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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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 Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 5:05 pm Post subject: Re: The Doujin Scene and Underage Girls: God, Why? |
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Hey guys! Aren't those wacky Japanese some sick pedophile fucks???
Oh, wait...
That article is hilarious! I somehow get the feeling it's one of those Onion (or some other parody) articles that accidentally got confused with real news.
The Gamasutra article is kinda sad, as the author clearly has no grasp of copyright law, and he claims to be advising Japanese companies on it.
The MoeMania article was too ranty, and lost my attention. He needs to take lessons from Tim on how to be ranty and rambly but still somehow keep my attention through at least half of it.
And now for some feedback on the topic:
Lolicon is typically added to sub-par games to make them more appealing. Just like pornographic games. I have a very healthy doujin collection, and none of it is lolicon. Some of it even exclusively features little girls (touhou games, lillian fourhand) but does not rely on panty shots to make up for shoddy gameplay. Although I find the concept of Lin Kill Spirits hilarious, and wouldn't mind playing a good fighting game with a "panty shot" mechanic, I haven't bothered to check it out because in my experience panty shots and other lolicon antics are added to cover for bad gameplay, and gameplay is more important to me than porn.
I've also been casually trying to figure out moe for a while now, and currently believe that it's partially about pedophilia, but mostly not. It's hard to explain or even conceptualize in American terms, which is why nobody has done so. Actually, wait, I think I just found a good example; a friend of mine recently posted on his blog that when he was 13 and he would get crushes on girls, that the crushes were so emotional that he was unable to also feel sexually attracted to them. He couldn't even masturbate while thinking about them, and had to fantasize about girls he did not have crushes on instead. That, I think, is very close to what moe is, or at least a major part of it. |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 6:32 pm |
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| luckystrike wrote: |
| so, uh, Arcana Heart. Yes? No? Those machines are manned all day, every day at every arcade I've been to, despite the fact the game looks pretty like a pretty mediocre counter-fest. |
Many fighting game fans LOVE mediocre counter-fests. I don't know how loli Arcane Heart is, but I doubt its loliness has anywhere near as much to do with its popularity as the fact that it's OMG A NEW 2D FIGHTER!!!
| luckystrike wrote: |
| Keep in mind I found nother either pedo nor sexual about the characters of Disgaea. They were just goofy. To either play that game or avoid that gae because such images make you uncomfortable does say something more about your tastes than about the game. Keep in mind I am not saying that this is a negative thing, but still. |
I concur! The only sexualized characters in the game were Jennifer and the "sexy body monsters", all of whom were clearly adults. That said, I also find Etna's skimpy costume a little unnecessary, but not enough that it hampered my interest in the game, and (at least in the American version) nobody ever says anything remotely sexual about Etna, except maybe like one comment about her being flat-chested and thus NOT sexy.
But if Etna's costume was enough to drive you away, then there's nothing wrong with that, either.
| BotageL wrote: |
However, I will attempt to clarify my complaints with James' post here:
- He immedietly goes for the "oh those wacky animu fans and their obsession with all things Japanese being better" stereotype. Commence eye-rolling.
- Whips out the "all of these games involve prepubescent girls" stereotype in the second paragraph.
- Brings in the usual "hey guys Japan is fucked up and creates pedophiles- I MEAN 'fans', just look at all the creepy costume cafes and shit man. ISN'T THAT ZANY?!" bullshit.
- Equates all portrayal of any girl that doesn't look like an american supermodel with the lol-tastic "moe" trend, which is only sometimes (okay, usually) linked to pedophilia. |
In his defense, those extremes of Japanese culture are the majority of what makes it overseas, and without any other output it can certainly seem to foreigners like that's the basis of Japanese culture. I remember when I first started college and met some students from Japan, and was apalled that ALL of them thought that anime and video games were lame and for little kids. That was not the Japan I was told about by anime and video games!!!
That said, I think this post makes a perfectly good half-cocked SB forums post, and while I'd be surprised to see it on the front page of IC I'm still getting the hang of what does and doesn't constitute a front page post here, so I'm not so surprised to see it on the front page here.
