Tropes vs the Recently Released

I don't watch Jim Sterling, but none of that makes sense. Even if you were doing a dubious "mind's eye" thing, Shelob is an Eater not a Seductress, though I'm not sure making her a very fat woman is a more positive female representation. She's not a Maiar or anything, so there's no reason why her Residual Self Image would be humanoid. Pay for more time for the animators and have a talking spider.

The other thing is, she's apparently also presented as a very 'motherly' and protective maternal figure.

...

She's a spider. She eats her own young.

Do regular spiders eat their own young?

pretty sure they do? or am I getting that mixed up?

I know for sure that the young often eat the mum, so fair's fair

On the tropes front, I'm feeling good things about Telltale's Batman Season 2. Without going too far into spoilers they introduce Tiffanny - a pretty cool tech-savvy WOC who is probably going to be significantly important in the series going forward (fingers crossed!).

Also, given how well I think they handled Catwoman in the previous season, I'm tentatively hopeful on how a certain other character is going to turn out in future episodes.

Spoiler:

Dr Quinzel is briefly teased at the end of episode 1, and it kinda made it sound like she has a bit more 'authority' than usual - John Doe (the joker) might even have been 'created' by her instead of the other way around? That might be wishful thinking, but given how keen this series is on gleefully twisting the regular Batman tropes it definitely wouldn't surprise me!

on top of that, you've got background characters like a recently promoted Montoya in the GCPD and Waller & Iman from the Agency, so there's a hell of a lot more good woman and WOC representation here than in your average batman story.

This is only episode 1 though, so who knows what happens going forwards.

This isn't released yet, but...

Check out the difficulty slider for the new South Park RPG... (about 5 min 30 into vid)

Cartman wrote:

“Don’t worry, this doesn’t affect combat. Just every other aspect of your whole life,”

Apparently the dev's confirmed that while this doesn't affect combat, it reduces the amount of cash you get in encounters and the NPC's all treat you differently in-game.

There's also the option to pick whether you're Cis or Transgender at one point...I'll reserve judgement on how that's handled until people braver than *I* get their hands on the game!

That's funny, but that doesn't make South Park any less awful and offensive as a whole. Their "it's okay, because it's satire and we target everyone" shtick is tired and built on a solid foundation of self-obsession and privilege.

I feel the hope this idea has is that I'd put money on it coming from developers. In addition to Clock's accurate assessment, Stone and Parker are pretty toothless for a pair with reps as fearless satirists. This idea seems pretty toothy, and the idea of making the Scalzi essay I have to assume inspired it literal is legit funny.

As people elsewhere have pointed out, though, it also makes it harder for PoC players if they want to pick a character that looks like them.

As satire and social commentary it does have a bite...but maybe one that doesn't take the actual people in question into account and is more concerned with being arch and provocative than with being caring or genuine. So, as Clocky said, very South Park.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

That's funny, but that doesn't make South Park any less awful and offensive as a whole. Their "it's okay, because it's satire and we target everyone" shtick is tired and built on a solid foundation of self-obsession and privilege.

Oh yeah, definitely. I'll still likely not be going anywhere near the game, because South Park.

I agree that South Park has rubbed me the wrong way in the past as well - for me, it's the running offensiveness getting tired and dated, and also the prevailing attitude that anyone who takes a stance on anything is someone crazy worth mocking and we should all just sit on the sidelines.

That said, for a couple of white guys with a libertarian ideology and a very anti-PC attitude, I must say they have taken on a surprisingly very progressive attitude towards race issues the past few years.

Gremlin wrote:

As satire and social commentary it does have a bite...but maybe one that doesn't take the actual people in question into account and is more concerned with being arch and provocative than with being caring or genuine. So, as Clocky said, very South Park.

Thanks for saying what I was thinking with better words than I would have come up with.

kuddles wrote:

That said, for a couple of white guys with a libertarian ideology and a very anti-PC attitude, I must say they have taken on a surprisingly very progressive attitude towards race issues the past few years.

