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
The most annoying thing about Twilight-style vampires is that if being a vampire doesn’t mean giving anything up (they can after all run around playing baseball in the sunshine, and survive without killing) then what’s the point from a symbolic perspective? Where’s the dramatic tension? You may as well just say “they’re immortal, just because” and go from there. If you take out the idea that they lose as well as gain things then you’ve removed everything that makes them interesting from a storytelling perspective.
Agree, I don’t see the point of making someone a vampire unless you’re gonna present the very blood-drinking as somehow problematic. Otherwise you could just as well have used some other supernatural or techno-babble explanation as to why someone is immortal.
Still, it’s not just Twilight that takes away the problem with blood-drinking… Like True Blood. Haven’t seen it, but from what I gather, blood-drinking is no problem any longer since there’s synthetic blood. Okay…? And Cassidy in Preacher who could survive just fine on bloody steaks. Could just as well have said that he was immortal just because (and yeah, he couldn’t stand direct sunlight, but that’s not a big deal to live with after all… )
However, as pointless as it is to call the Twilight vampires “vampires”, a good writer could still have made something interesting with the concept. Merely being immortal and telepathic (as Edward is) could make for really interesting problems and moral dilemmas.
Meyers doesn’t even seem to see the dramatic possibilities in immortality itself. All the angst in those books is romantic angst. I know they were written for the YA market, but imo it’s rather insulting to assuming that teenagers can’t understand any sort of difficulties that they’re not dealing with personally.
Haven’t seen True Blood, mostly because it does seem like a soap opera with vampires, ie. like all that stuff that makes vampires interesting is absent.
The nastiest example of unaging immortality’s problems I can think of is what happened to Claudia in Interview with the Vampire. Stuck in a five-year-old body forever – horrible.
I loathed those books, btw.
It did make for one great moment in the rather sucky film, though. Lestat turns her and suddenly her hair isn’t rats’ tails anymore, it’s clean! And super curly! Vampirism, the ultimate cure for bad hair days! Plus if you give it a bad cut, no probs, it grows back overnight!
… didn’t think highly of the film, either.
The only good thing I can say about that film is that Tom Cruise was hilarious! Unfortunately it wasn’t intended to be a comedy.
Antonio Banderas was pretty hilarious as Armand, too, who I seem to recall was short, had curly auburn hair, wore fifteenth-century clothes that had seen better centuries, and looked about fifteen.
It being a comedy reminds me of what a woman said to me in Scotland when a couple of American tourists were waffling about Braveheart. “Och, we like it here, too,” she said, after I’d said I’d never watch the thing. “It’s a great comedy.”
Ah, yes. MachoMysteriouslyAgedArmand was quite a trip. Thing is, his looking like a teenager was actually a plot point, so much as I like Banderas in general…no.
Re: vampires losing their weaknesses but keeping their powers, exactly. The vampire myth turning into a superhero fantasy is one of the most annoying parts of modern vampire lore. Something of a classic though it may be, I actually didn’t like Anne Rice’s take on the blood-suckers that much – so what, vampires are some kind of an exclusive club for chosen ones now? No wonder zombies had to replace vampires as the “plaque-carriers” that infect people left and right. Granted, the change did open up some interesting themes regarding the loneliness of immortality and stuff like that, so it’s not strictly a bad thing either.
What I find aggravating about Edward Cullen is that Myers admitted to not having read any vampire fiction when writing him. Supposedly, she had a dream about this sparkling dude she just had to write about, and made him into a vampire to cash in on their popularity or something. Or so I heard. Still haven’t read the books.
Re: zombies overcoming trained military personnel etc. I think it was originally meant as a critique of modern society’s inability to deal with the unexpected. It’s not that big of a stretch to assume that law enforcement officials relying on their training (I’m not an expert, but aren’t cops usually told to shoot primarily at the torso, to maximize the chance of actually hitting the target at all?) will become a liability when dealing with things that don’t “play by the rules”, so to speak. I find it stupid when military training in some movies (looking at you, Michael “I lurv boobies and explosions” Bay’s Transformers) is portrayed as stripping you of fear and confusion and just make you super-competent at everything even when your friends and colleagues are being ripped apart all around you (again, not an expert, but I don’t like the implications behind the idea that military training turns one into an emotionless killing machine).
Of course, being a big fan of George A Romero’s [Noun] of the Dead series, I also feel the need to comment on how the creator of the modern zombie genre went against many of the problematic conventions we tend to associate with zombie movies these days. For instance, how many times has “the mighty white guy” or “the loner” actually survived a Romero movie? The Night of the Living Dead remake gave Barbara (yes, the “they’re coming to get you, Barbara…” Barbara) an actual active role, something that apparently was changed from the first movie when Romero became increasingly aware of gender issues.
