Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/hollywood-sex-scenes-decline-by-40.861222/page-4?post=122427174#post-122427174

im guessing you're not a fan of softcore porn then?

its a lost art nowadays.

No, but it's not that, it's more sex is generally not what I watch movies for. I watch movies for entertainment and maybe I just don't find sex entertaining. I can actually find it gross depending on my mood.

Edit:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/hollywood-sex-scenes-decline-by-40.861222/page-4?post=122426523#post-122426523

This place has very weird hang ups with sex.

Yeah. Maybe because it's a gaming forum that attracts socially-maladjusted nerds.

[Jansen]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/stellar-blade-review-thread.852417/page-21?post=122427201#post-122427201

[Boredfrom]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/stellar-blade-review-thread.852417/page-21?post=122427201#post-122427201

We can go into the specifics of how Confucianism evolved differently between China, Japan, and Korea and the impact that it had on patriarchal social structures but clutching your pearls when a Korean game studio that makes pervy games gets compared to a Japanese or Chinese studios that ALSO make games for the exactly same audience is not an argument.

This is the same company that made hundreds of millions on the butt-flashing Nikke game. There are almost SEVENTY THOUSAND incels that signed that (American) censorship petition because of minor bits of extra fabric being added to some Stellar Blade costumes. I think it's fair to say that this isn't an accomplishment in Korean cultural expression.

the Korean government just celebrated the release of stellar blade. are you Korean? i am a former president of the Asian American Journalists Association in DC, and we oversee issues of Asian representation in media and popular culture. where do you have the authority to call a Korean product "not an accomplishment in Korean cultural expression?"

edit: it is simply more honest and less problematic if you would simply call it a sexist portrayal of women without erasing the Koreanness of it. you don't have to focus on the Korean aspect at all to criticize this game, yet you insist on erasing it.

[Boredfrom]

To be fair, it's easier to get permanent residence in Japan than in the states. Probably easier to assimilate in the states though because it's a country of immigrants.

Citation needed.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/protests-at-columbia-university-continue-as-groups-on-both-sides-of-the-aisle-call-for-action-to-be-taken-university-shifts-to-hybrid-classes.851787/page-25?post=122427069#post-122427069

[benji]

Here's the issue guys. I was simply trying to offer background on the Korean culture that produced it. I literally agree in so many words (and in the links I provide that are meant to be educational) that Korea's beauty culture is patriarchal.

It's alarming to me that many of you hone in on invaliding the Korean part of my review specifically. Of course I bring up Nier in my review and other Japanese culture. That's part of the thread of Korean culture finally trying to stand out despite the influences and cultural hangups. Of course STellar Blade is imperfect Korean representation. Nothing could be perfect. The point of equal representation is to allow our cultures to make mistakes, our bombs. Look, we have a very messy way of interepreting beauty. But here is just one example of our messy problematic yet wonderful and interesting culture. This is my culture. I love Koreans and being Koreans, despite how much i disagree with our culture.

I am curious as to what you consider to be the stand out features of the Korean beauty standards that are presented in Stellar Blade. I understand that the whole of the character designs reflect the beauty standards, but many of the features overlap with beauty standards elsewhere, so it seems that there should be some set of features or combination of features that are specifically Korean.

they're already in my review. the unfair and omnipresent pressure to be perfect and attain conventionalized, commercialized perfect beauty. it's a different kind of pressure than you'd find even in Hollywood.

i don't know how else to describe it other than also Eve and Adam have distinctly Korean faces (Lily looks like she's from Final Fantasy). What do you want me to do, break out the measuring tape?

This ongoing pushback and insistence of me trying to further break down Korean beauty standards continues to be weird and oft putting, especially when my piece offers many links to further your reading and education. there's clearly a deep and seemingly willful ignorance of the Asian diaspora here.

Gene, no, don't hurt em too bad. 

[Ethan]

The weird juxtaposition of, on one hand, fervant puritanism when it comes to jiggle physics in games and sex in movies, and on the other hand, the glofication of sex work IRL, in that inserting stuff in yourself for tips on Only Fans is a noble profession.



Often, it's different group of posters, but in this case, I think it's the same ones.

[Boredfrom]

Morrigan, again, weasels out of calling Gene Park a misogynist and pretend she was just having a good exchange of ideas. 

Anybody else and she would ask her mod friends for a ban.

[benji]

She literally posted this on this forum: https://www.resetera.com/threads/stellar-blade-review-thread.852417/post-122388636

Bringing up (checks notes) war crimes in order to win an argument about (checks notes) video games. OK then

    

This comment confuses me.
It is understandable that a Korean may not want to be judged based off a Japanese game. The hate is still real and raw despite the exchange of pop culture being on the uptick.

