I don’t do a lot of ranting about this on Tumblr, but I’ve done it on Twitter. There are a LOT of situations where a female character is treated poorly or radically changed that annoy me lately, but and I notice a trend: it’s treated as suddenly acceptable the instant a woman is made into one of the most prominent creators involved in the project.

For the supposed Tomb Raider “reboot,” its version of “Lara Croft” was rightfully panned as inappropriate to who Lara Croft is as a character… until Crystal Dynamics revealed and emphasized the fact they had Rhianna Pratchett writing the script. And as soon as Rhianna Pratchett started really pushing that treatment of her as somehow good and a step above. Special note: Rhianna Pratchett being the script writer was announced and turned into a big news story immediately after sites jumped on a producer’s remarks about “Lara” getting nearly raped and how it makes the player supposedly want to protect her.

Likewise, with Harley Quinn, throwing away her entire harlequin theme as a character and turning her into a female Joker knockoff was rightfully panned when it was Adam Glass. Then, as soon as Amanda Conner got involved, everyone started building it up and promoting what DC was doing to Harley Quinn as The Best Thing Ever.

In neither case was the intent and plan actually something spearheaded by the prominent women attached to them. The “Tomb Raider” “reboot” was done, with its plan for a beaten down and traumatized Lara Croft as a way to throw away the heroic badass Lara Croft, entirely because a male exec at Crystal Dynamics saw the popularity of Nolan’s Batman films and wanted to force that concept on Lara Croft. Throwing away Harley Quinn’s entire theme as a character, what is to her what bats are to Batman, came because a male exec at DC Comics saw the popularity of Arkham Asylum’s costume change for Harley and thought that meant Harley needed to have her costume changed everywhere.

It is in much the same way as what happened to Barbara Gordon. A male editor decided Batgirl needed to be tossed aside and her crippling via Killing Joke was a way to do it while promoting the men. Everything that happened with Oracle wasn’t planned, it was women salvaging a character that a man had no respect for.

In essence, what we have is female creators used as a smoke screen for poor decisions made by men. Ideas that would garner massive criticism and complaints with a man at the helm suddenly get praise and accolades with a woman placed front and center. The success or failure of an idea forced on a character by a man also becomes the duty of a woman; if it fails, the blame can be pinned on her instead of the real problem that was forced on her.

This situation forces female creators to have to do things that are good for their careers at the expense of the female characters they’re working on. It forces them to convince people, including themselves, that what they’re doing is a good thing. It seems like a “when you have lemons, make lemonade” scenario, but it’s really not.

The great work done with Oracle as a result of Barbara Gordon’s poor treatment via Killing Joke is constantly used as a reason for why Barbara Gordon shouldn’t be Batgirl again. There were objectively a lot of great things that happened with Barbara’s development and character as Oracle, and she added meaningful disabled diversity… but it comes at the cost of trying to deny Barbara the chance to be Batgirl.

Great work done by women making good things out of a bad situation is weaponized as an excuse to continue reinforcing the original bad idea, and deny any and every possibility of setting things right.

“Barbara Gordon can’t be Batgirl again, you’re robbing the world of an important disabled character if you do that!”

“Lara Croft can’t be a badass heroic icon again, you’re undoing progress toward video games in general having more realistic female characters!”

“Harley Quinn can’t have her harlequin theme back, you’re taking away her whole troupe and team-up storylines with other characters!”

And so on, and so forth, as if a team of builders doing the best they can with a horrendous foundation somehow makes the foundation good.

What Crystal Dynamics is calling “Lara Croft” right now could have been an entirely brand new character for a new IP. She could’ve had a long line of successes in her own right, and eventually had a crossover game with the actual Lara Croft.

Harley Quinn could’ve had a troupe and team-up storylines that kept her harlequin theme intact, and even built upon them more. Instead of looking like a female Joker knockoff, there could’ve been a variation on the jester concept.

None of this is in a vacuum. Without putting any thought into it, the Tomb Raider “reboot” might look like the best thing to ever happen to Lara Croft, and Harley Quinn losing her jester theme may appear like the start of her breakthrough. It only looks that way because these companies are pulling out all the stops into making people accept a terrible direction, heavily promoting it while making women responsible for its success or failure.

But the truth is, what we see is much less than what could have been, and it comes at the cost of lost opportunities elsewhere.

When it comes to Tomb Raider, one of my favorite examples of just how wrong the “reboot” is comes from Resident Evil 4. The director, Shinji Mikami, had all these ideas ranging from psychological horror to supernatural horror. He eventually realized those ideas had absolutely no bearing on Resident Evil and turned it into an entirely new franchise: Devil May Cry. Devil May Cry became a huge success, resulted in the creation of brand new character Dante as a major respected gaming protagonist, and Resident Evil 4 still became a huge breakout game that revived the franchise. Crystal Dynamics celebrated the “Tomb Raider” “reboot” reaching 3 million sales worldwide in a month, yet Resident Evil became so successful that Capcom considered 5 million sales for Resident Evil 6 in the same time span to be bad sales.

Just because something looks better than it was doesn’t mean it’s better than what it could have been. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug, and it narrows the mind to potential alternatives.

Lastly, notice that the exact same things rightfully continue to be criticized when it’s a male character. Snyder’s idea of Superman in Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice has been constantly torn to shreds. “Dante” from DmC also kept getting complaints for radically changing his entire nature and theme as a character. People have no problem spotting what’s wrong and calling it out when it’s a male character. They have a problem doing it when it’s a female character with a prominent female creator involved.

I really hope that some day, we’ll see Lara Croft and Harley Quinn again. I hope people start to see through this form of corporate trickery toward making people accept bad ideas. I hope corporate stops using women as shields against having their bad ideas taken to task and undone.