Snoot Game cleanup

Snoot Game has been brought up several times on the ROCEJ violation thread (here and here, for instance) and the bigoted works thread (here and here) but there hasn't been any major discussion about it. To quickly sum it up, Snoot Game is a parody of the upcoming and contentious Goodbye Volcano High, where all of the good endings involves convincing Fang (the game's non-binary protagonist) into rejecting their identity. All of the game's bad endings involve Fang becoming a school shooter.

The page itself was created in June 2021 by Skunkbrains with little examples beyond bashing Volcano High, before being expanded upon since. While the page does note that the game mocks the source material, it also seems to have a gushy tone, and there wasn't any mentions of the Cure Your Gays premise until November 2022. I've included an example of the unusually gushy writing below.

• Affectionate Parody: Despite the expectation from the game's source, there's a surprising level of genuine love for the cast and setting given here (or at least from what little of GVH was publicly available during the development). While it certainly uses the real game as a source of comedy and frequently pokes fun at it and the themes, the devs took great care to replicate the characters, their personalities, and their relationships as best as they could, including several references to events from the game and its trailer such as replicating the beach bonfire scene from the latter (with Anon included) in Ending 4. Except this time, instead of burning the yearbook, the characters all leave an inspiring quote inside it to keep fond memories from their time at Volcano High).

Aside from the gushy writing, Affectionate Parody isn't an example so we can just remove it. I am not familiar with the game or its source material so I don't think I can help with rewriting the description.

Also, it might be a good idea to build a sandbox for this project because there's probably a lot of things that we have to rewrite.

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 25th 2023 at 10:06:20 AM

As I mentioned in ROCEJ that entry is false on multiple levels; there was almost no information about the cast of Volcano High and their personalities/relationships for the game to be faithful to when it was being developed.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Feb 25th 2023 at 9:47:18 AM

Cut the Affectionate Parody entry.

Snoot Game's now added to the Pages Attracting Edits That Promote Bigotry sandbox list, signposting to this thread.

If I've misrepresented it in that list, please tweak the description as needed.

Would it be wise to page the tropers that did most of the edits to the pages? Only Vorpale seems to have edited recently, though.

I was also reading through some of the YMMV entries and noticed that there's a Broken Base entry that's cynical of the fact one of the endings has Fang become an "unironic tradwife stereotype". So it seems the gushing issue might not be as bad as I expected.

I think it might good idea to get in contact with people who edited the page as they would be the most familiar with the work.

How should Fang's gender identity be handled in the context of Snoot Game? Ordinarily if a fan work changes a character's gender, we follow the gender used in the fan work, even if it doesn't match canon.

Is it complaining to add “Being non-binary is a harmful self-delusion and will lead your mental health to degrade to the point of committing a school shooting.” to An Aesop? I haven’t played the game but that’s the message I get from reading the page.

At the very least, that's the developers' intended Aesop.

I'm familiar enough with the game's endings to know that the school shooting only happens in one of them, and that's the one where you actively and rudely neglect Fang's emotions — the other bad ending is just them becoming a miserable lonely drug addict after you break up (as a result of being nonbinary and surrounded by the "toxic influence" of LGBTQ "abusers", of course) so the Aesop isn't quite that over the top at least; more "nonstandard gender identities are harmful self-delusions and indulging them will only worsen things."

EDIT: Some context to the story/endings to help with cleanup; I'm going off of memory here admittedly —

• Worst Ending: You're actively a shitty boyfriend to Fang and neglect their emotions. School shooting ensues because you decided to go play videogames instead of talk to them when they were in the middle of a crisis.
• Bad Ending: You don't question Fang's gender identity and don't intervene enough against their "toxic enabler." Fang is eventually bullied and gaslit into breaking up with you because of said "enabler" and years later you run into them at a bar, clearly addicted to drugs with a shaved head, ultimately deciding to leave them to their misery.
• Normal Ending: You convince Fang to break things off with their "toxic enabler" and they subsequently conclude that their nonbinary identity was a delusion. You both get married out of high school but Fang remains unhappy and riddled with anxiety.
• "Good" Ending: Same as the above but you encourage Fang to pursue their interest in music. You wind up in a perfect, idyllic happy marriage where Fang is, as mentioned on the YMMV page, essentially an unironic tradwife stereotype.

