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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24845 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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Culture war in Germany: former COVID-era minister of health Jens Spahn has finally resigned as the leader of the parliamentary group of the conservative CDU/CSU.

Spahn (born 1980) got elected to the Bundestag in 2002 and served as a backbencher. He came out as gay in 2012, some 11 years after Wowereit had firmly established that gay politicians were a thing in Germany.

Under Merkel IV, he became minister of health. I surmise the reasoning was that he was a loyal party member and the health ministry was not particularly important, so the damage he could do there was limited.

Then, COVID hit, and health policy became kinda important. Oops.

I will credit that he was no RFK Jr, but mostly did what the experts recommended (whatever you think of that), apart from having meetings with donors when he had just warned against gatherings (like many other politicians did).

But he certainly saw an opportunity for grift and took it. This was the so-called Maskenaffäre. In the summer of 2020, it became increasingly clear that COVID-19 was airborne and particle filter masks (US: N95, EU: FFP2) would offer some protection. This lead to a dearth of protective masks in Europe. So Spahn funneled money taxpayer money to entrepreneurs with close ties to the CDU/CSU to procure such masks.

Now, it was obviously reasonably for the ministry of health to acquire some face masks even at inflated prices common for medical equipment -- at least for people working in hospitals, but he overestimated the amount required by orders of magnitude. Per WP, he bought 5.8 billion masks for an average price of about an Euro per mask. That is 70 masks per person in Germany, most of which were later destroyed when they expired.

As someone very willing to wear masks when recommended (at least until I got multiple doses of the vaccine), I estimate I went through perhaps 10 or 15 masks in total. While there was a supply shortage at a time, it only lasted a few months before Chinese masks flooded the market. The average price I paid in retail was certainly less than a Euro.

The Maskenaffäre cemented the image of the CDU/CSU as a hive of grifters, but despite them losing a few regional elections, it did not lead to Spahn getting driven out of politics. He did lose his ministry to Karl Lauterbach (SPD, physician, COVID hawk) and did not manage to become the heir of Merkel.

In 2025, he became the leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, which is probably not in the top 5 jobs in political Berlin but likely in the top 20.

That is all just background info, not while he was now resigning.

The CDU/CSU has always been a force of social conservatism. Merz famously voted against criminalizing marital rape in 1997. The CDU was not the only party to represent the interests of the industry (the FDP also existed), but it was (for a long time) the main party to vote for if you did not like LGBT rights.

It is thanks to Spahn's CDU/CSU that surrogate pregnancy remains illegal in Germany today. So while Spahn and his husband did not break any German laws when they contracted with a surrogate mother in the US to get a baby, it was generally taken as a defection from the values endorsed by the CDU/CSU and Spahn personally.

Another casualty of Spahn's retreat is the satire news website der Postillon, which in the past years published dozens of articles on Jens Spahn based on his mask procurement which depicted him as both clueless and corrupt. Semiconductor crisis over: Spahn buys chips for more than 3 billion euros was a rather representative example. After he resigned, over 700 employees specializing in such articles reportedly did lose their livelihood.

Merz famously voted against criminalizing marital rape in 1997.

This is technically true, but lacking context and very misleading in practice.

There was a general consensus to criminalize marital rape, but disagreement on the details (whether to allow the victim to retract an accusation.) Importantly, a CDU backed proposal to criminalize marital rape had been voted out earlier the same year - so the majority of Merz' political opponents also "voted against criminalizing marital rape". The individual votes for the other proposal weren't tracked, so we don't know Merz' vote, but there's reason to believe he voted in favor (later, he cited the retraction issue as the sole reason for his no vote in the second proposal).

Also, marital rape wasn't actually legal, it just didn't fall under "rape", it would still have been prosecuted under "sexual assault". So strictly speaking, it's not even technically true.

That seems plausible. TIL.

Merz famously voted against criminalizing marital rape in 1997.

This always strikes me as such an odd left-wing shibboleth to throw out. The actual concept of prosecuting marital rape under the law seems like a really nuanced and difficult idea, not one that is easily simplified to "well duh you fucking troglodyte of course this can only go one way."

Yeah, it's annoyed me even when contemporary conservatives and traditionalists defend the concept (I have seen them criticising foreign countries for not criminalising it) - the concept implicity undermines the traditional understanding of marriage.

Marital rape wasn't a crime because in the past it was assumed (required) that marriage came with an obligation to engage in sexual intercourse with your spouse. There's a reason the euphemism "fulfilling the marital obligations" was used in the past. Catholic teaching, still, teaches that spouses shouldn't refuse one another unless there's a genuine reason and the requests themselves are reasonable.

What defendants of the concept of criminalising marital rape will argue that it's basically to stop violent rape with marriage - i.e. a husband physically and violently forcing himself on his wife. That there were a huge epidemic of women who actually being violently raped by their husbands but no one could do anything about it because it was "legal". But the reality was it was and is already a crime in the form of various spouse battery statutes. In practice, marital rape is used to describe any "coercion" a husband uses on his wife to sleep with her. But this creates huge ambiguity - it's expected, traditionally, that the husband and wife would be having sex so any sexual act itself couldn't be considered evidence of coercion. It demonises normal sexual marital expectations.

The concept of marital rape itself is a good example of how liberal presuppositions have become omnipresent in even our closest relationships. Marital rape as a distinct concept from domestic violence only makes sense where marriage is merely a sexless economic contract between cohabitors that can be broken at any time, and not a union of two bodies and souls.

There are striking parallels to the introduction of no-fault divorce.

Now, it was obviously reasonably for the ministry of health to acquire some face masks even at inflated prices common for medical equipment -- at least for people working in hospitals, but he overestimated the amount required by orders of magnitude. Per WP, he bought 5.8 billion masks for an average price of about an Euro per mask. That is 70 masks per person in Germany, most of which were later destroyed when they expired.

To be fair, as far as I know this may have even been on the lower end of necessity. FFP2 and N95 masks were always supposed to be one-use, for maybe 4 to 8 hours of continuous usage, the filter stops being functional as it gets dirty. After that, the mask becomes just a dirty rag without any filtration functionality, as well as a health risk with bacteria and mold making breathing through them hazardous. Of course the reality had nothing to do with medical advice, people used the same mask for months often having it somewhere in a car or dirty jacket pocket to use while shopping or whatnot. All in all, it probably caused more damage than good.

I would frame it like this: for a single use FFP2 mask, the manufacturer has tested that the mask will last a shift. So from a purely technical compliance point, you are correct.

However, this is similar to the claim that you need to exchange the oil in your ICE every six months or 8k kilometers, whatever comes first. Sure, it is what the car manufacturer recommends, and if your car is part of some life-critical infrastructure (e.g. a patrol car), it might be easiest to do this rather than trying to justify deviating from it. But a lot of people get decent mileage out of older cars despite replacing the oil much rarer than recommended.

The general public was never trained to wear FFP2 masks the way professionals (like people working with asbestos) hopefully are. Realistically, a huge fraction of the public was not getting the full benefit of 95% particle filtering due to imperfect use.

In the "flatten the curve" era, the idea was not that we could eradicate COVID-19 by making sure that everyone inhaled less than 5% of particles in public. Instead, the idea was "particle filter masks likely offer some marginal benefit over medical masks or textile masks even if worn imperfectly, we might as well try to benefit from that".

Basically, we are in the realm of cost-benefit analysis, not strict compliance. I can not say I was really surprised by this study claiming that some masks remain very effective even after forty hours of use (though I did not anticipate that they would even survive washing that well). I am sure that there were employees in the ministry of health who shared my instinct that most of the exposure would come from ill-fitted masks and a lack of compliance in the population, with overlong reuse being a distant third. The average citizen likely wore his mask to the supermarket, so during an acute shortage, you might want to order two for him, which should offer some protection over two months, and once they arrive you can reassess the market situation.

Add to that some basic economic literacy. The CDU donors obviously did not produce their FFP2 masks in their own factories, they procured them from China, same as everyone. If China is shipping masks they will have masks to sell to the taxpayer at some hefty markup, but this also means that other people will also be selling Chinese masks. And if China is not shipping masks, then they will not have masks to sell at any price either. CDU donors are not the Spacing Guild, they do not have a monopoly on transportation.

If Spahn had ordered enough masks to cover hospital shifts for a few months from 3M or some other medical or PPE company even at a hefty markup, nobody would have cared much. Instead, he ordered colossal quantities from his grifter friends.

And he isnt even the father!

The child is from his good looking trophy husband (who I presume nagged Spahn until he got his child wish fulfilled). „Cuckold“ is not used for homosexual pairings, but by definition this is for what Spahn sacrificed his political career.

Per WP, he bought 5.8 billion masks

My eye skipped over that at first and I went "oh, five million, yeah that's a lot of masks but if it's one for every health worker?" and then I read it again. BILLION? Okay, that is definitely "funnelling money to the party donors" territory.

The surrogacy thing is particularly juicy, since the usual accusations of hypocrisy about gay politicians go "you are secretly gay yourself yet vote for and support anti-gay legislation", hence outing campaigns. Gay surrogacy is a novel twist on this!

Isn't CDU a not particularly ideological establishment party? I know that they are socially conservative by name, but my impression was that they had a knack for sitting just to the right of the median voter in Germany on social issues, wherever that happens to be.

Sure, the strongest-held believe of the CDU/CSU is that the Bundeskanzler should be of their party.

With regard to the CDU being just right of the median voter, I think that they are a bit more to the right than that. A 2022 study I found claims that 41% are for legalizing surrogacy while 24% are against it.

But yes, I agree that they do not have any hills they are actually willing to die on. Not that I think that this is something which sets them apart from most other parties. The SPD would probably agree ("with belly aches") to anything up to legalizing hunting the working class for sport if they felt that this was required to maintain the coalition.

I don't know if surrogacy would be particularly more popular on the Left in Germany; in fact if I had to make a blind guess I would imagine the FDP to be the party whose electorate is most okay with it, since it really registers as more of a "affluent people defying nature and propriety" vibe than anything with obvious left/right implications. If the CDU makes it a right-wing thing, they are just rationalising their impulses using whatever their chosen branding is.

