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
For me it wasn’t that, it was all the afterwards crap – it was barely mentioned again, and Lori just seemed to feel guilty. Lot of opportunity there for good storytelling and character development… but no.
I say quasi because they didn’t actually have standing. They were an adjunct advisory committee/brainstorming session. I think (though I don’t know, I was a little young at the time [15-18ish]) they reported to the National Security Advisor; in the form of the papers drawn up at the meetings.
But the meetings had lots of people who weren’t in any way official, so class material (if any) was really limited. They also had no (direct) access to policy formation, either in Congressional Committee, or from the side of drafting anything, “The President Sent to Congress”.
I’m also pretty sure it was, primarily, self-funded. There were (I think) some calls to come to Wash, and those might have had class access; they also may have had paid lodging, but the fare wasn’t covered.
in my complaint about the walking dead i somehow deleted half a sentence it should say that having the baby could put hers and the rest of the groups lives in even more danger including Lori’s eleven year old son.
Cthulu’s Intern: What’s also really funny is that guns that handguns that are lighter are so heavy they’re impractical. Like the desert eagle. It’s about 4.4 pounds fully loaded. It has a hell of a knockback. There’s more than one video on YouTube of people getting hit in the face by a desert eagle they just fired.
Desert Eagles are odd guns. They are very heavy for a handgun, and use a reloading system which is poorly chosen for a handgun (gas operation). It makes them really “slammy”. Apart from them it’s almost impossible to hit yourself with a handgun, because they go more up than back (esp. a revolver).
And holding 4-5 pounds at arms length is tricky. If you are trying to hold it in steady position (so you can hit something when you squeeze the trigger) there are some tricks you have to learn, or you won’t be able to do it very long.
Regarding abortion in media:
So, my hubby and I have very, very different taste in movies. There are VERY few movies we both enjoy. Case in point: his favorite movie of all time is ‘Dirty Dancing,’ and roughly once a year or two, I’ll watch it with him purely because he loves it.
Everyone agrees that Dirty Dancing is fluff, right? But I realized with surprise that this 80s movie has a character who has an abortion and is treated sympathetically. She’s on the side of good; the leading man is her dance partner and close friend.
I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a movie do that, never mind one as fluffy and braincandy as ‘Dirty Dancing.’ It’s all adoption or ‘changed my mind, want the baby,’ now. It kind of gives me the creeps.
Lately, I find myself getting the nagging sense that my country has been back-sliding in human rights and quality of life issues. But I’m young. Older Boobzers, is this just me becoming more aware of horrible things that have always been here, or has it really gotten worse over the past decade or so?
If you want an example of deeply, incredibly problematic fiction, check out this to see how bad it can truly get. *trigger warnings*
http://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html
My boyfriend and I have this weird obsession going with The Walking Dead. I don’t even particularly like it, and I’m not much for horror in the first place, but we still watch all of it. :p Maybe it’s masochistic; it sure as hell isn’t a great show but it pushes my comfort boundaries so that’s a little interesting to experience.
It’s obviously racist as fuck, though. The moment that they started running into other black people I literally predicted that T-Dog was going to die on account of no longer needing to be the token Black Guy. And boom, he bites it. Saving a white lady, naturally (’cause apparently the group has a shortage of those?) Thank god for Glenn and Maggie, the only saving grace of that show! If Maggie gets preggers I’m gonna have to light something on fire. Like the director.
RE: misery
OH JOHN RINGO NO!
Oddly enough, the videogame version of The Walking Dead is by far the best version of the franchise.
It also features the most diverse cast of characters. The main (player) character is an African-American man, and there are several actually competent, agency-having female characters. It also doesn’t wallow in torture porn, unlike the comic.
The main plot arc of The Walking Dead game involves a man acting as a surrogate father-figure for an abandoned young girl, so as a bonus it’ll annoy the MRAs because the main character is totally beta or something.
Ah, this justification. Someone once told me “It’s like movies about the Titanic: The zombies are just a backdrop for the rest of the story.” And I was all like “If we had as many Titanic movies as we have zombie movies, I’d have a problem with that, too.” The metaphor justification isn’t very strong, either: There are plenty of monsters that are scary in themselves, with or without any underlying message. A weak monster makes a weak metaphor.
(If y’all like zombie movies, go ahead, like them; I wouldn’t want to stop you. Obvs there’s a subjective element to what makes a good monster.)
Now I kind of want to give World War Z (the book) a try. I don’t read a lot of that kind of fiction, trying to broaden my horizons. Questions: Are there much better zombie/horror/apocalypse books I should start with or read instead? If I do read WWZ, should I read The Zombie Survival Guide first?
More questions:
WTF is up with MRAs and DOORS??!?!!!??!!!
Finally thanks to whoever it was who posted the racist zombie video; that was hilarious.
RE: cloudiah
I liked World War Z, can’t even remember if I got through the survival guide. It’s hardly necessary. And frankly, World War Z is the only zombie apocalypse book I’ve ever made it through.
It’s good to see my avoiding The Walking Dead television series was warranted – everything about it sounds terrible. As someone who loved the comics given how well-characterized the cast is and less about the zombies than it is about the details of surviving such a situation, it’s kind of awful to know it’s just filled with stereotypes (everything I hear about T-Dawg makes me grind my teeth) and may as well be Uwe Boll’s House of the Dead.
It makes sense these guys, without any sense of irony, are analyzing gender in a game while basically telling Anita Sarkeesian to “shut up”. Because her’s isn’t the “right opinion” and theirs’ – due to the powers of bullshit – somehow is. We’re talking about people from the same group who will use “free speech” as some kind of everything-proof shield, yet will silence any dissenting voice or someone who is ideologically opposite of them. They don’t give a shit about freedom of speech unless it protects them from taking responsibility for their own shitty behavior. It’s cowardly in a very insecure way and their need to be macho just further proves it.