I would like to believe that, although it often seems like screaming into the wind, eventually memes (in the classic meaning of the word) make their way from the fringe to the mainstream if enough people push them tirelessly enough.

I mean I guess I shouldn't be surprised by them at this point but..I feel like this was maybe crossing a line. Even for South Park. ESPECIALLY at the way the mother fish is caricatured... 0_o

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/EgDa6q8dplP3O/giphy.gif)

Yeah, on top of that, it's apparently mocking Kanye West's dead mother. I think Waypoint talked about it an episode or two back.

Yeah, the pair of them mocked kanye's game on stage at one point (E3? maybe?) and then on South Park itself. This is an extension of that it seems. Only they seem to have made the mother-fish extra racist looking this time around because...edgy?...i guess?

Oh, I assumed they were just sort of ripping off Robot Unicorn Attack, good to know they decided to do something much uglier.

This appeared on my phone today. Spoilers for Samus Returns if you haven't played it yet.

Battlechasers: Nightwar is interesting sounding in description. It sounded like something both my wife and I might enjoy. And then I took one look at the trailer and... Nope.

You think ridiculous outfits on female characters would be over by now.

Hopefully the right thread...anyway...

I've really enjoyed Injustice 2 since release. It's far from perfect--there are currently 10 women and 30 men, and while there is another woman likely to be added, so will 3 more men, and there are some other matters, but still, it lets me play dress-up with a bunch of characters I think are cool. I had a much longer and different post in mind about the stories/themes of the women in the game I might get to one day, but that's not why I'm here.

Like I said, you can play dress-up. You get gear, and it changes how a character looks. If you like Margot Robbie's Harley, you can make a Harley much in that aesthetic, or if you've got taste you can also make a classic Harley. If you want Wonder Woman to wear pants, she has a lot of pants. If you think, cheesy as it is, it just doesn't seem right for Supergirl to not wear a skirt, there are options for you too. And it's all by-and-large tasteful, and that which isn't is mostly in keeping with the character, generally, which obviously has room for disagreement. Many of Catwoman's tops are cut a bit low, but she's Catwoman and since it's a fighting game, she's a Catwoman that can f*ck people up. Everyone looks designed to emphasize that they are powerful and dangerous, rather than to titillate. Black Canary is one of the best martial artists in the DC universe, so she has some murderous legs, but not a pencil of a waist. Notably, anything that might be considered booty shorts covers the entirety of the booty. This will be important in a minute.

So, on Youtube I stumbled across a video about "Canceled and Censored Female Gear" in the game. Turns out one of the concept artists posted a bunch of his concepts, mildly aggrieved that they weren't used. They included: an inordinately busty Catwoman, booty shorts that did not cover the entire booty (the artist proclaimed himself an "ass man"), and some Black Canary stuff that's basically a leather bra with some straps. In the artist telling, this last one got rejected because apparently someone on the project said that didn't fit Black Canary. Which is 100% correct. It all looked bad, and the tool who made the video kept calling it censorship, despite "being rejected because it looked like sh*t" being the more accurate term (hence, I'm not linking the video, sorry).

Anyway, it was a both shocking and not at all shocking trip into the mind of some of the people working on our games, and how we sometimes are saved by corporate oversight, and I had to vent about it.

Oh no, this is exactly the thread of it. Thanks for reporting back, SpacePP. I wish I could say I was surprised.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

So, on Youtube I stumbled across a video about "Canceled and Censored Female Gear" in the game. Turns out one of the concept artists posted a bunch of his concepts, mildly aggrieved that they weren't used. They included: an inordinately busty Catwoman, booty shorts that did not cover the entire booty (the artist proclaimed himself an "ass man"), and some Black Canary stuff that's basically a leather bra with some straps. In the artist telling, this last one got rejected because apparently someone on the project said that didn't fit Black Canary. Which is 100% correct. It all looked bad, and the tool who made the video kept calling it censorship, despite "being rejected because it looked like sh*t" being the more accurate term (hence, I'm not linking the video, sorry).

