Thoughts on Bioshock Infinite (spoilers toward the end)

PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING BEFORE COMMENTING, because whatever knee-jerk reaction you may have, I probably address it somewhere in this post.

I finally finished the game! Great game, seriously weird ending, but in doing a little research on various theories and explanations I have a somewhat better grasp on things, and the game in general makes a whole lot of sense. On the whole, very different from the first game, but very good. Not sure if I'll play it as often as I've played the first game (a lot), but I'd say it's got some replay value. All in all, worthwhile.

(And worth the wait - as my friends know, I didn't buy it when it first came out, my birthday was May 18th so I decided to wait until then and got it as a birthday present)

Anyway, I don't so much have a theoretical analysis as a bunch of scattered thoughts. Let's begin.

As I expressed months before the game was released I was very hesitant about it, since Elizabeth looked like a damsel in distress on the cover art cirulating the internet shown above. I also saw some gifs that basically showed her getting taken, or begging the protagonist . Er, not cool guys. Then Ken Levine, the creator, admitted he wasn't interested in marketing the game to women, and that the target demographic for the advertising was the typical frat guy. Great. I mean, it made sense, gamer nerds were gonna buy it regardless of how it was marketed and they wanted to draw in some new fans, but stillm just frat guys? Not sorority girls? Or any type of "normal" woman?

Then the trailer came out. By this time I was sold(ish), but again, it showed Elizabeth about to be hanged, and the protagonist rescuing her. While she did nothing. Awesome.

Anyway, seeing Elizabeth largely shown as a helpless woman to be rescued and protected rubbed me the wrong way, despite my friends telling me she was gonna be awesome and useful. Then the game came out and surprise, she was a strong, independent woman and not at all a damsel! Yay!

When I started playing, she immediately struck me as strong willed. There was nothing weak about her. She seemed like the love child of Disney princesses Rapunzel and Belle - in voice, appearance, and character traits. That's not a terrible thing when you realize how strong both those women were.

And since the game only allows you to carry two weapons at a time, and doesn't let you carry any health kits or phials of salts (Infinite's version of Eve hypos), I certainly appreciated her throwing those things at me during combat. But it would have been even cooler if she participated in the fighting as well. That system would have been much better than one that makes the player rely on her for everything. Men in the 50's relied on women for a lot of things, didn't make those women their equals.

Is it just me or does she look like Wonder Woman?

She does revive you when you "die," rather than have the game send you to a Vita Chamber, but women have been healers in games, especially RPGs, for decades. Healer may be a step above "damsel," but it's still not exactly progressive.

It is true that the game isn't one huge escort mission, which is a step up from the last Bioshock games. God I hated escorting that little girl toward the end. Seriously, that sucked, and I'm awful at escort missions. It's good that she (mysteriously) never gets hurt, ever, and doesn't need to be protected.

That said, Elizabeth isn't entirely without flaw from a feminist standpoint. As a character, she's strong, capable, and ambitious. But despite people arguing that Infinite is her story, not Booker's, I can't help be seeing that more often than not, she's an object to be acted upon. She's put in a tower to protect her, and seemingly to protect others from her. She's rescued from that tower. She's taken again and things are done to her. This whole story is about what's done to her. As Anita Sarkeesian said in her first video about damsels in distress (no I haven't seen the second as it was taken down before I could see it, but I'm keeping my eyes open), "it's been said that in the game of patriarchy, women aren't the opposing team, they're the ball." Elizabeth does get tossed back and forth, and from man to man, for various reasons. This doesn't reduce her to a weak, helpless character, but rather strips an otherwise capable woman of her own agency. 

Elizabeth is not an annoying, useless, weak dolt that exists solely as an objective, but she does fit the basic definition of "damsel in distress," in that she is captured and needs to await rescue. The fact that she does act with some agency during combat, and the fact that she can pick locks for the player/protagonist does help detract from her objecitification, but I don't think it balances it out completely.

