The notion that [character] is female and thus being killed by impalement has a sexual connotation because phallic symbols and shit can be pretty much entirely blamed on the viewer, as long as the death is not portrayed in a sexual way.
I looked at that video and I don't think Lara's dying by impalement is portrayed in a sexual way, so therefore I conclude that the bringing up of this aforementioned notion is something that ought to be blamed on the viewer for trying to read a sexual meaning into something that lacks one.
that's an overly hasty conclusion when you're missing the wider context
Well it IS a real phenomenon that people have basically been conditioned by long-term exposure to dirty jokes that pointy things = penis. And at least for some people, it's entirely a cognitive association -- there's nothing inherently generates sexual awareness/stimulation about that thought.
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
Most of us can see it, I honestly don't know why you can't.
Also, being able to forsee people reading a sexual meaning into something is the job of the creator. This is not to say that the viewer is absolved (because hey, maybe I'm just a fucked up guy), but that everyone shares blame.
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
I mean yeah the spiky thing's a dick and Croft has a vagina and we've been conditioned to sexualize female experience and activity in general and it's Lara Croft and it's not just any one of those things but everything at once.
What I mean is the whole "pointy thing = penis" and "receptacle into which pointy thing is jammed = vagina" thing is basically an association that people thought up, and unless you go around horny all the time and see this association as inherently sexual, the association is worth far more for silliness than actual sexual meaning.
So yeah, tl;dr is it's due to people learning to think dirty.
What I mean is the whole "pointy thing = penis" and "receptacle into which pointy thing is jammed = vagina" thing is basically an association that people thought up, and unless you go around horny all the time and see this association as inherently sexual, the association is worth far more for silliness than actual sexual meaning.
So yeah, tl;dr is it's due to people learning to think dirty.
all things that are not physical objects or forces of nature are things that people thought up
idk i feel like rather than try to engage with people's response to the animation here and understand what's being said, you're taking it as some kind of an affront and being personally judgmental about it for some reason
Glenn, it's totally okay to have sexual thoughts about weird things.
Really. It's fine.
I never said it wasn't.
I'm just blaming the reading of the scene in question as sexual on people's having dirty minds.
If you don't like the word "blame" I can use the word "attribute". If you don't like the phrase "dirty minds" I can use the phrase "been conditioned to associate these things with sex". I'm just attributing the reading of the scene in question as sexual on people's having been conditioned to associate these things with sex.
idk i feel like rather than try to engage with people's response to the animation here and understand what's being said, you're taking it as some kind of an affront and being personally judgmental about it for some reason
I'm not being personally judgemental or taking this as an affront, just tired of having to reason through words right now.
when i was a kid a girl in my class had one of the tomb raider games, it was one of the first games i ever played and i just remember dying repeatedly to a bear
recently i bought a bundle of tomb raider games that were on sale on steam, none of which i have played yet
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
The onus is not just with the viewer.
People look at Tomb Raider and they say; "Sex sells." What sex? No sexual acts exist in the games. The sex evoked of being a woman with large breasts.
The people who made that game clearly wanted to sell that game with "sex." The sex evoked by being an attractive, vulnerable young woman. But the execution of the game included massive amounts of violence. So the sexual element added to the violence element produces sexual violence, or violence of a sexual nature, which is weird.
see, but the thing is going into this all i knew was "this is a video game franchise where back in the day the lady had big polygon boobs and i liked the movie"
i had no context on this, tabula rasa
"this is a video game franchise where back in the day the lady had big polygon boobs" is not tabula rasa. It's half the background for why the double standard exists at all, and is so prevalent even outside Tomb Raider. This franchise literally helped codify all the stereotypes we're talking about -- it's not innocent by any stretch.
The only equivalent to how Lara is treated is probably Spec Ops: the Line, which for one thing didn't linger on Walker's injuries to nearly that extent.
Spec Ops didn't have the same kind of heavy survivalism theme. If you just replaced the model with Nate Drake, none of this would be discussion-worthy -- we've certainly seen him get his ass beat to hell and back before. It would just be a gritty shooter where he's slightly less of a Wolverine-esque bullet sponge than usual.
The thing is that this kind of lingering, voyeuristic, exploitative /only ever happens/ with female characters.
You can say "oh just replace her with Nathan Drake" but Nathan Drake isn't treated like that in his own games.
Plus this kind of stuff will pretty much always register as weird- Lone Survivor, that is, the film, essentially did something similar and a lot of people were really skeeved out about it. It's just that it's especially problematic for several (hopefully self evident) reasons when it's a woman.
The new Tomb Raider games try to create a sense of emotional impact and empathy without earning it at all.
In fact, I have a challenge to Crystal Dynamics. In Tomb Raider III or whatever you're calling the next one, create a storyline in which Lara gets breast cancer. Imagine the drama of a vulnerable Lara Croft still persisting on her worldly adventures despite her illness. It needs fleshing out, no pun intended, but I guarantee the gaming world would be shocked, stunned, and moved by the effort to make Lara's character more meaningful.
The thing is that this kind of lingering, voyeuristic, exploitative /only ever happens/ with female characters.
You can say "oh just replace her with Nathan Drake" but Nathan Drake isn't treated like that in his own games.
