this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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As a gamer, I am constantly rolling my eyes at people claiming that a gay character with a same-sex love interest being a minor character in a massive game makes it "Political" and "Forces an Agenda"
Especially as the "Non-Political Games" they stick to are always the most Leftist shit like BioShock (Why Libertarianism is bad and will always lead to someone destroying the world to stack the deck in their favor), Fallout (Blind Nationalism is meaningless and will force you into a conflict that causes you to lose everything you held dear), and Residnet Evil (America's For-Profit Healthcare System creates company that are evil and cannot be trusted with people's lives)
Funny, it seems like Right Wing Politics actually make game stories worse, like Dead Rising 3 (Vaccines are evil and a means to spy on you, also the President is an expy of Hillary.... this is also where Dead Rising fell into a spiral with 4 finishing it off) and BioShock Infinite (Good game, but also another franchise killer with a story that pisses off everyone.. One of the key points of the story? Black slaves revolting against their highly bigoted white owners are just as evil as the people who kidnapped them, took them to a city in the sky, and forced them to do all the labor)
"The only difference between Zachary Cumsock and Daisy Fitzroy are how you spell their name!" - Booker DeWitt being the dumbest man alive
God what's another game with terrible Right Wing politics? Hard to say because most of them are budget title shitposts like the Kyle Rittenhouse game on Steam or the various "Play as Trump and save America" games on Steam
I actually can't think of much media considered "Good" by anyone that's right leaning at all aside from The Dark Knight Returns (Where humanely treating and rehabilitating criminals is seen as foolishly naive and the government is incapable of helping anyone... To be fair Reagan was President), King of The Hill (and even then Hank would be a solid never Trumper, don't get me wrong, as much as I love Hank I don't see him being much an LGBT Ally (Especially not to T's) without breaking character), and..... huh.... I can't think of anything.
Does that show Ben Shapiro's people made to be a Pro-Right Cartoon, but failed when the super woke antagonist was... a far more likable character than the protagonist, and said protagonist was so accidentally queer-coded as a closested gay bear with a crush on the woke antagonist guy that it attracted a Leftist fanbase that ships the Protagonist and Antagonist together? To such an extent that it might as well be a canon pairing?
Yeah does that show count? Sorry I don't remember the name
Anything else?
Nope that's about it, it's almost like Conservatism is a backwards ideology that can only bring destruction in its wake and deep down we all know that it inevitably leads to fascism.
I also find it funny how much stuff gets called "Woke" when it really isn't..
Like the Tomb Raider prequel-disguised-as-a-reboot where it's called woke because Lara's sexualized less. Which while true, is only to an extent, she still has the largest chest in the game (To the extent that it looks like she has implants, especially in scenes with other female characters) and every camera angle is throwing her delicious cake in your face (Which appeals to my bisexuality, just cause I'm female doesn't mean I don't like fanservice), and personality-wise... Lara spends a large amount of the game helpless, looking up to a male role model, with her combat prowess being based more in acting on a combination of fear, instinct, and adrenaline than anything else. She's constantly shown as being in a state of fear to such an extent that some parts of the prequel/reboot trilogy dubbed "Survivor Trilogy" might as well be a Horror Game, and people who work on Horror Games for a living agree since Lara Croft's the most recent addition to the big Horror Crossover game Dead By Daylight!
Oh and her iconic weapon is a makeshift bow (You'd think she'd start carrying heavier ordinance in the sequels), she never even gets her trademark Dual Pistols (the first game implies she hasn't earned them yet.. but they're not in the sequels at all), a weapon of last resort crafted in desperation.
Meanwhile Original Lara is a wise-cracking adventure seeker never backing down from a challenge, with her iconic weapon being a stupidly large amount of ammo fired out of two guns she keeps on her person at all times, ready to fight. This weapon speaks more to someone ready to kick ass and take names.
Original Lara is often seen outdoing her male peers with her biggest rival being another woman, as if to say that literally no man can be her equal.
If we put them side-by-side, it's actually Original Lara that feels more like the typical "Strong Female Lead" they complain about, but it's the reboot that's woke?
For the record, I like the Survivor Trilogy, but Original Lara is still my favorite Lara. (And you bet your ass I bought the Classic Lara skin the second it was available for DBD) We need more chicks who are "Basically the female equivalent of Duke Nukem", and only Lara and Bombshell (from Ion Fury) come close to that bill. (And well original Lara is more recognizable from a visual standpoint, reboot Lara doesn't stand out as much to the point that I sometimes get her mixed up with REmake 3's version of Jill.. My autistic face blindness doesn't help)
Sorry I kind of went on a tangent there. I LOVE LARA~!
