That's a damn throw back and a half, huh? Like, look, at that. The radio station, if that's what it was, just shut down and well, I'm' lemanting having to prehaps go to a dentist the first time in my life, so...
When bored or lazy or dreading a doctors appointment. I prefer to get into a ranty mood. Let's have a nitpick at Feminist Frequency's video's, eh?
Right, uh... Of the top, before we get to the plot. I ain't a fan of the "tropes vs woman" subtitle. I am aware this is going to sound completely stuipd, but tropes aren't being used correctly. Tropes are the audience classifications for story beats or character types or just basic visuals. Such as "Dark and Evil" (think most cartoon villains having either dark purple or black as a major part of their colour scheme) or "Heel face Turn" (any time a "villainous" character becomes a "good guy", like say, Megamind is a story that is mostly about a heel face turn). To judge a story solely on tropes feels limited as tropes are usually just the audience short hand for something.
The presenter, who's name is not entirely relevent for my argument, went on to make a whole statement on how the Game Dev that gave us Packman, was kinda sexist for implying that "woman like to eat desert after dinner". Which, is a statement. But even if it can be aruged as slightly reductive, is not really sexist. He didn't say that was a bad thing. And furthermore in another source I saw on how Packman was made, it was kinda clear he choose eating as the theme of the game as well, humans need to do that to live. And therefore it applies to everyone.
Regardless, that side tagent doesn't really mean much for a "Mrs male character" video break down. All it really does is potentially poison the well by implying inherent sexist intend in video game design even if that is limited in the example or a minor minor aspect of the topic. As Mrs Packman, the character the presenter mentions as her first exmaple, was not designed by the original creator of Packman at all. Meaning he is irrelevent to Mrs Packman.
Alright, now for the actual topic. Only about, three minutes into the video. Our lovely presenter gives us the definitation of a Ms. Male Character, "A femal version of an already established or default male chracter. Ms. Male Characters are defined primarily by their relationship to their male counterparts via their visual properties, their narrative connection or occasionally through promotional material." And already I got a complaint. Namely, by this defintion the only thing preventing Shadow the Hedghog (known for being mostly a colour swape of Sonic aside from the mild chest tuffs and ring bracelets, is mostly known for fighting Sonic on being better than him and is mostly promoted as edgy Sonic) from being a Ms. Male Character is that Shadow is a male. Which kinda fails your point when I could name multiple male characters who are functional the exact thing you are describing as a sexist trope.
Our lovely presentor than brings up, gendered art language to which I must reply. I could ignore it like when she brought up superheroes, but I have studied some art. This is my domain now. Mostly, how do you diffencate between chracters? In pixel art of ye olden days, either very obvious differences or colour. And since Mrs Packman is a Packman, which is known for being a circle with a cut out. How do you make it clear that one is one character and the other is another character? Namely, the answer our Mrs Packman devs came up with was a red bow.
For reference, I have played some old school games. Namely stuff like the original Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Contra and so on. And pixel sizes were... Limited to say it very nicely. Mario's sprite was tiny, so they copied the basic character change idea and made Luigi green and ever so slightly taller. Same with games like Contra, player one is blue and player two is a exact copy of player one but red. Sonic, by virtue of having better access to pixels led to us having Tails instead of a colour swaped Sonic (we got that later with Silver, although from the future and with psychic abilities, and Shadow, altough from the past and with guns, and Amy, although yandere and armed with a hammer, and Metal, although robotic and evil, and... you get the idea).
Now, while our presenters point might, in some situations, hold water, Mrs. Packman is a horrible example to start with due to pixel limitation. If the character design wasn't so limited, the pixel ammount not so low I can count it by eye, the colour pallete not just one colour and the game not an arcade game with very simple pixel art, I might have agreed that better character design is helpful. But alas, none of my earlier points are false, and I have to take this as a pretty bad first example.
