22 votes

Blizzard's long history of manic pixie nightmare girls and fear of women

12 comments

  1. [3]
    vorotato
    Link
    My friend and I used to joke that every woman in every Blizzard game is a divorced dad's view of an ex wife.

    My friend and I used to joke that every woman in every Blizzard game is a divorced dad's view of an ex wife.

    17 votes
    1. [2]
      Litmus2336
      Link Parent
      Kerrigan was a great waifu until she took the kids, the dog, and tried to conquer the galaxy. And I still have to pay alimony! I blame space feminism.

      Kerrigan was a great waifu until she took the kids, the dog, and tried to conquer the galaxy. And I still have to pay alimony! I blame space feminism.

      10 votes
      1. vorotato
        Link Parent
        I look forward to a good writer who creates a campaign of the zerg as "(mostly) the good guys", lead by a Kerrigan whose heart was changed by watching zerg be pushed to extinction.

        I look forward to a good writer who creates a campaign of the zerg as "(mostly) the good guys", lead by a Kerrigan whose heart was changed by watching zerg be pushed to extinction.

  2. [3]
    moonbathers
    (edited )
    Link
    A piece of art Blizzard put out for Starcraft 2 had (in my mind at least) one of the most famous Escher Girl pictures, in which Kerri is fighting someone I don't remember. And when she gets...

    The inhuman coloration to their skin and general lankiness denotes an otherness, but everything else feels oriented towards sexiness, creating a line of mean, angular villainesses—like fuckable Lamborghinis.

    A piece of art Blizzard put out for Starcraft 2 had (in my mind at least) one of the most famous Escher Girl pictures, in which Kerri is fighting someone I don't remember. And when she gets re-infested, why the fuck does she have heels built into her new form? You could argue that the Zerg have a beauty in their own way but they're also entirely about practicality over style.

    The rest of the article is a nice dive into part of what we've all known for a while now, that Blizzard's writing is garbage, but it's still nice to see written out.

    edit: here's that Escher Girls picture I was talking about. It's been a long time since I played the Heart of the Swarm campaign but I don't think Kerri fights Nova at any point, and Nova's entire purpose was to be the hot special forces lady that Kerri was for a few missions of Starcraft 1.

    12 votes
    1. [2]
      unknown user
      Link Parent
      Is it common for images like this not to make sense, tactically or biomechanically? Yes, yes it very much is. But I see a lot of ass and tits, so none of it should matter, right? Right?

      here's that Escher Girls picture I was talking about.

      Is it common for images like this not to make sense, tactically or biomechanically?

      Yes, yes it very much is.

      But I see a lot of ass and tits, so none of it should matter, right? Right?

      3 votes
      1. moonbathers
        Link Parent
        One of the comments on imgur for that picture was "Ah yes, I too fight by pointing my ass toward my enemy"

        One of the comments on imgur for that picture was "Ah yes, I too fight by pointing my ass toward my enemy"

        7 votes
  3. [6]
    Ellimist
    Link
    It's a shame that Blizzards "face of the franchise" characters like Sylvanas have had their stories brutalized and their physical attributes sexualized to the degree that they have been. At least,...

    It's a shame that Blizzards "face of the franchise" characters like Sylvanas have had their stories brutalized and their physical attributes sexualized to the degree that they have been.

    At least, in my experience with World of Warcraft, there's a wealth of smaller, lesser known female characters who have had strong personas and stories.

    First one that springs to my mind is Lady Liadrin. She's been around since Burning Crusade and has gone from Priestess of the Light to bad ass Paladin leading the Blood Knights, the Blood Elves Paladin strike force, for lack of a better phrase for them. At least in game, she hasn't been sexualized either. She wears normal plate armor and a simple Blood Knight tabard

    And then theres some smaller female characters like Thaylssra of the Nightborne, Mayla Highmountain, Queen Talanji....in fact, there were some players who complaining that the game was becoming too feminine with multiple faction leaders being female.

    5 votes
    1. [5]
      Bullmaestro
      Link Parent
      A lot of things bother me about Sylvanas's character arc in WoW, mainly that they are pulling the same shit as they did with Garrosh Hellscream, complete with poorly written narratives, complete...

      A lot of things bother me about Sylvanas's character arc in WoW, mainly that they are pulling the same shit as they did with Garrosh Hellscream, complete with poorly written narratives, complete u-turns in character, significant retconning of past events, being ousted from the Horde in similar fashion and setting up the events for the next expansion by escaping and causing chaos.

