rayon
waifutech enthusiast
The Dork Enlightenment
User ID: 2632
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
14d ago
Well, I didn't say the Aphrodite of I is a trve love goddess either. They're roughly the same in (lack of) attractiveness, but the first one is merely... meh?, whereas the chad jawline of Aphrodite II tips her over into actively repulsive territory for me.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
15d ago
I know so many real women who have vastly squarer or more masculine jawlines than this character, if that is really the ‘issue’.
I would entertain this argument for literally any other character than the literal goddess of beauty, who you'd think would have been required by station to be at the very least distinctly female, nevermind conventionally attractive.
I agree not every woman in vidya has to be goonbait, however:
Hades II
has to be some sort of anti-record in this regard, unlike the first game I don't think there's a single conventionally-attractive female character in that one, like you cannot tell me Aphrodite of II is not a man's face stapled onto a woman's figure. Even so, I was still a big fan of the first game and, while definitely another example of uh, female empowerment, it didn't bother me much... until in some Xth run I hit a Dionysus encounter, and something clicked for me.
Now, obvious over-the-top safe(?)horny parody is obvious, you don't even see Dionysus often in the second game because he's no longer a "main" boon giver and you can only meet him once a run in his literal goon cave, but consider: can you imagine a distaff counterpart here, even as a blatant parody? Can you imagine say Aphrodite in full bikini bimbo mode, with her divine knockers front and center? Somehow I don't think the parody defense would've saved any shred of the designers' skin from being flogged on xitter at every occasion. It's just tribal shit. Pandering to the male gaze is shunned in a way pandering to the female headcanon gaze never was and never is.
While Rose is not a great example of enshittification (IMO she looks alright, Belmonts broadly are brick shithouses anyway), and full-on goonerbrain is its own kind of insanity, I think that people designing stronk women like her or gestures at Hades II know exactly (or at least intuitively) what they're doing, and lambasting them for it is fair game. Castlevania specifically was a stupid choice of flex considering the more ingrained (and attractive) associations fans are likely to have upon hearing "Castlevania female protagonist". I try to retain my lack of interest in the culture war around vidya, but as the saying goes, the culture war sure seems interested in me.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
25d ago
Complaining about the weird sexual practices generates more outrage and more circling of the wagons than critiquing mosquito nets.
Being more sensitive about their [personal] sex lives than their [political] beliefs is definitely not unique to rationalists, the tendency is virtually universal. Would you not object more harshly to someone criticizing you for who you sleep with, who you feel attracted to, than if they'd just called you a X-triber or tried to point out how stupid your politics are?
The same kind of people that slurped up lazy 2B cosplays (white wig, blindfold, tits, ass) are now calling half-naked women trying to entice them with blond wigs and green fingernails "slutbloods" and encouraging each other to block them.
More evidence of the wholesomeness of the trend, no? 2B's design is not exactly subtle and eminently lewdable, obviously intended as coomer bait, so uh, objectifying her is acceptable and even encouraged - I'll be the first to defend Automata's story but it's largely irrelevant as far as lewding 2B goes. Whereas the lust for Malfoid (whose "design" doesn't really exist, but can be trivially imagined as fairly chaste given the standard of dress in Hogwarts) stems more from the proverbial heart-boner than the more traditional kind, as the OP describes.
Thus, cosplayers aping the aesthetics of 2B are judged (and accepted) immediately on their uh, visible merits since that's the schtick of the character, whereas the visual appeal of Malfoid seems largely incidental (since it's fanfiction, most of the appeal lies in the headcanon character dynamics), and women appropriating it are seen as missing the point at best, and vainly exploiting men's genuine bellyfeels at worst.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
26d ago
Scott complains about the way Pinker characterises the AI doomers as a "cult" who recite the "catechism" of their creed. Comparing group X to a religion or a cult is indeed a cheap way to make that group seem ridiculous
And yet, per Yud, every cause wants to be a cult (Scott himself posted on this topic too). How is he of all people surprised and even offended by comparisons to cults, surely he's smart enough to look past the emotive connotations? Isn't that just evidence that they're winning, or at least are on the right track w/r/t community building?
