Anita Sarkeesian, the videogame critic whose Kickstarter project to analyse the role of women in games was responded to with an online hate campaign including a game about beating her up (as Helen says, “I like writing it like that, to emphasise the madness of it”), has released the second video in her “Tropes vs Women” series.
The video, part two of three examining the idea of the damsel in distress, delves deeper into the expression that trope has when combined with the “grim and gritty” aesthetic used in modern games. She explores ideas like comics author Gail Simone’s concept of “women in refrigerators”, which refers to the frequency with which a female character will be “killed, maimed or depowered”, nearly always to provide a motivation to a male character rather than as part of her own character arc. She also explores related tropes, again usually gendered in their application, like the “mercy killing” and the gleeful depiction of violence against women. Through the magic of the internet, the whole thing is embedded below. If you want to watch part one, it can be found here.
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