I think you missed the Kojima roasting on the last few pages of this thread lol.
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Why women criticise sexualised character designs |OT2| I have no pants and I must scream (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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I think you missed the Kojima roasting on the last few pages of this thread lol.
That was meant to be sarcastic. Please allow me to amend that.
EDIT: Does anyone else have issues editing posts? I'm using Firefox And sometimes the editing window freezes and I have to refresh the page to make it work.
Yep. Even with my limited time with the game so far, she's a great villain. Something I've been starving for on a star wars game since Kotor.
The Ninth sister is also pretty cool.
I really love that Ninth Sister makes an appearance here. She was great in Soule's Vader comic, but her fate was left uncertain after a battle, so I glad that she lives for least another few years.
I love this picture too actually, cause everyone here were first introduced in that comic series (Second Sister only had a single non speaking appearance through).
I was excited for this game after loving titanfall 2 and really wanted to support respawn but (and this may sound petty) the protagonist reveal killed any desire I had to play this. I may get it on a discount a year from now but this really hit me with how fed up i am of white male protagonist ESPECIALLY in a star wars setting. The amount of cool female characters throughout the game that ive seen just make it hurt more.So, Jedi: Fallen Order has a lot of great female designs. I'm especially in love with the main villain, "Second Sister". But a lot of the NPCs are female too, in all sorts of roles including engineers, scrapyard workers, and pilots. My only main gripe is that 100% of stormtroopers you fight are male, but I guess that's an artifact of it being codified into Star Wars lore.
90% of the facility died. Did a single relationship actually survive that game?
Since of the start of the Disney Era, in most of the Major media only white dude MC's have been The Jedi Fallen Order guy iirc.
You right, while I was writing that i had tunnel vision. Was just thinking about Luke, Anakin, and Kyle Katarn. Wasn't thinking about Rey or Ezra. Still there are two characters I would have vastly preferred to play as in Fallen Order than Jerome.
yeah didn't mean it to be dismissive, Star Wars done a really good job with having a variety of characters of different backgrounds in the new canon.
I have less of an issue with the actor but having read New Dawn and watched rebels the game seems very similar to Kanan's story.
I am coming off as an asshole towards the actor and i dont mean to. I have nothing against him personally.
Unrelated but im also just not a fan of celebritys being original video game characters (all of death stranding) because it really takes me out of the originality of the character.
Kazuda is coded as east-asian, and his show has quite a few supporting PoC. I was pleasantly surprised when they revealed Iden for BF2. But you are generally right and I have my... Annoyances with how they treat Finn.
Unironically though, it's amazing that the mind that gave us Quiet and the B&B unit also gave us The Boss. Did someone else design The Boss, and as he put on years he became less shy about showing off his inner dirty old wanker? Did he make a bet with someone daring him to hit both ends of the scale?
It might sound weird and even insensitive to say this, but I'm of two minds about Stormtroopers not being all white men. The Empire was originally an obvious proxy of Nazism; that's also the reason there are no alien Stormtroopers. Making the Empire non-racist and non-sexist kind of loses the metaphor; they just become generic villains with no applicability to modern politics. In a way, it's "keeping politics out of muh escapist movies".
On the other hand, I understand the Empire has cool aesthetics that a lot of fans love, and villains are always cool, so it stands to reason these fans would like to play Empire characters that look like them. It's the "wow cool robot" / "wow cool future" thing all over again (appropriately, since Gundam's Zeon is another obvious Nazi expy, yet also has a ton of fans). It's like asking for corporations in Cyberpunk to be portrayed as less morally bankrupt because they like their logos and CEOs. Doesn't the political message get lost at that point?
I dunno, am I overthinking it and way off base here? Perhaps the portrayal of the Empire as space Nazis at this point is like trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube and the political metaphor is lost already?
Edit: To pre-empt the "you cannot have Nazis in modern family-friendly entertainment", let's not forget about Marvel's Hydra, which had no trouble keeping the Nazi theme including the racism and sexism.
