Tropes vs Women SECOND VIDEO - "Damsel in Distress: Part 2"

[Westaway]

Why was this lady given $150,000 to read a TVTropes pages?

 

[Eremiel]

One final point I really think it does the this series great harm that Anita's tone strongly suggest she hs already made up her mind up on the subject matter at the start of the video. It conveys that she is just there passing judgement on an entire collection of media/art and its audience rather than trying to facilitate discussion on where this media falls short and how it can be improved.

That has been my main problem with her in general. She does not offer a non-biased view or an objective discussion of anything. She pretty much gives the impression that her way is the right way (hence the frequent use of 'clearly') and that there're no shades of grey, no nothing. She's passing judgement because she's completely infallible.

Same thing with her non-"tropes vs women" videos.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

does she not have the budget to switch outfits ?
enjoyed the summary in the last 3 mins.
should be renames "Tropes vs Women; the Industry is out of Ideas!"

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I think I would take a lot more away from these videos if I agreed with her, but I fundamentally disagree that there's anything wrong with the Damsel in Distress trope. I do agree that violence against women serves little real purpose, but saving a woman, or a child of either gender, is a perfectly valid motivation for a male character. In the real world there are some very few things that men would go to the ends of the Earth for. Among them are likely wealth, power, family/friends or a woman.

 

[The Great JT]

Okay. I don't disagree with her, but I can't say I'm seeing eye-to-eye either. The Damsel In Distress and its ilk have been storytelling devices since there have been stories. Video games aren't the first to use them, sure as salt aren't going to be the last, but they are the first to actively include the player/interactor/whatever you want to call the person who plays the character that drives the story forward, which I think is where the issue is coming from. I do somewhat wish the "Damsel/Dude In Distress" would just flat-out die, but I think we've got a better chance to see an open, level-headed debate on the topic show up on the internet first, and we all know that the internet will never, ever let that happen.

I do think Sarkeesian is doing the right thing here, making a video series that doesn't out-and-out demonize mediums for using tropes like this but going after the tropes themselves, but I do sort of wish that she'd go after more mediums than just video games. Again, games aren't the only perpetrators.

 

[Marik2]

Really thought she was gonna put The Boss in this video or put that B&B corps from MGS4. Would have gotten mad if she put The Boss there as a bad example.

Some points were good but at the end she like dropped the ball

 

[TAGM]

Oh look, the trolls inundated the new episode with inappropriate contents/copyright claims and managed to get the video taken down.

Who is it who's trying to stifle discussion again?

I know the answer, teacher! Or, at least, the answer to who's stifling discussion the most. (Because, newsflash, more then one person can do that at a time!)
It's not the trolls, actually. They're doing all right (as in, they're managing to stifle it, not that I support them doing the same thing other people complain about in Anita), but they're not the worst.
Anita? Nah. Comment blocking, sure, but hey, that's not the worst.

It's people like You. People who see one bad thing happening to Anita, or her videos, and assuming - for some bizarre reason - that this somehow proves that all her detractors are just trolls and fuck wits. If you're going to use her video being taken down by a few rogue trolls (And it can be a few rogue trolls, or hell, just one dedicated rogue troll, the way youtube's DMCA claims work!) to make a sarcastic comment that basically implies that the claim that she stifles discussion is disproved by this is not only a logical fallacy, it's poisoning the discussion by discrediting one side because of the actions of a few individuals. It'd be like me taking Anita's actions and using them to criticize every feminist in the world. And before you say it, yes I realize that some people have done basically that, but if you're going to bring that point up as an attempt to prove that I'm wrong, then you're doing the same thing you did last comment.

Spoiler: Here's where it goes less to you, and more to everyone.

And ya know, I'm realizing, at last, it's not Anita I'm getting angry with, it's all the people who do this sort of illogical shit. Watching Anita's videos are a bit like slamming my head against a brick wall, in my personal and honest opinion. Why? It's basically what she doesn't say rather then what she does, and the way she got her videos up. (Which, beyond reasonable doubt, was through troll baiting and funneling the resulting hatred into just the right place to play the victim and rake in the moolah) But all that pain pales in comparison to trying to get my points across to reading the comments (Where you can, anyway) which feels more like smacking my head against a fucking LANDMINE. Trying to talk to people who think a few trolls are all that are standing up against her, to make valid points even while their minds rush to the idea that I'm just a female hating bigot who can't imagine playing Call of Duty or LoZ as a FEMALE, that I'm some sort of misogamist troglodyte that doesn't want to see progression in video gaming, talking to people who are under the impression that because Anita can give some "concrete facts" (with a few bits missing, but still, right?) that she should be defended to the death or something, is outright fucking depressing.

