{"id":823,"date":"2016-01-12T17:21:56","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T22:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/?p=823"},"modified":"2016-01-12T17:21:56","modified_gmt":"2016-01-12T22:21:56","slug":"please-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/please-leave\/","title":{"rendered":"Please Leave"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"dslc-theme-content\"><div id=\"dslc-theme-content-inner\"><p>Hey, remember\u00a0<em>Mortal Kombat X<\/em>? The series reboot by NetherRealm? Came out early last year.<\/p>\n<p>I remember it, because in April I wrote the game&#8217;s subtle deployment of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/articles\/2015\/04\/kung-jin.html\" target=\"_blank\">first canon gay character in the\u00a0<em>MK<\/em> series, Kung Jin<\/a>, for Paste Magazine&#8217;s games section. In said article I was pleased with the way they handled the character&#8217;s deployment even if I was cautious about handing them too many laurel crowns for doing so in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>That was basically where I left\u00a0<em>MKX<\/em>. It&#8217;s never really been my sort of series, because of my general aversion to gore.<\/p>\n<p>WELP: then today happened.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>So\u00a0<em>MKX<\/em> is about to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/see-mortal-kombat-x-kombat-pack-2-characters-in-ac\/1100-6433710\/\" target=\"_blank\">get some new DLC<\/a> with a bunch of playable characters. By and large they&#8217;re following the trend of the game including what must be Warner-owned properties (hence a bunch of horror and suspense film playables like Leatherface and the Alien). But among these folks is returning series character Bo Rai Cho, who you can see being demo-ed in the trailer below (skip to 00:50 if it doesn&#8217;t cue properly):<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"663\" height=\"373\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uyP_kWd7QYw?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;start=50&#038;end=66&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>If you are a regular reader of this blog, you can probably intuit why I&#8217;m upset.<\/p>\n<p>I spent a lot of today since this was shown to me going, &#8220;Do I need to write about this? Should I bother?&#8221; Because let me tell you, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fARIQrm2XaQ\" target=\"_blank\">I&#8217;ve talked about this before<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In fact I&#8217;ve talked about it several times.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gdcvault.com\/play\/1022209\/Portrayals-and-Pitfalls-of-Fatness\" target=\"_blank\">Over&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/three-short-fat-films\/\" target=\"_blank\">And over&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/laevantine.tumblr.com\/post\/121953877357\/nope\" target=\"_blank\">And over&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/whole-hog\/\" target=\"_blank\">And over again<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;m gonna talk about it here, again, because I feel as if this topic gets buried a lot, and so I&#8217;m going to continue to be loud about it, because to do otherwise is&#8230; not good.<\/p>\n<p>So the &#8220;fat guy who attacks with toilet humor&#8221; is a very old trope indeed in games. In fact, &#8220;the gross fat person&#8221; (usually a dude\u00a0though fat women characters are subject to this too)\u00a0is a very old storytelling trope, full stop. And (surprise!) I&#8217;ve talked about reasons <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/shes-got-the-look\/\" target=\"_blank\">why fighting games often go to the trope well for their character design choices<\/a> before so I know all about &#8220;they need to be recognizable and discernible at a glance&#8221; etc.<\/p>\n<p>Here is why this is one of the most pernicious issues, though: it&#8217;s a trope that plays on and then intensifies our abjections when it comes to bodies. You&#8217;ll notice that the toned, muscular dude never has a fart attack in a fighting game, no matter how egregious the game&#8217;s overall design is. The reason why is that the toned, muscular dude&#8217;s body exists in a hegemonically-approved framework for dude bodies in general. We are not meant to find his body abjectionable, by which I mean a thing that we reject or throw away, that is repulsive rather than just &#8220;a thing we don&#8217;t like.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, it&#8217;s much more common to find these sorts of &#8220;gross&#8221; attacks &#8212; using bodily fluids, etc. &#8212; on fat bodies (or otherwise marginalized bodies) because we&#8217;re expected to find them abjectionable, culturally. Because we&#8217;re cued to view a fat body as lazy, slovenly, and &#8220;gross,&#8221; it just &#8220;makes sense&#8221; for them to be farting on people, spitting vomit on them, etc., in terms of the trope.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also notable that while some hegemonic bodies\u00a0<em>do<\/em> have &#8220;gross&#8221; attacks (think\u00a0<em>Skullgirls<\/em> or even some\u00a0<em>Darkstalkers<\/em> characters), those are never actually portrayed in terms of abjection; rather, the body horror aspect is part of their appeal or style, meant to be taken seriously. By contrast, the &#8220;gross fat guy&#8221; is never seen in a serious light; they&#8217;re a joke, and the inclusion of this &#8220;gross&#8221; stuff in their fighting style actually\u00a0<em>de-emphasizes<\/em> the seriousness of their style\/character\/etc.<\/p>\n<p>The problem, of course, is that all this&#8230; <em>this-ness<\/em>\u00a0is circular. As we continue to paint fat bodies in this &#8220;gross&#8221; light, they become increasingly coded as abjectionable. The more we view fatness as &#8220;gross&#8221; and &#8220;bad,&#8221; the easier it is for us to assign them abjectionable, &#8220;gross&#8221; traits in the character design process. You can see this with any marginalized group and its stereotypical portrayals, really.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the sad part is that when\u00a0<em>Mortal Kombat X<\/em> came out, I really enjoyed that they mixed up the cast, and that its inclusiveness was a step forward (if you want more analysis of that, Shareef Jackson has a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=t_4-jVjWJqI\" target=\"_blank\">great video that walks through the four new main characters<\/a>). I&#8217;m not exactly looking at fighting games to be the wavecrest of inclusion.\u00a0It&#8217;s great\u00a0when it happens&#8230; but that just makes the return of Bo Rai Cho &#8212; who in almost all respects feels like a joke character, right down to his name being a pun on the Spanish word for &#8220;drunk&#8221; &#8212; all the more inexplicable and annoying. Sure, let&#8217;s make Cassie and Jaqui cool, strong, important new characters. Let&#8217;s add a series first queer main character. Oh right, but make sure the fat dude attacks with a belly bounce and by farting on someone&#8217;s face though.<\/p>\n<p>I feel like this blog post is pretty short compared to my normal interminable screeds, but like&#8230; what am I gonna say, anymore, that I haven&#8217;t already, other than: don&#8217;t? Stop? Please leave? Because that&#8217;s all I got. Bo Rai Cho is a weird legacy of the old days of\u00a0<em>Mortal Kombat<\/em>, and I feel like they could have made him a cool drunken master character as he was updated for\u00a0<em>MKX<\/em> if they wanted to &#8220;save&#8221; him. But they didn&#8217;t; they went right to the gross fat guy joke well that he was originally drawn from and stayed there.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s almost like, when I said &#8220;let&#8217;s not rush to give them too much credit,&#8221; that I saw this sort of thing coming.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey, remember\u00a0Mortal Kombat X? The series reboot by NetherRealm? Came out early last year. I remember it, because in April I wrote the game&#8217;s subtle deployment of the first canon gay character in the\u00a0MK series, Kung Jin, for Paste Magazine&#8217;s games section. In said article I was pleased with the way they handled the character&#8217;s&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/please-leave\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Please Leave<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[165,81,52],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/pleaseleave-poster.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3NfdI-dh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":832,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions\/832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}