Feminism general thread

[Deedles]

In the RP groups I'm in right now I tend to be the token female of the group, but considering that (in the exception of one female I've only ever seen play male characters and thus think she, on some level, feels more comfortable with that) I'm one of the only females in the group I don't find that surprising. I just find it more comfortable to play a character of my own gender, if only because it makes it easier to voice-act them during sessions.

And speaking of that, that's one thing I was pondering a lot on when I became more aware of the feminist movement (overall, but mostly in gaming) in the first place; I wondered if my characters would essentially 'pass the test'.

[Deedles]

Thank you! I can't personally recall those examples(if she brought them up in her videos), but I don't remember all about them, so I'll take your word for it. That's really all I was looking for, examples of what she does like.

There's also the lengthy hypothetical she offers in one video about what she'd like to see (I believe JackSlack referenced it above)... it isn't calling out a specific "humanoid female character" from a game, but I found it very constructive.

I guess where I am coming from is that I know I can name female characters from video games that I like but I can honestly think of very few, if any, that I would name as being unambiguously "good characters" where neither they nor the game they are in fall to any of the problems Sarkeesian is talking about in her videos. For example, Sarkeesian mentioned that she liked the plotline with Elaine in Monkey Island, but that the game still wasn't a perfect example of what she was looking for. I feel the same way about a lot of games.

Now, maybe you think it would be more helpful if she ignored those flaws in the spirit of talking about what she likes; your mileage may vary, I suppose, because I don't see how that's particularly helpful.

I don't think the flaws should be ignored, and I'm sorry if I implied that, it's mostly... Hmm, how to express it... This isn't just down to Anita, but a lot of the pro-feminist voices I'd heard, but the general feel I got for what would make a 'good character', would essentially be a female Steve. Which would be nice to see, but, yeah, not very diverse. That's why I was curious as to what Anita, who has made a name for herself talking about these things, thought would make a good female character.

[JackSlack]

One of my favourite examples to use of a female protagonist done right is Chell from the Portal series. You play as a female. End of story, no fuss, nothing, and I feel that's how it should be.

I'm fine with Chell, and I'd like some more Chells.

But I'd also like more Jades: Characters who are more specifically female, and written with female experiences in mind. I'd like characters whose experiences as women are told in the same way that so many male characters are told as

And hey, that's happening bit by little bit. Ellie was a great character, and so was Clementine; but it's probably not a coincidence that we've gotten the junior pair of the partnership as female both times. I'd like a few examinations of being a surrogate mother, and a few examinations of being a surrogate son for that matter.

It's not that being gender X(X or XY? ) has to matter. But it would be nice to see gaming balance itself a bit better. Sometimes gender matters. Sometimes it doesn't. Where it does, gaming's been pretty happy to explore male perspectives before female ones. And where it doesn't, they've been more happy to default to Master Chief than they have to Chell. I'd like to see that balance more too. As with all these things, the goal is balance and diversity, not a superiority of one either option.

Thank you! I can't personally recall those examples(if she brought them up in her videos), but I don't remember all about them, so I'll take your word for it. That's really all I was looking for, examples of what she does like.

Well, I just mentioned the Monkey Island one; but she hasn't brought up Faith at all (I think) and Jade so far only in passing. I'd be very surprised though if she doesn't use Jade as a counter-point when she gets to Man With Boobs; she's a great example of a character who is uniquely feminine. And yeah, she's brought up her love of Faith as a character in the past a lot; I think Faith is her favourite female protagonist ever.

[JackSlack]

Geeze, I also can't realise I forgot to do this, but this is her current planned set of topics, and I'll add a bit of subtle emphasis on one topic in particular.

• Damsel in Distress
• The Fighting F#@k Toy
• The Sexy Sidekick
• The Sexy Villainess
• Background Decoration
• Voodoo Priestess/Tribal Sorceress
• Women as Reward
• Mrs. Male Character
• Unattractive Equals Evil
• Man with Boobs
• Positive Female Characters!

(Seriously, I'm more amused at myself for forgetting she's planned a whole episode to that topic.)