Like when she goes on to talk about promotional material, she has a better case. But, she started the argument off on the game's pixel art. And again, early pixel art was rough. Namely because dev teams were kinda tiny back than as where games and pixel sizes that could realistically be displayed. So, something had to give, and usually it was to make character designes much more simplified and easy to read, quickly. Remember, sprites are usually in motion. And if I can't keep track of my character, I'm going to die often. Which is fine in an arcade game, but usually seen as bad game design or just unfair.
Also, our presenter, while jumping through wildly different studio productions and time periods, does manage to link a large group of female character which display blund feminisation, all of her example are cartoony artsyles. Games with cartoony artstyles, and cartoons by extension, need to display more information with less. Hence character design taking on more blund visualisations. Take Bugs Bunny for example. He doesn't look like a real rabbit, but because he has "rabbit" features like big ears, a roundish little nose, big hind paws, buck teeth and a cottontail, we read him as a bunny. Same with any other cartoon character. Superman and batman tend to either be sort of triangular or just a really big rectangle. It's for visual easy of reading and for easy of animation or repeated drawing.
In otherwords. This is a side effect of cartoon requirements. Like how Military games tend to have a certain grimy, tacticool look to them, cartoony graphics do too. And so, if this is a problem, all of cartoons should be damned too instead of this being a solely video game issue.
Also, remember how I mentioned that Amy was a colour swap of Sonic? I was partically joking, of course, I do know the lore of most sonic characters. Which is where I get to say that Amy is hardly a colour swap personality wise. She's bubbly, deeply crashing on Sonic and firey with an insanely large hammer. Our presenter, kinda ran past that with just saying that Amy is a pink Sonic.
Also, our presenter missing kinda obvious charactization for one of Bowser's kids, Windy, by claming she is just "the girl". Like, I am so sorry, but clearly her character architype is "bratty spoilt daddies girl". She looks like a member of a mean girl group. She's decked out in pink, yes, but also has over the top gold bracelets and heels and a necklace. She looks like she's trying to look rich. That is chracterisation. By defination.
Anyways, she than goes on to say that by Windy is "shallow" and that that's bad as if the mean girl character type is just... not a thing. Again, Windy is a villain, like her brothers and father, of course she isn't a perfectly good koopia. It would be more sexist in my opinion if she was somehow nothing like her family, all of which aside from Bowser and Bowser Jr. are one note and mildly evil. Like, why does the random daughter get a full personality when everyone else is either main characters or one note?
Oh, and I hate... That's a lie. I love to do this. But you can't both have a character with no characterisation and bad characterisation. That is inherently impossible. It's like having a character that's both well not important and important. Windy can't be bratty and shallow but also just the girl. Are you saying all girls are bratty and shallow in media? If so, how do you explain Princess Peach or Princess Daisy in the same francise?
It just seems slightly, off beat, to nitpick any female character for being too, bluntly female. Like, shouldn't a female character be allowed to be as female as they want? I get we shouldn't be sexist, but isn't going too far in the other direction also bad? Woman and girls should totally be allowed to be interested in fashion. Hell, getting angry and being mildly shallow isn't even a solely female dipicted trait. The toxic guy and pretty boy tropes are a thing. It's just odd to me. I feel like we can critic the presence of overly bland characters without relying on the critic being just "girl characters have too many girly things on them". Girls shouldn't feel like they're "wrong" or a "bad sterotype" for being sterotypically girly. Limiting characters who are like that or reducing them to just "bad girl characters" feels counter-intuitive.
Some of the characters the presentor brought up have character. To just write them of as bad rip-offs of a male character that is one note is ironically sexist in my opinion. What makes Mrs Packman less than Packman, actually. Both have no personality in the original arcade game, aside from eating little dots or fruits and running from ghosts. How could you in good faith say that either is properly charactised in their original forms? It makes not sense to me.
Moving on, our presenter decided to talk Christianity. And look, some people don't like Christianity, some people outright hate it, but we can all agree that the overlap between video games and the Bible is rather limited. I get kinda where she is going here, but does the creation myth of Adam and Eve really give and example of a Ms. Male Character? Again, Adam is really given much more than Eve here. Eve and Adam are written mostly one note either way. Like, I am a Chritisian saying this. You get more charactised people later in the Bible, but by virtue of being unfortunte victims in learning good and evil Adam and Eve are just naive at the start of the story. Not entirely Eve's fault a being of, depending on who you ask, evil managed to manuplate her into eating from the tree of good and evil.
