So it’s true: Feminists have started ruining video games with all their feminism. At least according to some dude called pullupjumper on MGTOWforums who recently wrote a post warning his fellow red pill dudebros about a little game called The Last of Us, which is not only filled with zombies but, get this, girls.
For anyone who plays video games as one of their hobbies, The Last of Us is a pretty fun game…. but…. The feminist messages were close to ruining a game I waited a year for… The game’s setting is in a zombie apocalyptic world and the basic story (no spoilers) is that this guy has to take a 14 year old girl across the country during the zombie apocalypse. Almost as soon as the story started, I knew pretty much every female character in the game (except for the main protagonists daughter) would be portrayed as a”bad ass” character. The message was clear, women are as strong as men… Even when they are only 14.
Also, there were some adult ladies in positions of authority!
During the game , the two main characters meet different survivor groups. Every group leader was a woman. The only group leader who was a man, was a bad guy. The main protagonist even said yes ma’am, no ma’am to these women.
CAN YOU IMAGINE.
Now before you all go, but isn’t this sort of complaining a little hypocritical, given that all these video game dudes got mad when that chick Anita Sarkeesian who isn’t even a real gamer because of boobies made those videos she totally stole all that money for because IT’S ONLY A GAME, LADY JEEZ DON’T RUIN EVERYTHING WITH YOUR STUPID GENDER ANALYSIS.
Well, no, it’s not totally hypocritical because, get this, the girls in The Last of Us are portrayed as being unnaturally strong and capable.
What was pretty funny though is that the 14 year old girl is able to fire a rifle THAT IS BIGGER THAN HER and fire it accurately.
This is a clear affront to the extreme naturalism and realism of a game about a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.
And clearly never before in video game history has any male character been portrayed as unnaturally strong or capable.
Oh but it gets worse:
On the other hand, (not funny) another boy who was about the 14 year old girls age, was portrayed as weak, could not fight, could not shoot a gun and was just made to seem very weak. The Fems cant even leave their “girl power” out of the games.
A male character who is helpless and in need of rescue?
OH NO!
SAVE ME PRINCESS PEACH!
Happily, pullupjumper has an idea for a way to confront this creeping feminism:
Maybe, if any of you are interested, a couple of us can get together and start making our own games after these games become unbearable. What do you guys think?
Grimlock is right there with him:
I’m currently going to school for media arts and animation and am considering starting a small indy animation/film studio with a couple of guys from class. I also happen to be getting pretty good at 3d modeling … and even though i want to start with animation and film video games are my end game.
I don’t think I’d ever put an obvious message into a game, since I find pushing your belief onto others through mediums like videogames more than a little cunty, but will my games be misogynist? You better fucking believe it. Misogyny The likes of which will make duke nukem blush. I won’t need to tell you guys when I break into the industry, you’ll know it from the sheer uproar it’ll cause.
Misogyny … in video games? Now there’s a novel idea!
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Oh, by the way, for new and/or extremely literal readers, I would like to point out that this post contains
There’s also a vampire story from the nineteenth century by Théophile Gautier called “Clarimonde” or “the dead mistress” which is super creepy, but mostly on a psychological level.
It’s a story of a priest who’s seduced by this beautiful vampire woman, only she’s got mind control powers, and during their entire relationship he’s in some kind of dreamlike state when he doesn’t really know what’s what, and can’t always be certain about what happens for real and what’s only in his mind. Because she’s so in love with him she decides that drinking blood from anyone else would be nasty, so she drugs his drinks so she can drain him of blood without him noticing. What’s so incredibly creepy is that he’s the one telling this story, many years after it happened, and he keep making excuses for her. Like, it wasn’t really abuse that she drugged him, because he’d have let her drink his blood if she’d only ask, meaning it was okay after all, and besides it seems like she tried not to take too much (only it’s clear she did and his health suffered). So he makes all kinds of excuses for her like that.
There’s this older priest who knows about vampires and wants to kill her, and eventually does. Because we see everything through the eyes of our abused hero, this older priest comes out as pretty cruel and nasty, although it’s obvious, when you think about it, that he’s right all along.
I read a feminist blogger who thought Gautier was a total misogynist for writing this, but I can’t agree… The other stories I’ve read by him featured female characters that were perfectly decent and not evil at all. I think you gotta be allowed to make one story about an evil female character abusing a male character without being labelled “misogynist”. I’ve also read comments by people who think this story is honestly romantic – the vampire is even monogamous (uh, blood-monogmaous?)! How sweet of her! That’s just… fucked up.
That’s interesting, Dvarg – I’ve never read that ambiguity in Camilla. With Dracula, the brides certainly seem almost entirely driven by appetite, but I didn’t read the Count that way. He’s a lot less frightening than his inspiration (Vlad), and Stoker makes a point of showing how cultured he is. I didn’t read him as particularly alien or maybe not having recognisable emotions. I’d say he’s more human than, oh (for a frivolous comparison) Anne McCaffrey’s more cardboardy and motiveless villains. For that matter, he’s more human and comprehensible to me than some real humans, ie. MRAs. I’ve never thought of any of the literary vampires acting out emotions, like sociopaths (if I’m understanding sociopathy aright).
