As Duke Amiel du H'Ardcore (high-tone, foppish voice):
It's too hot. It's too hot. Justin. Justin! Justin, it's too hot!
My face is melting away!
Like the Wicked Witch of the West... aaaAAAH!
[♫ "Born Depressed" by Drill Queen ♫] "Born different, born innocent."
♫ "Born perfect. I'm not like you, I'm a born lover..." ♫
I've noticed that that Fall Guys is a very good game.
And I know that some BRANDS have noticed it's
not only good, but also quite popular.
And unlike Fortnite where they got on the train late,
they want to get in on the ground floor.
The brands are thristy, thirsty for Fall Guys.
And I want in. I mean, it's not even for
promotion or, or money or anything,
I just really like attention.
So, can we have...
I mean, you know, it would appeal to
you know, 0.3 % of your playerbase,
and the rest of them, the ones who hate me,
you don't even have to tell them it's me!
Anyway, do you remember The Last of Us Part II?
That game that came out like 10,000 years ago?
Well, some people haven't forgotten.
Well, there's a particular aspect of the game they haven't forgotten.
And haven't forgiven.
Because you see, there are muscles...
in The Last of Us Part II.
(quietly) Lady... muscles...
And some of the comments I've been receiving
whenever I've talked about this, uh, WONDERFUL little topic
have been so incredible
they could only be delivered to you by a Georgian aristocrat.
As Duke Amiel du H'Ardcore (high-tone, foppish voice):
The character design of Abby sucks!
And majority of gamers agreeEEee.
No amount of crying and whining you do will chaaange thaaat.
Yeaaah,
sorry that Iiiiiii don't like unattractive people.
[light groans of effort]
I don't like muscular WOMAN.
It's a turn off.
[barely-contained giggling]
Those arms ARE realistic...
...ON A MAAAN!!
SURE women CAN bulk up like this,
but in reality it's FAR less common than having laAaArge brEeAasts.
Whatever!
I was never in the target demographic for THIS gaaaAAaaame.
CLEARLY not aimed at MEN who like FEMinine women.
Royston! Royston!
I DECIDE WHAT IS SEXY!!!!!
[inhales into super-loud sexy groan]
UUUUUuuuuUUuuUUUuuUUU!
[shouted loudly like Macho Man Randy Savage]
OOOOHHHHHH YEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!
[dainty laughter]
The things that [digital warping] 'the gamers'
decide to be upset about will never not be fascinating.
When I talk about the ways in which
games are deliberately designed to manipulate and prey upon people,
I'm told I'm beating a dead horse.
Even though literally nothing's been
done about the problem of predatory monetization.
In fact, it's only gotten worse.
But I'M the one beating a dead horse.
When I discussed the issue of very real men
in very real life using their positions of
power and authority to mentally and physically harm others,
I'm shouted down for being... (mocking) 'too political.'
Seriously.
But by the clammy, wet hands of God
so help us all,
when it comes to a woman in a mushroom zombie
videogame having big arms,
it'll be an outrage that burns for months on end.
Abby in The Last of Us Part II
is proving to be one of the most controversial video--
Oh wait, wait, scratch that.
Abby in The Last of Us Part II
is proving to be one of the most non-troversial videogame characters of all time.
To ordinary human beings with some sort of purpose in life,
or at least more than one hobby,
Abby is a protagonist in a videogame.
To The Gamers (TM)
--you know the ones I mean--
she represents the downfall of the gaming medium.
Proof positive that SWJs
have taken over videogames
by erasing attractive women and replacing them with...
...a-a-attractive women!
She is, in their perpetually self-martyring worldview,
yet another example of how 'real gamers'
--straight little white boys--
are being ignored in favor of the non-real gamers:
anyone who isn't a straight little white boy.
In short, Abby is [digital warping] THE FINAL CUCKENING.
Aerith gains, bro!
A huge portion of the.. 'controversy'
is rooted in something so utterly, pitifully simple:
they don't like that an unconventionally-attractive woman
dared to be a playable character in a mainstream videogame.
And that is literally it for the vast majority of them.
Oh, they'll dress it up.