I agree that it should be right up the alley of the FDP. A market-based solution favoring individual rights over fears of individual incentives leading to globally suboptimal decisions.

Though them favoring economic liberty over social liberty has happily brought them to the brink of irrelevance these days, of course.

I agree that it should be right up the alley of the FDP. A market-based solution favoring individual rights over fears of individual incentives leading to globally suboptimal decisions.

I wish they were that. Look at them from the inside, and it's tons of "the market is inefficient, we need more regulation and buerocracy to handle this, only it should be created by us intelligent liberals, not the innumerate others!".

I know there are societies where opposing surrogacy is more of a feminist thing than a socially conservative thing, but it's rarely more popular on the center right than the center left.

Zohran Mamdani is threatening to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits the UN in September

18 USC 878 makes it a federal crime to threaten to imprison any foreign head of state, which suggests that the DOJ has grounds to take action against Mamdani here. This would, of course, cause absolutely nuclear levels of insanity to erupt, especially since I have very little faith in the media not to frame it as "Fascist Trump arrests political rival". But also, it's also extremely unlikely that there will be an actual attempt to arrest Netanyahu, since that would require the NYPD to tangle with the United States Secret Service. All of this seems obvious to me, which means it must be obvious to Mamdani, which raises the question, what is his play here? Even the suggestion that the city that hosts the UN would seriously consider arresting guests of the UN should be insanely problematic.

My reading of 18 USC 878 in connection with 18 USC 1201 is that it refers to illegal kidnappings only. The key operative word in 1201 is "unlawful".

Arrests by police are almost never so blatantly unlawful that we prosecute the police for kidnapping.

More generally, threatening to have someone arrested is not considered threatening a crime.

Even the suggestion that the city that hosts the UN would seriously consider arresting guests of the UN should be insanely problematic.

I think that the arrest of foreign officials wanted by entities outside the US is obviously a federal matter, and absent specific legislation from Congress entirely up to the executive. Obviously there are tradeoffs between diplomatic standards and enforcing international norms.

But if Trump did an 180 tomorrow and told Netanyahu that he is not welcome in the US and would be shipped to the Hague in he appeared on US soil, that would be entirely within his power.

And putting aside conflicting statutes, on what basis would it be a lawful arrest? Mamdani cites ICC. The ICC is not controlling in the U.S.; in fact the opposite (we have a provision to invade The Hague). So that dog doesn’t hunt. What is the NYC law he could enforce that isnt preempted by federal law?

And if there isn’t one, then what credible argument could Mamdani make re the arrest?

in fact the opposite (we have a provision to invade The Hague)

It's actually worse than that, since

(1) The so-called Hague invasion act prohibits all governments in the US from cooperating with the ICC;

(2) the UN Treaty (which has force of federal law) gives immunity to foreign diplomats traveling to the US on UN business;

(3) Absent the UN treaty, Netanyahu would presumably be entering the US with general diplomatic immunity; and

(4) AFAIK The Rome Statute itself recognizes (2) and (3).

So yeah, there's no legal basis whatsoever. That being said, smoke-blowing is a long tradition among politicians. And Mamdani is just playing to his base who don't know (or don't care about) the law and are driven by what could be politely referred to as "strong anti-Israel sentiment."

And if there isn’t one, then what credible argument could Mamdani make re the arrest?

None whatsoever. As far as I know, Netanyahu could come to NYC and personally spit in Mamdani's face with full diplomatic immunity. In fact, I hope Netanyahu decides to rub it in a bit; sign up for a tour of Gracie Mansion; and plant an Israeli flag in the entry way.

18 USC 878 also references 18 USC 112, which prohibits imprisoning any foreign official.

But what about reading it in connection with 18 USC 112, which doesn't mention kidnappings and does mention "imprison" without any specification that it's not under color of law?

This is what @StableOutshoot also said.

I agree that "imprison" sounds like it refers to police conduct. Of course, if this was the case, then any policeman who arrests a foreign official (say, because he just shot up a school) is criminally liable under this title, which is likely not what the legislature intended.

--

As an aside, it might just be cultural bias, but I find the way laws are written in the US rather opaque, like there is no expectation that citizens should even try to understand what the law is (at least pre-LLM). 18 USC 878 seems a prime example. First off, it is very niche, criminalizing threats of a list of offenses (which themselves are special cases of more general offenses against members of the public instead of foreign officials) -- which I presume is in turn a special case of a more general statue, because it seems unlikely that the US is fine with people threatening other federal crimes.

Then there is the fact that 18 USC 112(1) reads like the result of a brainstorming session without any attempt at deduplication. One would think that the verb "assault" also covers "strike" and "wound". Or the fact that it then includes the local definitions of another section in a way which would never pass any code review if it was software.

The idea seems to be much "let's just frame things broadly and rely on prosecutorial discretion".

If I were a criminal, I would much rather do crimes in Germany where I then have to deal with the Strafgesetzbuch (and the Nebenstrafrecht, sure) rather than doing crimes in the US and deal with a labyrinth of federal and state-level norms. In the long run, this will put the US at serious disadvantage attracting criminal talent.

It's possible that "imprison" here is meant in the sense of the crime of "false imprisonment," which is the crime of hindering someone's movement without cause, but which does not require a literal prison.

But even in that sense, someone's arrest by law enforcement would also constitute "imprisoning" them.

My reading of 18 USC 878 in connection with 18 USC 1201 is that it refers to illegal kidnappings only. The key operative word in 1201 is "unlawful".

Arrests by police are almost never so blatantly unlawful that we prosecute the police for kidnapping.

I agree, although I suspect part of that is that a different statute would be used -- the one forbidding deprivation of rights under color of law.

More generally, threatening to have someone arrested is not considered threatening a crime.

I think it would be difficult to prosecute, but I can think of situations where it would be seen as criminal wrongdoing. And I can't think of any categorical reason why threatening to have someone arrested could never be considered threatening a crime.

I think that the arrest of foreign officials wanted by entities outside the US is obviously a federal matter, and absent specific legislation from Congress entirely up to the executive.

I'm not so sure about that. I suspect that Netanyahu's visit would come under the UN Headquarters Agreement. As far as I know, the Headquarters Agreement has the force of a federal statute and provides as follows:

The federal, state or local authorities of the United States shall not impose any impediments to transit to or from the headquarters district of representatives of Members or officials of the United Nations

+++

But if Trump did an 180 tomorrow and told Netanyahu that he is not welcome in the US and would be shipped to the Hague in he appeared on US soil, that would be entirely within his power.

As a legal matter, I think the Israelis could start a proceeding in Manhattan Federal Court and have Trump enjoined from impeding or interfering in any way with Netanyahu's visit to the UN.

The federal, state or local authorities of the United States shall not impose any impediments to transit to or from the headquarters district of representatives of Members or officials of the United Nations

TIL. Now I am wondering if any hostile foreign head of state (e.g. an Ayatollah or North Korean) was ever willing to bet his freedom on the US sticking to the letter of the law.

Upon further digging, the WP article on the Rome Statute quotes Article 98(1) as the following:

The Court may not proceed with a request for surrender or assistance which would require the requested State to act inconsistently with its obligations under international law with respect to the State or diplomatic immunity of a person or property of a third State, unless the Court can first obtain the cooperation of that third State for the waiver of the immunity.

So as long as Bibi only came to NY to visit the UN headquarters and not spend his holidays there, he would likely be fine.

TIL. Now I am wondering if any hostile foreign head of state (e.g. an Ayatollah or North Korean) was ever willing to bet his freedom on the US sticking to the letter of the law.

I'm not sure if you would call him a head of state, but Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (former president of Iran) famously visited New York multiple times in the late 2000s. I think doing so is a pretty safe bet given that the US still, more or less, has rule of law. And the law is pretty clear that such persons are immune.

So as long as Bibi only came to NY to visit the UN headquarters and not spend his holidays there, he would likely be fine.

I would imagine that regardless of any UN activity, Bibi (or any other foreign head of state) would not travel to the US (or any other foreign country) without being allowed to enter with diplomatic status.

Ahmedinejad came to NYC in 2011.

Fidel Castro did it twice.

Though those were under a quite different American regime.

It’s probably also close to a constitutional valid arrest under the Logan Act. An actual arrest I believe would. A threat still kind of interferes with official federal foreign policy.

He's obviously not going to seriously try to do this. He'll go to Florence if he does, and he knows it. Equally obviously, he has lots of supporters who eat this stuff up. This is a political stunt, and he knows better than to try.

He's obviously not going to seriously try to do this. He'll go to Florence if he does, and he knows it. Equally obviously, he has lots of supporters who eat this stuff up. This is a political stunt, and he knows better than to try.

I tend to agree with this, but from a tactical point of view, it seems misguided to me. What happens when Netanyahu visits NYC and nothing happens? Seems to me that Mamdani loses face with his supporters. Because it's not a situation where Mamdani can have Netanyahu arrested; wait for the courts to order him released; and then shrug his shoulders and tell his supporters that he gave it his best shot.

I kinda hope that Netanyahu comes to New York and really rubs his visit in Mamdani's face. Apparently Gracie Mansion is open to the public for tours. I hope Netanyahu signs up for a tour and pins up an Israeli flag on the wall.

Seems to me that Mamdani loses face with his supporters.

Nah, he falls back on "legal advice told me I couldn't do it, all fault of Orange Man Bad and MAGA" and they cheer him on.

Mamdani needs an out to agree ahead of time not to arrest Netanyahu or this is an uncharacteristic political stumble.

'Uncharacteristic' stumble?

Mamdani hasn't had any fatal mistakes, but since election he's definitely gotten into unnecessary tiffs with members of the local and state Democratic party interest groups. Some of that may be catnip to some of his base, but I'd not peg him as someone above theatrics that cause inevitable discomfort down the line when political reality hits the road.

He put a collar and leash on Hochul and walked her around the room. That's not a tiff, that's winning.