Comparing Stellar Blade to Nier has been done countlessly everywhere including on Era (hell, everyone wanted that Rear Automata OT title, remember?), including by the dev himself who is buddy with Yoko Taro. So no, I don't think it's appropriate to invoke sexual war crimes largely committed against women in order to defend a titty action game inspired by various other titty action games. I hope this clears up your confusion.

are you Korean? or Asian at all to give you this kind of authority to speak on how i should feel? do you have family thats tried to create art and express themselves only for everything they do be compared to something produced in Japan's economy? tell me your historic in this topic.

edit: there is a direct loud example of racism against Koreans posted in this thread and you're really lecturing me on how i should feel? this is just very sadly dismissive and deeply incurious about other cultural perspectives.

also no i wasn't just talking about sexual war crimes. Japan tried to colonize Korea, destroy our language and culture. forgive me for expressing some cultural pride in seeing our language thrive on a global (Japan distributed no less) platform.

I didn't say anything about how anyone should feel concerning Korean representation at all nor am I purporting to speak with any kind of "authority". But you really don't see how invoking incredibly serious and deeply violent crimes against women when discussing a sexist video game is an uncomfortable escalation of rhetoric? As a woman this is what I take issue with.

"as a woman" ok and as a Korean i take issue with being lectured about my blood. and please see my latest edit.

MORRIGAN BTFO

[benji]

 GENE PARK

[benji]

I thought Gene was such a harmless little guy but this is the second time he's gone on there and bodied prominent members.

[benji]

UPDATE:

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[kaleidoscopium]

He’s pretty great,

[Propagandhim]

Morrigan getting absolutely clobbered in the Lived Experience game.  Absolutely decimated.

[benji]

Same thing that ZeoVGM and them tried to do to him. They're so bad at using their only move.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

Judo is pretty popular in Korea.

[Taco Bell Tower]

Gene is too good for Ree.  He should join thebire.

[Potato]

I hope noodlesoup is alright. you never know when those pro israel death squads are coming..

As long as he doesn't attend any music festivals near the Palestinian border he should be fine...

[benji]

Pretty disappointed in him for this. I am a long-time follower of Jeff and have always enjoyed his takes on the industry. Even if I don't agree with many of his personal tastes on games, I respect his reasoning and think his experience and insight on the industry is almost unparalleled among journalists.

This is one of the few times where I've seen him put his foot so thoroughly in his mouth. The fact he felt it was okay for him to tell us the skimpy outfits are just fine, and actually women like them too, so shut up, is just completely embarrassing. I understand his point that there should be room in the games industry for everything, and it's not like he is arguing in support of the "Free Stellar Blade" crowd, but just this once I would have hoped he could look at that situation and go "maybe we've had enough middle aged white straight cis guys comment on this, I should defer to other voices."

He even seemed to almost realize the issue with this halfway through his response, but instead of more directly acknowledging and exploring it, he kind of just kept going about how "nobody wanted to ban Team Ninja games 15 years ago" as if times, audiences and society haven't changed.

Jeff is not a bad guy and I think he has grown significantly as a person over the last decade of me following him... this is one of the rare times his opinion just felt tone deaf and unnecessary.

Yeah, having followed Giant Bomb since 2010 I'd say that's pretty much spot on analysis and what I'd expect from Jeff and the old Giant Bomb staff as a whole. What really disappointed and drove this home to me was goty-discussions the year Nier Automata came out. You have a tableful of guys with a shared century of experience in games industry and reviews waxing poetic about how wonderful the storybeats are and how the game touched their soul but when the one female member of staff pushes against this by saying she didn't want to play for more than 8 hours due to the horniness of the game her opinion was just brushed aside. Being able to identify more with a robot in a videogame than your colleague and friend explaining her stance really stuck to my mind.

I think it's very interesting how quickly men, even supposedly well meaning men, jump to conflating criticism with banning. Team Ninja games absolutely got heavy criticism 15 years ago. OtherM is a game so drooping with gross sexism that even a lot of chuds had a hard time defending it, for example, and that was 14 years ago. Sexualization was a huge part of that criticism.

Not saying Jeff is as such a bad person, not even a flat out sexist person, but he has heavy blindspots and is very dismissive of criticism from women when it concerns sexism. A lot of men are.

That anecdote on Nier really is apt to how it often goes.

Using DOA as an example is also really interesting because it's part of a trend I keep noticing with DOA and a lot of this in particular, the rewriting of history.

