Sengoku Rance - P5 only

edit: ninja'd x2

edited 8th May '12 9:40:39 PM by InsanityPrelude

Claiming historical works will be disrupted by it is ridiculous.

It's like saying that the anti-pedophilia is going to lead to the deletion of works like Romeo and Juliet, Snow White and Lolita. It's just not a valid argument and might as well just be reductio ad absurdum.

There's a far cry between the way rape is presented in Sengoku Rance and your the way it's presented in your examples, I believe. It's not explicit porn with the intent to be titillating while very obviously having unwilling candidates, for one thing.

There's no intent of going "Cut everything that is linked to from the rape index" or anything silly like that.

"But if we cut, X, Y might be next because Z" just seems a little... bizarre of an argument based on irrational fears.

Things need to be looked in context, but I seriously can't find the context for Rance redeeming in any way at all and I don't think protecting it out of fear for some kind of chain reaction is a very sensible idea at all.

But Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, James Bond and Gone with the Wind are not on the same level of Sengoku Rance, where rape is concerned.

In fact, from what I've been hearing about Sengoku Rance, if the main character had been in one of those works, he likely would have been a villain.

Also, nowadays you wouldn't be able to get away with the levels of Unfortunate Implications about women and their consent that those works showed in the past.

EDIT. RE: Romance novels: From what I understand, those are aimed at women. The fantasy is for the women who is being "ravished", not for the man doing the "ravishing", like it would likely be for Sengoku Rance if you looked at its plot only.

Oh, I have been ninja'd. The term you're looking for is Slippery Slope Fallacy.

(Edit: sorry, messed up the arrows.)

Actually, it's more akin to how we treat Porn, rather than Pedophilia.

But the difference with those works and Sengoku Rance is that the rape in those works is more about the old views on the "rights" men had concerning "their woman".

In Sengoku Rance it's a serial rapist.

edited 8th May '12 9:59:50 PM by Mazz

You weren't calling for Rance to be cut, you were calling for rape to be treated the same way we treat pedophilia. We currently treat pedophilia in a way that can best be described as "fire on sight" (and will almost certainly continue to do so). Pedophilia is somewhat elastic (Romeo and Juliet is not it, for example). Rape is concrete. You see where the problem is.

It's the heroes in all those works that are the rapists. Every single one of those has the uniting fact that the hero rapes the heroine into falling in love with them. They glorify the heroes actions as good and heroic and romantic. That's the point I'm making.

Rance may push the line too far. We need to figure out where the line is. Not just rant about rape being bad. We need real standards. Rance's issue is that it goes too far with everything. Not simply how it treats rape.

and Those are, in fact, very good arguments for the same position that Shimaspawn's post advocates: looking at everything on a case-by-case basis without using ironclad criteria. And as it happens, that's exactly what we're doing. And please do not forget that the idea of a "Cut everything that is linked to from X index" approach is a good deal less silly than it sounds, considering that's exactly what happened as an emergency measure until the current system could be implemented.

edited 8th May '12 10:02:10 PM by EnragedFilia

That would be me being less clear than I'd like. I tend to have an issue with me actually saying what I mean, and I should probably read over my posts more (though instead I tend to just scrap them and rewrite it every time, and I'd say that my early attempt was more what I intended in hindsight).

I've nothing against rape being portrayed, nor do I have anything against pedophilia being portrayed. The difference is HOW they are being portrayed. I would never, ever suggest banning something merely for portraying or having rape or pedophilia in it.

I'm saying that when either rape or pedophilia or portrayed in a ridiculously positive manner that glorifies it, it should not be permitted here. It's common sense. This isn't rape is love or anything even the slighest bit doubtful. It's just... blargh.

You said everything I wanted to say, down to the difficulty in translating thoughts into patterns of words that everyone else can understand.

edit: I would add, however, my agreement in nuking everything that is titillating of the underage variety.

edited 8th May '12 10:15:20 PM by Mazz

I'm going to leave this one to shima, since she is far more erudite than me in the best of situations, and "should currently be asleep" is not the best of situations.

I understand what you're trying to say, Jarkill. I'm just saying that rape seems to be glorified in media far more than it should be. I was naming other works that glorified the rape that happened in them. I think the concept of this is terrible and horrible. But glorifying rape isn't enough. Treating it as a joke isn't enough. Those things happen in mainstream PG works.

