She's The Main Character

Jeff from End of a Species sits down with Ari 4 Education and SocratesLastStudent to talk female protagonists in gaming -- why they keep outperforming their male counterparts, what the industry keeps getting wrong, and what that reveals about patriarchy, the male gaze, and game design.

Games discussed: Ghost of Tsushima, Ghost of Yotei, Assassin's Creed Shadows, The Last of Us, The Witcher 3, Silent Hill F, Hades, Life is Strange, Telltale's Walking Dead.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Jeff from End of a Species

Jeff is the founder of End of a Species, and a snarky philosopher

Guest

Ari 4 Education

Have courage and be kind✨ ...but not to bigots. For the Gurls, Gays, and Theys that love Intellectual Violence join the discord link for Book Club!

Guest

Socrates Last Student

What is End of a Species?

Join us on a unique journey where news, culture, and history collide with humor and critical thinking in “End of a Species.” We blend philosophy and logic with a dash of comedy to help you see the world in a new light. Whether you’re a curious mind, a philosophy enthusiast, or just someone who loves a good laugh, our podcast offers thought-provoking discussions and plenty of laughs. Tune in for a fun and enlightening adventure that will not only make you think but also keep you entertained. Let’s explore the truth together!

This Mexican restaurant that we like to go to, we

sat down there and

Our our server was...

A Mexican woman.

Who was born in Mexico?

Raised in Mexico.

and doesn't speak Spanish.

What?

Like, not a word of it.

Like, I sat down and I thought,

Oh, I'm going to get my Spanish on and I said stuff.

I don't speak Spanish.

Oh.

I feel like how long?

Well, I bet you probably don't know this, but like,

I guess the question will be how long she lived in Mexico, but I

don't assume you asked.

But, um, my grand...

So she was close to in high school.

Um, okay, never mind.

Like my grandparents were born and raised in Nicaragua, and then, um,

When my aunt and my mom and stuff were growing up, they

never like, my grandparents would always speak Spanish to them, but

they would never pick it up.

So, I mean, I guess I can understand in a way, but

I guess everyone's different.

Did she grow up in a tourist area?

That I didn't ask.

Yeah, I didn't ask that.

Because I understand no Sabo kids here, but no

Sabo kids from your own motherland?

What is happening?

Yeah, it.

It didn't compute for me.

I was hungry, so I didn't really like run

the, but at the time in the back of my head,

I was thinking.

But there's other, while that was going on,

She also was very like straightforward.

It was...

the like she was...

What's your order?

Um, she told us that at the beginning because

of the Spanish thing.

But after that, was like, what's your order?

Got the food.

Here's your food.

And it wasn't a lot of what I

typically get at restaurants, especially

Latin American restaurants where it's like, you know how Olive

Garden says when you're here, your family.

At restaurants with Latin American people, you like, we don't have to say it.

You literally are family.

Like,

It left me...

I didn't think it was bad service.

I just, it was, it was, like, weird.

It wasn't what I was expecting.

It wasn't bad, but it was just surprising.

I guess surprising is the word.

He was getting Tex-Mex.

Tex-Mex style surface.

And, I mean, do you guys ever...

get that kind of thing where you go to a place and the service is

good, but it's like blank.

Uh.

Well, listen, yeah, Sean, I don't go outside.

person to ask about this.

I will order everything.

But especially when we're talking about Latino restaurants,

I don't think I've ever gone to a Latino restaurant where Latino

did not speak Spanish.

Like all the waiters spoke Spanish.

So that's just a different experience.

Like I've gone to Puerto Rican restaurants in Florida.

New Jersey and every time.

They all speak Spanish and it just feels like la familia all the time.

So I don't know.

I don't know.

I guess I get that.

Like if I'm actually at Tex-Mex, but that's because it's Tex-Mex, that's for white people.

Yeah.

But what about?

Even the idea of just

straightforward service as opposed to

Coming around and...

Getting to, you know, giving some charisma, that kind of thing.

I had that at Waffle House today, but I mean, personally, I

just feel like less talking is cool with me

because I really just came here to eat for real.

So like, you're just like, oh, do you need such and such?

And we keep it short and simple.

That's better for me.

Yeah, I guess also where a lot of performance

comes out because we are in our economy or how our

service field works.

It's very tip oriented.

So that's how they get their tips is being personable, right?

And the conversation gets them more tips because they're

more likable and that likability.

It pays money.

So, I guess it's that too.

Yeah, I mean, I'm,

I tip anyway.

I wish we were in a society where people just got what they needed,

but I tip anyway because you did do a service.

I don't even think that that would reflect my tip.

I think it just speaks to kind of culture and how

our traditions shape us because,

yeah, if I go to New York and I go to...

One of the restaurants I grew up going to.

Whether they remember me or not, they remember me.

You know what I mean?

Like they, they make, they give you that feeling of, Primo, like,

like, you're part of us.

So when I go to, and I'm so used to that,

that when I go to other places, I kind of expect that

filling out of,

what that relationship is, filling in the blanks

of culture, filling in the blanks of uh,

the norms that I'm used to.

That's why when I don't have it, I see it so fast.

I feel that.

Well, I guess also comes with expectations because you're seeing a Latino and

especially was this white Latino?

No.

Okay.

So, when we see non-white people,

People, especially brown and black folk, weeks, like.

It just feels familiar automatically.

It just feels like family automatically.

And so, I guess also with that expectation.

And the fact that Also, we just need to stop

assuming those expectations of performance from people at the same time that

like, you know what?

I am a complete stranger to you, and you don't have to treat me like family,

and I should probably stop expecting this performance from you just

because you're brown and black, you know?

Yeah, that that's also true.

Seeing seeing the exception to the rule shouldn't

be, shouldn't have the shock factor that it does.

But at the same time, it does,

and so that's a...

That's a good what I call segue.

Into.

This next episode of The End of a Species podcast, and...

Hey everybody, thanks for joining us.

I'm Jeff.

From End of a Species.

Oh, I mean, by now you should know.

I'm here with my friends, Ari for

education, and Socrates, last student.

Introduce yourselves.

Thanks for coming through.

