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
Cassandra: The trigger discussion amused me because I have really strong hands, stronger than most men I know.
It’s a different muscle set. It’s really the ability to contract one finger. I am no longer good at opening jars (a function of my arthritis), but I can still manage to use a DA pistol.
Properly done, it’s a two-handed isometric exercise.
@ Radical Parrot
Totally agree that zombies have taken over the role that vampires used to have before they turned first sexy and then sparkly and “vegetarian”. Over time vampirism has become more and more of a metaphor for sex. Werewolves I think serve as a metaphor for some types of mental illness – sometimes you’re not quite yourself, but only for a while, and whether or not you can remember the things you did while not yourself and feel horrible about them depends on the specific story – but the fact that you do remain in control of yourself most of the time makes them far less disturbing than zombies. 28 Weeks Later did a really good job of getting at that part of why people find zombies so horrifying (partly because Carlyle is such a great actor). I do think that the “you my have to watch someone you love change and then kill them before they change you too” aspect is part of what makes zombie stories compelling, if done well.
(Is also a horror buff.)
Some zombie stories focus more on the body horror, and I tend to find those kind of boring for the same reason that I roll my eyes and go get a drink during the “check out how gross this is!” bits of Cronenberg movies.
Werewolves are often a sex metaphor too, though. Actually it’s interesting to me that as societies get less sexually repressive it kind of frees up more and more monster categories to represent something other than “omg if you unleash your sexual feelings something terrible will happen!”.
Ok, breaking my 6th month of lurkagedom for this. Dear sweet mother father! Did he just REALLY REEEEAAAAAALLLLLLLLY bring up something was “unrealistic” in video game weapons v real life. Pfft, honest to god, the man must not play video games enough to realize how absolutely bull that statement was. Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy, Team fortress, you name it, has stupid scary weapons that are physically impossible to actually use or wield in real life. Building off of what CassandraSays said about the non sexualization of the young 14 year old protagonist, it blows my mind because I know good and well that if she was as sexual as Yuki from FFX we would not be having this conversation. Bahhhhhh *agressively looks at pictures of lil kittens*
…Also
Hello nice to meet you all, I have enjoyed reading your guys’ comments and your insight on this blog and I love the blog and you guys are just all awesome. ^~^
I just stumbled on this page with an excerpt from My Day by Jonesy. Kitteh with attitude. 😀
http://io9.com/5880158/read-alien-retold-from-the-cats-perspective
Misfits kind of plays on how casual the main cast is with murder from the outset, though. They kind of briefly freak out over the very first person they kill, but from there on in they’re very blasé about it.
Eventually, everybody unlurks. We’re irresistible. Also, of course, they all want this delectable welcome package. Welcome!
I’m spending a quiet evening at home, thanks to a little touch of the stomach flu, hoping my neighbors’ fireworks don’t set fire to any buildings.
Also, someone is barbecuing but mostly what I smell is lighter fluid. If I can smell lighter fluid (and only lighter fluid) from a distance, I can’t imagine that food is going to taste too good. WTF?
I can smell lighter fluid too! It’s putting me off my (properly cooked) dinner. I’m also staying indoors because I fear and encounter with a stray firework. That shit is loud.
@Lionheartedgirl1234
I’ve seen an MRA claim that women in real life are weak, therefore it makes sense they are portrayed like that in videogames (or was it comics…one of those forms of entertainment)
Because we all know Batman, Kratos, and Ironman are perfect representations of all men.
But hey, even your average, blue collar guys get to be portrayed as heroic and awesome in videogames, unlike women. Look at Super Mario.
@Kittehserf: Ha, I *was* thinking about the popular depiction of Cthulhu. IIRC, the image is based on a statue in the short story Call of Cthulhu, but does an otherworldly horror really look like a green humanoid with an octopus head, or is that simply an image the human mind has concoted because it can’t wrap itself around a creature that looks so inconceivably alien? The non-Euclidean geometry attributed to this being from beyond the stars and the city it inhabits (“…he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry that shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse…” quote from The Call of Cthulhu) alone is horror enough, even without it turning you into a snack. To try to imagine what such things could look like without the “brain filter” is strangely intriguing, mind you.
