Hi I'm Aranock, she/they pronouns. I am a disabled nonbinary trans woman, digital artist, and video essayist existing in so called Canada. I also write for Jessie Gender, edit for Tirrrb and help behind the scenes for many of your favourite essayists. You can find my other portals into the mortal realm here: linktr.ee/Aranock For professional inquiries please email: aranockofthevoid@gmail.com
Awesome video! Made me think deeper about one of my favorite games - Pyre (made by Supergiant Games of Hades fame) and how it is one of few games I've played where you the player are the avatar AND every choice you make feels deeply personal. It's also one of few sports games I enjoy playing lol
I adore pyre, its imo Supergiant's best, also the way it makes you miss your party members when you free them, not just their presence in dialogue but their mechanical relationship to you as each has a unique skillset. It's brilliant ludonarrative consonance. Also the gut wrenching late game twists that just devastated me SPOILERS I had let the character I liked significantly lowest go free first because, of course, I was going to free anyone! And then I genuinely was devastated when that ending rolled around. I doomed myself to save as many as I could, and sparked a revolution in the overworld. Its a brilliant story about collective action, the extreme violence of punitive justice and what we owe to those around us, how we can learn to grow and forgive.
Wow…it has been so long since I have played a video game in a proper sense…so avatars…hmm…not sure. Not exactly a proud admission but the last games I sincerely played were “candy crush” esque mobile puzzle games…and those were a few years ago. Please don’t judge. But something I remember that frequently and eventually ended my interest in those games was the lack of accomplishment going through what was an infinite number of levels. Bright shiny colors and animations and yet nothing achieved…not exactly a slight to my avatar(s) but poetically quite appropriate…now I read, write short stories and sew my clothes…so much happier. Take that Candy Crush!
I'm sure someone else has already commented this, but it's also worth noting that Japanese gaming Twitter LOVES Yasuke as a protagonist, and they don't view it as "ruining" Japanese culture or whatever. I'm sure there's racists in the Japanese comments as well but these "anti-woke" gamers are literally whiteknighting for the Japanese fandom as if they can't speak for themselves. I've seen several Japanese tweets about how they "love this piece of history getting attention" or that they "had never heard of this black samurai before so they're super excited!" etc etc. oTZ
Aranock your voice training is such expert levels i am literally shockedddd to my core. i just started training and i now understand the demonic skills you posess.
"This all apart of gods plan" I resonate so deeply with your hate of this phrase. My childhood lead to me being placed in the foster care system. The amount of times social workers, therapists, teachers and guardians told me my /trauma/ was planned. Leaving christianity made me realize the ridiculousness of the statement. How this supposedly kind benevolent god /planned/ the pain I went through. That phrase is disgusting and pisses me off every time I hear it. Bev's actress was phenomenal as I had to pause the show so much to calm my anger.