Last edited by luvcraft on Thu Jan 04, 2007 6:38 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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luvcraft
buy my game buy my game me me me
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:42 pm |
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| bort wrote: |
| Even if they dismiss it as nonsexual, I don't see how people can actually stomach the Precious-Moments-figurine aesthetic. It's soulless and kitschy and completely worthless. |
yes. I remember being totally revolted by the design aesthetic of Final Fantasy Tactics. Now that it's been used in pretty much everything I've been dulled to it, though.
| bort wrote: |
| About the JAPAN thing though I have been thinking. Someone should make a Norman Rockwell-themed doujin game and see if they can bring out all the Americans with equivalently fucked sensibilities. Or that dude who draws those whitebread landscapes of houses in meadows with waterwheels, or the woman who takes pictures of babies inside flowers and ladybugs and watering cans. |
MORTAL KINCAID!!!!!!!!!!
Actually, Dark Cloud 2 was pretty Kincaid-y. |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 10:16 pm |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| Why don't you present some counter examples or arguments. What you say may be true but based on the things I've seen from the doujin scene in Japan James is pretty much right on with a lot of his observations. Of course I don't have much knowledge when it comes to this stuff, so... educate me! |
Melty Blood series
Hitogata Happa
Every Extend
Armjoe
Cave Story
Crazy Power Disc
Warning Forever
Everything by Kenta Cho
Everything by ZUN / Team Shanghai Alice
Akatsuki BK
Lillian Fourhand
Dan Da Dan
Fatal/Fake
Chantelise
Melty Blood and Every Extend have been so successful that they've been turned into console games. ZUN's games are so successful that he makes a living off of them. None of these games are loli. |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 10:25 pm |
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| BotageL wrote: |
| Would you have preferred it if it had been a whole bunch of furry-themed amateur games? Wait, I think I know the answer to that. |
http://4070.jp/8105/mov/monster_adv_high.wmv |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 11:32 pm |
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| Balzac wrote: |
| Oh come on. All of the above have loli characters (where loli refers to anything that looks like the Japanese equivalent of a precious moments figurine). |
Wait, WHAT? Loli is short for "Lolita", which specifically means "the sexualization of underage girls", as per the popular novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. It does NOT mean "Precious-Moments-looking", although the two do sometimes overlap.
You might want to clear that up before you tell someone "Final Fantasy Tactics is my favorite loli game" and accidentally get branded a child molester.
| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| The article itself may be scare tactics/shit stirring, but this (self-identified pedophiles promoting their viewpoints on Wikipedia) is a real phenomena. You'll also find people who have sex with animals and who deny the Holocaust ever happened at Wikipedia, doing their best to make their views known and accepted (not that I immediately associate those two deviant behaviors, but you see what I'm getting at) |
Even worse than that, you find people who don't like Ico on there trying to make their views known and accepted!! And just like the pedophiles, the racists, and the puppy-rapers, any non-encyclopedic opinions they add to articles are promptly removed by the seething gestalt of Wikipedia editors. The fact that Wikipedia editors (read "everyone in the entire world with access to a computer") include pedophiles doing their best to make their views known and accepted is no more noteworthy than the fact that the population of whatever country you live in includes pedophiles doing their best to make their views known and accepted. |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 2:47 am |
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| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| luvcraft wrote: |
| Even worse than that, you find people who don't like Ico on there trying to make their views known and accepted! |
From now on, when I'm tempted to try and talk seriously with you, I'll remember this and decide against it. |
My point was that evangelical pedophiles have as much influence on Wikipedia as evangelical videogame haters, or anyone else with an agenda, and that any non-encyclopedic edits they make are quickly reverted by other editors, regardless of whether that edit is saying that screwing kids is AOK, or that white people are superior to black people, or that a videogame sucks.
I wasn't trying to be smarmy or trying to trivialize pedophilia, I was trying to create perspective. Your statement that "You'll also find people who have sex with animals and who deny the Holocaust ever happened at Wikipedia, doing their best to make their views known and accepted" made it sound like Wikipedia is overrun by these people and that you never know what article you'll be reading when you stumble upon a secret message supporting pedophilia or beastiality. My response was that anything non-encyclopedic is typically methodically stricken from Wikipedia when it's found by other editors, regardless of how controversial or deviant the subject matter is or isn't. Thus, anyone on Wikipedia trying to promote their opinion on pedophilia has just as little long-term effect on Wikipedia as someone trying to promote their opinion on Ico. |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 2:48 am |
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| dessgeega wrote: |
there are a lot of sweeping generalizations for a frontpage post, i feel.
i do share james's sense of discomfort, though. |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 4:19 pm |
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| klikbeep wrote: |
| James, please tell me why you strongly implied all of those things about me. They are COMPLETELY wrong ideas. Where did you get all of those ideas James if it was from a person maybe I could talk to them |
I feel pretty confident that he was just trolling. Actually, I feel pretty confident that he started this whole thread just to be silly and ranty, and it would've normally just received a few "haha! you made funny over-generalizations!" replies if it hadn't been "legitimized" by being frontpaged. Maybe he feels bad about a post that was supposed to just be silly groundless ranting (which is fun to do from time to time) being "legitimized", and is trolling in it to try to "de-legitimize" it.