Less charitably - now that AI doom has gone from a fringe obsession to something actually resembling a movement with visible political influence and cultural cachet, is he finally concerned about how stuff like this reads to normies, whose support is instrumental in advancing their cause?
"I'll believe AI poses a threat to the human race when someone who hasn't had sex with Aella says so."
Kek I'll remember this one, thanks. I still think calling rationalists writ large a sex cult is uncharitable - weird sexual practices aren't a defining trait of their culture - but I agree that at this point it's undeniably a trait, can't be easily written off or ignored as convenient, and is bound to cause some friction pun not intended in the long march towards the mainstream.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
27d ago
they themselves drugged a girl
everything else plays out more like her being a gullible mark with poor self-defense skills
They were on their home turf with the strength of numbers; she was smaller and physically vulnerable
I'm sure they pitched the first dose as just a fun party drug (if they didn't straight-up spike her drink)
The drug they forced on her was a dissociative anaesthetic commonly used to tranquilize large animals
she was too far gone to speak clearly,
as far as I can see, anyone who ever accepts a drink from a guy at a party could end up slippery-sloping into this situation
I commend the smooth slide into cataclysmic gender-wide implications, "delicate social work of extricating herself safely from a roomful of big, strong, horny young men" is especially evocative. Still, this is highly overwrought, I don't particularly care for this kind of argument.
No matter how you embellish the literal descriptors, the core issue remains that the initial offer was straightforwardly unsavory, and the woman, holding highly unrealistic expectations (inb4 "what, to not be treated like a piece of meat?", to which my answer begins with "play stupid games"), decides in sound mind to take it. Afterwards rumors get out, as rumors do in their kind of environment (do we even have evidence that the guys started them?), the woman discovers she doesn't like the label that her social circle assigns to women that voluntarily participate in gangbangs, and (only at that point, not before!) reaches straight for a superweapon and outsources her problem to the public court. Judging from cordial text exchanges, she evidently didn't regret the sex she had in the short term - only the reputation it has eventually wrought her. Such oopsies are usually avoided by thinking through the things you want to do, and considering risks wherever you take them beforehand (and you vividly describe how great the risk is, here); neither the men nor the woman have done this here, and now female hypoagency dictates that she is blameless.
My issue is mostly with the last part.
we don't usually argue that the scammers should go unpunished
Would you say the fratboys are going unpunished, here? Haven't there been expulsions already? Nothing is ever enough in culture war I guess, but irregardless of that, I haven't even argued they should go unpunished - only that they don't have the entirety of the blame here, and even that seems too much to stomach. You're too comfortable putting words in my mouth.
Absent some general principle ... , what would you propose she should have done to avoid your moral opprobrium?
As mentioned above, not getting into group sex with drugs and men you barely know involved would be a good start. Not hurling spurious rape accusations as soon as her reputation came under threat would also be nice, but given that "there is only rape" I suppose the, ahem, incentives made it inevitable.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
27d ago
Implausible that you'd find a sexual instinct so strong as to be irresistible in straight men, but not appearing at all in gay male sexuality.
I don't think "not appearing at all" is valid here (I imagine gay men would also like their partners to be faithful to them, for one, though "gay relationships are just ✿better✿ without all this dumb het monkey-neuron baggage" is a common headcanon among fujos in my experience), but even assuming arguendo - really? Even without leaving the topic of gay porn, it's plainly observable that gay porn for straights, gay porn for gays, and gay porn for women are three radically different categories. Straights and gays are indeed attracted to different things. Do you think it's a coincidence that traps/femboys tend to look like young women (hint: it's in the name)?
In any case, you've missed my main point:
it's irrelevant because the central issue here is not just male preference for women's sexual exclusivity; it's male gang-bang/promiscuous seduction instinct in combination with male preference for female sexual exclusivity.
