Sabrina Thompson-Cook

Undertale is so so excellent. The obvious, yet casual representation in this game is so perfectly executed. Yeah, it isn’t subtle that Alphys is in love with Undyne, but the gayness isn’t mentioned. The monsters just are how they are and experiencing a world where nobody questions different romances and genders is a delight in modern gaming.

A particular moment I loved was the protagonist’s date with Papyrus. Papyrus is the most lovable character in the game (imho) and I can’t imagine playing through and not accepting his invitation to go on a date. His hilarious personality draws you in and then on the date he reveals that he only likes you as a friend! It’s such a great twist of expectations, that he felt pressure to date you and felt bad that you liked him so much. For a protagonist to not “win” a romance and to be left with a friendship instead is SO refreshing and so much more realistic than the hero winning the girl.

I could talk about the great characters and relationships in Undertale for many hours, this article was lovely to read and to illustrate the importance of the game. I hope we are all still talking about it in the years to come.

Interesting and pretty impartial article. I’m a gal who games and like many gals I know – I play games all over the spectrum. Overwatch and TF2 would both likely make my top 20 favourite games and both have hundreds of my never-to-be-seen-again hours. But I also adore being engrossed in character and story through the wonders of RPGs, having just finished Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia.

I feel that, all types of people play all types of games. Enjoyment of an RPG or a shooter comes more down to interest and preference on a personality level, not so much a gender level. A bunch of my introverted friends join me online to meet new people and shoot up the baddies on Overwatch each week, and some of my loudest and wildest extroverts get into debates for hours about Dragon Age: Inquisition and its failures and successes.

While I think its somewhat silly to segregate gamers into categories and talk of what games women play vs. what games men play, I also think it’s very important to look at gender in gaming.
A lot of the time these studies come out on what games different genders play in order to make men feel better. A lot of men seem to feel threatened by the existence of women in the gaming community and their expectation of equality and representation. So statistics that suggest that women are sticking to mobile games, farming simulators and Bioware games all help men feel more comfortable that women aren’t REALLY there, they just hang around in the background, making them easier to ignore.
At the same time, more talk about representation in games (not just female but LGBT+ and POC) fills me with joy – when it comes from the right perspective. It might sound extreme but I don’t want to read another IGN male-written article on “how many women are REALLY playing COD?”, I want to read articles and watch videos and hear the perspectives from the minority and how they feel in the gaming world and what their experiences are.

As a women who is harassed online almost every night I speak into voice chat, hearing another man’s voice saying “women don’t play games” and “suck it up princess” in comments and articles is meaningless to me.

It’s refreshing to read an article that while I may not wholeheartedly agree, is from an objective place and from a female perspective – thanks!

Thinking about the excellence of Korra always brings up the fierce comparisons between the series and its near-perfect prequel. Something that I really respect about Korra is that it tackles some of the darker, harder and more important issues that society faces and I think this article illustrates that perfectly.

The Last Airbender played it safe and produced something really great, but Korra took risks and came out the other end with a mixed bag of amazing, important moments (Zaheer and the end of Book 3, Korra’s personal struggle through Book 4, the non-bender uprising of Book 1) and some really big misses (basically just all of Book 2).

I have a friend that criticizes Book 1 of Korra due to the way the show brushes off the issues of non-benders at the end of the season when Amon is defeated. While I wish the show had continued with the struggles of non-benders, the way it was tackled in Book 1 was really interesting – and honestly something I hadn’t considered when watching The Last Airbender.