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Death Stranding and The Outer Worlds: A Tale of Two Asexual Representations
- Thread starter Plum
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I'm really kind of upset about this. I've been mixed about this game, but I didn't want to believe Kojima was this kind of person.
Wait what kind of person? At worst it just seems like he has researched something but maybe not gone enough into the subject.
it's not that he researched it or didn't. It's that, intentional or not, it comes off as extremely asexual-phobic and draws on many negative views and stereotypes.
OK. I honestly don't know enough about the subject to comment on that but I think it's a bit strange to say he's a particularly type of person because of this.
At worst he is misinformed. Also he likely didn't have that much input with the little bits of lore
Look man, I compartmentalize a lot about a lot of public figures, and even my own family, but it is what it is. It's BAD. He put out something bad. That's as upsetting as if it were homophobic, racist, or anything else, and I don't like that this is now associated with him.
I don't really see where it links birth rates and sexual assaults/harassment?
It reads more like humanities growing lack of interest in physical contact leads to lower birthrates and less sexual related crimes. So it's good (less crime/issues) for humans and bad (lower birthrate, less people etc.). It reads more like a listing of things it affects not saying one has anything to do with the other. But maybe I'm misreading that part.
No offense intended, I just don't quite get that particular point you are listing - the others I pretty much get and can understand where you are coming from/what your issue with the content is.
It reads more like humanities growing lack of interest in physical contact leads to lower birthrates and less sexual related crimes. So it's good (less crime/issues) for humans and bad (lower birthrate, less people etc.). It reads more like a listing of things it affects not saying one has anything to do with the other. But maybe I'm misreading that part.
No offense intended, I just don't quite get that particular point you are listing - the others I pretty much get and can understand where you are coming from/what your issue with the content is.
Gotcha. Won't push any further into it as well as I don't want to derail the topic with unrelated info.
I think the Death Stranding one, while misinformed maybe, it's interesting. A lot of stories involving an extinction event just assumes everyone starts fucking like bunnies to repopulate. Oddly refreshing to take the opposite route. Either that or I'm an idiot.
Haven't played Death Stranding yet but I was very impressed with the character treatment in Outer Worlds.
Yeah it comes across as him reacting to all the "Japanese youth no longer interested in sex" hysteria that Japan's going through, and talking out of his ass haha.
On Death Stranding, the "sexless lifestyle" implies asexuality is a choice and also at the same time is painted as a deficiency by using the term incapable. It's weird and clunky and I can see why you have a number of issues like it. Playing TOW I'm definitely finding Parvati a warm comforting companion and happy to read the history of how she came together as a character.
Really hope that a character or Sam or really anything else you can find in DS says or points out how stupid that particular email/message is. But that's asking a lot of an AAA game meant for (well kind of) mainstream audiences.
Youre shocked that a man who displays constant misogyny is bad at representing sexuality?
I'm hesitant to just copy-paste tweets here, so I'll link what I've said on Twitter about this thing in Death Stranding:
Basically, I think it has a lot to do with ignorance about what asexuality actually is and a lot to do with Kojima's laymen understanding of what memes (as in, the scientific concept of memes as originally described by Dawkins) are. I also think it's an attempt to directly comment on the low birthrate issue in Japan specifically, and it shows a very low information, "Facebook uncle" (as Naomi puts it in that second thread) understanding of the causes of the low birth rate.
I mean, the definition of "asexual" as presented in Death Stranding is "incapable of feeling desire or attraction" which is completely inaccurate, as you describe. It's a scapegoat used in Japan to explain the low birth rate without addressing the many, many societal reasons the birth rate is so low there.
I think it also shows, however, a blending with the concept of memes. The idea that knowledge of the asexual identity has spread among the population is pretty explicit. But it fails to show an understanding that this knowledge only enables asexual people to better understand themselves—it does not, in itself, cause asexuality to "proliferate".
