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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24828 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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You’ve blocked me, so I don’t expect a response, but how is not wanting underaged girls depicted sexually in video games a “feminist” thing?

Think back 10, 20, and 30 years and recall that this has a never been a partisan issue, let alone a predominantly leftist demand.

I admit to having never played Atelier Totori and have only played about 10 minutes of Atelier Sophie, but I'd be very surprised if any Atelier game had "high impact sexual violence"...

It absolutely is a leftist demand, but it only applies to things that aren't western. Anime style can only be attractive to people who are pedophiles. Therefore anyone attempting to be attractive in anime style is appealing to pedophiles. When I think back 10-20-30 years nobody would give a shit about this at all. Sailor Moon would be re-edited for American audiences now with more modest clothing and all sexual innuendo changed to say "pickles... .. ... farthead" or whatever they change many modern japanese translations to say.

Because it doesn't matter it's just a videogame or an anime and only children watch those and if you watch or play them you're a child and probably a pedophile if you enjoy anything not western.

This is a huge vibe I get from literally anyone trying to crusade against "underaged girls" being exploited in the videogames. Of course they'd never say that but every other aspect of their political and cultural bent is left, they just happen to also think that underage anime girls presents some kind of major moral issue because they're fighting pedophiles.

Not many people gave a shit about trying to censor American Beauty and those that did certainly aren't the same people that give a shit about a 100% more tame anime visual novel coming out now that will get rejected from steam while "Hitler rapes all the milfs" will be sold without problem. A japanese visual novel will get rejected from steam for an underage girl wearing a towel for a scene but a western visual novel about underage siblings engaging in incest and cannibalism, that's fine, the art style isn't even anime. Or even outside of mainly sexual content something like the Witcher or Cyberpunk is fine for twitch but I can guarantee if the characters were anime-looking it would be banned, or maybe if they were simply produced outside of the western-okay-to-be-sexual sphere and anime-looking is just a happenstance.

Sure there are some hardliners that don't want any sexuality in anything and will side with the crusaders but the crusaders are faux fighting pedophilia and they're almost entirely left wing. Why? I don't know in either case but the only people that I've encountered that care and are happy when steam bans a visual novel that has like a two second scene of an "underage" girl in her underwear are all left wing, to the point that it's most of their commentary on reddit dedicated to it.

When I think back 10-20-30 years nobody would give a shit about this at all. Sailor Moon would be re-edited for American audiences now with more modest clothing

You are unfamiliar with Sailor Moon censorship. And they actually did edit the art during the transformation sequences.

a western visual novel about underage siblings engaging in incest and cannibalism

If you’re talking about ‘ The Coffin of Andy and Leyley’, then the two title characters aren’t minors. They’re both in their twenties.

So, are 99% of the "underage" anime girls.

It’s not a game where they have a warning “all these characters are over 18” despite being set in highschool.

Not only is their age stated during the course of the story, they are shown being spoken to as if they’re adults by their own parents. When they visit their parent’s home, the mum makes it clear she doesn’t either of them to move back in.

Their design IMO doesn’t strike me as appearing obviously underage. Based on the art style they look like young adults to me.

When they visit their parent’s home, the mum makes it clear she doesn’t either of them to move back in.

In non-Anglo countries people leave their nest later. In Poland, on average, if the mum expected they would back in, it would merely mean they are under 27.4. A test which expects such autonomy from characters to consider them adults, would have a high false negative rate when applied to media not produced in the Anglo cultural milieu.

This ties to my point that "perceived to be a minor" is culturally dependent and subjective.

Huh? The point is that they’d have to at least be legal adults for the mum to be saying that. The reason the mum wants them to fuck off is cause the daughter is a fucking psycho who the mum doesn't want to be around. It doesn’t really matter if they come from a culture where they normally kick their kids out at 18 or 30.

Yeah, and it shouldn't matter either way. If you think it's important to tease apart the minutiae of this example in defense of something that is clearly not pornography then I'll take this conversational detour as an agreement that people deciding that things need to be censored or banned based on a passing familiarity with the content should be ignored.

Maybe you're thinking of some particular subset that I'm not, but not that I've seen? Anime loves high-school, so a lot of characters are 16-18, and a fair number are 13-15 too. Reddit famously once (temporarily) banned subreddit mod holofan4life for posting a picture of Kaguya from the romantic-comedy Kaguya-sama in a bikini. (Presumably for "sexualizing minors" either because she's 16 at the beginning of the show or because her breasts aren't big enough.) Outside the school settings ages still tend to be pretty young and often feel like they were chosen at random, Yoko Littner is canonically 14, though it's not mentioned in the show. I'm less familiar with videogames but I think a lot of visual novels have school settings, and the characters in the aforementioned Atelier Totori range from 13-17.

