Both Catherine and Vincent are completely drunk, yet Vincent himself doesn't remember it.
That is the legal definition of Date Rape. If one person doesn't remember it happening, they were probably forced into it without realizing it.
See the page.
Watch SymphogearVincent clearly enjoyed himself while still in the bar and presented at least partial control of his actions there.
He is just very easily pushed around.
edited 3rd Dec '12 3:57:52 PM by fakeangelbr
Donate money to Skullgirls, get a sweet poster.I've never liked this argument. I mean, the fashion industry is female-dominated, for a predominately female audience but nobody would ever say size zero models aren't a problem because of that. Or that being thin is a "female beauty fantasy" in the same way people say muscular male superheroes are a "male power fantasy".
@Demongod:
- Vincent was drunk of his own accord and for all the subtle shit implied in the game, date rape drugs aren't one of them.
- The reason Vincent never remembers having sex with Catherine is because it's implied he may not even have had sex with her in the first place. It's easy to miss, but there's a lot of what initially looks like cliches or contrivances that are given logical explanations by the game. The chances of Vincent not remembering getting it on with Catherine consecutive nights in a row for almost an entire week, but remembering a bunch of other things is extremely unlikely(especially during nights at the bar when Catherine doesn't even show up or you make Vincent leave before she does show up). Of course, just because he woke up the next day with her naked in bed doesn't mean they actually did anything. Catherine is a succubus and, as shown in her ending, can literally appear out of thin air. Remember, she wasn't hired to suck out his soul or steal his life energy or anything(like a Succubus typically would), just screw with his head to make his nightmares worse.
Not that this would change anything. The point wasn't even the sex, but more that he wasn't really committed to making his relationship with Katherine work, and it's strongly implied he would still have had the Nightmares regardless of Catherine showing up.
edited 3rd Dec '12 4:25:40 PM by JotunofBoredom
Umbran Climax◊Except in order for Catherine's lessons to be able to work really well, I think a She-Vincent and Male-Catherine story would have to work the same way....
Except the outcry would be immense by comparison and would of made the game made that way tank hard.
edited 3rd Dec '12 4:28:09 PM by Demongodofchaos2
Watch SymphogearBut, like I said before, Catherine's themes are literally meant to be told from the male viewpoint. They aren't supposed to be equal between genders.
They could make a game with the same concept based around a female protagonist, but with the change in gender you'd have to have a change in viewpoint(essentially, Female Gaze instead of Male Gaze).
@Thorn: Seriously man?
edited 3rd Dec '12 4:33:03 PM by JotunofBoredom
Umbran Climax◊![]()
Except it's Supernaturally induced By Mutton, and Vincent outright calls him out on not having women enter the nightmares too, except for Erica due to being a transexual, which is a can of worms by itself.
I hold them in the same value as pornography.
Which is what they are.
I'd rather not turn this into a complaint about those books. It's been done.
I mentioned them because both books more or less deal with a female character being pursued by a powerful, manipulative male with overt sexual and romantic overtones. I don't disagree with the whole premise for a story. It's just I and several others personally feel that it was a poorly executed example of such.
A better example of a female protagonist being pursued by a powerful/supernatural male with predatory subtext would, in my opinion, would be something along the lines of Bram Stoker's Dracula. And I'm hard pressed to find women and men who don't adore both the book and the movie adaptations.
My general point is that you can make a story about predatory males as sexual beings without generating a predominantly negative response from the audience. How to do this with the video game medium is the pressing issue. I actually think it would be pretty cool to see a game about a woman in a conflict with an incubus-like antagonist/love interest. Maybe something in the same spirit as Silent Hill? Haunting Ground is viewed by some to be a vehicle for that type of story, but to what extent is debatable. Fiona doesn't have any desire to have sexual or romantic connectivity with her pursuers, so I'd like to see a character with something closer to what Vincent or Harry Mason experience. That is, the female character would have to confront both implicit and explicit forces of sexual malevolence and sexual ambiguity while they're pursuing some other objective.
