Well, half of his classmates could do without certain aspects of him.
Actually all of them could do without those parts.
This is the problem that I genuinely think XB2 runs into with Tora. I don't think that his dynamic with Poppi is meant to be taken exclusively as a joke given the game's immensely heavy focus on the exploration of unequal and unhealthy relationship dynamics, but the fact that it tries to roast him for the stuff that he does but plays it almost entirely for comedy winds up making the entire thing run completely counter to the game's message alongside the fact that the devs themselves are guilty of the same shit that he is.Satire is a double edged sword for this reason. The best approach is to not make the thing you are satirizing look desirable/fun/funny/harmless. The joke is the message on the surface, and unless your audience is already in tune with the subtext, then it's the surface message that'll be the take away.
So you have no evidence besides anecdotal outtakes for your claims, and no experience running experiments or writing academic literature?I am not in academia, merely a critic of it. Where I have experiences reading papers in the social sciences, I've found them to be purposefully misleading.
I get what you mean, but my point was the show just laughs it off like it's nothing.Well, half of his classmates could do without certain aspects of him.
I think Xenoblade 2 's themes would have been amazingly done if the hypersexualization of its female characters was properly intertwined with the narrative and if Tora was never implemented to make light of sexual objectification. I have not finished the game yet, but I think if given the extra time to erase the objectifying angles and clichéd set pieces where Pyra's breasts or thighs were the focal points in the frame, then it would have served and hammered in the narrative much better. The contrast is odd, I agree. And, it was a severely missed opportunity to introduce a proper dialogue on the sexualization of the female body.This is the problem that I genuinely think XB2 runs into with Tora. I don't think that his dynamic with Poppi is meant to be taken exclusively as a joke given the game's immensely heavy focus on the exploration of unequal and unhealthy relationship dynamics, but the fact that it tries to roast him for the stuff that he does, and plays it almost entirely for comedy, winds up making the entire thing run completely counter to the game's message alongside the fact that the devs themselves are guilty of the same shit that he is.
It gets extremely muddled and messy.
Xenoblade 2 is, perhaps, the most striking example of visual design detracting from the ultimate message of a work of fiction I've ever actually seen. I'm pretty sure I could write a paper longer than my graduate thesis on it. I might actually do that eventually, long down the line.
So you have no evidence besides anecdotal outtakes for your claims, and no experience running experiments or writing academic literature?
Why do you continue to post as if you are any kind of an authority on this matter?
Yeah, this is incredibly common.The point with these stereotyped pervert characters (and I'm just watching Boku no Hero Academia, which has its very own one), is that, while they're presented in a comedic, deprecating way... they're also presenting harassment as harmless antics that merits no real consequence beyond the occasional slap. You will never see any character have a serious talk with them as to why what they're doing is wrong, god forbit they be kicked out of the group. In other words, they're normalizing harassment; not in a "this is fine" way, but in a "this is just harmless fun" way.
It's a trope so old and omnipresent that the first instinct of most people when they see criticised is probably "oh, lighten up, it's just comedy, it's been done forever". But scratch a bit under that first reaction, think a bit more about what it's really doing, and it's not pretty at all.
Xenoblade 2 is, perhaps, the most striking example of visual design detracting from the ultimate message of a work of fiction I've ever actually seen. I'm pretty sure I could write a paper longer than my graduate thesis on it. I might actually do that eventually, long down the line.
So you got two problems: presenting LGBT characters as being promiscuous or predatory... which I don't think they even intended to do, because other than those, er, "quirks", those characters are legitimately cool, likeable, and popular. So I think it's not so much a bad portrayal of LGBT characters, as much as a "sexual harassment is wrong but still kinda funny harmless stuff, lol". And when you consider that the targets of that harassment are frequently underage teenagers, well... yeesh.
Tora's an adolescent, and generally implied to be the youngest person in the party. He acts like it and is treated like it. I'd put him somewhere around 13 based on his behavior, but it can be difficult to ballpark this stuff.The heart to heart about bikini armor sounds pretty bad... I mean it sounds great and funny, but in this game in particular is bizarre. Having your cake and eating it indeed lol, it specifically reminds me of Danganronpa AE UDG which I also find puzzlingly bad in its attempts to parody and/or criticize pervy stuff in games, but that ones far more offensive.
