Here's a good introduction to that new gaming genre, cruel and cute pregnancy and injury games. These put you, o player, in the role of a paramedic tasked with helping a Disney princess or similar character, who comes to you with various injuries, plus a baby to be born, or related challenges.
For example,
There’s Baby Elsa Ambulance where baby Elsa (there is so much Frozen stuff out there, seriously) with a bleeding slash to her chest and a black eye crying in the back of an ambulance.
Yes, this is how it begins:
Or:
In Pregnant Anna Emergency you’ll find Anna from Frozen sporting a huge baby bump and lying in bed after what looks like an accident at a wood chipping facility. Wooden spikes jut out of her skin, her nose is bleeding and her face is bruised.
"wooden spikes"? Yes:
There’s never any explanation of how a pregnant Disney princess would end up quite so punctured, she just is and you must use some green medical pliers to yank them out. It’s not an easy job either – there’s a real sense of the nails being jammed in and needing a great deal of tugging to pull them out. Bare arms, legs and bump are all afflicted.
Or consider the graphic horror of Elsa Throat Doctor:
And yet, as Philippa Warr explains:
These games go out of their way to avoid difficult, messy or real elements. Babies have flowers instead of genitalia and caesareans involve them magically appearing rather than being born. Broken bones are healed in seconds and tissues stop your eyes weeping pus. The makeover never fails, roles are never questioned, pain is almost entirely absent and the women are always styled as cute and compliant...
Infocult: little girls were the first to know.
(thanks to Andy Havens)
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