Update: TVTropes Deletes All Rape Tropes

Rednog

New member
Nov 3, 2008
3,567
0
0
John Funk said:
Rednog said:
John Funk said:
In June alone, the videogame industry has seen controversy flare over the "Tropes vs. Women in Videogames" Kickstarter [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117776-Hitman-Studio-Apologizes-For-Nun-Massacre] - with furor over booth babes and treatment of female journalists at E3 to boot.
I'm a bit curious as to why the escapist is defending Anita Sarkeesian so hard? You don't say describe the hitman trailer, or the Lara Croft thing, nor the booth babes or female journalists with a positive or negative context, but you throw in "disgusting reaction" just when mentioning Anita Sarkeesian's kickstarter. Why isn't it neutral like the other's why isn't it "the reaction to Anita Sarkeesian's...."? Or the reverse, the questionable Hitman trailer, the horrific treatment of Lara Croft, the mistreatment of female journalists?

I'm a bit miffed that the escapist has really taken a non neutral approach to Anita Sarkeesian. In the initial article it completely painted her as a victim. Yet there is still no mention of the fact that she spammed chan sites with her kickstarter in order to force that kind of reaction and to put controversy behind her project to get attention. Isn't news supposed to be neutral and report the whole story? I do not support what people said on her youtube page, but at the same time her actions aren't excusable either. The means do not justify the ends. It's a cheap tactic to get publicity, and she shouldn't be rewarded for choosing that route. There is absolutely no integrity in her means.

If I walk into a police station and say hey look the police are terrible people who oppress the citizen of the country and to prove it I'm going to punch out a cop. And then I act all shocked and hurt when the police draw their guns and slam my face into a wall. I then scream See! See! The police are evil, look what they're doing to me!
For context? People may have missed it when we first reported on it. The reaction was disgusting. There is no defending it. End of story.
I'm sorry but you addressed nothing.
For context?
Already talking about context, deciding to "contextualize" the Feminist Frequency but not the other issues sticks out, any English teacher would circle that with a red pen and say it's inconsistent.
People may have missed it?
Um, ok, where was I complaining that you linked to the various related articles?
The reaction was disgusting. There is no defending it.
I made no attempt at defending the reaction:
I do not support what people said on her youtube page
I'm criticizing her and questioning as to why the escapist left out that aspect of the story, oh look people wrote god awful things, wtf is wrong with the world. Oh but I find out she's really shady too in how she conducts herself...well that doesn't make up for what people said or make it any better, but I sure as hell don't feel sorry for her or think she is some kind of martyr if that was the reaction she forced/wanted to get.
End of story
I typed out a reasoned criticism and it gets shut down in a single line of text, basically accuses me of defending misogynists, I guess that makes me a terrible person for questioning and that's the end of the story.
 

Kahunaburger

New member
May 6, 2011
4,141
0
0
Jiggy said:
I don't consider starting shit with 4chan, the general cesspool of the net as trivial,
I absolutely see "starting shit with" 4chan as trivial - they do that to themselves every day. See also: pissing into an ocean of piss. If /v/ gave a cause that rustles their jimmies free publicity, they have nobody to blame for that but themselves.
 

Frission

Until I get thrown out.
May 16, 2011
865
0
21
psijac said:
Censorship is the enemy of Good story telling
Oh don't start with censorship. I don't like censorship, but TV Tropes is a site about man children talking about their favorite under aged porn. It looks nice on the outside, but it's pretty much horrible on the inside.

Google is requesting it to go down because it's supposed to be a "family friendly" site. Either take out the family friendly tag or take out the creepy shit. It's not that hard.
 

Kahunaburger

New member
May 6, 2011
4,141
0
0
Jiggy said:
Kahunaburger said:
Jiggy said:
I don't consider starting shit with 4chan, the general cesspool of the net as trivial,
I absolutely see "starting shit with" 4chan as trivial - they do that to themselves every day. See also: pissing into an ocean of piss. If /v/ gave a cause that rustles their jimmies free publicity, they have nobody to blame for that but themselves.
And she has nobody to blame but herself for the abuse, glad we cleared that up.
Bwuh? I don't know about you, but I tend to lay the blame for harassment on the harassers.

psijac said:
Censorship TVTropes is the enemy of Good story telling
Fixed.
 