I remember the criticisms of DOA back then as much of it came from DOA's women fans who loved the series but felt like they were being pushed out because of how more and more they were pushing the sexualization and objectification in both the main series and especially their extreme side series. I was one of those women and saw so many women just leave the series because it became clear Team Ninja didn't want them around... And then male fans and influencers started declaring women NEVER played DOA (despite DOA3&4 starting many women's competitive careers), especially when it was believed DOA6 was going to tone down the sexualization (which it didn't). I remember people like MatPat pulling that shit and just seeing it become more common and common throughout the CFGC fandom.

If it's just criticism then anyone can dismiss it. You aren't entitled to have your criticism treated as valid let alone true. Abby's weird opinion shouldn't "dismiss" the rest of the groups either. The Heckler's Veto is wrong, not the ideal, which is why you guys don't accept it whenever someone else is the Heckler.

Also:

just this once I would have hoped he could look at that situation and go "maybe we've had enough middle aged white straight cis guys comment on this, I should defer to other voices."

This is just horseshit. Jeff was asked his opinion. You're saying that someone should silence themselves because of their race, age, gender and sexual orientation. Which is just disgusting to say, especially because you assumed Jeff's opinion would automatically be the same because of those things. You people are such blatant bigots that I almost get offended.

It's just so embarassing. My wife and I enjoy a lot of the same kind of games, and I enjoy that we can discuss what we like about them, or the stuff that is problematic even if we enjoy most of it.

This is how it is for my husband and I as well. We both have hot takes about the different kinds of games we play. For the Persona series, we've both just said that we are mostly done with the entire IP not just for the way Persona 5 handled Ann in particular, but just because the setting has been the same thing in every game for a long time since 3 (the whole kids in high school, slice-of-life, etc) and we're both just getting burnt out on it.

And we've both come to a unanimous conclusion that neither of us will touch Stellar Blade (he definitely won't) unless it's....free or something and I want to torture myself. He wasn't a big fan of Nier either honestly.

Bringing up your spouses opinions.

[Potato]

She literally posted this on this forum: https://www.resetera.com/threads/stellar-blade-review-thread.852417/post-122388636

Bringing up (checks notes) war crimes in order to win an argument about (checks notes) video games. OK then

    

This comment confuses me.
It is understandable that a Korean may not want to be judged based off a Japanese game. The hate is still real and raw despite the exchange of pop culture being on the uptick.

Comparing Stellar Blade to Nier has been done countlessly everywhere including on Era (hell, everyone wanted that Rear Automata OT title, remember?), including by the dev himself who is buddy with Yoko Taro. So no, I don't think it's appropriate to invoke sexual war crimes largely committed against women in order to defend a titty action game inspired by various other titty action games. I hope this clears up your confusion.

are you Korean? or Asian at all to give you this kind of authority to speak on how i should feel? do you have family thats tried to create art and express themselves only for everything they do be compared to something produced in Japan's economy? tell me your historic in this topic.

edit: there is a direct loud example of racism against Koreans posted in this thread and you're really lecturing me on how i should feel? this is just very sadly dismissive and deeply incurious about other cultural perspectives.

also no i wasn't just talking about sexual war crimes. Japan tried to colonize Korea, destroy our language and culture. forgive me for expressing some cultural pride in seeing our language thrive on a global (Japan distributed no less) platform.

I didn't say anything about how anyone should feel concerning Korean representation at all nor am I purporting to speak with any kind of "authority". But you really don't see how invoking incredibly serious and deeply violent crimes against women when discussing a sexist video game is an uncomfortable escalation of rhetoric? As a woman this is what I take issue with.

"as a woman" ok and as a Korean i take issue with being lectured about my blood. and please see my latest edit.

MORRIGAN BTFO

Morricunt right now: "But this ALWAYS works when I do it to other Era users..." 

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/abandoning-all-decency-the-official-bluey-channel-has-put-the-banned-episode-dad-baby-up-for-all-to-see.861168/?post=122421306#post-122421306

this is my first introduction to Bluey.

Oh my fucking god, this was incredible. When the little dude jumped back inside and the neighbor character jammed his fist up there, i fucking howled. Straight up feels like a sketch on a much more adult show. It's harmless, but yeah, i gotta wonder how this ever made it past the concept stage.

I'm gonna have to watch this show, huh?

[Taco Bell Tower]

She literally posted this on this forum: https://www.resetera.com/threads/stellar-blade-review-thread.852417/post-122388636

Bringing up (checks notes) war crimes in order to win an argument about (checks notes) video games. OK then

    

This comment confuses me.
It is understandable that a Korean may not want to be judged based off a Japanese game. The hate is still real and raw despite the exchange of pop culture being on the uptick.