Yeah, so hi guys.

I'm Ari for Education.

Uh, that is my app on TikTok, YouTube,

uh, Blue Sky, Twitch.

I am a womanist, feminist creator,

intersectional.

And I my platform center is education.

I am an educator.

literacy with a huge episodes on on

education, literacy, and building relationships with reading.

I also have a discord where I run a book club.

W book clubs.

Once a month, by the way.

You have to remember because you failed your announcement last time.

Yeah, it's once a month, guys.

We already we already had it this month,

but don't worry, next month.

No, we did it.

It's next week.

Ah, shit.

next week.

That's not important.

I'm Q.

Most of y'all know me as Socrates.

You've also probably seen me as Black Jesus.

Some people assume that I'm the real white man from South Africa.

Why are you like this?

That doesn't matter.

It's okay.

But yeah.

I'm usually just around the troll and then sometimes I take debates very serious.

Sometimes.

But it's okay.

I'm all about the liberation of black people.

And that's where we're getting towards.

He he says sometimes, but he had a counter

for how many consecutive wins

he had in debates about the border.

That is something that actually happened.

I don't even remember what that counter topped off at.

You're rangeing up to 300, right?

No, I think I was past that.

Oh.

I know it was beyond 300.

Yeah, I think I was at 491 at one point.

The last time I stopped.

I counted was at 491.

Sheesh.

Yeah.

But usually it was pretty quick concessions and people would just give up.

So.

Because they don't know.

People don't read.

Don't be reading.

No one reads.

And they form misconceptions.

They are.

Hollow vessels in this world, uh, which brings

us to today's topic, and the title.

of the uh...

show, which is she's the main character, and the central thesis.

And I want to tell you how I came up with this or how this hit me.

I wrote a blog post a little bit ago.

About specifically Ubisoft and Assassin's

Creed, but also some other games that they made and

how they can't seem to get it together with

putting a woman as the main character.

without also

Either allowing the player to swap her

out for a man?

Or having her chaperoned.

And that led me to start thinking about

The typical archetype.

of a man-made character.

And why it is that people do so much of what they do

in video games such as min maxing

with men versus women.

And so I think that women, especially for

story driven games, but more broadly, women make better main

characters in video games than men do.

So just off the top, I know you guys have had the uh,

the outline, and you knew we were going to talk about this.

Give me your initial thoughts on this.

Uh, W Take?

Especially we're talking about story driven.

We're seeing like so many games are doing away

with stories, especially as they're trying to focus

those games towards men, right?

Like look at Call of Duty series, right?

Story is going on and out the window.

What happened to go like all the those main characters, right?

They had the black op story, modern warfare 2 story.

Like those are gone.

No one's even playing the campaigns anymore.

They just want to pew, pew, pew, pew,

and like just shoot them up and all that stuff.

Like the, their plot is gone.

And we're seeing a lot of those type of style games are doing away

with plot because there

is no character really anymore.

Um, no one's attached to the characters.

Everyone just wants to fight and beat each other up.

can agree with that.

I play a lot of Call of Duty personally.

And I kind of have to like,

Which one was it?

Modern worldfare 2019?

All of the story modes kind of touches became like an open

map kind of thing.

And it was kind of pointless to play, unless there was like something

specific you wanted out of the story.

So a lot of times it's just multiplayer games.

Yeah, everyone's just looking forward to milking. that's what that was the most.

I mean, there used to be features where if you beat the campaign,

it would give you a little something in multiplayer, but

I think even that's gone.

I haven't played Call of Duty in a long time.

Don't.

Cheaters now anyways.

Everybody just cheats at the game.

I haven't played Call of Duty in such a long time.

I literally just played the last block ops because of zombies, but that's it.

Yeah, it's unlikely that I'll jump back in.

But I do want to talk about this hollow

vessel thing.

And so like the hollow

vessel in video games started out as a as a feature.

It was something so that.

The player can put their personality

on the character and they

can feel more immersed in the game.

The most classic one is Link.

The reason that Link is called Link is because he's

your link to Highroll.

supposed to feel like you're in the game.

Over time, I think that became something of

We're going to create these.

One-dimensional characters where the entire point of

the character is in order to drive the story is

them learning how to be a human.

If you look at Kratos,

A lot of, especially his more recent story is him learning how to be human.

The last of us, Joel, his story is learning

how to be a human, I guess, again, but

even in the beginning of that game,

He showed some emotion, but he was still kind of like one note

kind of gruff, right?

Arthur Morgan and um...

Really, just in Red Dead, the

Red Dead Redemption series as a whole.

They are the characters that you play in that game are very...

Like one note, I'm a cowboy, now I got to

learn how to be selfless or be whatever it is.

And so the story becomes fill out the

character as opposed to experience the story.

And for me, that leads players into this

thing where they're not worried about filling out the character.

They're worried about collecting the strongest guns, leveling up harder.

like min maxing, that kind of thing.

And it ruins the...

For me, it ruins the experience because that's not the story.

Right off of that, what do you think so far?

Completely a great one.

That also kind of ruined the most latest Assassin's Creed game for me.

Because like the way I have to

now try to get my

experience up just to get to the next assassination

is fuck, it's so annoying.

It is...

Extremely annoying.

But no, I completely...

agree, especially, um, when you talk about Joel,

and even in the next game with Ellie, who is from

presenting, however, they masculize her, right?

She's in a lesbian relationship and she's the more masculine

presenting lesbian.

And even when they try to like when they masculize her,

it's her also finding her humanity back, right?

She's lost it.

She's she's a grown adult.

She watched Joel die and get murdered and get his head bashed

in and now we're doing again another revenge arc that's very

analogous to that of men.

So it's still a femme presenting character, but it's still a

female...

It is a femme face on it.

And it's just this repeat washroom pee, even though you're trying to be more inclusive

with, uh, your protagonist.

Interesting you should mention that because look

at how abruptly,

how sharply the entire...

Well, a good portion of the gaming

community reacted when

they did humanize her at the end.

Because you didn't get the Death Star explosion, people

were like, what the hell is this?

And the backlash was intense.