Elizabeth, in some ways - mostly in terms of her characterization - does show us how far women in video games have come. In other ways, she's a lot like women in ealier video games. She's strong, but still needs to be rescued. She's not on the sidelines, but she's not exactly in the middle of the action either. She's a supporting character, not the protagonist. She's a step up from the Little Sisters in the ealier games, but she's not exactly at the top of the staircase. She's great, I'd definitely cosplay as her, but we still have a long way to go.

On a slightly unrelated note, I would like to praise this series featuring female scientists in at least two of their games. You had Dr. Tennenbaum in the first game, and Lutece in this one. For games that took place so long ago, having women of science play prominent roles in the backstory is pretty awesome.

But enough of these white women. It's intersectionality time! It's also spoiler time. I tried to avoid them, but alas, I can't talk about Daisy Fitzroy without giving something away.

I noticed that racism is a prominent theme in the game; we, the modern gamers, are supposed to know that that's wrong. It's there to illustrate that Columbia, while beautiful, has an evil and creepy side. Much like I'm sure Rapture did before it went down the tubes (no pun intended). It's supposed to Columbia, not us, who think that Daisy Fitzroy (still one of the few prominent women of color in mainstream gaming) is evil. We're even supposed to support the radica uprising, although we're only aiding it to get the airship back.

Then why does Daisy become the enemy? Elizabeth has to kill her to keep from killing a child, and the final battle involves fighting off the Vox and destorying their zeppelins in order to protect your ship. If Levine wasn't such a fan of racists, why did he write a black radical to be so violent that she's a vile, child-murdering antagonist who needs to be killed? If the game was really anti-racist, why does the Voxpopuli turn against Booker and Elizabeth so quickly, despite Booker supposedly being a martyr? Well, I remember the stated reasons, I'm more questioning the writing choices than the characers' choices.

The Uncharted franchise is notorious for putting people of color in antagonistic roles.

This may only be slightly problematic if video games in general had plenty of racial equality, people of color were usually present without being enemies, and nerd culture wasn't chock full of white privilege. Sadly, this isn't the case, and the racism in this game's storyline is at best more of the same, following a not-so-great trend in modern video games.

As a feminist, it's great to see women in general placed in prominent roles in video games, even if they're not protagonists. From an intersectionality perspective, however, it's disheartening to see a woman of color in such a negative portrayal of black radicals.

Zatanna: My New Comic Book Love

First I read Wonder Woman, the cliche feminist go-to. I liked it.

Then I started reading Batgirl, and fell in love with Gail Simone's writing.

And now I'm in love with Zatanna.

Not an easy book to find, mind you. Volume 2 of the series is the only book still in print, and no one had it. Not Comicopia, not New England Comics, not Newbury Comics. But wanting to support a local comic book shop and not just order it from Amazon, when Comicopia offered to order it for me I enthusiastically accepted the favor. And it was worth the wait!

A comic that centers around a woman? Yes! A story about a creepy, possessed marionette? Hell to the yes! A female magician? Oh yeah! Well not magician, sorceress that does magic shows . . . and it's never clarified if the audience knows about her powers . . . but still, yay!

Really my only complaint is the way she's constantly sexualized. Her usual outfit wasn't too problematic, although I dunno, pants would be nice. But in some of the chapters her breasts were insane. Not all of them, sometimes she had normal sized boobs, but what purpose did those melons serve? And then the fan art is all about sexy sexy sex times, further reducing her to a sex object. The fandom seems to be mostly male and mostly concerned with her appearance than her character or the stories told in the books.

really?

seriously?

Oh come on . . .

. . . she had better be doing an escape act here!

Look! Pants! Finally!

Zatanna: Because a successful female magician is so inconcievable, she only exists in comic books.

Well sort of. I know there are female magicians out there, but I once heard that there is not one female magician with her own show in Vegas. I went to a magic bar that sold black shirts that said "escape artist" - "for the boys," the headliner said; and "for the girls," they had pink shirts that said "I <3 [the magician's name]" Don't get me wrong, I did really like him, as do many young ladies, but the way the shirts were gendered rubbed me the wrong way, and ultimately reminded me how far south I'd traveled. I want to take this moment to talk about women in magic, and keep in mind that magic is tengentially related to nerd culture, there seems to be a considerable overlap between the two interests.