We are actually in agreement that the former produces ungood results and is overall uncouth and bad; the difference is that you also condemn the latter, whereas I point out the impossibility of being rid of it, as "the corrupting power of cock", ie sexual exclusivity, is more or less the core of male heterosexuality. You expect your gf to not fuck around, or vice versa, only elevate a woman who doesn't fuck around to the position of "gf". Visible disregard for fidelity is disqualifying.
Hence, the men's initial offer and the whole "free pussy" part were straightforwardly unsavory (and are what's actually contemptible about them, here), but the gradual dissociation from the woman after the fact, especially once the rumors started getting out, is at the very least unsurprising considering the nature of a gangbang. Again, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. This ain't Manacled, she wasn't getting adopted by a gaggle of vampire billionaires handsome strong men as some kind of honorary gf, and the first guy to step up and defend m'lady would've instantly made himself the scapegoat hate-sink and designated loser (and I heard women happen to not like socially-shunned losers much, so everyone loses anyway). Absent airtight privacy, which I don't think you ever have at a frat house, this could only ever end in catastrophe; as mentioned somewhere downthread, in the current_year there isn't a word for "woman regrets a sexual encounter". In the grim darkness of the literal present, there is only rape.
To reiterate, much of this could have been avoided by the woman by simply uh, controlling via reason some of her baser impulses, like that to attend a drug-fueled gangbang. Even if the gentlemen in a sudden show of cojones managed to coordinate and close ranks around m'lady, with seven impulsive men and one easily-swayed woman vs. literally the entire zeitgeist hankering for a good ol' rape scandal, not to mention frat/sor heads covering their own asses, the odds are pretty grim.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
28d ago
Right, and that is "the corrupting power of cock": men's faith that any woman (not dudes, though) has irretrievably lost status, even social existence, once a bro has stuck his dick inside her. Scoot into the parallel universe of gay interactions, and penetration somehow doesn't seem to work that way.
To paraphrase Scott since I don't remember the source, don't hate the player, hate the lazy millions-of-years-old evolutionary meme generator that optimizes for stupid things. Sexual exclusivity was ~always the deal in heterosexual relationships, and seems likely to remain the deal; I too have my gripes with certain "faiths" and behaviors of women w/r/t dating and sex, but that's the table stakes.
What must it be like to interact with a female peer, knowing that you and your friends desperately want to do something to her that you fully intend will diminish her as a person in your eyes? "This will destroy and disinvite you, please please pretty please can we do it?"
Can't speak for the meatheads in question, but I imagine that nobody thought this through and (as with the woman) the idea sounded pretty exciting to the men beforehand, the immediate aftermath was pretty cordial from circumstantial evidence, and it wasn't until the inevitable rumor mill and social consequences kicked in that there was any destruction taking place. (Another strike against the social media panopticon.)
Make no mistake, I defend the men here only insofar as they are slaves to sexual/social incentives they can't unilaterally change. I am however also against promoting female hypoagency, and think that normalizing making certain choices like not getting into what sounds highly similar to a gangbang with drugs and men you barely know involved, as suggested downthread, would be a good start.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
28d ago
A certain Austrian painter reacts to the AfD (cw: aislop aigem)
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
28d ago
But this chick was putting out for them, putting herself out for them, and a man has at least some obligations in response to that.
...Hold up.
These guys just tried to get laid and then drop her like a hot potato, and while it's not absolutely clear to me that it was them spreading the knowledge that she'd been fuckin', it seems a little more plausible than that her sorority sisters wanted it common knowledge that they harbored sluts.
The seven young men, individually and as a group, acted like total fucking cads, and they were getting away with it.
They felt entitled to her body at face-value terms, that "consent" was the only thing needed
But what else is needed if both parties consent? Keeping it quiet? Right, after all dumb young men never brag about sexual conquests. Commitment? How do you imagine commitment in a gangbang?