Here's what I think: If you're supporting females in games, that's fine. Personally, right now, I think the industry is in a sorry state in terms of that. What with that stuff revealed recently about it being hard as shit to get a female in a game with that most disgusting and unprofitable things as a stable relationship, it's clear the industry - or at least the big PR departments that OK games based on profit potential alone - need to seriously change their attitudes before the entire thing falls in on their heads. But supporting Anita, a woman who, never mind offering solutions, has not even addressed these issues, (And I don't see how she really could, short of just chucking the current format away or doing this as a side video) isn't helping. It isn't forward movement, and hell, It may not even be 100% standing still, because what with all the criticisms that have to be leveled, some people in PR might just get the idea that no, we really DO hate women and hope they go away!

And if you don't read this, declare it TLR? Fine. Whatever. I'm not even sure you deserve to be made to read it anyway, because really, this wasn't directed at you alone - Your comment is a tiny little thing, it doesn't really require or even deserve this kind of mass breakdown of everything wrong with the idea. this comment is, in essence, a culmination of 8 or 9 months of watching people jump into this thing and say some of the most illogical things, directed in one direction, I.E. You. Is that petty? Sure. That's why I say you probably don't deserve or need it.
And if you agree with her? Fine. I have my issues, but at the same time, I can understand how people would agree with her. Even if you're doing it to make gaming look better, that's OK! I don't mind that, either, 'cause honestly I would like it if gaming in general got a bit more respect by, ya know, anyone besides us. But if you're going to get illogical about it, if you're going to stiffen discussion by discrediting a side with logical fallacies, that needs to be addressed, and it's doing no favors to anyone.

 

[Erttheking]

Hey, if anyone wants to have a clam and rational discussion on the issue, I'll be willing to talk to you. Just reply to me or send me a PM.

 

[Estelindis]

Why was this lady given $150,000 to read a TVTropes pages?

Because we wanted to. Frankly, it was our money and we were entitled to fund her cause if we wanted. If you want to be outraged by what people do with *your* money, feel free, but there is absolutely no need to take Anita to task on our behalf. If we feel she's not doing what she said she would, we can tell her ourselves.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

In fact, a lot of it is really sexist in stating that because it happens to women it is somehow worse.

Congratulations, sir. You've managed to hit the nail directly on the head.

Modern "feminists" like miss Anita aren't interested in equality. *shrug*

 

[Darken12]

However the two way street has a lot more traffic going the way of society influencing the media. And you can't reasonably expect companies to make losses and go bankrupt in an attempt to reshape society. Maybe if we lived in a communist society that would work. But in our world that would just lead to bankruptcies.

What you're saying is not how things actually happen. A company will not go bankrupt if it tries to appeal to niche audiences. Otherwise, no company would ever produce games for genres that aren't FPS. Companies still make horror, simulation, fighting, sports and RPG games. So long as there is a need that a company can fill, it will not go bankrupt. If it goes bankrupt, it's due to poor business practices, not due to what need it chooses to fill. Look at the recent gaming news, you have companies who declare titles who've sold millions and millions of copies as "failures". That's not a problem of the title itself, that's a problem with the company's expectations and business practices.

Sure i can blame women. There are plenty of triple A games who don't use said tropes. If women were interested in triple A games they would buy those games and that would send a strong signal. However it's obvious they are not interested in the typical triple A game genre discussed here. So the state of the industry is very much shaped by that. And i've yet to see any tangible evidence that the industry is part of the problem. Still waiting on market researches proving that.

Actually, they're already doing that. Bioware has a significant female demographic precisely because it tries to do its best to appeal to women. There is most certainly a place in the industry for women, and women have shown that when invited in, they will take that step. But I don't think the game industry is smart enough to realise this. I genuinely believe that most of the gaming industry thinks women in general just don't like video games, and they never stop to challenge those assumptions.

However her way of education can be compared to that of a preacher "educating" people about creationism. She makes a lot of unfounded assumptions. Sure she is right about the use of tropes, but so what? Tropes are used... ok... whatever? And than whenever she's trying to explain why that overuse is bad it goes in the world of wild speculations. That's not education.

While I agree that there are things she could improve upon, the message she is trying to impart is most certainly educational in nature. She's trying to explain why she feels that the overuse of a trope is harmful. Whether you agree with her or not is a completely different matter.

You assume diversity is a universally desired trait. You may consider it better, but that doesn't apply to everyone. As such it is merely an opinion.

