The crowdfunding pitch for Ordinary Women, with its $200,000 goal, is far more ambitious than that of Sarkeesian’s last campaign. In 2012, her site Feminist Frequency asked for a mere $6,000 to make Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, an outgrowth of her existing YouTube video work. The response — both positive and negative — was overwhelming. Backers pledged nearly $160,000 toward the project, leading Feminist Frequency to add several more videos as stretch goals. At the same time, the project drew unexpected ire from a wave of online anti-feminists, who launched a dedicated campaign of violent threats and abuse that has continued for nearly four years. In 2014, online reactionary movement Gamergate deemed Sarkeesian one of its greatest enemies, accusing her of "scamming" backers by releasing videos too slowly or of attempting to censor video games with her criticism.

Today, Feminist Frequency has broadened its scope significantly. Sarkeesian has so far put out 13 Tropes vs. Women videos covering both negative gaming tropes and positive examples of female characters, along with reviews of new games and movies. Now registered as a nonprofit, Feminist Frequency was chosen as one of Intel’s partners for a diversity initiative in 2015, and it’s one of the roughly 50 organizations Twitter has tapped for advice on handling harassment. Last week, it partnered with game developers Zoe Quinn and Alex Lifschitz’s anti-abuse project Crash Override, allowing the group to receive tax-deductible donations. And there’s still a year left of Tropes vs. Women, a project that Sarkeesian readily admits has left her exhausted.

"It felt like writing a master's thesis in three months with every episode."



"With Tropes, it was supposed to be five episodes that were like 10 minutes each, with a few examples. The international attention and the hate campaign against me really changed the way that we approached the project," says Sarkeesian. Each installment is packed with offhand references to dozens of games, constructed to carefully anticipate the counter-arguments of her most fervent critics, who analyze the 20- to 30-minute videos with the intensity of conspiracy theorists poring over the Zapruder Film. "It felt like writing a master's thesis in three months with every episode," she says.

In January, Feminist Frequency announced that the remaining topics would be divided into more specific tropes split across shorter videos, drawing to a close later this year. "I love Tropes. I think I'm really proud of that work, and we're still continuing to do it," says Sarkeesian. "But I did get really burnt out, and I'm really looking forward to doing something new."

Each episode of Ordinary Women will be devoted to a single woman, aimed more at depth than breadth. And Sarkeesian says that unlike Tropes vs. Women, which became increasingly large and amorphous as funding grew, the series will have a set first season that’s researched and filmed before the first episode comes out. Its creators are also aiming for something more complex and visually compelling than Tropes vs. Women’s straightforward editing. For Ordinary Women, the team will create animations and music based on art from the subject’s time period, and Sarkeesian will host wearing outfits loosely inspired by the era. Nearly half the total budget — including crowdfunding campaign fees and the cost of backer rewards — is intended for animation and post-production. If everything goes right, Sarkeesian, Hudson, and Aultman plan to release their first video in September.