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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...
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.
Sexism didn't lose its taboo because of a "steelman". What happened was exhaustion, we saw it liberally stretch from "repeal the 19th" to "why is there no female Bond??" with near equal levels of emotional and ideological fervour. Eventually, it became apparent that it's mostly just bitter and depressed women who just wanted you to be as miserable as they were. Most people would still broadly agree that you shouldn't be a dick to women, even though hair-trigger ideological enforcement is mostly gone.
Nobody is thinking "hmm, maybe sex with kids isn't so black and white." I'm wondering, "uhh do you mean 40yo Steve molested his 8yo niece or did he just go on a date with a 25yo office worker?" This deliberate conflation is not at all minor. And the second and third order effects won't be trivial either, think an ever expanding breach of civil liberties and digital privacy.
Dawg, I live in a mostly Asian suburb and I'd say they were roughly 40% of my classmates in school, I've never seen a 7yo look like that. I've seen adult aged e-girls on douyin look like this. But I will concede that on the sliding scale of neoteny, she is on the higher end.
Sure, but I think that the sort of actual unambiguous sexism that used to be roundly condemned now draws less outrage than it used to. I'm predicting that desoite attempts to abuse the term "pedophilia" to smear men who like women in their 20s, there is a floor on how much the power of the word can erode since the central examples of pedophilia are just too abhorrent for the vast majority of people, unlike racism or sexism.
Dawg, I have also spent a little time around Asian people I disagree. Yes, Asian children look different than the apparent fantasy-Caucasian main character front he video, but the facial age is quite clear to me.
That was my point though, nothing is immune to "crying wolf". You don't have infinite oxygen for anything. In around half the world, the central examples of sexism are still "women are just baby machines", which is still abhorrent to most western people. What they're too exhausted to combat is someone simply tweeting "your body, my choice". Because in your immediate proximity, and near ambient personal experience, "sexism" is mostly "this 2D comic book woman is too busty!" Getting tired of verbal cheapshots need not numb you to the actual act itself.
Okay, we have a floor. But where's the ceiling? Can a normal person just stand upright without hitting their head?
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