Plus, I really like the dystopian future of the non-virus strain of zombies, a world where, for no reason, people come back from the dead, not just if they’ve been bitten. IIRC, in Dawn of the Dead, it is implied that it’s not some virus that kills a person who’s been bitten, but the tremendous amount of bacterial activity inside the rotting corpse’s mouth, something you really don’t want anywhere near an open wound. Ewwwwww.
A crappy movie as it may otherwise be, camp value notwithstanding, The Day of the Dead has the best opening sequence of any zombie movie ever. (Warning! Contains disgusting stuff. Seriously, what’s up with that first zombie’s face?) I also like the idea of some zombies entering a form of hibernation when no prey is nearby. They don’t need to feed to stay alive, but what else is there for a zombie to do anyway? Video games don’t work any more, buddies, better go outside and play.
TL;DR: Yay, vampires and zombies! #easily amused#
My daughter has been bugging me about this game for the past few days (she loves to watch lets-plays on youtube). Now I am very inclined to buy it for her!
World War Z is an awesome book and when I saw the trailer for the movie I was so fucking pissed! I can’t believe that Max Brooks (who is the son of Mel Brooks) would allow this! The great thing about the book is that not only is it very good story telling, but it is funny too. A story that has drama and terror and humor combined wins my heart every time.
As a female gamer and the mother of one (she’s been playing since she was about 4) I find it so completely obnoxious that male gamers think they are being persecuted. Almost all of the games out there are games where the ONLY playable character is a male character. And even the ones that have options almost always feature the male version in all advertising and such, for example look at Skyrim. Many games have the whole range of options of course, but I really think that all new games need to start automatically offering the binary options. I mean really that should be the absolute bare minimum. As a female gamer and an old hand (I’m 33 and have played just about every console system starting with Atari), I am sick to death of being invisible and ignored.
There are so many things wrong with The Walking Dead (and the after show show gahhh). I only watch it so that I can verbally pick it apart with my daughter because she is 10 and likes it (and likes to pick things apart too). She is into gore and stuff though, I’m hoping it’s a phase she’ll grow out of. First the scene with the horse really made me mad, but I kept watching because I know senseless gore is part of the genre. Then there’s the racist character who somehow is still allowed to be a part of a group of survivors who are not made up of KKK members. Then there’s the part where instead of telling racist douche to gtfo, they handcuff him to a roof? Also the scene in the CDC where Andrea wants to stay and they try to make her come anyway…yeah that was a black lady that they basically were like “oh you wanna stay, well duh ok.” That was a big wtf. Yeah…everything about that show just got worse and worse. But it is somewhat entertaining to hate-watch.
I started to watch The Clockwork Orange and couldn’t get through it. It was just way too weird and it made me feel icky. It’s the same reason that I won’t allow any of the Grand Theft Auto games into my house. I just don’t care for the exploration of vile behavior. I just recently read Lolita and I just didn’t get it at all. I don’t feel like there is anything there worth saying or reading, it is just sad and gross.
I love The Vampire Chronicles and Anne Rice’s take on vampires. I admit though that her’s is the only version of the vampire story I have read. I have seen a few movies, but they didn’t do it for me. I plan to read the classics soon (have been doing that more thanks to free digital copies of old books). I saw the first Twilight movie and the only thing I took from it was that it has a beautiful setting, really want to live somewhere like that. Would not bother to see any more of the movies though or read the books. Plus the whole angsty teenager shit was poorly done and far too cliche.
Heh dorry that comment turned into a monster.
It doesn’t bother me per se that Meyer made her own kind of creature and called it a “vampire”. There are so many different takes on vampires in both old folklore and pop culture that it’s stupid to say “this is what REAL vampires are like, and Meyer’s vampires aren’t like that!” – like when people assume that it’s always been a rule that vampires burn up in sunlight, and you can’t call something a vampire unless it does (hey, Dracula!). I think you can call any humanoid that in some way needs to drink blood “vampire”… So I wouldn’t say “these aren’t actually vampires” about Meyer’s creations, but I can say
a) I can’t see the point of making a vampire story if the blood-drinking isn’t gonna present some kind of problem to the vampires in question, and
b) I can’t see the point of making a story, period, with such lack of actual conflict and drama as the Meyer books, and
c) it’s really stupid to talk about something being a curse if you don’t actually present it as a curse. To be fair to Meyer though, she’s not the only one having this problem. I think this is often a problem with, for instance, the X-men as well. It’s hard to really make having super powers come out as a curse – takes a good writer to pull that off.