What Mandami has done so far doesn't rise to the level of a threat. The article says he's "discussing" it. If these discussions actually happen, his law department will tell him "LOL no you can't do that". It's just hot air until he gives the order. And unless he has some handpicked fanatics in the NYPD, NYPD won't challenge the Secret Service even if he does.

Yeah agree, it just seems like basic political signaling. Shows that he agrees with his supporters that Bibi should be in jail, that his hands are tied and he has no power to do anything despite his best wishes, and any anger and blame should be redirected away from him and onto the federal government.

I'm pretty sure that if the positions were reversed you'd see the left screaming about fascism, racism, and all kinds of other things.

It may be a pointless political move on Mamdani's part, but bitching about it is certainly legit.

I think the implication is "if my lawyers say I can" is roughly the same as "in Minecraft". I'm not sure I buy it completely here, but "I'm going to murder [person] if my lawyers say I can" does seem dumb enough to express such an intent.

I think the implication is "if my lawyers say I can" is roughly the same as "in Minecraft". I'm not sure I buy it completely here, but "I'm going to murder [person] if my lawyers say I can" does seem dumb enough to express such an intent.

I would give Mamdani leeway for the exact same reason I would give Netanyahu leeway: People who serve executive functions in government need to be able to discuss, debate, and effectuate public policies without the constant threat of prosecution by their political enemies. You can always look at a controversial prime minister, president, big city mayor, etc. and twist something he's done into an arguable crime (or war crime). (Well, not always, but still.)

To be sure, I'm willing to make an exception for extremely egregious behavior, but of Netanyahu, Trump, Mamdani, etc., none of them have come anywhere near doing anything which would justify prosecution. Partisan hacks from both sides might say otherwise, but that's exactly the point. We don't want partisan hacks running around pursuing political prosecutions.

I hope Trump announces that he's asked the DOJ to investigate whether Mamdani can be prosecuted for violating 18 USC 878 and afterwards everyone shuts up.

A city mayor with no authority to conduct foreign relations proposing the arrest of an internationally protected person in violation of both US federal law and a UN treaty that the US is party to does not seem to me to be a simple "discussion of public policy". It feels like a line has been crossed quite decisively.

Mamdani feels like he is trying to run NYC as a sovereign city-state and doesn't want to explicitly acknowledge the reality that he is legally required to defer to the authority of higher political entities. It really shows here, where his discussion of why he won't actually do the arrest mentions "the laws here in New York City." New York City doesn't have a law about this! This feels very much like a phrasing deliberately chosen to avoid acknowledging that New York City is under the political authority of the United States.

A city mayor with no authority to conduct foreign relations proposing the arrest of an internationally protected person in violation of both US federal law and a UN treaty that the US is party to does not seem to me to be a simple "discussion of public policy". It feels like a line has been crossed quite decisively.

As much as I hate Mamdani (that's actually an understatement -- I think Mamdani is a vile contemptible human being) I would have to disagree with this. If the Trump Administration got an indictment of Mamdani and I were the assigned federal judge, I would dismiss the indictment. I'm not sure what legal doctrine I would hang my hat on, but the basic idea is that this sort of political trash-talking is protected.

No, you don't understand. It's good and OK when trump does it, but it's bad and norms violating when mamdani does it, because that's why.

for real though, the level of motivated reasoning on this one is interesting to see; how some plainly stated threats from the executive need to be carefully considered because of the context, and a virtue signaling hedge from a mayor is a violation that needs to be punished with the full force of the state.

No, you don't understand. It's good and OK when trump does it, but it's bad and norms violating when mamdani does it, because that's why.

for real though, the level of motivated reasoning on this one is interesting to see; how some plainly stated threats from the executive need to be carefully considered because of the context, and a virtue signaling hedge from a mayor is a violation that needs to be punished with the full force of the state.

I'm not sure I see your point here, but I certainly concede that there are partisan hacks on both sides. By "partisan hack," I mean someone who is outraged by X when it's done by the enemy tribe and/or outgroup but defends a very similar (or far worse) X' when it's done by someone from his own tribe/ingroup/allied groups.

Just observing how the population of this board has changed over time. There were always a good amount of partisan hacks; now I would say it is majority hacks with a thin film of regular partisans and five or six people anywhere left of right left writing.

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Nobody is getting arrested by anybody. This is just political pantomime, like Dawkins and a bunch of the New Atheists trying to show off how Tough they were, calling on the British government to put Pope Benedict on trial.

Zohran is signalling for his DSA pals and the white liberal voters that he's a Tough Guy on the right side of history. Netanyahu will love this, he can play up to it back home and help save his neck a little longer. It's also giving Trump a wonderful platform.

Everyone will make hay out of this, no one will do anything practical in reality.

The hysteria over this flies both ways.

The DOJ has no grounds to take any action against Mamdani as he has only said that he was in active conversation with the legal team over whether or not he could arrest Netanyahu. That can't be illegal, can it? Following that the law apparently says he can't arrest Netanyahu so this is just PR for the lefty base.

That being said, Israel is an apartheid state engaged in terrorism against civilians in large areas that it wants to ethnically cleanse and settle with the genetically correct people. The UN is by their own standards denigrating itself via inaction against such a regime. As is the rest of the world who holds on to the pretense that this is bad under any other circumstance.

To that extent the UN can not act as if their own inadequacies and failures are excusable when they fly in the face of the moral decency felt by free and democratic societies that are fast seeing their electorate turning into single issue voters due to the corruption and crimes committed by zionists and Israel.

Maybe the people of NYC don't want to host the UN if this is what the organization stands for.

Is Israel more or less of an apartheid state compared to its neighbors?

I don't know. Is there apartheid lore I'm missing from the middle East?

That being said, Israel is an apartheid state engaged in terrorism against civilians in large areas that it wants to ethnically cleanse and settle with the genetically correct people.

Israel is not apartheid state. There doesn't seems to be segregation inside Israel. People in the west bank and gaza are not israeli citizens so how can Israel apply apartheid to them?

For the ethical cleansing - Israel seems to be pretty bad at it. We have more Palestinians than ever.

Israel is not apartheid state. There doesn't seems to be segregation inside Israel. People in the west bank and gaza are not israeli citizens so how can Israel apply apartheid to them?

The South Africans also claimed "Zulus in the Bantustans aren't South Africans so how can we apply apartheid to them" and yet that little trick didn't fool anyone. The essential element is that the West Bank and Gaza are under effectively under Israeli sovereignty yet their people have no citizenship, the textbook example of apartheid.

For the ethical cleansing - Israel seems to be pretty bad at it. We have more Palestinians than ever.

Yes, they are bad at it. The essential difference between them and the Germans is competence: the Israelis are more cowardly, less capable and less self reliant. First as a tragedy, now as a farce and all that. There have been plenty of incompetent genocidaires throughout history; the Rwandan genocide ended with the genocidaires actually losing the war to their would-be victims, for example.

Also we have no idea how many Palestinians there are since they refuse to allow any kind of unbiased outside monitors in to actually figure out how many Palestinians there are. Famously the 1948 World Almanac claimed that the Jewish population had actually increased during the war but that was because the Almanac was using old data.

So, your argument is that they totally definitely for sure WANT to kill all the Palestinians. (I suppose that before Oct. 7 2023 they just had other things on their mind, like controlling global finance.) With that as a given, the fact that they HAVEN'T is only explained by being so darn incompetent. The Israeli tanks and missiles are being stopped from razing every city to the ground by ___ (please fill in the blank here, presumably with something other than "being a civilized Western nation").

They're obviously incompetent since they claimed their goal was to destroy the tiny militia located in a territory entirely encircled by their forces and in the end they wound up having to release thousands of ostensible deadly terrorists while leaving said militia still in control.

The only real dispute is whether they're incompetent cowardly losers who were too militarily inept to defeat Hamas or whether they're incompetent cowardly losers who were too politically inept to engineer circumstances sufficient to kill or displace the entire population of Gaza.

It's strange how we have to pretend that the fact that these clowns who haven't won a war since 1982 have failed at their objectives is an indication of anything other than their incompetence.

The Israeli government was seriously discussing shutting off all the water to Gaza. The only reason they didn’t do that was because if the massive international outcry.

I suppose I'll have to take your word for it that they were totally definitely for sure seriously discussing stopping giving a utility to the Palestinians, and then didn't stop giving the utility to the Palestinians. Those jerks. You did lead me to a fun Wikipedia page talking about water in the Palestinian territories. After the mandatory Israel-blaming, there's this buried gem:

In all 25 municipalities in the Gaza strip, water provision is the responsibility of the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU). However, the utility is still in the process of being set up and exercise its legal tasks. The intended procedure is that the municipalities receive technical assistance by the CMWU and gradually transfer their staff and assets to it. According to the World Bank, this model led to some improvements like faster repair of leakage and economies of scale. However, the plan is far from being fully implemented. The model experienced serious problems which are mainly caused by the unstable political conditions in the Gaza strip since 2008, including differences between municipalities governed by Hamas and Fatah, so that some municipalities refused to transfer their assets and staff to CMWU.

So, the Palestinians have spent 18 years not handling basic services because of their dysfunctional government. But if the Israelis stop covering the slack, it's "genocide" I guess.

If I lock a hooker in my basement and then stop giving her water bottles, that’s murder. I can’t argue that the stupid bitch should have been responsible for her own utilities payments.

The essential element is that the West Bank and Gaza are under effectively under Israeli sovereignty yet their people have no citizenship, the textbook example of apartheid.

They are not under Israeli sovereignty. Israel doesn't claim to own them or rule them. Both are orphaned ex Egypt and Jordanian territories. And if tomorrow Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or the Alpha centauries offer to conquer the west bank and gaza, Israel will welcome them and unroll the red carpet.

Also we have no idea how many Palestinians there are since they refuse to allow any kind of unbiased outside monitors in to actually figure out how many Palestinians there are.

I think we can guestimate by how many hospitals Gaza ministry of health has claimed to have been destroyed.

They are not under Israeli sovereignty. Israel doesn't claim to own them or rule them.

If the West Bank isn't under Israeli sovereignty then why are Israeli settlements full of Israeli citizens guarded by the Israeli military located in the West Bank then?

