being a woman that's as heavy into games as me can be a.... conflicting experiance, any hobby that's typically male dominated can be, watching the slow decline of anime as things like shoujo adaptations all but die out in favour of sexualised shows for men or seeing many online spheres decend into radicalisation and outright hate towards people like me but games seem worse for it, sometimes it's the games themselves that can be this way, many times often their fans can be even moreso, but this isn't really new info for anyone, if you're on spaces on the net like this you already are more than aware of how bad most of the rest of the net and media can be, most people in spaces like this will agree with it, will point it out when it comes up or mock the people perpetuating it but there's always an elephant in the room when these come things come up, a perpetrator of misogyny who even people who claim to be against it will defend fervently, a hill they always seem to want to die on no matter what, it doesn't matter how progressive or queer or left leaning the spaces supposedly are because any frank and honest discussion on their issues by women always gets shut down without even a second of entertaining a notion that something could be wrong, i'm talking about grasshopper manufacture and indeed suda51 himself

i don't dislike the studio, i can like things while also acknowledging that they have things about them that upset me, not even all of their games are that bad with it, some like the original silver case, lollipop chainsaw and even no more heroes 2, a game this was originally going to be a very positive review of, that page will still come out, just with a section on the companies misogyny turned into this instead of being there, that's all this was going to be, originally, a footnote on a different page, but i knew it would get backlash and hate and that it might even turn people against me, because it's happened before and i wanted to get it over and done with on my own terms and so it doesn't colour what will be posiitve coverage of a game i really love. anyway, sure it's not every game of theirs, but for every one that is either fine or at least, not overtly sexist, you'll have a game like the 25th ward, a game with some outright vile views on women and a game that seemingly finds subjects like rape funny, i don't hate all of 25th ward, i think 2/3rds of the games campaigns are great but that the rest of the game is spoiled by the most grasshopper of the 3, the one suda himself was involved in (and while i think he is a root cause here i do recognise this is not all on him, even games he was not involved with carry many of these same issues), all of the games worst qualities, the rape jokes and the grossest depictions of women in any of the studios games are here and it's not even good, some like michigan can still be funny despite their grosser views on women, almost coming across as being endearingly sleazy rather than outright vile, but other games like killer7 or shadows of the damned seem to barely see women as anything other than sexualised objects, is it really any coincidence that the only playable woman in killer7 is wearing nothing but a fucking neglege, that's not to say that sexualisation is an issue itself, take lolipop chainsaw which is one of the more sexualised games from the studio, but it's a game that i wouldn't lavel as being misogynistic because while juliet is sexualised, the game also respects her and more often than not treats the games male cast as being the but of the joke, sure it's there to be subversive but it still shows that sexualisation isn't inherently the problem here, but when it's there and not framed by much else respect for these characters, or in the case of killer 7 by having most of the male cast be much more respectfully dressed and her having no real counterpart like that. outside of 25th ward and parts of games like shadows and killer is dead i don't think much of it is really ever even mean spirited, it makes me uncomfortable and it can harm the experiance but it never makes me outright dislike them but i also have an abnormally high tolerance for this and i know many other women for whom almost the companies entire output is basically unplayable because of it because of how pervasive it is in almost every single game by them that isn't some kind of licenced property, and yet despite all this any attempts me or some of them have made to vocalise and talk about these issues always get shut down, given threats of being ousted from spaces or outright insulted in some cases, not for really even hating on the games, praising them in spite of these issues in some cases, but for simply acknowledging that there's a problem there at all.

the question is why, really, why this company, why suda, is it a parasocial relationship thing? the guy is memed p heavily todd style but i'm not sure that's it, are the games just that good? well, no, but they are really good for the most part, i think its an image thing, that for many people especially on the left, the things they like cannot be problematic, if something is problematic then it is wholley bad and irridemable to the point of sometimes even making shit up to justify it (like the amount of people i have seen call neon white misogynistic despite that it's written by two women and actually shares more in its writing with a grasshopper game moreso than anything else, making that wholley ironic) and that the things they do like, cannot be problematic, ergo games like 25th ward cannot be misogynistic, because they like it, and that would make them misogynistic, so instead its better to deny that there could be an issue, to shut out the women who try and speak out, because thats better than admitting that you like something problematic, right, it doesn't make you a misogynist to like these games, that would be silly, what makes many of these people misogynistic is the hostility towards women and shutting down their legit critisisms of misogynistic media, what makes you a misogynist is how you actually view women when they do something you don't like, it's a problem with grasshopper yes, but it's also a problem with the people who sing their praises without ever stopping to take these things into account and it's a problem that the "obscure" games scene has had for a long time, one that has been getting worse and one that i don't personally ever see getting better with how ingrained and normalised the hostility towards women (especially but not always limited to cis women) is and how much worse it gets as what few of us there are get scared off by this kind of behavior, when no one is there to call it out, misogyny can and will fester and issues will become readily apparent. take into account for example how this issue even pervades into the culture of how these games are reccomended, even recently i have spoke to several people to who got reccomended some of these more extreme cases with no mention whatsoever of even a content warning, almost as if a blanket refusal that anyone would even need one despite the fact that grasshopper games can be on the more extreme and triggering end, for many of you in this scene, i ask how many had gotten reccomended 25th ward and were shocked by what i said about it above, it's going to be a lot more than you'd think, this kind of thing is commonplace, many of the same places will reccomend games like fear and hunger or *numerous* eroge VN's in a similar way, so it's not just limited to grasshopper.

question then becomes, what do you do about it, well, my critisisms are there, simply let them exist, it's not my wish for things to even change with the media itself while i might believe suda to be a misogynist and his studio to follow suit, i want them to keep making games because i do love most of them despite the issues, i just want the culture around them to change, let women speak about their issues with it without fear of being shut down and labeled as haters regardless of weather or not they actually love these games, warn people going in because these games are triggering and someones safety and mental health should always come before worrying over spoilers and for the love of fuck do not let people get away with meming the fucking rape scene, that's all i ask, i don't expect this to change much, most people making it this far most likely already agree with me and anyone who disagrees likely checked out 2 paragraphs ago and i've more or less left fandom spaces altogether because of the experiances i had so it's not like i'd even be able to know if this does result in anything, i'm a very offline person these days and this is mostly just a form of closure to me more than anything else, you know, one last scream into the void to get things off my chest before i move on with my life, thanks for sticking with me this far.