are we going to ignore the fact that this guy
who in one incarnation was raised by a tree
cannot hold the tree pose.
I guess he forgot his roots.
did you just
Request from herestoyoumsholly for Aqua (Birth by Sleep), Sayaka Miki (Madoka Magica), and Sailor Mercury to be hanging out. After inquiring, they all seemed like mellow characters that would enjoy a nice cup of tea together. I still need to see Madoka Magica. Maybe one of these days. >.>
Also, Aqua has a really pretty color scheme. Really nice purple-blues. :3
OMIGOSH I love it SO much it’s perfect! X3 All of my Blue Haired Heroes spending quality time together, and you captured their demeanor so well!
Yes
We’ve all played Mario and Zelda and DK and Pokemon and everything a million times right?
But you put those games in
And it’s still magic.
It’s still right. It’s still familiar.
Not that there aren’t fuck ups, not that doing new things doesn’t go horribly wrong
But they have been doing…
This year at E3 during the Xbox panel during a scripted “trash talk” bit someone made a scripted rape joke (male gamer to girl gamer who sucks at a game: “just wait, it’ll all be over soon.”) and then they acted like it wasn’t a big deal and then they released an expensive, anti-consumer (DRM on physical games) piece of hardware. And then Sony just released the PS4 which is just the PS3 but better graphics and $100 cheaper than the Xbox. So THAT happened.
But then Nintendo just quietly released a bunch of great looking sequels for all of it’s major franchises (Mario, Pikmin, Donkey Kong, and Smash Bros.) and every single one of those games interestingly features playable female characters who haven’t been seen in decades like Dixie Kong and Princess Peach - and Pikmin now has a new female hero.
One of my favorite things about Peach in the new Mario game is that one of the power ups is a literal “cat suit” and Peach’s “cat suit” doesn’t sexualize her at ALL. You can’t even see her boobs. She just looks like she’s wearing over-sized footie pajamas it’s so cute. Also they added a pink letter to the Mario logo just to accommodate Peach’s re-inclusion into the franchise as a character with actual agency!
So at the end of the presentation they tell you to go to the Smash Bros website to find out about new characters. And then they announced this character, Wii Fit Trainer, on the site. And in an interview the director said he gets thousands of requests for almost every video game character under the sun and he’s gotten absolutely zero requests for this character and he put her in the game to be funny and defy fan expectation. This character is literally “hey fuck you we’re the ones making the games around here, and we’ll be goofy and funny if we want to and also check it out another female character in Smash.”
Also the inclusion of the Animal Crossing villager is interesting because Animal Crossing is VERY popular with girls and even though the villager is male I’m 100% certain his alternate costumes will include the girl default villager character. So that’s neat. The three Smash characters they announced were two girl(ish) characters from two girl(ish) games and then Mega Man.
Also in the new Animal Crossing game boys are allowed to cross dress and all of the animals are explicitly genderqueer in the dialog. Characters say stuff like “Boys can ware make up if they want to, I mean, it’s 2013, who cares?” and just today a jock rhino was looking deeply into my eyes and asking me to hike a football and I asked him if he loved me (which was one of the option out of other options about sports) and he was like “Oh I guess a lot can happen when you look into someone else’s eyes like that, huh?” He didn’t even care that we’re both guys. Also in the new Pokemon game you can be black.
Basically what I’m saying is Nintendo is quietly and systematically making their games more socially progressive and Microsoft made a rape joke and then said “what? it was a joke.”
good
Right now we’re seeing geek culture across a lot of spaces fight the same battles- misogyny, racism, heterosexism, in videogames, Sci-fi/Fantasy books, movies, etc.
I saw a specific question - “What is gamers problems with women protagonists in games?” - which, you can broaden out to all of those issues.
Heroes.
Idealized characters. Characters with power. Characters with agency. Characters who matter. The fictional examples help us see the potential for real people.
But kyriarchy sits heavy on making sure we never see people HAVING potential. Widening the view of people makes them into full people, and not the roles kyriarchy needs. Which is why the marginalized are best set up as sidekicks, supporting characters, sacrificial characters, caretakers, anyone who demonstrates the “proper place” for such people.
When we see women primary protagonists? They’re sexualized, because even if they’re the “main character”, they’re really there to remind the (assumed, het male) reader/watcher/gamer, who they’re there to serve.
It’s also why we see a lot less POC, non-straight male, non-femme women, women who don’t fit male gaze, characters - because they don’t serve the role of serving the presumed white male consumer, they in fact, displace him by not putting his desires at the center of the universe.
So what the backlash is, is the fact that anyone else might get heroes too. The idea anyone else might… save the world, free the kingdom, destroy the demon lord, whatever. The megalomania of kyriarchy is so deep that even mattering in an imaginary world is too much of a threat to these folks.
Because they have to work so hard everyday to keep those blinders up because reality doesn’t always match their fiction - all of us ARE people, not just worthy of respect, not just demanding it, but also, a lot of us are a lot more fucking competent than you, because we actually had to work for it instead of imagining it. And because that’s too hard to face, even as you have all the institutions serving you, communities working to protect you even when you fail, and taking from our labor to benefit you, you create imaginary worlds where everyone knows their place.
And that’s it. You’re afraid of losing your perfect world in your head. Your ultimate delusion.
Strangely, just because some movies/tv shows/comics/books/videogames exist where you are not the worshipped center of the world - doesn’t magically reach into your head and rip out whatever media you ARE enjoying that puts you at the center.
You’re just so narcissistic that you can’t let anyone else imagine a world where they matter too.
And we see hundreds and thousands of dudebros willing to show up, organize DDOS attacks, get people fired, toss rape and death threats - because they’re afraid of not being the center of the universe.
Willing to spontaneously organize to make rape and death threats because they may not be the center of imaginary worlds.
And society doesn’t see exactly how damaged and dangerous that mentality is? Where a fiction > than someone’s life?
But that’s what it’s always been. The fiction that men are better > women’s lives. The fiction that white people are better > POC lives. The fiction that straight people are the only way > LGBT lives. etc. etc. Anything that challenges that narrative must be silenced.
You maintain your delusions in our blood.
And that’s why anything, no matter how small, “It’s just a game/book/movie”, must be protected.
Because your superiority only exists in delusion.
im not sure that it matters to anybody, but my thoughts are with the LGBT community in Russia. Stay strong guys. I’m so fucking sorry.
it matters
Wow. I’m so sorry. /: Ugh.