      3 votes
      1. [4]
        Ellimist
        Link Parent
        Yea a lot of fans called BFA “MOP 2.0”. The similarities were extensive, down to Lor’themar quoting Taran Zhu. Frustrating because it felt like they completely disregarded any previous character...

        Yea a lot of fans called BFA “MOP 2.0”. The similarities were extensive, down to Lor’themar quoting Taran Zhu.

        Frustrating because it felt like they completely disregarded any previous character development for Sylvanas in favor of turning her into a mustache twirling villain instead of one with depth and nuance

        2 votes
        1. [3]
          Bullmaestro
          Link Parent
          Mists of Pandaria was in my opinion the moment WoW turned sour and was the first time I actually wilfully unsubscribed from the game. It's unbelievable how much the game has been dumbed down even...

          Mists of Pandaria was in my opinion the moment WoW turned sour and was the first time I actually wilfully unsubscribed from the game.

          It's unbelievable how much the game has been dumbed down even further after that expansion. The fact that I started playing RIFT to cleanse my pallet of that expansion should say a lot.

          1. [2]
            Ellimist
            Link Parent
            See I didn't start playing WoW until well into Legion, shortly after the 7.3.5 patch, I think. So BfA, for all its shortcomings, was my first true experience with World of Warcraft, at least in...

            See I didn't start playing WoW until well into Legion, shortly after the 7.3.5 patch, I think. So BfA, for all its shortcomings, was my first true experience with World of Warcraft, at least in the sense of being there from the beginning of an expansion to the end. I don't hate it as much as many players do simply because I don't have much to compare it to but some of it just......is down right frustrating.

            I consider myself a lore nerd, first and foremost, of any game I play. For me to truly enjoy it, I have to know what's going on. Who the major players are, what their motivations are, so on and so forth.

            With WoW.....it's hard to enjoy that aspect. The sheer amount of lore should excite me, and in many areas it does, but the inconsistencies and the laziness of BfA really made it difficult. So many of the events in the game required massive stretches of the lore and characters just completely ignoring what was going on.

            When the first images of Teldrassil burning started leaking, I desperately hoped it was inside job. I desperately hoped Genn Greymane set the torch to Teldrassil in a set up. Or that he'd attack Sylvanas again in his quest for revenge against the Banshee Queen. Anything that would make the Horde/Alliance conflict actually morally grey.

            But no.....we got another Horde aggression expansion despite the Hordes leaders being among the most peaceful and honorable characters the game has. They just go along with Sylvanas because "muH WaRChieF" when it makes zero sense otherwise

            2 votes
            1. Bullmaestro
              Link Parent
              I've been playing ever since Burning Crusade. I also had a previous background of playing Warcraft III. WoW was at one point like catnip to me. It used to be a very complex game, complete with...

              I've been playing ever since Burning Crusade. I also had a previous background of playing Warcraft III.

              WoW was at one point like catnip to me. It used to be a very complex game, complete with talent trees, a plethora of stats, a plethora of abilities, diverse gameplay across all its nine classes, a challenging and rewarding levelling experience, brutally hard raids and many other things.

              It wasn't until Cataclysm that Blizzard started pruning things in an attempt to pander to casuals; probably out of pressure from their parent company Activision Blizzard who acquired the publisher in 2008 following the merger of Activision and Vivendi. As much as I think Vivendi were a blight on the games industry and drove multiple franchises to the ground with rushed cash grabs, they were surprisingly hands-off with Blizzard. Not Activision Blizzard.

              I could explain in great detail what Blizzard did in each expansion to dumb down the game for the lowest common denominator, but that would take all day and I'm sure I'd be hitting the comment character limit if I actually tried to do that.

              All you need to know is that Blizzard have employed some very incompetent people in lead design roles on their Warcraft team in the past. Names like Greg Street, Brian Holinka, Chadd Nervig, Ion Hazzikostas, etc have contributed in some way towards the downfall of the game. Much of Blizzard's old guard have jumped ship over the past few years because they saw the writing on the wall and would rather go down as martyrs than watch their work fall to corporate greed. To my knowledge, only Jeff Kaplan and J Allen Brack remain and they're pretty much drinking the Activision kool aid.

              2 votes