Gamasutra - What did they do to you?: Our women heroes problem

[orangerful]

Gamasutra - What did they do to you?: Our women heroes problem

Read and discuss (I'll post more thoughts after I get home from work but this felt relevant to several conversations we have had over the past month.)

Comments

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

I HATE YOU. I AM A STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER, AND THEREFORE I DON'T NEED TO BE NICE TO PEOPLE. THIS IS HOW I TALK. ALL THE TIME. But inside I'm in pain and just need someone to hug me and give me a cookie. Preferably a guy.

^ That right there is the problem, imho.

I'm not a gamer so I won't even try approaching that end, but to me a female character should have more characteristics than being hardened by some trauma. Let's take Zoe from Firefly; we know she's probably the way she is because of the war, but we're not beat over the head with it. We know she's not always a girly girl, but she'll let her hair down sometimes and be cutesy with Wash, or tousle Kaylee's hair (as much as Zoe tousles), and so forth. She isn't strong because she's an Uber Woman who fights in a metal bra, she's just a character who has seen a lot of crap, and happens to be female. She's also a gentler foil to Mal, someone who still lives the life he does, but has moved on more in other respects.


And I think there's the difference. Is the woman strong because she's broken and needs to be fixed, or is that simply how she's wound?

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

Zoe is such a perfect example. Her backstory is almost the same as Mal's - they were both changed by the war. It's all we really need to know for her character. The insistence on making female characters suffer to be strong is very unsettling though and I guess I hadn't really noticed how pervasive the plot line was until recently.

I remember a few years back when they released the new metroid is game. Samus was one of the most iconic female characters of the original consoles. And now she was getting a new game on the Wii! But then the game came out and what was the story? It was about her horrible childhood and how that made her into a tough woman. It all came down to daddy issues.

Why can't women be born bad-asses the same way men are? Or why does the abuse have to be so specific. James Bond apparently didn't have a happy childhood but it's mentioned and they move on. They don't dwell on it or examine it and try to show how his boyhood abuse me him stronger. I mean, the suffering hero trope is definitely an archetype but it's weird the way it is applied to male vs female heroes.

[poniesandphotos.livejournal.com]

I agree that it is an issue with current media. While I do think that women often get this, I prefer it to a character with no development at all. Of course, it would be nice if everyone, regardless of gender, could be just as damaged and therefore just as strong and grow just as much. I think that some writers do this better than others in general.

I don't expect every woman character to be strong, just as I don't expect it of every male character. I am just happy when the characters are realistic, flawed human beings.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

This is a good point. It would be nice if female characters could be written as people first and foremost. So often I feel they're either OTT strong and badass or OTT... silly and "girlish." There's nothing wrong with being girly, but even girly girls have layers, for the most part. And so do women with chips on their shoulders. Women, like men, are people with complex personalities. I DO think in drama or comedy you sometimes have to be a bit more simplistic, especially on a show or movie where you only have so much time to establish a personality, but still...

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

I don't think you should give tv shows or movies an easy pass. If the writers want to write good stories, they can do it. We've seen it out there. It can be easier to just fall back on tropes, that's why they are tropes, but there are plenty of tv shows and movies that manage to create complex male and female characters in their limited amount of time. You pointed to Zoe and Mal. By the end of the first episode, we have a pretty good idea about both of them and their backstory.

I do feel like a LOT of writers want to go to the well of "childhood trauma" a bit too much for both male and female characters. It's part of the reason I can't get interested in Gotham which feels like it will be an entire show of childhood trauma to explain why Gotham's villains are so evil.

[twissie.livejournal.com]

I am always on the fringe of these gaming related debates, so I have nothing of importance to contribute at all. Gaming to me is about game mechanics and gameplay. If I also happen to like the characters and story, that's just a bonus. Representation in games in not something I really think about. Sure it would be nice to have more female protagonists, and it would be nice if they were given the same sort of motivations as the male ones, but I think at this point, if people want to see real change in the area, we need more women to actually make games. So.. let's go make games, I guess.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

That is true, but we've also got a chicken/egg issue there of how do you get girls interested in programming and games when there is no representation? Or when game companies set them up to fail (like the Assassin's Creed game with the female protagonist that was released...on Playstation Vita. Talk about DOOMED!)

But, just from a storytelling standpoint, even outside of games because I feel like we see this same plot device used in movies and tv shows just as much -- why must the female characters suffer such abuse to make them Strong? When male characters can just be strong. Is it so ingrained in our programming that the princess will only fight back after her prince has failed her? Or do we just not have writers who are willing to create these characters vs writing the same archetypes over and over?

