Tropes vs Women in Video Gaming - Damsel in Distress

@nikki: oh god, the comments are turning large again ._.

Yep. I have a lot to say. You should just be happy I barely post, play in IRC and lurk almost everywhere else.

1 and 2) it's the first in a series, but the titles i saw for the rest of the series doesn't seem like they would make the situation improve.
and dunno, she can make videos as long as she wants, but better to have a long vidoe that explains everything, than a short video that, assumming it's just everyone misunderstanding her, causes this sort of misunderstandings.

The point is that the rest of the videos are going to address a lot of different tropes. The main problem I'm seeing is that people are neglecting the fact it's a multi-part series on different tropes that specifically affect women (because that's the group of people she's focusing on). Considering she's already said there will be multiple parts, and it's pretty obvious because the movie's title includes "Part 1" in it (meaning that, unless she's Mel Brooks, there is going to be a second part). I don't see how she (or anyone) can make this any clearer that she's not going to say "Women can only be damsels," which is what a lot of people are so stubbornly fighting against. No one has said that, and it's already clear. They have the information in front of them and are wilfully neglecting it.

Also, she's already said she'll be addressing characters where they've "flipped the script" in the next one. And the final videos appeal to deal with positives and future advice. You can't offer those without having first pointed out what's wrong. I'm still failing to see what's "wrong" here.

3) tropes being overused isn't a reason to complain about them, you can't have a trope-less story, tropes are little things that always are in a story, the hero, the mcguffin, the kind of plot, you can't say that because it's overused it's bad

Considering I've also written a response to this elsewhere, I'm copying it to avoid writing it again. And it may repeat something I've already said.

It’s not always a bad plot device to have someone in distress, to have a hero who wants to save someone who is in trouble. It’s the way the treatment of the characters is handled or how the characterisation of that distressed person is neglected. Another issue is that when a damsel goes through the capture, the story does not belong to her; it belongs to the hero. We see how it affects them, and we are rarely privy to any information as to how the detainment has affected the detainee. It merely becomes an “oh, thank you” and everyone continues on their merry way. That’s what makes it problematic.

It's bad because it's overused and inaccurate; it's bad because of the subtlety of media on our society. And I'm not saying "this trope causes men to treat women badly;" it's not a direct causation, but it is a correlation in terms of how women are continued to be treated in other areas of society. And I'm sure that the more we see alternatives to this trope (and many others), the more comfortable groups of people are going to feel. The more you see alternatives, the more you're going to get characters that you can identify with in terms of personality and strength. You don't change things by ignoring them, and you can't make people aware of these problems if you say nothing.

The problem with all tropes is that they're overused and they seep into our subconscious. We unknowingly have biases that we don't even recognise because it is so subtle. If you see something enough, you start to believe it. That even applies if you only see it on television or in movies.

So what would be different if we lessened the use of the one where men are supposed to be like sturdy trees, strong and emotionless? What if we stopped marketing things to boys and men on a basis of violent activities (see almost every boys' toy commercial) and sex (see a lot of adult fragrances)? Just like women are tired of the constant misuse of female stereotypes, I'm sure there are some men who are just as sick of theirs. And you're telling me we shouldn't complain about overused tropes? Sorry, that's a hard pill to swallow.

and i dunno where "here" is for you, but over here, women don't get bugged into marriage any more than men, in fact, any marriage talk any of me and my friends have ever had (of both sexes) was all the marriage talk we ever had, besides the classic "find someone that makes you happy, don't settle, etc etc"

I grew up in Illinois, I lived in Kentucky, I lived in California, and I've since moved to Australia. In Illinois, my mother was the only person not putting pressure on me to find any guy and marry him; in fact, she advised me against it. Instead, I had to battle pressure from my just-out-of-high school "friends" to things like not marrying the guy I was dating at the time (who I later broke up with) and to finding someone and just getting married already. In Kentucky, I had girls putting pressure on me to get married because it was "weird" that I was single; it was odd to have Single Me around all their coupled friends at parties, as if I had no value because I hadn't a husband. In California, my ex-fiance's mother was the only person seriously asking me to think about what I was doing (and thinking about me); his paternal family put more pressure on me to just do it instead of waiting. The moment I put on the engagement ring, everyone asked me about my fiance. Most people stopped caring about me, but they wanted to know more about my connection to him.

Now that I'm in Australia? I moved here and started dating someone (who was more than a bit questionable and treated me like an object). My "friends" knew about this, and many of them told me to just "work with him" because "I wasn't getting any younger." They told me to put up with his excessively abusive nonsense for the sake of the fact that no one could love or marry someone as "old" as me. (And before you say to "leave him," I did quite awhile ago. And I stopped talking to those people. All of them. In every area.)

Now, I'm not saying it's been everyone. But I know that, for a fact, women receive this treatment far more frequently than men do. There are still people out there who relate us to who our husbands are, and they still see us as awkward if we're unmarried. Many people don't understand how to handle a woman who doesn't want to get married! People can't fathom a woman who doesn't want children! We get yelled at by crazy lunatics if we don't want to or are physically incapable of breastfeeding. I've seen these things personally; I've watched people I know go through them. I've cried about this nonsense with these same people, and we hate it. We're more often defined by our relationship to someone else (more frequently to our significant other or children) than we are in terms of our own merit.

And I'm not saying this hasn't been changing, but it still happens. We still go through it at a much higher frequency than we ever should have to. And every single one of these instances where someone is acknowledging us only in terms of our relationship to another human being is a form of objectification.

as for that hacked DK news, that's, as always, the extremists and nutjobs being overly vocal, and those exist on every side. which is something i don't condone either, people may dislike and disagree with anita's video all they want, but calling her a dumbass feminist that deserves to die? yea, that's not a decent man/woman behind the screen.

You're right, it's not decent. These people are disgusting, but if it was one or two? I'm sure it wouldn't have even blipped too hard on this father's radar. He would've just shrugged it off without even considering the sentiments as being more than a handful of morons. And even if this is the internet and people troll hard, look at the numbers of people doing it; it's disgustingly huge. And I know they're extremists, but even the minor comments that are found on the articles about him have been disgusting or annoying.

He changes the game to make his daughter happy, and some guy comes in commenting on one of the many articles with a tasteless joke about "teaching her to change tyres" (which is one of the most minor infractions). You know, because there are no women in this world who can do that. Clearly we all hate cars and everything to do with them, and we have no idea how to fix anything on them. (Except, hi, I do exist.) And that is a good example of why these tropes need to stop being the basis for a vast majority of stories.