Of course it's an opinion. That's why I keep repeating it's perfectly fine if you disagree. She's trying to sell you an idea. If you buy into it, good. If not, oh well. You don't have to care.

It has gravity though.

Not really, no. The gravity, when it exists at all, is always on the feelings of the male hero.

That's what people have been saying about GTA and the only thing it seems that fictional violence can desensitize you to is more fictional violence.

You misunderstand. I didn't mean to imply that if you overuse a trope, you are desensitised to its real life occurrences. I meant that you become desensitised to further uses of the trope. If we brutalise women in games over and over, we will become quite used to seeing women brutalised in video games. You can see why this might make gaming an unappealing place for women.

If someone commits suicide right in front of you that would also be shocking, and it wouldn't be vulgar would it?

If it's solely intended to shock me, then yes, it would be vulgar. However, I'm sure that very few suicidal people kill themselves solely to shock others, so the example does not apply.

What games do this? What games don't portray it as a horrible thing period? I didn't watch the video because people said there were spoilers (that and other reasons)

Then I would have to spoil you. She has the examples in the video. There is a difference between "a horrible thing for the hero" and "a horrible thing for the victim". Games emphasise the former and let you feel the latter if your empathy so desires. The kidnapped/murdered women are not allowed long monologues to detail what they're feeling, we rarely see them at all throughout the game, and we barely get an idea of what their personalities are. They become disposable tools meant to flesh out the male hero. It's very hard to trust that the game industry has respect for the issue when they don't care enough about the woman they're kidnapping/murdering to give her a personality or have her share the spotlight along with the male hero. It calls into question the "terribleness" of the act when they haven't cared about the woman at all throughout the game.

In other words they have but you want to downplay it.

No, not really. A woman screaming "Help me!" while the male hero gets a five-minute monologue on how sad he feels that he has failed to protect his loved one is not egalitarian. Some women get less than that! Some of them are found dead, and we don't even get the token reaction at all.

Wouldn't trivialization be the game portraying it as not a big deal?

You don't understand the point she's making. She's not saying that the issue is trivialised in-game. She's saying that the overuse of the trope trivialises a real-world issue. When it's used so thoughtlessly and often, without care, respect or gravity, developers get across the feeling that they think violence against women is no big deal. "Oh, we need a motivation for the hero? Meh, just kill his wife." "We have a sequel? Meh, kill the mother." "Another sequel? Meh, kill the daughter." And so on. That's where the trivialisation lies, in the way the game industry gives off the impression that it thinks women are not only almost never protagonists, but also thinks they're good only as prizes and/or victims.

 

[Beretta]

I wonder why Heavenly Sword never seems to get a mention for Strong Female Protagonist.
Nariko's not dressed to impress women, but the rest fits. Gets Damseled, rescues herself, passes the Bechdel Test, and even transcends her own motivation.
Not common, right?

 

[Flames66]

I don't see what all the fuss is about. She is not saying these tropes shouldn't happen, she just wants women to be better represented in games. Her videos so far seem to be fairly well researched and make a lot of sense.

 

[EyeReaper]

So... according to her, women should never die in a video game, because that's disempowering and sexist.

And here's a person that didn't watch the whole video. Because she said and explains, repeatedly, at the end that that's not what she trying to say.

Well done! How far in did you actually get?

Of course i didn't finish watching the video. i wasted ten minutes, I'm not gonna waste a half an hour on this drivel

 

[taciturnCandid]

The Darkness examples really sickens me as she simplifies Jackie's loss as "OH NO I LOST MY WOMAN, MUST KILL EVERYTHING."

I really hate how she showed darkness 1 footage and labeled it as 2. In fact, it is a huge spoiler and ruins an really really emotional point in the game.

Simplifying that moment down to it being because he lost his woman really ruins the whole point of the scene. IT wasn't that she was just a woman, she was his childhood friend. she is the only source of joy in his life and the only thing he really cared about. It really really hits hard on the player. I put down the controller in shock and almost cried and I still have a hard time watching that scene.

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

First of all I don't agree with her on the part of games having problem portraying women, because some of my favourite games (Baldur's Gate, Guild Wars, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge, Final Fantasy X, Skyrim, World of Warcraft, Bioshock, Silent Hill series etc.) include so many well written female characters.

