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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   9419 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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Having heard nothing about this controversy before this thread other than that it had something to do with a video game, I simply could not believe the cover art was real. I still kinda don’t.

You buried the lede. They made the little girl look like an age 9 version of the hottest chick in the college sorority, complete with makeup, bedroom eyes, and long flowing hair.

Spec Ops: The Line was controversial for intentionally making the player feel like a war criminal. Is part of the artistic vision of Pragmata to make the player feel like a pedophile?

I appreciate the resistance to ideological uglification in games, but that doesn’t mean we need to make preteen girls look like Kate Upton.

Wait, what the hell? I just heard about the game now, the cover art is a little girl with a blue jacket piggybacking on a robot or something. I see nothing remotely like bedroom eyes sorority girl in the picture. She does have long hair though, it just makes her more babyish IMO. There was no lede to bury. I only get dad vibes from the art. You must be projecting sexualization where there is none, or you have different cultural standards.

What are 'bedroom eyes' anyway? I know I'll regret asking.

hey made the little girl look like an age 9 version of the hottest chick in the college sorority, complete with makeup, bedroom eyes, and long flowing hair.

Oh for feck's sake. I had heard nothing about this whole kerfuffle until I saw Shoe's video, but come on. Newsflash: little girls have long flowing hair. When I was that age I had long flowing hair and it was nothing to do with "hottest chick in the college sorority".

Makeup? Haven't seen enough of the images to notice, but from what I can see, that's not makeup. Again, little girls (and boys!) have clear, unblemished, youthful skin with strong colouring - when I was a girl in my early to mid teens, I was at school with girls with Dresden doll complexions and no makeup was involved at all. Now, she does seem to be wearing lip gloss, but on the other hand it's hard to tell if that's meant to be makeup or if it's her artificial skin under the lighting (she also has a shiny nose in this, and there isn't (yet) the notion that one's nose should be shiny so here's highlighter to make that happen). And besides, there are makeup sets for tweens so we're long past any pearl-clutching over marketing adult shit to kids too young for it. (That TikTok is one where I'd happily join in a torch-bearing mob protesting against it).

Bedroom eyes? I'll have to take your word for that.

Going off looks, Diana is around eight to nine years old. So she won't have the uwu features of the sexualised anime little girls (like the current case of Mimi Yanagi, another storm in an online teacup case and one where the 'artist' damn well is making a 'sexualised four to six year old but it's all chibi art and a totally fake fictional character so what is all the fuss about?') that maybe you are referencing as an internal model of "this is what a child in video games should look like".

Agreed. The character looks like a prepubescent girl. A pretty girl to be sure, and somewhat stylized. She is a bit doll like, which is fitting given that she is supposed to be an android.

I hope we are not reaching a point where anything feminine, cute, or pretty is immediately seen as sexy. But it seems like an unfortunate side effect of internet memes that anything that can be sexualised will be, leading to weird situations like this one.

Exactly. If you felt that the cover was too sexual, thats like some pedo virtue signaling or something.

I hope we are not reaching a point where anything feminine, cute, or pretty is immediately seen as sexy.

No, you're only seeing the connection drawn here because:

a.) angry women on the Internet want to Problematize it and equate "men getting to interact with the cute/feminine" = "pedophilia [as the most effective proxy for 'offensive to Female Privilege']"

b.) angry men on the Internet actually did see it as sexy and are crimestop-ing, or are just simping/pretending to for the benefit of the aformentioned angry women

But it seems like an unfortunate side effect of internet memes that anything that can be sexualised will be

Well, it sure beats only one gender having the privilege to determine what is sexual and what is not. That way lies your "don't worry we won't tell your folks; when you're at school, you're a girl"s.

Yeah the character in question looks nothing like an adult.

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