I'm also relatively certain the game contains loads of weirdo 4chan humor and nonsense side characters that are directly based on memes, but I haven't seen a full playthrough myself to know details.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Feb 26th 2023 at 10:14:20 AM

You say "at least" but that's hardly meaningfully better.

Edited by Perseus on Feb 26th 2023 at 9:54:23 PM

Not sure how to cover it, because even though it's the intended aesop of the game and its authors, if I stumbled randomly across a page that said "nonstandard gender identities are harmful self-delusions and indulging them will only worsen things," then I would be heading straight to the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment thread to ask 'Is it okay if I delete this, because Jesus Christ that's, uh... a lot.'

I think it's best to just acknowledge the message in the description and not as an actual example. We're allowed to just say "the game carries An Aesop about-" and not need to put it so bluntly in the example list.

Yeah I wasn't sure how to go about making that nitpicky "not quite as awful as that" correction; I want to be clear I find this game utterly gross on a number of levels.

I think ideally any writeup for a trope entry about its Aesop would avoid a plain, uncritical statement of the message. "The game promotes various anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs and conspiracy theories, in particular the idea that nonstandard gender identities are harmful delusions and that the LGBTQ+ community is "converting" vulnerable youths." But as pointed out, this whole game is a massive ROCEJ landmine.

In any case I'm going to try and take a crack at turning the description into something that reads less like a gushy celebration later today.

EDIT: Eh, got bored and did it right away instead. First draft:

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Feb 27th 2023 at 6:32:01 AM

Already way better than the description currently on page.

Went ahead and pushed it to the page with some minor revisions. Feel free to tweak and adjust as needed.

I'll note that having brushed up on the game and its story a bit more, cleaning this up may be a bit more of a challenge than its reputation suggests, as it does make an attempt to veil its messaging as being about teen mental health instead of the dangers of The Gender. It adds the frustrating layer of "the text technically never states its bigoted message outright and hides it behind a different issue" — you'll see a lot of Snoot Game's defenders using the ol' "oh you're reading too much into it, the character's gender isn't the point man!" line.

Essentially the argument is that the game's focus is on Fang's anxiety and depression and how they're not getting the support they need, and the fact the improvement in their mental health after you give them that support just coincidentally makes them realize their toxic friend is gaslighting them into being nonbinary or whatever is a minor side thing that totally isn't trying to say anything

It's obvious bullshit if you know the circumstances behind the game's development or are at all familiar with anti-LGBTQ+ talking points, but unfortunately the actual text of the work also plays this game of obfuscation which may make it difficult to objectively trope without falling into the trap of uncritically relaying some of its messaging.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Feb 26th 2023 at 10:33:08 AM

The part of the description where it notes about its anti-LGBTQ+ message was deleted. I think it should be restored, because the whole game carries it's harmful message on its back (in addition to ) plus the edit reason the user gave really rubs me the wrong way.

Edited by Ayumi-chan on Feb 27th 2023 at 3:00:30 AM

Perhaps we should call them to this thread, in that case?

Edited by Perseus on Feb 27th 2023 at 6:05:10 AM

The description change should have had an edit reason or least at a link to this thread because it looks it was changed unilaterally to people who aren't privy to the discussion. It's important to include for large changes like this.

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 26th 2023 at 2:06:43 PM

I think pinging him wont work since they have a _ in their nickname... Can we PM them directly or that wont work either?

The ping did work. The pings were fixed last year so you can ping people with special characters in their name.

Oh nevermind then. Congrats on fixing them!

Yeah that was my bad, I was going to do exactly that but spaced out while making some last revisions and forgot.

How’s this for a Aesop writeup?

We could also probably add another entry that says something to the effect of “The LGBTQ community is a toxic group that preys upon minors to groom them into thinking that they’re not straight or cisgender.”

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Feb 27th 2023 at 8:37:56 AM