I don't know why he picked on you, though, klikbeep. Everyone knows that you really look like Orlando Bloom as drawn by Tom of Finland. |
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luvcraft
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Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 10:27 pm |
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| RecessRapist wrote: |
| I know about 15 pedophiles IRL. |
With a name like RecessRapist?? Surely not! |
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luvcraft
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| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 5:21 am |
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| BotageL wrote: |
| Click here to not automatically accept the card |
OMG that video was filled with delicious tangy awesome. Especially the very end. For most of it I was going to say "Tai Chi Master's better" but that end totally pushed it over the top for the win.
That was a great article about fact versus opinion until the author shot himself in the foot halfway through by claiming that there's no such thing as opinion, and then concluding by talking about estimates which are a form of opinion. But yeah, I think that people arguing that something that happened did not happen, unless they're taking the "all of the past is an illusion and we only exist right now" approach have a lot less legs to stand on than people arguing against popular opinion, even if their arguments are totally reprehensible. |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 8:56 pm |
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after much headache and contradictory definitions, I think I've finally come up with a concise definition of moe (that actually has nothing to do with the definition I tried to provide earlier in this thread):
Moe is when you consider a child the same way you would consider a puppy. You want to bask in its cuteness, you want to watch it romp and play, you want its attention, you want to snuggle it and take care of it. You probably don't want to fuck it, though. On the other hand, you don't want it to grow up, you don't want to have a meaningful conversation with it, and you don't want it to become independent.
There. As far as I can tell, that's the most succinct definition of moe on the interwebs, compiled by reading a lot of suggested definitions of it, most of which try to cast it in too positive a light (by ignoring the whole "never grow up" aspect), and a few of which cast it in too negative a light (by confusing the snuggling and taking-care-of desires with sexual attraction), and then extrapolating from all of those.
I realize that defining moe is not the purpose of this discussion, but moe is the subject, and since it's never been clearly defined before it's kind of hard to have a serious discussion about it when it means completely different things to different people. |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 2:08 am |
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| q 3 wrote: |
| Nintengirls: Brunette and Friends? |
Remember not to let your precious child eat spaghetti out of the garbage during walks. |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 4:43 pm |
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| klikbeep wrote: |
| The reason that I find The Idol M@ster so interesting is that it represents a next-level step for the entire moé cult -- at least as it relates to video games. The two most interesting bits (the card reader and touchscreen) are missing from the Xbox version, but these seem like such logical progressions of interactivity that it's a wonder that nobody's delivered a home version of them yet. Virtual girls that you can actually touch -- if they let you. Photos of them that you print out and carry around in your pocket. I'm thinking something like a DS; a girl you can take along with you, who's always there for you. |
For a long time I wanted to make a "kidnapped little girl locked up in your basement" virtual pet parody game, just for the shock factor, but I could never quite bring myself to do it.
| klikbeep wrote: |
| I think that the real key is going to be in user-created content . . . a MMORPG dating sim, where you can be a girl or a guy, or pretend to be . . . people competing for the best girls, or to be the best girls. Right now, that's where the illusion falls apart in dating sim games -- eventually you've played all of the scenarios, and you're stuck buying another game. |
http://www.invertedcastle.com/archives/2006/04/25/im-exchange-otd/
| klikbeep wrote: |
| In a sense, maybe moé is an attempt to rewrite or relive the past for a lot of lonely people. |
I would say that the majority of popular media is an attempt to rewrite or relive the past for a lot of lonely people. |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:19 pm |
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| Levi wrote: |
| Is it incorrect to assume that the reason for the loli aesthetic in the first place was the inherent irony of cute things performing violent acts? |
If by "loli" you mean "moe", then I think it's more just a natural progression of the graphic styles that communicate a sense of "fun". Mario in SMB3 is much cuter than Mario in SMB1, and Mario in Sunshine is even cuter still. Watching children play is significantly more whimsical and carefree and fun than watching Die Hard. Thus, since most games want to convey a sense of whimsy and fun, they star children or child-like characters. When a game wants to feel serious and dour (HL2, God of War, Contra), it stars serious characters and looks more like Die Hard. Bloodless combat or shooting pink bulllets at goofy monsters looks a lot more like childhood play than "violent acts"; with the sole exception of the parody video Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006, I've never seen any bloody decapitations or any other sort of gore in cute games. |
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luvcraft
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| Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 7:43 pm |
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| Levi wrote: |
| So then chibi is moe now? |
no no no, this is the thread where we throw around the words "chibi", "moe", "SD", "loli", "pedophilia" and "yukelele" as if they all mean exactly the same thing, but then refuse to define that same thing that they all mean.
