Tropes vs Women in Video Gaming - Damsel in Distress

What I disagree with is the idea that the "damsel in distress" trope is problematic. Supporting characters are allowed to be helpless.

The point that's being made isn't that the idea itself (supporting characters being helpless) is bad, it's that women in video games are almost always put in this position. What's problematic is that all of the characters who are helpless and cannot do anything to change their situation are overwhelmingly female.

There is a major difference between "helpless men" and "helpless women," which is what creates the problematic Damsel in Distress. Male characters who are shown as helpless almost never suffer from the inability to not do something. Even in your prior example of "Mario is helpless," he isn't; he's still running about and trying to change the future outcome of events. He's not powerless, which is what the DiD trope is showing. The point of this trope, as she's said in the video, is that you strip power from a female character. It's not just a one-off, either; you can have examples of characters who were 'strong' but suddenly become Damsel'd in their own ways. Here's a good example of a horrible game story that did this: Final Fantasy VIII. Rinoa starts off fairly weak and is shown as consistently stupid/naive (Quistiss also falls prone to this despite being intelligent, since she gets demoted from her original position; Selphie's obviously bat pomegranate crazy, especially when it comes to trains). Rinoa, however, becomes possessed (strips Rinoa's powers away, Damseling her); she then falls into a coma (strips more power away from Rinoa). These two plot devices (badly) aid Squall's push to 'do something,' because he's looking for a way to save Rinoa (not that anyone will ever know why, since this is a problem of story continuity).

That's what the trope is about. Men generally don't have power stripped from them; they have options taken away, but they're "creative" enough to figure out a new way to solve their problem. Or they're still able to continue their journey and accidentally solve the issue. (Or, if it's a particularly bad storyteller, they forget it all together.) Women, on the other hand, lose their power when Damsel'd; these characters become helpless, useless, powerless and have no opportunities to change their own story. Their strife and struggles are shown as a changing element to the wrong person. In fact, they almost never have anything to say/feel about their detainment/capture. That's the difference.

And while I can think of one game where a male character is shown in this light (Mario is Missing), I also remember that he was not the main focus of the game; your main focus was to answer history questions to replace missing historical artefacts! It wasn't until the end of the game that I even remembered he'd been taken and why I was doing what I was doing. And that's one game out of how many where a male character has been entirely detained with no chance of escape? When women take this role, you're reminded of it at almost every turn. Someone always has to bring it up.

I would like to see more strong female protagonists in games, but I don't think the damsel in distress trope hinders that in any way.

She even mentions that it doesn't, using examples of how Zelda (and her disguises) were strong and helpful characters. The trope itself is that you strip power from someone, even if it's temporarily done. You can see this in a lot of games, but it's the fact that it's overwhelmingly female. Moving up a few years, let's look at FFX. Yuna is a pretty strong character with a lot of development, especially considering she's shown to start out as a fairly dim and unexplored person; she grows as she travels and learns as she meets people. She turns into a Stand Her Ground sort of character, but the problem is that she gets damsel'd at one point in the story to "advance it" (and ironically introduce you to Rikku and the goal of the Al Bhed, even though there were a number of ways this could've been done). She gets kidnapped from the Shoopuf and placed inside a mechanical prison. At this point in the game, she's then rescued by two men (because Wakka and Tidus are the only swimmers at this time, since you've yet to acquire Rikku -- that's not inherently problematic).

That doesn't mean that she's overall weak, and that doesn't mean that she's always useless or helpless. But if it was a male character in Yuna's position (or one similar), he wouldn't need that assistance. He'd have found a way to escape through his own power. (Or it wouldn't have happened to begin with, since she's just snatched up as easily as a donut left sitting on a plate.) Again, that's where the difference comes between the two.

League of Legends is particularly bad when it comes to female hero design, but I don't understand why you take exception to the rarity of brawny female characters in games. The big warriors are usually male because men are bigger and it takes a lot of muscles to swing a big axe. In a game with fixed character models, it just makes sense. It's not as if the spellcasters and more agile classes are less important.

I didn't say they were less important, but let's take a look at that logic versus reality for a moment. We have brawny women, we have women who could wield axes just as easily as the next man, we have women involved in melee sports (boxing, fencing, sword arts, martial arts, and so on).

Look through history: There are women who know how to protect themselves. Women weren't as defenseless as they were turned into through the history books. Many of them, even in the Middle Ages, did the exact same work as their male counterparts. You know who didn't? The upper class women. The overwhelming number of lower class women did much of the same work as their husbands; if they didn't, they wouldn't have survived. Women aren't overwhelmingly weaker. That's why this is annoying.

Also, it's a game. If you're gaining an audience that includes a lot of women (and maybe even some progressive men!), you probably should cater to them a bit more. Some of us girls like to play female characters and prefer melee skills to ranged ones. You've already alienated us when you've shown that the only thing we can do is stand back and shoot arrows at enemies or read books at them until they die.