And just to be perfectly clear, I am emphatically not suggesting a rape simulator, because that essentially defeats the purpose of the gender reversal Demon mentioned. Rather, the hypothetical game should be an exploration of the sexual tensions that come with modern romance and how men can and do legitimately operate as temptress figures. Not to read too deeply into it, but Catherine strikes me as the galvanizing force for Vincent's inadequacies and fears as a twenty-something having to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of being in a committed relationship. This echoes that video Jotun posted about that Tony Danza movie.
The whole game (Catherine) strikes me as what Inception would be if it were a dark romantic comedy rather than an action movie or sci-fi heist. Mal represents the darker sectors of Cobb's subconsciousness much in the way Catherine is both a source of encouragement (somewhat ironically) and downfall, depending on how you want to interpret Vincent himself.
edited 3rd Dec '12 5:03:17 PM by Aprilla
I know. I don't think we can find anyone here to disagree with that sentiment anyway.
You are not alone.While I have problems with Catherine, I think some of them I misatributed. The villain was operating under a certain theory of gender essentialism, woman act this way, men act the other and I decide who falls into each category and how to treat them as a result.
Though some of the characters are sucked into believing this dichotomy, upon challenging it they discover that it's far more complicated and really rather artificial, thus challenging some commonly accepted gender stereotypes. I think I've come around to Erica being a far more positive character because of this. She's only plagued by nightmares because the villain decided defined her by her — I think it's implied she's had the operation, that or Johnny's possibly too naive to be capable of consent — pre-op identity. To the player, and to herself and the people around her (?), she's a woman. Hell, she's pretty much an idealised version of womanhood.
His treatment of her puts a mockery to his superficial essentialism: men act this way, women act that, as long as you've got the balls to follow through. Only, like I said, it's not true.
I still think that Catherine/Katherine are both kind of shit characterisations considering their importance, and that Vincent's intellectual catharsis could be better defined — he just seems to jump to the conclusion that "men and women are more complicated than that" largely apropos of personal revelation — but the game's heart is in the right place.
This post has been powered by avenging fury and a balanced diet.@Demongod: Nothing having to do with the core of Vincent's character flaws are supernaturally induced.
Being ambition-less, noncommittal, and milquetoast are all qualities he had before the game even started, and his inability to be straight with Katherine is presented to us before he even meets Catherine. Dude still wants to take it slow and not have to take on any responsibilities after 5 years of dating Kat. 5 years of dating, bro.
None of the personal issues men are having in the game are caused by supernatural events; rather it's their personal issues that make them more susceptible to this specific otherworldly phenomenon in the first place. And the characters you can save optionally? Their problems aren't solved by the Nightmares, they're solved by talking to others(mostly Vincent) and coming to terms with those problems themselves. Otherwise the Nightmare just kills them.
The Nightmares themselves are backwards and needless in the first place. They're a murderous, millennia-old tradition used by detached deities in order to bump up reproduction rates. And this is in a future setting where humans are already colonizing the moon and moving cities worth of people there. I seriously doubt the population is lacking in such a world. And by the time Vincent finally grows up and we're meant to agree with him, he says the Nightmares don't really have much of a place in the current world.
If you're saying the Nightmares targeting men only makes Catherine sexist or thematically inconsistent then you might have a serious problem telling the difference between the intent of the author from the feelings of their characters, because we aren't supposed to agree with the Nightmares; they're simply a medium used to explore these ideas in different(sometimes more abstract, sometimes more literal) ways.
edited 3rd Dec '12 5:13:41 PM by JotunofBoredom
Umbran Climax◊Nosferatu is my favorite Dracula adaptation.
edited 3rd Dec '12 5:27:27 PM by Scardoll
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.You mean... it's not?
My whole world... is lies?

Ironically, many of Catherine's themes, though well done, end up falling flat because of the fact that the whole thing started because of what was basically the legal Definition of Date Rape....
Watch Symphogear