I’m now picturing vampires with plaque problems and EWWWW.
Dvärghundspossen — iirc some of the older folklore vampires didn’t drink blood, they sort of psychically drained their victims energy (usually their relatives, soon after they died…which has its own interesting implications)
“The nastiest example of unaging immortality’s problems I can think of is what happened to Claudia in Interview with the Vampire.”
I know one worse — Silver Kiss’s vampire is asked to turn to main character’s mother into a vampire…she’s dying of cancer (knowing she’ll spend eternity suffering, he won’t do it)
I haven’t read that since I was in HS, so I might be problematic, but I remember it being fairly good (and it is a YA vampire story that isn’t Twilight)
That’s interesting about the Silver Kiss one, Argenti. Did vampirism not elminate mortal ailments like cancer in that story? That’s an unusual take.
I reckon Rice’s books would be the worst, most distasteful and at the same time wimpy vampire stories I’ve ever read. Peter Tremayne’s might be sillier, but at least they were a bit of fun. Rice’s … blurgh.
@Dvärghundspossen (får jag bara säga att jag älskar pseudonymet?): Interesting that you should mention that. As a pretty horror-obsessed individual, I’m fairly pedantic about some of this stuff (the 28 Days Later infected aren’t zombies! Stop calling them that!) I find ”vampires should die in sunlight” the least convincing argument from the Twilight Sucks crowd. I mean, you guys do know that the dying in sunlight thing comes from the 1922 silent movie Nosferatu, and is no essential part of the vampire mythology, right? There’s a lot that the modern vampire throws out the window regarding the Stoker version, like the arbitrary weakness to garlic and crosses and being invisible in the mirror etc., but Stephanie Meyer’s version pretty much comes about as an afterthought. ”Hey, we should make this sparkling, immortal ideal of a human being (well, a man, since those pesky lady equivalents can’t even breed, so screw them), get this, a vampire! Huh? Huh?”
I’m personally fond of the theory that vampires are unable to turn to a bat or mist or control the weather or whatnot in sunlight. It fits in neatly with the theory (too lazy to go through the comments again to see who presented it) that vampires are the supernatural version of rich people or the aristocracy, and forcing them down to our level shows just how weak and average they really are. Stick it to the Man!
@Argenti: Agree about Claudia. I find her story one of the best parts of the Vampire Chronicles.
@Kittehserf: Once again, my mad English skillz reveal themselves. Though now I kinda want to write a story about plaque zombies that everyone is initially afraid of, but who are ultimately revealed to be a marketing ploy by dentists.
Actually, that story sounds like it would suck (pun somewhat intended).
I stand corrected, Argenti! Anyway, my point regarding Meyer’s vampires, that it’s silly to say “they’re not vampires, because vampires aren’t actually like that”, stands.
Regarding not aging – in Let the Right One In, Eli was turned into a vampire at age twelve, and zie never really matures mentally past that age either. That’s even worse than merely being stuck in a child’s body.
Radical Parrot: Thanks for the compliment on the nym. 🙂 It comes from the time we lived in a suburb where most people had pitbull-type dogs, and me and Husband had three toy dogs. Whenever we took them for a walk they’d sort of stretch their necks in an attempt to look as tall as possible, and our neighbour would comment “Hey! It’s the toy dog posse!”.
Re 28 days later, I thought some parts of the movie were incredibly stupid. Like how they took sleeping pills despite being seriously in danger of a zombie attack – hello, the Darwin Awards called! Plus the scene where the little girl is about to get gang-raped by soldiers and the chemist woman drugs her so she won’t suffer too much from the experience, and the little girl goes “are you giving me lethal drugs?” and the woman goes “oh no, I’m just gonna drug you down a bit so you won’t feel as bad about getting gang-raped” – that whole thing was just… yuck.
>>>in Let the Right One In, Eli was turned into a vampire at age twelve, and zie never really matures mentally past that age either
That’s interesting, I believe the movie was based off a book right? From watching the movie I was under the impression that Eli’s 12 y-o persona was mostly the result of expectations put on her by people because of her appearance, but that she is an ageless monster with a completely non-childlike motivation underneath it all. Maybe in the book the internal state of Eli is more apparent?
I’ve both watched the movie and read the book, and I actually prefer the movie… Cutting some stuff out from the book was mostly for the better IMO. (Although my use of “zie” basically came from the book, since it says that Eli doesn’t have much of a gender identity at all as I recall, just goes with either boy or girl in different periods of zir life as seems most convenient for the moment.) Anyway, I don’t think zie’s supposed to be like a regular twelve-year-old on the inside, because living for a couple of hundreds of years, staying indoors during the day, hunting people during the night and so on will obviously make you really different from a normal child. But zie’s not mature like an adult either. Zie never really grew up and developed psychologically the way human beings do.