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The same mind originally wanted The Boss to go into battle with one boob out because he wanted her to have a tattoo of a snake that would look like it's laughing when the breast bounced.
I'm guessing that someone had to step in to get Kojima and Shinkawa to put their inner wankers back where they belong (at least until the final scene).
It's not an age thing because Kojima used to be even more open about his perviness before MGS, with Policenauts infamously allowing the player to grope every female character.
Yeah, I'm just guessing The Boss was just his "stopped clock being right twice a day" moment of lucky serendipity, and even he doesn't understand why she's a great character. Hell, at this point I'm almost sure he doesn't even consider her a particularly good character himself. It's downright tragic. :(
I'm guilty of making that joke to my friends, partially to try and convince them to play as female characters out of their comfort zones but I made it non the less.
Truthfully I just much prefer female heroines in games and books and will always choose it if I have the option regardless of game from Dark Souls, Mass Effect, Dishonored 2 etc.
I recognize him as the actor that plays Ian Gallagher, a LGBT character, in Shameless (one of my favorite show adaptations). Cameron also played an interesting character in Gotham
Not having played the game myself yet, and from the game trailers, I really can't dismiss Jerome as just a "let's have a white dude MC, case number #9000..."
Adding to the characters you mentioned, we also have Versio and Jyn as leads in their respective media.
Qi'ra and the Cloud-Riders leader single-handedly carried an otherwise snoozefest movie! Not even the new depiction of Lando saved it for me...
Despite a lot of negatives regarding the new trilogy, it seems Disney are taking a positive (and actually active) stance regarding diversity. I will add that making Mara Jade non-canon was truly nonsense, she and Darth Lumiya were the best characters in the EU!!
Cross-post of what I said about Death Stranding in the OT, if some of you are interested. Some very light spoilers have been blurred.
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So I finished the game yesterday. Honestly, I bought the game on a whim because it looked like the gameplay was something I could enjoy (I really did), and I desperately needed something good to play. But the game being made by Kojima really made me prepare for the worst.
For background – as I extensively wrote in the other women thread each time the subject of Kojima was brought up – growing up I really loved some of Kojima's work like MGS 1, 2 and 3. But starting with 4, I began to be extremely uncomfortable about how he was treating women in his stories (defining moment in MGS4: The Beauty and the Beast Unit. Ugh...) It really affected me. And it definitely didn't get better with his following games (defining moment in MGS GZ: Paz), and MGS5 was just ridiculous (defining moment in MGS5: Quiet. No Kojima, I DO NOT feel ashamed of my words and deeds, you creep!) It affected me so much that I began looking back at the earlier MGS games I once liked, and the only thing I could see (while not necessarily as obvious as his more modern games) was the misogyny. As I wrote in the other thread, and I stand by it, Kojima's usual convoluted way of telling stories is not "deep", the stories are just obfuscated by a lot of opaque pseudoscience and pseudospiritual stuff, which gives the illusion of being profound and meaningful. But when you piece everything together, all that is left are easy metaphors and the awful misogyny.
Now, about Death Stranding. Honestly, I was really pleasantly surprised. I honestly was half-expecting bikini unlockables and "sexy" photo ops. None of that happened. And the women were generally not presented in a egregiously sexualized fashion. Even moments where it would have been obvious for Kojima to go full-on with the sexualization, like the Fragile shower scene, or when she has to walk under the rain in her underwear, are very well done. I think the shower scene was tasteful, showing Fragile from the back, and only revealing her shoulders to show her abnormal aging. Same thing with the rain scene, even if she was in her underwear. I didn't have the feeling that it was sexualized. Generally, the outfits were good, with maybe the notable exception of Amelie with her evening red dress and high heels and the scene where she is running on this very rocky beach in high heels with Sam made me laugh out loud. I'm really looking forward to the time where fictional "sexy" woman characters will stop being in high heels. But even her case wasn't that egregious. Especially compared with the MGS games. Also, even if names like Fragile or Mama could lead to believe that the story would include very bad characterizations, I didn't had this impression while the story unfolded.
