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Showing posts from 2019

How and How Not to Satirize Rom-Coms: Isn't It Romantic VS. Playing It Cool

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Rebel Wilson in Isn't It Romantic (2019), and Chris Evans, Topher Grace, and Michelle Monaghan in Playing It Cool (2014) I think it's safe to say that everyone has seen at least one movie that would be described as romantic comedy, or rom-com for short. Clueless , Legally Blonde , To All the Boys I've Loved Before , 10 Things I Hate About You , When Harry Met Sally , Love and Basketball , and the list goes on for probably an eternity. And while all the movies I've listed are considered good, quality movies, there are hundreds more movies in this genre that are just plain middling, or downright awful. Each of these movies, whether good or bad, follows very specific tropes that are now staples of the genre, so much so that they have been parodied and satirized by media for decades. Now, what are some of these tropes, exactly? TV Tropes is the best place to find all of these tropes, so I'll link the Romantic Comedy trope page here  so you can find your fav

Have Faith in Your Fictional Women: An Analysis of Soul Calibur's Characters

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Tira and Seong-Mina in Soul Calibur. Anyone look cold here? The conversation surrounding misogyny in video games and gaming circles has been a large talking point for the better part of a decade at the very least. When choosing who to market video games to back in the very gendered 1970s when they began to be produced for commercial use, marketing executives chose boys, excluding entire markets from a medium, and a product, that anyone can enjoy. It's a choice that has haunted the industry to this day, as more and more men show their disdain for women who play these games, whether these women play in competitive circles or for pure entertainment, gatekeeping is common in the industry and community. Women are not only discouraged from engaging with these products, but from making them as well, as development teams, from writers to programmers to directors show a clear lack of diversity on all fronts. Nowhere is this gap more felt than in the fighting game genre, as straight cis