[Duckay]

I don't think the flaws should be ignored, and I'm sorry if I implied that, it's mostly... Hmm, how to express it... This isn't just down to Anita, but a lot of the pro-feminist voices I'd heard, but the general feel I got for what would make a 'good character', would essentially be a female Steve. Which would be nice to see, but, yeah, not very diverse. That's why I was curious as to what Anita, who has made a name for herself talking about these things, thought would make a good female character.

Well, a female Steve would be one example of a non-sexist female character. However, it's not the only one. I agree with you that a world full of Steves and female Steves (Stevettes?) would not be particularly diverse, but I also think there are other ways to do it. I'm very much under the impression that Anita agrees too, just that so far she's been unwilling to provide praise for any given female character (or, at least, humanoid ones) that don't also comment on how perhaps other aspects of the game are not as strong.

Of course, given that she's planning to do a whole episode on that subject, I'm not really surprised that she hasn't said much on the subject yet.

[Deedles]

I think what annoys me(note: this isn't aimed at Anita, but rather views of more extremist feminists(can't think of a better term), who use her videos as fodder, that I've seen) is the idea that if a female goes through ANY of these tropes she's instantly lost all credibility as a 'good' character. She is now JUST the trope, and nothing more. And I honestly find that view more dis-empowering than any trope, ever.

That's not Anita's fault, and I would never blame her for that, but I guess you could say that that's what I think is the bad side of it all.

Geeze, I also can't realise I forgot to do this, but this is her current planned set of topics, and I'll add a bit of subtle emphasis on one topic in particular.

• Damsel in Distress
• The Fighting F#@k Toy
• The Sexy Sidekick
• The Sexy Villainess
• Background Decoration
• Voodoo Priestess/Tribal Sorceress
• Women as Reward
• Mrs. Male Character
• Unattractive Equals Evil
• Man with Boobs
• Positive Female Characters!

(Seriously, I'm more amused at myself for forgetting she's planned a whole episode to that topic.)

Considering the speed she's been updating it's a ways off, but I'm happy that you pointed that. Though, she doesn't seem to of been following that list in order, so maybe it'll come sooner... though I imagine it would do best as a 'wrap-up' episode. Well, either way I'll look forward to seeing it!

[Duckay]

The thing is I think that's more a matter of degrees than of right/wrong.

If a female character fits into one of those tropes but is otherwise a strong character, she still fits that trope and I don't think we're helping anything by ignoring that on the grounds that the character is good in other ways. Of course, you are also correct that is wrong to do that in reverse too. Can we have a middle-ground?

[Deedles]

I want a middle-ground, that's what got me to ask the questions I did in the first place.

For example, I can admit that Yuna needs to be rescued in FFX, while none of the males ever need to be rescued(though that wouldn't remove the trope, since they're not really equal). And while Zelda certainly helps Link through the game she never gets him out of a situation of distress, where he is caught by someone, instead she just stops him from hitting roadblocks, while he actually needs to go and save her from Ganon.

So, yes, I can see the tropes and the flaws, but when someone claims that because of those tropes(that didn't need to happen in the first place, but they did) any of the achievements of those characters and all their good traits become void... That's when I get really annoyed and, honestly, will probably disregard their opinion on the matter to some degree because I find that they're just too extreme in one direction.

[korvys]

Do people often claim that? Other than Anita, who I don't think does, I've not gotten too into discussions about this stuff.

[Deedles]

I thought that I pointed out that it wasn't aimed at Anita, which is why I came here and asked for examples of good female characters by her since I was certain that she must of given some, even if I'd missed them.

I can't link to exact statements, but it's mostly shit I've seen on Twitter, and I finally decided to bring it up, because I thought it could be interesting and I hoped the answers would be informative(which they were).

That's it. =/

[korvys]

Oh, sorry. Yes, you were very clear you weren't talking about Anita. I was just trying to put my experience in context. I haven't been part of many discussions about this stuff, other than discussions around her.

I've not really seen anyone claim that a trope makes an otherwise ok character not ok, but then, I've sort of abandoned twitter at this point, so I was genuinely curious how common that is.

[Deedles]

Not too common, but these things kinda build up with me until I feel like bringing it up to talk about.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

For example, I can admit that Yuna needs to be rescued in FFX, while none of the males ever need to be rescued.