Gary Oldman’s Dracula was seriously hot stuff in his grey suit and top hat and glasses and That. Hair. There was a collective gasp in the cinema the first time his waist-length hair was seen, back in the day (well it was a bunch of Goths watching). 🙂
@Kitten: Was some time since I read those books, so I can’t say at the moment how much is undoubtedly in the text and how much was my interpretation. 🙂
I think I read Clarimonde years ago, it rings a few bells.
Whatever else Gautier was, he was a total cat person. 🙂
Oooh, has anyone here read the Newsflesh trilogy (Feed, Deadline, Blackout) by Mira Grant?
Also, Ellie appears to be in pretty decent shape physically. I have problems with muscle atrophy and can fire a rifle with fair amount of accuracy. That…doesn’t make me special, y’know?
The Last of Us
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2140553/fullcredits
Directed by: Bruce Straley
Written by: Neil Druckmann
Those cunts! Seriously, I count one woman in the team who created this video game, and she was in casting. (I’m not counting the voice actors). These whiners can go fuck themselves.
That’s interesting – do people tend not to desex dogs and cats there too? Because with an experienced vet, the risk is minimal. They are more difficult than cats and dogs, and with spays you have to find a vet who specialises in smallies but it’s really not too much of a risk (though there is always *a* risk with surgery).
I have had a couple (out of *cough* 30) die, but those are due to being an employee and the nurses not keeping them warm enough afterwards. I never, ever let my rats have surgery at work unless I’m there now (I actually like to do my own animals anaesthetics but lots of people don’t): I do not trust the other nurses I work with to take the importance of keeping small animals warm seriously enough (we do do a fair few rabbit neuters and they’re good with that… I think people tend to be too casual with their coworkers. 🙁 )
The SPCA here desexes their rats, partially to prevent irresponsible breeding, and the rat rescue here will desex their rats if they have the funds available.
Spayed females tend to have a much, much lower incidence of mammary tumours and obviously no pyometras. I have almost exclusively desexed rats: I actually don’t know of any particular health benefits to males but it’s nice being able to have a mixed group. I have had most of my rats live to close to or over 3 so it seems to be working. 😀
The fan hatred for Lori is mind-boggling. A guy who is an obvious villain lies and tells her that her husband is dead so he can fuck her, and she’s a horrible whore. She questions her husband on his monumentally stupid decisions that always end up getting people killed, and she’s a vicious bitch. She gets bullied out of terminating her pregnancy, and then gets treated like shit by her husband because the baby might not be his. Then she dies in childbirth, and suddenly Rick is like, “OH I’M GRIEVING SO MUCH, MY BELOVED WIFE.” And now she’s a magical ghost thing.
The Walking Dead is a sexist, racist mess that I can’t stop watching and hating myself for it.
P.S. I wonder if neutering lowers the risk of tumours in males too? *Not going to look it up right now. *
But neutering for aggression is magical. I’ve had a couple who just could not live with other boys. I always wait 3-4 weeks after before attempting integration but the difference is huge, within days. They just lose all the tension (the pushy boys I’ve had have mostly been the most incredibly affectionate with humans, interestingly.)
Despite a vast majority of male rats being chilled out dudes, I can’t help but feel that neutering might make life a little more relaxed. Considering the huge difference in overly hormonal rats, hormones must effect rats a shit load more than dogs (which figures, obviously. 😀 )
hrovitnir – no, cats and dogs get spayed, except maybe indoor animals, who have no contact to the other sex. we’re not drowning in kittens and puppies. 😉
The local animal shelter does not desex rats and will only give them to people who just keep one sex. Exceptions may be made, if one can proof that the sexes have no contact. They sometimes do desex lonely males, because their chances to be rehomed are rather slim and better if they can live with females. Of course there’s no guarantee people won’t abuse the policy, after the first control of the new home. But for someone who wants to do that, just getting some rodents at a pet shop is far easier and cheaper.
It’s pretty interesting. One of my critters had two mammal tumours removed already and a lot of rats seem to die slightly over the age of two.
But it’s kind of hard for me to accept this out of nowhere, that maybe desexing isn’t mostly evil selfishness. Huh. ^^”
I think Carmilla is the most interesting formative vampire story around, because the novel does such a successful job at leaving the nature of the main character to be ambiguous.
One of the characters claims that “Carmilla’s bloodlust can be mistaken for passion”, but since
most of the novel consists of interactions between Laura and Carmilla I feel like the reader is in a better position to answer that question than the vampire hunter who comes in literally in the last few pages of the book.
Too bad it seems impossible to have a good movie adaption of the source material. At least there is this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcc0ODj99qM
Nothing to do with horror, but I came across this little comic on the subject of objectification of women in video games (totally safe for work, despite the subject). Yes, it’s old, and it has probably been linked before, but I thought it was pretty funny.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/8836-Mortal-Kombat
One, one poppy seed, two, two poppy seeds, three, three poppy seeds, ha ha ha!
