#shift-up

I’ll make this its own post (original here) because I’ve seen people believing this didn’t happen, or there was some twitter thread that was deleted so it means it didn’t happen. this is a link to a direct Korean news source regarding what happened:

article regarding SHIFT-UP removing an artist’s work from their gacha game “Destiny Child” after she said there shouldn’t be a problem being a feminist and voiced support for the VA, Kim Jayeon, that Nexon fired for taking a photo of herself wearing a shirt that said “Girls Do Not Need A Prince”. The shirt was part of a fundraiser to help victims of domestic violence (see the npr article linked below) , the rates of which are especially high for women living in South Korea. You can note here that literally anything vaguely feminist is met with “are you megal?” (referring to the defunct website megalia) and it doesn’t even matter how she responds. This woman made some simple statements and is smeared as some feminist terrorist. tbh sometimes it’s an uphill battle trying to explain to anyone, especially on the western internet, that these women aren’t making some evil dogwhistle to the feminist illuminati when they make basic feminist statements. I’ve gotten called “terf/terf sympathizer” (???) for trying to explain that the artist Vellmori was being smeared on the western web with the term “terf” as a targeted campaign by Korean incels who know that term puts a target on your back and nothing else about it. I am of course not saying megalia was a totally unproblematic site with no ideological problems but none of these women being attacked and fired are saying anything like “yeah the homophobia was great” they’re literally advocating for basic women’s rights. I’m also not saying “basic” in a condescending way, on the contrary I think these women are brave for speaking out and have created complex feminist ideologies and movements. “Basic” and “simple” are meant to show the absurdity in the reaction (extreme male anger, firing, censorship, etc) in relation to the original statement (molka is bad, it’s fine to be a feminist, etc).

this is an article in English regarding the VA who wore the shirt:

this is frustrating of course but not surprising. the design is a product of a misogynist company that exists in a violently misogynistic society, I don’t believe even a conversation that just tries to critique the design alone can happen without acknowledgement of this. of course this isn’t always the case, you can have seemingly non-hypersexualized character designs like some of them in “Limbus Company” and the company that makes this game will still engage in antifeminist incel pandering with their actions in real life, just like there can be a company producing media that seems “progressive” while engaging in fucked up shit in reality. this is common and is often weaponized. but I think the link between company politics and character design is relevant here so we can move forward with this discussion. on the western web you get the “FINALLY A GAME WITH A SEXY FEMININE FEMALE” guys and then you get the “she looks like a sex doll unlike MY favorite sexy video game female” guys who disagree but don’t want to come across as prudes. who creates these designs, who puts them in the game and for what target market? how is it advertised and why? typically this is never mentioned and therefore these conversations just become another childish “my favorite videogame VS your favorite videogame” internet fight. it just feels shallow and pointless. You have shifted the conversation that should at least acknowledge antifeminism in South Korea to stellar blade girl vs nier girl or whatever. it’s easy to react immediately/make memes or quippy twitter posts about the way something is designed based on your own feelings so this is what most people will do. again I do think part of this is because misogyny simply does not register for most people as a serious form of oppression. this is compounded with the fact that the Korean feminist’s struggle is not broadcasted across the western web with the same frequency and in the same way that something like the Hogwarts Legacy controversy was. Personally I find it disingenuous for reviewers especially to not mention Shift-Up’s antifeminist history. It’s not hard to find!