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Feminist Frequency

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Is there any support that the backers are disappointed? The reactions I saw from people who donated money were pretty positive (so now we're both basing the reaction to this video on anecdotal evidence).

Also, this is the first video in an entire series, it seems a little presumptuous to call the whole thing a failure.

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So now that I watched like four minutes of this video and learned that Miyamoto is evil, which Mario games should I burn?

 

Maybe go back again and pay attention? At no point did she get up on a soap box and start calling to tear these games down. She said that she has played and enjoyed Mario games for much of her life.

 

Calling something out for what it is does not mean you are trying to censor it. Saving Peach has so little to do with what makes the Mario games good; it's not like they would be in any danger if they tried using a different premise for Mario's conflict with Bowser for a change. Aren't most of us tired of Nintendo rehashing their games anyway?

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It doesn't matter how right you are, if you only give attention to one side of the story people will see you as a nut and more or less start to ignore whatever message you wanted to convey.

I don't like one-sided research, if you pass off judgement you better give the reader the complete picture.

I'd still say she wanted to make a video about the damsel in distress trope and that's what she did, and she backed it up with lots and lots of examples and seems to have researched many many more. Not to over-snark, but if you want a video about 'good female characters', make one. And she actually has planned to make a video about 'Positive Female Characters!', so that should provide 'the other side of the argument' for this and all future trope-videos.

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It's very clear that the video has much higher production values than your standard YouTube fare.

That's an enormously broad scale. YouTube has everything in quality and budget from grainy home videos of hamsters eating to network TV programs. It's above average, but not exceptional.

No one seemed to care when Idle Thumbs exceeded their asked for amount, because people understood that it is expensive to record/host a weekly podcast and also have separate full time jobs. Why isn't the same understanding being directed towards the FemFeq Kickstarter?

That's a common and reasonable critique to the money question, and since I did contribute to Idle Thumbs, I can say that I felt satisfied with the money I spent. I think it's gross that access to research materials is a special privilege to people who paid her $50, and I'm underwhelmed with the quality of the product relative to the hype. But I'll grant that the budget isn't an entirely fair criticism, except that you can't say that $6000 was the budget for the series. The budget was $26000 with stretch goals. Minor correction.

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I though the video was pretty fascinating myself. I had no idea the history of that Star Fox adventure and how Fox was shoehorned in. I didn't know Princess Peach was an accident in Mario 2. It's new knowledge to me and like the Daily Show, the rest of the video works well by digging up examples ad nauseum to make an unmistakable point. Her delivery could certainly have been a little more relaxed, but people are already complaining about her not being 'academic' enough. Clearly she's not living up to YouTubes standards!  :blink:
 
As to the funding. It's an interesting (if very loaded) question but it seems pretty obvious that she's just going to make more videos. She says as much in this early interview:
 
Erich: The project is Kickstarter funded and is currently well past its initial goal. How well did you think the project funding would go? What is your reaction to the money raised and the fan response so far?

Anita: To be honest I wasn’t sure what to expect, as this is the first time I've attempted to raise money before I began a video series. When planning the Kickstarter I kept the initial goal low and the scope of the project smaller for that reason. The response was immediate and overwhelmingly positive. We reached our initial goal in the first 24 hours. Because of this I’ve been able to expand and evolve the project to cover a wider variety of tropes and characters.

 

http://www.pmsclan.com/content.php?task=detail&pid=641

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I actually did rewatch it and it seems the basic idea is "if you disempower a woman, even if it's a single time, in the benefit of HIS story arc". which means:

 

-Kurtis has his own story arc in Tomb Raider, the Angel of Darkness, she saved Lara's bacon in the end, turning into a damsel in distress.

 

This definition is ludicrous, just because a female character got help a single time for a few minutes, she's all of the sudden a disempowered damsel in distress? Then I can't think of a single character independent of their sex that hasn't been reduced to a damsel in distress at least once.

 

By the short preview it looks like she'll talk about Elaine Marley as a positive role model, sure, she managed to escape in MK I and saved Guybrush in MK II, but she was totally a damsel in distress in MK III, MK IV and Tales of Monkey Island. Like she said in the video, she's disempowered in favor of the males story arc... Come to think of it, considering Guybrush mess up Elaine's plan and defeated LeChuck himself, that made Elaine disempowered in favor of Guybrush too.

 

See what I'm getting too? It's too vague of a description, or maybe too ample to exact. 

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I think what you're really getting at is that the Damsel in Distress trope is all over video games and you basically can't have a strong female character without at some point subverting her and making her into a Damsel in Distress. Which I gather is her point.