Besides, Adam and Eve as a theological tale didn't actually say Adam was superior to Eve. Rather that they were two parts of a whole, with Eve being from Adam and thus both being connected. Hell, the only real level of dominion is man over beast.
But again, why are we talking Christianity in a video about why there's a Ms. Male Character problem in video games. For a long time Christians and video games weren't friends. Even now some Chrsitians and video games aren't friends. It's an odd idea that video games are mimicing Christianties "sins" when it is usually made by counter culture people, or at least used to be before it got profitiable and corps took it over, but that's another rant.
Honestly, her best argument has to do with the marketing of the video games. Which is a bit confusing for me. On one hand, marketing isn't the actual game. That's mostly how I could have a positive perception of Cyberpunk 2077 despite the lying marketing it had on release. On the other hand, marketing does govern some level, if not all, of public perception of the game that is going to come out. I wouldn't say it is a "game" problem as much as a PR problem however. Mostly, as out presentor mentioned Mass Effect which does have good female characters and lets you play a female shephard but laments the lack of clear marking to show that. To which I will say, that's marketing. We've been lied to before. And the original Shephard was a guy, so maybe the marketing was trying not to alienate og fans or make it seem like a new canon or Shephard.
Furthermore, it's really not the games fault marketing is bad. A clearer distinction might make it seem more like the presenter was targeting the marketing, but it's mostly subdued in the video itself. Again, while marking is a part of game design it is a very seperate part of game design if the game is as big as Mass Effect.
Also, the presenter brought up that only about 18-20% of players played as a female Shephard, claming the marketing helped push that statistic. Which, is likely not entirely the truth as Mass Effect is one of the games that has characters have pre-set sexual orientations. In other words, like in Cyberpunk 2077, you can't just romance anyone as any gender. Some characters prefer a male Shephard and some a female Shephard. This could have also been a massive reason for the statistic as some people like certain characters more and probably wanted to have a chance to romance them and thus chose the appropriate gender. I've contemplated the same to romance Panam in Cyberpunk as she doesn't really fall for a female V, but since I'm trying to get Judy this playthrough, I clealy haven't made that choice yet.
Another point was that games that let players make a custom PC, including changes the player characters gender, doesn't usually advertise the change. Which is somewhat fair, but usually that's the base given of genres that have that ability, namely rpgs. It would be like a FPS making a big deal of you being able to move and shoot your gun. It is a expected trait of the game and therefore usually seen as a waste of time in a limited time format like a trailer or advertisment. For example, Skyrim only showed a Nord PC in the trailers, despite the number of races you can play as. Likely because prior fans to the Elder Scrolls series would be aware that you can play as more than just a Nord.
My challenge is I want to assume our presenter is correct. Although, some of her arguements are bad. Really bad. At the very least, this is a try again argument. And the potienly of the rules slipping into a problematic idea that female characters shouldn't be too bluntly feminine either. I mostly fear it would result in a aesthetic only rating of characters which should rather be judged on actual stories.
In seriousness, I'm tired. I'm gonna call it there. I don't hate the presenter lady, she just comes across as one of those Christian "video games are from the devil" people in my head. She has a few points, but some of her points just feel bad faith or too narrow. I don't hate girly girl characters, or mean girls. They're some of my favorite, even if I'm more rough and tumble irl. I think the solution isn't to just get rid of girly girls in media.
The presentor lady doesn't really go for that. Her "good female" characters examples are more along the lines of tomboy, emo and more edgy. Which is fin as characters, literlly nothing wrong with them. but it's just a bad taste that her only good example have no girly girls, in my opinion. Being girly is not a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with being either masculine or feminine. Girls should be allowed to be themselves, either a rough and tumble tomboy, a girly girl, a fashionistia, into the darker aspects of life, a gamer, so on.