I think you may have meant something different from resent, resonate maybe? Resent would imply you are angry at me for hating the phrase which I doubt was the intent. It is a frankly vile phrase used to dismiss peoples pain in often deeply harmful ways. I'm sorry it was used to hurt you too 🫂
@@Aranock oh im so sorry totally meant resonate, dyslexia is a bitch. Its a deeply disgusting phrase & I'm sorry that people used it in away that dehumanized your experience as well. Thank you for sharing your story and I have throughly enjoyed this video, it's been very insightful. 🥰
Sooo... "What do we owe the dolls?" ...may be a good question for exploring the state one's abilities to empathize with others and their experiences, if not also with one's own experiences. Like an inverse scale for window-of-tolerence models of trauma. Also probably a question that will nag at me for months, because it articulates something in my approach to ttrpgs and LARPs that I have done for decades without naming well. All that to say, good job
@@PetalsandGems Im glad it connected strongly, and that you applied it to imo the 2 closest art mediums it applies to! I contemplated doing a section on ttrpg's but decided to keep the focus tight and hoped people would take the toolset and use it elsewhere 💜
I was taught that Confession is invalid if the confessor intents to repeat the offense, does not feel remorse, and/or does not repent. For Confession to be credible, one must genuinely be remorseful, attempt to make amends, and put in the effort to improve. I was also taught that forgiveness is earned, not expected. It is up the wrongdoer to earn forgiveness. It is *not* the wronged person’s responsibility to impart forgiveness. Furthermore, being forgiven does not absolve the wrongdoer of accountability. Forgive and move forward. Never forgive and forget. To linger on an offense, to hold a grudge, can be corrosive and unhealthy. But to forget an offense is to condone it. Forgiveness should never condone wrongdoings. Forgiveness should encourage reform, redemption, and compassion. I am so, so sorry that you were made to feel like a villain when you were victimized. I’m so sorry that you were mandated to forgive your abusers when they should have been the ones begging for your forgiveness, a forgiveness they were not owed. That is incredibly unfair to you. I recall also being told to “forgive and forget,” and it infuriated me as a child who was relentlessly bullied. If my bully was genuinely sorry, I could consider forgiveness, but I refused to forget what they did. Until they’re able to demonstrate that they’ve learned their lesson and become a better person, I will hold their actions against them. Telling me to “forget,” in my opinion, was the same as a telling me that “abuse is acceptable,” and it is not. Abuse is _never_ acceptable.
51:10 and people shunned feminist frequency for pointing this out. Bayonetta imo both wants to critique objectification but arguably contributes to it as well
@@ladygrey4113 I wasnt quoting Anita Sarkeesian earlier in the video without reason. The harassment she received for applying even basic feminist media analysis to games has imo pushed most people away from discussing it at all. Bayonetta is frustrating as an overall work because on a pure plot level one could argue it wants to combat objectification, but the marketing and the camera both strongly place it as primarily participating in objectification.
Fantastic video, you got a new subscriber. I think Bayonetta 2 for all it's faults actually does manage to be a pretty good queer romance story, cause everyone tells her to give up on Jeanne, and how she's doomed to hell cause she's a witch anyhow etc etc. Bayo 3 ruins it. I think the difference between Bayonetta (at least Bayonetta 2) and Rain from MGS is you can choose to take something empowering from it, where Rain literally in the narrative has no choice (just as much as a fictional construct she has no choice.
@@PrincessOzaline Cant ruin what wasnt there sadly. While I get why people read queer subtext into bayo 2, I dont think the developpers wanted that. I love queer readings and I dont think anyones wrong for doing so, I love that people get that from the work. I too have works for which I read queer subtext into, and videos on why I think thats valuable. I just genuinely disagree with the take that the developpers were failing representation, because they never intended to have it in the first place. Bayonetta was always meant for a straight male gaze. To criticize them adequately for bayo 3, requires contending with the disconnect between what some queer audiences read bayo 1/2 as, and what the creators thought it was. I do think it is a good thing that queer people try to use her for other things though.
@@Aranock I mean I think it is there, even if the developers didn't fully intend it. But that's a whole conversation on how tropes from Class-S, Early shojo/josei manga, and yuri have become adopted by shonen/seinin works (sometimes very much on purpose, and sometimes incidentally) . The subtext is there whether they want it to be or not. yes some if it is read into by the reader, but I wouldn't say it isn't there. From it starting and ending with celebrating Christmas (a primarily romantic holiday in Japan), to it being a retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice. I'm not defending the intent of the developers or giving them ally points, they made a work that lends itself to a queer reading, and then they made one that didn't.
@@PrincessOzaline The developers imo explicitly intended the opposite. Bayo 3 kinda just confirms it. The subtext is there, but the developpers did not ruin it in bayo 3 because they didnt intend for it in the first place.