Anyway, I was wondering, is Tora's age ever implied? I always assumed he was a teenager probably the same age as Rex, but I've seen a couple or people call him "pedophile" so I wonder if they read him wrong or it's shown later in the game. I already see him as an annoying perv of course but him being older would definitely make it worse. Honestly I've had fun with XC2 so far, made it to chapter 5 yesterday, but it's mostly been in spite of its story and cast because so far it's been a relatively run of the mill shonen anime with a couple of good moments (in chapter 3) and the only character I like so far is Nia, though Morag looks promising.
I'm reading comments about how the game does indeed have a deeper message though so now I'm a bit more interested in progressing in the story.
The heart to heart about bikini armor sounds pretty bad... I mean it sounds great and funny, but in this game in particular is bizarre. Having your cake and eating it indeed lol, it specifically reminds me of Danganronpa AE UDG which I also find puzzlingly bad in its attempts to parody and/or criticize pervy stuff in games, but that ones far more offensive.
Anyway, I was wondering, is Tora's age ever implied? I always assumed he was a teenager probably the same age as Rex, but I've seen a couple or people call him "pedophile" so I wonder if they read him wrong or it's shown later in the game. I already see him as an annoying perv of course but him being older would definitely make it worse. Honestly I've had fun with XC2 so far, made it to chapter 5 yesterday, but it's mostly been in spite of its story and cast because so far it's been a relatively run of the mill shonen anime with a couple of good moments (in chapter 3) and the only character I like so far is Nia, though Morag looks promising.
I'm reading comments about how the game does indeed have a deeper message though so now I'm a bit more interested in progressing in the story.
Persona 5's depiction of men who like men is... dehumanising, to say the least.
Though Japanese games do intentionally present LGBT as predatory.
Persona 5's depiction of men who like men is... dehumanising, to say the least.
And yeah, it's so hard to find a bi character in any media that isn't defined by how they want to fuck everything.
So you got two problems: presenting LGBT characters as being promiscuous or predatory... which I don't think they even intended to do, because other than those, er, "quirks", those characters are legitimately cool, likeable, and popular. So I think it's not so much a bad portrayal of LGBT characters, as much as a "sexual harassment is wrong but still kinda funny harmless stuff, lol". And when you consider that the targets of that harassment are frequently underage teenagers, well... yeesh.
Bakugo is actually what got me to drop MHA. Dude's a bully that faces no repercussions for being an asshole nor does anyone seem to care that he flat out told Deku to kill himself in the beginning. The framing of him as this badass anti-hero bothers me quite a bit. And of course he's at the top of all the popularity polls :/
That said, it would also be naive not to point out that sexualization has worsened tenfold as visuals have become able to depict characters (including female ones) in more detail. Older RPGs contained far less sexualization because, frankly, characters were a handful of pixels; and still, FFIV's dancers removed their clothes, and some female FFVI enemies were straight up butt naked (both censored in the US versions). We want to think that even if old Square had access to modern Square's resources, they wouldn't have made a character like Cindy... but to what extent can we be sure?
I mean, Persona could probably help itself by letting Satomi Tadashi write the games again. He didn't hit everything perfectly, but he certainly did a better job almost twenty years ago now than they manage now with a lot of the same damned subject matter. Hell, nearly Persona 5's entire central cast was stocked with off-brand knockoffs of Persona 2's who handled their character arcs uniformly worse.At this point I simply think that Japanese devs (and quite possibly Japanese society at large) just don't know any better. I know the "different values" argument has been made ad nauseam, but in this case I think it's just that: they mean well, but have been brought up in environments where these kinds of things don't even ping their radars. As they are exposed, in a progressively more interconnected world, to other values, especially feminism, they identify with them and want to represent them in a positive way, but their own defaults and customs subconsciously trip them up when they're not paying attention. Persona 5 does this a lot too.
The upside is that as they are exposed more and more to these values (also, as the young people now growing up in an interconnected world grow up and become creators themselves) this problem is (hopefully) bound to resolve itself.