That pissed me off soooo much. Really soured the game for me. The imagery of worshipping the founding fathers was the best part.
It's funny, it's so rare in a work of fiction that I can point to the EXACT moment that I stopped caring about the narrative in a piece of media.
It's centrist "BoTh SiDeS" nonsense
I know the "both sides" thing is something we're all sick of now, but there's no way Levine could have imagined what 2020+ would look like. Not to say that isn't something that's always happened, but man 2012 didn't have it to our current degree of insanity. Also I always figured the Vox were modeled more after the Russian revolution which... yeah... Stalinism was the end result, so it fits. I think that's the crux of the bad writing. You model the Vox after real world socialist uprisings, but they're predominantly black in a crazy racist planation in the sky. Now you're borrowing context from two real world things, and need to be careful about what you're saying, intentionally or not, about each of them. You have a responsibility in your messaging now. Given how it landed with you, I'd say they didn't do a great job.
Also Booker's view of it fits. He's a drunk, gambling, Pinkerton who sold his daughter. He's going to be a jaded misanthrope. Oh yeah and the part where he is also Comstock. Everything is there for us to know this is not a character we should be rooting for. But while these are facts about him, they never really make it into the "feel" of booker. So the information is there, it's just not great writing.
In contrast Elizabeth is really well done. She starts naïve and pure (if only because of the whole fucked up locked in a tower bit), and Booker does genuinely "lead the lamb astray". He's the reason she gets exposed to everything, and as a result rains fire from the sky. While we know booker is an asshole but doesn't feel like one, we definitely feel Elizabeth getting darker. I also think it's a great touch that the one that saves Elizabeth is, Elizabeth. Booker can't even take credit for that one.
I'm rambling now, I have a lot of mixed feelings on the game. It's got some really great and well done parts, and some serious blunders.
Nah, that wasn't a "looks bad now" thing, it looked bad any time. Saying that people rising up against their oppressors are just as bad as the oppressors is bullshit in any era. One can claim that that was just Booker's point of view and the game wasn't saying he was right, but the narrative did nothing to imply that he was wrong in any way, especially considering you were encouraged to mow down the slaves who were revolting just like you did the slavers previously. And having them dress like this? What were they thinking?
The line from bookers perspective is entirely appropriate (he's an asshole), the narrative reinforcing it should have been handled better. That being said, the reason the "both sides bad" bullshit is such a prevalent fallacy is that there are instances where it's true. I already mentioned Stalin, but revolutionary France got pretty messed up as well. Thats why it short circuits the whole "is it true in this case" reasoning. You can absolutely find cycles of violence in every nation, and you can talk about them in a way that doesn't cheapen the suffering that brought them on. When talking about BLM and literal nazis saying "there's good people on both sides" is bullshit. Saying "robes Pierre was kind of an asshole" is not. The game did a pretty shit job of that.
I have to be honest, I always saw the costumes as just red and scary, but I see your point. Looking at them in isolation I get it, but knowing they were mostly black didn't make me think "klan". If anything I saw it as a red cap analogy. There's probably a bunch more I missed to. Thanks for pointing me to a re-look before I go mouthing off about it some more. I definitely need to take a better look.
I can understand why some might not see it as being as awful as I do - I don't think the creators intended to make it seems as enlightened centrist as it is (The wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "There's actually zero difference between good and bad things. You imbecile. You fucking moron."), and it's probably more a case of being tone-deaf than anything else. But was a very poor attempt at the "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster" bit.
Yeah, and they cut soooo much from original concepts they had, I wonder if they would have handled it better if they didn't get to the "fuck it, we need to ship" stage of things.
Still, you can't just borrow from the real world when it's convenient for weight and impact, you owe it to the people that lived it to do it right.
Thanks for the conversation!
Wow. I couldn't even make it halfway through the first BioShock game, I found it way too tedious and boring. Like playing an Ayn Rand novel
I agree with all of this except what you said about Hank Hill... I think he would be very uncomfortable at first, then get to know them on a personal level, and then become cautiously accepting by the end of the episode.
And while King of the Hill features a bunch of right wing characters, I don't think I'd consider the show itself right-leaning. It respected its characters but also constantly made fun of them regarding their beliefs. Like when Hank would say Bobby isn't alright, I didn't get the impression that's what the show wanted to say; the show respected Bobby as much as it did Hank. And Peggy and Luanne.
