epillepsy
plz don't mock me
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Just say no: Video game romantic rejection is far too rare
When it comes to video game romances, where are all the great rejections, the shut-downs, the total face-plants? In Mass Effect, Persona, Dragon Age, and more, love comes far too easy.
games.avclub.com
ARCHIVE LINK SO HE DOESN'T GET CLICKS: https://archive.is/03QbQ
TLDR: In video games in which romance with a fictional foid is possible, the foid should reject the male gamer more often, because women aren't rewards to be won and video games should show female empowerment.
This article is mainly criticizing JRPGs and dating sims in which gamers can enjoy fictional relationships with fake foids in order to escape from this garbage world and cope a bit with escapism. The author says that video games should be more realistic and that the gamers who are playing should be rejected by anime foids as well, and this should teach the gamers not to see women as rewards that you gain by making "certain choices." (that's a quote from the article, btw)
This article is sinister because there is a contingent of people who want gamers who play romance games (mainly they see them as incels who are unattractive and unsuccessful in relationships) to be "punished" by not being able to cope with having even a fictional girlfriend. The author gets a spiteful pleasure from taking everything away from people he hates.
Quotes from the article:
"Fictional characters should reject men but only if they're not gay."For as much critique as it deserves for its overly accommodating treatment of these issues in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect games, BioWare at least gets credit for a few straight-up “no thank you”s across the decades: Seth Green’s Joker will (reluctantly) turn down a pass from Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 3, while Dragon Age 2’s Aveline will outright ignore player character Hawke’s attempts to press their suit. But it feels notable that I had to cherry-pick those examples pretty aggressively from a wide host of games, and that most of the other ones that come to mind come only from situations with incompatible orientations in play, rather than lack of attraction to the apparently irresistible player. After 30 years of attempts at a convincing video game romance, you can still count the number of outright incidents of “Sorry, it doesn’t matter how many Charisma points you have, it’s just not going to happen between us” on maybe two hands.
He is saying here that he wants fictional characters to reject the player more often in romantic situations but ONLY if they are straight. In this quote, he bitches about how gay players get rejected due to the fictional guy's heterosexuality.
All video game romances are, by definition, fake. (This is obvious, right? Please tell me that this is extremely obvious.) They’re simulations, designed to evoke certain feelings, and to play on the intimacy of a medium that has a player interact, often as themselves, in supposedly meaningful ways with a fictional world.
In a film, it would be bizarre for a character to look a viewer in the eyes and say, “I love you,” but in games—especially modern games—it happens all the time. (Looking at you, Final Fantasy VII Remake.)
This doesn't make sense because why would a movie character tell the viewer that she loves him? The audience of a movie is not supposed to be part of the narrative. But in a video game, the player is in the narrative so it makes sense for a video game foid to declare her love to you.
That false connection is powerful, off-putting, and maybe even a little dangerous. Using it to teach players, subconsciously or not, that achieving romance with another person is a factor of correct choices—that the right inputs can always be relied upon to produce the desired outputs—is an ugly side effect of a genre that traffics in some of the most intense emotions we have collective access to.
Here, he is basically admitting that some men can't get sex IRL no matter what choices they make, acknowledging lookism.
But then he goes on to say that these people should also get rejected in video games no matter what they do.
Can you imagine a dating sim in which it's impossible to get a girl no matter what choices you make?
And here he pretends to be someone who plays JRPGs to gain authority. But you know he plays only shitty modern AAA games.Learning how to take the L in love can be painful and sad, but it’s a form of acceptance that’s absolutely necessary for proper social and emotional functioning. So I ask you, games, please: Break our hearts. (Or at least, blunt our crushes.) For once in your life, tell your players no. It’s for our, and everybody else’s, good.
I don't really play video games, but I do remember in Dragon Quest VIII how happy I felt to be talking to the princess at nighttime when she transformed back from a horse. And I also played some hentai games in the past.
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