MRY - I see your point (I think) but what I am mainly getting at is that making a female power fantasy story now and in the America of the past would be much different. I'd wager there was a chance that PST could be played from the eyes of a Kreia-like character which I consider as the best female character in gaming. The other thing is, even if the muscular protagonist and sexy babes art direction were imposed by Feargus, then I must say it kinda works very well. Someone in the team connected these outrageous visions together, and maybe that visual direction makes the darker story work so well. I dunno. Besides "Last Rites" already mentions romances and sexytime.
In the modern political climate one has to meet certain criteria - .i.e. modern Lara Croft - she became a boring (visually) schizo (as a character) who is afraid to kill and after the cutscene ends massacres 50 dudes with an axe. I feel like there is no space for a deconstruction of a female power fantasy character, even though a strong independent woman archetype is already overplayed.
If characters like Kreia, Ravel, Anna, Fall are deemed problematic by some people and the author who created them feels obliged to "set the record straight" with them then it makes me feel disheartened. It's like someone created a template and the artist has to follow to appease some group(s). Besides, as it was mentioned before, what would have happened to characters like Deionarra. Deionarra is a very feminine woman (er, ghost) and it turns out that is "problematic". Turning her bisexual would feel forced, and that comes from a fan of Ancient Greece parties.
I guess a female character could work well, but would need a game for herself. Otherwise you end up with a Dragon Age: Inquisition story, but as I said I have no hope of a good deconstruction of a female power fantasy trope - I already feel the potential cringe.
I hope I am making some sense.
The issue with writing a female power fantasy in the classic sense, is that women don't generally seem to identify with it, the way men do with male power fantasies. The most popular female writers of fantasy - and I use that term to stand for any sort of fantasy, not just elves and wizards - generally produce
resistance literature, which positions its female characters as members of the oppressed, who rise up to either over throw or control the system around them by subverting its power - usually
specifically male power. Novels like
Twilight,
Hunger Games, and
Divergent uniformly feature a female protagonist who, at the start of the novel, is
oppressed by male power and who, through the course of the novels, learn to manipulate and control it. The underlying assumption, at the beginning of these stories, is a position of weakness, not a position of strength.
This is different from your typical strong, independent woman cliche, where the character is presented basically as a male hero, but with a vagina. Sure, these cliches, on occasions, make references to the
resistance narrative, but these are secondary and trivial - ie a female hero might toss out a sentence about how she's no worse than a man, but it's not
felt because the story gives no basis for thinking she was ever in a position of weakness, to begin with.
It can be hypothesized that the female experience in the West, as it currently exists, must sympathize with the condition of being oppressed, such that women love literature featuring protagonists who are oppressed, and who rise up to cast off that oppression. To this end, simply substituting a woman into a male power fantasy and changing the genders, adding more romance, etc., will not necessarily work. Sure, I imagine there are women who would enjoy this sort of story, but most women seem to have a different preference in terms of protagonists they identify with.