Tidus needed to be saved from his own stupidity.


And it's been a while since I've played FFX, but didn't Yuna manage to escape without Tidus's help using a summon? An escape attempt after trying to assassinate the main villain? An unsuccessful attempt as Tidus and crew got caught and basically forced Yuna to spare their lives.

[Deedles]

Yeah, I agree with you on that, but despite that I imagine it still falls under the trope.

As for Tidus needing to be saved from his own stupidity, while not entirely untrue isn't really the same.

[JackSlack]

Considering the speed she's been updating it's a ways off,

My current estimates range between Christmas 2017 and September 15th, 2021.

[Deedles]

Aw man.

[JackSlack]

I need to update it, though. I realise now that "Positive Female Role-Models" is missing, and that I've omitted a clear and important projection technique.

[AdmiralMemo]

1. I think the "Female Steve" should be called "Stephanie" personally.

2. I'd like to see those Mass Effect statistics redone by removing all of the "completely default" characters, where the player didn't change anything about the character. That would give you more of a picture of players who care about customizing the character and would probably give you a higher than 18% distribution.

[JustAName]

I dunno, Stephanie forms a specific mental picture for me, and she is not a Steve-ette.

[Telaril]

This is long, and it's long because there are no easy answers. Blarg.

I don't think the flaws should be ignored, and I'm sorry if I implied that, it's mostly... Hmm, how to express it... This isn't just down to Anita, but a lot of the pro-feminist voices I'd heard, but the general feel I got for what would make a 'good character', would essentially be a female Steve. Which would be nice to see, but, yeah, not very diverse. That's why I was curious as to what Anita, who has made a name for herself talking about these things, thought would make a good female character.

There's one real answer to this, and it's probably going to be frustrating.

We need more female characters who are varied and different, because there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this. It's easier to have a bunch of good female characters when the cast of a thing is 50/50. Instead we usually get 17-33%. Write a bunch of female characters who are as varied in agency, motivation, opportunity, quirks, appearance, and awesomeness as male characters are. Fixing the ratio makes it infinitely easier to solve the problem.

Hamlet is a good male character. Now imagine if, from now, on every piece of media contained only one prominent male character and that character had Hamlet's personality and story arc. "A good male character is someone who is emotionally unstable and indecisive, who is brought down by his own flaws in the end." Cut, print!

There's a joke among writers and that critics can tell you that something's wrong, but they can't actually fix it. If Ebert were as good at making movies as he was at criticizing them, he'd have been a director instead. The best critics realize this... and stick more to examples of what's wrong and occasional examples of what they think worked. Anita doesn't try to solve the problem because that's a problem for writers, and it's super complicated. How complicated? This post is the simplest one I could write.

Hamlet is a good male character. So is Spock. There's no template for 'good female character' any more than there's one for 'good male character.' We need more female characters, proportionally, so that their motivations and personalities can be varied, and the one character in a game or show who happens to be female doesn't have to be all things to all people.

Game of Thrones is a great example of this: Arya and Daenerys are popular, but I also know girls whose favorite is Sansa, Catlyn, Brienne, Margaery, etc. There are so many drastically different women, everyone can find someone to identify with. And yet I've seen women rant at other women for liking Arya over Sansa, because Arya is just a "man with boobs" while Sansa is a "more like a real woman," and that's bullshit too.

The desire to pick the one example that does it right and then use that as a template is a HUGE mistake. It feels necessary because people often insist there's only room for one woman in a work, so we have to make her a good character who will satisfy everyone. That's the problem: pick any of the primary male characters in the Avengers. Make a list and roll a D6: Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye, Captain America, Nick Fury. I got a five, so Cap it is! Cap is great! But is he your favorite Avenger? Is he everyone's? Do this for each of the characters. If you could make a new movie using only one of those characters, who would you pick? Answers will vary widely, but if you're a guy going into the theater, you're likely going to find a character who makes you happy. If you're a girl and Black Widow doesn't make you happy, you might say that aspects of her characterization make her a bad female character, because she took the one "girl" spot and effectively prevented you from seeing a character you'd like. The fact that there's only "room" for one female character in most franchises is one thing that leads people to try (and fail) to come up with a universal set of rules that will produce a perfect female character. The other factor is internalized patriarchy.