True, but there were plenty of episodes where Hank Hill is shown being in the right for combating "New-fangled Liberal Nonsense", like the episode where they ban transfats to be more like NYC, or the episode where he finds it disrespectful to tone down the details of "The Alamo".. There are also plenty of episodes where the opposite happens and Hank realizes he is indeed stuck in the past and the ideals he holds close are not best for everyone, or maybe even anyone.(Like when he realizes an overly strict parent of boy scouts is overly strict for a reason, or when he realizes that growing roses is a legitimate sport that requires practice and discipline)
It’s because of Hank’s character. Take “The Alamo” episode. That is very much a Texas thing and he will die on that hill even if it’s wrong, but it also doesn’t really harm people to the extent that hating gay people harms people.
When it comes to the issues that causes society to turn on each other Hank often takes the approach of “you need to leave people alone and let them live even if you don’t like it” tactic, because that is what he wants for himself.
Like when Khan moved in.
Similar, but also remember that by the 10th season ole Hank was a lot more open minded than when the show started lol
Because when the show started Hank was still a characture from Beavis and Butthead, and the writers grew him into something pretty awesome.
"DAMMIT! THOSE BOYS HAVE BEEN WHACKIN' IN MUH SHED AGAIN!"
Hank never hated Khan for the color of his skin, but because the guy was a jackass. With the conflict being that Hank wasn't actually allowed to be the slightest bit disrespectful to him because Khan was the one non-white guy on the block.
Hank meets a trans woman who tries to explain being trans to him, and he just doesn't get it. He has a mental block. He insists that she's a beautiful young woman and he also likes her "brother" quite a lot.
In another episode he helps Bobby buy a bra so he can dress up as a woman.
Yeah, but like you said he didn't understand the concept.. and as for the latter example it was for Powder Puff Football and he even stresses that Bobby can basically "Never dress like this again" afterward
I can imagine Hank being ignorant, stubborn, and dismissive, but I can't imagine him being directly hateful. I think his behaviour at the grocery co-op is a good indicator. Hank got along perfectly well with potheads, hippies, and vegans, as long as he was able to teach them the value of hard work.
If I meet Hank Hill I'd tell him "I ain't no woman and I ain't no man. And if I catch you running your mouth to the contrary, I'm gonna kick your ass. You can call me Mx. Mindtraveller, and refer to me with the pronoun "they". Understood?" And that would be that. He'd mess up, of course, and I'd respond with a stern look and a faint growl, and he'd get the hang of it sooner or later. The key to these kinds of men is simply speaking their own language. You have to demonstrate your rugged individualism and ability to fight for your own dignity, and you need to phrase bigotry as a violation of the social contract and of good manners.
The only people who Hank really gets mad at in the show, are those who are violent towards women and children, and those who lack the determination and good sense to accomplish what they set out to do. Hank respects people who can look after themselves.
Hell ya! You said it
Fair point
Yeah I put it there with the whole thing with Kahn "So are you Chinese or Japanese". Super shit, but you know they would have happily drank with him in the alley if their personalities didn't otherwise clash.
This is the same character who had to pay a guy to buy coop beef from the hippies. He had no trouble supporting them but couldn't handle the application process.
Oh my god, this blew right past me! What show was this?
I've long been a fan of Samus Aran!
I really wish Other M had a version where all the story beats were removed entirely
That's the one I haven't played. Then I had to look up who this weird "Adam" character was in some of the following games...
I remember the plot was odd, but reading a random wiki didn't make the story really stick for me.
When I played Metroid Other M I went from "Oh shit, Adam's here. This is going to be awesome." to "I'm fucking glad you're dead Adam."
(Adam was in Metroid Fusion as an AI upload where he was said to be Samus' ex-husband and that she liked him due to him being the one man not intimidated by her being a planet destroying killing machine shaped like a woman)
What went on in that game? The plot synopses I've found have lacked detail; he just comes off as vaguely controlling and uncommunicative.
Basically Adam spins the whole game gaslighting Samus into thinking she's worthless, and because she's a girl she falls for this bullshit because she likes Adam's cock... it gets to the point where there are creepy scenes where Adam refuses to authorize Samus' Varia Suit because he actively wants to see her in pain to "test her resolve" or some shit (Read: Because it's Tanabae's kink)
It's insanely misogynistic and nothing about Samus as a character in Other M lines up with the character as shown in Metroid Prime, Super Metroid (the game Other M is a direct sequel to) or Metroid Fusion (the game Other M is a direct prequel to)
Ugh, okay - I suspected something hinky was going on with Adam just from the summaries I'd seen, but I'm just as happy to give that game a miss now! Think I like him better as a brain in a box, but it still colors their relationship...