They don't claim to own or rule them, yet they do. Israeli forces freely enter both, kidnap or murder who they please without the slightest accountability. The Israelis effectively exercise sovereignty without all the inconvenient parts that come along with it, like providing basic services or allowing the people there to vote on their leadership.

And if tomorrow Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or the Alpha centauries offer to conquer the west bank and gaza, Israel will welcome them and unroll the red carpet.

Would they? At various times they've also pretended to welcome a Palestinian state, but it's pretty obvious that this is just a pretense so they can absorb the land at their own pace without absorbing the people too.

I think we can guestimate by how many hospitals Gaza ministry of health has claimed to have been destroyed.

Well if we're doing "guesstimates" then my "guesstimate" is somewhere in the mid 6 figures. Around a tenth of the population at the low end, closer to a quarter on the high end. Comparable to the losses of one of the Soviet Republics during WW2, certainly genocidal by any standard.

The essential element is that the West Bank and Gaza are under effectively under Israeli sovereignty yet their people have no citizenship, the textbook example of apartheid.

I think it's worth pointing out that under your definition, Lebanon is an apartheid state; Syria is an apartheid state; Egypt is an apartheid state; heck, even Norway is an apartheid state.

Well no, because none of those countries are exercising sovereignty over conquered territory whose people are kept in a state of permanent statelessness for purely demographic reasons. Try again

Well no, because none of those countries are exercising sovereignty over conquered territory whose people are kept in a state of permanent statelessness for purely demographic reasons. Try again

It seems to me you are shifting the goalposts here. For example, your previous post said nothing about "conquered territory."

At this point, I would ask you to lay your specific definition of "apartheid state" so that the goalposts are firmly in place. I think that it's going to be hard for you to define "apartheid state" in such a way that (1) it's broad enough to apply to Israel; (2) it's not broad enough to apply to states such as Lebanon (which has long denied citizenship to Palestinian Arabs who have lived their for generations); and (3) it's not an obvious gerrymander definition created in order to apply only to Israel.

I think it's worth pointing out that under your definition, Lebanon is an apartheid state; Syria is an apartheid state; Egypt is an apartheid state; heck, even Norway is an apartheid state.

I'm not VIM but what exactly do you mean by that? Because Norway etc has non-citizens in its territory?

I'm not VIM but what exactly do you mean by that? Because Norway etc has non-citizens in its territory?

  1. Palestinian Arabs living in Lebanon (even for generations) don't get citizenship. They are considered "refugees," they are not allowed to vote, own land, or work in various professions.

  2. The situation is similar in Syria and Egypt.

  3. Norway exercises sovereignty over the Russian town of Barentsburg. As far as I know, Russians living there don't get Norwegian citizenship even if they are born there.

I'm sure we can all appreciate the real world difference between the Russian owned coal mining outpost of Barentsburg, hosting a population of ~300 that operates on Norwegian land, and Palestine.

Or appreciate that refugees from the Israeli Palestine conflict are not the same as Palestinians living on their own land.

Pretending that no one understands what apartheid means is just annoying wordplay. Israel occupies land and legally distinguishes between the populations within using various criteria and discriminates accordingly to maintain control for the designated ethnicity, just like SA did. They employ de facto separate voting rolls, just like SA. They even deploy the same alleged tokenism SA did. It's as close as you can get to the original to the point of parody. But regardless of that, the practical effect is the same.

The Israelis as they exist today never intend to relinquish any relevant representative control over the explicitly racially defined jewish state of Israel to anyone other than jews. They define themselves ethnically. They define their state ethnically. It is not possible for Israel to exist without jews. It's not possible for the state to be jewish without jewish sovereignty.

But when you live on the same land as a population group that is not jewish then you either make your bed as an apartheid state to maintain your ethnosupremacy over the land or you let everyone vote. There's no argument for why West Bank jews can vote in Israeli elections but West Bank Palestinians can not that is not de facto apartheid driven.

The Israelis as they exist today never intend to relinquish any relevant representative control over the explicitly racially defined jewish state of Israel to anyone other than jews. They define themselves ethnically. They define their state ethnically. It is not possible for Israel to exist without jews. It's not possible for the state to be jewish without jewish sovereignty.

And I assume you're similarly outraged by the existence of Japan, South Korea, Liberia etc., all of which are ethnostates in fact if not expressly in law? Or for that matter, essentially any Arab nation, most of which purged themselves of their Jewish, Christian, Druze etc. minorities at some point in the last eight decades or so.

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There's no argument for why West Bank jews can vote in Israeli elections but West Bank Palestinians can not that is not de facto apartheid driven.

France and Hungary, and most other European countries, let their citizens living outside the country vote. I used to have a friend who was born in the United States to a French mother and (at the time I knew him) had never lived in France his whole life - but he was still regularly voting in French elections.

Would you say that French voting law is based on apartheid, because they let him vote but not me?

Now, of course, there is a difference: France does not have military bases on American soil and does not have any oversight over the American government. But France didn't let Germans vote in 1946, either, even as they were maintaining a literal military occupation over part of Germany. Of course, that was more obviously justified than the Israeli powers over the Palestinian government - but even if you argue the Israeli example isn't justified, it remains at least "an argument... that is not de facto apartheid driven."

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Pretending that no one understands what apartheid means is just annoying wordplay.

OMW was making a (pretty interesting) objection to a definition. If someone offers up a definition that can't stand up to annoying wordplay, it should probably be modified. (There's no shame in tweaking a definition; changing your argument in response to correct objections can only strengthen it, unless it is fundamentally weak).

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Yes, but this is that thing you do when you strip things of all context and then leap in saying, 'har har! Under your definition, Britain is an apartheid state!'. Resulting in an incredibly long definition which to be perfectly honest I believe you would either nitpick to death or say, 'well, clearly this definition was created to allow Israel to be an apartheid state without Norway or Britain'.

In practice words have fuzzy definitions and 'partitioning your state to exclude a specific citizenry that you hate and fear but nevertheless can't actually kill' is pretty close to apartheid.

partitioning your state to exclude a specific citizenry

Which is question-begging. Asking that question doesn't resolve the antecedent question of what is part of the State.

Not begging anything. To my eyes Israel exerts de-facto authority over Gaza. Because it feels it has to, because it doesn't trust the Gazans (understandably) enough to let them alone, but it also doesn't trust them enough to let them be part of the state. This is the circumstance I think of as apartheid.

Does it? I don't think the Israeli police can wander directly through the center of Gaza City and arrest whoever they like.

But even moreso, many military forces have held a foreign territory without automatically annexing it to their state. The US occupation of Japan went on, and the solution was a Japanese government, not Japanese representation in the US system.

It's even more outlandish given that such annexation would be against the manifest will of both populations. It runs directly contrary to any norm of self determination to tell both the Gazans and the Israelis that we've just gone and decided that it's now a part of the Israeli state.

Yes, but this is that thing you do when you strip things of all context

I think the context-stripping door was opened by those who want to use a specific, principled-sounding words such as "apartheid" or "terrorism" to tar Israel.

Once you accuse Israel of these things, it's completely reasonable to ask for definitions of those words. And to see if the word is applied universally or if there is a special definition for Israel.

I'm the last person to deny that nasty words have their definitions stretched for political goals, and I don't even like the Palestinians, but Israel really does look like a pretty damn clear example of an apartheid state to me.

but Israel really does look like a pretty damn clear example of an apartheid state to me.

If you want to make that claim, fine, but it's reasonable to ask how you are defining "apartheid." Because if you have a special, broader, definition which applies only to Israel, it undermines your point. To use your words, it suggests that you are stretching the definition of a nasty word for political goals.

ETA: As an alternative, you could simply argue that it's improper for Israel to rule over the Palestinian Arabs living in Judea & Samaria without giving them a voice in Israeli government. In response, I could point out that doing so is the best among various bad alternatives; and so on. But as soon as you start throwing the word "apartheid" around, you've opened a door. To use your words, you've stripped context.

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so this is just PR for the lefty base.

Precisely. Mamdani is a politician first and foremost, not some socialist demi-god who will use his position as ruler of the richest, most powerful and important American city to bring about paradise on Earth now that finally Real Communism can be practiced.

I'm about as opposed to the Israelis' actions in Palestine as it gets, but I believe that hosting the UN ought to entail some sort of responsibility that surpasses object-level moral concerns. Really, the UN is somewhat like the Motte in that its purpose is to provide a neutral ground for parties to talk to each other who would never do so otherwise, except with the UN there are rather more things at stake.

If the people of NYC can't keep their moral principles in their pants for this higher purpose, maybe they should in fact not be allowed to host the UN, and the headquarters should move to a place with a higher decoupling waterline. It's their loss, or that of the US as a whole if they are incapable of finding any other site to guarantee safe passage for the de facto representatives of every significant piece of clay. (I'm sure China would be happy to set up a special economic zone with hookers and blow somewhere if nobody else is willing to step up.)

If the people of NYC can't keep their moral principles in their pants for this higher purpose, maybe they should in fact not be allowed to host the UN,

One could argue that in practice it doesn't matter since the Supremacy Clause strips NYC of any power to do anything. Heck, it's difficult for NYC to enforce its parking laws against UN diplomats.

But yeah, as a general principle the Mayor of NYC should refrain from this kind of talk.

as a general principle the Mayor of NYC should refrain from this kind of talk.

What's funny is this was a big win of Mamdami's campaign in the "what are your top priorities as mayor and why is #1 visiting Israel?" debate. That's basically what he said and he looked fantastic. Basically stole Trump's excellent "no new wars" rally vibes

I'm not seeing a failure mode for Mamdani voters here. As far as they are concerned their moral principles are the reason the UN exists in the first place. If the UN is not serving those principles then what's the point of venerating it? Create a migrant hotel for Palestinians out of the headquarters instead. Host an annual anti-zionism conference. Do something that lines up with the morals of the demos.

