that time again to be HYPED UP and then reach for you poison of choice as it turns out to be a load of shit. CUTS because no one wants to read my capslock abuse
also SARCASM ALERT.
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THIS, ALL OF THIS
(Going to use male and female only, because video games almost never represent trans*, genderqueer, two-spirit, etc. people, which is also a huge problem but god help me I will never shut up if I get started on that so for the sake of this argument I’m referring only to female-bodied female identified representations/characters and male-bodied male identified representations/characters)
I am so fucking agitated by how the video games industry as a whole still pulls this ignorant, offensive, close-minded, archaic, fucked up bullshit where the vidya must be only for ~boys~ and therefore girls don’t matter unless they’re featured in the game as what the vast majority of western society considers sexy no matter what!!!!! BECAUSE WOMEN AREN’T REAL SHUT UP GET OUT OF THE TREE HOUSE!!!!!!
FUCKING STOP
FUCKING STOP RIGHT THERE, VIDEO GAMES
And then, inevitably, the woman in whatever game is getting the shit beat out of her in some incredibly, suspiciously violent and specific way, which has every possible negative connotation, or she dies, or she dies especially horribly, or she is incapable of defending herself/her stats are continuously so low she’s the weakest character even as the game goes on and other characters are getting continuously higher stats, and so on, and oh my god this angers me so much
Related: In games where I can customize my character to a reasonable degree, I usually make the character like myself: Mid to late twenties, male, pale-olive skinned, tall, long hair, etc. and then I think, hey what the hell, I feel like being a female-bodied character today, then BAM even with all those settings saved, everything pulls this fucked up 180 and suddenly I’m this fucked up caricature of the western idealized woman!!!! Suddenly, it’s like fucking Liefield drew my character!
What the hell is that? How can you play a game, as a woman, and feel like you’re NOT constantly being objectified and generally shit on by everything in the game? By everything in society, and everything that society chooses to perpetuate in all forms of media— Even the one you turn to when everything else proves too fucked up to tolerate anymore! Video games are supposed to be fun and relaxing and imaginative, but the reality is that for most women, video games are just another place where you get subjected to sexism, rape culture, racism (find a game with a female POC lead without thinking for longer than a minute I dare you- now think of one with a white female lead-now think of one with a POC male lead-now think of one with a white male lead SEE WHAT I MEAN) and all the horrible shit you want to get away from.
Video games, it’s time to stop being full of shit. Come down from the treehouse, clean your underwear, and grab a social justices book or look into some good feminist media, and fix what you fucked up. Learn from your bullshit, and never do it again.
Seriously, this pisses me off so bad. Body types besides a western ideal aren’t ever shown, most of the female character voice acting is some kind of soft or hardcore porn if you just put in some headphones and close your eyes no matter WHAT the character is actually doing, women in games are almost entirely represented as some sick twelve year old boy fantasy bullshit. This is not just offensive, ignorant, and outright stupid in so many ways I can’t even begin to get into it, but it perpetuates the idea that women are objects to every new generation that picks up a game that features this shit.
Games like Duke Nukem Forever still happen! That game, christ I can’t handle that, I can’t start talking about it or I will literally die from rage, but you all know what I’m talking about. Those games still happen! They are still created! We are going backwards at the speed of fucking light, here!
Games like Super Princess Peach also happen, where the sexism is less obvious at first. Her “superpowers” in the game are completely emotion-based. She can cry to grow plants, she can get angry to burn through things, she can get joyful and fly, and there’s a fourth emotion I’ve forgotten. After exhausting these emotions, she gets tired, and you can’t use the powers for a while- During which time she is much easier to kill and the level difficulty spikes. When she fails a level the DS lower screen changes to her sobbing into her hands or something similar, but when she wins, she twirls and throws her hands in the air and cheers in a very high-pitched, delicate voice. The plot of the game has NOTHING to do with her at all- Her UMBRELLA is the total focus of the story, as far as I’ve gotten into the game. Does this sound bad to anyone else, after thinking about it? My boyfriend got pissed off about it too, and he said it was like “Nintendo shit itself and tried to make a game for the WOMEN-FOLK (because women don’t play ~normal~ video games!!!!) so they made this game, but since they know nothing about real women or how to make a strong female character they gave up, made her umbrella the main character, and gave her the ability to stereotypically ~PMS~ her way through each level.”
We were both so pissed off we just stopped playing it; I got to the beach level before I had to stop. It was ridiculous.
I love Princess Peach. She has always been, and will continue to be, my favorite Mario character. I wanted to like the game, and I wanted to play as Princess Peach and fuck up some stuff with my umbrella to a reasonable degree for a Mario game! Instead I can only pick things up or fly with the umbrella, and I have to get upset and cry when I can’t reach a certain platform, getting frustrated like a child, and then weep over a plant so the plant can grow up and I can hop on it’s leaves and jump over the wall. Princess Peach, in the game, is totally unable to do anything without assistance or throwing an emotional fit of some sort. Because ladies aren’t capable of being violent and/or bad ass in any way and are delicate flowers who need to be helped and can never show aggression!~~ I mean, seriously, what the fuck.
In Mario Kart, I fuck up every other player. Nobody fucks with Princess Peach. I main her, and I am all over that fucking track! I keep the household record of continuous wins. Princess Peach is fearless, drives like Jeremy Clarkson on cocaine, and CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP. Fuck you Mario, fuck you Bowser, fuck you Toad, get out the way. In HER OWN GAME, she will get regularly defeated by a large flower if she can’t EMOTION~ her way out of it. I realize part of it is the shitty controls and part of it is my inability to play most video games with any level of skill, but the biggest part of it is a fucked up bullshit game mechanic. I should not have to get upset and cry when confronted with a problem. I am Princess fucking Peach, and I will punch that flower in the face and jump over it’s corpse, and lounge with an apple schnapps in that castle. Because I am Princess fucking Peach. What is this bullshit game you made, Nintendo? WHERE IS MY APPLE SCHNAPPS
If it were up to me, I would make a Princess Peach movie to make up for that horrible fucking game. She would be played by Lori Petty, and it would basically be Tank Girl, but with Princess Peach. You know you would watch that movie. Don’t even lie.
but yes so I’ve been drinking and this isn’t very coherent but I feel like I had to say something because tl;dr I am a feminist and video games have great potential to make me rage
Source:
derparoo