We think alike

Rpgs where the main char isnt written: skyrim, WOw
dragon age&mass effect are from a studio which is known for their way of progressiveness and good characterization-so ther is nothinc to critizise-and she does not. These tropes (euthanized girlfriend, murdered and stolen girlfriend etc) arent in this games, so you i thing you just missed the point.

and-its not about one game or another-ist about all, ist about the prevalence of this kidn of tropes in games in general.
she eeven named/showd mirrors edge as a good example for good characterization of women (with-a female player character AND a PoC player character. which isnt very often the case.Soo remember me)

 

[noahd]

she lives in a bubble where there are no real women, and every great women are either flawed, very few or don't exist.

she believes that it's up to men to do everything, even some of these so called damsels in distressed are saved by women. she thinks that many cases that the writers just so happens to have a women lead, that has some injustice done to her, or some tragic scene cut to end off a game or a chapter, just so the story doesn't lead on and on... she think's it's all pony's and butterflies.

there have been many times where the opposite has happened and it's the female lead that has to save everyone, but she doesn't see it. sometimes it's the men that's the damsel in distressed and you must save, escort, kill off, watch die, etc... sometimes there's an bittersweet ending, sometimes it's melancholy, sometimes it' sad, even happy at times.

but she's hooked on the fact that women are portrayed at all. if a women dies saving her kid, that's wrong to her. if a women is kidnapped because of the work she's in, that's wrong. if a women is beaten by a bunch of bad guys because what she either said, did, or other.(meaning if she stabbed one of the bad guys and was beaten up for it. they'd still be in the wrong, even if they are bad guys to begin with.)

she keeps bringing up the same trope in many different forms and is stuck on it, like it's her guilty pleasure. she doesn't understand that the same trope can be placed in anything. such as a guy leaving his wife at home and going to war, in that sense, it's used as the same trope. she's fighting against. things that can be pretty normal to women and men that aren't in her bubble, are outrageous to her.

there have been deaths of females back in the 80-90's, but like many things, she can't see them. she's put in a position where it seems like she just got into the games in the 2k's and ignores anything that can be a trope for the opposite gender. aka, instead of a male fantasy, a female fantasy. instead of a female in trouble, it's a male. instead of anything in the story you'd say; "yes, that's the only way i could end." or "this is all the could do in this world to continue the story." as to say, if you don't put something to gear the main character towards something, he might just go back to sleep. instead of going on a journey.

just like many things, you could have a game where everything around you gets sort of a shock value, friends, random strangers, teammates around you get killed off either in front of you or in mentioned. and it still be a damsel in a refrigerator. because of one out of 100 ppl is a female.

--

she doesn't like female characters both of passive and aggressive. because aggressive is just a men clocked with a female body, and passive is a misrepresention of women. and she likes misogyny, either in games she "reviews" or just to say that things are misogynistic. and it doesn't matter about how many men get murdered in front of you, to her - they were asking for it. that isn't misogynistic to her, it's just the way things work in her bubble.

i keep trying and trying to get where she could get all of the things she's filling thoughts with. but it keeps going towards the wonder amazonian women agenda. there's no mercy, or anything to the common or higher up people. everything is Misogynistic, submissive, weak, property of a men, can't do anything themselves, is only meant to be a thing. this is the world she sees. she sees her world in a bad s&m movie. one fault in a women in a game collapse the whole game's story in her mind. even if she wasn't a women to be cared about in her story. even if that women's part in the story is 5% of it, it's enough to ruin everything of it to her. because she lives in a world where no women need help from anyone and their at fault if they do.

if she makes 10-12 of these she'll repeat the same things she did in the first 2 videos. and all could be summarized in one video, but will be lengthened from 1-2 paragraphs to 10-12, with no golf clap for heroic heroins in games, just debby downer, putting a 'what's wrong with women, needing help, dying, sacrificing, putting themselves in danger, holding any feminine traits that's kind, rather than the 'stuck up b*'. all i can think of is anything feminine to her is a fault in her eyes. whether it's the character's choice, or forced into it.

she looks down on feminism, but at the same time says she's rooting for it. i know, i'm over analytical of her. but it's more of how she portrays herself, and thinks of others, and would be considered a bigot if she was ever in any place of the characters she looks down on. and is another reason why i don't like people talking about character's and not going through any hardships in life. to the point everything is outlandish and unrelatable. kinda like a rich person talking down to a poor person. these traits of her will show more and more as she shows herself. but she's a victim of her own problems and can only find problems with others. even if some of these tropes are thousands of years old and readable in history books, and not in anyway wrong, but just bad to happen.

in a game where you are forced to play the male fantasy as she would say; i'm always compelled to try and save everyone, whether they're savable or not. often, the bad guys are often the victims. but you don't hear her complaining about that.

