fairy jacket

I found a fairy jacket, hanging on a bush, and thought of "Scarborough Fair."



Tell her to make me a cambric shirt,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Sewn without seams or fine needlework,
If she would be a true love of mine.

Tell her to wash it in yonder well,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Where never spring water or rain ever fell,
And she shall be a true lover of mine.

Tell her to dry it on yonder thorn,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Which never bore blossom since Adam was born,
Then she shall be a true lover of mine.

male and female heroes in video games (being thoughts on a quote I saw on Tumblr)

“It seems that when you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you want to make a man into a hero, you hurt . . . also a woman first.”
--Leigh Alexander, “What Did They Do to You: Our Women Heroes Problem.”

I was going to argue that although this is powerful rhetoric, I don’t think it’s true, but I realized I was thinking of the realm of literature, whereas the writer was talking about video games. Sadly, I think she’s pretty correct about video games.

What the article describes is how male protagonists in video games are motivated by harm to women who are important to them, whereas female protagonists are motivated by harm they themselves suffer. The thing I dislike about this most of all, which I haven’t seemed mentioned, is that it denies female protagonists the opportunity for the same level of altruism as the male protagonist. He gets to be motivated by love for someone else and anger over harm that comes to them. . . but this is apparently not possible for the female protagonist in video games. Her concern ends up being only herself.