You even acknowledge this in a way:
In short, they disrespected her severely, and by disrespecting her so severely, transmuted her essence from "fun woman" or even "nice, sweet girl who made a mistake" into "crazy slut," because the only person you can get away with doing that to is "crazy slut."
I would shift the focus here from the (sfw)corrupting power of cock to the incentives behind behavior, which you acknowledge for the woman but fail to apply to the men. The only person she can get away with after a gangbang is "crazy slut", but - extending this logic - what kind of person can you get away with being as a male participant? A healthy "aftermath" of sex is normally some measure of commitment to the woman, but can you imagine doing the "responsible" thing here, committing, to however small extent, to a woman you and your buddies have liberally taken turns on? Defending the honor of the nice, sweet girl who made a mistake, at the direct cost to your own status? Can you in your heart of hearts see such a man in this case as anything else but a mark, who's chosen to pay an upkeep everyone else has handily refused? Can the woman? Is the shadow of the gangbang not going to influence every joke and conversation (both with the woman and with the buddies) for years after? Remember we're talking about meatheaded fratboys here, sophisticated high-decouplers they ain't, stupid monkey neuron-activation shit absolutely can and does rule the status dynamics among those.
It would seem to me that the only winning move for a man here (insofar as the obviously superior "not to play" is not anymore an option) to preserve his status is to put on his best yes_chad.jpg face, mentally write the woman off, and proceed with business as usual. The cad-ness of the fuckboys here is largely in the gall of the initial offer (to which the woman has apparently consented); their behavior afterwards (as is hers) is entirely the result of incentives. A gangbang pretty obviously precludes any possibility of "healthy" commitment; if the woman was misled by yaoi the culture to expect otherwise, I extend my sincere condolences, but shrug play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Were they allowed to turn her into a slut just because she slept around?
Uh... turn? I thought that "someone who sleeps around" is basically the definition of "slut". Sleeping around requires having sex, and sex is a 2 (uh, 2+) players game. Bit of a chicken-egg problem, but once again I don't think the almighty power of cock is the sole answer here.
Excuse me? Then why did she have all that sex? Just for the love of the game?
I mean... why not? Does it have to be more complicated than that? My experience with horny university-age women is that they are, well, horny, and frequently think/talk about sex and sex-adjacent things even if we assume female hypoagency they're sane enough to not brazenly act on it (same as university-age men, incidentally!). One girl I knew pretty well confided to me that on her graduation party, she stumbled on the timeless Prom Classic (i.e two coeds having sex in a toilet stall) and her immediate gut reaction was along the lines of "I wish that was me...?" even as she hastily shut the door, bolted in inexplicable embarrassment, and refrained from having impulsive sexual relations that night. This is the Motte aka galaxy-brain central, so I genuinely don't mean to disparage you for positing that ackchyually the real issue is traditions and society-wide troubles three OoMs removed from the particular happening and something something incentives (hell, I literally just did the latter), but at the same time I really don't think we have to dig very deep here.
Unless you're doing a variation of the Christian server meme, this scans as unrelated bait. Casual drive-by allegations aside, how is the Motte even a meaningfully "Christian" website, other than perhaps in allowing Christians to post?
Those ain't divine knockers by any stretch, man, use your imagination!
More seriously - true by technicality, I suppose, but I'd hoped my parallel with Dionysus was clear enough. To illustrate: the man in question here is a jovial chiseled himbo with a wine cup in hand, actively (but not too actively, of course) complimenting the uh, confused Melinoe, with his only article of clothing being a fucking leopard thong which does a very poor job of covering the man's bulging Olympian dong. What do you imagine the female equivalent to such a character would be here, and how hard would the usual suspects kvetch from it? Even the (superior) Smite version seems quaint in comparison.
My point is that the only reason such naked (heh) safehorny pandering went into the game is because they knew nobody would dare give them shit for it. Female-oriented goonbait is entirely normalized.
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