Tropes vs Women in Video Gaming - Damsel in Distress

To be fair, while I think there will be an impact, I don't think there will be an increased amount of outcry over the topic of What Women Wear in video games. We all know it, we all see it, and I think a lot of people have already picked on this a lot. What Women Wear has already been a core argument for why women should be treated better at cons (because they're dressing up as 'sexy' characters who they love, but they receive a lot of negative attention from men for either being 'fake' geeks or just wanting to wander about scantily clad around a bunch of 'ugly nerds' -- I think, or hope, that we can see why this is a bad argument from multiple perspectives). It's been a major reason why the Hawkeye Initiative (linked earlier) has been occurring, too.

Also, this isn't directed at you, but it's directed at everyone who continues to try to invalidate something being a Damsel in Distress without understanding what the trope is at its core and how it can be used in conjunction with other literary devices.

People are more likely to cry about the Damsel in Distress trope because she's "unfairly ignoring examples where it doesn't happen" (and yes, there are exceptions to the rule -- that's why they're called exceptions; there are also different stereotypes to address, and you can't address them when you're talking about a particular one in a series), but they also aren't willing to understand what it is at its core and how it's used as a literary device . I posted this somewhere else (and I'm not going to link it here; I'll let that slide for someone else to do/find, if they wish), and I'm posting it here for the sake of simplicity in explanations (and not having to write it all over again). I'll mark the text in the same way that I did in its previous location:



That's what I've been fighting against repeatedly when people pull other examples. Just because you have some examples of something doesn't invalidate it from falling under the literary device. Just because a character is strong at the beginning of the story doesn't mean she can't be turned into a damsel at another point of time; just because we know Zelda's going to be kidnapped in advance to further progress toward the Tri-Force doesn't mean she hasn't been damseled. And it's those small bits of story that keep people from seeing this. Those other aspects are parts of other literary devices; it doesn't mean that one literary device works by itself all the time. It works with others to create a story, whether or not it's adequately written.

i think the backlash isn't only because she's "unfairly ignoring examples where it doesn't happen", but because she's treating it like it's -all- that happens.

it's a trope, that means it's used often, and it's a trope that "weakens" women mainly, but for that trope, there's also other tropes for men where they are "weakened", or forced/expected to do things, because they're "men"

i'll just leave this here, it works for pretty much everything

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ma...leStandard

my point against anita, is that she complains only about the female ones and with bad examples at that. and she's complaining about tropes* which are ALL overused, both against girls and men. i'm sure nobody here sees peach or zelda as "a ball" or "an object to be reclaimed" heck, in fact when i was little my mind only thought of two things when peach was captured: "bowser, you're evil!, you don't kidnap people!" and "allright, let's play this game" i'm sure that at no point, and this goes for the men, women, everyone alike, anybody ever thought "i want MY peach back"

edit: just a quick add, but peach was as much of a ball, as "the president" was in bad dudes, they were just there so that you weren't mauling shrooms or people without a purpose. not as an object to be reclaimed, after all mushrom kingdom needs it's princess as much as the US needs it's president.