The wingeing little lads who are still --weeks after launch--
trying to invalidate Abby's existence as a character,
will try to tell you it's not about something so surface level, but it is.
People hate Abby because she's reasonably muscular.
And when I say "reasonably muscular" that's the extent of it, too.
She is not, as some people who even LIKE
her described, super mega jacked.
Maybe it's because I spend a lot of time
working with actual, professional wrestlers,
but I see super jacked human frames on the regular.
And Abby, while very clearly built up,
is nowhere near the TOP
when it comes to getting ripped to fuck.
Which of course is fine,
be as built up as you want to be,
but the way some people talk about it,
it's like they've never seen muscles before.
They talk about her like she's Brock fucking Lesnar.
But she does put Naughty Dog's intricately-animated
weapon upgrade system to shame
by having the sweetest guns in the game.
And (mocking) 'other gamers'
can't fucking handle it.
Which is why, despite the rest of the world
inevitably having moved on to the next
high-fueled, AAA distraction,
we still have a subset of hardcore gamer boy types
who are diligently working to bust to the myth
that a muscular woman could be
in THEIR favorite videogames.
Spoilers time, time for early spoilers in The Last of Us Part II.
(mumbles) By Naughty Dog.
(mumbles) Published by Sony.
(mumbles) On PS4.
It's not like people weren't predisposed to hating Abby
as her killing of the SUDDENLY beloved
videogame character of Joel was
--when news of the story leaked before launch--
enough for many people to preemptively decide
she was awful, and refused to ever see her perspective,
which is hilarious when you consider
what the game's narrative was desperately trying to do.
But anyway, Joel was a shithead,
and a selfish character,
and he was always going to meet a violent comeuppance.
That he died horribly was a natural story beat.
I pointed this out before.
That anybody felt otherwise is shocking to me.
There's nothing about Joel that ain't loathsome.
Even his fatherly character growth
is rooted --as the end of the original game demonstrates-- in self-interest.
But some people treat him as if he was one of the
all-time lovable protagonists.
Even if you disagree with my read on the character,
he wasn't fucking THAT.
Some even talk about him like they're mourning a loved one,
like he was their own father figure.
And darling, let me tell you,
if you look up to Joel from The Last of Us, well you're..
...well you're probably exactly the kind of person
who thinks it's okay to harass, and stalk, and attack a voice actor
for something her CHARACTER did
to another CHARACTER.
As Duke Amiel du H'Ardcore (high-tone, foppish voice):
I don't give a single care about her.
I just want my Joel to not be GOLFED to DEATH!!
And if you're that abusively disconnected from reality, hey...
...Ubisoft's hiring.
We already discussed in a previous video
how Abby's performer, Laura Bailey, has been attacked online
by weird and fucked up Last of Us fans
who have maybe spent too much of their squalid, rotten lives
playing violent videogames and can no longer discern fiction from reality.
And while some of those still negatively-obsessed with Abby
will tell you their hate is rooted wholly in the character's actions
within The Last of Us Part II,
even a cursory glance at (mocking) 'the discourse'
will reveal that's all complete and total bollocks.. for most of them.
Abby is not a traditionally, conventionally-attractive
videogame character, and they despise her for it.
You don't even have to look very hard
to see their real problem with her.
It all comes down to the muscles.
At first they tried to argue Abby wasn't a realistic
portrayal of a woman simply BECAUSE she was well built,
and rather than acknowledge the existence
of people outside of their tiny idea of what people can be,
they decided it wasn't 'realistic'
that a woman could be so stacked.
When it was pointed out that, yes, women CAN
get that swole and more besides,
when it was pointed out that, yes, the very woman Abby's design
was based on was equally, if not more muscular,
the outraged gamers changed to their tune.
NOW the popular argument persists
it's not that she can't be muscular,
it's that she can't be muscular in The Last of Us Part II!
You see, the same group of status quo warriors
who have spent YEARS in this so-called culture war
defending unrealistic body types
is suddenly an arbiter of what is and isn't
believable character design.