To steelman the lefty base, Israel has been waging its ethnocentric terror campaign against the Palestinians for decades. The time to invoke the sanctity of our international institutions passed us by a long time ago. The moment Israel stopped pulling their punches after Oct.7 and the UN did nothing, any surface argument for maintaining the pretense that these institutions matter went out the window.

The UN is not and can not serve as the world police enforcing what the US wants and thinks is moral on everyone else, because a UN that does it is a UN no more. The only reason it can exist is precisely because it doesn't get involved if any of the major players in the world don't want it to. If it ever did, those major players leave and it becomes yet another generic partnership between allies, which we have plenty of and keep creating more, rather than an international conference between opposing nations which we have a scant few.

The UN's best point is not in forcing our own desires onto Russia or China or India or whatever else, but coordinating with them to achieve the few goals that all of us can agree on regardless of our difference in values.

Wouldn’t the same logic apply to North Korea, Iran, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and many more members of the UN? If the UN’s purpose is to “do something” when states violate moral principles, then there won’t be many member states left.

If we care about doling out equal punishment to all at the same time based on nothing but moral intuition then the same logic applies. Doubly so if we pretend we are not human beings with agency and capacity for strategy and understanding of context but instead mindless automatons that have to follow every possible strand of 'logic' to its conclusion or our heads blow up. But that's obviously not the case so no.

The current issue being focused on is Israel. The current strategy is aimed at disrupting and ultimately stopping the regime. If the power of anyone relevant can be leveraged to that end in any relevant way then that should obviously be done so long as it's beneficial to the cause. To that extent everything that's going on with this political theater is 'logical'. Mamdani has to demonstrate ill intent towards zionists at the behest of his electorate. And if you asked the NYC electorate if risking the sanctity of the UN was worth disrupting the Israeli government that is terrorizing Palestinians then the answer would be yes.

The UN rather uniquely tried to do something about North Korea, but this was the one time in the cold war that the communists forgot to veto action and it was not a mistake they repeated.

It's not moral principles, it's showing off, like the sanctuary city stuff and then all those immigrants turning up was a problem so they needed to be bussed off somewhere else.

I think that's what 4bpp is saying. Saying something like "keeping their moral principles in their pants" is a good way to put it. It's like having a big dick. Instead of a dick though, it's big morals. A lot of people who have it want to show it off as much as they can.

As usual, and as we have seen from the UN over many decades too, the anti Israel people are extremely selective with who earns their anger. There are many other brutal leaders in this world who Mamdani is for some reason not eager to arrest.

Who are those leaders and what is their relationship with the US and the UN?

It seems pretty obvious that what's driving the negative PR hounding Israel is decades of hawkish zionist aggression that's been destabilizing the middle East and killing millions. Their most recent outburst of killing Palestinian civilians and dragging the US into conflict with Iran doesn't help either.

But on top of all of that zionism, Israel and Netanyahu still hold on to reverence and support from many western elites. Who constantly belittle themselves in front of their own people to suck up to zionists like beaten dogs.

So it's hardly a mystery then why far left candidates like Mamdani signal hostile intent when the entire far left wing hates Israel.

Who are those leaders and what is their relationship with the US and the UN?

Kim Jong Un, Xi, Salman bin Abdulaziz, Putin, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, it’s a pretty long list.

Outside of the oil sheiks, all of them are already either in open conflict, proxy conflict or cold wars against the US. I don't think it's selective at all to go after Israel given the US is already going after everyone else. Outside of the oil sheiks, of course. But they, despite everything, managed to play the PR game better than Israel so it's hardly a mystery why their heads are not on the lefty chopping block first.

I think Netanyahu should be arrested, but it's not going to happen in New York while he's visiting the UN, and Mamdani knows this damn well as much as the rest of us do, so it's just a cheap PR stunt which makes real pushback on Israeli aggression even harder.

That's part of what annoys me about this. Mamdani is creating easy propaganda for his enemies as well as his friends. Does anyone really think Netanyahu isn't going to use this to maximise "anti-Semitism is rampant, we have to protect ourselves, only by pushing forward and destroying Hamas/Hezbollah/Lebanon/Syria/anyone else we can think of can the Jewish people finally be safe in the world"?

This strikes as "Lemme at 'im, lemme at 'im!" behaviour. That is, getting fighty while your friends hold you back. It lets you broadcast your furious manly pride and aggression without any risk of having to follow through with it, and you can cast shade on the people holding you back for being cowards.

This strikes as "Lemme at 'im, lemme at 'im!" behaviour. That is, getting fighty while your friends hold you back. It lets you broadcast your furious manly pride and aggression without any risk of having to follow through with it, and you can cast shade on the people holding you back for being cowards.

I tend to agree, but if Netanyahu shows up in New York and nothing happens, it arguably causes Mamdani to lose face and look ineffectual. In fact, if I were Netanyahu, I would make a point of going down to One Police Plaza to apply for a dog license or something. And take a tour of Gracie Mansion.

Mamdani is not Greg Abbott who can line up the troops to deter the federal government into letting him get away with stuff(and even then- only with Joe Biden)- and if he's not savvy enough to know it, well, that's limboing under a very low bar, the sort of which would result in him actually trying to arrest Netanyahu- and probably getting arrested by the NYPD for giving the order. Everything we know about him is that he'll come up with some reason to get out of it ahead of time.

Promising things you know are impossible is pretty standard politician behavior, but empty political promises normally consist of things that you won't actually get in trouble for promising. Mamdani mentions discussing his options re: Netanyahu with the city's legal team, but surely any competent lawyer would be aware of 18 USC 878 and would advise him strongly to shut the fuck up about wanting to arrest a foreign head of state, which suggests that either Mamdani's lawyers are incompetent or he is ignoring them. And I cannot possibly imagine anyone at the UN being happy about any suggestion that the mayor of the city that hosts the UN thinks that section 11 of the UN Headquarters Agreement is optional.

Does saying "I will do X but first I will check if it's legal, and if it's illegal I won't do it" actually count as "threatening to do X", legally?

I suppose it depends on the wording of the announcement. "There might be a loophole thst allows me to legally stab you; you stay right there while I double-check with my lawyer and sharpen my knife" I would think could be considered a legal threat, but I am of course no lawyer.

Nah, Mamdani is being very careful to not fall foul of the precise and exact letter of the law. "I never said I would arrest him, I only said I was taking legal advice on what our options were". So he can come back with "I was advised this is impossible" and he gets to shrug and tell his partisans "Sorry guys, hands tied, whatcha gonna do?"

With the implication of ‘this is why I should be in charge of the legislature’ for good measure.

Doki Doki Literature Club Redesign Controversy as a «mise en abyme» of Certain Culture War Issues

I saw a small-scale controversy on Tik-tok (ugggggh, I know right?) recently. First let me give the background. Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC) is a knock-off visual novel, in the same way that California Champagne is a knock off of Champagne. Visual novels are the video game version of anime and manga and as a consequence, they can only be produced in the Japan region of Asia. They are not really video games, but more like something in between a manga and an anime delivered in .exe format on a computer. The only dynamic element they have is a tradition of branching choices, which anime and manga cannot do.

Anyway, it is not that important that DDLC is a knockoff, except that it provides some background for the type of people who like it. The art of this knockoff is quite faithful to the real deal, but the story is not. I have never played it and am not planning on it, because I am a snob, but from what I have gathered, it's like the anime girl version of Depression Quest. It also features a lot of annoying deconstructive quotes like, «these girls are like if you took all of the traits that make someone human and just took the cute bits» said by the player character in the middle of it. Quite rude for some foreigners to do, no? Kind of like making something in California called Champagne but you somehow criticize the concept of using Chardonnay grapes and making it have gas in it while you're at it, while taking the alcohol out of it for tee-totaling Americans. Almost like it's a product of hatred for the original thing.

Well, it will turn out that you will of course get a lot of fans that hate the fact that it comes in a wine bottle. The wine bottle of DDLC is that the characters look like cartoon, moe, teenage anime girls. They have round faces, big eyes, cute mannerisms, and wear bows and and school uniforms for most of the VN, as is customary.

Here are some examples of official art from the game.

Now, what if they were designed to look like real girls? Obviously they would look like this, right (edit: this is one of the original redesign posts)? Well no, because they obviously look like cross dressing men here. The fact that those redesigns look like men is now being denied by real girls who look nothing like those men.

I can only describe this as gas-lighting. And it perfectly parallels the way gender discourse from the left happens in the broader culture war. Transgenderism of course is the biggest gas-light of them all, but feminism broadly is filled with some of the most bald-faced untruths of any political ideology. Many feminists believe women aren't mentally different from men, and can beat men in fights, for example. On the trans issue, we are supposed to believe that people can be born the wrong sex, that sex doesn't exist, that there is, in a meaningful sense, more than two sexes, and that sex changing operations are good for people. To me, these claims are about as credible as the claim that those redesigns look at all like 16 year old girls with two X chromosomes and not cross-dressing men. It is hard for me to understand how blind or dishonest one must be to really make those claims.

To add to the debating about whether Western visual novels are actually visual novels, or if they have to be Japanese...

Trends for video game genres are largely driven by technical limitations, not just by creativity, and for the purpose of technical limitations, VNs count among this. Japan's domestic PC market in the 80s and 90s was dominated by the domestic PC-98. These systems were designed with rendering Japanese text in mind, and because of that, required much higher resolution displays than comparable Western computers. However, their actual processing performance was no better. Turns out this is the exact combination that leads to Visual Novels, which are well-placed to take advantage of the combination of big displays and comparatively weak processing power by focusing on exquisitely detailed, static sprite art.

Western developers skipped this stage of technical limitations and went for WRPGs for their branching-choice games instead. Early ones driven more by gameplay than plot, and once the graphics caught up there was no need to dump the gameplay in favour of artwork by then.

As for whether they were drawing the DDLC characters as crossdressing men, when it comes to anime, crossdressing men are often just drawn identically to women anyway.

Western developers skipped this stage of technical limitations and went for WRPGs for their branching-choice games instead. Early ones driven more by gameplay than plot, and once the graphics caught up there was no need to dump the gameplay in favour of artwork by then.