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I actually did rewatch it and it seems the basic idea is "if you disempower a woman, even if it's a single time, in the benefit of HIS story arc". which means:

 

-Kurtis has his own story arc in Tomb Raider, the Angel of Darkness, she saved Lara's bacon in the end, turning into a damsel in distress.

 

This definition is ludicrous, just because a female character got help a single time for a few minutes, she's all of the sudden a disempowered damsel in distress? Then I can't think of a single character independent of their sex that hasn't been reduced to a damsel in distress at least once.

 

By the short preview it looks like she'll talk about Elaine Marley as a positive role model, sure, she managed to escape in MK I and saved Guybrush in MK II, but she was totally a damsel in distress in MK III, MK IV and Tales of Monkey Island. Like she said in the video, she's disempowered in favor of the males story arc... Come to think of it, considering Guybrush mess up Elaine's plan and defeated LeChuck himself, that made Elaine disempowered in favor of Guybrush too.

 

See what I'm getting too? It's too vague of a description, or maybe too ample to exact. 

 

 

It's not vague, it's nuanced. You're interpreting it as black and white: a woman must be either a damsel or hero. A woman can exhibit properties of both, at the same time, in the same game! But by and large we've seen women primarily be portrayed as disempowered damsels. And even those moments of empowerment are quickly revoked, such as in the Zelda examples. The Monkey Island example fits this as well. It doesn't make these bad games, but it does necessitate a need for new, inclusive and forward thinking games.

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Of the (right now) 87 comments below the video there is only one negative one. Some people have some points of critique, but they all start or end with some form of 'great work'. So I guess the people who backed it like it.

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Where's the proof that she didn't?

 

I'm only playing devil's advocate here because I don't actually care very much what she does with the money, but I do think that as a general rule those who enjoy funds well beyond their expectations should have at least an ethical obligation to be open about how all that money is spent. Kickstarter is becoming a pretty big part of the developmentosphere so it's interesting to think about.

 

I don't really agree. When you Kickstart something, you know exactly what you're getting. The kickstarter explains what the end result will be in the pitch. There are stretch goals for additional donations. I don't see why you would be entitled to anything above and beyond what you are promised in the pitch. One of the major purposes of Kickstarter is to provide access to funding so that people can develop a product and eventually sell it. If you require Kickstarters to funnel all their funding back into the product, you undermine that profit motive, you wreak havoc on their business plans, and you basically turn it into a charity model. I don't think Kickstarter would be as successful as a charity model. 

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Really well done, and I think these could serve as great educational tools for younger people..

 

Also, there is nothing wrong with being critical or at least aware of problematic things you enjoy. She explicitly states that she enjoyed these games, but there are problematic themes.

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-Kurtis has his own story arc in Tomb Raider, the Angel of Darkness, she saved Lara's bacon in the end, turning into a damsel in distress.

 

This definition is ludicrous, just because a female character got help a single time for a few minutes, she's all of the sudden a disempowered damsel in distress? Then I can't think of a single character independent of their sex that hasn't been reduced to a damsel in distress at least once.

 

I think you're reaching a tiny bit to make your argument, but sure.. in that exact moment she qualifies for the trope. Like youmeyou says, this isn't a black and white, "now this character is a damsel in distress forever" thing.  In that scene, Lara is made to be a damsel. This is a fairly mild case of this, but it still fits the bill.

 

I'm actually curious, how many male video game characters can you think of that are imprisoned, don't break out themselves but instead are rescued by a female character? I'm trying to think of any.. maybe Pey'j in Beyond Good and Evil? I never played that through to the end. 

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It's not vague, it's nuanced. You're interpreting it as black and white: a woman must be either a damsel or hero. A woman can exhibit properties of both, at the same time, in the same game! But by and large we've seen women primarily be portrayed as disempowered damsels. And even those moments of empowerment are quickly revoked, such as in the Zelda examples. The Monkey Island example fits this as well. It doesn't make these bad games, but it does necessitate a need for new, inclusive and forward thinking games.

But that's the problem, if revoking a female character of power for a single second is wrong and considered "regressive cr*p", that sounds regressive by itself.

 

How many stories empower a hero by dissempowering them first? How many stories disempower to show humanity or emotions? Is she asking for a "Space Mary-ine" Sue or what? 

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jeremywc, on 08 Mar 2013 - 10:58, said:

Maybe go back again and pay attention?