It was nuts.

for something so, because as

a story beat, it makes sense, and everything

you play in that game is leading to that, where it's like,

Everybody around Ellie doesn't want this for her.

She's off on her own, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's forecasting this ending, but then when you get that.

It might it might actually be that because she she

was masculinized, it the

story didn't earn the right to give you that ending.

But regardless, that was the right ending to have.

Yeah.

No, I totally agree.

I have a couple of contentions with the last of us

too in the in the writing of it.

When, again, the masconization of, like, I'm

presenting characters, like, sure, you have fun presenting the leads.

Now we're in this lesbian dynamic.

And her companion is now pregnant.

Like, like, now we're, and now we're, and

then in the end too, you get this kind of nuclear family dynamic of child

femme presenting femme, who's doing the

mothering and mass presenting femme, doing that.

I'm forgetting the other the other...

She she was an MMA fighter, essentially.

Abby.

Abby, Abby.

And did you see the backlash with Abby's character as well?

Um, because her hers was also a revenge arc.

It was 2 femmes, hyper masculineized, one right, one's an...

MMA fighter essentially.

And she is on a revenger because her father got

murdered by Joel.

And that gives us the whole anticipation.

So everyone's just doing revenge, revenge, revenge, and a lot of people

don't like Abby either because she was, she was muscular and all that stuff.

So you have 2 femmes who are on...

mask arcs, essentially.

performing masculinity in its own way of how their their stories are

told, uh, and people aren't pleased in in

2 different ways.

One, they didn't like the way they didn't want the Death Star blow, as you said, right?

They wanted they wanted Ellie to kill Abby.

But they didn't get that, right?

They said, you know what?

I'm not going to do this and this is like, this is just going to replete

the cycle of harm, right?

You kill Joel.

And this is why I'm here and I'm not going to do this to you.

And Joel killed your dad and it's just a cycle of killing.

I'm going to end this, but also,

And people had issue with that because they like that revenge arc.

They like the accomplishment of a revenge

art, but also people were not happy.

With masculine women overall.

So I just think overall people are getting mad because them people are there.

This isn't isolated, right?

When I look at Kratos in the in the 2018

God of War, he had that moment where he goes,

no, I'm not going to do this.

And the game kind of shoves him into, no,

you got to, what do you mean you're not going to kill this guy?

You got to kill this guy.

And then, of course, in in Ragnarok,

everybody that

He decides, hey, I'm not going to kill this person.

The game, the story moves in and like, no,

no, you everybody got to die.

You gotta, you gotta die.

That's it.

By the way, if you were going to write me an email

and you think we should have put a spoiler alert on this?

At this point, I'm going to put it in the description,

but at this point, if you haven't played the game,

It's been like the game.

Yeah, the game is in kindergarten and or

3rd grade right now, learning

cursive if they still teach that.

It knows how to add and subtract and subtract.

So I'm not worried about nobody.

The point is, I'm not going to respond to any

emails about spoiler alerts.

Just letting you know.

Just go play the game, guys.

I mean, Last of Us has a freaking show at this point.

Come on, come on.

Yeah.

Because the game's been out since like PlayStation 3.

Yeah.

Yeah, last of us won.

They made like 400 versions of.

I want to talk about what it is that

we fill the void with.

And I talked about min maxing.

And I think sometimes we

confuse like min maxing for

customization.

Um, this happens a lot in games where

You have a really robust character builder.

And the story's not going to say anything about

about the character.

But you can design your character to

have the hair color you want, the face

shape you want, the face shape you want.

And then you can even customize

what class they are, what weapons they use, how

much you, how many skill points you assign.

And we look at that as,

customization of a character when

it's really just customization of a build.

It's customization of a, of a vehicle

that you're using to make hit points go down.

And not really like a character.

Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think the best game that actually lets

you actually customize a character and you're not customizing the builds is

Boulders game.

Quick 831.

Game of the year.

For many reasons.

It was an amazing game.

playability.

It's one of my top tier games and I am an Asarian girly.

Sorry, not sorry about it.

That's my toxic trait.

But like how you can customize

all those things, right, right?

To the basically service level, what you're talking about, service level,

customization does not affect the plot.

But with Aldersgate, you are actually building who, if you want to.

who your character is, if they're a thief, if they're a knight,

if they're, um, well, not knight, that's not what it's called in

D&D, I'm spacing on the terminology.

But all those different things also affect how you get treated

in the game, right?

So like I've played as an elf and I've played as a drought

and like as a drought, you get a totally different experience because

basically jobs experience racism.

And so when you talk to characters,

as a drow, they're like, fuck you.

And I'm like, oh, wait, what?

Um, because.

of the reputation drows have.

And so that affects your gameplay.

And so, but with these, it's just very surface level

picking, like you're not actually picking the, it does

not have any effect on the trajectory of the game.

It's just a mask to make you feel better.

On the opposite end.

Personally, I play a lot of 2K, probably like every day.

Um, so they, they, they like.

Recently, they just put in a game move where you can play like in the...

WNBA and like you can customize your, uh,

your, your, like, player and everything.

But it's so different, like, if you were to play the regular

my career where you're like, put as a man,

if you have like a whole story mode and everything.

But when you play in the WNBA mode, it's

literally just like, you build your career and you play games,

there's no story behind it.

And it's kind of just like, you know, these are

2 different leagues um, that do the same thing, but

you put more, uh, spotlight on the men.

And like their gameplay rather than like building a whole different

story for the women.

And I would think that you could probably come

out with a more robust story for the women given

the fact that it's a younger league, given the

fact that there's so much around...

what the plays are, like...

People love watching NBA games.

Don't get me wrong.

But...

A lot of the things that are happening right now in the WNBA are

the 1st time it happened.

And so you have a lot of chances to be the 1st person who did

this because it's such a young league and

there's a lot you can build around that.

And so not taking advantage of that seems like a...

It seems it seems like something that they should take into

account because, especially 2K,

loves their little flashy, like,

You did this.

Like, your achievement was this.

Aside from achievements and trophies, just being able to

show you the cutscene of the thing you did.

They love doing that and they'd have so many more places they can

do that with a WNBA.