After all the defenses of chain mail bikinis,
and everything Rob Liefeld did to artistic concepts of human proportion,
SUDDENLY the question of Abby's large arms
in a mushroom zombie videogame have turned
every two-bit gamer with a Twitter handle
into an expert nutritionist who can scientifically argue
that no women could get so hard in a post-apocalypse.
You see, there's no FOOD in a zombie apocalypse
so nobody can get the nourishment they need
to build up their bodies to get muscles in the first place!
That's logic that's suddenly been applied to a videogame.
I mean sure, she's not even THAT extremely muscular
and has no more meat on her than many of the men,
but we're not here to question MALE body types, are we?
Get out of here with that commie logic.
And sure, we could say that in a game about mushroom zombies,
the size of a character's arms AREN'T the biggest
suspension of disbelief out there.
But that kind of Bolshevism isn't going to get those cocks jerking, is it?
And sure there are supplement pills found in every drawer and cupboard
that the protagonists chow down without hesitation.
But that's just videogame logic!
And we shouldn't be looking for, uh, too much realism in a..
...in a game...
...yeah.
Any reasonable person would be able to say shut up,
it's a videogame, the reasonably-muscular arms
are among the more believable suspensions of disbelief
in a mushroom zombie videogame,
and that's even if you think it's unrealistic in the first place.
But that doesn't do enough to counteract
the sheer hypocritical stupidity
of a group of literal wankers
who only ever shout realism when it's convenient,
when they're trying to get an unconventional
videogame protagonist erased,
or falsely claiming that black people weren't around in the olden days,
which is why games set in medieval Europe should only have white characters.
Idiots.
What makes this situation so absolutely absurd is not just the fact
that it's a mushroom zombie game,
and a pair of above-average biceps are the least of the fiction,
it's that even within the world of The Last of Us Part II
Naughty Dog went out of its way to show that Abby actually does
have access to regular meals and a fitness regimen.
Narratively, of course, the game establishes that Abby
spent the past few years specifically training herself
physically for the task of wreaking revenge on Joel.
On top of that,
we see very early in the game that the settlement Abby lives in
has a fully-functional agricultural system.
You know, farms and shit.
She's eating fucking burritos part way through the game,
just after asking what's for lunch, to indicate
that they have, if not a fully-balanced diet,
then certainly a diverse enough one
to where they're eating different stuff.
An top of all that, Abby's role in the settlement
is a physical one. She goes out,
patrols, hunts, fights, her entire job is physical.
She is fed.
And even if, EVEN IF that's not enough
to 100% explain how muscular she is,
it's still more explanation than any other videogame gives
for any other body type in any other fucking videogame,
AND it's still just a fucking videogame!
ANd The Last of Us Part II did so much
visual and literary legwork here
that disbelief SHOULD be more than fully suspendable,
unless you're actively TRYING to be upset,
which, let's be honest, is what 
the people still performing their crusade for realism, are.
I mean how else do you explain this almost
deliciously audacious stretch
where one highly-educated doctor
found Abby's in-game workout schedule,
and used it as PROOF
that Abby shouldn't exist!
The schedule, by the way, is not a major plot point
oooor.. anything.
It's not anything.
It's a background asset.
Something cobbled together for the scenery like background assets are.
And it was by no means intended to be paid attention to.
But wankerless wonders starved for anything
vaguely resembling a bullet for their logic gun,
people who must have been scouring the game for weeks
trying to find anything to back up their laughable anger,
have lept on this throwaway meaningless asset
as if it's pure argumentative dynamite.
(mocking impression) "The image shows she does not work on her arms"
"to the capacity an average woman would need to"
"Thursdays -- 4 times every 2 months."
"Additionally, food is rationed."
(mocking) Ooo-huu.
Uhhhhh huh!
That's where we are with this shit.
Some boys out there are so eager,
so frothingly, gleefully, eager
to invalidate the existence of even a fictional woman,
that they're hunting down background images
and zooming in, and enhancing them,
like they're in a Tom Clancy fucking book.
And all because --despite their sudden and convenient interest in realism--
a group of gamers don't find this girl
as attractive as other fictional girls.
Some have suggested that these particular gamer boy types
get violently distressed if they
encounter someone they don't want to masturbate to.