 

[The Lyre]

You don't understand the point she's making. She's not saying that the issue is trivialised in-game. She's saying that the overuse of the trope trivialises a real-world issue. When it's used so thoughtlessly and often, without care, respect or gravity, developers get across the feeling that they think violence against women is no big deal. "Oh, we need a motivation for the hero? Meh, just kill his wife." "We have a sequel? Meh, kill the mother." "Another sequel? Meh, kill the daughter." And so on. That's where the trivialisation lies, in the way the game industry gives off the impression that it thinks women are not only almost never protagonists, but also thinks they're good only as prizes and/or victims.

Except that these aren't real people - they are video game characters. Their lives don't have value because they don't have lives. Clichés might be awful, obvious and easy but they cannot be used to discern the psychology and intent of faceless game developers and character designers, because these designers aren't making decisions that affect the lives of real people. They are constructing stories - badly, perhaps, but they certainly aren't making life and death decisions with the bodies of real, live women. You are making serious accusations towards developers who are not actually dealing with real world issues. They are making a video game, not attempting to represent real world problems.

This is one of my major problems with this series; why on earth is it based around tropes? Why couldn't she have researched interviews with game developers, character designers and writers? Gotten it directly from the horse's mouth, instead of trying to armchair psychologist her way through common video game character archetypes.

We have no idea why these tropes are used. Intent is very important, here - it's the difference between genuine sexism and plain lazy storytelling. One is intentionally harmful to people, the other is just lame. If people are taking offence from female characters in video games, when developers have no intent to portray real women as inferior to real men, then there isn't any actual 'sexism' going on here - it's just a lazy, accidental faux pas that's offending people without meaning to, and that's very different from intentionally dismissing the issue of violence against women.

We have no idea what the context or intent behind these design choices are, and I highly doubt that any of these developers are actively attempting to make men view any kind of real-world violence as acceptable. At most, you can claim that this is an accidental phenomenon - well, you can't really, because no one so far has proven that this is even happening or having the effect Anita says it is. It's all just speculation - and terrible, half-assed speculation at that.

So as it stands, all we have is this;

"Video game characters get hurt a lot and maybe this might be accidentally convincing gamers that getting hurt isn't a bad thing perhaps through lazy storytelling, we're not really sure but it's probably not on purpose. Did we mention we're aware that modern controlled scientific studies have found that video games do not provide any kind of marked, prolonged increase in aggression in gamers?"

Edit; to clarify - if Anita or whoever believes that this subtle brainwashing is an accident, then she should not be calling developers 'irresponsible' or their writing 'insidious'. She should not be accusing them of wrongdoing, but pointing out that in her opinion, they have made mistakes and it is causing accidental harm.

But Anita does not discuss this issue in this manner. The last five minutes of the video are particularly accusatory and wildly speculative. I believe the intent is to blame and shame here, and that suggests she believes this is done intentionally, across the board.

 

[Beretta]

Oh, and while I agree with the interpretation of the Euthanized Damsel, I also think it worthwhile to mention that another point to the trope beyond "she's asking for it" is Duty's Burden. That for the player/character doing the unthinkable and cruel is a matter of cruel necessity, an uncontrollable vicissitude of fate.
It is, to me anyway, beyond merely shocking and into the terrain of emotionally hollowing. Angel's death, in Borderlands 2, turns the already grim and bitter setting into a (very symbolic) death march. Handsome Jack various betrays, tortures and murders other people while the game slogs on, but I don't give a fuck. He's past the moral event horizon, the rest is just killing time before killing Jack. I just want to blow his brains out, preferably after a prolonged session of torture, and watch the credits roll.
(I keep wondering if BL2 was developed by two totally different teams working off the same blueprint. It's alternately whacky!11 (Tiny Tina!) and then it's grimdark (Tiny Tina's backstory) in spasmic amounts.)

Ditto Gears of War 2. Dom loses everything...although for a cast-iron Action Hero such as himself and his mates that's not really a new idea. If Maria had survived Dom would be pressured to split caring for her with his military duties, and I doubt GB wanted to tell that story. Euthanized Damsel indeed.

 

[Beretta]

The point about men's responses being culturally proscribed is 100% true, unfortunately.
That Real Manly Men are balls of spectacular rage in the face of being powerless is practically a universal human cultural constant.
But...maybe it's not so useful now. That caveman crap ages badly as Smart increasingly bests Strong.
I do think it's as much a matter of biology (Testosterone!) and psychological evolution as cultural influences, but it's rough to see it all exposed to the light as this series does.

So, thanks again Anita.
Food for thought, indeed.