It'd be interesting to see a further breakdown of protagonists: Like women that are just there to be a sexy object for men to stare at VS an actual protagonist. THe ages of the female protagonists VS Male protagonists and the amount of male protagonists over a cetain age (let's say 35) and if they have a beard (a sign of being a manly man). Then a comparison of pretty men (Like Cloud, etc) VS the gritty hardened image of a man (See pretty much every male protag) "and finding your son" (Fallout 4) Yeah it's always a boy too.
@@Aranock It'd be done if I was ablebodied and in perfect mental health. I never said anyone else had to do it I just said "It'd be Interesting". But I guess people like me don't exist and can't ponder things.
Tron has been one of my special interests for years now. this video is amazing, i love seeing queer readings of tron and i think yours is one of the most in depth I've ever seen! shouts out for ace Sam. i personally identified with Sam Flynn so much that i chose his name for myself. i love your note at the end about representation. as much as i love to read into queerness, explicit representation is so, so needed and needs to get better.
i think the only thing i disagree with here is Kevin being a villain. he's extremely flawed, he fucks up a LOT, but i don't think he has bad intentions. Legacy kinda screws over his character, honestly. I highly recommend the extended media like the games and comics if you haven't looked already, they offer a lot of insight for him (and the wider universe of Tron as a whole). but ofc it's your video and you don't have to listen to me at all. im just some guy on the Internet lol
it's interesting that i got recommended this while lamenting the lack of body type variation for the masc body in cyberpunk 2077. it's like everyone "forgot" that males have different bodies, and even mods only cater to people who want to see more types of feminine bodies...it's a little isolating, honestly.
@Aranock yep, weird considering how much variation there is in npc's and so much modification they can do, yet we're stuck as cookie cutter gym bro and cookie cutter slim lady with no options and no good explanations as to why. not even any major characters we interact with are much different, and the ones that are die at the start of the game...ugghh.
It means video essays in what people call "breadtube" genre are a little too inspired by each other. It's a grand achievement that you were able to make such a long intricate video from a craft point of view but the context's, techniques and influences feel played out in the overall ecosystem. blabla tldr it feels like if i make a breadtube cheklist this and way too many other videos would be basically following it to a t. don't let my nitpicking discourage you tho, do watev u want
Thats not how anything works, first off you clearly don't understand male gaze please read Visual pleasure in narrative cinema by Laura Mulvey, I even cite it in this video. It is the paper in which the term was coined. Secondly a "female gaze" doesnt really exist per se and if it did it would not be found in objectifying men, especially not in the same way the male gaze behaves(which is to say the expected participation in patriarchal cisheteronormative gaze). Female gaze if such a thing were to exist would be oppositional in nature to what the male gaze performs. As such one could argue that the female gaze would be inviting the audience not to participate in the ogling of onscreen objects by way of a bearer of look, but instead to consider the subjectivity, personhood, of whomever was on screen. Or to put it simply; objectification bad, and based on your wording you would just reinforce the same white supremacist cisheteronormative beauty standards in this attempt, only limiting them more to men.
The fact that you jumped to "what if straight women objectified men" also tells me you likely have a very narrow comprehension of women's capacity to gaze. It's particularly funny to do so in the comment section of a lesbian.
Strong recommend here: There is a vid on youtube about the female gaze in shojo manga, done by a channel focused on anime and manga, and focused on that somewhat controversial series about the hikikomori guy who wakes up in a teenage girl's body after obsessing over her for a spell. Find that discussion of the female gaze. It will not solve everything. There's probably even another bell you have to ring after that. But it will get you headed in a good direction.
1:09:07 preach, it blew my mind as a kid finding out that white hairdressers can’t do Black hair. We’re talking professional people on film and television sets just can’t do a sector of society hair and still be viewed as competent.
None of this is funny. Ok, I wanted to make this very original joke comment, but even in an excellent essay yet again covering the deeply rooted systemic problems of discrimination, even here there were funny moments, so I can't leave this statement be, it's simply not true!
Seeing Stardew there alongside the more dudebro games caused me to have a moment too. It has all the vibes of "I want to ruin this thing that girls like."