Part of the problem lies in the way women's clothing is designed. Dresses and women's suits are fitted and rarely have functional pockets, leaving little room for women to hide things. Women tend to have small hands, making sleight of hands illusions especially difficult (yet I still can't palm anything smaller than a quarter). While women are never actively discouraged from pursuing magic, they're not exactly encouraged either. A lack of female magicians out there mean that lots of girls don't even consider learning magic, and girls are still socialized not to be too outlandish or "attention seeking," because it's not ladylike to show off the way boys do with their magic tricks. And if those shirts at the magic bar say anything, it's that we just don't expect women to be interested in things like magic and escape artistry, their role is that of a groupie or, if they're lucky, the lovely assistant.

(Don't get me wrong, I loved being called up on stage that night; if it happened again I would not complain in the slightest)

Er, I guess that's it really. Obstacles, not cool. If would be awesome if the series addressed the gender disparity in the magic world, maybe showing Zatanna deal with sexism from male magicians. Maybe it has happned, but it's not gonna be cheap to track down the back issues or out-of-print graphic novels, gotta get a new job first to see what happened in Every Day Magic and Zatanna vol. 1. But if it hasn't happened in her story, it probably won't, since the series that centers around her has been disconinued. Zatanna was not part of the New 52 series of reboots. Maybe it's time to start writing some fan fiction.

Anyway, the series is not overtly feminist, nor are most of the fans, but I'd say the series is worth checking out if you're looking for something new to read.

The lack of women on Free Comic Book Day

If you're looking for an intellectual, unbiased, well thought out analysis, keep looking because I'll be honest this is a bit more more anecdotal than some of my other writing, and I'll admit I haven't written in a while. And it's a bit, shall we say "whiney." You have been warned.

Today was Free Comic Book Day, my first in fact. I went to the local New England Comics to see what they had to offer. It was a pretty good deal, really. They were giving out a free Tick comic, plus two from the table and an additional two from a box at the end of the table. Five total. Plus a ton of great deals throughout the store, almost everything was on sale, so I got my fill of books for a while. Although Comicopia just got my Zatanna book in (Volume 2, currently the only Zatanna book in print >_< why has it been so friggin difficult to find this damn book?) so that'll be a priority when I'm able to pick it up. Speaking of comics featuring female protagonists, they were scarce. There was an Aphrodite comic on the table, which I picked up even though I've never heard of the series, but all the other books featured men heavily or exclusively. I also snagged an X-Men comic from the box since it featured Storm on the cover. I don't read X-Men that often but I do like that, despite the title, they do feature women pretty well. Or maybe that's just the impression I got in my Women of Marvel book - maybe those issues were the exception to the rule.

(my haul, of the day, plus cat)

And while checking out the comics, the trend carried over to most of the store. All of the action figures were men, all of the special harcover books on sale were about dudes, and the Buffy books in that display were on the second to last shelf - I almost didn't see them. Yes, we have Wonder Woman, we have Batgirl, we have Buffy and Black Widow and Supergirl and Zatanna (barely), and they are awesome characters. Their presence counts, but it doesn't count that much when their male counterparts are still the ones dominating center stage.

I realize that it's not fair to only read comics about female characters, and trust me I don't limit myself in that way. I just seek them out more actively because I do identify more with Batgirl and Wonder Woman than I do, say Spider Man. I still read comics about men, just less frequently. Besdies, I'm voting with my wallet, I know I'm one consumer but if I can contribute to the demand for more badass women in comics, maybe more will be published. One can only hope.

Now, there were girls in the store! Not a lot, the store was still mostly dudes, but so often I'm the only girl in the comic book shop (unless it's Newbury Comics, but that doesn't really count these days, especially the one in Fannuel Hall which at any given time these days is loaded with high school kids let loose on a field trip) that it's refreshing. And two of the kids, the cutest little ones in the store, were African American - and yes, this is significant to point out, since nerd culture may be becoming more egalitarian gender-wise but it's still overwhelmingly white, which is arguably an even bigger problem.