Right, but even like the, they have like a my team mode,

I don't know if it was this year or last year, but they just

recently started putting women in like the, uh, in

the my team of, um, to play with because

like, I don't mean to my brag or nothing,

but back in COVID 2020.

I was actually one of the top ranked players in my team, and I

got invited to the tournament that year.

Oh.

Yeah, no.

I didn't get to play though, but it's all good.

Yeah, like, up until recently, like, you couldn't

even, like, use women players on my team or even,

like, if you play the, uh, the, the play

now online where you just, like, use regular teams, you

can't even use uh, the WNB teams either.

So it's kind of like, like I said, they're putting this giant spotlight

on like on the men, but they don't do the same thing for women,

and it even shows in like,

Well, we were talking about Call of Duty earlier, like, there's

way more men characters than there are women characters,

and at one point,

When you played Frank?

You would get like a rank skin and it would only be like men

builds rather than women builds.

Listen, we don't even want to get into that conversation about Call of Duty Bills because listen,

they finally put a Puerto Rican in it with the Model

Warfare 2 remake.

I was like, me, and she's a Puerto Rican woman.

I was like, what?

Now, I haven't been following, was there any

backlash for that?

Were there people like?

I didn't pay attention because all the men could suck my dick.

Fair.

We let us say that on the, have you let us say that on a podcast?

say, look, it's my podcast.

We can say whatever we want.

No, I'm just joking.

But, um...

I always forget what the name's called.

Uh, y'all ever played that Samurai game?

It was, it was the, uh,

Go see your time?

Yeah.

Wait, what's the is that the 1st one or the 2nd one?

The 2nd one.

Yeah.

The 1st one goes to Tsushima.

Yeah, Tsushima.

Post to Yote, even per game, like the whole, the whole storyline

is based off of uh, getting revenge like what

Ari was talking about earlier.

The whole storyline is based off like revenge from when they killed that.

I don't remember if it was her dad or somebody else.

It was her whole family, essentially, at least her parents.

Yeah, but like, it was just

like the whole game, well, I was talking about like revenge and stuff,

like with the last of us.

That's literally what the whole game was based off of getting revenge and

they kind of like masculized her.

throughout the whole game.

Well, that's that's the pattern here, right?

Like, sorry, I got to turn the light on.

That's the pattern here, right?

They're good.

They're doing FAM characters to be like, you know, we're woke guys or

we're being inclusive.

We have femme characters, right?

But then they assign masculine behaviors or

masculine story arcs to these women, right?

So, yes, go to Yote.

I would even say, wait, obviously Ellie.

I would even...

Tomb Raider is not just a sex symbol.

Warcraft is just a giant sex symbol.

That's all she is.

I'm sorry, I said it.

One thing I will say about Laura Croft is

In the same way that Bayonetta is supposed to

be like the op, like the woman version of Dante.

Laura Croft, you could say, is another version of, and

she came out first, but like games like Nathan Drake, like Uncharted, right?

Except that.

Laura has a deep lure behind her.

She has a, like, this is her occupation where

Nathan Drake falls into one of these archetypes, which is...

The charming thief guy who like...

The whole the whole goal is to steal things,

and that just leads you to the adventure, where Lara Croft is...

trying to do

Her job, right, which is education, following

her father's footsteps, which is...

you know part of the character building.

So I think with Tomb Raider, and especially like you said,

just now, so I can see the...

The remake Tomb Raider games, you get more

of the story from the Lara Croft games

than you do from other games that are similar.

And I think in that case,

It tends to lean toward why

women in that role make

better characters.

In Ghost of Yote, there's some parts of the game where

if you compare it to gin.

Ujin's entire arc in Ghost of Tsushima is...

fighting his urge to keep the tradition of the samurai.

That's the thing.

He was raised as that.

That's what he's fighting duty.

There are parts in Ghost of Yote.

where...

You can see her forming these friendships

with people, not begrudgingly.

Not like they're just another person that's doing a thing, but

she's actually forming relation, like forming bonds.

And so they have this additional, like, the

pack of people that can come in and out of your journey.

And you have stories with them as opposed to just...

Hey, uh, I went to that village and it's marked done.

So I'm on to the next village.

type of thing.

where even some of the characters

Like there's one moment in Ghost of Tsushima where one character

dies who...

Gin.

feels responsible for, but it's the responsibility that

makes him mad, not the bond.

You know what I mean?

Like he feels like he caused the death.

Way to throw shade at Assassin's Creed.

Because that was straight shade at Assassin's Creed,

some market done.

I think the storytelling component that you get out of fem

presenting characters is also indicative of just like one patriarchy, right?

Because women in society do build.

stronger relationships, right?

They are taught to be more empathetic, more in touch with their emotions, and

thus build bonds, right?

And so I think overall, what we're finding in these games is

that they're just reflective of patriarchy, right?

And the gender rules assigned and how you can get better stories out

of women because they connect better.

We saw this.

I know Jeff, you talked about this.

We saw this in Assassin's Creed with the Twins.

Where, 100%.

Yes.

where you got all story plot from, I believe her name was Eve, Evie,

and because I...

It was Jacob and Evie Fry, I think.

Yes, yes.

I started back and never finished it.

Literally just from, uh, because I think I got halfway through, uh,

with Jacob, he's just a beat him up guy, right?

And that's his fighting style, right?

He's, he does not stealth well, I believe, was his story.

spikes out, he doesn't do well for stealth.

Evie does.

And he was just brute force.

We also saw this in Assassin's Creed.

Um, when you had uh, the most recent one.

Assassin's Creed Shadows, when you had the main protagonist

who was also a woman, her fighting style was mainly like she was very stealthy.

She could do the assassinations.

where you had

I'm skipping on everyone's names today.

So in there, it's Naui and Yaseke.

Yes, yeah.

Uh.

Yasuke was the was the man,

like the big samurai guy.

Yeah

Yeah, the black guy.

A black guy.

Um, where he, literally,

his, like, they do a tutorial of him, like, barging through doors and he

just hawks smashes everything, right?