That's bad. I'm not going to hunt it down on YouTube, but I certainly believe it's there.

If you all want something depressing but hopeful, this week's Waypoint Radio is absolutely incredible and should be listened to by every video game player out there. I wanted to post a link to that here because it's relevant.

It is interesting that a superhero fighting game of all things can be considered a positive example, in some aspects at least.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

If you all want something depressing but hopeful, this week's Waypoint Radio is absolutely incredible and should be listened to by every video game player out there. I wanted to post a link to that here because it's relevant.

Halfway through, but i had to throw some thanks your way before i go to bed and forget. This is a fantastic conversation, thank you for bringing it up.

Do check out the rest in Wolf’s ArtStation portfolio. He said these were from “An internal pitch project aimed to bring female characters to the cast of Team Fortress 2.”

IMAGE(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/007/425/191/large/drew-wolf-tf2-1.jpg?1506033785)
IMAGE(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/007/425/193/large/drew-wolf-tf2-2.jpg?1506033574)
IMAGE(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/007/425/194/large/drew-wolf-tf2-3.jpg?1506033576)
IMAGE(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/007/425/190/large/drew-wolf-tf2-4.jpg?1506033570)
IMAGE(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/007/433/239/large/drew-wolf-tf2-5.jpg?1506095004)

yeah I've seen those before - really cool!

Is there any explanation/background why these didn't make it into TF2 or why they were even considered?

they were dabbling with the idea back in 2009 but nothing ever came of it. Weirdly, valve never said why*

*I use weirdly in the most sarcastic way possible, because Valve.

pyxistyx wrote:

*I use weirdly in the most sarcastic way possible, because Valve.

Oh for sure. I mean, I figured that the reason was because Valve initially, I was just wondering if there was anything "on the record" for an explanation. I suspect there was nothing specifically stated.

I do seem to remember some discussion, prior to the introduction of hats, that they wanted to maintain some level of simplicity in having as few "silhouettes" as possible for players to need to "remember" when playing the game... then they added hats to change all of them anyway.

On the Injustice 2 stuff... I remember having the same thought about the game's female characters. The only characters who costume choices approach borderline were basically the expected...

-Poison Ivy (where most gear actually makes her more dressed than her base appearance).
-Harley Quinn where there's a pretty wide variety between the original Animated Series appearance to very Suicide Squad movie levels of skimpy, but nothing egregiously bad like most fighting games.
-Catwoman, basically the same as Harley, there's some meh options, but not many.

My biggest negative from a Trope perspective is Wonder Woman so consistently being turned into emotional support for Superman. It's a role she consistently plays in big Superman stories anyway, but in the "evil" Superman stories, it sticks out way more as her pushing him to greater levels of villainy. All of Wonder Woman's morally gray moments happen in the tie-in comics, in the game... she really does just come off (especially seeing her fears from Scarecrow popping up) as the "reason" Superman is the way he is... removing some of his agency in his choices and making her out to be the like temptress who took him off the right path.

Link won't work because there's a swear word in it, but I suspect you should be able to figure out how to fix it.

Intro of the article gives a pretty strong Content Warning, just FYI...

I'm going to spoil the hell out of the first twenty minutes of Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. You've been warned. I'm also adding a content warning for, well, everything related to nazi behavior, including racism, homophobia, anti-semitism.

I know a few folks on the boards were getting this in spite of it not being their type of game because Bethesda/Machine Games has been awesome on the advertising front dealing with idiot altright Nazis getting upset about the game...

So figured you miiiiiiight want to know what you're getting yourself into with the first 20 minutes or so.

What's interesting now is the blind spots I'm picking up in a lot of other writers' descriptions of how the opening affected them. Mentions of the homophobia didn't come up in a couple of reviews I've seen so far.