So while things are getting better, but if Free Comic Book Day 2013 is any indicator of how things are progressing, we still have a long way to go.

Do they or don't they?

Okay so this isn't really a feminist issue, although it is worth saying that social issues are interlinked so this could be related to feminism if you try hard enough. This is about video games and their relation to violent behavior.

Some people say they do and they blame the video games for school shootings and the general increase in violence in our society. Others are offended at the mere implication that video games, or really any form of media, could possibly impact our behavior. They think you'd have to be really stupid to let that stuff influence you at all. Well, this issue isn't exactly black and white.

If a mentally healthy person plays a violent video game, it's probably not going to have much of an effect. Mentally sound people know it's just fantasy and that's not how you behave in real life. If anything it'll provide an outlet for any aggression they do occasionally feel. However, exposure to violent video games while one is developing may skew one's view of reality a tiny bit; they may become desensitized to violence, or some of the gorier stuff may be disturbing to younger gamers. Not good. But if someone with a mental illness plays video games, they may interpret the violence a little differently, and they may see it as an inspiration. It may fuel their illness, or it may encourage their violent behavior, and that's where a problem occurs.

Think of it as an energy drink. Energy drinks may have a minor impact on a healthy person's wellbeing -  digestive problems, heart palpitations, insomnia, etc. Nothing serious, but still unpleasant stuff. Only a major overdose is going to have really negative consequences. But we still allow adults to make their own decisions about them. Energy drinks do, however, endanger their less healthy consumers. If you have a heart condition or other such health problems, an energy drink could kill them, or at least put them in the hospital. This is why adults are advised not to consume them if they have health problems, and a big part of why minors are often not allowed to buy them at certain stores. I know CVS doesn't let minors buy the stuff, they even carded me.

Now, I'm not sure I'm totally against restricting the sale of M-rated video games to minors. Maybe not in the form of a law, but I do see the value in letting video game stores require an ID for certain games. It's not censorship, it's putting the decision in the parents' hands. If parents want their preteen kids playing Bioshock, they're free to buy them the game. If parents don't want their kids playing, say, Grand Theft Auto, it's probably not the end of the world for the kids. So you have to wait until you're a little older big whoop. My dad made me wait until I was 12 to play MediEvil, and I was pretty much never allowed to own any GTA games. I thought it was unfair at the time, but I grew up and I got over it. It was inconvenient  but they weren't trying to oppress me, they were just doing what they felt was right, an they were probably on to something. Parents have the right and the responsibility to take charge of their kids' psychological development.

On the other hand, restricting the sale of video games may only lead to these games being torrented, and video game companies losing money. Then again, that's a sale they may never make if the kid is forced to wait, and outgrows the game before he or she is allowed to play it.

So again, I'm still sort of on the fence about this, I just can't seem to get myself all riled up either way. I think teenagers flipping out over the possibility of not being able to play whatever game they want whenever they want to be a tad immature, but I think there are some issues with an age restriction as well. And we certainly can't run mental health checks or background checks on kids who want to buy Gears of War, that would be ridiculous. And while I do think Penn Jillette has a point about the need for better, more attentive parenting, I've never been a parent so I don't think I'm in a position to judge most parents or tell them how to raise their kids.

Okay, I've said my piece. Not totally relevant to the blog, but screw it, it's my blog and I'll write about whatever the heck I want.

Why I'm Doing These Panels - a response to some bad critiques

Apparently Facebook has an "other" inbox, where messages from pages, events, and non-friends go to die. Sort of. I didn't know about this inbox until last night when I was looking for a message from a friend in my recent archives, and to be sure this "other" inbox is useful in making it so I don't have to wade through spammy updates and random guys trying to "chat" with me to get to messages I actually give a crap about, but it also kept me from seeing a pretty interesting message about my recent(ish) panel at ConnectiCon.

It was pretty critical, dare I say scathing at points. She did raise constructive comments about how I should moderate the discussion better, keep things moving and change things up because we pretty much talked about the same thing the whole time. But she also raised a concern that I was too "one sided" and "man bashing," and that I made the atmosphere too intimidating for the likes of her. She then went on to say that maybe she has a thick skin, but she doesn't have a problem with video game harassment. Then ended to say that I'm always going to have some opinionated feminist in my midst and I shouldn't let it bother me too much.

