nosferatulovemachine:

takashi0:

punchingsatanlikeaboss: dontneedfeminism: zerotide: w0lpert1nger: planetcartoon: uselesslesbian-vampire: w0lpert1nger: jsgomex: w0lpert1nger: ‘There are no women in video games!’ ‘Women in video games are always sexualized!’

‘If their main outfit isn’t sexualized, their alternate costumes are!’

‘Women in sports games never wear appropriate clothes! They just wear sexy outfits!’

‘Women are always damsels in distress and never know how to fight!’

‘Women in games are never allowed to be feminine!’

‘Women can never be main characters in games!’

‘And if they are, the ratings are never good!’ ‘Women in games can only be masculine, they can’t use feminine attributes to their advantage!’

‘Women are never valuable party members!’

‘Women in video games are only interested in male partners or friends!’

‘Women in video games always dress as men, but men in video games never dress as women!’

‘No one ever likes a woman in a video game!’

‘Women in video games -’ Princess Peach has got you covered. Name 20 female characters that are like this. Sure, I can name some that fit either all or most of these.

1. Princess Peach

2. Princess Rosalina

3. Princess Daisy

4. Princess Zelda

5. Goombella

6. Vivian

7. Flurrie (although whether or not she’s sexualized can be debated a bit)

8. Toadette

9. Tiny Kong

10. Samus

11. Lucina

12. Ilia

13. Animal Crossing Villager (can be male or female depending on the choice of the player)

14. Wendy O Koopa

15. Palutena

16. Mona

17. Captain Syrup

18. Midna

19. Birdo

20. Lady Bow Tyrannosaurus rek’d Except those all appear to be nintendo companys. Nintendo is a family amd childrens game company, of course they wont sexualize females. Plus nintendo is like the nicest company ever. Fair enough. Yuna (Final Fantasy X)



Cassandra (Dragon Age: Inquisition)



Ellie (Last of Us)



Aveline de Grandpre (Assassin’s Creed Liberation)



Clementine (The Walking Dead)



Alyx Vance (Half-Life 2)



Jaina Proudmoore (World of Warcraft)



Celes Chere (Final Fantasy VI)



Amanda Ripley (Alien Isolation)



Commander Shepard - Female Version (Mass Effect)



Chell (Portal)



Faith (Mirror’s Edge)



Kate Archer (No One Lives Forever)



Haruka (Yakuza series)



Samantha (Gone Home)



Gaige (Borderlands series)



Mad Moxxie (Borderlands series)



Tiny Tina (Borderlands series)



Lilith (Borderlands series)



Elly Van Houten (Xenogears)



Kidd (Chrono Cross)



Elena Fisher (Uncharted)



Cortana (Halo series)



Marle (Chrono Trigger)



Lucca (Chrono Trigger)



Angela of Altena (Seiken Densetsu 3)



The Boss (Metal Gear Solid 3)



Kreia (Knights of the Old Republic 2)



Bayonetta (Bayonetta series)



Lara Croft (Tomb Raider series)

Deus Ex: Human Rektolution World of Rektcraft: Reking Crusade heather mason - silent hill 3 Claire - Claire Friendly reminder

Great.

Now, off the top of your heads, list a decent amount of female characters who appear to be older than 20-something (and still do things that matter like their older male counterparts).

List a decent amount of female characters with varying, realistic body sizes (big tits and skinny compared to smaller tits and skinny doesn’t count).

Expanding on that, list a decent amount of female characters who have varying face or facial feature shapes.

List a decent amount of female characters who appear to be battle hardened and scarred and rugged like their male counterparts, rather than soft-skinned and youthful.

List a decent amount of female characters that are legitimately ugly (and not bitter and angry over the fact that they are ugly to remind us that being pretty is the most important thing to a woman), or just conventionally unattractive.

List a decent amount of female characters who aren’t light skinned.

List a decent amount of female characters who are totally butch, meaning they display absolutely zero feminine qualities. Alternatively, list a decent amount of female characters (that are supposed to be likeable) who revel in and are completely in control of their femininity, characters who choose to be girly and wear pink and dresses and bows in their hair and enjoy makeup and are “exactly like other girls”. I want characters who are this way because they want to be, not just so you can tell them apart from their male counterparts.

List a decent amount of female characters whose costumes have no cleavage windows, or some other awkward patch of skin that you probably won’t see on a male character, or isn’t really tight-fitting or shapely. (Or wearing heels/creating the illusion that they’re wearing heels, something that’s dying down a bit, thankfully.)

List a decent amount of female characters who are surrounded by a decent amount of other female characters if they’re a member of a group of something, rather than being the only female in the group among many men. Bonus points if this group she is apart of isn’t known for being an all-female division of something.

List a decent amount of female characters who have never once been depicted as the voice of reason, or the tough-girl-who-shoots-shit-and-does-it-better-than-the-boys-while-still-remaining-to-be-sexy-the-whole-time.

List a decent amount of female characters whose abilities have never once been sexualized, or feminized for what seems to be for the sole sake of reminding you that this character is a female (Lilith from Borderlands’ skill tree comes to mind in terms of needless feminization).

If this female character is known to be trained by anyone, list a decent amount of them that weren’t trained by a man (because the only way a woman can be strong is if she’s taught by a man, you know).

List a decent amount of female characters whose backstory is just as in-depth and well written as their male counterparts’. List a decent amount of female characters that can hold their own story without any help from the other characters.

List a decent amount of female characters who are something other than human. List a decent amount of them that don’t conform to humanity’s ideas of beauty somehow. (Also, give me some non-mammals that don’t have any tits.)

List a decent amount of characters who were only later in the game revealed to be a female character that didn’t lose any badassery once the fact that they were a girl became known. List a decent amount of female characters who aren’t ever viewed with awe by any of the men in the game (or meant to be viewed this way by the audience), in a “wow she’s a girl and yet somehow she can do that?!?” kind of way.

List a decent amount of female characters who are /THE/ main character, who’s life and actions and events are the main focus, rather than being a member of the supporting cast or just another member of the focal group of main characters. List a decent amount of them who have always been the main focus. They aren’t a spinoff from a game that was traditionally led by a male. They are and have always been the main character.

Now, go back and swap the genders of all the above things I just said. Come up with a list of male characters for each one. Compare that to your list of female characters.



And don’t go giving me some RPG or MMO where you can create your own character, because you can (almost) always create a female protagonist that way. Don’t go giving me 90000 examples from Mass Effect or Dragon Age or Borderlands, give me examples of characters from different people. Give me some mainstream examples, games that a lot of people know about with an active fanbase. Indie games are usually very good with making decent female characters, but bigger budgeted games are the ones that get the most attention, and those are the ones that tend to make any sort of difference.

We’re led to believe that things are way better than they actually are. There are a shit load of female characters in video games nowadays, and I will never deny or argue against that. But we’ve got ways to go before things can be considered equal. The gaming community is so weirdly in denial of that.