Someone wrote an essay last Oscar season about Lupita Nyong'o and Jennifer Lawrence. A lot of critics of both genders thought Lupita should win, so they tore Jennifer a new one... talking about how she was silly and stupid, while Lupita was smart and dignified. Just the previous year, these same critics had been praising Lawrence's down-to-earth nature, but they turned on her the instant there was someone "better." "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE ACTRESS," the commentator wrote - while there are a bunch of ways to be a good actor, to be a good 'woman' you have to conform to whatever woman we've temporarily decided is the current template. That's bullshit: Nyong'o and Lawrence are both awesome in entirely different ways.

This one-size-fits-all "good female character" approach has actually lead to something I wasn't able to name until recently: Trinity Syndrome. Women are given strength and skill and all these great characteristics, and then they're given nothing to do. They do something awesome in act one, and it barely comes up again, fading entirely to the background by the time the male hero saves the day in act 3.

And this relates to another thing you bring up:

I think what annoys me(note: this isn't aimed at Anita, but rather views of more extremist feminists(can't think of a better term), who use her videos as fodder, that I've seen) is the idea that if a female goes through ANY of these tropes she's instantly lost all credibility as a 'good' character. She is now JUST the trope, and nothing more. And I honestly find that view more dis-empowering than any trope, ever.

The next time you come up with an example (other than like… a young kid complaining on their blog) of a serious commentator claiming that a character's positive traits become "void" when they fall prey to a trope, I'd like to see you link it here. This isn't a 'I don't believe you' challenge, I just don't see it as often as you do.

I do see, more frequently "aw, but you were doing so well!" This is what happens when a character looks like they're not going to fall prey to any of the tropes, and then they do, and it breaks your heart. My best example of this was Kate Bishop as Hawkeye. I read her story with slowly growing glee. She was great - smart, confident, flawed enough to be interesting, and then BAM! they gave her a rape origin story, and I was so sad. I actually quit reading Young Avengers for over a year because of it. I'd been reading that comic as an escape, and then they punched me in the face with the most overused female comic hero trope EVER. While it didn't ruin the character, it really seriously hurt my enjoyment.

Then, six months later, people started posting panels from the new Hawkeye book, and they looked so good and Kate was so awesome. I started reading them and they were great and now Kate is one of my top three Marvel characters. But if it weren't for that one trope, she'd be perfect. The trope didn't ruin her, but it hurt my enjoyment a lot. I think a lot of the people talking about a character being ruined are probably just hurting in that same way, and don't have the words to express it.

The other problem comes from different definitions of "good." I love Zelda, especially Ocarina of Time Zelda. She's great. But is she "good"? Like, a good example of what to do? I'm not sure I'd say she is. Zelda is a bunch of super problematic stuff that years of artistry, imagination, and personal investment have turned into an interesting and beloved character. Could you set out to follow that same pattern and come up with something good? Chances of success are low.

Zelda isn't valueless, but she's not good enough. She's not a replacement for female heroes who get to do things, and that's how she's often used by people who don't understand.
"We need good female characters!"
"But what about Zelda?"
"She's a princess who gets rescued. Not what we need. Not good enough."

It's easy to interpret that "not good enough" as "worthless," but you should endeavor not to. If media had equal numbers of male and female characters who got rescued all the time, Zelda would probably be held up as one of the coolest of the rescued/helper characters. Until that time, I'd avoid holding her up as an example of a good character - just because "good" can have so many different interpretations.

This is one of the difficulties that is always present when discussing tropes: since their ubiquity is part of the problem, every example of a trope is part of the problem, even when it appears in a balanced and nuanced work. When someone's talking about how bad it is that people of color are often shown as criminals, you can easily come up with a lot of great PoC characters who are criminals, from Aladdin to Omar from The Wire. Those characters are great and there's a lot of reason to love them, but yeah… in a way they are part of the problem.

Now we get to the single biggest, most difficult thing to process in media critique. Anita talks about how it's fine to enjoy problematic media while still criticizing the problems, but there's a missing piece to that statement, something it took me a while to figure out myself.