Well, maybe I need to make this abundantly clear at all times: I am a feminist. I believe in gender equality, and since I am a woman, most of my opinions are going to side with the concerns of women over the concerns of men. I care about men's rights, I support efforts to question our society's definition of masculinity as well as femininity, but I'm probably going to focus mostly on women's issues from a feminist perspective. So yeah, while I talk about gender as a general topic, and while I may incorporate men's issues and issues of gay men, and acknowledge opposing aruments (in future panels), I don't think it's possible for me to ever be completely unbiased. This is reason #1 why I allow for discussion, so my panels and presentations aren't just my own opinions but other people's input as well. I let people disagree, and I let people talk to each other. I want a forum of various opinions, although I prefer that they be respectful and, ideally, informed.

Reason #2 why I feel discussion is important is that I hope to create a safe space where people can share their experiences. They can talk about incidents of harassment, or anything that's made them feel frustrated, angry, upset, or just plain uncomfortable. And they can do this without someone immediately dismissing them, telling them to get over it, calm down, grow a thicker skin, you're overreacting, it's not a big deal, not all women have this problem so why are you whining? So if that's what my critic wanted to say, a part of me is glad she was too "intimidated" so say it, and I would like to think that she actually listened to what others have to say but I'm unconvinced that was the case.

Don't worry, I don't mean this as a passive-aggressive response to her. I'll get back to her once I get home tonight, I just couldn't deal with it last night because this week has been overwhelming as all get-out at work and I knew if I responded without thinking out a mature, polite way to acknowledge her feedback, I would further ruin my reputation. It's bad enough someone's been going around telling everyone I made a rape joke* and banned men from talking during the discussion**. But as I was formulating a response today, I came across this essay on convention harassment (at Anime Boston of all places), and it reminded me that there are lots of women like me who share my frustration, and my panels are not only there to make people think, but to let people speak where they may otherwise feel silenced. I hope I get to continue these presentations.

My next one will be at NerdNite Boston on the 28th, if anyone's interested. The Facebook event already a ton of confirmed guests which is starting to freak me out. Unfortunately I have to somehow keep my presentation to 20 minutes, which is not easy since my first two were given hour-long time slots.

*I kinda did, maybe. I recounted someone telling me to "relax and enjoy" something I thought was problematic, and I mentioned that that sounded like something a rapist would say. It wasn't meant to be a joke, but it did make people feel uncomfortable and I probably shouldn't have said it. Still, if she's going to tell people she really ought to acknowledge the context, because she's making me out to be a much bigger bitch than I am. My biggest concern is that the CTcon coordinators won't invite me back - they've completely ignored my e-mails since the convention thus far and I can't help but think it's because they heard this stuff.

**I don't recall this at all, but I am sorry if I said something that made men feel like they couldn't talk. If someone wants to tell me what she meant by that I'm all ears. The only thing I can think of was when I told a male friend of mine to shut up, and I'm not even sure that happened. I did participate in the discussion but I mostly let others talk amongst themselves.

Marvel, Komen, and Pinkwashing

Today I found an article on The Mary Sue about Marvel's new push to spread awareness about breast cancer. Specifically, male breast cancer. From what I gather, the covers of eight October releases will have special pink covers, and all the October releases will have an ad trying to break the stigma of male breast cancer.

Now, normally I'd sigh and accuse Marvel of being a dick because they're only focusing on the disease as it pertains to their male readers when they definitely have female readers as well, but this is a special case. People tend to forget that men can get breast cancer too - not just fat guys with "man boobs," the guy I knew who had it was fairly skinny - and there's this huge femiphobic stigma around it, where guys feel ashamed of having a disease almost exclusively associated with women. So in this case I'll give Marvel and Komen some credit. Besides, at this point we all know about breast cancer.

But not a lot.