GloatingSwine

New member
Nov 10, 2007
4,544
0
0
Kahunaburger said:
Jiggy said:
Kahunaburger said:
Jiggy said:
I don't consider starting shit with 4chan, the general cesspool of the net as trivial,
I absolutely see "starting shit with" 4chan as trivial - they do that to themselves every day. See also: pissing into an ocean of piss. If /v/ gave a cause that rustles their jimmies free publicity, they have nobody to blame for that but themselves.
And she has nobody to blame but herself for the abuse, glad we cleared that up.
Bwuh? I don't know about you, but I tend to lay the blame for harassment on the harassers.
Look, if we can't blame the victim we're going to have to admit that there's a problem with the way some people treat women when they think they can get away with it.

And who wants to deal with that?
 

GloatingSwine

New member
Nov 10, 2007
4,544
0
0
Father Time said:
It can be both, I remember there being analysis on there.
No. You don't. Because there never has been. Actual analysis would take twice the length of the average page on TV Tropes to discuss one example in its proper context, examining it from multiple angles and discussing its meaning to the text and how it is communicated.

TV Tropes doesn't do that shit, because it's difficult and takes a long time and requires effort and work and a wider understanding of the example, the work it comes from, and the literary landscape that work is a part of.
 

Kahunaburger

New member
May 6, 2011
4,141
0
0
Father Time said:
She was harassing 4chan
[citation needed]

GloatingSwine said:
Look, if we can't blame the victim we're going to have to admit that there's a problem with the way some people treat women when they think they can get away with it.

And who wants to deal with that?
Yeah, if we progress as a society, the feminists win!
 

pretzil

New member
Jan 30, 2010
97
0
0
This is a good thing!

Now if only wikipedia would remove its rape page there will be no more rape in the world! Hoorah!

Btw, Google Dictionary defines rape as:
The crime, committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with him, esp. by the threat or use of violence.

A plant (genus Brassica) of the cabbage family with bright yellow, heavily scented flowers, esp. a variety (oilseed rape) grown for its...

The stalks and skins of grapes left after winemaking, used in making vinegar.
 

Vausch

New member
Dec 7, 2009
1,476
0
0
I feel stupid for asking this so late, but did I miss something somewhere? A good chunk of articles involving games and culture lately have been devoted to rape and the discussion of whether it's a societal taboo to talk about in storytelling or fiction or something like that. Did something happen I missed or did all of these just suddenly get put in the spotlight?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying rape is a go-to thing and if you feel it must be used in a story it would probably be best to try and find an alternative or know good and well what you're talking about so as not to trivialise the act, but it just feels like all of a sudden it's become a total taboo to even speak about it in fiction.
 

PureIrony

Slightly Sarcastic At All Times
Aug 12, 2010
631
0
0
Jorec said:
Wow, that's pretty sad. What happened to TVTropes man? It seems like the site admin just doesn't seem to care about the sites image anymore, only how much revenue he's able to get from those Google ads.
He doesn't get revenue. They need the revenue that they can obtain only through Google ads(other sources are not nearly as profitable) to keep the site up and running. They already got booted from Google ads once; they probably didn't want to risk being booted again.
 