Practically everything is problematic in some way.

Human society has problems. Some of these problems take the form of internalized beliefs about races, genders, and sexual orientation. Everybody who lives in society has internalized some of these harmful beliefs, and all our beliefs come out in the art we create. Most art is problematic. Problematic in different ways, and to different degrees, but still problematic. If we hated all problematic things or yelled at everyone who likes problematic things, we'd never be able to enjoy anything. I used Game of Thrones as an example of a work of media that I think does a lot of things really right, but I know people who hate it and think it's horribly sexist, because it uses so many tropes about rape and often sexualizes characters.

Ok, so if everything is problematic, why bother? You can't win. You can't get it perfect, so why try at all?

The goal isn't "perfect," it's "better." A lot of the tropes Anita brings up are used almost automatically, without even thinking about them. The goal is to help people think, and to get media to a point where the problems aren't as blatant.

Fifty years ago, it was perfectly acceptable to have the most racist caricature of black people imaginable in a cartoon. Google that stuff, it is VILE. Now there's the problem that black characters are underrepresented and stereotyped. That is still a problem, but it's a better problem to have. The "man with boobs" problem is a better problem to have than "all female characters are identical victims".

Our goal is to continue to get better problems.

[AlexanderDitto]

*applauds*

Well said.

[AdmiralMemo]

One thing I always take from TV Tropes is their "Tropes are not bad." motto. They also have a "Tropes are not good." motto. There's nothing wrong with tropes in and of themselves. For example, a rape origin story isn't bad by itself. It's just the prevalence of so many of them, and, in hand with that, so many poorly-done versions of it. This is the issue that I think Anita is trying to fight and people are misinterpreting. Having a "Damsel in Distress" or a "Sexy Sidekick" doesn't have to be bad. It's when they are simply those things, and nothing more, that it becomes a problem. It's when we are getting only those things that it becomes a problem.

Like Alex was saying, there's nothing wrong with the "Steve" character, and he can be done well. It's just that he's everywhere that's the problem. It doesn't matter how good or bad something is when it's everywhere. You could be sitting there eating the best-made chocolate ice cream in the world and (assuming you like chocolate) still not feel like eating it, because you've already had 6 bowls of chocolate ice cream from other places.

[Deedles]

This is long, and it's long because there are no easy answers. Blarg.

I don't think the flaws should be ignored, and I'm sorry if I implied that, it's mostly... Hmm, how to express it... This isn't just down to Anita, but a lot of the pro-feminist voices I'd heard, but the general feel I got for what would make a 'good character', would essentially be a female Steve. Which would be nice to see, but, yeah, not very diverse. That's why I was curious as to what Anita, who has made a name for herself talking about these things, thought would make a good female character.

There's one real answer to this, and it's probably going to be frustrating.

We need more female characters who are varied and different, because there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this. It's easier to have a bunch of good female characters when the cast of a thing is 50/50. Instead we usually get 17-33%. Write a bunch of female characters who are as varied in agency, motivation, opportunity, quirks, appearance, and awesomeness as male characters are. Fixing the ratio makes it infinitely easier to solve the problem.

Hamlet is a good male character. Now imagine if, from now, on every piece of media contained only one prominent male character and that character had Hamlet's personality and story arc. "A good male character is someone who is emotionally unstable and indecisive, who is brought down by his own flaws in the end." Cut, print!

There's a joke among writers and that critics can tell you that something's wrong, but they can't actually fix it. If Ebert were as good at making movies as he was at criticizing them, he'd have been a director instead. The best critics realize this... and stick more to examples of what's wrong and occasional examples of what they think worked. Anita doesn't try to solve the problem because that's a problem for writers, and it's super complicated. How complicated? This post is the simplest one I could write.

Hamlet is a good male character. So is Spock. There's no template for 'good female character' any more than there's one for 'good male character.' We need more female characters, proportionally, so that their motivations and personalities can be varied, and the one character in a game or show who happens to be female doesn't have to be all things to all people.

Game of Thrones is a great example of this: Arya and Daenerys are popular, but I also know girls whose favorite is Sansa, Catlyn, Brienne, Margaery, etc. There are so many drastically different women, everyone can find someone to identify with. And yet I've seen women rant at other women for liking Arya over Sansa, because Arya is just a "man with boobs" while Sansa is a "more like a real woman," and that's bullshit too.

