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More specifically, Hot Guys Making Out has apparently been a thing for a while now, as in literal years. It's gotten play at conventions and people have posted stories of showing up, deciding to drop in on the game because it sounded like something goofy and fun, and immediately X-carding right out of it because yeah, it's got some Definite Undertones. And Overtones. And the cover art is the sort of thing that you would not want someone to see you reading on the bus. I don't know if there's any one particular inciting incident that caused it to blow up but apparently people have been trying to bring up to the creator how uncomfortable the game is privately and been repeatedly rebuffed so I guess people just decided enough was enough, time to rip the bandage off. So now following everybody who's had issue with it coming forth and saying "yeah this is kinda hosed up" a new contingent of people are coming out in defense of it casting it as people going on the attack against the creator because they're queer and how accusations of pedophilia/adjacency only ever happen to stick onto queer creators and would you also call this OTHER game that deals in difficult themes problematic, etc, despite the fact that those games are usually a lot more up-front about the nature of their content and what they entail. e; I've seen it stated in his defense during these arguments that Ben Lehman/P.H. Lee is themselves a victim of childhood sexual assault and these games are a way for them to explore and unpack their own personal traumas, but to be perfectly honest having seen how Hot Guys Making Out was pitched to prospective backers in a lighthearted and jovial tone instead of with some more serious "hey this is going to be fraught territory" gravitas I'm inclined to say that it's still pretty hosed up. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Nov 26, 2019 |
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Nov 26, 2019 09:00
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Hel posted:Does anyone know what's up with the current discussion about the author of Bliss stage and their apparently multiple games about child loving? At first I mixed it up with the current thing about authors saying that writing pedophilic stuff is ok as long as it's fan fiction, but this seems to be a specific RPG thing. Thankfully I almost exclusively see people calling out defenders of it on my timeline but if anyone knows why this is a thing right now, I've only ever known of Bliss Stage as the "pedophilic mech game" so the fact that it's author would have support from indie RPG developers seem odd to me. TRIGGER WARNING DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND PEDOPHILIA There was a discussion of it in the Trad Games Discord, but Anna Kreider/Wundergeek/Go Make Me a Sandwich blog came out in defense of said author. Chances are I'm missing some deeper context of the drama, but from I and other's reading of the post it did not come off as an honestly-written blog entry. A thing to keep in mind is that Hot Guys Making Out and Bliss Stage were written quite a while ago, so I'm unsure whether the author changed their views on said subject material and thus to what extent their past work reflects who they are today. In response to the controversy the author explicitly pointed out that the characters in HGMO were above 18 (the ages in the original were unspecified), although the problem with Bliss Stage is that the premise is a post-apocalyptic setting where very underage (as young as 12 IIRC) engage in sex to power their mechs. And one of the PC roles is an adult who may also have sex with the children. The problem is that neither book had 'trigger warnings' for said material and in some cases (like with what I heard of HGMO) played the tropes straight rather than using meta-text to reflect on the hosed up nature or otherwise responsibly handle the comfort of readers and gaming groups. Bliss Stage I think points out the problematic nature at one point, but adult-child sex is very squicky and triggering and some critics who read the books got PTSD reignited and asked for said products to be taken down. While I do not have direct links or means of authenticating people's Internet identity, Kreider's blog was problematic in that they presumed that all of the critics were cis white guys while I've heard that people who've taken issue with the above 2 RPGs include queer people and people of color. It's a similar logical fallacy I've also seen with Sigmata's creator who assumed that people criticizing his game all came from middle class first world environments. While I haven't read HGMO (I read Bliss Stage once a long time ago), one of the criticisms I heard is that it reflects some of the more problematic trends in yaoi: where the top/seme is manipulative to the bottom/uke, including use of financial control. Many gay men have a problem with how yaoi sends one-dimensional negative stereotypes, and the "older male predator seducing younger boys" is a well-worn homophobic media portrayal. Given how toxic social media is, Twitter in particular being terrible for these types of discussions, I can definitely see how in some circumstances some people used the outrage to harass and send threatening messages to PH Lee. On the other hand, tabletop gaming has a definite problem with gamers being predators at worst or to a lesser extent uncritically repeating toxic messages about sex and consent in their products. So I cannot really condemn the people who feel upset about said RPGs' content. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Nov 26, 2019 |
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Nov 26, 2019 09:02
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One common theme I've seen about this is people saying that, if you cancel Hot Guys Making Out for age differences, imagine what other RPGs you would have to cancel. We'll have to cancel Changeling: the Dreaming? I cancelled that a decade ago!
