Board Thread:Metal Gear Solid V/@comment-146.90.86.5-20150917130942/@comment-1971498-20150920171945

64.33.250.214 wrote:

DementedP wrote:

Except that using their deaths to further the angst and drive behind the male characters' motivations is a very tired trope that works at the expense of the female characters. There's a difference in writing well-meaning deaths and one that subjects them to horrible fates while specifically using their deaths to give more development to the male characters.

Again, these ideas aren't inherently bad, rather it's their frequency in pop culture that has made it into a horrible stereotype and a form of bad writing. The fact that those two female characters from PW suffered this fate unlike the male characters which got off better makes it really jarring in retrospect. It's telling how when a male character dies, Kojima finds a way to bring them back. The only female exception is The Boss, who had very little presence beyond being an AI. Since MGS4, they've had a tendency to die in humiliating or silly ways. If the shot of The Boss's cleavage at the end of MGS3 wasn't jarring enough, the B&B Corps died (died they even die?) curled up in a fetal position. Naomi's sudden romance with Otacon made her final moments seem more melodramatic than tragic. Paz "dieing" in her underwear in Peace Walker, only to really die from a vagina bomb in Ground Zeroes. Strangelove left to suffocate to death with her former lover-turned-robot so Otacon could be disfunctional like Solid. Then Quiet, the only female main character in Phantom Pain, who died because she chose to speak. Thank you, and that's exactly my point. I'm honestly glad I'm not the only one seeing this. It's not like I'm even hating on Kojima here, rather I feel like it's fair game to draw criticisms (whether it be positive or negative) on works that we like as it serves to further our understanding and ability to engage in critical thinking based on the media we consume.

Again, it's that level of frequency of the misguided treatment towards his female characters that I find really disappointing since Kojima didn't do such a bad job at it before in the past.