#...where the manhood and womanhood don't interact and you could essentially... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

grim-echoes · 10 months

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Hi, apologies in advance if my memory is failing me, but was it you who shared insightful opinions critical of Lisa? If so, would it be alright if you'd share them again? I'd like to hear them if only to feel less ridiculous about my disillusionment toward the new game. No pressure ofc -- I know how fandoms can get on here and I'd rather you don't get hassled! 🙏

you're likely thinking of my partner who made these two posts a while back and presented any points i could make more cleanly than i can. however i also despise lisa for these same reasons and have my own points i'd like to make, especially since the remaster is undoubtedly stirring up discussion of the games again;

regarding the point of the gender essentialism that is an undercurrent of the game's narrative, i've genuinely had to argue for the legitimacy of the claim that it's also deeply transphobic--it's a point i don't make lightly, and the amount of shit i've gotten for it is actually concerning and illuminates the complete lack of thoughtful, critical engagement lisa fans have with the games' narrative framework. "what if one day there were no women" is already a "what if the world was made of pudding" question to ask, but as my partner pointed out in their posts: what lisa determines makes you a woman is evidently the ability to birth a child, which further raises issues with the moral quandary being presented to the player: 1a. if the social problem that the characters in this world face is the absence of women, and the absence of (presumably entirely cis) women means not only no new children being birthed but a loss of a sexual outlet for (presumably cis) men, then this heavily implies that the ability to conceive a child is what determines a person as a woman in the world of lisa. this is a notable point to make because of how "sacred" women are to the game's narrative--not because the only remaining women in the game's world (only one of whom is actually living) are considered important, human, and sympathetic, but because their identities as (cis) women are source to the games' central conflicts and traumas inflicted on the various male characters you play as and interact with, with lisa herself a victim of intense, horrific sexual abuse that is written as the entire catalyst for any of the games unfolding the way they do (hence why the games are named for her--she is not a person, she is a concept of a woman in a world where women are both vilified for causing problems in the lives of men, and deified for their sexual usefulness to them). 1b. if the ability to conceive a child is not what determines a woman in this world, then this has strange implications for both cis women who are infertile, and trans people across the entire spectrum and is where my point of transphobia comes from: there is no hyper-specific identifier of what makes a woman aside from who the developer austin jorgensen believes to be a woman; when you write what is essentially an anti-woman beam into your social apocalypse narrative, you shoulder the burden of explaining to your audience precisely who you believe those people to be, and when your answer to this cataclysmic event is accompanied with "all men become sexually ravenous, animalistic deviants upon the imbibement of a drug that strips them of all their inhibitions because this is an immutable quality of manhood", the only possible conclusion that can be drawn is that you only consider cis women to be women (and only cis men to be men), which means that you believe there must be a crucial biological element to determining not just womanhood, but also manhood, and therefor it must be a conservative idea like chromosomes or the ability to conceive. based on this tweet by austin from june 5th 2016 (i'm aware of the age--we'll get to that in a bit), i'm inclined to believe it was in fact a completely nebulous biological element that triggered this international de-womaning. there are no trans people at all across any of the lisa games--queen roger MAY be interpreted as a trans woman if you squint very hard and align yourself with the rotational axis of jupiter during a harvest moon, but taking both these games and the above tweet into context, he is a physically large, hairy mlm who crossdresses in a way that comes off as blatantly transmisogynistic. he is also a joy addict and was a murderer even before the apocalypse, something that is typically characteristic only of the men in this series. whether you interpret him as anything more than a drag queen is ultimately your choice, but it's not a coincidence to me personally that he is perhaps the closest austin ever gets to answering the question of what happened to trans people after this gendered apocalypse scenario.

a recurring point of praise i've come across for lisa that continues to be parroted among the (mostly cis male) fanbase is that it's a grim, soul-tearing story about the thanklessness of trying to be a good person. while i do believe this sentiment comes the closest to what the game was trying to say with its themes, i fundamentally disagree that this is what was accomplished in the end, nor do i believe it was as poignant and thoughtful as many claim. lisa has never come off as anything more to me than a product of its time where indie video games were a novelty in a much edgier social climate where people wanted games that were demanding, tedious, and player-unfriendly. lisa's entire draw back in the day was that it was brutally difficult, and the story utterly despised both you and the characters that inhabited its world, and this is the exact reason that i've never liked it ever since it first dropped and started gaining traction within the wider gaming community because it is completely inept at actually using difficult gameplay elements to tell a compelling, meaningful story that doesn't hinge on mishandling its treatment of men, women, and topics like sexual abuse. for all of the ways the game finds to be unnecessarily cruel and unsympathetic to its characters completely removed from any narrative purpose, it's utterly bizarre to me that people attempt to pat it on the back for telling a beautiful story about goodness in a cold, uncaring world while also repeatedly describing brad as intrinsically selfish for his protectiveness over buddy; it loops back around to women being either antagonized or deified in these games based on their ability to procreate, i.e their usefulness to men (nevermind the fact that the "repopulate the entire human race using one woman" thing is completely fucking absurd). lisa is completely incapable of telling a heartfelt, philosophical story about a life in this hypothetical situation because it's completely disinterested in treating the people within it with even a sliver of humanity, and i haven't yet walked away from a discussion with a single one of its fans that hasn't essentially been writing fanfiction in their head the entire time of what they perceive this game to be (and who also hasn't been convinced of the rampant misogyny and victim-blaming the writing desperately wants you to feel justified in participating in, which is genuinely horrifying).

i would also like to note after this that austin has since stated that he no longer agrees with his previous stance on transgender identities and appears to have become quite progressive (i would post proof of this in the tweet that i saw, but googling isn't helping me and i can't view his twitter main page without creating an account and logging in, thanks elon), but it illuminates an important thing of note regarding the original lisa games and the new definitive edition--the rampant misogyny and transphobia are baked into lisa's identity. the narrative and the characters and their motivations and their traumas cannot exist without it, and to rewrite lisa without these elements would be to erase lisa entirely and everything the series was built from. whether austin truly leans left in his political and social stances now remains to be actionably evident, but it does not change the fact that these unempathetic and conservative ideas were the foundation for the original games, and continue to be present in the remaster. the best thing austin could do in a situation like this is to openly condemn and criticize these ideas that once represented him and how they manifested in lisa; a lot of older fans are going to have new ways to engage with the series, but a lot of newer fans are likely going to be introduced to lisa and it will ask them to earnestly meet it halfway on the horribly toxic, hateful ideas it presents with no nuance whatsoever. frankly, with all of my grievances laid bare, i'm shocked that more people don't take severe issue with the game and what it says with its mishandling of all of these topics.

#didn't think this post would be so long sorry anon #this still doesn't cover my full criticisms of lisa lmao #long post

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