The only thing that I found to be very "Kojima-esque" about the depiction of women in the game was that every important woman character in the story is essentially there to suffer. Nothing as bad as Paz from MGS GZ (ugh!), but still. It could be argued that even the men are suffering in this game, but it's still nowhere near the degree of sophistication and intensity than what is happening to the women.
So I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not sure if it's a sign that Kojima is slowly getting better, or if it's just a fluke, but I'll take it.
As a quick note about the gameplay, I had a lot of fun playing the game. The traversal gameplay is so good! I had a lot of fun in the 65 (!) hours it took me to beat it.
---
So I finished the game yesterday. Honestly, I bought the game on a whim because it looked like the gameplay was something I could enjoy (I really did), and I desperately needed something good to play. But the game being made by Kojima really made me prepare for the worst.
For background – as I extensively wrote in the other women thread each time the subject of Kojima was brought up – growing up I really loved some of Kojima's work like MGS 1, 2 and 3. But starting with 4, I began to be extremely uncomfortable about how he was treating women in his stories (defining moment in MGS4: The Beauty and the Beast Unit. Ugh...) It really affected me. And it definitely didn't get better with his following games (defining moment in MGS GZ: Paz), and MGS5 was just ridiculous (defining moment in MGS5: Quiet. No Kojima, I DO NOT feel ashamed of my words and deeds, you creep!) It affected me so much that I began looking back at the earlier MGS games I once liked, and the only thing I could see (while not necessarily as obvious as his more modern games) was the misogyny. As I wrote in the other thread, and I stand by it, Kojima's usual convoluted way of telling stories is not "deep", the stories are just obfuscated by a lot of opaque pseudoscience and pseudospiritual stuff, which gives the illusion of being profound and meaningful. But when you piece everything together, all that is left are easy metaphors and the awful misogyny.
Now, about Death Stranding. Honestly, I was really pleasantly surprised. I honestly was half-expecting bikini unlockables and "sexy" photo ops. None of that happened. And the women were generally not presented in a egregiously sexualized fashion. Even moments where it would have been obvious for Kojima to go full-on with the sexualization, like the Fragile shower scene, or when she has to walk under the rain in her underwear, are very well done. I think the shower scene was tasteful, showing Fragile from the back, and only revealing her shoulders to show her abnormal aging. Same thing with the rain scene, even if she was in her underwear. I didn't have the feeling that it was sexualized. Generally, the outfits were good, with maybe the notable exception of Amelie with her evening red dress and high heels and the scene where she is running on this very rocky beach in high heels with Sam made me laugh out loud. I'm really looking forward to the time where fictional "sexy" woman characters will stop being in high heels. But even her case wasn't that egregious. Especially compared with the MGS games. Also, even if names like Fragile or Mama could lead to believe that the story would include very bad characterizations, I didn't had this impression while the story unfolded.
The only thing that I found to be very "Kojima-esque" about the depiction of women in the game was that every important woman character in the story is essentially there to suffer. Nothing as bad as Paz from MGS GZ (ugh!), but still. It could be argued that even the men are suffering in this game, but it's still nowhere near the degree of sophistication and intensity than what is happening to the women.
So I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not sure if it's a sign that Kojima is slowly getting better, or if it's just a fluke, but I'll take it.
As a quick note about the gameplay, I had a lot of fun playing the game. The traversal gameplay is so good! I had a lot of fun in the 65 (!) hours it took me to beat it.
I haven't completed it yet (on episode 8) but the rest of the game makes me even more dissapointed that the email is in and the Fragile scene is framed the way it is.
Because the rest of it is so restrained and normal (especially vs past Kojima), like he was almost there.
"I'm part Corn, like some sort of CornDogMan."
Followed by an email that does another dose of overexposition. 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
I never played MGS4, just 1, parts of 3, and V(aka peace walker 2) All I know of MGS4 is the cutscenes reached maximum overdrive and peak kojima.jpg.