One thing I did like about the book which isn’t in the movie is the explanation of why there aren’t tons of vampires around, despite the relative ease with which people are turned in this universe. The thing is, whenever an adult human being becomes a vampire, zie’s usually completely horrified by what zie’s become and commits suicide. But the few people who become vampires as children tend to adapt better to their new situation, in part because children have a less developed moral sense than adults, and can easier get used to being murderers.
Anyone ever read Thirsty by MT Anderson or Bloodsucking Fiends/Bite Me by Christopher Moore? Thirsty makes vampirism sort of a metaphor for puberty, and especially the alienation you feel and the desperation to belong. I didn’t like it as much as I liked Anderson’s other YA novel Feed, but it was an interesting take. Definitely some unsexy vampires, too. I think my favorite part was that vampires were treated like a fact of life, like “oh, don’t stay out too late, it’s vampire season””but moooom, they’re going to kill that vampire they caught in the town square and I wanna seeee” is not dialogue found anywhere in the book, but it could plausibly happen within the book’s universe. I believe it also takes place in the pacific nw, so it’s kind of the anti-Twilight.
Bloodsucking Fiends and the sequel Bite Me are just hilarious because Christopher Moore is frickin hysterical. IMO. It also delves into whether vampirism is a blessing or a curse, and comes out on the side of “it depends on the individual”
How has a discussion about vampires gone on this long w no mention of Buffy? COME ON GUYS
I liked that thing someone said earlier about vampires being how lower class views upper class and zombies are the reverse. A while ago I heard a theory that zombies represent our fear of humanity/masses, which I liked but I think the rich vs poor one is better.
Let the Right One In is one of the few vampire media I’ve ever enjoyed. Haven’t read the book (and likely not going to because HOLY FUCK it’d set me off bad) but I always got the feeling that Eli didn’t behave in a childlike way; I could totally buy Eli as a predator. It felt pretty real to me, especially since in here we have a couple kids who don’t behave like children in some ways.
I admit, in my vampire ‘verse I use the sunlight thing, because I knew jack all about vampire mythos, and it’s a convenient huge weakness. I DO have blood substitutes (animal blood does work, and there are synthetics available, but they’re expensive, difficult to find, and nasty as hell), but a lot of people also start donor pools. I also pretty much axed most vampiric superpowers unless you live a long time. Since I’m interested in exploring vampirism as a chronic-illness/daily life inconvenience sort of deal, that’s what worked for me.
VtM sorta has donors. Particularly in the game — the Giovanni curse is a painful bite as for every other clan it’s, um, compared to good sex. Which makes people willing to try it (not always of course, but with a moderate level of points put into seduction it isn’t presented as much harder than getting a one night stand).
And Salubi can only feed on the willing (and from what little I could find on the nearly extinct clan, usually fed on animals)
LBT — I have very nearly all of the oWoD books in PDF form if you want me to send you the cold rule book (if anyone needs/wants one of the out of print silly expensive ones, let me know)
RE: Argenti
Not gonna lie, I’ve always found the ‘bite as sex’ thing really befuddling. I mean, aside from it just not being my thing, BITING someone is among the least elegant ways to let blood I could imagine. You’d have to really CHEW on them, and that’d be really horrific and obvious-looking, not the little puncture wounds. Plus OMG unsanitary. So my vampires mostly just hook IVs up to people. You know, pragmatic.
And… hmm. I suppose I could give those books a shot. I admit to being kind of leery of the Masquerade, just because what I saw seemed to be even MORE of the hot broody amoral predators that I was so sick of.
@Dvärghundspossen: The image that tale brings to mind is even cuter than I imagined from the nym alone. *headasplode*
@LBT: I haven’t watched True Blood, but from what I’ve heard, there’s an interesting take on the vampire power/weakness issue. Recently turned vampires are still fairly weak power-wise, but on the flip-side, they are fairly immune to the weaknesses as well. As they grow in power, their weaknesses become more apparent. That would mean that a new vampire walking around in sunlight might only feel slight discomfort, but a centuries old uber-vampire with all kinds of magic powers would turn to dust the instant sunlight strikes.
I should probably turn in my geek card, but I’ve never watched Buffy, Firefly or pretty much anything by Joss Whedon. I did read the beginning of his run on the Astonishing X-Men comic, though.