By which I mean: I think this thread has spun out of control and is now worthless. :( |
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luvcraft
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| Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:35 pm |
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| klikbeep wrote: |
| THE MELANCHOLY OF HARUHI SUZUMIYA: EPISODE 9 |
it sounds like you're speaking from firsthand observation of moe-obsessed otaku. If you are, could you please tell us more about it, specifically the social effects that we outside of Japan do not see, and thus can only judge it on its artistic merit? |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 3:18 pm |
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| Maxson wrote: |
I figure it's based on the demographic that makes up the market- here, socially unaccepted people. Social outcasts want to be needed, but society doesn't need them- so they create what they don't naturally get. If moe is a sense of protecting and warmly watching over someone, that means the target of moe wants (and needs) to be protected and warmly watched over- the outcast as player has a substitute.
Over time, the most basic form of this "pure love"- a highschool sweetheart, or a damsel in distress- became boring. So gamemakers made the old new again with things that range from preferences (much like blond/brunette/redhead, you can get glasses/pigtails/etc.) to fetishes (loli/maid/so forth). Naturally, "standard" moe is still available for the newly outcast, who generally grow tired of it and enter fetish land.
In America, the outcasts turned to power trips instead- D&D is one example. Gaming focused on power and victory. When this grew old, the story was retold with better graphics and gameplay. Instead of creating many different scenarios, American gamemakers try to make the original scenario perfect- a realtime 3D multiple-light-sourced power trip. Some mixing in does occur- Doom-horror and WW2-nobility, usually- which helps keep the same story interesting.
That got kinda long. |
This post is full of sense. |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 3:28 pm |
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| BenoitRen wrote: |
Sheesh, you people don't have to be such assholes.
A person who looks at pictures of fictional little girls isn't necessarily sexually attracted to them. What if (s)he finds them cute? |
Dude, you are the SECOND person in this thread who doesn't understand that "loli" does NOT mean "cute little girls", it means "little girl porn". If you say you like loli, people will presume you're a pedophile, just like if you say you love raping dogs, people will presume that you're into beastiality, even if you have the mistaken belief that the word "raping" means "petting". |
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luvcraft
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Cobrastan
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 5:47 pm |
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| Mr Stegosaurus wrote: |
| And you are perhaps the first person in this thread who doesn't understand semantic shift. Obviously the word comes from "Lolita," but it doesn't mean that in all current contexts. My fiancee's into EGL ("Elegant Gothic Lolita") fashion, and it really is ridiculous doll-like dress-up. Man, I don't even like it. The women who wear it actually like how sexualized it is NOT, and as a dude I agree with that analysis of unsexiness. I'd rather she wear GAP. But there you go, luvcraft. The meanings of words change. |
My bachelor's degree in asian studies tells me that, with the sole excpetion of EGL, "loli" means "the sexualization of little girls", and my friend who has lived in Japan for years and is a Japanese Studies graduate student agrees. Even EGL originally started out being erotic, and has only gradually shifted into something not-always-erotic.
I agree that semantic shift occurs, but it takes more than just a couple of people misusing a word for it to happen (unless those people are world-famous rappers or something). |
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luvcraft
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 9:16 pm |
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Thread end!
I think we've all learned some valuable lessons here: Never overload an electrical outlet, if you find a dead bum in the gutter tell a grown-up, and if a stranger touches you in your bikini area, create an article about it on Wikipedia.
Last edited by luvcraft on Tue Jan 23, 2007 11:03 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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