And that's his, and so it's just brute force for everything where, and

a lot of the story plot that we have around them shows,

again, is traditional ideals of,

Well, not even I want to say traditional because hers is also a revenge story.

Shocker.

They murdered her father.

And now she's seeking to avenge her father's death where Yasuke

is over here trying to...

just figure out where he fits in most likely, which

also is...

really analogous to how men.

Navigate society.

Because masculinity causes you to be isolated.

and hyper individual because you're competing with other men and then...

A lot of them do try to find communities.

Unfortunately, they find like fretful communities and end up like wanting to harm women.

I think those are good examples.

Another big example.

is in in the Witcher.

There's this moment in Witcher 3.

where you've been worried about Siri this whole time.

And then you switch to players as her.

And Gerald has is just a,

he's another, like, there's parts to Gerald that are...

Uh, Shrekish.

Like, he's got layers.

But at the end of the day,

If you see Gerald talking to Dandelion...

And then when you switch to Siri and she's talking to Dandelion.

It's 2 different people.

And you can tell.

She's more capable.

Low key.

Then Gerald...

Like, she can teleport.

She's got.

Uh, some low level magic she can do.

She's really well like versed with the sword.

She can hold her own.

So, like, it's this.

That's not a damsel in distress.

This isn't somebody we need to go rescue.

She's good.

She's right.

I don't know if many people notice this or if they or

if they hit them, how ironic it is that we're chasing

down this person.

who's probably

More likely to rescue us than we are to rescue her.

Yeah, I think it goes to what you were talking about earlier too that.

Automatically people assume that women can't save themselves, right?

And this is why you always see a pairing of two, right?

You have Evie and Jacob, right?

They have to have a man option.

Or they have to masculine the femper antagonist to

make her do masculine behaviors or masculine

displays of masculinity, whatever.

Because obviously she can't just be a woman and save herself, right?

So I think it speaks to that.

One story line that I really like that

just kept it feminine in her experience,

and it did get a lot of backlash, but I don't give a fuck because it

was just so good, was Silent Hill F.

With Kinako, uh, uh, she,

I'm going to say this wrong, I'm so sorry.

Shimizu, Shimizu.

Don't send me no emails.

If she got it wrong, go sad.

I'm not even gonna read them.

Uh, but Hinako, it purely

was a commentary on patriarchy.

And one, I just overall love the Silent Hill series because I

love, I love games that I have to look shit up.

Right, to understand the deeper meaning, right?

I love those type of psychological games and that's all the Silent Hill games, right?

And if you look at the men protagonist prior to Hinako,

um, and their experiences, one was he murdered

his fucking wife, right?

And he was gripping with the fact that he murdered his wife, he smothered

her with a fucking pillow and it was him coming to terms with that.

And like these grave atrocities that these men did, where Hinakos

was very different and that it was her experiencing

and coming to and recognizing her experience within a patriarchal society.

She was forced into an arrangeed marriage.

And does she actually want to adhere to these

strict gender norms that she's being placed to in society?

And the commentary that I've seen the internet have on that game went

right through people's head.

Like the fact, like men were upset, they couldn't see a purse skirt.

Not shocking, but there was a reason for that, right?

And there was a reason why in the game, one of the enemies

is a scarecrow type of thing where it is short skirts, right?

and their bodies are a little bit more exposed and there's a reason for

that and why they move the way they move.

And it just went over everyone's head and I love the the commentary

on patriarchy in that game and it was an authentic coming to realization

of what does she want and what role does she want to pay within society and

the roles that were given to her?

Now, personally, I've never actually played Silent Hill, any of them.

Um, but I did see the backlash that Ari is

referring to on the game, and majority of

the backlash is only coming from men.

They're like, you'll see no women talk any bad about the game.

It's just a bunch of men mad that there

is more exposure within the game.

Because a lot of times when you do see like women in games,

Like GTA, prime example, whenever you see a woman in the game, they're they're like,

presented as a,

As like,

They want titties.

Just say it.

want titties.

They just want to like see see them naked.

And I think it's weird because like, why are you going to play GTA to go to the strip club?

Like, what are we doing here?

I've always thought that...

The video game, like video games as a whole are a medium that you

can tell such cool stories in.

And there are, there's a small sliver of the

gaming community that gets it, that does the analysis that reads it and

says, hey, I just experienced this and then they played a 2nd

time and they catch the things.

But the overwhelming majority is just

doing the look at my stats.

I reach level 99.

aren't I cool?

Look, I just added a mod, and I'm now the Hulk in GT.

Forget the story, forget...

The the broader implications.

Forget all of that.

I just want to do...

I just want to see things blow up.

And that's cool.

But I think of video games as so much more than that.

If all you're doing is maximizing the stats,

How is it that?

I think you're missing out on a deeper connection to things like

Like the symbols of a game or like collector's editions

or things like that where you look at something and you're like, hey,

this represents this moment in the game as

opposed to, look how quickly I beat this boss.

Now that's not a shade at speed running.

I think speed running is dope.

And...

A lot of people in the speed running community are part of that sliver,

like you ask them about the plot of the game that they're speed running, and they'll tell

you, they understand it.

I'm talking about more the broader landscape of people who

Pick up a game, play it, and dispose of

it as soon as they hit max level, and

don't care anything about plot points or...

whether they have something to learn from this game or anything

like that, they're just like bulling a

China shopping through this.

Yeah, I think uh, uh, one of the series that's having a

reckoning with this is the Resident Evil series.

Because they hit a precipice and got a lot of backlash from Resident Evil 5,

uh, to the point where in Resident Evil Village, they made a joke about

that, uh, because in Resident Evil 5,

Redfield just punches a fucking rock.

He's like, sucker punches a rock in it.

It, uh, it goes into a volcano and they kill

Albert Wesker.

Um, and they received such a backlash for them.

It wasn't really a backlash.

There's more people cracking jokes about it.

Like this is this ultimate display of masculinity.

that you have this dude just punching a fucking rock who's supposed

to be regular human like me and you.

Like, he's not supposed to be like superhuman, and I don't know, a single man,

like, you, are you going to punch a fucking boulder today?

Like.

No, I don't think so.