And that, indeed,
[digitally warped] pumping out a fat load
is what this is all about.
And I'm not saying that's definitely what's going on.
But anyway, here's a couple quotes about Abby we found
with minimal effort on The Last of Us' subreddit.
(computer generated voice) "If there's no rule 34 of Abby,"
"does that mean she doesn't exist?"
"No one will make lewds of her."
"There is r34 of her in the fucking game itself."
"Let's not talk about that scene."
"If I was drunk enough I'd nut to it,"
"I'm sure people with muscle fetishes would be very happy."
"I wonder what rule 34 will do with Abby."
"I have my eye bleach ready."
"This is no pornhub, we don't post [distortion censor] sex."
Ah, yes of course there's a transphobic slur tossed in there,
because Abby has muscles you see,
and no muscle girl be allowed in game for real big grown up man!
The very fact Abby isn't skinny and/or curvy
automatically made her a man in some people's heads.
And while I don't like to churlishly throw around
people's dating success or lack thereof,
I genuinely wonder what some of these people think actual women look like.
Because some people DO look like the people they find attractive, but..
that's only a percentage of the makeup
of the human range of body types.
I mean, look at the extreme example I set.
But some 'gamers' out there seem to believe that women
can only look and --let's be honest-- behave one way.
And when you see them clutching pearls
over Tifa's breast size being altered in Final Fantasy VII Remake,
or screaming furious vengeance
because a drawing of a girl's panties aren't as visible
on American game packaging as it is in Japan,
it's difficult not to assume that these
poor miscreants must be so utterly,
crushingly desperate for an actual range of human interaction.
Or at least in need of something different to jerk off to.
Not necessarily better stuff, just more VARIED stuff.
More than JUST rule 34.
There's so much more stuff to look at when you're pounding it.
[repeated fist-to-hand slapping rapidly]
When you're pounding it.
[repeated fist-to-hand slapping rapidly]
(muttering) When you're pound--
Just where, where were all these people
when Gears of War gave us men
who were 90% pure, Grade A beef fortress
after a 14-year-long war
that devastated the planet's resources
and decimated the population?
Where the fuck were they during the release of Borderlands,
and Borderlands 2, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel,
and Tales from the Borderlands, and Borderlands 3?
Where all the starved inhabitants of a dead, desert world
make Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson look like this prick.
Hell, where were all these people telling Lord Humongous
that he was just too fucking ripped?
You know, I'm racking my brain trying to think of the last time
anyone had an issue with muscles being in a videogame, and uh,
nothing springs to mind.
[rapid tapping]  Hmmmmmmmmmm.
[rapid tapping] HHMMMmmmmm.
HHHHMMMMMMMMMM!!!!
"Here's the thing, as a dude,"
"I actually fell into this trap a little bit."
Writes Forbes' Paul Tassi,
in an article that gets to the meat of the matter.
"Not like in an 'angry' way,"
"but I did keep waiting for some sort of story explanation"
"as to why Abby had gotten so jacked,"
"but it was never directly addressed outside of one line"
"about how she had just lifted a certain weight for the first time."
"But then when I stopped and thought about it,"
"I realized when had I ever asked that question about a male character,"
"or needed an explanation as to why they were 'unrealistically' jacked"
"(way more unrealistically than Abby, usually)?"
"Never."
"It's just assumed as 'videogame default' that men are jacked with huge muscles,"
"and if women are muscular, they are also skinny."
"And yet it's perfectly reasonable to think"
"that a woman living in the post-apocalypse on a mission of revenge"
"would indeed get super jacked"
"to be able to take on zombie hordes and enemy soldiers alike."
"There really isn't any explanation past that needed."
"Once I saw a social media movement"
"of other muscular women showing off their arms"
"that looked close to identical to Abby's,"
"I realized i was being dumb for even thinking about this as"
"a story point that needed to be addressed."
"No, I wasn't vocally mad about it online,"
"and yet my own bias has made me internally question"
"whether Abby's appearance was 'right.' That was stupid."
Yep. He's correct.
It is stupid.
Because no matter who you are watching this right now,
you can CLAIM that you'd have been just as skeptical if Abby were a man,
but the fact is you wouldn't be,
because you HAVEN'T been.