No.

jeremywc, on 08 Mar 2013 - 10:58, said:

Saving Peach has so little to do with what makes the Mario games good; it's not like they would be in any danger if they tried using a different premise for Mario's conflict with Bowser for a change.

Yes.

youmeyou, on 08 Mar 2013 - 11:03, said:

I though the video was pretty fascinating myself. I had no idea the history of that Star Fox adventure and how Fox was shoehorned in. I didn't know Princess Peach was an accident in Mario 2. It's new knowledge to me and like the Daily Show, the rest of the video works well by digging up examples ad nauseum to make an unmistakable point.

That's good! I am mistaking the point, though, because all I got was "Video games have historically used the women in their story as a player reward. Opportunities to move past this have often been squashed."

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I don't really agree. When you Kickstart something, you know exactly what you're getting. The kickstarter explains what the end result will be in the pitch. There are stretch goals for additional donations. I don't see why you would be entitled to anything above and beyond what you are promised in the pitch. One of the major purposes of Kickstarter is to provide access to funding so that people can develop a product and eventually sell it. If you require Kickstarters to funnel all their funding back into the product, you undermine that profit motive, you wreak havoc on their business plans, and you basically turn it into a charity model. I don't think Kickstarter would be as successful as a charity model. 

 

A Kickstarter should be specifically for the funding of exactly what's described. It's not meant to be a donation system or a way of giving a company extra funds they can use for whatever. How annoyed would you be if Apple did a Kickstarter for some project they're unsure would sell well, and then after getting way more than necessary they just said "thanks guys" and put the extra into the company's general money chest rather than using it to improve the product or develop something implicitly related to it that'd definitely be of interest to its contributors?

 

The point I'm raising is that if a Kickstarter project gets more funds than it asked for and more than was specified in the stretch goals, what then? You can't keep inventing stretch goals indefinitely, there's going to be a point where excess money truly is excess. So what should happen to it? Should it be returned to contributors? Should the project owners get to keep it for themselves? Should a system exist so people can revoke their money without penalty until the funds fall to the stretch goal ceiling? Should some facility exist in Kickstarter so a specific plan of how to use that extra money can be outlined, whether it's marketing or whatever?

 

I'm basically getting at the fact that whereas most parts of Kickstarter are very transparent and this is partially responsible for its popularity IMO, the matter of what happens to extra funds is fairly ambiguous and in many cases I suspect project owners just do whatever and nobody has any idea what happened to it. I get that some people might simply not care about it, especially if they've only contributed $5 or whatever. But what if you've donated $500 and you discover that the project owner ended up with an extra $50,000 that he essentially just blew on things completely unrelated to the project? I'd kind of want my fuckin' $500 back.

 

I suppose I'd just like to see Kickstarter itself accomodate for this kind of thing more, this isn't anything to do with Feminist Frequency at all. I can't really blame her if she has decided to just take the money for other things (I think it's almost guaranteed she's only used about a quarter of the overall funds at most), but I do think better processes need to exist on Kickstarter for managing this. It's important to maintain the line between contributing towards a product and contributing towards a team/cause/company, the latter of which Kickstarter isn't designed for, nor does it allow it AFAIK.

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I'm actually curious, how many male video game characters can you think of that are imprisoned, don't break out themselves but instead are rescued by a female character? I'm trying to think of any.. maybe Pey'j in Beyond Good and Evil? I never played that through to the end.

That we actually don't talk about this kind of stuff in the wake of such a video but (have to) rehash the same fucking arguments with the same horrible cast about sexism and feminism and everything else that is a bit besides the point is pretty sad (and sexist).

 

Yeah, he kind of fits the bill - he is a big fat pig though, I wouldn't call him damsel-y in any way. I was wondering, does Elaine ever free Guybrush? Maybe April or Zoë (The Longest Journey)?

 

And regarding Pey'j:

It's been some time, but wasn't there a reveal in the end that he was one of the bad guys? That would kind of un-damsel him in my eyes. I could be thinking about Anachronox though, not sure.

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A Kickstarter should be specifically for the funding of exactly what's described. It's not meant to be a donation system or a way of giving a company extra funds they can use for whatever. How annoyed would you be if Apple did a Kickstarter for some project they're unsure would sell well, and then after getting way more than necessary they just said 'thanks guys' and put the extra into the company's general money chest?