It's also putting the asexual label on voluntary celibacy which is just so ignorant. Asexual people have sex. Asexual people sometimes choose not to have sex. Asexual people experience all sorts of attraction. Asexual people can desire sex. Asexual people have children. Et cetera.
Whether Kojima himself wrote that, I don't know. But I think he either writes most of it or has strong editorial oversight. I'd love to see what it said in Japanese to better understand whether there's a localization issue as well. Regardless, it's in his game, the one with his name plastered all over it—I don't think it's a stretch to reason that this is representing some idea of his.
And yeah, I love his games generally, but I was just waiting for the "problematic" shoe to drop in DS given his history with Quiet and such. Didn't think it would be about Ace people though.
As for Pavarti, she's easily my favorite new character of 2019 and they did a great job representing us realistically with her.
(Also, thank you for explicitly explaining that we can be attracted to aesthetics.)
Basically, I think it has a lot to do with ignorance about what asexuality actually is and a lot to do with Kojima's laymen understanding of what memes (as in, the scientific concept of memes as originally described by Dawkins) are. I also think it's an attempt to directly comment on the low birthrate issue in Japan specifically, and it shows a very low information, "Facebook uncle" (as Naomi puts it in that second thread) understanding of the causes of the low birth rate.
I mean, the definition of "asexual" as presented in Death Stranding is "incapable of feeling desire or attraction" which is completely inaccurate, as you describe. It's a scapegoat used in Japan to explain the low birth rate without addressing the many, many societal reasons the birth rate is so low there.
I think it also shows, however, a blending with the concept of memes. The idea that knowledge of the asexual identity has spread among the population is pretty explicit. But it fails to show an understanding that this knowledge only enables asexual people to better understand themselves—it does not, in itself, cause asexuality to "proliferate".
It's also putting the asexual label on voluntary celibacy which is just so ignorant. Asexual people have sex. Asexual people sometimes choose not to have sex. Asexual people experience all sorts of attraction. Asexual people can desire sex. Asexual people have children. Et cetera.
Whether Kojima himself wrote that, I don't know. But I think he either writes most of it or has strong editorial oversight. I'd love to see what it said in Japanese to better understand whether there's a localization issue as well. Regardless, it's in his game, the one with his name plastered all over it—I don't think it's a stretch to reason that this is representing some idea of his.
And yeah, I love his games generally, but I was just waiting for the "problematic" shoe to drop in DS given his history with Quiet and such. Didn't think it would be about Ace people though.
As for Pavarti, she's easily my favorite new character of 2019 and they did a great job representing us realistically with her.
(Also, thank you for explicitly explaining that we can be attracted to aesthetics.)
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Didn't know that about The Outer Worlds. That's pretty cool. I'm not super interested in TOW, but this makes me a little more interested.
Didn't know that about Death Stranding, either. That's uh... not as cool. To put it minimally.
Didn't know that about Death Stranding, either. That's uh... not as cool. To put it minimally.
I don't really disagree with anything you are saying OP. That being said, I ascribe these views to the ongoing crisis of population decline in Japan which is likely informing the point of view from which this little bit of backstory is derived.
I assume that the harmful stereotyping evident in the text is likely based on a specific cultural perspective.
And despite what you might presume to be some base level of research, this is probably just a story point that was conceived without any research, from the default perspective that anything which contributes to population loss is an overall bad thing, and the terminology was probably just looked up by someone who already had the bones of this story point in mind and just used those terms to give the appearance of a scholarly work. The fact that it is written to emulate the style of a piece of scholarly work should not give anyone the impression that ANY level of open minded research went in to this. I don't think they were being explicitly anti-asexual, but rather it just didn't occur to them to examine the subject thoroughly or objectively, because it was just window dressing to make it seem like the fictional in world character did so.
edit:
This right here.
I feel like Kojima likes to create the veneer of thoughtful research in his work, which is at least more than a lot of other creators bother with, but his understanding is mostly just pop science headline stuff and not much more thoughtful than that.