You see, I'm always wary of drenching products in pink to promote breast cancer awareness, often selling them with the promise that proceeds will go towards breast cancer research - or pinkwashing as it's commonly called. At best it's a marketing scheme used to promote some products over others - if you have to pick between two products, you'll likely go with the one promising to promote cancer research, even though the actual amount donated is usually pretty scant and typically capped at a certain amount. Even products like the Marvel comic books that aren't being used to raise money are still exploiting a devastating disease to generate profits - and I'm sure some people will be lead to assume the comic books will help support cancer research; if you look at the above cover, next to Captain America, it says "Benefiting Susan G. Komen for the Cure." At worst, the product in question actually contains chemicals linked to cancer development. Obviously comic books won't give you cancer, and probably aren't terrible for the environment (maybe?), but this is still a pretty obvious push to give Marvel brownie points and give them a competitive edge over DC Comics, at least for this month. I for one am kind of disappointed that Susanna Polo didn't touch on this in her article.

And y'all don't get me started on Susan G. Komen, who withdrew funding for Planned Parenthood for stupid political reasons. I don't care if they took it back, it was still a dick move.

So all in all, I have mixed feelings about this whole thing. I'm glad someone's drawing attention to male breast cancer and trying to remove the stigma, especially for such a young audience, but there are some aspects of this campaign leave a bad taste in my mouth. I'll definitely bring this up in future panel discussions.

Final thought, at least it's Marvel, leaving DC's Wonder Woman virtually untouched.

Finally getting into Wonder Woman

I've wanted to get into Wonder Woman comics for a while, but it's always daunting trying to dive into a series that's been around for decades. I never knew where to start, and asking for help can be a bit of a gamble. But Barnes and Noble made it easy >_>

I stopped at B&N last night after work, having some time to kill and wanting to get Jessica Valenti's new book. Still not in stock, of course. One of the greatest feminist writers of our time releases a new book and B&N can't bother to . . . ugh. I rolled my eyes and decided to check out the graphic novels, though I wasn't sure if I wanted to actually buy one since I just started my new job and I won't see a cent from this company for another two and a half weeks. But when I saw that DC Comics graphic novels were on sale, I couldn't resist. Good time to check out the 'ol Second Wave feminist icon, yes? But there was a grand total of two Wonder Woman volumes in the section. Lots of Batman, lots of Superman, lots of Green Lantern, two Wonder Woman. And one Batgirl book, which I grabbed to take advantage of the "buy 2 get 1" deal. I saw a couple Catwoman volumes scattered in the Batman section too but I was less interested in those. Probably would have settled for one of them had there not been a new Batgirl release - Barbara Gordon has defied the "women in refrigerators" trope and has gotten out of the wheelchair, stronger than ever! Yay!

Wait, what's that? You've never heard of "woman in refrigerators"? Here, watch this video, I'll wait

I love her.

Anyway, it's not that I hate dude superheroes or that I don't want to read any of their comics, but since graphic novels are so expensive I want to prioritize ones about women. It did frustrate me that there was such a small selection, but no one else seemed bothered by it. The checkout girl, unfazed, assured me that this one Batman series had a lot of Catwoman in it. Small consolation. When I brought it up on Facebook my friends were indifferent, not seeing the problem and shrugging it off. "Nothing to see here," one said. Not that the small selection was a shock, but I still think it's a problem. Why is everyone so goddamn complacent?

Again, nerds are willing to acknowledge a gender issue in their media, but with a very casual "yeah, that's how it is" attitude. People aren't willing to challenge it or call for any sort of change.

Look, they finally put pants on her! And straps! I always wondered how she was able to fight in a friggin tube top. The enormous boobs don't seem necessary though.

Anyway, I started reading the first volume of Wonder Woman: Odyssey last night, and it's awesome! I know I still have to finish Battle Royale, which I've been muddling through all summer (I like it, it's just  very long and I'm a slow reader with ADHD), but I want to find time to read these as well because I'm really into them so far! Then again, I should savor them, because I cannot get in the habit of buying these on a regular basis. Yes, I could just buy individual comic books, but since I want to collect these I want to get something durable.

But maybe next time I should go to Comicopia or New England Comics, they'll (hopefully) have a better selection than a bookstore.