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Dragami Video games introduced this month that its Lollipop Chainsaw remake launch was getting delayed to 2024. By no means having performed hack-and-slash Lollipop earlier than, however eagerly awaiting the remake, I made a decision to manage rationally: I spent $40 on a sport made 11 years in the past, and hauled my buddies’ dirty Xbox 360 to my residence.
I had identified the horror tales about upskirt achievements and rampant objectification, however after taking part in Lollipop, I believe its unicorn vomit-covered motion is neither actually offensive, nor topped with the lascivious whipped cream determined males swear it’s smeared in. Like schoolkids and fairies, the sport is misunderstood. And after rummaging by its dental floss bikinis and love letter-wide cheer uniforms, I discover that Lollipop is likely one of the extra charming video games for women on the market.
Hack-and-slash my coronary heart
Sure, it’s for women. It’s particularly for women in 2023, a yr that—as each Willa Rowe for Inverse and Stacey Henley in TheGamer appropriately word—absolutely welcomes bimbos, sluts, and any sort of whore to the pot of gold on the finish of feminism. The sport, a collaboration between cult-favorite designer Suda51 and The Suicide Squad (2021) director James Gunn, guiltlessly options bimbo-slut-whore captain Juliet Starling as its chainsaw-swinging protagonist. She’s a cheerleader on the fictional San Romero highschool, she subsists on lollipops (“I do know what you’re considering,” she says whereas her silhouette flexes a lean abdomen within the sport’s intro, “I’m getting sooo fats!”), and she or he’s been taking some pole dancing lessons. At present is her 18th birthday. Quelle shock!
Juliet presents as a caricature, however the extra I carve the zombie rot overtaking her highschool together with her rhinestone-struck weapon, the extra I really feel like I’m her. For the reason that sport’s roughly six-hour-long playthrough is confined to button-mashing (there are, technically further combos you should purchase with Gold Medals that spill out of destroyed zombie guts, however I all the time discover stabbing X and Y repeatedly with my thumb to be extra satisfying) and quick-time occasions, it’s straightforward to place myself on autopilot whereas chopping up enemy hordes within the its brief ranges.
I button-mash so nicely that I change into an knowledgeable in a tumbling somersault that splashes scorching pink and cuts a path to Juliet’s Sparkle Looking, a fight mechanic made from sweet hearts and glitter, which signifies I’ve concurrently killed three (or extra) zombies and gained extra Gold, and a few rarer Platinum, Medals.
Easy fight means I float by the Lollipop Chainsaw’s Regular setting consistently amused, like a cat in a sofa cushion, and get to purchase a rain of power-ups like health-expanding Rodent Chow Mein or Energy Dumbbells to spice up my energy, making it so I by no means really feel overwhelmed once I’m low on Chainsaw Blaster bullets, or being confronted by particular zombies. A few of these can fly, for some motive.
I not often attain for the strawberry lollipops I discover shimmering across the map to recuperate my well being. I chill, as a substitute, and pursue the “Threads” part at Lollipop’s Geocities-style Chop2Shop.zom retailer, till I understand I’ve needed to spend about 100 Platinum Medals to get a Juliet pores and skin that covers her shoulders.
Feminine protagonists (idea)
Proper—about that. I discover instantly that the survival horror-comedy sport is conflicted about how its participant ought to see Juliet. She’s bought, as she describes it, a “ginormous, fats butt” and is barely authorized, so, utilizing online game logic from Lifeless or Alive, Steel Gear Stable V, or Bayonetta, she ought to moan her manner by bloodshot glamor pictures, slipping and falling into victory.
Lollipop tries that strategy, now and again. After her letterman jacket of a boyfriend Nick will get bitten, Juliet makes use of magic—a prerequisite of any member of her ghoul-slayer household—to cease zombie venom from mushing his mind, and he finally ends up as a decapitated, speaking head.
“Is {that a} new purse? Wait, it’s your boyfriend!” Juliet’s sister Rosalind says the primary time she sees him dangling at Juliet’s facet.
Juliet wears Nick like a set of automobile keys on her waistband, giving the sport’s digicam a corridor cross for peeking up her skirt each time it’s taking a look at Nick’s face. Lollipop additionally makes a limp joke out of Juliet’s sensei faceplanting into her chest a pair occasions, and it permits each enemies and allies to toss nasty catcalls at Juliet with out protest.
“I by no means thought I’d be saved by somebody with such nice tits,” a classmate I shield from spoiled, dynamite-strapped zombies tells me, swiftly making me remorse it. Later, throughout one full-throttle boss battle, all of which characterize a rock subgenre, a zombie asshole with a mohawk makes use of phrases—“STUPID COOZE! COCKSUCKER! FUCKING BITCH!”—as assaults that emerge from his mouth and must be dodged or sawed in half.