Yeah, gay/bisexual = predatory is another Japanese trope that's absolutely and completely everywhere; it's so normalized that other characters assume and excuse it as a matter of fact.
This is very off-topic (didn't mean to derail, sorry), but Bakugo has grown a lot on me (which is to say, I'm merely indifferent as opposed to finding him utterly insufferable). During the second season he kind of turns into a self-parody that's played for laughs most of the time, and I have to think he's at least partly a deconstruction of the Vegeta type of anti-hero. It also becomes more and more apparent that nobody likes him (literally not even the announcer, which is quite amazing), which is at the very least consequent and realistic.
It also helps that he's an extremely competent and focused fighter when he wants, which, again only shows in the second season onwards. I'm currently at the midpoint of the second season and in general I'm liking it so much more than the first, it's moving so quickly too and giving other characters the chance to shine. And yeah, Mineta has been pretty much invisible for the first half of the second season, except for one or two mandatory pervert/slap moment. :P
Again sorry for the derail, I just literally finished an episode less than an hour ago.
Are we talking comedy or satire? You will find very few examples of successful satire indeed in videogames by their own nature.
That was... exactly my point.
I dropped the entire series during the Fourth Shinobi World War saga.
I get what you mean, but my point was the show just laughs it off like it's nothing.
But yeah other people already covered this. :P
I mean, Persona could probably help itself by letting Satomi Tadashi write the games again. He didn't hit everything perfectly, but he certainly did a better job almost twenty years ago now than they manage now with a lot of the same damned subject matter. Hell, nearly Persona 5's entire central cast was stocked with off-brand knockoffs of Persona 2's who handled their character arcs uniformly worse.
Oh no, I'm talking about Bakugou specifically. I remember when everyone thought he was another Sasuke, but no, thankfully that didn't happen.
This was so blatant, especially with Ann, that I thought they were gonna take cues to better their writing but clearly that didn't happen, ugh. Honestly I see Hashino and other key people leaving to make that fantasy project as a blessing in disguise. Persona 6 would be awesome with Tadashi back, but if that's not a possibility then literally anyone else besides Hashino and co could end up doing a better job in the writing department, so I'm (kinda) hopeful.I mean, Persona could probably help itself by letting Satomi Tadashi write the games again. He didn't hit everything perfectly, but he certainly did a better job almost twenty years ago now than they manage now with a lot of the same damned subject matter. Hell, nearly Persona 5's entire central cast was stocked with off-brand knockoffs of Persona 2's who handled their character arcs uniformly worse.
Well, can we agree that Midnight is a creepy teacher who flirts with her students?
Where have I presented myself as any sort of authority? Where I have experience, I have been explicit and detailed about what that experience is. Heck, in the post you quote, I literally say that I'm not in academia, but a critic of it and then the rest of that paragraph is me explaining precisely what I mean by that using several examples. The only authority I have claimed is that as a creator myself, I feel comfortable sharing a point of view from a creator towards the nature of how criticism can affect creation.So you have no evidence besides anecdotal outtakes for your claims, and no experience running experiments or writing academic literature?
Why do you continue to post as if you are any kind of an authority on this matter?
Also related to the Dunning-Kruger effect is that people of high ability tend to underestimate the skill required for tasks at which they are proficient in - and apparently, I'm greatly underestimating the skill required for reading comprehension. When I see people complaining about the length of a four paragraph post, I can't help but wonder if maybe they haven't really read the material they are quoting in support of their position. And if they haven't read it, much less understood it, maybe the conclusions they are drawing from it are in fact fallacious, if not outright erroneous. I can't help but think that this discussion, when it veers from moral grandstanding to actual debate, is based on little more than skimming a few summaries on Rational Wiki. There's your god damned Dunning-Kruger effect.
.Yeah, this is incredibly common.
Even in games with otherwise pretty decent representation, like Kiseki games, it's there. In Trails in the Sky, a bisexual character (who is otherwise very popular and a real cool character and legitimately funny) kinda creeps on... well, a lot of characters, including 16-year old ones. And he's called out on it, but it's still presented as funny rather than legitimately problematic.
