>>Am I missing something?

Yes – the rest of the video.

Yeah, the fact that doing a good deed doesn’t negate your previous bad deeds!
So according to you, the existence of Kameo completely negates what Nintendo did with Crystal in Star Fox?Kameo was made by Rare, just like Dinosaur Planet. It was Nintendo’s misogyny that killed Rare’s original idea and made it a sexist piece of shit.And according to you, that shouldn’t be acknowledged or discussed, because Kameo.

Also, you seem to have a poor grasp of story structure. Anita CLEARLY states that this will be a 12 part video exploration of all themes, and yet you want it aaaaaaaall crammed in the 1st one.

Ridiculous children, I tell ya.

Am I missing something? 
Is the goal to collect a bunch of money to film a PSA to tell us that Japanese people are backward compared to westerners?

Are people usually fully clothed under a full suit of armour?

Yes, or even more than fully-clothed.  Usually you put some padding under it because armor.

I think there is a larger issue at work in the patterns of ”women being portrayed in lousy ways.”  

Speaking *very* generally, it’s often been like this through history.

For example, in Ancient Greece — as I recall — the playwright Euripedes deliberately sets up Electra as being completely useless in his play named after her.  She doesn’t accomplish much beyond bemoaning her fate, while all the other characters are busy doing things.  

(I wrote a screenplay based on the tragedy, and the notes were: “The girl’s a zero,” which was sort of the point of the myth/tragedy/screenplay.)Meanwhile, Euripedes portrays Electra’s mother as a sort of the opposite pole of evil-female-media-portrayals: dangerous, violent slut.  

Which was sort of Euripedes’ ironic point: “Look at how poorly we portray women in our culture!”

So, this is not a new problem.  And we’re still asking the same question. 

Perhaps it is because women aren’t usually the ones writing/filming these stories.

Or perhaps it’s because women have better things to do than write stories.  

Or, maybe, it’s because when they do write stories — like J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, etc. —  the authors are typically villainized (at least initially), either in ad hominem attacks, or via their stories, which are basically said to be vehicles of evil.  

For example, the vehicles-of-evil thing regarding Harry Potter stories goes without saying, despite extended spiritual/Christian metaphors and patterns throughout.  Similarly, Bella Swan goes from being a typically nervous teen through an extended, hero’s journey/spiritual metaphor to become most powerful being in the natural and supernatural worlds, yet is widely criticized as weak, a “poor role model,” a “victim of abuse,” etc., etc., etc. 

Comparatively, warrior-class Katniss, who personally wins far more than her wildest hopes, is left mentally-disturbed and broken, seemingly unable to enjoy any of the happiness she’s earned — a permanent victim, despite her “victor” status.  I get that dramatic irony, but while her character steals failure from the jaws of victory, she is still widely praised as a being “wonderful” role model.  Murderer or not.

So I see some humanity-wide perceptual problems here, with successful women — in any story — viewed as a threat/undesirable.

And… I’ll just wait here while the Twilight trolls come out.  Step right up.

In the Zelda series Zelda did have her own game (wasn’t that great tbh), in more recent entries of the franchise Zelda has been given more depth especially in Skyward Sword and Spirit Tracks where you literally couldn’t complete the game without playing as her (she was trapped in a suit of armour) even in Ocarine of Time Zelda appeared before you in the form of a badass ninja called Shiek where she would assist you and as Zelda she helped you been Ganondorf in the final showdown. You could argue that Link is frozen in time as he is the silent male who simply abliges to the fact he has to save the princess.

In the story mode of Super Smash Bros. Brawl Zelda and Peach actually team up and make a competent and effective team while Link and Mario almost kill each other due to a misunderstanding.

Even so for nes games saving a women had no sexist malice involved it was simply a plot device that the developement team wouldn’t waste their very limited space with character depth and intricate plots.

Also Video games in general don’t really make much of an attempt to give their characters much depth. For example men are portrayed and ripped, violent, badass, psychopaths such as Kratos, Dante, Travis Touchdown, who just kill for the lols. Also in fighting games there are as many ripped, good looking, shirtless men with 6 packs as there are beautiful scantily clad female characters.

To be honest I find the situation of women in games to be improving in current times with female characters such as Lightning, Chell, Alyx and (rebooted) Lara Croft. By analyzing games that were released over 20 years ago of course there are going to be some outdated views.

April Ryan in the Longest Journey
Kate Walker in Syberia
Commander Shephard in Mass Effect 1-3 (yes, you do have the option of playing as a woman which gamers refer to as FemShep)
Victoria McPherson in Still Life
Zoë Castillo in Dreamfall
Faith in Mirror’s Edge
Lightning in Final Fantasy XIII

I didn’t get to ten, but this list includes characters that exist for themselves and not just to empower the men around them. There are a lot of characters that I like that I excluded, like Bastilla Shan in SW:KOTOR, Annah-of-the-Shadows in Planescape: Torment, Princess Ashe in Final Fantasy XII, Clementine in The Walking Dead, etc., because they weren’t the central character or that they could arguably only exist for helping a central male character continue his plot. It is a short list. If I had to do the same thing with men, I’d probably come up with 100 or more entries (though to be fair, I’ve probably forgotten 5-10 good female characters).