I get filth spat at me consistently whereas strolling down the road in my neighborhood, so nothing males say in Lollipop sounds to me like satire. It sounds actual, and I can really feel butterflies beginning to suicide-bomb my abdomen.
However other than these queasy moments, when it appears like the sport is insisting to its presumed male viewers that it agrees, scorching ladies are simply as lifeless because the zombies getting gored throughout Juliet’s hometown, I don’t assume Juliet is handled poorly.
Objectification 101
Let’s return to how she turned her candy boyfriend right into a literal, tossable, pliable object.
“[Nick’s] actually become an adjunct, a commodity, and his humanity is denied,” James Gunn stated in a 2012 Destructoid interview, “Nick will not be solely emasculated, he’s tremendous emasculated.”
I’m, once more, not pleased with how uncritically Lollipop engages with this concept. At one level, fed up with getting used as a particular assault weapon, or glued onto limp zombie our bodies to assist Juliet fulfill duties—together with one horrible baseball minigame the place I’ve to shoot enemies whereas reanimated Nick runs the diamond—Nick lashes out: “You took away my selection, Juliet!”
Learn Extra: Lollipop Chainsaw: The Kotaku Assessment
That line may have been a chance for males to, albeit, in a ridiculous context, higher perceive themselves as a part of world violence in opposition to ladies, and for girls to be warned of the damaging attract of accepting patriarchal positions of energy, making them sparkle, however holding them insidious.
Lollipop, as a substitute, shrugs off the loaded line prefer it’s as inconsequential as a dropped greenback. I be taught to forgive it—this can be a six-hour sport, in any case; there isn’t sufficient time for annihilating sexism and lots of of ambling zombies—however it sticks with me as I attempt to course of Juliet as a headstrong, difficult particular person.
Not solely is she nimble together with her screaming chainsaw, utilizing her cheerleading experience to flip over and pom-pom punch unhealthy guys, she’s additionally bilingual, dedicated to her household, and, a miracle for any teenager, appears to have a wholesome relationship together with her sexuality (“Killing zombies provides me whole wooden,” she says cheerfully).
Like her (comparatively) up to date heroines in 1997 TV sequence Buffy, 2009 film Jennifer’s Physique, or Gunn’s 2006 directorial debut Slither, Juliet subverts audiences’ expectations for each femininity and engaging ladies in horror. She declines Carol J. Clover’s formative definition of the Last Lady, which instructs her to be “a male surrogate in issues oedipal, a homoerotic stand-in, the viewers incorporate,” and as a substitute strikes frantically, determinately, together with her tits out, like a topic in one in all Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s delirious music movies.
What all of it means
That’s why I see myself in her. And I can’t recover from that.
It’s refreshing to play a sport that permits its feminine protagonist to be annoyingly talkative, sexual and competent, romantic and good. Juliet likes pigtails, little skirts, and Bazooka bubble gum pink, however she’s not a robotic—she’ll cease and cry if she needs to, enable herself to be susceptible when actuality units in.
There’s blood all over the place. There’s a rainbow. She’s a troublesome particular person. Juliet will not be straightforward to categorize, however that’s what makes taking part in her really feel so pure, and but so in contrast to all of the “woman video games” I’ve performed earlier than—Flash video games that marketed themselves to me with flashing lights, Barbie make-up video games, movie star dress-up, that sort of factor. There was by no means any loss of life or something ugly the best way there’s in Lollipop Chainsaw, although it was all the time apparent from the best way folks stared and the way my favourite scary motion pictures labored that these have been essential elements of girlhood, too.
“You maintain me down like a magnet / And this isn’t the life for me / No, this isn’t,” riot grrrls Bikini Kill sing.
At this second in gaming, individuals are arguing about wanting 1,000,000 Baldur’s Gate 3s—graphically spectacular tomes, or second worlds to run to for so long as Mars isn’t viable.
I performed Lollipop Chainsaw on a console from 2005, and I do know that every one I want from video games is easy understanding. This womanhood factor is fairly bizarre, don’t you assume? It’s not 24-hour dress-up, a drama-free boudoir, it’s messy and harmful like the remainder of the world.
Lollipop Chainsaw understands that in its coronary heart, and it serves bitter gummy worms—enjoyable froth, a zombie-hunter who’s given sufficient area and equipment to be a zombie-hunter unquestioned.
“I’ve bought the love that’s robust and never weak / I’ve bought the love that’s robust and never weak,” proclaims Bikini Kill. Juliet’s legacy, greater than a decade out from her 18th birthday, is a excessive level for girls in video games. She evokes me, makes me chuckle, and teaches me that, God, I like killing shit on my Xbox.
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