Metadiscussion about Nechtronica

[faefux]

Strawman. never mentioned pixels. if you want to have proper conversations act like a grown up.

[crazykiddeath]

You don’t have to mention it, I can see the picture above.

[dpwb]

Although I am not exactly one for weeby stuff, even I know that gothic lolita is an anime thing that just refers to a type of fashion.
I don’t see anything here that specifically sexualises children, it’s just your typical anime shit, based on this game apparently https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/Nechronica

Nothing meaningfully bad here, just that skirting-the-edge-of-the-line-of-western-sensibilities that Japan does.

Although I don’t see the appeal of this mod at all, I don’t think it’s intended the way you saw it, faefux.

[faefux]

sigh How it’s intended is largely irelevant. what is relevant is what a reasonable person would consider offensive or sexually explicit.

Consider that most regular reasonable people arn’t super into anime to realize that the hyper-sexualisation of children is normal and acceptable in that community.

Not sure why we are discussing this, just want the mods to deal with it. this kind of thing alienates everyone not part of a very small and specific crowd.

[faefux]

To really spell it out:

• Girl: a female child.
• Doll: a small model of a human figure, typically one of a baby or girl, used as a child’s toy. (read, presenting them as objects/toys.)
• Lolita: a sexually precocious young girl.

These are the commonly accepted definitions (with the exception of my clarification on doll). It is both sexualising children and highly misogynistic towards young female children and this is in my view how your average, reasonable person would see it.

[crazykiddeath]

Like bondage gear? or hardcore drugs? or canabalism? or murder hoboing?
Lots of things are offensive to different people, this isn’t a mod I’ll ever use but I’m certainly not offended by the use of a name convention used for a style of clothing regardless of it origin.

It’s offensive to most people even though it’s a mainline mod and you are the only person to complain about it to date?

[faefux]

If you don’t understand the difference between bondage gear and heavy sexual insinuations in relation to children then perhaps you should just stop. you’re being very creepy and dishonest in attempting to create this equivalence.

[BlueKanary]

Lolita fashion

Although the origin of the fashion is unclear, it is likely that the movement started at the end of the 1960s with the fashion style and subculture Natural Kei, which romanticized the Victorian Period.[27] At the end of the 1970s, this resulted in a new movement known as Otome-kei , which slightly influenced Lolita fashion since Otome means maiden and maiden style looks like a lesser elaborated Lolita style.

Doesn’t say anything 'bout weird stuff

[faefux]

On it’s own i would take your point but when you are then adding that clothing explicitly to ‘girls’ who you call ‘dolls’ you are being willfully ignorant in pretending there is something not up there.

[BlueKanary]

From what I understand “doll” is a common 50’s slang for woman so…

Just like gal etc etc

[crazykiddeath]

If you had ever taken more then a cursory glance at the whole bondage scene and the things connected with it you would understand my point, it’s rife with unbalanced, abusive and frankly unhealthy relationships.

I find it far more disturbing then a clothing style REGARDLESS of what that style is called.

Doll ALSO has a different meaning in japanese culture:

Japanese dolls

[faefux]

Look. this really isn’t that hard to grasp. it’s not appropriate to sexualise children. I’ve said this a ton of times and you can handwave to justify paedophilic fetishes all you want but let’s not pretend this is acceptable to normal person on the street, okay?

read the Community Standards. ffs.

[crazykiddeath]

Don’t you dare try and insinuate something about me.

[dpwb]

Knew it would eventually end up descending to that.

[crazykiddeath]

I would say it’s an obvious reference to the haunted doll story from japan but I’ve never tried the mod so no idea.

[yonsisac]

Sorry to interrupt but one thing that has not been mention is that there is no children in the game besides the children zombies.

So the whole clothing is being worn by a adult even if that was the case. I don’t even watch anine or thing but I knew this was not sexualizing children because they are not in the first place.

Maybe you thought such because of the words used? Instead of “girl” it could have been anything else and this discusión would have not happend in my opinion

[kevin.granade]

@faefux I understand where you are coming from, and frankly the source material is very weird, however I do think you are applying a very shallow first impression of what this is about based on some key terms that you are misunderstanding.

Gothic Lolita, as has been pointed out, is not inherently about sexualization of children. It’s a weird term that has a very strange history based on a very strange process of cultural appropriation practiced by parts of Japanese culture (side note, I’m just using cultural appropriation descriptively here, I’m not saying anything bad was done).
“Dolls” within the context of Nechtronica is a term referring to the loss of agency of the protagonists because they were created by and controlled by a shadowy puppet master. I’m not going to lie, it is creepy, but on balance I read it as commenting on and exploring the situation rather than reveling in it, which is a key distinction.

In a similar way, the novel “Lolita” was reviled for exploring early sexualization of children in a similar manner, but on balance history has judged it to be a meritorious work of art. Is Nechtronica high art? Probably not, but neither is it fetishistic smut.

There’s no real misunderstanding about “girls”, it is used to mean “juvenile females” in this context, and it’s really irrelevant whether they’re “real girls” or “just zombies”, rather that’s kind of the whole point.
What is NOT happening as far as I can tell is sexualization of those girls, just because they dress a certain way (side note, one that is not at all sexually provocative) and are under the thumb of some shadowy controlling figure does not amount to sexualization.

If instead it were a game about child soldiers in an African warzone, it would still be control of children, but there would be no question of sexualization.

I read most of the base Nechtronica source books when this mod first came up several years ago specifically so I would know what kind of source material we’re talking about here, and it really is not about sexualization of children.

Unless you have something a lot more damning than the confluence of some terms being thrown around, I need you to drop this.

[Mantar]

I feel like you’re way off base here, faefux. I don’t see any “sexualizing children” going on in this mod, though I guess I can see how it could be misinterpreted that way.

[TheMurderUnicorn]

I am particularly sensitive to the abuse of children. Though, I guess a lot of people would say that.

I haven’t seen anything blatantly sexual from the mod. From what I can see it’s just clothing, none of which contains nudity or particularly suggestive garments. As has been pointed out, ‘lolita’ is not explicitly sexual.

In anime, it simply refers to a young girl. This often clashes with definitions that appear elsewhere, where sexuality is implied. Almost every anime has lolis in some capacity, most of which are not sexualized. In one of my recent novels, a boy refers to his female friend as a ‘gothic lolita’ because they’re into anime culture and she’s short and wearing an old-timey black dress to their dance. These are examples of the term becoming a regular part of anime culture.

If there was a mod about abusing children, or in which there are sexual references made to children, I imagine that would be cracked down on, probably aggressively, and I suspect the community would turn on them in an instant. I’d be right there with you, holding a pitchfork.

Letting your characters or npcs wear gothic style clothing and having their tiles or whatever look like young girls is not overtly offensive or sexual.

I don’t know if there’s something sinister buried in the mod I didn’t spot, but this is my current opinion.

[ecchi_squid]

Faefux makes me snicker.