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I'm a few weeks late to this, ShiftUp dropped the reveal trailer to the Stellar Blade sequel.
For the non-gamers, Stellar Blade is a South Korean action adventure game released in 2024 on the PS5, and on PC a year later. It caught a ton of media attention for its "goonbait" protagonist EVE, her sex appeal was central to the game's marketing. EVE is based on a body-scan of South Korean model Shin Jae-eun, but it's obvious that her body proportions were deliberately exaggerated in the game. IGN France ran a preview piece calling EVE "a doll sexualized by someone you would think has never seen a woman", and issued an apology for that comment after getting called out. The game was a smashing success, sold millions of copies and became the champion game for the anti-woke.
Now the Stellar Blade sequel is self published, and will feature a new protagonist, Evie. The gameplay has also seemingly taken a different style, now set in a populated, linear city area as opposed to the post-apocalyptic world of the original. Now as per tradition, the studio is caught up in a controversy again, but from both sides. The wokes are saying Evie looks like a minor but is still sexualised, now which normal adult would jerk off to that...
Edit: forgot to put it here, some users on resetera also threatened to report the game to payment processors, who were delisting certain games from Steam and other platforms last year.
But the ShiftUp CEO dismissed those criticisms, and recently reposted a comic making fun of those complaints.
The non-wokes are upset because they wanted EVE, and Evie's assets are comparatively tame. And at least some of them (including Asmongold) agree she looks too young as well.
The biggest highlight for me is how "pedophile" has become the last truly potent scare word left in the discourse. But just like "sexist," "racist," and "homophobic" during the Gamergate era (which once forced constant defensive crouching and ritual apologies from those at the receiving end), the term is now being inflated and abused by both sides. Age-gap relationships between consenting adults, anime-style character design, and anything that triggers either tribe's sensitivities gets shoved under the label. Both sides are eager to fire this particular silver bullet at each other because it's the last remaining moral failing both can still agree is beyond the pale. Eventually, we're gonna roll our eyes at this too.
There is no "steelman" for pedophilia, unlike for racism (freedom of association), sexism (traditional gender roles), and homophobia (traditional sexual morality). There's no virtuous principle or sympathetic situation that causes people to think "hmm, maybe sex with kids isn't so black and white." So I expect the taboo to hold indefinitely barring a radical shift in the legal and social understanding of what childhood is and what children are.
As for the sequel's main character -- look, I grew up on early chan imageboards and the unfiltered early 2000s internet so I have a pretty high tolerance and probably a quite warped sense of what's within the bounds of good taste -- but even in my opinion, that's a 7 year old's face on a young woman's body. That's bad enough, but all the exploitative and opportunistic camera angels make it uncanny and perverse. I probably wouldn't play it unless they aged her up at least to adolescence.
EDIT: I'm not talking about the SJW version of "pedophilia" meaning attraction to women under 30. And yes I'm aware that people online like to motte and bailey the term in bad faith. I don't have any problem with people playing this or making this game, just saying it's not for me.
It's a korean game though. Asians already are more neotenous than caucasians on average, and the women even moreso. Back from when I was doing my PhD, my supervisor was a tiny asian women in her 30s who easily could pass as underage. She sometimes had problems ordering beer at the pub for us. Several of the other PhDs were also asian girls in their 20s and some of them looked downright pre-pubescent when judged by european standards. Once you internalize this, the uncanny aesthetics of animes, chans, asian videogames etc. imo make a lot more sense: It's basically a projection of what european women would look like if they were as neotenous as asian women + some minor other asian characteristics often considered attractive. Basically combining all attractive features of european and asian women into one person, as judged by asian men.
I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. I've lived in Asia for over a decade total, I've taught a dozens of asian children ages 3-12 over the span of several years, and I'm married to an Asian woman. Asian people are indeed more neotenous, but not to the degree that the character in the linked video would be mistaken for a teen or young adult.
That's not quite what I mean; Asian women are naturally more neotenous, so once you spend enough time with them, this just becomes normal to you. European women are naturally less neotenous, but this also feels normal if that's what you're used to. The uncanny aspect comes from combining both in a way that doesn't work naturally. Though I agree that it's sometimes not just combining them, but outright turbocharging it.
I understood your point. I think what I was trying to say was that "a projection of what european women would look like if they were as neotenous as asian women + some minor other asian characteristics often considered attractive" is not what we're seeing in the linked video. I think that a better example would be sexy female anime characters or K-pop stars with heavy plastic surgery. Both are highly stylized and a bit uncanny, but IMO they both usually look like adult or at least teenage women (1,000 year old loli dragons aside).
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