Feminist adventures?

[pawsplay]

What was in his heart is entirely relevant, given that you claim she was "conceived as" a feminist icon.

There is no way to know what was in his heart. You can certainly believe, if you choose, that he was lying about his conception of the character.

 

[kitsune9]

I have slight lack of creativity here, please help me.

I'm DMing superhero-game based on Marvel Comics and movies. One of the PC's has declared that she wants to defend women's right with her superpowers.

I really want to listen to players, so I need to think of something related to feminism as a cause for superhero adventure. My head is bit empty with this one, give me something to grasp please :-/

A good resource is to check what issues are important to organizations for women.

For example, go to National Organization for Women (NOW) and click on their hot topics. Those are issues that are important to them.

Now, this is obviously a very politically minded website so it may not suit your political affiliations; however, this is where we get to use our imagination and put our superhero villains as the key movers behind the scenes.

However, if going to that website isn't your thing, let's choose a topic that is more generic.

1. Let's start with domestic violence. Since this is a feminist topic, we'll make this simple--husband/boyfriend beating up his wife/girlfriend. Now, we need to make this serious topic into something that would warrant the attention of our superhero.

2. First thing, is that domestic violence reports are going through the roof. They've doubled the last quarter alone! The police budgets are beginning to strain just from answering the 911 calls in every major city because of these reports. What's going on?

3. Our superheroine knows that this is not normal that something is working behind the scenes of this chaos. She investigates some reports/homes/crime scenes and discovers a connection -- the men were all drinkers of Killzone Beer. She has her forensic friends analyze it and sure enough, they find a very sophisticated bacterium in the beer called toxicomy aggresses a.k.a the rage bug. Normal assay and toxicology would not be able to detect this, but our superheroine can. But how did this bacterium get into the beer?

4. Our superheroine then investigates a local factory, and here, you put a super thug in charge of operations here so you can have a battle in a factory. However you handle the battle, our superheroine will know that the thug is working for a master villain/organization and gets the location of where the bacterium is originating.

5. The adventure concludes with our team going to the villain's headquarters, destroy the labs where the rage bug is being grown and bringing the super villain to justice.

Of course, we want a good motivation why the villain would be doing this.

1. The villains hates women this is his revenge. A backstory of how his marriage fell apart with his spouse cheating could be introduced.
2. The rage bug is psychically linked to the super villain and once he has several million men infected with the rage bug, he will psychically command the rage bugs to turn the men into his unwilling soldiers for conquest. If these men happen to be CEOs, politicians, and other men of power, he's pretty much conquered the world with a shot being fired. The side effect is the domestic violence issue.
3. The villain is someone like the Joker who just likes chaos.

Happy Gaming!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There is no way to know what was in his heart.

Which is what i've said upthread.

You can certainly believe, if you choose, that he was lying about his conception of the character.

I don't believe he was lying, I just believe it wasn't the whole truth.

 

[pawsplay]

I don't believe he was lying, I just believe it wasn't the whole truth.

So what's your point? If you want to argue the "whole truth" I am sure we can make good progress on proving nothing is anything.

 

[nedjer]

While it's true the early radical feminists were women of action, their efforts didn't really impact mainstream iconography and fiction...not like WW did.

Don't know enough about the US to comment on that, but in Scotland/ UK their efforts had a way larger cultural impact than any comic characters, e.g. the vote for women, women legislators, maternity leave . . .

 

[S'mon]

If WW, Daisy and Xena - plus their real life 'versions' ain't that good, where we gonna go?

All these characters - and Buffy, Lara Croft, Alias and the rest - were created by men, for a primarily male audience. Female protagonists created by and for women look quite different, and not of much interest to men, which is why you guys are not discussing them here!

 

[nedjer]

All these characters - and Buffy, Lara Croft, Alias and the rest - were created by men, for a primarily male audience. Female protagonists created by and for women look quite different, and not of much interest to men, which is why you guys are not discussing them here!

For example?

 

[S'mon]

For example?

As I'm a straight man they don't interest me either. But the protagonist of "Twilight" comes to mind. No idea what her name is.

 

[jonesy]

Need more characters like Jade from Beyond Good & Evil, Faith from Mirror's Edge, Zoë Castillo and April Ryan from the Longest Journey, Alyx Vance from Half-Life, Grace Nakimura from Gabriel Knight, Annah and Fall-From-Grace from Planescape: Torment, Alex from Breakdown, The Boss and Meryl Silverburgh from Metal Gear, Ashley Williams from Mass Effect (and fem Shepherd), Carla Valenti from Fahrenheit, Alexandra Roivas from Eternal Darkness, Kate Walker from Syberia, Joanna Dark from Perfect Dark, Darci from Urban Chaos, Rubi from Wet, Amy from Zanzarah: The Hidden Portal, Damsel from VtM: Bloodlines, Jennifer Tate from Primal, Madison Paige from Heavy Rain, Rynn from Drakan, Elena and Chloe from Uncharted, Nico Collard from Broken Sword, Elika from Prince of Persia ("so what's with this donkey?"), Anna Grimsdottir from Splinter Cell, Victoria McPherson from Still Life...

I was also going to mention Carmen Sandiego, but I couldn't find her.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I went looking for a list- didn't find one. I did find a lot of feminist critique of Buffy, Xena, Laura Croft and other "action" heroines that eerily echoed critiques of black actors for taking "buffoon" roles (claiming they reinforced negative stereotypes). Apparently, by becoming competent warriors, they reinforce patriarchy; they're more masculine than feminine.

Personally, my view is that you only achieve true equality when you're free to take such roles- buffoons for blacks, warriors for women, etc.- without such critiques being leveled.