sweasel.com

One of the things that startled me about the wizard game is that so many of the enemies in the field were women. It was so odd, I thought that must be from something in the books. It eventually dawned on me: it was an equity thing! They went out of their way to ensure 50% of the violent thugs were women as a matter of fairness.

It didn’t occur to the writers that violent thugs are hardly ever women in the real world and that was a good thing about women.

It’s not that modern storytellers don’t know the difference, it’s that they seem to hate woman things. It’s a weird kind of feminism that only values women when they’re doing man things like riding motorcycles, ordering men around and punching men in the face. It’s one of the many, many ways modern writers create fake feeling worlds.

In the real world, women can’t go toe-to-toe with men and they have to use workarounds like guile, misdirection, persuasion, seduction, or enlisting the help of another man. Also guns, hatpins and poison. Those work, too.

It sucks that this is true, but it’s incredibly dangerous to teach girls otherwise. And incredibly unconvincing in fiction.

p.s. story problems are opportunities to find cool workarounds. The girl in the picture is the protagonist of the latest Star Wars game. Her stealth strategy is to go up behind men and punch them in the side of the head. Even if they’re wearing a helmet, they go down like a sack of potatoes. It the most not believable thing ever.

They could have given her some kind of cool high-tech brass knuckles that let out a burst of electrical activity that renders people unconscious. But no, she just pops ’em with her widdle fist.

p.p.s. her sidekick is creepy as hell, too. He was so obviously designed with merch in mind.

p.p.p.s. good weekend! We have the scaffolders in again.