Comparing Stellar Blade to Nier has been done countlessly everywhere including on Era (hell, everyone wanted that Rear Automata OT title, remember?), including by the dev himself who is buddy with Yoko Taro. So no, I don't think it's appropriate to invoke sexual war crimes largely committed against women in order to defend a titty action game inspired by various other titty action games. I hope this clears up your confusion.

are you Korean? or Asian at all to give you this kind of authority to speak on how i should feel? do you have family thats tried to create art and express themselves only for everything they do be compared to something produced in Japan's economy? tell me your historic in this topic.

edit: there is a direct loud example of racism against Koreans posted in this thread and you're really lecturing me on how i should feel? this is just very sadly dismissive and deeply incurious about other cultural perspectives.

also no i wasn't just talking about sexual war crimes. Japan tried to colonize Korea, destroy our language and culture. forgive me for expressing some cultural pride in seeing our language thrive on a global (Japan distributed no less) platform.

I didn't say anything about how anyone should feel concerning Korean representation at all nor am I purporting to speak with any kind of "authority". But you really don't see how invoking incredibly serious and deeply violent crimes against women when discussing a sexist video game is an uncomfortable escalation of rhetoric? As a woman this is what I take issue with.

"as a woman" ok and as a Korean i take issue with being lectured about my blood. and please see my latest edit.

MORRIGAN BTFO

https://www.resetera.com/threads/media-create-sales-week-36-2021-sep-06-sep-12-read-staff-post.487222/page-48#post-73872259

I'm a woman I can say it

She's always using gender to try and get away, huh?  

[HaughtyFrank]

I just can't believe how pathetic they are about this game. 
There's not even anything sexist about the game, their only problem is that Eve wears skimpy clothing. The absolute horror. How will women ever recover? Anyway, time to watch Amounrath stick a camera up her butt live on twitch.

[Potato]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/abandoning-all-decency-the-official-bluey-channel-has-put-the-banned-episode-dad-baby-up-for-all-to-see.861168/?post=122421306#post-122421306

this is my first introduction to Bluey.

Oh my fucking god, this was incredible. When the little dude jumped back inside and the neighbor character jammed his fist up there, i fucking howled. Straight up feels like a sketch on a much more adult show. It's harmless, but yeah, i gotta wonder how this ever made it past the concept stage.

I'm gonna have to watch this show, huh?

Ummmmmmm, it's not made in a country with major religious and moral hangups about...EVERYTHING?

Americans are so fucking weird.

[Chumbawumbafan69]

Are Bluey adults the new Bronies?

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/stellar-blade-review-thread.852417/page-21?post=122429574#post-122429574

the Korean government just celebrated the release of stellar blade. are you Korean? i am a former president of the Asian American Journalists Association in DC, and we oversee issues of Asian representation in media and popular culture. where do you have the authority to call a Korean product "not an accomplishment in Korean cultural expression?"

edit: it is simply more honest and less problematic if you would simply call it a sexist portrayal of women without erasing the Koreanness of it. you don't have to focus on the Korean aspect at all to criticize this game, yet you insist on erasing it.

Nah, I'm an American-born Iranian dual-national but I grew up in the Bay Area and actually my best friend for 15 years is Korean. I'll tell you what I tell him on probably a weekly basis:

We have the stupidest fucking governments.

Korea has plenty of globally popular cultural products. They don't need to add this one to their all-stars team.

"No, but I have a Korean friend."

[HaughtyFrank]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/stellar-blade-review-thread.852417/page-21?post=122429574#post-122429574

the Korean government just celebrated the release of stellar blade. are you Korean? i am a former president of the Asian American Journalists Association in DC, and we oversee issues of Asian representation in media and popular culture. where do you have the authority to call a Korean product "not an accomplishment in Korean cultural expression?"

edit: it is simply more honest and less problematic if you would simply call it a sexist portrayal of women without erasing the Koreanness of it. you don't have to focus on the Korean aspect at all to criticize this game, yet you insist on erasing it.

Nah, I'm an American-born Iranian dual-national but I grew up in the Bay Area and actually my best friend for 15 years is Korean. I'll tell you what I tell him on probably a weekly basis:

We have the stupidest fucking governments.

Korea has plenty of globally popular cultural products. They don't need to add this one to their all-stars team.

"No, but I have a Korean friend."

I'd be a little offended if an Iranian implied that South Koreas and Iranians government are comparable

[saltygeneraltso]

I don't know about you fellas but I'm always talking to my second generation friends about how stupid the governments our parents immigrated from are.
I'm telling you, every week we have autistic convos about the drastically different governments that have absolutely nothing to do with us.
We live in the famously well-governed Bay Area™ btw.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

UPDATE:

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Students were shot with live ammunition? 

[books]

We need more final fantasy news before these dudes and 'dudettes' go nuts.