What we need is to figure out which works are actually indefensible for their positions. After all, we can't cut any work someone finds terrible, misogynistic, and glorifying abusive relationships. Twilight would be the top of my list if we were to do that.

Personally, if it's wall to wall rape, then cut it, but if you're playing a 30 hour game, and your character being a rapist asshole is say, 1% of the game, you might want to just lock it.

Yeah, it would have been better for me to add that rape should obviously only be an issue when it's portrayed as desirable and/or a good thing. I'm not going go flag SVU or anything ridiculous.

And, I'd say that when the intent of the main character is literally to rape as many women as possible, me using the word "glorify" is only really because I can't think of any stronger words.

A better way of putting it would be that rape should be treated just as harshly as rape in the context of the main character going around do it at the players behest.

And trust me, this isn't a case of the protagonist being an asshole rapist 1% of the time. This is a case of the protagonist being an asshole rapist 99% of the game. I've played this game, and... yeah.

And there are many more possibilities than that. If a protagonist is presented as an asshole to everyone in sight and repeatedly expresses his intent to rape anything with big boobs that he can't talk the pants off of first, but never actually has a chance to do it before he pulls a Face–Heel Turn and the whole thing gets a No Ending ending, the appropriate course of action gets even more muddled.

Now can anyone guess what work I just described?

No. o_o Should I?

Yeah... to be honest, it kind of had the opposite reaction to me. I'd been told that he gets better and stuck through it, approved of his reaction to certain events... but the whole thing is promptly dropped and it goes straight back to rape is hilarious.

The No Ending Ending also just left me with the impression that they just didn't care, only further reinforcing my belief that it effectively has no plot and to be honest if you are making a game with a message like that, it's not the one thing you end up leaving out, it's the one thing you make sure gets in.

That and I believe there are sequels and they just don't get any better - the whole thing just repeats over and over. This is the seventh Rance game. I highly doubt they ever intended for him to improve in this one. That's the type of change that occurs in a single work, not over the course of an entire series all of a sudden.

(Nevermind, misunderstood the context)

edited 8th May '12 10:46:35 PM by Jarkill

Wait, so he never actually gets the chance to rape anybody?

Ah, thanks.

edited 8th May '12 10:59:30 PM by Mazz

Yes he does. There's also consensual sex, semi-consensual sex, and scenes where he's the one being raped. Usually by women, but I vaguely recall a scene where he was raped by a man, though that might not have actually happened. Though there's definitely a gay demon with the hots for him. With the exception of the underage princess's rape scene (which was not Rance) and the half-demon girl being raped by her full-demon father on top of a mountain of corpses, every sex scene in this game is Played for Laughs. Those last two are played for What The Fuck Is Wrong With This Guy Kill Him Now.

Oh, and there's a couple other Played for Drama rape scenes outside the main quest that I forgot about, like if you don't rescue Kenshin fast enough.

edited 8th May '12 11:20:28 PM by Discar

And now to clear up that accidental confusion, the description in #38 refers to Kanta from Desert Punk.

I think it says something that the one scene in which the protagonist is raped by a male... doesn't appear in either text or CG form. Unlike every other rape scene, effectively. Had two paragraphs on this, killed it for being another rant tangent. Suffice to say that I read this as they don't exist because they wouldn't be considered titillating, and, well, I'm sure you can take it from there and that's not the point of this post.

Of course, this is my interpretation of the work, which doesn't enter into the equation at any level. Me choosing to perceive it as being poor quality or making random assumptions as to the intent of the author is worth precisely nothing, so kindly disregard any random baloney I spew about that.

What, uh, exactly do you mean by "semi-consensual"? I've googled the term and I can't make sense of it. From what I understand consent is either there or it is not, so I'd appreciate being enlightened here.

I assumed you were referring to Rance but making a typo. I was mislead into thinking that the protagonist would get better (my only knowledge being that apparently it was about a very popular strategy game, about a serial rapist and the look up the diviners skirt / rape her screenshot before playing the game) and played through it. I really did try to keep an open mind, and every time it got better it only got two times worse later on.