A lot of the late 80s / early 90s western games had self limited graphics because the artists were apparently incapable of using custom palettes and the companies had outdated ideas about common graphics hardware. See eg. Sierra games of the late 80s, many of which had basically CGA level graphics even though EGA had been the norm for many years by then and VGA had been fast becoming the de facto standard (and everyone upgraded their PC every 2-4 years, so having to support particularly old computers just wasn't a thing).

Huh? I don't think this is right. Sierra was one of the companies pushing graphical standards in games, from EGA to VGA to FMV cutscenes. Even King's Quest I (their breakout hit) was released in EGA on MS-DOS systems in the mid-80s, so I'm actually not sure what game with "CGA-level graphics" you're referring to.

Sierra was one of the companies pushing graphical standards in games

If they had been, they wouldn't have released multiple games using CGA based graphics engine by the time VGA was available.

Even King's Quest I (their breakout hit) was released in EGA on MS-DOS systems in the mid-80s

That's not EGA. That's a tweaked CGA text mode which is why the resolution is only 160x200 (with a fixed palette) instead of 320x200 and why the graphics look like ass.

King Quest IV was the first KQ to use EGA graphics. By the time KQ V (AFAIK the first sierra game to use VGA) was released the graphics could have looked like this on a run of the mill new 286 PC (without animation obviously). I should know because the only reason our first PC (bought by my single mother in 1990, so far from being high end) couldn't handle 640x480x256 mode was that the particular Triden 8900 chipset had a hw bug that made it require a multisync monitor.

By 1988 common PC tech (VGA) allowed up to 320x400x256 resolution (or 640x480x16) - not that almost any game took advantage of it (I remember Scorched Earth did in 91-92 and that was written by a lone hobbyist). It took forever for games to switch to using 640x480x256 resolution with Warcraft 2 being one of the first (1995).

You can see similar stagnation on the sound side where almost every game was composed by people sitting in their ivory tower studios for hardware that almost nobody had (Roland MT-32 & later General MIDI) and then degraded with anemic results on the hardware people actually used (Soundblaster). On those rare occasions the game devs and composers had a clue, the results were legendary (the second originally composed for amiga but the only difference is in how grungy the sound quality is).

Ps. If we want to get technical, this level of graphics were strictly speaking possible on 1983 PC hardware (I recommend muting the video, it sounds like ass). Compared to that Kings Quest 1 graphics look like something a first grader might draw. What was that about "pushing graphical standards"?

From the Wikipedia page for King's Quest I:

Sierra continued to release King's Quest for other home computer systems over the next few years, such as MS-DOS for IBM PCs, the Atari ST, Amiga, Macintosh, and the Apple IIGS, adding support for newer graphics standards like EGA.

Not to mention that the screenshots you linked are distinctly labeled CGA and EGA (and include the comment "Very impressive graphics for its time")...

And VGA was absolutely not common in 1988 (it wasn't even invented until 1987, and it certainly took longer than one year to become highly adopted). The first VGA game I ever played was The Secret of Monkey Island, which was released in 1990. Wing Commander and King's Quest V, other major VGA releases, were also in late 1990. It's insane that you're linking to a screenshot of a 1998 game (when friggin' Pentiums were already obsolete) as an example of "what was possible" on a 286. You also can't compare even the contemporary demoscene (let alone modern retro demos) to game graphics of the time - it wasn't until Id Software's era that games started to catch up technically. Note that this had nothing to do with artists being "incapable of using custom palettes".

I'm guessing you're younger than me and didn't grow up in this era, which is why you're muddling the timeline so badly...? It was a different world. What was technically possible had little to do with what games actually looked like. (Note that game logic was also a significant part of the CPU's load, cutting into anything you could do with graphics.) During my childhood, Sierra games were the best looking games I ever had access to. If you want to argue this further, please give even one example of a contemporary game that looked better.

(Can't comment on the sound side. I was not an audiophile.)

Not to mention that the screenshots you linked are distinctly labeled CGA and EGA

If you look at them, the EGA image uses the same low resolution blocky graphics as the CGA, just with a different palette (same as in the Tandy version I believe). That limitation was present throughout all Sierra games made with their AGI interpreter until they finally moved to actual EGA graphics with SCI in Kings Quest IV. Of course even those were much lower resolution than what EGA was capable of.

VGA was absolutely not common in 1988

It was common enough that not only were there multiple super VGA adapters on the market but that the industry recognized the need to standardize them in late 1988. Hells, there was even a ”laptop” with vga by 1988 (My mom used to take it home from work occasionally on weekends, so that was my personal hands-on introduction to PC and programming - in addition to playing games at friends’). And besides, we're talking about "pushing graphical standards in games".

If Sierra had actually pushed graphical standards (as opposed to persistently catering to the lowest common denominator), by 1988 the games could have looked like the second and third images here. First is original low res game graphics, 2nd is how it could have looked on VGA, 3rd is how that could have been displayed on EGA without requiring any additional storage and the 4th is Nano Banana reimagining of the original that was used to produce 2nd and 3rd images by downscaling to 640x350 and dithering to 16 color images with a fixed palette (not even optimized per screen) - all images upscaled to 1280x800 for ease of comparison and avoiding aspect ratio problems. In fact the games could have looked like the 3rd image by 1985 as far as the hardware was concerned (EGA was released in late 84).

I'm guessing you're younger than me and didn't grow up in this era

Not only did I grow up in that era but by 1991 I was writing VGA graphics code, so I was familiar with what the hardware had been capable of with reasonable effort since the introduction of VGA (at least for paid developers who had actual budget to buy hw documentation books etc). Obviously I wasn't writing anything professional level, but did know enough to use the magic spells mov ax, 13h; int 10h and xor ax, ax; mov dx, 3c8h; out dx, al; inc dx; rep outsb (If you know you know and if you don't you may not be qualified to judge the topic in the first place).

Note that game logic was also a significant part of the CPU's load

Sure, for an action game. For adventure games like the ones Sierra made? Not even remotely because they essentially had no running logic until you typed something in the parser or changed screens.

please give even one example of a contemporary game that looked better.

Defender of the Crown from 1987. Note the lack of fugly blockiness.

Falcon, also from 1987. Not that the graphics are pretty as such but at least they aren't a horrible blockfest.

For VGA graphics, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade from 1989 - over a year before Kings Quest V.

A-10 Tank Killer, also from 1989.

But like I said earlier, "A lot of the late 80s / early 90s western games had self limited graphics because the artists were apparently incapable of using custom palettes and the companies had outdated ideas about common graphics hardware." The problems were industry wide and it took until the mid 90s before parts of the industry started really pushing the envelope, Doom being one of the early examples.

(If you know you know and if you don't you may not be qualified to judge the topic in the first place).

Oh, believe me, I very much know, and your elitism is hilariously cringe. "I coded in mode 13h, you ignorant plebes wouldn't understand what good graphics are."

Going to ignore your technobabble (though the screenshots are fun), because it's irrelevant if there were no actual games being produced looking like that. Thanks for at least moving on to some examples, which (of course) look nothing like the first half of your post. I'll give you Defender of the Crown (though you picked a static screenshot - the action screenshots don't look that good), which does outclass anything Sierra had until KQ4. Falcon and A-10 Tank Killer? Meh. As for Lucasfilm/Lucasarts, I agree wholeheartedly. They were also a company that was pushing graphics standards in games - I did mention Monkey Island, after all, and I sadly missed out on Indiana Jones and Loom. Of course, when Sierra caught up, it also produced absolutely gorgeous games like Gabriel Knight and King's Quest VI.

So I'm genuinely putting some effort in here, trying to parse through your tech snobbery and find some interpretation that matches the reality I experienced. I think your point is that the games industry as a whole wasn't using graphics hardware to its absolute fullest in the same way that the demoscene would (a few years later). And I can agree with that! It's pretty amazing what you can get old tech to do with modern knowledge (and no need to attach it to a playable game); hell, there are C64 demos that blow my mind.

It doesn't change that Sierra was at the forefront of graphics in the games industry, and you're absolutely wrong that it's because the artists were stupid and lazy. Tools didn't exist, market pressures did. Art, design, and playability (and being able to support what you sneeringly called "the lowest common denominator") mattered more than raw graphics (this was the era when the underpowered NES was dominant, after all). Sorry, but if you were there in the 1980s you wouldn't have upended the industry with your brilliance, any more than you would have been a king in the 1300s. It was a different world and you're not smarter than everybody who was living in it. Even if you did code in assembly (gasp)!

I'm not nearly as versed in the technical side as you, but my impression from reading this blog is that you're sort of both right? It's just that the 1980s were such a rapid time for PC tech development that it really depends on which particular year you look at. At the very start, in 1980, Sierra made a splash simply by having graphics at all, when there weren't a lot of computer games for sale on the Apple II, and the few that existed were either text adventures (still limited even in how much text they could have) or something like a port of breakout with very limited graphics. You could do better with arcade cabinets or video game consoles, of course, but those were specialized machines, not a general purpose PC. In that world, the graphics of [early Sierra]](https://www.filfre.net/2011/10/the-wizard-and-the-princess-part-1/) really stood out, and it took some skilled hacking from Ken Williams to make it work.

But then Sierra turned into a real company, with pressure to steadily release new games, so they stopped trying to push the edge in graphics and just churned out varients of more or less the same game, using their tried and true EGA-based engine that the made for the first King's Quest in 1984. Which looked nice enough when it first came out, but quickly aged, so their main claim was being easy enough to work with that non-hackers could make games, and they could sell to a wide audience.

But then at some point that formula stopped working, and they had to really double down again on graphics with their VGA games in the early 90s. Which weren't exactly a huge technical breakthough- the tech already existed to support it, and would have been even better on the Amiga- but they did a great job of just hiring skilled artists to make the pixel art look amazing, even if it wasn't super high tech. So then they got a new lease on life as a company making relatively simple, easy, family-friendly games which looked gorgeous but were also easy to run on less expensive computers.

Would you agree with that summary of the timeline?

More comments

Visual novels are the video game version of anime and manga and as a consequence, they can only be produced in the Japan region of Asia.