Hey Aranock. Just a head's up: I personally know several of the folks in the Nexusmods community (I was quite active there back in the day), and I want to point out that several of the popular nude body mods were made by women and/or nonbinary folks! > Including CBBE, which you explicitly cite in this video. < While the gender of the creators DOES NOT undermine your point about the male gaze or the concerning attitudes men have toward fictional women, I do think it's important to gender people correctly and to recognize the existence of women and queer folks in spaces that are dominated by men. Caliente has had to endure quite a bit of hostility from sexist dudes because of her gender, and I think we can have this conversation without erasing her experience as a woman in that space. Once again I'm not saying that this undermines your criticism.
Sorry, I’m late to the comment party. Finally gave this a watch, as someone who use to play video games a lot during their childhood. And sadly hasn’t been able to for awhile cause life happens. 😅 But I do admire the work you put into this essay video, especially since I’m someone who hasn’t played enough current day video games to know all the improvements made/problems that are still happening today in the world of gaming. I’m not a game developer, but this does help think as a storyteller to think about how I can improve and do better with representation. Thanks to videos like these, it really helps me to hear from other perspectives, so I can challenge myself to think outside of the binary box. Thank you for that. And I hope you have a great rest of your day/weekend. 🫶💖
People have posted sexual fantasies about you in the comments?! I shouldn't be surprised (people are frequently awful like that), but wow that is disgusting. I mean, I'm not perfect. I've thought some of your outfits are hot, but I don't recall ever having a fantasy about you. Even if I had, I certainly wouldn't tell you about it. We've never even met! (Hypothetically, if we were close friends in real life, we might have the kind of relationship were it would be okay to comment on each other's appearance like that. But we aren't close friends in real life.)
not much of a Hardcore Gamer myself, but this was a super informative piece. the interludes with tirrrb and the stanley narration segments were welcome moments of levity between some of the heavier bits. keep it up!! also i cheered when that tgwdlm clip played
Ill admit that your discussion of Bayonetta raised my hackles because identifying with her was *so* important to my on trans journey, but over recent years ive become a lot more receptive to the argument that my reaction was *not* the intended one.
As a fellow trans woman, I am surprised that Fallout New Vegas (an imperfect game its own right) did not come up as a better representation of queer characters during the Fallout 4 section.
I didn't want the fallout stuff to be too big, what I said there is actually a short excerpt from a much longer bit I wrote when Jessie and I were considering a larger examination of Bethesda's writing. New Vegas absolutely handles that element much better. Characters actually have sexualities that engage with and are effected by the world they are in.
there is nothing quite like having an affirming avatar in a game - understanding myself was made easier when I had some sense of being represented in something. honest representation really matters. thank you for the wonderful work!
I think the problem with queer rep in regards to romanceable characters in games nowadays is that people are afraid of hearing the word "No". Like people are afraid of having a gay or lesbian character not be attracted to theirs
I like that the outer worlds had a lesbian character that you couldn’t romance regardless of your own character but you could play wingman to set her up with someone else. I only played that side quest and then kinda dropped the game lol
I wonder if Saga Anderson from Alan Wake 2 being a black woman contributes to my ability to submerge myself in her horror of being forcefully written into Alan's Story/Reality
I started this video thinking it was a neat idea for a video essay, only for it to go in directions I never expected. (W.E.B. Du Bois quoted in a video game avatar video essay, what a time to be alive!) But seriously, I will never look at the entire medium the same way again.
@@Aranock I'm just saying that because bayonetta doesn't just appeal to straight men like Anita Sarkisian and hbomberguy say because even people who aren't attracted to women like bayonetta still love her presentation and personality she's more than a vessel for straight men to objectify
@@jarrellfamily1422 Thats exceptionally irrelevant to the point. She is objectified by the camera. Queer people like her. Neither of these are contradictory statements lmao