These are supposed to be regular people in a zombie apocalypse and

he punches a fucking boulder, right?

Uh, and they had to come make a reckoning of this in Resident Evil

Village where one of the the main villains.

He's like, you punch, you both are punching bitch or something.

Uh, because it's just, that's what it was.

It's just now we're just doing ultimate displays of me, man, strong,

and I'm getting, I'm maxing out my characters and all that stuff that like,

plots and the humanity and like the actual experience

of the game is lost.

So like, well, I know, and they're still kind of reckoning with that with

Leon's character and the most recent rerelease or the

recent game that they just had to come out.

Resident Evil Requiem, because I am.

I follow the whole Resident Evil series game.

At this point, we're a, I'm not a quitter.

Even though the games have been like losing me.

I'm not a quitter.

We've been here for the long run, I'm going to finish it out.

Uh, but Resident Evil Requiem, same thing.

It's Liam coming, or Leon coming to terms with his,

the original game, uh, Raccoon City and that he feels

this emotional distress that he's lived through with.

But he's also doing this show buddy, masculine thing,

like every time he kills a zombie, he has to do like a freaking backflip.

And so like, and so they're trying to figure out the story.

I did not enjoy the story of Requiem.

I just thought it was them trying to play on nostalgia, but also.

do this whole thing with Leon's character, which they keep doing, which

is he just suffering from depression in the past couple games.

Like, I, you have enough money, go, go to therapy at this point.

I don't want to tell you.

I will say as an aside.

Uh, I played Resident Evil 5 and my

contention was not, like, I didn't play through the whole game.

I couldn't.

Uh,

I know about the boulder, but that wasn't my contention.

Uh,

This past February, I told all of my followers to go on Twitch and...

If they saw anybody playing Resident Evil 5, like just right in their chat, like, really?

Don't fly this thing.

Really?

I played that game and I'm like, wait, wait, wait.

What are we doing?

We're in.

West Africa, just shoot, like, so this white dude

just goes to, and we're just shooting black people?

That's what we doing?

The way I drove my ass back

to GameStop and said, no, I think you want this back.

This isn't this game is not for me.

I'm not going.

I'm not participating in whatever y'all got going on.

Not even that biological warfare on black people.

Yeah.

I'll play Leisure Sue Larry before I play this game.

There's no way that's happening.

And this is me like criticizing

the patriarchal nature of games, but they like, come on.

West Africa.

You just send a white dude to go exterminate some black people.

That's crazy.

That's cuckoo clock.

They try to make it better than the next game.

Resident Evil 6 took place in Asia.

like, like, y'all, we're not just killing black people.

Now we're killing Chinese people.

Um, I'm, I'm good off that.

With that, I do want to move into the

next segment of this, which is our top 5 for this episode.

Which is the top 5 women protagonist in gaming.

You guys might disagree.

The people at home might disagree.

I don't particularly care.

I made the list and I'm sticking by it, 10 toes down.

Number five, I'm going to say Siri, and originally

I was going to say Siri from the Witcher three.

But no, I'm going to say Siri from the Witcher four.

because she's the main character in that game and

God, I hope they don't like make her a

side like a side character in her own game.

I hope they don't give her like chaperone stuff.

I hope, like, I hope we're playing as Siri for the whole game.

That's my hope.

Number 4 is going to be Alloy from Horizon Zero Dawn.

Is.

She's A, she's a great character because of the fact

that she's trying to tell everybody what's going on.

Nobody will listen, so she just goes and changes

the light bulb herself.

So that's...

I think that's like feminism in a nutshell is

like, y'all keep trying to tell us something's broken,

and we don't listen, so y'all just go, all right, fine.

It's like that Thanos thing.

I'll do it myself.

Uh, number three, Ellie,

last of us part two.

I know we gave her some shit, but the

ending for me and the fact that

She's a character who has an attribute and that attribute

is not the story, right?

Her interaction with the environment is the story.

And I appreciate that a lot.

Number 2 is one that really messed me up,

and that's Sanua, from both Hellblade games.

Senoa is...

A character that suffers from,

I don't know if it's schizophrenia.

I don't know if it's, it's some sort of psychosis, but

you experience that psychosis with her.

throughout the entire gameplay.

And so you get to.

understand what she's thinking and why she's thinking it, and

she's a multi-dimensional character.

Like the way that she interacts with her journey

is very unique.

And number one.

Just out of nostalgia.

Even though, character wise, some people may not agree.

But this is the OG, and that's Samis Iran,

because that's the very 1st...

Woman main character.

Samus was so dope that people were playing Metroid

and didn't realize they were playing as a woman the whole time.

For ages.

There are people who just figured it out when Smash came out.

Like when Smash Brothers came out.

They were like, wait.

Sam is a girl?

No, she's a whole woman.

She's dope, and she kills aliens for fun.

Uh, so I'm going to open it up.

What y'all think of the list?

If you guys have your own list or if you want to add to it,

remove it, critique it, go for it.

Personally, I think your team should be on the list, goes to, that's what it is, right?

Go to Yoti?

Yoti?

Yeah, I think she should be on the list.

If you played the game, you would understand the game is great.

I feel like as much as the storyline

is about her getting revenge for her family, the

way that she goes through like the map and you get to bond with

people and you get to like lift flashbacks of like when she was

younger and building a bond with their parents and building a bond with their brother.

I think they do a really good job of like making her

the main character throughout the whole, throughout the whole, the game.

I got issue with Ellie.

Yeah, I was about to say, I also have the issue with Ellie, but I

mean, I can understand because...

Without her, there really is no the last of us.

So, I mean, it makes sense.

But...

They did, they really fucked up when they was making her in the video game.

Well,

All right, well, Sam is, I think when people play Sam is in Super Smash,

I swear they like Sam is because of titties.

That's just me.

I'm being honest.

I'm just giving my honest output.

Like, I, like, I think a lot of people, like, well, I'm saying, and

I'm mainly thinking, like, in terms of,

Patriarchy, right?

I think people mainly recognizing that most of

the people who play games are men.

A lot of people, the people who typically like Laura Croft, I

just think they like her because she's, they think she's hot.