Do you mean this in a literal linguistic way, as in if it doesn't come in Japan it doesn't technically count as a "visual novel" even if it's identical in every way, as in the Champagne example? Because this is entirely false. Neither "visual" nor "novel" are Japanese words. We don't have an equivalent word in English because that's what these are.

Or do you mean this in a less literal but more meaningful way, as in only the Japanese have the cultural competence to actually make one of these any good. Because I would mostly agree with that, I don't think I've ever seen a decent visual novel come from anywhere other than Japan even if hypothetically one could.

Warning: extremely pretentious weeb discussion below.

Personally, I would argue that they are different in the first way; in my view, the difference between a "visual novel" in the Western and Japanese sense is a semantic shift, in the same way that " マンション / mansion" in Japanese means a small apartment, but "mansion" in English means a large free-standing house, with connotations of land and status.

In the Western context, visual novels are really just considered cheap porn, and even when Western indies try to surpass this definition, it's much like trying to build a bigger apartment to try and re-create a mansion (in the English sense). Apartments are great and all (as many Western indie games are pretty great), but fundamentally they're just contained in different categories.

In contrast, there is a Japanese otaku subculture where visual novels are considered a serious artform, and as a result there are real auteurs, who would have been acclaimed authors of high society in another life, who end up in a position of writing high-budget erotic games (although again, "エロゲー / erotic games" is a bit of a semantic shift, the difference between Hot Singles In Your Area and Lolita).

For example, I would consider White Album 2, Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai and Albatross Koukairoku (amongst others) to be legitimate works of literary art that equal or surpass much of the actual literary canon; there's frankly no Western "visual novel" that would even come close in my estimation.

I agree with your object level criticisms about how Westerners have approached this problem, but would categorize all of that under the second way. If a certain culture or group of people publish a bunch of smut novels and can't figure out how to write a decent novel they're still "novels", just not very good ones. If they start filming and publishing porn films, they're still "films". It's the same type of media, even if it's only one specific genre within that media. Visual novel is a form of media, and it's trivial to make something that's in the media. It's highly nontrivial to make one that's good. A mansion is a type of house. A building is a structure which can contain many different types and serve many different purposes. I argue that the word "visual novel" is more akin to "building", and the West can make those. You don't look at a log cabin and say "it's not a building because it's smaller than this mansion". They're not the same, they're not really in the same ballpark in terms of quality. But in a literal and linguistic way they are still the same category of object.

Yeah I think we're 99% on the same page here, that the Japanese are building mansions (of varying quality of course, most "authentic" Japanese visual novels are still awful, as most of everything is awful) while Westerners are only constructing a bunch of log cabins (apart from Katawa Shoujo as someone mentioned downthread, which is structurally identical to a Japanese mansion except in language).

I would say the difference between your viewpoint and mine is that I think to further torture this metaphor, that Westeners view the definition of "building" as identical to the definition of "log cabin" and cannot imagine a building to be like anything else that isn't a log cabin. DDLC broke fairly hard out of containment, and while Salvato himself is pretty tapped into Japanese VN culture, normie reception to DDLC was generally along the lines of "this is the only good visual novel, how did he do it?", which isn't helped by how the game is framed, from the normie perspective at least, as a structural deconstruction of every other visual novel being a cheap dating sim.

In Japan, while obviously still extremely niche relative to broader society, the conception of the building as something greater than a log cabin actually exists, and by extension the idea of the visual novel as an actual artform actually exists. Typing this out it sounds extremely pretentious, but I think this conception of "the building as greater than the log cabin" purely exists only amongst the Japanese and highly Japanese-influenced people, and hence it wouldn't really be wrong to claim that it's different in a real, linguistic way.

I don't think this is quite right. Because obviously a significant fraction of westerners have played Japanese visual novels and are aware of what can be done. And while this is not the normie, even the normie anime-viewer, neither are the people making western visual novels. The average normie does not write their own visual novel. And when someone who clearly does know and care about visual novels makes one, like DDLC, it's still not a full length visual novel. Not because they don't know or care, but because they can't.

The real issue is infrastructure. The big fancy good mansion visual novels in Japan cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, involve many high quality writers, artists, and voice actors. Anyone in the West who imagines a full length real visual novel cannot get the funding to make it, and cannot find/hire voice actors who would both be willing to work on the project, and good enough to do it well. There ARE no Western equivalents to Rie Kugimiya, Tomokazu Sugita, or Mamoru Miyano.

It's not merely an issue of imagination. Anyone can imagine things. It's the technology and infrastructure required to take that imagination and turn it into reality. And I suppose in some sense this is downstream of culture and imagination. The majority of Western audience imagine and ask for log cabins, so none of the investors or talents try to create this infrastructure. And if some rich visionary made an expensive AAA visual novel it probably wouldn't sell enough to recoup its costs, so the investors aren't wrong. But it's more complicated than simply "no one can imagine anything better". We can clearly see the better things, which is how you and I are talking about them right now. But even the most skilled and creative architect can't go out into the woods with nothing more than a rusty hatchet and make themselves a mansion. Individual people with ideas can only make indie games.

While I agree with you that budget is certainly a factor, I think budget alone kind of overstates the case that you're trying to make.

Two of the most influential visual novels in the genre, Tsukihime and Higurashi, were both literally created by a couple dudes in a basement each, and while certainly not gold-plated 6-figure mansion experiences, still vastly outstrip the scope, ambition and quality of any Western visual novel I'm aware of. Maybe they're kinda shabby mansions, but they're clearly larger and of different provenance to the log cabins.

Visual novels are like, the cheapest medium out there to create behind literal novels; while you certainly need budget for the best graphics and voice actors, you can get very far by just having a good writer, a good artist and a good composer.

While I agree that there's no, say, Western Clannad because of budgetary reasons, I think it's much more a deficiency of vision (and frankly, skill, because all the competent people do something respectable instead) that is why no serious Western competitor to something like Tsukihime or Higurashi exists.

While I agree that there's no, say, Western Clannad because of budgetary reasons

Ahem. The OG Clannad might disagree about that.

Or do you mean this in a less literal but more meaningful way, as in only the Japanese have the cultural competence to actually make one of these any good. Because I would mostly agree with that, I don't think I've ever seen a decent visual novel come from anywhere other than Japan even if hypothetically one could.

I usually find Western erotic games to be superior to Japanese h-games, even apart from the bother of setting up a Japanese locale emulator to get the damn game to run. But that may just be because I don't like ugly bastards. I certainly prefer anime-style graphics to something like Daz 3D, but in the age of Koikatsu Party and Pony Diffusion any Western dev can make those.

But that may just be because I don't like ugly bastards.

The obvious answer is of course to combine western player characters and Japanese love interests.

Edit: I present Exhibit A ("1girl" anime style) and Exhibit B (from Summertime Saga, an apparently popular western erotic game). Obviously somewhat NSFW. I realize that according to the internets (or at least many such western game creators) men are obligated to prefer HHH-size boobies but, at the risk of coming off as a deviant, I'm going to have to go with Exhibit A (even though it was created in 30 seconds using an ancient AI SD 1.5 finetune).

I usually find Western erotic games to be superior to Japanese h-games

This is the opinion that matters on this one. If anyone else disagrees I honestly dont care

If you're just comparing quick cheap goonslop and/or small indie projects, then sure both of them can make some passable stuff. But if we look at proper visual "novels", masterpieces like Grisaia no Kajitsu, G Senjou no Maou, or Steins Gate, there just is nothing in the West even remotely comparable. The West does not have a sufficiently large audience, nor a sufficiently talented voice acting scene, nor the level of culture to put forth the kind effort and budget required to make a proper visual novel.

Um, I haven't played G-Senjou no Maou, but I've played the other two and I wouldn't describe them as "masterpieces". I'd describe them as "decent VNs with AAA production values" (well, Steins;Gate and Kajitsu; Meikyuu and Rakuen I'd describe as "AAA sequelitis").

(Kajitsu's way too long for its plot and a bit cookie-cutter; Steins;Gate has an interesting premise and then hamfistedly declares that 90% of the interestingness is arbitrarily denied by "convergence" and mostly does romantic misery porn instead. Chaos;Head's (a lot) less polished, but it delivers on much more of its premise than Steins;Gate.)

All of your criticisms are directionally true, I just think the quality of the games is high enough to make up for this (with the exception of Meikyuu which... meh, they could have done better). Maybe they just uniquely appealed to me and my sense of humor. I laughed throughout the entire (quite lengthy) common route in Kajitsu and would gladly have played more (which is why I've replayed it two more times over the years). The character routes, especially the flashbacks, can be a bit of a slog but are still quite good. Likewise, I think Steins;Gate is peak when it is making jokes and being hilarious, while the sad drama stuff does drag on a bit. Overall though, I think they needed the sadder slower parts to tell a meaningful story, and they did, and nothing the West has ever made is even slightly close.

...Hmm.

So, I find slice-of-life comedy completely useless (LCD sense of humour =/= mine, probably aspie-related). What I was saying was too long about Kajitsu was the common route, which has a pretty-terrible word-count-to-plot ratio; I liked some of the heroine routes (mostly Sachi and Michiru; Amane and Makina routes should have been combined, and Yumiko route is bleh).

I'm fine with romantic dramas (the two VNs I've ever rated 10/10 are School Days and Totono, and Saya no Uta's 9/10), but Steins;Gate pulls the same "blow up your relationship or the world ends, lol" trick four times (in lieu of any kind of creative solution, because "convergence"), which is why I called it misery porn.

What about Slay the Princess or the Coffin of Andy and Leyley? They're both overwhelmingly positive on Steam, comparable to Steins Gate.

I don't generally do spooky horror stuff, so haven't played either of them. That said, they appear to still be small scale indie games with stylized but clearly budget art styles, little to no voice acting, and about 4 hours of content each. They are small indie games. Their target audiences apparently like them for what they are, but they are not what I'm talking about. Stein's Gate is about 30 hours and Grisaia no Kajitsu is about 60 if you play all routes. (And both have sequels with even more content, albeit slightly less amazing) These are big meaty stories with intricate details, whole casts of characters, recurring jokes, themes. They develop characters and make you feel for them. They go into backstories. They have slice of life and action and drama. They do everything because they are not constrained by the limitations of a 90 minute cinema timer or the indie creator's non-existent budget.