I assume that the harmful stereotyping evident in the text is likely based on a specific cultural perspective.
And despite what you might presume to be some base level of research, this is probably just a story point that was conceived without any research, from the default perspective that anything which contributes to population loss is an overall bad thing, and the terminology was probably just looked up by someone who already had the bones of this story point in mind and just used those terms to give the appearance of a scholarly work. The fact that it is written to emulate the style of a piece of scholarly work should not give anyone the impression that ANY level of open minded research went in to this. I don't think they were being explicitly anti-asexual, but rather it just didn't occur to them to examine the subject thoroughly or objectively, because it was just window dressing to make it seem like the fictional in world character did so.
edit:
This right here.
I feel like Kojima likes to create the veneer of thoughtful research in his work, which is at least more than a lot of other creators bother with, but his understanding is mostly just pop science headline stuff and not much more thoughtful than that.
Yeah it really feels like a "response" (if you want to call it that) to Japan's birth rate issues that doesn't make the leap from culture to culture properly in addition to being a shit take. Practically a Kojima trademark at this point.
The definitions used for Asexuality in the death stranding interview are wrong, but would the other ideas in the article such as the implication that it isn't "helping" society after the death stranding be attributed to the real life writer or the in-game character who gave the interview with their world-view?
EDIT: the latter informs the former of course so if the real life writer believes it, that's problematic but I also wonder when it's just characters being written with problematic views based on the in-universe perspectives
EDIT #2: I suppose when that happens in-game, it's important to have other characters react negatively to other problematic characters which hasn't happened yet in my playthrough of death stranding, which isn't great huh
EDIT: the latter informs the former of course so if the real life writer believes it, that's problematic but I also wonder when it's just characters being written with problematic views based on the in-universe perspectives
EDIT #2: I suppose when that happens in-game, it's important to have other characters react negatively to other problematic characters which hasn't happened yet in my playthrough of death stranding, which isn't great huh
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OPs write-up was very informative for me as someone who was not familiar with these nuances.
When I was playing Outer Worlds and reached that point in the story with Parvati, I thought her feelings on physical contact were genuine, relatable, and gave her character more depth. Since she didn't explicitly state that she was asexual, it didn't even dawn on me that she was, I just thought she was someone not so interested in sexual contact.
Which is exactly OPs point - that aces aren't that different from anyone else. I liked that they didn't use the label but accurately described these feelings. Also that Parvati mentions it like any other character trait and not like it's some sort of flaw.
EDIT: phrasing
When I was playing Outer Worlds and reached that point in the story with Parvati, I thought her feelings on physical contact were genuine, relatable, and gave her character more depth. Since she didn't explicitly state that she was asexual, it didn't even dawn on me that she was, I just thought she was someone not so interested in sexual contact.
Which is exactly OPs point - that aces aren't that different from anyone else. I liked that they didn't use the label but accurately described these feelings. Also that Parvati mentions it like any other character trait and not like it's some sort of flaw.
EDIT: phrasing
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Kojima is like one of those first year college students who takes a semester of psych and thinks they're an expert. Add in some screaming misogyny and a surface level "understanding" of social issues and marginalized groups and you get shit like this. It's no surprise.
Real happy to hear about Parvati, though, I had no idea stuff like that was represented in The Outer Worlds. Hope it can become more standard, especially in RPGs like that where a large part of the game is playing who you are/want to be.
Real happy to hear about Parvati, though, I had no idea stuff like that was represented in The Outer Worlds. Hope it can become more standard, especially in RPGs like that where a large part of the game is playing who you are/want to be.
That's pretty much what it is. The whole "disconnected isolated youth" thing has been a hot topic in Japan for awhile now, and ties into the lowering birth rate thing in some ways (in Japan at least), so he's just sloppily trying to find dots to connect.
Being shitty in one area doesn't always mean you always expect it in other areas. But again, I did admit to being naive.