No, you're not overthinking it at all. In fact, you've precisely described the problem with The First Order from the sequel trilogy, and why they've largely fallen flat on their face compared to The Empire. Everything about them has always screamed as an attempt to make the aesthetics of The Empire... well... sexier than ever. And this has come at the cost of any meaningful political messaging - which was the core of every star wars film Geroge Lucas ever made. His attempts at space politics were always blatant and didn't always succeed (coughprequelscough), but at least their was a wider point to his films that was applicable to real life.
Funny story in relation to this: if you go back to 2005 and read critical reviews of Episode III, you'll realize that the biggest reason critics gave it more of a pass than the first two prequel films - despite it being just as bad from virtually every standpoint - was because it was an unambiguous anti-Dubya polemic. And after Bush was out of office, some critics (including none other than Roger Ebert) eventually revisited the film and realized how much it sucked.
Yeah, to credit Lucas, the prequels didn't shy away from the politics. The fascists rose to power from the beginning of a manufactured taxation dispute that led to a separatist movement that was then run on both sides by a single person until a senatorial body could be convinced to concede power for the sake of a "stronger" force. It charted a pretty clear route to space nazis.
George was a man of principles. Nute Gunray was named after Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan.
George was a man of principles. Nute Gunray was named after Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan.
Even The Force itself has political overtones. "Fear leads to hate, hate leads to suffering" is as much a political message as is an ethics principle. Fighting with hatred in your heart, no matter how justified you (think you) are, eventually turns you into a monster. All of these are antifascistic messages at their core. I vividly remember watching the movies with my father as a kid, and him, a science-loving engineer and one of the most intelligent people I've met, not quite understanding how you could fight without hatred. It was only at that moment that I realized how and why the concept could be insurmountably counterintuitive to others.
We've just grown up taking all of this for granted, so that it seems ethically obvious to us now; which in a way is the strongest compliment you could give to the effectiveness of a movie's message.
In MGS1, Psycho Mantis and Sniper Wolf tell you their story with their dying breath, Vulcan Raven and Liquid do it before fighting you, you never fight Decoy Octopus, and Ocelot doesn't die, so yeah, every single one of the bosses that die tells you their backstory. :D
We've just grown up taking all of this for granted, so that it seems ethically obvious to us now; which in a way is the strongest compliment you could give to the effectiveness of a movie's message.
In MGS1, Psycho Mantis and Sniper Wolf tell you their story with their dying breath, Vulcan Raven and Liquid do it before fighting you, you never fight Decoy Octopus, and Ocelot doesn't die, so yeah, every single one of the bosses that die tells you their backstory. :D
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Nah, I agree. Also, while the toothpaste may be out of the tube, it's kinda sad that they diluted the old Imperial themes in the name of inclusiveness (=laudable) to, well, sell more movies/games, i.e. make more money at the end of the day (=not so laudable).
Yeah, those are complex, mangled feelings 🤷♀️
I dunno. I'd argue that's much more debatable. While hate isn't a good thing, aren't you hating hate there? Or even fearing hate? Which, you know, leads to hate? Is that not contradictory? You have two hours.
(it's the age old dispute "can you tolerate intolerance" 🤷♀️ )
I don't need more than two minutes, hahah. You can point out something is bad without "hating" or "fearing" it, and in a way, that's exactly the point I was making about my father not getting the "fighting without hatred in your heart" thing.
I think people may see it as "debatable" because we were raised in a society that finally figured out that hatred is a bad thing; at least rationally, if not always emotionally. This was not always the case; the justification of hatred has been a core pillar of political ideologies for a very long time. And of course, we're seeing a resurgence of hatred in mainstream politics now, which not coincidentally goes hand in hand with the resurgence of fascism. Fear, hatred and fascism are one and the same. It's really no coincidence the Force as a tangible version of one's ideology features prominently in a movie where the villains are space Nazis.
Of course. At one point, you may have to actually fight it though. You don't need hate to fight. But you need to be clearheaded about what you're fighting for, why you're fighting for it, and most importantly how.