Hey, let’s just throw in a picture of Non-Euclidean Cat for no reason at all!
https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/4496289280/h4DD4099D/
@Kittehserf
yeah I kept wondering if Jonesy would die too and was hoping he wouldn’t. You know I’m surprised MRAs haven’t compared feminists or women to a xenomorph since we are teh evilest evil that ever eviled.
@pecunium – I’m 60, ie, old enough to personally recall how abortion rights & equal pay were used by unscrupulous men to their own benefit during the late ’60s & ’70s, so his support of those issues aren’t particularly strong arguments against his being a misogynist. But putting that aside, personally, I gave up reading Niven 20+ years ago as much because of his extreme (& SILLY) darwinist/behaviorist notions as his inability to write consistently realistic women characters.
I’m afraid that arguing that the most virulent ideas in Lucifer’s Hammer can be laid at Pournelle’s feet doesn’t do much to let Niven off the hook, either. Niven chose to collaborate with Pournelle, so he must bear part of the blame for the ideas appearing in the book. & actually, it isn’t the ideas that are directly stated that are the most troubling, but those that are *implied*. (I don’t have space or time to list them here.)
I’m not surprised that you describe Pournelle as an unhappy man, as full of inconsistent, unrealistic ideas as his head apparently is, it can’t be very comfortable there, & it sounds like he’s doing a pretty good job of self-sabotage in at least some areas as well.
Quackers – heheh let ’em think we’re xenomorphs, then, and remember what happened to all the dudes except Jonesy aboard the Nostromo! 😀
RadicalParrot – non-Euclidean kitty is adorbs!
I don’t think I ever had an image of Cthulhu from the relatively little Lovecraft I’ve read, but yeah, the pics of “burly green guy with tentacle head” on the net don’t really cut it.
Though this one works.
Oh my.
I’ve found a site called Lolthulu.
I am lost.
http://lolthulhu.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/james-starz_is_almost_right.jpg
Welcome Lionheartedgirl1234! I’m a semi-lurker because I can never keep up… there was an awesome ratty conversation that I was dying to jump into but was so far behind… so any rat people, hai! Rats are the best. ^_^
Splitting my giant post into two because I’m cool like that. 😀
OMG, OMG, there’s an alternate ending?? *dies* I freaking hated how that movie suuuucked at the end, and just told myself that it ended with him being eaten in that scene.
I also hated how sunlight was meant to burn, so they were unwilling to run over a sliver of light? Ummmm, how about no. And the animal scene made me cry where nothing about killing humans does, apparently. >_>
Me too. I actually get really angry when there is violence against animals in films without a damn good reason. I mean, as someone whose life centres around my pets I find it irritating enough that in movies no one has pets unless it’s central to the storyline – disappear for a weekend, don’t worry about your dog starving or anything? So when it’s gratuitous “hey, this makes people sad” violence against animals, I am not happy.
So. Creepy. It’s irritating because it’s the kind of film I like (weird, fucked up, has a point) and a lot of people I like like it… but a lot of people I do not like like it, and for the wrong reasons IMO. So it being a fucking fashion statement grosses me right out.
That said, I am slowly getting used to the fact I basically cannot watch any movies with explicit rape scenes (can read about them just fine, go figure), and I couldn’t get anything from the film because of that. Just another scene I can’t get out of my head. :/
That sounds aaaawesome. <3
Hahaha. Had to quote this just because the “dumber than an armadillo” made me laugh so much.
Re: zombie movies, I’m not big into horror or zombies but I did enjoy REC, a Spanish zombie movie. The second one… not so much.
It made me think about how the whole concept of zombies sounds an awful lot like humans with rabies – salivating, irrational, terrified and prone to violence. That would be even scarier in a superstitious world with no real medicine to speak of (and made me feel so lucky to live in the only country never to have had rabies).
I have half a zombie film in my head that is basically a super contagious, fast-acting rabies. Showing people who are not rotting or undead but just hallucinating and panicking and eventually haemorrhaging out.