This notion that feminism is somehow taking over the videogame industry reminds me of conservative U.S. Christians. They both assume they are oppressed and that their rights have been infringed upon, usually over something utterly benign whether it is a comedian using them as the butt of a joke or being asked to be polite to others in public, while nonetheless making absurd demands to limit the rights of others for the sake of their comfort and sense of validation. They’ll latch onto either “freedom of religion” or “freedom of speech” to self-victimize one moment – only to then demean, harass, and mock actual victims. If they were honest, whatsoever, they wouldn’t use either idea so disingenuously.
Cloudiah, the survival guide is unnecessary and IMO (and I collect these things) kinda tedious. It won’t take anything away from WWZ, but it won’t add much either. I kinda got the sense that they knew they had a hit with WWZ and wanted to try to milk it for all it was worth, so they spun out a Worst Case Scenario Handbook typed product to be able to charge another $12. Meh.
World War Z was surprisingly good, though. I wasn’t expecting all that much from it really, and maybe that’s part of why it worked so well for me, but I found it thoroughly entertaining and quite moving. Great story, well assembled, and a great use of the multiperspectival approach to storytelling. I was also pleasantly surprised at the range of fairly authentic voices portrayed, and the way that the “oral history” approach worked to tell a complex and rich story.
LBT: It’s not just your imagination. There are at least some pro-choicers who think that Roe v. Wade was a bad tactical move because it solidified a hardline defense against abortion at a time when there was a steady move towards legalization. I don’t know that I buy that, but it is definitely true that abortion has become the invisible option–people mention it briefly, then set it aside and it never appears again in the course of the fiction.
While we’re all ragging on The Walking Dead, I had a particular problem with some situation in season 1 (it’s been ages since I watched it, so the details are fuzzy) where they had gotten into a CDC building in Atlanta or something, and they were suddenly surrounded by zombies and they were going to blow up the building and one of the female characters was like, “I’m going to stay in the building and die because I just don’t want to live in this world anymore” and everyone was like “no you can’t give up! We love you! Come back with us! We won’t let you die!” So she leaves.
And some other guy is like “I want to die in the building too.” And everyone is like “OK buddy, godspeed, we’re outta here”.
This guy’s complaints would be just as ridiculous if they were accurate, but I’d like to point out that they totally aren’t:
“The only group leader who was a man, was a bad guy”
This isn’t true, the main character’s brother is the co-leader of a group of survivors with his wife.
“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”
This is because his overbearing older brother wouldn’t teach him how to defend himself, whereas Joel reluctantly gives Ellie a gun and allows her to take part in the fighting. The differences in their capabilities are due to how their respective protectors and authority figures relate to them, not their gender (although to be fair, Ellie is implied to be pretty badass even before the game starts).
(ps everyone go buy The Last Of Us it’s awesome)
Grimlock!? Soda almost came out the nose. One of the MOST VILE MISOGYNISTIC songs I have ever heard was by a hardcore band named Grimlock: With lyrics like “I’ll show you no mercy” and “break the bottle over your face. lay there and bleed bitch.” and “I’ll kill you…I’ll kill you…you fucking cunt.” This song is like the MGTOW’s anthem, haha.
RE: gillyrosebee
Survival Guide actually came out first. Also, the author is closely related to Mel Brooks! (Either son or nephew, forget which.)
RE: freemage
Enh, I don’t buy it either. “You’re getting your rights opposed because you FOUGHT TOO HARD for them!” sounds like HRC horseshit to me.
@ Tracy
Yep, the conversation in the car. It was just so obnoxious that it was pretty obvious where they were going from there, and I wasn’t willing to sit through any more of that crap, so we turned it off, went out to dinner, and never watched any more of it.
Pecunium: thanks for the insight into Niven/Pournelle! When I was a kid I read Niven almost obsessively, it’s neat to hear hints of the person behind the stories I still remember fondly.
I recently threw in on a kickstarter that got funded for a game called A Hat in Time, the main character is also one of these girl people. And it portrays the unreal depiction that a girl can jump like 10-15ft into the air, and even jump WHILE IN THE VERY AIR (probably an invisible and disposable man she’s jumping on), I’ve never heard of a male character depicted so unrealistically, especially with regards to jumping.
Not only that, but the main villain is called Mustache Girl, and she has a mustache! She probably stole it off of a hard working beta and is using it to pretend to be manly so that she can empower herself.
Feminism is totally ruining gaming, I mean just look at all the games out there that just tow the feminist line…
Anyone else ever play Jill of the Jungle as a kid? Jill saves the prince!
In order to make the joke work you’d have to add “no sense of ethics and an active desire to hurt other people as a way to take revenge for some imagined slights”. Which kind of kills the humor, unfortunately.
Max Brooks is Mel Brooks’ son, yes. Which may explain how he got both Carl Reiner and Rob Reiner as two of the narrators in the audiobook version.
The Zombie Survival guide did come first, but you certainly don’t need to read it to understand World War Z, which is a self-contained standalone narrative.
A lot of the power in both comes from the thoughtfulness of zombies as a form of natural disaster, like a pandemic, rather than a collection of horror movie cliches. The survival guide is clever in a personal way, encouraging people to think of disaster survival by means of zombie apocalypse. WWZ extends that thoughtfulness to society as a whole: how do people collectively deal with disaster. The interview structure makes it an intensely personal look at a global disaster.