It's hard not to see the resurgence of fascism as the inaction of the many (not to mention the potential complicity in some cases). Plus fascism is such an overused word everyone throws at the face of the other, which oftentimes loses a lot of its meaning. I mean, some people tend to throw that word at ecologist movements because, you know, they wanna setup a "green dictatorship" (because they think some products should be banned due to their heavy environmental footprint).
I'm just not sure what to do with this word anymore. I'm sure even Donald fucking Trump throws it at the face of some of its political opponents (yeah I know, the irony and all that, but still, when everyone throws the word around, it's becoming harder and harder to see what it means).
Yes, exactly. Star Wars isn't about not fighting for what it's right, otherwise it would be a very short saga. :D But it is about fighting without hatred, and this is because hatred sweks the perception of what is right.
Sure, but we cannot let disingenuous actors dillute the meaning of the word, and we sure as hell cannot let them make us stop using the word when it fits. When I say fascism, I mean fascism.
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism[1][2] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy[3].
I mean Nute Gunray is also seen as a racist caricature of Asian people so I think if George was trying to throw some shade at white Republican politicians he failed.
I agree.
But, going by that definition, you do understand that this is close to being applicable to a lot of "democracies", right?
I mean if I look at my own country, France, we have a far-right government (ultra-liberalism), authoritarian (look at protest management), characterized by heavy centralized power (our president is extremely powerful and our parliament is very weak, see "fifth republic"), forcible suppression of any opposition deemed unacceptable (again, see recent protest incidents, two deaths, dozens of mutilations), strong regimentation of society (stranded social mobility), and of the economy (ultra-liberalism or gtfo).
The only thing we lacked was ultranationalism ... and we're for a few months now in a wave of renewed Muslim obsession which stinks to the umpteenth degree.
But then again this may be a little off topic.
On the Kojima names, one thing to maybe point out is that he's doing that from the perspective of another language. It's kinda like when English-speaking creatives name characters based on names for shit in other languages. Japanese games put together crazy combinations of English words all the time because it probably sounds cool and foreign to them.
Umberto Eco wrote a great article on Ur-Fascism, which is basically fascism for a modern age, which itself has much more to do with controlling how and what people think about: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism
And yes, most late-stage capitalist "democracies" are basically a step removed from fascism at this point. In name they are democracies, in practice they are highly regimented and largely dictatorial states, ruled by an ever dwindling number of elites. While it is often easy to point to singular individuals as the "cause" for this, the reality is that it's a small number of people with a large amount of wealth who are typically the ones most interested in such a state of affairs.
The reasoning, however horrific, is largely a result of a combination of fear and a need to feel in control. Mostly then pushed onto other people, including the recent resurgence of racism, sexism, and dictatorial behavior. At its heart, fascism is not that far removed from religious fundamentalism in its philosophy, its primary difference is in execution (which is to say that religious fundamentalists tend be much more... open... about their hatred).
Is that the same Nakey Jakey that has a Youtube channel?
Of course. Democracy is as efficient a path to fascism as any other, as Nazis themselves exemplify.
I forgot to say that this is a very good piece you shared. Thanks for the link.
I have a question, Kojima is terrible at portrayals of women in general but isnt the thread about character designs or has it evolved to portrayals? I haven't played Death Stranding but I like the female character designs even if the portrayal is probably not great but I haven't been spoiled about anything really so idk.
It's both. And the game has a very specific scene that would qualify even under a more strict interpretation of the thread.
I'm woefully out of the loop, but this is pretty awful. I hate to see prominent posters like you go, but I understand if you don't feel safe and respected here. Whatever you decide, I wish you nothing but happiness.
Just started reading this and it is bad. Mod team in importante topics like this one or the Palestine-Israel conflict are awful.
It is a shame this place admins and mods did not learn anything from the other site downfall. Apparently it is really hard to say they fucked up, do a good apologize, try to undone what can be undone, ban the ones responsable for this and be harsher against bad faith actors in general.
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