I mean, wasn't it obvious?
It's alright to still be disappointed, despite past missteps.
Yeah, I read that in the game and like, "yikes." I get what he's trying to do, but some as obsessive about details as Kojima should have researched this more. Just how do you get it that wrong?
Yeah I see what happened here. He tried to tie Japan's birth rate problems into all these different sexualities. I see how he got there, it's just...fucking garbage lol. Someone should've told him that.
lol yeah I thought about that but didn't add it in. I know how unlikely it is.
You guys completely miss all the interviews which stated how collaborative Kojima was to work with?
The hate the man gets on this forum is so unfounded.
The hate the man gets on this forum is so unfounded.
There seems to be a lot of bullshit in death stranding. The more I find out about these details, others more spoilery, the more I am quite put off.
Just... what's the need? I'll probably pick the game up one day as I do want to see it all in context as a sum of it's parts. But a lot of it just seems needless.
Maybe before you jump it to every thread to stan the dude, take a read.
People in this thread have clearly said that Kojima cant be responsible for every detail in the game.
Just... what's the need? I'll probably pick the game up one day as I do want to see it all in context as a sum of it's parts. But a lot of it just seems needless.
Maybe before you jump it to every thread to stan the dude, take a read.
People in this thread have clearly said that Kojima cant be responsible for every detail in the game.
Yeah, the death stranding bit definitely sucks. Ace/aro/demi/panromantic people aren't "reticent" to form emotional connections, they just experience attraction in different ways. Framing those orientations* as symptoms of the shitty state of the game's world is in super poor taste.
And I especially feel you on having a problem with the "self-identify" rhetoric. One of the worst feelings (at least in my experience) with being queer is feeling like people are only tolerating your identity so as not to upset you, as opposed to recognizing it as a legitimate part of who you are.
And I especially feel you on having a problem with the "self-identify" rhetoric. One of the worst feelings (at least in my experience) with being queer is feeling like people are only tolerating your identity so as not to upset you, as opposed to recognizing it as a legitimate part of who you are.
Why are you defending this? The buck stops with him on this game. He gets all the praise as well as the criticism.
I saw the Death Stranding journal entry yesterday, and the first thing that stood out to me was its included definition of demisexual and panromantic people. So clearly more research than none went into writing it.
I don't think I have much to add that you haven't covered. It's disappointing. And the relation to Japan's birth rate definitely gives it the air of "the queers are destroying the family which will lead to the end of civilization".
I'd be interested to see the rest of the entry, or others related to it. The last visible line about the author not having empirical data makes me hope the character who wrote this is incorrect in-universe.
I don't think I have much to add that you haven't covered. It's disappointing. And the relation to Japan's birth rate definitely gives it the air of "the queers are destroying the family which will lead to the end of civilization".
I'd be interested to see the rest of the entry, or others related to it. The last visible line about the author not having empirical data makes me hope the character who wrote this is incorrect in-universe.
Thanks for this thread. I'm someone who's just putting himself into words. I think I can confidently say I'm asexual. At least, I'm in the grey ace area. I'm super interested in TOW now (though I was pretty much sold on it already!). I've always felt I wanted to explore how I personally felt by creating something (a game, a comic, a story, something) which featured a prominent ace character. Short of doing that, being able to enjoy such a well-crafted experience seems to be the second best scenario :)
Fuck Kojima.
People probably thought otherwise because you weren't quoting or replying to anyone specifically, and assumed that meant you were talking about the thread in general.
Hideo Kojima is the director of Death Stranding , is he not? It is his vision, is it not? If you can praise him for his unique approach and very particular style of video games ,surely you can criticize fot the shit hes done and approved . Thats how it works
Kojima is only responsible for the cool stuff. Anything questionable, must have been someone else. Can't blame the guy for directing the game and being the main creative force behind it!
/s, obviously.
People really out here trying to say that the game director doesn't have to approve damn near everything that goes into the game.