The counting was also made difficult by the fact that some vampires were pumpkins!
Myoo – ROFL I’d quite forgotten the Count!
@tooimpurenangel
Yes, but they’re so cute, though.
And of course, if someone is going to post the Count, I’m going to have to post this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Wd-Q3F8KM
Also, I do not know how to embed. Go figure.
I’m just gonna leave this here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EhRGRFnpm0
Dvärghundspossen: I think you might be interested in the series, Vampire: The Masquerade which plays into the different concepts of what a vampire is. From the hideous Nosferatu to the Tzimisce who embrace the fact they are monsters to the “humane” Toreador (they’re the Anne Rice type).. It does question if vampires are really just parasites, what it means to be one and the theme of clinging to your humanity or just recreating yourself as something beyond that. It also has an interesting creation myth (the biblical Cain is the first vampire).
I never want to see Grimlock within 50 feet of a game developer’s building.
re neuter/spaying of rodents: You need an experienced vet. When I was working in a practice which did exotics (i.e. not cat’s and dogs, and no larger than a goat… which ignores the sheer size of an Irish Wolfhound) we had two vets who really liked rabbits; so we did a free spay for two of the rabbit rescues. We also did neutering of rats and hamsters. Spaying was offered, but not as encouraged, mostly because they being so small it was harder to balance the anaesthesia.
So, on the much, much broader topic of feminism in fiction… I’ve been caught off-guard.
As an exercise in getting at the roots of some of the stuff I enjoy reading, I decided to take the opportunity presented by a reprinting of the original Dr. Fu-Manchu books. I knew they were written by a British writer in the early 1900s, so I was expecting all the imperialism, racism and sexism I associate with the era.
I got two out of three. The racism and imperialism are so blatant and over-the-top that it’s almost possible to ignore them–there’s no coded language, no attempts to pretend there isn’t any racism. It’s simply assumed that everyone is as racist as the culture these characters come from, and thus, it becomes easy to simply realize that the talk of “the Yellow Peril” and the “threat to the white race” is so much self-motivating propaganda. But the sexism is a different matter altogether.
Now, don’t get me wrong: the two main characters–Dr. Petrie, the narrator, and Commissioner Nayland Smith, the lead hero–are horribly sexist in their views. They dismiss Karameneh as “a creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu.” And of course, her name, given to her by Fu-Manchu, and never once suggested to be changed, even when she becomes Dr. Petrie’s fiancee, simply translates as “slave”.
But despite all this, she’s almost the only one who really does the heroics. Smith and Petrie blunder from one error and false lead to the next; half the time, they ignore a warning from Karameneh, only to wind up in a trap that could’ve been avoided if they’d just listened to her. Very frequently, it’s Karameneh who actually gets them out of one trap or another, saving their lives on multiple occasions. Even her servitude to Fu-Manchu arises from a combination of physical abuse and psychological torture, and a desire to save her brother from Fu-Manchu’s clutches.
And of course, in the second book, it’s she who hands Fu-Manchu his first direct defeat, nearly killing him with a gunshot, when all Smith and Petrie manage whenever they face him is to end up in a new set of shackles. It’s like Rohmer KNEW the attitude towards women in that era was complete bullshit, and wrote her as a strong, willful and resourceful woman just to show that it could be done.
As a result, I’m enjoying the books more than I expected, even when it becomes obvious Rohmer, like Doyle before him, was writing for serial publication in the newspaper, and thus paid by the word.
Not relevant to the topic at hand but this is somewhat relevant to the fathers’ rights movement and thus of interest to Manboobzers maybe. Looks like they like to talk big but won’t actually live up to their promises of taking care of the kids, looking at the statistics.
http://guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jul/05/childcare-men-pull-weight
@Yaoi: Sounds interesting! I’ve heard about that series, but so far haven’t checked it out.
Usually if I like something I only know what I and Husband and perhaps my colleagues at work if they watch the same thing think about it… I normally don’t check out internet fandoms and the like. But some time ago I came across a feminist blogger (can’t remember the name now) who wrote about how there’s so much sexism in the tumblr fandoms, including loads of internalized sexism from women.
I thought the vampire Mitchell in British TV show “being human”, which I wrote about earlier in the thread, was a great character, but he was a pretty terrible person. He’d go around for years being “good” and not murdering people, and then he’d slip up and kill one or two or twenty innocent people when the bloodlust became too strong. Cue bad conscience, trying to do good deeds, once again being a good person and atone, until he slips up the next time… But apparently tumblr is full of girls who just luuuuurve him because he’s so handsome and brooding, and these same fangirls thought Mitchell’s girlfriend was a bitch when she found out about a massacre he’d committed fairly recently and didn’t just shrug it off (despite him feeling all sorry about it).
Fans can be weird.