The desire to pick the one example that does it right and then use that as a template is a HUGE mistake. It feels necessary because people often insist there's only room for one woman in a work, so we have to make her a good character who will satisfy everyone. That's the problem: pick any of the primary male characters in the Avengers. Make a list and roll a D6: Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye, Captain America, Nick Fury. I got a five, so Cap it is! Cap is great! But is he your favorite Avenger? Is he everyone's? Do this for each of the characters. If you could make a new movie using only one of those characters, who would you pick? Answers will vary widely, but if you're a guy going into the theater, you're likely going to find a character who makes you happy. If you're a girl and Black Widow doesn't make you happy, you might say that aspects of her characterization make her a bad female character, because she took the one "girl" spot and effectively prevented you from seeing a character you'd like. The fact that there's only "room" for one female character in most franchises is one thing that leads people to try (and fail) to come up with a universal set of rules that will produce a perfect female character. The other factor is internalized patriarchy.

Someone wrote an essay last Oscar season about Lupita Nyong'o and Jennifer Lawrence. A lot of critics of both genders thought Lupita should win, so they tore Jennifer a new one... talking about how she was silly and stupid, while Lupita was smart and dignified. Just the previous year, these same critics had been praising Lawrence's down-to-earth nature, but they turned on her the instant there was someone "better." "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE ACTRESS," the commentator wrote - while there are a bunch of ways to be a good actor, to be a good 'woman' you have to conform to whatever woman we've temporarily decided is the current template. That's bullshit: Nyong'o and Lawrence are both awesome in entirely different ways.

This one-size-fits-all "good female character" approach has actually lead to something I wasn't able to name until recently: Trinity Syndrome. Women are given strength and skill and all these great characteristics, and then they're given nothing to do. They do something awesome in act one, and it barely comes up again, fading entirely to the background by the time the male hero saves the day in act 3.

And this relates to another thing you bring up:

I think what annoys me(note: this isn't aimed at Anita, but rather views of more extremist feminists(can't think of a better term), who use her videos as fodder, that I've seen) is the idea that if a female goes through ANY of these tropes she's instantly lost all credibility as a 'good' character. She is now JUST the trope, and nothing more. And I honestly find that view more dis-empowering than any trope, ever.

The next time you come up with an example (other than like… a young kid complaining on their blog) of a serious commentator claiming that a character's positive traits become "void" when they fall prey to a trope, I'd like to see you link it here. This isn't a 'I don't believe you' challenge, I just don't see it as often as you do.

I do see, more frequently "aw, but you were doing so well!" This is what happens when a character looks like they're not going to fall prey to any of the tropes, and then they do, and it breaks your heart. My best example of this was Kate Bishop as Hawkeye. I read her story with slowly growing glee. She was great - smart, confident, flawed enough to be interesting, and then BAM! they gave her a rape origin story, and I was so sad. I actually quit reading Young Avengers for over a year because of it. I'd been reading that comic as an escape, and then they punched me in the face with the most overused female comic hero trope EVER. While it didn't ruin the character, it really seriously hurt my enjoyment.

Then, six months later, people started posting panels from the new Hawkeye book, and they looked so good and Kate was so awesome. I started reading them and they were great and now Kate is one of my top three Marvel characters. But if it weren't for that one trope, she'd be perfect. The trope didn't ruin her, but it hurt my enjoyment a lot. I think a lot of the people talking about a character being ruined are probably just hurting in that same way, and don't have the words to express it.

The other problem comes from different definitions of "good." I love Zelda, especially Ocarina of Time Zelda. She's great. But is she "good"? Like, a good example of what to do? I'm not sure I'd say she is. Zelda is a bunch of super problematic stuff that years of artistry, imagination, and personal investment have turned into an interesting and beloved character. Could you set out to follow that same pattern and come up with something good? Chances of success are low.

Zelda isn't valueless, but she's not good enough. She's not a replacement for female heroes who get to do things, and that's how she's often used by people who don't understand.
"We need good female characters!"
"But what about Zelda?"
"She's a princess who gets rescued. Not what we need. Not good enough."