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Nov 26, 2019 09:23
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Unusually for Twitter, we've actually seen a wide swath of middle road where people identify that there is definitely a space for games that deal with trauma and pain but HGMO is very, very much not that game - doubly so because of the bait and switch it pulls with its pitch, which is literally "this is sexy and gay."
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Nov 26, 2019 10:33
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Zurui posted:Unusually for Twitter, we've actually seen a wide swath of middle road where people identify that there is definitely a space for games that deal with trauma and pain but HGMO is very, very much not that game - doubly so because of the bait and switch it pulls with its pitch, which is literally "this is sexy and gay." Right, this is basically my take on it. Other games exist which tackle fraught subjects and I'm fine with them even if they aren't my particular cup of tea, but the big issue seems to be a one-two punch of 1). HGMO not laying its cards on the table and 2). even once you're into it, it seems questionable how well it actually holds up as a thoughtful examination of abusive sexual relationships. A lot of the sour feelings are also coming from the fact that, according to a lot of the people involved, they have tried to approach this matter with Lee and others before privately and outside of the Discourseosphere to no avail and to be honest, given the hobby's history of brushing off similar concerns in the past until everything blows up into a huge messy ball of recrimination I can't say I blame anyone who's gunshy about that sort of thing.
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Nov 26, 2019 11:15
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I’ve been following this from the callout and seen no major vicious hostility*, just a lot of discussion about how to deal with situations where survivors of trauma uncritically reiterate their trauma in an unsafe way for a mass audience for money. That and an increasingly frustrated discussion about how the long-ignored reaction to Lee’s games is being characterised by a lot of figures defending them as a vicious harassment campaign, censorship of any complex or dark material rather than a specific criticism, and generally as an angry mob who are unwilling to accept ‘messy’ people and who have to be emotively shouted down and shamed rather than spoken with. Gotta take issue with the idea that the edits Lee’s made ‘confirm’ that the characters are over 18, in any case. Aside from the questionable cover art, the scenario for the game - specifically the intro fiction in the first few pages - clearly lays out that the younger character was removed from an orphanage by the older one. The character list also describes the younger character as ‘passive, introspective’ and the older one as ‘passionate, active’. The implications build up for the characters’ relative ages and relationship. *yeah Twitter only gives you a restricted, curated view of the indie community/communities, but if the people defending P H Lee are seeing attacks and the people criticising them aren’t, then maybe the problem is in the former’s slice, not the latter’s
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Nov 26, 2019 11:26
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Yeah, the walkback about the ages is not only blatantly transparent, it ignores the huge issue at hand. Queer culture in general is tremendously unwilling to analyze the role of power differential in a lot of relationships. For those of you who don't know: especially among gay men, closeting has resulted in young people being put out into unfortunate situations. Historically, these men have often been "adopted" by older men or women and put in incredibly precarious situations regarding sexual and relationship expectations. This was portrayed as normal and good in the eighties and nineties and we are only in the last decade or so grappling with the long-term cultural consequences. Whether the younger person is 14 or 19 is really irrelevant when the age gap is 20+ years.
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Nov 26, 2019 12:08
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The age gap in the text and images reads more like mid-20s/mid-teens (e.g. 24 vs 16), but that’s still real bad, and that’s before you consider that the older is the guardian of the younger, and that the older is shielding the younger from the violence of the Spanish civil war. There’s a massive power imbalance and dependence there. This isn’t two adults with different ages finding one another in a dangerous world that fears, hates, and doesn’t understand them, coming together in a passionate if fraught romance, this is an older person pursuing a minor they have significant legal and social power over, and this is described as steamy, sexy, playful etc. And, of course, the fictional framing doesn’t overwrite the historic context.
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Nov 26, 2019 12:55
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Why isn't there a wholesome hierarchy-free game about gay love and shooting fascists in Spain?
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Nov 26, 2019 13:12
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Libertad! posted:TRIGGER WARNING DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND PEDOPHILIA Kreider moved/moves in the same circle of indie RPG devs as PH Lee and obviously they draw a lot of inspiration from each other since Kreider made their own hack of a PH Lee game (Polaris -> Thou Art But A Warrior), so yeah there probably is a heavy bias in this defense. Not that they need to be objective here but it is a bit galling to see this incident reduced to "minor transgressions" that Lee is being unfairly pilloried for. It's been disappointing to see since concerns about Bliss Stage's handling of pedophilia undertones and Hot Guys Making Out have been left hanging around unaddressed for a long time. It's ridiculous to say that this poo poo falls on queer creators more when there's a ton of examples of games by queer creators that are more upfront about their content and how it may be triggering, but also still manage to approach it maturely and gracefully. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Nov 26, 2019 |
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Nov 26, 2019 13:46
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Yeah, for example: Monsterhearts is a metaphor for romantic and sexual tension between queer minors but explicitly calls out the unfortunate and often toxic nature of those relationships. Everyone involved is equally confused and/or powerless. The only way to escape that is to grow.
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Nov 26, 2019 14:59
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This is like the storygames equivalent of those 90s-00s White Wolf coattail-riders that would go "Turns out the bad guys are actually good, and your PCs have been fascist murderers this whole time!"
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Nov 26, 2019 16:31
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That whole discussion has bled over into SF/F lit circles as well, and led to me crossing an author I enjoyed off my to read list when they started stanning for pedophile erotica with the tired old 'Its just fiction' and 'censoring this is like censoring mention of homosexuality'. I'm old enough to remember hearing the 'homosexuals are all child predators' arguments in the real world thanks, and they're still common in conservative circles.
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Nov 26, 2019 16:44
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Liquid Communism posted:That whole discussion has bled over into SF/F lit circles as well, and led to me crossing an author I enjoyed off my to read list when they started stanning for pedophile erotica with the tired old 'Its just fiction' and 'censoring this is like censoring mention of homosexuality'. You can't just drop this and not tell us who the author was.
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Nov 26, 2019 17:16
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I remember discussing Bliss Stage a few times in my friend group when it first came out and the discussions tended to boil down to "Yeah Evangelion is kind of hosed up isn't it?" followed by uncomfortable silence because no one wanted to seriously discuss the pedophilia RPG.
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Nov 26, 2019 17:28
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MollyMetroid posted:You can't just drop this and not tell us who the author was. I don't know if that's who they are talking about but Ann Leckie, author of Ancillary Justice wrote this post as well as making so tweets that are pretty much saying that you aren't allowed to complain about people writing and publishing pedophilic stories because you don't know their background. I think she's going at it from the "nothing should be off limit to writers" angle but it's still a lovely viewpoint IMO. Edit: Also didn't know until now that AO3 was ok with hosting this kind of content, the fact that the biggest fan-fiction archive is OK with this poo poo is pretty bad. Hel fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Nov 26, 2019 |
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Nov 26, 2019 17:41
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Kurieg posted:I remember discussing Bliss Stage a few times in my friend group when it first came out and the discussions tended to boil down to "Yeah Evangelion is kind of hosed up isn't it?" followed by uncomfortable silence because no one wanted to seriously discuss the pedophilia RPG. There's definitely a way to point out that Evangelion is full of hosed of people damaged by various forms of trauma who engage in bad and abusive relationships without dipping into pedophilia.
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Nov 26, 2019 17:52
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I really appreciate this discussion because from my POV Ann Leckie just started posting in defense of freely available fic sexualizing children and I was confounded and appalled. It’s good to know where that came from, at least.
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Nov 26, 2019 17:57
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Hel posted:I don't know if that's who they are talking about but Ann Leckie, author of Ancillary Justice wrote this post as well as making so tweets that are pretty much saying that you aren't allowed to complain about people writing and publishing pedophilic stories because you don't know their background. I think she's going at it from the "nothing should be off limit to writers" angle but it's still a lovely viewpoint IMO. That's the one. I have long been of the standpoint that there is a material and easily seen difference between a narrative that has a couple teenagers having sex in it or which deals with child sexual abuse as a serious topic and erotica that is written for the gratification of pedophiles. Allowing the latter to be an accepted norm in your community just leads to people seeking that content making themselves at home in your spaces, and tradgames and SF/F already have enough sex pests without creating a home for child sex abuse enthusiasts. This may not be the most nuanced of opinions, but it is the windmill I'll happily tilt at for the rest of my days.
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Nov 26, 2019 18:03
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Hel posted:I don't know if that's who they are talking about but Ann Leckie, author of Ancillary Justice wrote this post as well as making so tweets that are pretty much saying that you aren't allowed to complain about people writing and publishing pedophilic stories because you don't know their background. I think she's going at it from the "nothing should be off limit to writers" angle but it's still a lovely viewpoint IMO. Honestly the core argument of "it's difficult to tell the difference between stories dealing with trauma and stories for the gratification of pedophiles and therefore we shouldn't go out swinging against the latter because it'll certainly harm the former" seems reasonable. Not necessarily right, but it's an argument that I think has some value to it so it's worth trying to figure out how we can best reach a solution that satisfied everyone.
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Nov 26, 2019 18:37
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LatwPIAT posted:Honestly the core argument of "it's difficult to tell the difference between stories dealing with trauma and stories for the gratification of pedophiles and therefore we shouldn't go out swinging against the latter because it'll certainly harm the former" seems reasonable. Not necessarily right, but it's an argument that I think has some value to it so it's worth trying to figure out how we can best reach a solution that satisfied everyone. If your work harms the people you're ostensibly supposed to be supporting then I think you deserve any and all criticism directed your way.
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Nov 26, 2019 18:43
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I'm pretty sure it's possible to use metaphor as insulation here.
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Nov 26, 2019 18:53
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In this particular case... why fight for trauma coping mechanisms to be publicly available in an archive of fanworks and porn? Surely they’d be better served in a different and more specific context. This argument always comes off a lot like ‘TTRPG players using the table for informal therapy can’t be told apart from people pursuing their own kicks to the detriment of other players, so we need to be generous to all of them’ when a better answer is ‘stop using your weekly D&D session for therapy, it’s not going to work out well.’ Tabletop games that work as therapy are good but holy hell don’t mix them in with games for other purposes, that’s going to be a bad time.
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Nov 26, 2019 18:53
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Kurieg posted:If your work harms the people you're ostensibly supposed to be supporting then I think you deserve any and all criticism directed your way. Some people are probably going to get hurt reading it and some people are going to be hurt if they don't have the opportunity to read something like it, and some people are going to get hurt because the culture it enables and some people are going to get hurt because of the culture not allowing it would create. Just because something you're proposing might get someone hurt doesn't mean it's inherently wrong - and since people are going to get hurt either way I think taking into account what people are saying about one kind of harm that could occur is going to be valuable. Joe Slowboat posted:In this particular case... why fight for trauma coping mechanisms to be publicly available in an archive of fanworks and porn? People often use fiction to work through trauma, so it makes some amount of sense to put the trauma-coping fanworks with the rest of the fanworks. Especially because it can be difficult to divide between fiction that intentionally helps people with trauma and fiction that unintentionally helps people with trauma.
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Nov 26, 2019 19:14
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I had a group that (I later realised) was trying to using the game as therapy, and it ended up in an unfathomable spiral of dysfunctional relationships, substance abuse, suicide attempts, and diagnoses that should have been diagnosed decades earlier. If you're playing an RPG (or doing anything else) as DIY therapy, all you've likely accomplished is avoiding real help from people trained to provide it. If you can't find or afford therapy, please at least seek out a support group or crisis line. If you have insurance, see what options it provides for wellness visits. Self-care is a real thing that can help, but not if it's your only source of care.
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Nov 26, 2019 19:24
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Oh, huh. Apparently I have confused Ben Lehman with Ben Robbins for a literal decade. Glad that problems solved.
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Nov 26, 2019 19:28
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Well that's an author coming off of my "someone whose opinions I trust said this was fun" list and going onto my "nope" list. Thank you!
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Nov 26, 2019 19:49
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Yeah because loving yikesAnne Leckie posted:you squint hard enough someone in a scene is maybe underage (according to whose laws? But that’s a whole other can of worms isn’t it) Apparently the lit/fic stuff came up around Tamsyn Muir which is a bummer because Gideon the Ninth seemed rad but oh well.
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Nov 26, 2019 20:12
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LatwPIAT posted:Honestly the core argument of "it's difficult to tell the difference between stories dealing with trauma and stories for the gratification of pedophiles and therefore we shouldn't go out swinging against the latter because it'll certainly harm the former" seems reasonable. Not necessarily right, but it's an argument that I think has some value to it so it's worth trying to figure out how we can best reach a solution that satisfied everyone. Leckie makes the age-old of mistake of assuming that authorial intent is more important than how a text comes across to readers; if I sit down to write a cathartic exploration of my trauma but what I end up producing ends up having an unhelpful effect on folk who've had similar trauma and makes people who fetishise that trauma get all horny and sweaty, I have pretty undeniably hosed up. Moreover, in general it's usually possible to come to some sort of reasoned conclusion as to what stance on a subject a text is promoting. Is this relationship being presented as being precious and special and something to be desired or admired? Is it presented as something which is traumatic and horrible? Is it presented as a horrible mistake? Is it presented as an excellent learning experience for both? Is it presented as manipulative skeevery? Is it presented as welcome tuition? Again, unless a writer is incompetent you can usually tell.
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Nov 26, 2019 20:12
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If only there was a different recent gay guy that suffered a downfall for this exact "age disparity is actually a good thing" argument, but his politics were the opposite so we could observe the difference between when someone you kinda like does something loving gross vs. when someone you hate does it. poo poo, as I recall Milo also tried to backpedal the age of "This isn't gross you guys" back to 18 after the fact. It's some old fashioned gay adult bullshit, and it's nice to see the world rejecting it.
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Nov 26, 2019 20:20
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MollyMetroid posted:Well that's an author coming off of my "someone whose opinions I trust said this was fun" list and going onto my "nope" list. Thank you! To be fair, none of this shows up in the Ancillary Justice series, which is generally good. SFF publishing and fandom is riven with bullshit, unfortunately. In this particular case it seems like the side of people who argue for the literary value of fan fiction (which is a genuine fight in the genre and that’s the right side to be on, writing is writing) have circled the wagons because they perceive this as an attack on fan fiction generally. This is wrong, bad, and harmful, but as someone who takes a pretty strong stance on ‘no, don’t have that on AO3 you terrible idiots’ would still recommend Leckie’s fiction.
