Pods of juffo-wup: damsel in this dress edition.

Mar 15, 2013 14:34

I'm sure that, by now, y'all have heard of or actually seen Damsel in Distress which deals with the trope of, well, female video game characters becoming quest targets ( Read more... )

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zarla March 16 2013, 08:09:18 UTC
Is this really the side of this argument you want to take?

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sandokiri March 16 2013, 10:00:16 UTC
I shoulda been a bit clearer on that, since "Rinoa needs to be saved incessantly" is why I never finished Final Fantasy 8, as you know. ^^ So, it would be fair to say that I agree with the video's premise, that having fewer Rinoas would be better. (Along with fewer Celeses and OtherM!Samusclones, but that's another matter ( ... )

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zarla March 17 2013, 02:55:55 UTC
I guess to me it seems like a lot of the problems people are having with the video are related to how it's presenting the problem, rather than actually dealing with the problem itself. Which seems kinda beside the point, you know? Focusing on Krystal not being a good example doesn't erase the countless other examples of the trope, or prove that it doesn't exist or isn't harmful. It just seems a bit like missing the forest for the trees to me.

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sandokiri March 17 2013, 03:56:47 UTC
I agree with you on this, and thanks for getting me to rethink it. ^.^

I suppose the trap I got into was not finding a reasonable answer to "why is this happening" (it's implied that it's because Shigeru Miyamoto is a pig, which at best explains a tiny bit of it, definitely not the whole thing.) Then opposing bad facts.

I did another entry that takes a bit of a different angle, sorta reworking the video's content to poke at why things happened the way they did in the cultural context... and with an aim toward a solution.

(The very short form: "write what you know" plus being a man = disadvantage when writing women. Solution: Teach more gender-neutral writing styles like how James Cameron does it, and also get more women as writers. It's not perfect, it could even be wrong, but it's an idea. ^^ )

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