WRITER BIO

Malindy Hetfeld knows it’s uncomfortable to have your worldview challenged, but it’s just as uncomfortable to have to argue for representation. Her biggest dream is having more regular black people in JRPGs, because dreams cost nothing. games, 50 Cent: Bulletproof and

GTA: San Andreas, and they were all legitimately good games. But the kind of person all of these games centre on, the ‘thug’, the boy from the hood who’s friends with gang leaders and who essentially uses crime to build himself up from nothing, is a fictional character. The thug portrayed is a figure black people created to weaponise their own circumstance. 50 Cent turned the story of how he was shot nine times into an essential part of his gangster lore, to the point that 50 Cent: Bulletproof is all about him getting revenge for what was a burglary in real life. Drug dealing doesn’t lead to riches,