She's a sex symbol.

And things like that.

So like those are always my contention, little character, like,

What color is her eyes?

Quickly

Or were you staying at titty one time?

Well, Samus and Laura.

I like, what color her eyes?

I think a lot of crop size are like brown, but in the new game,

they're like hazelish.

Well, the remakes, yeah.

Oh, no, they haven't. they're they're doing a reboot of her.

Yeah.

And...

I'm not sure about Sanus.

I'm also figuring out that you were asking that question rhetorically, so I'm gonna...

Khalida.

At least Jeff tries to pay attention.

Snap at class for Jeff.

Right?

But like, I like a lot of those gamers, you can't tell me what their eye color is.

What's their eye color, right?

What color were their pants?

and you're cheating the salmons, because Sam is his whole suit is blue.

But like, they don't pay attention to that.

And you probably can't even tell me the whole story

plot of Laura Croft.

You just want to play as a woman and watch your titties bounce or something like that.

And so I always have contention with those type of things.

And this is why I like absolutely loved resident evil F.

I also have issue with Ellie.

I just more always have issue with it.

Like, I think she's a great character.

I just hate that everything comes from and has to be because

of the main, it doesn't have to be, but like because of the society we live

in, everything's in terms of a milk gaze, right?

So I'm going to either hyper sexualize these women characters

and give them titties that you can see their cleavage or

I'm going to masculize this woman so that you can better connect with her as a man.

and make her do masculine things, right?

A lot of the women characters that men like are the

ones who are on revenge arcs.

They're out here trying to avenge a lost

parent, friend, whatever.

And things like that.

Which is why I liked, he not, like, I was so excited about it.

F came out.

like I was on it.

I was in there like somewhere.

Because he not, and this is probably also just my femme perspective.

Hinakos was real to me.

It was authentic.

This is a coming of age story.

She's, she's being put in a, uh, an arranged

marriage and she's navigating the reality of what that

marriage means to her.

In the society, she lives in also navigating how people view her

in society, right?

And that each monster represents a view of

that, but also,

In that game, you're seeing different pathways.

that she has to take, right?

One, the 1st pathway, you have to take, you're kind of force to take it in the

game is that she,

She has to go through it and basically adhere to her gender role.

And then once you do that, you're allowed free Rome to go do the rest of the other outcomes.

Um, but I, for me, that coming of age that was not masculized

is a genuine woman experience.

I think that can't be negated or taken away from her, right?

Everyone else is masculine in some way, shape or form, but hers

is a genuine experience of womanhood.

I want to go further and look at other games that are Fen...

And really, famine, LGBTQ coded.

Like, for example, one that stands out is Hades.

Hades was a game that surprised the heck out of me because I don't typically

like rogue lights.

They're not my cup of tea.

But in that game, there's 1st off, there was a ton of story.

And have you guys played that game?

Mm-mm.

I've seen I've seen it, but and I've heard commentary on it, but I've never played it myself.

I think I'm going to bring it back into the stream and just start it over.

Because Hades 2 just dropped for PS5 also.

And that one even goes like beyond where,

uh, with the character development, development.

But in Hades one, there's a character named Dusa, which is a Gorgon.

And and she's just a floating head.

And tell me how...

Transcoded this is.

When you ask her why she's a floating head, this is the afterlife, mind you, you're in Hades.

She goes that she's always just been more comfortable

this way, so this is how she...

W.

I love it.

That's like, to put something like that, I know a

lot of people that played this game.

That statement went over their head.

But for people from the community, I guarantee you.

that if you're part of any one of those, the communities

that are affected by this stuff,

Stuff like that speaks to you.

The ability to have that in a in a game.

to me is is super dope.

Because if you're looking for it,

You get to get a little better understanding.

The people that you, like, that you share the world with that you interact with.

What was the other game that I had?

Uh, besides Hades.

I also like that because it's not as straightforward.

Like, hey, I'm hitting a check mark.

For being inclusive with LGPTQ plus IA people.

It looks different and it fits the aesthetic of the game and it doesn't feel performative.

It just felt something like natural to the game experience.

The, oh, the, of course, the other one is Life is Strange.

That whole series.

You're not making one dimensional characters.

There are a lot of people who are like, there's a lot of coming of age.

stuff in the game.

But it is people that are struggling through what, like normal.

everyday interactions with other people are,

but as they are also allowed to be their identity fully.

And while life is strange is a little less

like button mash arcade and more.

Walking simulator.

Not fully, but it has those elements.

The stories to me are very compelling.

They have a lot of.

a lot of depth in

Uh, what your how your decision affects the world,

how it affects endings.

the different ways that you can

look at relationships within that game.

Or just within the series as a whole...

I think games like that, you walk away with more

than you would just, hey, I got the

timing for this combo, right?

Yeah, uh, with games like that,

they remind me of like tell tale games.

And so I don't know if this character counts because she's essentially a child.

Can we consider Clementine?

Yeah, by the end of Walking Dead, Clementine is...

Well, I mean late teens, I guess, right?

Yeah, I was like, because she's she's still a child.

So like she's not...

a woman, but she's coming up, like we're watching her coming of age.

We find we start the Walking Dead series where

she's literally a child.

And we're watching her journey.

actually becomes a...

older teenager and that's where they kind of end the series.

But I thought she, like, watching her grow up was really good

and all the tale tale.

I am a fan of the telltale games.

I like that, again, it's one of those games where your choices

affect the series, whether you kill someone or you don't.

And...

It brings to that human experience.

And so we're walking through this game with this young little girl.

And her experiencing a zombie apocalypse.

I think one of the great things about Clementine is that

For the most part, she gets to retain her humanity.

She doesn't become

Too jaded.

With the with her surroundings.

So she does get to experience

a character arc that's not just...

I want to kill things.

I think at some point she did struggle with that, but I think that

was just natural to her experience.

And also she's coming up age.

We're watching her coming up age.

teenage hormones.

Uh, she's in a zombie apocalypse.

And she is navigating learning to trust people,

build relationships.

And so, yeah, I think I think it was like we did not see a revenge

arc for Clementine.

