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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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psychotic pixie nightmare girl.

Which is not reality, and if you want the blow-up doll version of that in a video game, okay go for it. But it's not beautiful, it's not what real women look like, and from the outside for women, it's a tedious trope.

Like I said, male and female sexuality is different. I'm not unsympathetic to guys going "my fantasy wank material is not appealing in this new version" about their traditional games, Lord knows I've whined about changes to my favourite materials in media. But games companies have to expand the market to make money, which means trying to sell to women as well.

Personally, I don't think games like Suicide Squad are appealing to women, but there may well be some women out there who like those kind of shoot-em-ups. So the game studios want to reel them in by giving them characters to identify with, like Harley, and that makes turning Harley from the blow-up doll to something more appealing to women a necessity. Again, I wouldn't take Suicide Squad for free because the concept insults me: oh yeah, go ahead and piss on Flash's corpse, that's so mature. But I'm carrying over my preferences from comics where I like the Justice League and don't like the idea of "so let's kill the League", even more "let's kill the League in demeaning ways because old-fashioned notions of honour and dignity are to be ridiculed".

I'm way more on board with the criticisms of having Lex Luthor be the voice of SJW by admiring the Amazons for being free of toxic masculinity. Those kinds of changes are truly worth fighting over, not cosmetic changes to Harley's butt so it's less jiggly.

Also, what the hell did they do to Amanda Waller? She's supposed to be a hefty lass, not this pop-eyed skinny bint.

Those kinds of changes are truly worth fighting over, not cosmetic changes to Harley's butt so it's less jiggly.

If there are fifty changes all of which makes the game worse to varying degrees, there may be only a few of them which are blatantly, inarguably, provably bad, but a whole lot of them which make the game a little worse but where a crafty debater can say "are you sure? You just aren't looking at it from the right angle." But the game becomes worse anyway, because all of these little changes with plausible deniability add up..

and from the outside for women, it's a tedious trope.

Don't women usually pick attractive characters in games? I believe there was a reference to that in one of the earlier discussions.

I'll admit that for female-oriented media, there are equally unrealistic expectations for men: can you dance? 😁

Supposedly that specific black actress has some form of connection to SBI and that's why she has been in so many games lately. She's also in many of the games that had the "female attractiveness change."

If she's alternate-earth version of Amanda Waller, okay. But she's not canon The Wall to me. And I shouldn't poke fun at the eyes, but they are very obvious.