“You just pulled the shit-end of a wishbone”: Examining the roles of Vicky Arnold and Heather Stevens, the women behind the early Tomb Raider franchise

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Chapman, Llewella (2024) “You just pulled the shit-end of a wishbone”: Examining the roles of Vicky Arnold and Heather Stevens, the women behind the early Tomb Raider franchise. Feminist Media Studies, 24 (3). pp. 609-627. ISSN 1468-0777

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Abstract

Previous feminist analysis afforded to the Tomb Raider franchise, in particular on the early games, has generally focused on the criticism levelled at the promotion and image of Tomb Raider’s leading character Lara Croft, who is commonly assumed to be “designed and written by and planned and conceived by a guy written for guys.” However, such assumption has led to the erasure of two women who held content-creative roles in the development of the early games in the franchise, Tomb Raider (1996) and Tomb Raider II (1997), namely Vicky Arnold, scriptwriter, and Heather Stevens (née Gibson), level designer. To date, neither Arnold nor Stevens have been afforded attention from scholars on the significant contribution they made. Therefore, this article seeks to address the omission of Arnold and Stevens through analysing the key individual agencies that both women had when developing the early Tomb Raider franchise.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	lara croft,level design,scriptwriting,tomb raider,women and game production,gender studies,communication,visual arts and performing arts ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3318
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Film, Television and Media
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	10 Jan 2025 01:01
Last Modified:	16 Jan 2025 01:09
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98151
DOI:	10.1080/14680777.2023.2217346

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