You've had chances before now to show that skepticism, my friend.
In many, MANY post-apocalyptic worlds
full of dieseled men,
and only now, only with Abby,
do people suddenly care.
People who --until now--
were among the most likely to excuse a game's shittiness
by claiming "it's just a game!"
Well shut the fuck up, kids,
because The Last of Us 2 is just... a game.
Not even a particularly great one.
I mean it's good, it's fun, it's a fun zombie game,
but it's just a fun zombie game!
I'm being very insulting today, and that's in part
because trying to debate this issue on the fact is relatively pointless.
The FACT is Abby exists.
Whether it's 'believable' or not,
she's got big arms in a mushroom zombie videogame,
and she's not going to disappear if you somehow
'prove' she couldn't exist in The Last of Us 2's world.
She does. Whether you like it or not.
Finding a workout regimen that was never intended to be so much as
thought about for more than a second
will not resurrect your precious, beloved Joel.
The Last of Us 2 came out ages ago,
sold a shit ton and you can't CHANGE that.
None of us can CHANGE it.
I know your experience in erasing black people from European history
has allowed you to believe you can alter the past, but you actually can't.
What's past is prologue, folks.
Abby happened whether you like it or not and it's time to move on.
And I'm simply not going to pretend
there's an actual, valid reason for
disliking Abby's EXISTENCE.
Dislike the character, dislike the story,
but when you're debating that the character can't EXIST,
especially when she's not even in the top 10
least believable aspects of the game,
I'm gonna side eye you.
You're trying to say women with certain body types shouldn't be in games,
that women with only one or two particular body types SHOULD be,
and the hateful comments, sexually-sneering attitudes,
and clinging desperation to scrub out Abby's entire presence
betrays that motive far greater than you think
any videogame has 'betrayed you'
because it had a woman with muscles or pink hair.
You fucking babies.
I realize I've been more than a little antagonistic with today's video,
and some people would argue you shouldn't be antagonistic,
you'll only rile them up.
But what are the other options when you're as exhausted as I am, you know?
You could ignore them. That's not very good.
You could try and debate their points
as if they have merit but they.. don't.
And what can I tell you?
I am an open pansexual queer
whose relationship with their gender, especially recently, has been a little...
Eeegh.
As Duke Amiel du H'Ardcore (high-tone, foppish voice):
He's right, you know.
This is as manly as it gets around here.
And I've gotten very fucking used to
spending a large portion of my life
being told I literally don't exist.
By the media. By people IN my life.
And I've got friends who are being,
are just having their their very human rights debated, by TERFs.
Galvanized as they are by the likes of
Graham Linehan and J. K. Rowling, who is a TERF, by the way.
By the way, I do understand that I've offended
some viewers in the past by saying that J. K. Rowling is a TERF.
[chuckle]
I'm just very tired of seeing the RIGHT to be different...
...debated.
You know? It's very tiresome
to see EVEN fictional people's existences disputed.
When she's there, IN the videogame.
Does it 'not make sense' in the universe for,
for that character to have those muscles? Well...
it makes sense in that universe because that's in a universe where clearly
Abby does look the way she looks, so...
It's not a- it's not a debate!
You know, some of the comments we've looked at here,
some of the comments I've seen continue to sprout
and spew forth from people's diseased mouths,
are still literally trying to claim
that muscular women don't exist,
or are certainly such unicorn-esque rarities
that they shouldn't be SEEN in a videogame.
And that's what it all comes down to.
These people shouldn't be seen, and these people shouldn't be heard,
if they're not the absolute bog-standard,
factory default setting protagonist...
...then gamers don't want them to be around.
They will scream about, oh, forced diversity,
when they see just a SHRED of diversity.
Games are less diverse than real life is.
You tell me what's being forced.
You know?
But look at me,
accidentally falling into the trap of
trying to seriously debate people
who CLAIM they want debate,
but actually don't give a fuck,
they're just very scared of things that are different.
And that's why they don't thank God for me.
Even though they SHOULD.
Or at the very least they should thank God that Joel died because he was shit.
He was shit.
♫ ♫
