Just completed freebird games' "To the moon" an atmospheric point and click narrative adventure (Not so much a game, as an interactive book). It was really confusing, because time leapt about, so no real post today, just a quick note to say: This game is really really interesting and I think you should probably play it because it is creepy and quirky and a little pretentious, and made me cry real tears.
Trailer posted so you can enjoy the fab music. *sigh* OK Fan girl gushing over!
Post script: This game contains another crazy woman! I'm really gonna have to make a bingo card for video game characterisation of women. This one handles it as subtley as The blackwell conspiracy, and its a really key plot device. I feel another post coming on: for another night.
I'm offended by all of the supposed-tos. I don't like women telling other women what to do or how to do it or when to do it.
-- Jessa, Girls Trawling through a charity book shop I come across a sociological texts that was published in the 1980s. It uses yellows, and blacks and whites and is called something like: female voices or traumas of single womanhood or the vagina dialogue. It is a collection of narratives about women. I point it out to mum, and she glances at it and laughs, saying, I read all of those, "I read them all until one day, when your brother was five or six I read that I really should send him away to live somewhere else, because once he hits eight years old, he'll start oppressing women. And I thought, what a load of bollocks." She gave up on reading the guidelines, and lived an albeit feminist lifestyle without adhering to all of the prescriptive writing. When Jessa, from the HBO TV show Girls is told by a book that sex from behind is degrading, she shrieks: "What if I want to feel like I have udders". Her outburst seems peculiar at first but then reveals the underlying problem that feminism has become a second set of prescriptive writing that tells women what they should be, what they should want and what form their sexuality should take. "Bad Feminism" by Roxanne Gay voices the frustration of an on-the-fence feminist: "I keep reading these articles and getting angry and tired because these articles tell me that there's no way for women to ever get it right. These articles make it seem like there is, in fact, a right way to be a woman an a wrong way to be a woman. And the standard appears to be ever changing and unachievable." Frustratingly this punchy closer is followed by a list of things she feels she gets wrong, so she subscribes to the idea that there is indeed a right way, and she falls short of it. Gay reinforces the stereotypes of extremely outdated feminism perpetuate: that sex must be a certain way, that women must be militant, that they must hate pink... etc. etc. I too have felt the stress and the strain that Gay articulates, but I realised that I didn't care if a handful of people, men, women, feminists or not were offended by my particular sexuality, penchants and tastes. Furthermore, I don't mind being told what to do sometimes. I enjoy articles which tell me of a new thing I need to think about, because I still have a mind, and a choice which allows me to construct a nuanced and relativistic approach to feminism. Roxanne Gay is wrong to assume there is a right way to be a woman, or even a right way to be a feminist, since both the gender and movement are forums open to discussion and negotiation. A place to toss your two cents, and then carry on regardless, because feminism suggests you should be able to justify exactly what makes you feel comfortable and happy as liberation; provided it doesn't hurt others. -------------------------------- Post Script on Video games. What do women want from female protagonists? My Two Cents: I want lots of them, I want them to be all kinds of different types of women. I look at Bayonetta and I think yeah: interesting. But that's been done now, can we have something else. Something different. Another refraction, a different collection of tropes, beliefs, fantasies, and shapes. Please? Pretty Please?
In case you were wondering: This is Bayonetta kicking someone with a giant stiletto made of her own hair.