Plus this kind of stuff will pretty much always register as weird- Lone Survivor, that is, the film, essentially did something similar and a lot of people were really skeeved out about it. It's just that it's especially problematic for several (hopefully self evident) reasons when it's a woman.
Uncharted 2 did exactly that the moment you pressed start. Dead Space breathed this throughout the entire series. Look up a Dead Space death reel -- it's way more lingering/voyeuristic, and the only reason we don't think of it as exploitative is because the dude has a dick and fewer people whip out the soap and tissues when guys scream in agony.
If a game includes extreme violence in general, people will sexualize it when it happens to female characters because we're kind of a diseased society. When Mortal Kombat X came out, one of the first things that happened was that some creepy fuck put out a bunch of "all fatalities performed on $FEMALE_CHARACTER" videos. And while MK isn't exactly a flagship for tasteful female characters, X is probably the least offensive thus far, and fatalities are literally generalized to the entire cast and use the exact same animation rig.
If you have a solution, I'd genuinely love to hear it. It's easy to say "don't do that". But audiences are so quick to sexualize violence, whether or not the developer does in any given case, that it effectively means not including female characters and especially female leads in violent games at all -- which is less immediately offensive than some asshole jacking off to it, but rather more worrying in the long run.
For the record though, re: Glenn, it's not just a problem with the viewer. While I was interning, we were making a game with a background audience. Originally, we had a roughly equal gender spread in the audience, but the higher ups at the publisher told us to reduce and eventually eliminate the men in the audience, and to make the women's clothing more revealing. I shit you not, they used the phrase "the mating game". Developers watch Extra Credits and GDC presentations, study these effects, and usually push to be more egalitarian as a result. But the people signing the paychecks are a friggen boys' club.
For the record though, re: Glenn, it's not just a problem with the viewer. While I was interning, we were making a game with a background audience. Originally, we had a roughly equal gender spread in the audience, but the higher ups at the publisher told us to reduce and eventually eliminate the men in the audience, and to make the women's clothing more revealing. I shit you not, they used the phrase "the mating game". Developers watch Extra Credits and GDC presentations, study these effects, and usually push to be more egalitarian as a result. But the people signing the paychecks are a friggen boys' club.
I think you misphrased something in the middle of the paragraph? This seems really interesting but one bit doesn't seem to jive.
So, Undertale beat Pokémon RBY in the Gamefaqs contest, which predictably lead to a ton of whining. And it makes me wonder just how many people actually remember what Gen I was like.
Every time an indie game that's popular on tumblr beats a respected older game in the contest, there's going to be whining.
Thing is, some of the other games (i.e OoT and FFVII) actually have something going for them, even by today's standards. Gen I was a buggy, clunky mess, with some of the worst dungeon design I've seen in an RPG.
I kind of feel like for Gen I Pokemon there's an argument for influence. And its important to remember that despite its many bugs, it was still hugely successful and a defining part of a lot of peoples' upbringing.
Comments
that's an overly hasty conclusion when you're missing the wider context
heck that's not even really how meaning works
What I mean is the whole "pointy thing = penis" and "receptacle into which pointy thing is jammed = vagina" thing is basically an association that people thought up, and unless you go around horny all the time and see this association as inherently sexual, the association is worth far more for silliness than actual sexual meaning.
So yeah, tl;dr is it's due to people learning to think dirty.
oh you know what
whatever
i'm not really in the mood to argue about this right now
Really. It's fine.
Yeah, and so basically I'm saying that that whole "insert tab A into slot B" thing is cognitive, unless one is really darn horny all the time.
I never said it wasn't.
I'm just blaming the reading of the scene in question as sexual on people's having dirty minds.
If you don't like the word "blame" I can use the word "attribute". If you don't like the phrase "dirty minds" I can use the phrase "been conditioned to associate these things with sex". I'm just attributing the reading of the scene in question as sexual on people's having been conditioned to associate these things with sex.
I'm not being personally judgemental or taking this as an affront, just tired of having to reason through words right now.
anyway i apologize if i annoyed you but i still feel like you've missed the point somewhat
"insert tab A into slot B" is not really the issue here, meaning is never inherent and interpretation is a cognitive process
it's not like i'm even invested in the tomb raider series anyway
when i was a kid a girl in my class had one of the tomb raider games, it was one of the first games i ever played and i just remember dying repeatedly to a bear
recently i bought a bundle of tomb raider games that were on sale on steam, none of which i have played yet
People look at Tomb Raider and they say; "Sex sells." What sex? No sexual acts exist in the games. The sex evoked of being a woman with large breasts.
The people who made that game clearly wanted to sell that game with "sex." The sex evoked by being an attractive, vulnerable young woman. But the execution of the game included massive amounts of violence. So the sexual element added to the violence element produces sexual violence, or violence of a sexual nature, which is weird.
don't try to draw lips. just, don't.
You can say "oh just replace her with Nathan Drake" but Nathan Drake isn't treated like that in his own games.
Plus this kind of stuff will pretty much always register as weird- Lone Survivor, that is, the film, essentially did something similar and a lot of people were really skeeved out about it. It's just that it's especially problematic for several (hopefully self evident) reasons when it's a woman.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
but it also had a tie-in tv show that people watched when they were kids
Oh Gen 1. You were fun, but your coding was held together by gum and paperclips.
I acknowledge this is irrational, but...
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead