7th Day Electric EP: 16 Sex, Beauty, and PCBs
Added 2021-03-07 20:24:10 +0000 UTCIn this ep I explore a complicated topic that i hope to articulate more clearly in a future video, sex and beauty in video games. I also talk about my love hate relationship with pcbs and how I wish I could afford more ha. If I say something insensitive in the sex section please grant me Grace, still working through my ideas on the vid :-)
Comments
I think if I can really hone in on what I'm getting at in the discussion it'll be more clear what I'm trying to say because I'm not necessarily getting at the idea of representation or something along those lines. I'm definitely trying to focus more on the nature of the relationship of the artist and the player and how sexual content tends to magnify this negotiation. I feel like I'm starting to put the pieces together in my mind. Thanks for the comment! Definitely has helped me think about how I want to approach the subject.
The Electric Underground
2021-03-09 00:56:41 +0000 UTCIf you broach this subject again in future, it might be nice to have a woman on with you and maybe someone who is queer, because gay people play games too. My main issue is when the characters are clearly underaged that are being sexualized and no just because the lore says they are a 500 year old vampire is not an excuse. And it would also be nice to have a balance between sexualized female characters and some more sexualized male characters too.
John Adams
2021-03-08 20:18:09 +0000 UTCI think you hit the nail on the head with this one and agree with your points about Touhou. In the games themselves there is nothing I would consider to be sexualized or even really suggestive for that matter. The fanbase and fangames are of course another story, but really what can be done about that? That's a whole topic in itself, fanbases becoming a life of their own. For example, Undertale. It's hard to just talk about the game itself anymore from my experience, which is a shame.
Chinopolis
2021-03-08 19:23:33 +0000 UTCOh yeah no doubt about it! I think if I do make this video (and it is very likely that I will in the near future) I need to be really on point with what I am trying to say and convey, because otherwise it can get very quickly misunderstood and turn into a nightmare. One thing that I think will help will be to preference the video by saying that the inspiration for the vid does not come from a political objective, but more of an artistic / aesthetic sensibility. Some people can't separate the two of course, but I'll try my best to keep it on that angle.
The Electric Underground
2021-03-08 19:08:53 +0000 UTCI'm glad to hear it! Yeah I think they are fun! A little tidbit is that I usually try to make the music match the theme of the episode ha
The Electric Underground
2021-03-08 19:05:41 +0000 UTCYeah I've heard very divided opinions on touhou because I think certain sections of the fanbase give the original product a more questionable reputation. However, like I said in the episode I've never seen ZUN or the original content go in a sexual direction, so it's sort of like punishing a piece of art for sections of its fanbase rather than its own merits, which I think is unfair.
The Electric Underground
2021-03-08 19:04:56 +0000 UTCHey Mark, I don't know, but I think sexualization in games is a very difficult topic because it's such a political minefield. I'm sure it would be interesting, but I think you'd have to be cautious in how you present this, and even then you might step on someone's toes...
Martin Wöhrle
2021-03-08 18:37:18 +0000 UTCGreat idea. I think it's definitely an elephant-in-the-room subject and I always wondered where it comes from. I hope you can dig something up.
NeonDaggerGames
2021-03-08 17:30:33 +0000 UTCI like the music intermissions. I'll even listen to the whole song if it's not something I'd normally listen to.
Robert St.Angelo
2021-03-08 16:05:04 +0000 UTCI have to admit I struggle to see why people would take issue with Touhou's characters, though I guess many people are used to seeing young girls depicted in Japanese stuff in ways we wouldn't in the west, so maybe by association when people look at Touhou they have some reflexive expectations. Now, Deathsmiles... I had to laugh when I saw the age descriptions of the characters. It's as if some law of the universe dictates that the visual design and canonical age of anime style characters must never intuitively align.
L
2021-03-08 06:05:50 +0000 UTC"Sexualisation is in the loins of the beholder" had me laughing XD. I find Touhou's characters very refreshing - they are indeed mostly 'little girls', but in my opinion ZUN succeeded in expressing 'beauty and innocence' through them, and never while playing the games did I feel weirded out. The character designs are numerous, varied, unique, and take interesting inspiration from various cultures and religions. While there is always gonna be r34, I can't think of a single Touhou character that has any obvious sex appeal, let alone a gratuitously sexy design. I like my space ships, and I definitely appreciate sexy pilots in shmups or characters in fighters, but it is nice to have a shmup with shrine maidens throwing talismans and charms at youkai or a kleptomaniac witch firing massive lasers at vampires, with ZUN's charming (and often derpy) art.
L
2021-03-08 06:03:05 +0000 UTCYeah for the vid I am going to try and do a little research on where this comes from in japanese media, because it is certainly not limited to cave and touhou and I do think there is some sort of strange cultural component going on there. I'm personally not a fan of it either as a general trend, but I think trying to understand where the art my be motivated from is interesting, because there could be a piece of the puzzle I am missing or something.
The Electric Underground
2021-03-08 04:55:56 +0000 UTCYeah these sorts of reductio ad absurdum arguments have always been around where you can take some form of media and reduce it to some mind twisting scourge on society. Fact is humans are curious so we watch horror movies, we watch murder mysteries, and sex and any oddball thing you can think of. Maybe it's some lizard-brain gene survival/propagation algorithm that just runs in our head whether we want it to or not. In any case, art reflects what people are interested in and I think that's the only totally normal and safe way to process that curiosity even with dark subject matter. History shows, to the opposite, a society full of pent up freaks clearly doesn't make it any safer. With all of that said, I still don't feel totally comfortable with the whole Japanese little girl fascination that permeates gaming (you should see my gamedev twitter feed, it's just little girl anime everywhere as long as you can scroll). But I don't feel compelled to swat it down from a moral high-ground. Besides, hard to do that when I have Deathsmiles sitting there on my gaming shelf for all to see!
NeonDaggerGames
2021-03-08 00:28:12 +0000 UTC
