Abomination said:
"Sexism" is turning into a bit of white noise now. When everything is sexist in video games, nothing is.
I've yet to actually see a truly sexist video game that paints something in a way that couldn't be misconstrued as anything other than intentional socio-political commentary stating that "women as a whole are inferior to men". You know, something that would actually BE sexist.
There are "sexist depictions" of women IN games, there are "sexist characters" IN games, but games themselves are not actually "sexist".
When does something go from "a woman being a woman" to "a woman being depicted as something negative in a sexist manner"? Is it only when a woman has a stereotypically feminine negative quality about her? Does that quality need to be present in only some female characters in a game or MOST female characters in a game before it is sexist?
Well, according to some, the traits of any female character is applied to the whole in relation to the number of females present in the game. Basically, this is why there will be complaints about the skimpy dressed female characters in one game and then about princess peach in the next. In the first example, majority of woman had that trait, so therefore it must reflect an opinion about all women. In the second, since peach is the only woman, she must be a surrogate for the "ideal" woman.
At least, that was my understanding of the "logic" behind this stuff. Sort of falls apart though when you realize how sexist it is that a female character can't simply be a character but instead has to be part of her sex first, representative of them for good or ill as though being a female somehow comes with that responsibility by default. Though not surprising given how people apply ideas of what is or is not female traits in the first place when judging a character as "good" or "bad" based off of personal morality or philosophy of what a female character should be in the first place (see sex negative feminists for example)
On topic.
This is stupid. Sorry, nothing else describes this so perfectly. This is not even the boy who called wolf here, this is the boy looking at the sheep he is suppose to be protecting and screaming it is a wolf and trying to get people to bash the poor wooly creature's brains in. From every example given, Ellie seems a great character. No, I did not mean a great female character, but a great character, end of sentence. She has a single god damn trait of being a female, but that doesn't make her character, let alone change the rules by which one should measure if a character is good or not. So many over scrutinize female characters, especially those claiming they are doing so to point out the bad ones (see my earlier remark about judging characters based off of personal preference and philosophy). Ellie seems a good character with depth, motivation, likability and realistic behavior. While this takes into account her gender in how one may expect a 14 year old girl to behave, that is not a representation of sexism, nor is it that the young teenage girl might find herself in trouble at one point or another and need some help to get out.
This... this is just stupid.