I guess this must be The Statement of Randolph Catter
@CassandraSays:
Yeah, gore is often unnecessary. Unless it’s totally over the top, of course. Tongue-in-cheek style.
I read a piece a while back that argued that as sex has become less and less of a taboo lately, modern vampires have instead become symbols for our society’s unhealthy obsession with food; Good vampires are portrayed as fighting the urge to feed (and get fat! Ewww!), while evil vampires revel in their eeevil enjoyment of food (what monsters! Don’t they know how many calories blood contains?). Can’t remember where I read it, but it was interesting.
Be it as it may, I too enjoy analyzing the classic monsters and how their role has changed over time. For instance, what does the gradual shift from “evil individuals threatening the community” (old vampire and werewolf stories) to “the entire community wants to kill you” (zombies, plus sympathetically portrayed werewolves and vampires) tell us about our modern fears?
As for Twilight… No, I haven’t read it. The idea of a stalker who boasts about being able to kill me is just too creepy and frightening. I’ll take less realistic horrors any day of the week, thank you very much.
[pointless rant]
BTW, what’s with the stupid “scare” horror movies of today, anyway? If you play a loud, sudden noise, of course people are going to get startled. Doesn’t mean they’re scared, that’s different. One of the great things about slow zombies is the gradual hopelessness and growing horror of the situation. It’s not “BAM! You’re dead!” but rather “Soon, you will die. Oh sure, fight and run all you want, but eventually, they’re going to get you. Sooooooon.”
Still, loved 28 Days Later. Haven’t seen the sequel, though.
[/pointless rant]
Ack, I should get some sleep, but I love this subject!
It’s interesting that’s how you phrase it, since animals are literally not-human to begin with. This is why it’s such a weird thing, that almost everyone still gets).
I think in reality, I’d find it much easier to kill an animal vs a person in self defense, but seeing it in shows/movies, it’s always much harder to see an animal die, even knowing that nothing is actually dying or even suffering.
I know, and they get away with it so easily too. But that’s why I thought it was odd that they had such a problem killing a cat. It must have meant something, I’m just not sure what the exact message was.
re Alien: My mother was a pre-release screening audience: the director’s cut was worse (one scene, but it was reviled: enough to make the movie too horrid to show).
The cat was what made it work (though the beast was, by and large) lifted from A. E. van Voght’s, “The Couerl” in “Voyage of the Space Beagle”. It was also less deadly.
“I think in reality, I’d find it much easier to kill an animal vs a person in self defense,”
I’d be the opposite, emotionally. An animal trying to kill me isn’t making a moral choice or being a shit or whatever; it’s hunting, or afraid, or whatever. Plus, I like animals in general much more than humans as a group. I’d certainly have the socialisation/taboo/conditioning or whatever to overcome, to kill in self-defence, but I’d be way more distressed at having killed a bear or dog or tiger or whatever than at having killed a human who was trying to kill me.
Hey hey now, I see a lot of zombie hate goin’ on up in here and, well, that just hurts. 😉
It’s always amusing to see manchildren throwing temper tantrums over video games. So, you’re offended that a female character is badass in [fill in the blank game]? Well gee, it isn’t like there’s a metric tonne of other video games that have uber masculine characters as the heroes.
Also, these guys and their weird post-apocalyptic fantasies where women will be put back in their place are laughable. I’d like to see them tell a female doctor that she has to wash clothes just because she’s a woman. It would serve them right if they broke a leg and she says “I’d set your leg and splint it but darn it all, I have to wash these clothes! Hope you don’t get gangrene. Bye!”
“Re: zombie movies, I’m not big into horror or zombies but I did enjoy REC, a Spanish zombie movie. The second one… not so much.”
OMGS some else here has seen it!!!
I kinda liked the second one, granted I’d have probably multi-tasked through it if I could have, but I liked the explaination of wtf happened. You see the third one? That one is so bad it nearly cycles back into being good.
And they aren’t zombies 😉
Two whatevers in one sentence. 😛
Whatever.
“Hey hey now, I see a lot of zombie hate goin’ on up in here and, well, that just hurts. ”
Should we say NAZALT at this point? 😉