Treblaine

New member
Jul 25, 2008
8,682
0
0
FEichinger said:
Rednog said:
John Funk said:
In June alone, the videogame industry has seen controversy flare over the "Tropes vs. Women in Videogames" Kickstarter [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117776-Hitman-Studio-Apologizes-For-Nun-Massacre] - with furor over booth babes and treatment of female journalists at E3 to boot.
I'm a bit curious as to why the escapist is defending Anita Sarkeesian so hard? You don't say describe the hitman trailer, or the Lara Croft thing, nor the booth babes or female journalists with a positive or negative context, but you throw in "disgusting reaction" just when mentioning Anita Sarkeesian's kickstarter. Why isn't it neutral like the other's why isn't it "the reaction to Anita Sarkeesian's...."? Or the reverse, the questionable Hitman trailer, the horrific treatment of Lara Croft, the mistreatment of female journalists?
Because the reaction was indeed disgusting.
Her videos are much needed.
Her methods are questionable.
But the reaction she received was disgusting and - regardless of the preceeding provocation - proof of what she was referring to. Your police-analogy simply doesn't hold. Neither are random people on the Internet in any way authority, nor would the police beat you up and break your ribcage - unless of course, it happens in the US. That, however, is the equivalent of this massive flamewar against her.
Well that's what happens with unmoderated open comments board. Try reading some of the graffiti in a bus stop some time. No one is ever going to un-ironically write poetry on there. Once a place fills up with trash that is going to encourage more trash, that's what happens when she gets attention of 4chan (that she may have directly facilitated). And she didn't ignore the trolls, she blogged about them, giving them the attention and reaction they craved.

The worst part is how she has managed to deflect ALL criticism by focusing endlessly on this pathetic tolling, calling it harassment, and never addressing the genuine criticisms of this project. Like how She asked for $6000 dollars, when she got to $6000 did she stop accepting donations? No. It has now gone up to almost $160'000 and is still rising. She does not need that much money for this project that most people do for free and will make money on itself being watched over and over again.

This is an important subject that she started out with some extremely erroneous and facile starting points, mainly in categories that you could fit almost EVERY character into and the categories are USELESS.

Damsel in distress
Fighting fuck toy
Sexy side kick
Sexy villainess
Background decoration

These aren't stereotypes, these are inescapable dichotomies, non-playable character either fights for you (Sexy side kick), against you (Sexy villainess) or non-combatant important to the events (Damsel in distress) or not (Background decoration). No matter how well you write any female character she will be in one of these "stereotypes". This is not useful language to discuss sex and gender in video games.

Fighting fuck toy is just an incredibly rude term for a female protagonist.

You know what, ditch the 5 obvious categories, there is nothing special about them as they apply just as much to male or even robot characters and focus on the common theme between all of them: sex.

All she does is take well established roles you'd find any any storyboarding textbook and add "sexy" in there or some aspect of looking good. That seems to be what the hundreds of thousands of dollars are for, defining women into two categories in video games, whether they are sexy or not regardless of all other factors. Just judge them by their looks. And if they are sexy then they are stereotypes, and that is bad, without a proper definition of what a stereotype is or even why it is bad. But some spread...

"Misogynistic ideas of women"

I hope she realises that "Misogynist" means "hatred of women". Yes, hatred of women, like hate speech against women, like how the KKK incite hate with "rivers of blood" speeches against blacks, only misogyny is that hatred against women. Really. That's a bold claim. That is the equivalent of alleging endemic racism in games, you better immediately back that up with a good example. But none. It's almost as if she is completely misusing the term for a shallow and meaningless effect.

If she'd said that about the darkest depths of the internet, that would have been very true and immediately borne out. But no. She is talking about the established games industry, like games made by Valve, Activision and Ubisoft.

I really REALLY don't like the trolls, mostly for how they have made her bulletproof. There can be no genuine criticism of her without her simply going "oh those awful trolls again". I'm not trolling. She has had almost 2 months and a small fortune and nothing to show for it beyond a terribly flawed opening premise of the discussion and endless unnecessary focus on herself and this trolling nonsense.
 

aattss

New member
May 13, 2012
106
0
0
I feel stupid for asking this so late, but did I miss something somewhere? A good chunk of articles involving games and culture lately have been devoted to rape and the discussion of whether it's a societal taboo to talk about in storytelling or fiction or something like that. Did something happen I missed or did all of these just suddenly get put in the spotlight?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying rape is a go-to thing and if you feel it must be used in a story it would probably be best to try and find an alternative or know good and well what you're talking about so as not to trivialise the act, but it just feels like all of a sudden it's become a total taboo to even speak about it in fiction.
I think that it had something to do with E3, probably about the Tombraiders trailer and whatnot.