Incidentally, did some thinking and it DOES have underaged (visual only, naturally - claimed age, no) characters with explicit rape h-scenes - Daidouji (http://www.animecharactersdatabase.com/character.php?id=29213 (whoops, my bracket redirected the link elsewhere, sorry about that!) (tagged as loli, incidentally) and Kojika http://alicesoft.wikia.com/wiki/Yamanaka_Kojika (Uh "20 year old girl who looks like a child"? Yeah, okay. Seriously, it's a two sentence summary and that needs to be one of the two sentences? When half a persons character in a h-game is "They look like a child" I start seeing flashing lights everywhere for some reason. It still feels weird to even so much as in any way imply that Sengoku Rance of all things is guilty of pedo-pandering).

Sengoku Rance, from my point of view, is in no way pedo-pandering, at all, so that argument can be dropped IN MY OPINION. Some of the content does need to brought to light (though this obviously isn't so clear cut as certain things), I guess, and my inference that Sengoku Rance is against pedophilia could be wrong.

Stating that it has absolutely no "loli" content whatsoever (short of Kou being very obviously not intended to be titillating), however, in hindsight was a premature and false statement and I feel like an idiot for saying it. Assuming I did say that, that might have been in one of my not-posted posts and I can't exactly check my scrubbed one.

Bah. My memory is terrible. Sorry if I'm being over the top again. I've tried to avoid being as condescending and, well, retarded as my previous wall of text, and I hope I've managed to succeed (...largely by cutting out large parts of it that just read a little blargh :P).

edited 9th May '12 12:06:00 AM by Jarkill

I don't mean to influence policy one way or another, since my position is to enforce whatever guidelines are settled upon.

However, I do feel the need to mention that this:

Is a pretty offensive thing to say, since it carries with it the implication that we (the panel), aren't doing a very good job of enforcing the guidelines if we're missing something that obviously was meant to be included.

I've been basing my judgements thus far on whether a work meets the criteria of a.) primarily porn or b.) pandering to pedophiles in some manner. If rape is also meant to be a primary consideration, then I would have voted differently on several works I've reviewed thus far, the exact number differing depending on how "glorifying" is being defined here.

If there are additional "deal-breaker" criteria outside of the two mentioned above that the panel needs to take into consideration when judging a work, then yes, I do think we need to make explicit mention of them in the "What we are looking for" section of ccoa's post here.

If I've misunderstood the post I quoted, feel free to ignore this. I just want to make sure that we are all on the same page, so that I can serve my function as a panel member to the best of my ability.

edited 9th May '12 12:50:42 AM by Meeble

I agree.

The entire reason 5p exists is because there's a grey area. The boundaries of that grey area still should be defined if they can be though.

Maybe this will mean more works getting cut, but I'm in even less of a position to say anything about what should be cut than Meeble.

I interpreted Fast Eddie as responding to Arha, who was stating that rape wasn't on the list of guidelines, and I viewed it as meaning that he didn't feel that glorifying rape wasn't necessarily needed on the guidelines because, well, common sense. Not that there's anything wrong with you not having it. I might be reading it wrong, though.

I don't think he was trying to criticise you at all. Could be wrong.

I guess that makes sense, Pec. I'm one to probably view it that overt or covert blackmail falls into noncon, and that choosing to do it for your own reasons doesn't. It feels more like what you're saying is that "it's gray which one it falls into and people will have their opinions" rather than there being some state where things are neither consensual or nonconsensual.

EDIT: Typo.

EDIT EDIT: Horrible facepalm rereading this part "well, common sense. Not that there's anything wrong with you not having it."

This refers to "not that there's anything wrong with you not having rape on the guidelines" because it's common sense from Fast Eddies position (as I understand it, anyhow, he's saying it doesn't need to be there because it's generally accepted as being unacceptable), I'm not implying that you don't have common sense or anything. Gore, I can see how I get misinterpreted so often when I write this poorly >.>

edited 9th May '12 2:10:26 AM by Jarkill

Yeah, it probably should be obvious what Fast Eddie's position would be.

But there is room for ambiguity like peccantis said and I can certainly understand where people are coming from if they didn't see it because they weren't looking for it, or didn't judge it because it wasn't in their criteria list (hey, we can try to be clinical about these things).

I suppose we have to take into account that we're also looking to excise Perversity as well, should it be severe enough.

All of which is a huge aside to our case by case basis for works.

@Shima - I think the problem is that the other works you mentioned may have rape-y stuff going on, but Rance is basically "Strategy game with MOAR RAPE LOL!"

I also don't get the rape part of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, but I'll PM you about that so as not to derail.