It's easy to interpret that "not good enough" as "worthless," but you should endeavor not to. If media had equal numbers of male and female characters who got rescued all the time, Zelda would probably be held up as one of the coolest of the rescued/helper characters. Until that time, I'd avoid holding her up as an example of a good character - just because "good" can have so many different interpretations.

This is one of the difficulties that is always present when discussing tropes: since their ubiquity is part of the problem, every example of a trope is part of the problem, even when it appears in a balanced and nuanced work. When someone's talking about how bad it is that people of color are often shown as criminals, you can easily come up with a lot of great PoC characters who are criminals, from Aladdin to Omar from The Wire. Those characters are great and there's a lot of reason to love them, but yeah… in a way they are part of the problem.

Now we get to the single biggest, most difficult thing to process in media critique. Anita talks about how it's fine to enjoy problematic media while still criticizing the problems, but there's a missing piece to that statement, something it took me a while to figure out myself.

Practically everything is problematic in some way.

Human society has problems. Some of these problems take the form of internalized beliefs about races, genders, and sexual orientation. Everybody who lives in society has internalized some of these harmful beliefs, and all our beliefs come out in the art we create. Most art is problematic. Problematic in different ways, and to different degrees, but still problematic. If we hated all problematic things or yelled at everyone who likes problematic things, we'd never be able to enjoy anything. I used Game of Thrones as an example of a work of media that I think does a lot of things really right, but I know people who hate it and think it's horribly sexist, because it uses so many tropes about rape and often sexualizes characters.

Ok, so if everything is problematic, why bother? You can't win. You can't get it perfect, so why try at all?

The goal isn't "perfect," it's "better." A lot of the tropes Anita brings up are used almost automatically, without even thinking about them. The goal is to help people think, and to get media to a point where the problems aren't as blatant.

Fifty years ago, it was perfectly acceptable to have the most racist caricature of black people imaginable in a cartoon. Google that stuff, it is VILE. Now there's the problem that black characters are underrepresented and stereotyped. That is still a problem, but it's a better problem to have. The "man with boobs" problem is a better problem to have than "all female characters are identical victims".

Our goal is to continue to get better problems.

I just woke up, so haven't read through the ending of the post because I'm too tired to focus, but I'm not sure if you realized that my questions and thoughts had already been addressed. They were mostly annoyances on my part that I wanted to bring up to hear peoples thoughts, and as such I don't really have anything to reply to you, not because the content of your post isn't good, but quite the opposite, you make good points, and as far as I'm concerned I've not argued against those points. If it seems that way then I apologize if I offended anyone, since that wasn't my intent.

Edit: Had coffee and read through the rest now, and I still agree with what I said earlier, in particular that you make good points.

Edit 2: I went and found an article that I had read on the Tomb Raider (2013) game that I disagreed with. Article Link

It's well written, but I really found it tiring that she kept referring back to 'Old Lara' when 'Old Lara' you begin to follow when she's already experienced because she's been doing this for a while, but Tomb Raider(2013) is a reboot, and also tries to explain Lara's origin, so having her be the super woman that she is in the old games would just seem incredibly unrealistic to me.

NOW what I will admit is that seeing as the continuation of the reboot isn't out yet I don't know if Lara Croft will continue to be vulnerable in the same way that she was in Tomb Raider(2013), but either way, I felt like it did a good job of explaining where she comes from, and what kind of shit she went through to become the badass that she is(This is somewhat assuming that they do make new Lara into a badass along the same lines of Old Lara.). Anyway, that's my two cents on it, since you asked for an example of where I think all the good parts of a character get overshadowed because they're not 'good enough'.

Oh, somewhat unrelated, but still related since it's mentioned in the article; Rosenberg's comments were way outta line, and really pissed me off. I did really NOT appreciate that rape of a character was used as a hype tool, especially when it was a bald-faced lie to create outrage and hype. It cheapens rape, and that's disgusting.

[CancerBottle]

This article changed my mind about that California law I discussed a while back.

http://www.vox.com/2014/10/16/6982559/yes-means-yes-ezra-klein-people-wrong

[JustAName]

Thank you.