 

The point I'm raising is that if a Kickstarter project gets more funds than it asked for and more than was specified in the stretch goals, what then? You can't keep inventing stretch goals indefinitely, there's going to be a point where excess money truly is excess. So what should happen to it? Should it be returned to contributors? Should the project owners get to keep it for themselves? Should some facility exist in Kickstarter so a specific plan of how to use that extra money can be outlined, whether it's marketing or whatever?

 

The makers should keep the money for themselves. The basic idea of kickstarter is this. I have an idea- a new kind of watch. That watch will eventually make money, but in order to set up the infrastructure I need some starting money to get going. So I go to kickstarter and ask for funding. In exchange for helping me set up my infrastructure and build the product, people who kickstart will each get a watch. If I get $10,000, I can set up the infrastructure and deliver a watch to each person who kickstarts $100, but I will keep no profit.

 

Say instead of getting 10 donations of $100 each, I get 100 donations of $100 each, for a total of $100,000. I can deliver every kickstarter a watch, but am left with $50,000 as profit. 

In my view, what should happen is that each person who kickstarted gets the watch they were promised. The profit is kept by the kickstarter. The only other two options are that you channel the excess funding into the watch, or you return the excess funding to the kickstarters, in which case you have both cannibalized your consumers (in that some people who would have bought a watch at a price that includes profit get the watch at a lesser price) and have given up any profit. 

 

Since the whole point of kickstarter is to give people with business ideas some funding to get that business going, it makes no sense to penalize them when they have a particularly popular idea. As long as they deliver what they promised to deliver, I see no reason why they should be denied the value of their idea. 

 

edit:

 

Also Lucca saves Chrono in Chrono Trigger. 

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Among other things, they've hired a full-time producer for this year. There are going to be at least another 11 videos -- hours of content that needs to be researched. Any accusation that the relatively modest amount of money this project is ludicrous. Ask the Thumbs how quickly that money disappears.

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He, even Psychonauts has the damsel in Lili - god I love that game. In Full Throttle Ben gets kind of saved by Maureen and she is a mechanic, that counts for something, no? He is the protagonist though, and he probably would have woken up later anyway.

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As i stated previously: she's making more videos. So this doesn't even classify as "extra money with no where to go" 160,000 is really not much money at all stretched out over a dozen (or more) videos. I'm assuming she also has to pay her researchers (in addition to her producer) This seems quite relavent to the Skull Girls skulldoggery what just went down.  http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-little-fighting-game-that-could/1100-4587/

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I think the "for the benefit of the hero/protagonist's story" caveat is probably the one that makes it work. It's an extremely common and valuable storytelling element to completely disempower the protagonist. This is where the tension comes in, where you have major reversals and redemptions. It's easy, without making that distinction, to muddy a story analysis with gender politics. The scene where Indiana Jones is going to be crushed under the lowering ceiling could be interpreted as damsel in distress if he was Georgia Jones, but that interpretation would only serve to discredit an otherwise fun and exciting story. Political (in this case feminist) story analysis is, to a degree, prescriptive, so it's necessary to place limits on its scope or else instead of highlighting differences it creates them.

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As i stated previously: she's making more videos. So this doesn't even classify as "extra money with no where to go" 160,000 is really not much money at all stretched out over a dozen (or more) videos. I'm assuming she also has to pay her researchers (in addition to her producer) This seems quite relavent to the Skull Girls skulldoggery what just went down.  http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-little-fighting-game-that-could/1100-4587/

 

I think $13k is more than enough for each video, based on the apparent production values of the first. Making allusions to all these researchers and producers doesn't count for much if the end result doesn't seem beyond what a few passionate dudes could have come up with in their free time. I'm not saying the quality of the videos is bad, but it's hardly outstanding.

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And yet, no dude was passionate enough or capable enough to try.

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Regarding the money: Even if it turns out that she pockets most of it for herself (which I seriously doubt), I personally would not care, as someone who gave her money. When this Kickstarter was just starting, I was planning on giving a small amount because I like her other videos. But when the Kickstarter created this huge backlash where people were actively trying to silence her (and silence is not an overstatment--there were people who were trying to flag the Kickstarter as terrorism or the infamous/disgusting example of someone making a game where you just punch Anita S. in the face repeatedly), I decided to donate more than I was planning on, as a way to counteract a lot of the hate that was going on. I assume that a lot of other people had the same reaction.

To me, the excess KS funds are just a sign that people really take umbrage with hateful attacks that are targeted at a woman who is just trying to express her opinion on the Internet.

I won't deny that there are larger issues with Kickstarter that will probably need to be addressed at some point if we're going to continue using it as a model, but I don't think FemFeq should be saddled with all that baggage alone.

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