Note: I think Final Fantasy has recently made significant improvements, though all female characters still appear as sex objects. Nonetheless, the Final Fantasy 13 series actually spent quite a lot of time thoroughly developing the women to the point that the men were the less developed characters!

Lets hit the list of the ones I actually have played.

Boderlands 1 & 2:  No.  These get marked squarely into the cartoon category.  As I said, she-rambo’s are fine, but not human.  You could swap the women in this game withrobot aliens and no one would notice.

Cthulhu Saves the World:  WTF are you talking about?  Did you miss the “well portrayed women” part that you quoted?  What woman was “well portrayed” in that?  Hell, what male was well portrayed?  Don’t get me wrong, it was a fun game, but it didn’t exactly have deep characterization, which is what I was pretty clearly talking about.  Did you confuse deep “characterization” with “no characterization”?

The Longest Journey: Never actually played it, but from what I hear it does in fact have an interesting and human female character.  

Metroid series:  No.  This is a she-rambo.  Not only is it a she-rambo, but you can’t even tell the sex of your character until the end.  If you do well enough in the original you get to see her in a bikini!  Oh joy.  If you consider this to be a “well portrayed woman”, I have nothing but pity for you.  The woman in Metroid is a well portrayed woman about as much as Gordon Freeman is a well portrayed man… which is to say not at all.  When she isn’t stripping into a bikini it isn’t sexist, but it isn’t contributing anything either.

Mirror’s Edge: Getting better.  This is actually a pretty decent example of a well portrayed female protagonist.  Granted, she is only slightly less of a mute than Gordon Freeman, but there is some character in there.

You missed Mrs. Packman… and also my point.  My point was that the damsel in distress is a bad stereotype, but that she-rambo, while potentially less sexist, isn’t much of an improvement.  Women characters without a little depth and humanity are at best mindless cartoons like their male rambo counterparts.  What is missing are well portrayed women that are believable. Women in Half Life 2 and Mass Effect is have lines and they don’t veer off into the territory of damsel in distress or mindless rambo character.   They have bad ass and believable personalities that fall somewhere int he realm of believability and there for contribute more than their fair share. 

The world isn’t completely devoid of female protagonist that are interesting and well characterized, but they are more the exception than the rule.  Like I said, that scene with Alyx in Half Life 2 stuck with me because it was so masterfully done and lacking in most other games.  Female characters that actually have character and fall outside of the she-rambo or damsel in distress trope are rare.

My point is that you are deftly ignored my entire post. My post mentions damsel in distress obliquely three times. The fucking post wasn’t about the damsel in distress point. The fucking post was about portrayals of women that are interesting and believable. Alyx was picked out because she is interesting and believable, not because she isn’t a damsel in distress. What makes Alyx awesome is that she is human. She reacts like a bad ass, but shows signs of stress and horror. She isn’t a cartoon.

Blasting off a list of what I assume are mostly Japanese RPGs isn’t a counterpoint. It is a list of either she-rambo’s or women who, while not a damsel in distress or she-rambo, have the personality of a cardboard box. No offense to the Japanese, but they are not exactly known for their anti-patriarchal commentary in mass media or video games. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe you actually have a list of brilliantly portrayed women, but if I, with a Steam account that is worth more than a few thousand dollars haven’t played them, they not exactly main stream.

if I started trying to argue “good” female characters then everyone would just nitpick them apart in order to facilitate their own agenda

Of course. How convenient!

But you know, if you’re bored, you could just copy/paste some more characters names to prove some point I’m not convinced you understand.

I’d much prefer intelligent responses to what I can only call internet drivel so if you’d like to actually post an intelligent response then I’ll be waiting.

You know, if you’re going to spend so much time mansplaining, can you at least say something? It doesn’t even have to be interesting.  Just say something!

Someone claimed “The number of well portrayed women in video gaming is dismally small.”

And your reply was simply a list of names. That’s it.  No other comment. Well, aside from the condescending and completely content-free “hmmm”. Hmmmm, what?  What exactly are you “Hmmmm”ing about? That you were able to create a list of names?I am impressed!  A list of names. Solid work. That must have taken a lot of time to copy and paste!

It’s totally hilarious to me that you are wagging your finger at @twitter-212575908:disqus  and claiming that his response to your empty, pointless, time-wasting “internet drivel” is … internet drivel.

You are projecting like crazy right now, man. It is astonishing to me that you think your random list of names is somehow a freakin’ response to someone’s claim that female characters are not very well represented in video games.

How is a random list of female character names in any way a reasonable or intelligent response to that claim? I don’t get it. We all are aware that there are female characters. I don’t even recognize a near majority of those names. 99% of them. I might recognize one. So how do I know any of these female characters are even good representations? No context. No facts. No research. Just a copy-pasted list of names. And funk daddy is immature? Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

This is just … I just … sigh.

Seriously, this is just getting fucking stupid

ETA: It appears it’s just a list of random characters from games you’ve played. Seriously WHY? What was the point? You made a list. From … games you’ve played. And they happen to be female characters. Okay…?

Also not a WoW fan, and don’t want to offend the many I know.

One family of my family, an Aunt, Uncle (in their 60s) and 3 kids (early 20s to mid 30s) all WoW together, with the kids RL partners/boyfriends/girlfriends and many family friends besides. I don’t want to tell them I play EVE…