Of course, the same is true for whole swaths of western media, like the teen sex comedy genre of movies, or teen dramas, both of which can have outright sex-scenes without anyone of note screaming about how that makes them "child porn". Some media from SJW-adjacent people will engage in the ridiculous business of deliberately writing characters to be 18+ because they believe it would otherwise be immoral to depict them sexually, but it's still not a mainstream taboo. Now, I think SJWs would probably go after those if they could get away with it (and probably have something to do with there being less teen sex comedies nowadays, though mostly for other reasons), but they're too obviously mainstream to act like they're doing something weird. Anime-style media is an easier target because any free-floating feeling of weirdness can be converted into talk about how something feels "creepy" for "sexualizing minors", without consciously thinking about how the same standards would apply to western media that doesn't feel "creepy".

My experience with this, mainly, are games that are refused from steam without explanation. This happens every few months and sometimes the people in them are children in a towel or underwear but sometimes there's absolutely no one underage in them at all. The tinfoil theory is there's someone that approves games on steam that thinks all anime games are pedophilic in nature. Maybe that's true or not there are quite a few people that are always commenting about how happy they are that steam is trying to put a stop to this stuff and they're always "SJW" when I look at their profiles. They do seem to think that even when the age is changed that it is simply a fig leaf like the little girl who is a 500 year old dragon. Which, to me, suggests that it doesn't matter what their age actually is because they think something drawn underage is underage. Though how they can tell the difference between a 17 and 18 year old anime girl is unknown to me.

The tinfoil theory is there's someone that approves games on steam that thinks all anime games are pedophilic in nature.

Per one of the VN translation companies, there does seem to be one particular reviewer ("Mary") who is disproportionately involved in visual novels that get rejected.

This arbitrariness in the enforcement of the acceptance guidelines combines with Steam's policy of not allowing edited re-submissions means that the process for publishing or translating an 18+ game on Steam looks like this:

  1. Do all of the work on your game to create the finished product
  2. Submit the finished game to Steam and hope that it doesn't get rejected, because if it does you're locked out of that market for this particular game unless you're a really big name that has enough influence to get an exception to the "no re-submissions" policy

Yes, I've heard about examples like that as well where the characters aren't even underage and there isn't even any real justification for calling them underage, and obviously they are a particularly telling example of the censor's mindset. (I'm reminded of how Patreon will periodically go after anime-style porn, like this pornographic animation of Hex Maniac, based on criteria that would include anything in an anime art style.) But I wouldn't call those cases the vast majority, a lot of censored visual novels are high-school romances and the like. It's just that standard is unjustifiable as well.

Looking at actual legal policy passed by politicians, the principle piece of legislation seems to be the PROTECT Act, which, among many other things

Prohibits computer-generated child pornography when "(B) such visual depiction is a computer image or computer-generated image that is, or appears virtually indistinguishable from that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct"; (as amended by 1466A for Section 2256(8)(B) of title 18, United States Code).

Okay fine, but that act includes lots of other provisions. Fine, how about the previous Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996? I literally cannot find a record of a vote (if that sounds impossible, please, somebody show me up). I can, however, find the court case that ruled it unconstitutional.

The majority had 3 Republican justices (Kennedy, Stevens, Souter), and 2 Democrat (Ginsburg, Breyer), and one concurrence (Thomas (R)).

I find these examples more convincing than your vibes and lived experience, so I'll reiterate: being against virtual child pornography sees bipartisan support.

You're arguing about something that nobody was even asking about. The people that care about "underage" character in videogames have nothing to do with court cases. I honestly don't even understand how you even make that connection with what I said and someone talking about Australian games that are classified "poorly" or refused classification and court cases/laws from the United States. I'll trust my vibes over your info that is not about anything either I or the above comment were talking about.

Yes, I consider actual legislation passed to be more relevant than your vibes, simply because I never consider vibes relevant. A poll demonstrating that Republicans think virtual child pornography should be legal would certainly be even better.

Yes, the fact that I'm citing American legislation is off topic to what some@ was talking about, but it's perfectly on topic as a response to your comment, which discussed American audiences, an American film, and generic redditors, but never mentioned Australia.

To be clear, I wasn't passing on "vibes" that was your word I repeated and should have put quotes around. I was telling you that people interested in this moral crusade are left leaning based on my experience. Though, now, I entirely understand why that other person blocked you because you argue in bad faith by continually misrepresenting others' words to "win" an argument. No, the legislation that deals with child pornography has absolutely nothing to do with videogames that may or may not portray a child or child-looking adults as having anything sexually related at all as being the equivalent of pornography. Nobody is actually talking about pornography but you because you don't understand what we're talking about or are actually trying to misrepresent what we're talking about. The entire crux here is shit like "that anime girl's 17 and wearing thigh high boots, this is clearly sexualizing minors" even people that want to stamp this stuff out don't actually refer to it as pornography.

not wanting underaged girls depicted sexually in video games

That's the motte.

You don't want women to get raped as a result of wearing immodest clothing, do you?

I'm confused -- whose stance are you attacking?

I'm illustrating the motte-and-bailey by analogy.

"I don't want CP in video games" is the motte. "This particular censorship is desirable, at a minimum" is the bailey.

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