A far worst example is in a later series, Trails of Cold Steel. You got this old dude (he's the grandfather of a female party member) who constantly makes really creepy comments about pretty girls (who are once again underage). Is that character portrayed as bad or problematic? No, he's a kindly old man and a brilliant engineer and very respected. The only one upset by his creeping on teens is his granddaughter, who goes "GRANDPA! STOP!" and we're meant to be sympathetic with her, except... like you said, there are no consequences, no one else really call him out, and his creepiness is mostly playable for laughs.
Another example from Cold Steel is from a gay woman who constantly creeps on the other girls (again, including underage ones). Other characters do act a bit miffed at that, but it's still played humorously. And like the bisexual man in the first example, the gay woman is another really likeable, "cool" character.
So you got two problems: presenting LGBT characters as being promiscuous or predatory... which I don't think they even intended to do, because other than those, er, "quirks", those characters are legitimately cool, likeable, and popular. So I think it's not so much a bad portrayal of LGBT characters, as much as a "sexual harassment is wrong but still kinda funny harmless stuff, lol". And when you consider that the targets of that harassment are frequently underage teenagers, well... yeesh.
Very good question. It's a leftist thing. They believe they know what's best for everyone and have a compulsion to regulate everything.
I can see where this whole thing is going. What the left wants.
Eventually, the left is going to get the government to form something like "interactive entertainment content board". It will be run by some random unknown unelected people who will go through every game's content for "hate speech", "sexism", "racism", etc.
They will determine what sort of content we are allowed to consume. And just like every other regulation, it will do more harm than good.
First of all, it will require tax payers money to run it, publishers have to pay a fee to get their game evaluated for 'harmful' content, which will lead to more delays in release dates, because they might be forced to redo game assets the board finds offensive. In addition to that, it will add more cost to games, indies will have difficulties going through all these regulations and last but not least, creative vision is being altered.
This is my prediction. It's what the left wants. They want to regulate everything. They want their subjective vision to govern reality.
You actively belittle fields of scientific endeavor because you personally find it without merit, with no supporting evidence aside from a couple of anecdotes.Where have I presented myself as any sort of authority? Where I have experience, I have been explicit and detailed about what that experience is. Heck, in the post you quote, I literally say that I'm not in academia, but a critic of it and then the rest of that paragraph is me explaining precisely what I mean by that using several examples.
I know, it's mostly for other observers in the thread, one can hope for some small inkling of enlightenment.
But men are not objectified. They are idealized. I suggest you watch this video by Jim Sterling to better understand it.This is so true...
It is not just women that get objectified in games / movies etc, it is pretty much every single character. Sure with women it goes regularly overboard and it usually leaves a bad taste, but that is not to say that a totally ripped uncannily beautiful Thor is not the absolute epitome of male objectification...
Just like women are depicted as sexbombs, in the same way most men are depicted as strong, incredibly sharp and confident studs.
Again, I get that women get the worse in this topic, but it is not to say that I, as a guy, look at this fully ripped, highly capable and successful dude and think "wow we men are so cool! I feel so great about being a guy!"... no, far from it... I am tired that the textbook action hero is almost everytime the objectification of the perfect and non existent male and I am tired of all the stereotypes and expectations that this creates in other people's minds.
After getting though chapter 4 of XB2 I have to say one of the worst parts wastoppling the maid boss constantly gave you panty shots. Panty shots of a god damn robot.
Like seriously what the fuck.
Also related to the Dunning-Kruger effect is that people of high ability tend to underestimate the skill required for tasks at which they are proficient in - and apparently, I'm greatly underestimating the skill required for reading comprehension.
Shower thought: isn't it funny that the otaku who defend that objectification in anime and games because "there's nothing wrong with female sexuality!!!!!1" are part of the same community that will destroy an idol's career if she's caught with a boyfriend?
"the otaku" that you describe. Do you know any of them personally?
I did finding it amusing that Tharja is apparently a heavy armour unit. Those panties must have a plate insert! For anyone who doesn't play FEH the icons to the right of their name indicate weapon type and unit type, with armour being the slowest.