[twissie.livejournal.com]

Women/girls make up over 50% of gamers, so the interest is there. I'm not sure how it is in the US, but over here general interest in mathematics and practical subjects are on the decline, which means that there are less qualified programmers despite a rising demand and interest. It's a fricking weird development. I'd love to see more women programmers, but a simple interest in gaming or computers won't be enough. The educational institutions need to step up their game as well. The culture at various game companies are probably not all that great either, but I don't know enough about it to comment on that.

Characters who are just strong tend to be extremely flat and boring. I prefer a backstory with a bit of suffering for motivation to a character who is strong for no reason. Needless to say, some creativity with this device would be good, but that goes for male characters as well.

I don't think writers don't want to create these characters, I think studios, producers, and investors are too scared to take the "risk".

[rhoda-rants.livejournal.com]

Hm. I've heard plenty of really cool debates/discussions about the representation of women in media all over the place, but gaming isn't one of my strong suits. I mostly watch playthroughs.

Although, there's probably something to be said for the fact that I'm such a big fan of things like Silent Hill and The Legend of Zelda because the central female characters do experience a certain degree of trauma, but not more so than the male characters; and they definitely come across as "strong," but because of who they are and what they're capable of, not as a result of that trauma.

Tomb Raider probably not the best place to go for good representation of anything except really fantastic graphics. I'm wondering about Metroid now though? I don't know Samus' backstory, but I know revealing that character as a women was a Really Big Deal at the time--no one questioned her awesomeness either before or afterwards.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

The horror genre is probably problematic in itself since the whole point is to have the main character terrorized the entire time LOL. But you are right, when you play SH3, it's not about some backstory that made her strong, she is just strong and we don't question it (I wonder if that is what made me enjoy the game so much more than the others? Or maybe I just never liked James...)

Tomb Raider was my first game when I was a kid. I think I could safely say it was one of the games that made me into a gamer. And never in my mind did I think "What made Lara strong?" -- she was just a female Indiana Jones and Indy was strong so why not Lara? Then this reboot came out, and they take the story back to her "first adventure", with her whining about how she "hates tombs" and other cheesy things. By the end of the game, she is my Lara again, a total badass. But it was like they felt they had to make her be abused and such before she could become a hero. Again, this might just be lazy writing, which I think most reboots are.

But the Samus debacle was definitely stupid. I did not play that game but my friend was VERY angry that they took a strong female adventure character and just turned her into another teen with daddy issues.

I think the article does make an interesting/sad point though, which was about the eerie fact that if it's a male story, the female characters are usually dead for him to avenge...but if it's a female story...it's STILL the female characters that are to be avenged. And if there are not enough characters, then the bulk of the abuse goes to the female lead. Could Lara be searching for her boyfriend? Her brother? Would that "insult" the male players?

[rhoda-rants.livejournal.com]

The horror genre is probably problematic in itself since the whole point is to have the main character terrorized the entire time LOL.
True, true, but that's the thing--horror is horrific for everyone. It's an equal-opportunity traumatizer! There are some unpleasant tropes associated with it, but the gaming world is strangely free of them. Resident Evil and Fatal Frame are pretty good at this too.

And Heather's just flat-out awesome. She does have a "traumatic" past, but it's not the reason she's awesome--she came that way, and uses it to fight the monsters when they show up. (Have you seen the movie? It's awful, but in a fun way.)

if it's a male story, the female characters are usually dead for him to avenge...but if it's a female story...it's STILL the female characters that are to be avenged.
Ugh--yes, that's the other thing. I remember having a similar conversation about comics elseweb a while ago. What were we talking about? Hang on. . .

Okay, here's what I said:

"If so many women didn't get fridged, we wouldn't be talking about it at all. But it happened to Peter Parker. It happened to Wolverine. It happened to Gambit. It happened to Eric Draven.* Hell, it even happened to the Joker, if you take The Killing Joke as canon.

The reason it's troubling is because it doesn't happen that much the other way 'round. If women need motivation for vigilante-ism, or a tragic past or something, most of the time you don't find boyfriends/husbands in the fridge. Most of the time, it's rape. So women are objectified even in their own stories. That's what sucks about the trope.

*Yes, he died too, but who comes back from the dead to wreak vengeance? Not the girl. Just sayin'."

(Context. We were talking about fridging in general, and comic book tropes came up in the side-discussion.)

[destertale.livejournal.com]

Not precisely the same issue, but along a similar vein, the fall-out from Ubisoft's comments about why there isn't a playable female character in the new Assassin's Creed has been generating some discussion as well. /sigh http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/assassins-creed-gaming-sexism-also-about-animation/

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

Not precisely the same but definitely from the same roots. And I can't believe the guy from Ubisoft made that comment, what a moron, did he not expect backlash from that??? With games like ME3 and DA so popular with both male and female character option, saying it was "too hard" would never fly. He could have just made a case from a story perspective or something. But the "it's hard to draw girls! They have boobs!" argument is all fail.