@coolboymew going only by picture:

> western main character

A rugged, beaten up character both physically and emotionally, she carries the history of the world on her sleeve. You can see what she has gone through, even without knowing her initial state.

> japanese side character

A completely static character. A compilation of pandering clichés. Cutesy, sexy, yes. Ideal, almost unreal body proportions yes. Characteristic - no. Fanservice doesn't stand out in the crowd of fanservice, it turns out.

@drq you forgot how the character is 120% made by ideology, Neil Druckmann pretty much told us in various developer conferences

@coolboymew also, any character is "made by ideology". Any and all of them. Ideology is just a system of ideas. Art is a representation of ideas. It's just that some ideas you're used to, and then it doesn't *feel* like ideology. And some, you're not. Then - ideology alert!

@drq Considering the dude managed to shove lesbians and trans people in a post-apocalyptic game, made it advertising focus and in which the company has signaled it's virtue about doing stuff like that for years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZwYCgNkmFY

And then outright told us about it on many occasions on how he designed the game's concept and it's protagonist all with a feminist agenda on mind

Yeah, it absolutely it ideology pushed extremely ungracefully

I'll remind you this is the man that gave Anita Sarkeesian an award he made up if you weren't yet convinced

There's a stark comparison between making art and making politics to ungracefully push stuff. You can make stuff based on a basic idea which won't reflect the politics du jour this badly. There's probably a lot of works where we could probably argue one way of another, but Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dogs' stuff absolutely crossed that line

@coolboymew

> the dude managed to shove lesbians and trans people in a post-apocalyptic game

And according to you, those shouldn't exist, or?... Because...

> And then outright told us about it on many occasions on how he designed the game's concept and it's protagonist all with a feminist agenda on mind

And this is bad how? Some people design this way, some do another.

> the man that gave Anita Sarkeesian an award he made up if you weren't yet convinced

Again, this is bad how? And what does it have to do with work in question? Don't answer, it's irrelevant.

> There's a stark comparison between making art and making politics to ungracefully push stuff.

Yeah. "Apolitical" art pushes politics you already agree with.

Yeah, even from your position. I would take a work that says ("pushes" as you say) something rather than one that says nothing. Because saying nothing is... Quite boring, don't you think?

@drq

>And according to you, those shouldn't exist, or?... Because...

This is a game attempting to be realistic, not a Japanese campy highschool girls shooting game, some of the elements in the game are pretty ludicrous

>And this is bad how? Some people design this way, some do another.

Ungracefully shoving your agenda in people's entertainment tends to get people to hate you, yes

>Again, this is bad how? And what does it have to do with work in question? Don't answer, it's irrelevant.

It's incredibly relevant. Anita Sarkeesian's whole deal was to ungracefully push feminist agenda in the games on an unwilling audience. She went in prominence through lies, deceit and because of many ideological idiots like Neil Druckmann

>Yeah. "Apolitical" art pushes politics you already agree with.

That's a whole lotta assumption in one little sentence

Tell me the politics of my favorite games:
1- Mischief Makers
2- Super Mario RPG
3- Sonic Adventure 2
4- Chrono Trigger
5- Illusion of Gaia
...

Actually I'll throw you some softballs
Mother 3, Fire Emblem Three Houses (yet to finish it however), Final Fantasy 6, Phoenix Wright series

Is there anything you can do with these?

>Yeah, even from your position. I would take a work that says ("pushes" as you say) something rather than one that says nothing. Because saying nothing is... Quite boring, don't you think?

I play video games to be entertained, not for someone's propaganda. The issue that comes with people with clear agenda, is that they usually can't abstain themselves from really fucking with their work in an irredeemable manner that makes it an unfun POS

@coolboymew
I don't have time for eassays, I have a job to do, so, I'll stop at one of the most popular:

> Super Mario RPG

Well-well. Mario world. There are ideas of monarchy (mushroom "kingdom", Peach is a princess, as well as Bowser is a king of his own kingdom), there is an idea of abduction of high elites and forced marriage sprinkled on top (both of which which was surprisingly popular in monarchies, albeit separately, by the way), the idea of war (koopa kingdom has a surprisingly well-trained army, complete with guns and airships, albeit it falls to one overzealous plumber), you get the idea.

@drq of all the things you chose Mario? Even over the extremely generous softballs?

The thing about Mario is that the whole thing is not only ridiculous, but it's extreme fantasy

Did Shigeru Miyamoro even have a particular agenda about it? Probably not and his involvement with the series along the years pretty much proves it

I think Mario is a magnificent example of what I want to show: how a story can just be story. If you just grab elements from it and go "that's political and that makes it a political work", that's too black and white and we're missing a hundred layer of nuance and context as to why people don't feel like Mario is politics, whereas why people are angry at The Last of Us and Neil Druckmann

@coolboymew

> The thing about Mario is that the whole thing is not only ridiculous, but it's extreme fantasy

Even things that are ridiculous and are "extreme fantasy" have roots in reality.

That's why the Mushroom Kingdom is a kingdom, and not a gdfsgeargadom.

> Did Shigeru Miyamoro even have a particular agenda about it

Again, who's Shigeru Miyamoro? I don't know him! And neither do you, really!

> people are angry at The Last of Us and Neil Druckmann

People who are angry at anything because it's "too political" are just uncritical of their own worldviews.

Mario has a lot of political in it that I don't consider good things. Monarchies, for example, are bad. Princesses and kingdoms shouldn't exist in my worldview. But they do in reality.

And I don't go so far as to be "angry" at the story for having them. Why are you so angry seeing something in the story you don't agree with?

Follow

@drq @coolboymew What you are saying is that any story that is set in a kingdom automatically promotes monarchism.

The Mario series has never said if Monarchism is good or bad. Bowser is stated to be evil but it has never been said what his ideology is or what he plans to do with the Mushroom Kingdom.

It's all left into interpretation. You can find countless theories online saying how one series is promoting this ideology when you can find another theory saying it promotes something else. The political messages of these stories (if any) are usually left to interpretation or sometimes as in-game choices.

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@xianc78 @drq @coolboymew Hell, isn't Bowser a king too? Back when I was a kid, I mainly knew him as King Koopa. And yet I don't think that's meant to be an anti-monarchy Statement anymore than Peach being a benign princess is meant to be a Statement in favor of monarchy. Either way, the ambiguity alone places the Mario series in a completely different category than something like The Last of Us 2, where you know exactly what kind of position the game (and its creators) take on a wide variety of divisive, explicitly political subjects. You could also say that's what separates propaganda from art.

@ChristiJunior

> the Mario series in a completely different category than something like The Last of Us 2

I dunno tho. To me, they're practically have the same idea: "mushrooms do the damnedest things to people"

@xianc78 @coolboymew

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