Like that, I don't think we can truly say that she was a revenge shark.

It was just more survival.

She's just trying to exist, be a child, and then be a teenager.

The only thing I would put, like I did not like about it, is that

you see what most of them presenting arcs, that they're either assigned

a companion or they're assigned a child at some point to take care of.

We saw this with Jill Valentine.

No, not Jill Valentine.

Chris Bill's sister.

I'm spacing on her name.

Chris Roenfield's sister in Resident Evil, Racum

City was assigned a child.

Clementine was assigned a child at the end, like always

this assignment of a child's, in fact, presenting

people to be the caretakers.

But I think Clementine store was a great story.

I don't think I saw any push too much pushback on Clementine

either, but she was well received.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think that's because you can't really cuss out a little kid.

So people got to... people got to see her grow.

And.

So therefore...

Oh, this is that's Clementine, the girl with the hat.

I did want to ask all a question.

Like what do you think a male protagonist would look like?

If they were.

Just a full person.

That's a great question, honestly, I don't think like...

That's honestly a good question, because like,

Most of the time when you see like male protagonists, they just have like this

this one dimension to them and it's just like this one

thing to connect to the story.

They never really evolve or do anything else throughout stories.

I think it would tell too much.

I don't I don't think the Manosseer would like it, right?

If we're talking about gender and how it's constructed currently and

the experiences of boys and men, right?

Uh, it would give too much away the trade secrets, right?

But, I mean, we can see, like, there isn't too much whole storytelling

that's done in video games, but we can look at a series like adolescence

that's on Netflix, right?

But it did give real life authentic experiences of growing

up and being a young man and then you see it reflected in his father, and

it told too much, right?

It told the battling of insecurities, right?

Because we see a lot in happening in games is either, one, he's on

Revenge Arc, or two, he finds out he was the bad guy all the time.

I saw a really good, uh, commentary on this on TikTok about,

Men horror stories, men horror movies that typically

when men are the main villain or the main character in movies,

he found out he was the bad guy the whole time, or he was the villain.

And that's what we see a lot of times is when.

Men actually had arcs and like, instead of revenge stories.

Their character was built on them finding humanity

themselves, they find out that they were the villain.

They were producing the harm, and they can't tell the trade secrets of patriarchy.

So I think that's why they can't do it.

Because then you have to look the ugly in the mirror and it would not feed

out to a lot of their fan base, their audience.

Currently, if I look at the landscape, if

A character that's a man or male is allowed

to be a full human or a full person.

They are either going to be a robot.

Or they're going to be heavily LGBTQ coded.

They're not going to be allowed.

to partake in masculinity while being

a full character.

Uh, I want to uh, focus on y'all

giving out your your socials.

I know you touched on that already at the beginning.

I want everybody to follow Ari, follow Socrates.

Tell us about what you got going on,

and where can we support you?

Well, really, I'm only on TikTok right now, so if you want to support

me, just follow me on TikTok.

It's Socrates last student.

If you find my backup page, it changes from time to time.

I'm not going to say what it is right now because there's allocations that are

roaming around the TikTok streets that.

About some white African man, but, you know.

Outside of that, you know, make sure y'all go to Ari's Discord and

join the club.

It's next week.

Once a month, by the way.

Take a nap, dude.

I cannot with you bro.

I'm I'm trying to help you out, bro.

Once a month, already is discorded.

We're doing it next week and then we'll probably do one in there.

What I think, she learns on the...

Nice to get his name, right?

Oh, my God.

That doesn't matter.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Next week is May, and so the 1st week of...

They were going to do a book.

We're going to do a discord at this book club.

What I tell you, Q learns on the job as

he's saying stuff.

He learns on the job.

And he just, he just says several ways to be corrected.

If y'all ever watch me in Ari's live, just debating,

a lot of times I'll be debating, and then Art will say something,

and then, like, I'll just figure it out as I go.

The worst is when he put me on, we

got to get the cue, the stuff.

The worst, when he put me on the spot because he didn't have a source or don't

want to pulp his source for the black maternal mortality rate, and then he blames me for it.

But anyway, I'm all right for education.

My, I said it earlier, my socials are the same on TikTok, Blue Sky.

Twitch and YouTube.

I don't really have anything up on Twitch or YouTube right now.

I'm still trying to figure out my setup for that, but I will be doing stuff soon, hopefully.

But I do post a lot on Blue Sky and on TikTok.

you can see me there.

I go live every single weekday around 7 CST.

Um, 8 CST around those times.

And every Saturday morning.

And I hold a monthly book club in my discord,

which anybody can get into.

It is 21 plus discord, though, because we read on

white's pharmacy, patriarchy, racism, ableism,

all these topics that have extreme amounts of violence.

and sexual exploitation in them.

So to just to make sure it's appropriate.

And people can handle the conversation, 21 plus discord.

We have book club SQ said once a month because he got it.

Finally, good job, Q.

That's a horrible class.

Once a month and we vote on the books that we read together.

So it's not just me selecting books.

People can make suggestions and.

We vote on the books every month.

And so yeah, that's me.

Oh, wait, she's giving out a signed copy of the book.

I just don't remember what it is.

Why women have better sex under social media?

Under socialism, yes.

But this is not going to be out by, this is going to be outpassed that day.

So that's not going to be the book that's going to probably be given out.

I just want to know who won that giveaway.

Just go to Ari socials and you'll and you'll know.

And then you'll know to participate the next time.

End of a Species is moving.

What I mean by that is...

Between me and all the people that have helped me, we've

amassed a good following on an app called TikTok.

I don't know if you've heard it.

It is trash.

I could say that here because I'm not on there right now.

If you want to hear more conversation.

like this, if you want to expand your

knowledge base, go to endofspecies.com,

either get yourself a hand on the logic, the field

guide, or any other debate reference library

items that we have up.

And in addition, go to the support link on

the website and read about what's coming next.

I will be updating that page to tell you the progress of the

end of a species transition to other

platforms

On that note,

Thank you both for joining me for this conversation.

I had a lot of fun.

Uh, like this video, subscribe to the channel.

Share it with your friends, and I'll see y'all next time.