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Nov 26, 2019 20:57
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Warthur posted:The argument seems to be based on the notion that you can't analyse a text and come to a reasonable conclusion about its overall tone and effect. But have you hosed up so much you deserve to have your name dragged through the mud online for being a pedophile? That's the context of what Leckie is writing about : an attitude and a standard that she sees as being used to provide a legitimate front for abuse. Warthur posted:Moreover, in general it's usually possible to come to some sort of reasoned conclusion as to what stance on a subject a text is promoting. Is this relationship being presented as being precious and special and something to be desired or admired? Is it presented as something which is traumatic and horrible? Is it presented as a horrible mistake? Is it presented as an excellent learning experience for both? Is it presented as manipulative skeevery? Is it presented as welcome tuition? Again, unless a writer is incompetent you can usually tell. The question is then, I feel, will people actually endeavour to make this distinction? One of the things Leckie raises is that in an attempt to go after the bad stuff, the not-bad stuff will suffer. And I think that's very relevant right now because as we're speaking there's a huge controversy over an SF/F author who was found to have written a Homestuck fanfic about Obviously, the opposite situation isn't desirable either - but I don't think it's the kind of clear-cut situation where it's reasonable to just dismiss Leckie outright (Which you're not doing anyway since you're engaging with the question.) because I think the concerns are legitimate, even if Leckie's conclusion about what isn't to be done is ultimately not the best one.
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Nov 26, 2019 21:22
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Why the hell is anyone here actually entertaining the idea that these games were made as some kind of therapy tool? They transparently are not, the author just said they were to deflect criticism of his games. It wasn’t even a very good criticism, he’s just hoping that no will realize you can actually, like, read the texts and determine that his excuse is obvious bullshit. Also “Isn’t Evangelion hosed up?!?” isn’t an excuse because, as much as that anime was formative for a lot of people, it’s still full skeezy misogynist bullshit without any purpose other than being skeezy misogynist bullshit.
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Nov 26, 2019 21:30
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I think that titling your game "Hot Guys Making Out" is certainly a point against the idea that it's meant as therapy, certainly.
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Nov 26, 2019 21:34
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Mors Rattus posted:I think that titling your game "Hot Guys Making Out" is certainly a point against the idea that it's meant as therapy, certainly. “It’s a therapy tool” is the “No I am actually protesting racism with this [racism], you just aren’t smart enough to see how subtle I am” of RPGs.
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Nov 26, 2019 21:37
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jakodee posted:“It’s a therapy tool” is the “No I am actually protesting racism with this [racism], you just aren’t smart enough to see how subtle I am” of RPGs. jakodee posted:Why the hell is anyone here actually entertaining the idea that these games were made as some kind of therapy tool? They transparently are not, the author just said they were to deflect criticism of his games. It wasn’t even a very good criticism, he’s just hoping that no will realize you can actually, like, read the texts and determine that his excuse is obvious bullshit. Nessus fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Nov 26, 2019 |
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Nov 26, 2019 21:47
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theironjef posted:If only there was a different recent gay guy that suffered a downfall for this exact "age disparity is actually a good thing" argument, but his politics were the opposite so we could observe the difference between when someone you kinda like does something loving gross vs. when someone you hate does it. He also tried to claim right at the end that it was his attempt to work through being raped as a kid, but by that point he'd pretty much cycled through every justification he could think of, so it kind of got buried in the mix.
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Nov 26, 2019 22:07
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quote:Who is this game for? This is taken directly from Lee's web-site listing for Hot Guys Making Out. If you want to make a therapeutic game, this is not how you frame it. This is not how you market it. This product description is, at best, negligent.
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Nov 26, 2019 22:29
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Yeah, even if you're fine with the subject matter itself, the dishonesty regarding what the game's actually about should be pretty damning; the author and advertising material are actively deceptive regarding its content. There really isn't any excuse for that.
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Nov 27, 2019 01:00
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LatwPIAT posted:But have you hosed up so much you deserve to have your name dragged through the mud online for being a pedophile? If outside observers cannot distinguish you from a pedophile and your work fuels the malfunction of actual pedophiles then you have materially contributed to the penumbra of harm around child abuse, even if you do not personally abuse any children yourself, and treating you like a pedophile is a legitimate immune system response on the part of society.
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Nov 27, 2019 08:58
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