"The second panel is unironically a much better design"
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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No, the bad-faith reframing of a couple millennia old tendency towards enjoying beauty as something base is what does that, and you're giving it airplay.
Take a walk through the Louvre. A sizable portion of its contents are designed to titillate, and do so with far more nudity than you'll find in any game. Should we burn it to the ground in a misguided attempt to avoid what is essentially an insult, designed to shame in lieu of an actual argument?
Grande Odalisque
vs
Dead or Alive 6
vs
Moero Crystal H
practically the same, i know. one is some guy painting a turkish concubine, another is an industrialized pornography magazine reference, and another is prompting the user to "rub vigorously" to get to view more pornography.
And what exactly is the point of your cherry picking? Everyday women, aristocracy, queens, semi-divine beings and goddesses all where subject to sexualisation. There's a very long history of people appreciating idealised, even sexualised beauty in non-sexual ways.
So no, I don't think hentai is the same thing as classical art. Nor am I making an argument in favour of it. I just think the notion that people enjoy idealised or even sexualised characters in games solely as a substitute for pornography is retarded. Given that it's the go-to means of dismissing criticisms of the intentional androgynisation of characters, I'm certainly not going to support it, even if we can agree on the excess of porn in modern society.
do you think the oft-pornographic engagement with modern-day sexy media is exactly equal to looking at a piece of art in the Louvre? is Rule 34 just one big art project?
it is neither the intent nor effect of those sculptures/paintings to cause extreme arousal in their viewers to the point where it can affect the way they act and think, and especially not on a cultural level - i do not see kids learning to sculpt so they can have naked Venus in their bedrooms.
you could argue it is not the intent of sexy video games to do that either (if you ignore things like Yoko Taro asking people to send pornography of the main character of Nier: Automata to him), but it certainly is the effect, and the ultimate purpose of a system is what it does, not what it intends. when even frankly tame examples of this stuff can balloon out of control and become a huge chunk of pornography culture, like Overwatch, i think we should be wary as hell of the more daring instances, like Stellar Blade sticking asses in your face the entire time or Dead or Alive just dressing their characters up like they're in an actual real-world pornography magazine.
either we agree on the excess of porn in modern society, or we don't. there cannot be a "but my enemies don't like this porn", that's how you end up with transgender pornstars claiming to be conservative right-wingers because they aren't liked by the left.
No, simply pointing out the obvious - that millennia's worth of sexualisation didn't yield the effects we have seen develop only in recent years.
This is where we disagree; I believe it a symptom, not the cause. Given that tame, wholesome and even modest characters are subject to the same treatment, and that "pornography culture" is a thing to begin with, I'm not sure attractive characters are deserving of my ire or removing them would be of any benefit. Where do you draw the line? How does that extend to film and other media?
Most sexualisation I've seen in games doesn't reach the level of what was common in film or literature growing up. Back then, it wasn't a problem. Amongst people of my age, it still seems not to be. If I were pressed to choose between an android in a maid outfit and the wholesale promotion of degeneracy at a household, institutional and state level, I'd be inclined to assign blame to the latter.
That was intended as a separate point. Simply put, I don't see Lara Croft or 2B, in their original context, as porn.