They are to full visual novels what Five Nights and Freddy's is to Elden Ring. They're different things which cater to different target audiences (with some overlap). But there's a difference in scale and ambition which (in visual novels) the West can't realistically match.

OK, slay the princess was short. But it was voiced and interesting. As for Coffin, I watched a streamer play through it and do voices for it and it was a pretty gripping, intense experience. There is a lot going on beyond 'incest haha'. There are themes, developed characters, intricate details for both.

Most of the reviewers had 10-20 hours.

Furthermore, the quality of a visual novel or any piece of literature is not decided by size. Otherwise Chinese webnovel bros would be the undisputed masters of writing. Visual novels don't need flashy graphics or voice acting to be excellent, the primary thing is the writing and all else is a cherry on top.

The test of quality should be in its review score. Anything overwhelmingly positive on steam has a perfectly good claim to high quality for its genre.

The West does not have a sufficiently large audience, nor a sufficiently talented voice acting scene, nor the level of culture to put forth the kind effort and budget required to make a proper visual novel.

Japan is not more cultured than the West. Anything Japan can do, the West can also do and vis versa. They're just more into visual novel type games, less into shooters or grand strategy. They could make a first rate shooter or 4X game, they just choose not to. Just because a Western audience might generally prefer more gameplay (putting it up from visual novel to 'story rich') or less gameplay (novel, cartoon) it doesn't mean there's some deficiency in the West compared to Japan.

Slay the Princess is fully voiced, at least as far as I played it (I got pissed off and quit, IIRC).

Which perfect woman was too much?

I got pissed off when I didn't manage to kill her the first time and then I got told "You cannot go further astray" when I tried to do it right the second time.

So IIRC I tracked down the save file, murdered it, killed her properly, got the deliberately-terrible reward, and quit.

Now, what if they were designed to look like real girls? Obviously they would look like this, right (edit: this is one of the original redesign posts)? Well no, because they obviously look like cross dressing men here. The fact that those redesigns look like men is now being denied by real girls who look nothing like those men.

Get this guy a job in western AAA game maker.

The fact that those redesigns look like men is now being denied by real girls who look nothing like those men.

That last link says "fixing this ugly ass art cause they look like men" which sounds like girls are not denying it at all.

She is positioning her real self as the "artwork" being "fixed" by filters, meaning she identifies her real self with the ugly drawings.

That last link says "fixing this ugly ass art cause they look like men" which sounds like girls are not denying it at all.

I think the person was being sarcastic.

Something I noticed being in the Homestuck fandom for a while, during content droughts what seemed like the majority of the new fanart you’d see produced was like this; black butch Rose, trans Jade built like a linebacker, basically everyone brownwashed, visually queered, and made uglier and/or fatter. When big updates would drop, more normal people would come back to the fandom, and you’d see a lot more art that was pretty and actually representative of the characters. I think the people who are still making fan content for a more obscure piece of media that hasn’t seen updates in years are more likely to be weird, deep into queer subcultures, or have an axe to grind with representation.

It can get annoying, especially in the modern media environment where Twitter and other social media collapses the distance between creators and fans. Relatively small groups of very motivated people can exert surprising amounts of influence on creators these days, pushing for their preferred (queer) ships to be made canon. In the case of Homestuck, the creator would go as far as to reboot the whole story and make gay everyone who wasn’t gay yet besides John. See Korra and RWBY for other, less extreme examples.

It has made me much less tolerant overall, seeing how quickly fandoms get overtaken and everything has to be made gayer to accommodate them. I don’t mind LGBT people being represented in theory, but as a straight person I don’t get any enjoyment out of reading about such relationships, and representation seems increasingly zero-sum when a property giving some gay representation inevitably leads to them demanding more and more.

Homestuck fandom

Viciously hates both the author and the other parts of the fandom and has done so for more than a decade. To be fair Andrew Hussie also hates the entire fandom intern and has not been shy in expressing this.

Homestuck

That was some kind of patient zero shit for tumblerism and reddit nonsense. I'm still wondering if the whole thing was a psy-op.

You have to press the Enter key twice in order to leave behind the blockquote.

Ah dang it. Thanks. You know you're getting old when you get filtered by reddit's markdown, specifically something which you already know how it works.

but as a straight person I don’t get any enjoyment out of reading about such relationships

Weird. I enjoy reading straight relationships just fine. Just not when they're bad and shoehorned in and superfluous to the plot, like a lot of Hollywood movie romance subplots.

What you might be seeing is that a lot of gay relationships in fiction are quite low effort, because they're being written cynically as representation slop, or because they're written by people who aren't gay (I would be fucking shit at writing straight romance, I don't know the internal experience of the courtship at all) or because they're being written as a wish fulfilment by the kind of gay authors who didn't have a social life.

or because they're being written as a wish fulfilment

Doesn't this describe like 90% of female romance authors?

The issue is not that the gay relationships I see are not genuine enough (with the solution being to consume even more genuine LGBT media), it is that they come at the cost of things I actually want to read about. Whether it is the main focus or just the spice, I enjoy M/F romance in my media. Gay romance does nothing for me. Possibly it’s just a relatability thing, but I imagine this is why representation is such an important point for activists - most people want to see themselves in their stories. I believe you when you say you enjoy straight relationships, but I still would bet that on the whole, gay people don’t get as much enjoyment out of them as they do homosexual romance. I understand why they’d push for more and more representation, but it doesn’t change that their tastes are adversarial to mine.

Most of the examples I gave came at the explicit cost of a hetero ship that the story had previously pushed, sunk after years of fans aggressively pushing for the gay alternative until it became canon. Yang/Blake in RWBY is a pretty obvious example of this. Homestuck was even more egregious; by the end of the story it seemed like every character not named John Egbert was in a gay romance, or about to be. I would call these changes anything but cynical (the creators probably felt strongly about their inclusion by the time they did it), but they ruined big parts of the story for me nonetheless.

Somewhat related to this subject is something I’ve been wanting to write more about for a while. Non-toxic straight relationships in media where the man takes the role of protector and emotional anchor while the woman is more emotional, soft, delicate, in need of protecting, etc. are a lot harder to find these days. This has been stigmatized heavily from decades of feminist criticism, so writers tend to avoid depicting women that way with men. This type of pairing has not gone away entirely, though - the only time you see it is when the writer makes the man into a woman. Historia and Ymir in AOT, or the relationship between the two researchers in this SCP are the examples that come to mind right now, but if you keep an eye out for it you’ll see what I mean. You can probably find counter examples in anime, obviously, or in Western media if the couple is toxic, breaks up, someone dies, or is otherwise sunk.

To preempt the what does this matter response from other people reading: abandon the reigns of cultural criticism at your own peril. Much of what people believe about the world comes from the media they consume. Fandom culture is upstream of future creators. LGBT people are active and relentless in pushing for what they want, and as a result the media landscape has gotten much, much gayer in the last decade. Your family, friends, children, coworkers, etc. will all be influenced by media to some degree, so it’s something to take seriously.

The issue is not that the gay relationships I see are not genuine enough (with the solution being to consume even more genuine LGBT media)

The solution is that we shame and mock people who write bad, shoehorned in romances. None of us should have to read bad content.

Possibly it’s just a relatability thing, but I imagine this is why representation is such an important point for activists - most people want to see themselves in their stories.

I never really understood this. I don't need my heroes to be proxies for me. I appreciate good characters for their own sake.

Most of the examples I gave came at the explicit cost of a hetero ship that the story had previously pushed, sunk after years of fans aggressively pushing for the gay alternative until it became canon.

I don't like instances of fandoms pressing things on authors, no matter the direction. Every author should just ignore their fandom and do what they were going to in the first place. Any time I detect that a decision was made in response to fan pressure, I hate it. Romance or no.

I never really understood this. I don't need my heroes to be proxies for me. I appreciate good characters for their own sake.

Same! If I wanted to read about someone like me, I'd just go experience life directly. I turn to fiction because I'm looking for something not like my experience.

Or in other words, you want an actual romance that makes sense, not a religious screed about how much the author loves LGBTesus.

Christian media has the same problem; ironically, by writing something competent it also tends to cease being explicitly Christian media ("Lord of the Rings is evil because it has witchcraft") even if it was written with that exact intent (again, LoTR being a blatant example of that).

The most prominent Homestuck alumni has arguably done exactly this in his games; as despite what the LGBTesus-worshippers will claim "LGBT themes" in the game are completely-to-almost-completely absent (so no "I'm So Oppressed" scenes for the fandom to get off on, though this reaction is baited a couple of times) despite the fact one such relationship is prominent in the story and the main character is of indeterminate sex (it makes thematic sense for them to be a 'they'). One does notice that it may arguably be creeping into certain areas, but you have to go digging for it, it's played for laughs (and remembering that ghost writers carry their religion with them in a way this author does not), and there's a roughly equal amount of casual blasphemy if you're paying attention.

I understand why they’d push for more and more representation

That's just called being selfish, though. I get that an explicit pillar of that religion is that these people get to be that way because Muh Oppression, but as always it remains the case that they're not making representation better, they're just enshittifying making fiction worse.

You're being pretty vague here. I assume you're taking about Toby Fox's games? Can you get more specific about what you see as "casual blasphemy" and LGBT themes "played for laughs"?

Can you get more specific about what you see as "casual blasphemy"

Sure. In the most recent chapter, we have "only women can give birth [to slam dunks]", the antagonist casually misgendering-as-insult (the fandom is too stupid to realize this, though), and your gender identity owes me 5 dollars.

The closest thing that you could consider a trans allegory is... a lot more complicated than that. Her Undertale counterpart is kind of like that as well (she is yet another reference to this game). Most of that conflict is resolved in a way not comprehensible to LGBTesus-followers; it's a lot more prosocial 'coming to terms with oneself' than the 'fuck everyone else, I'm an X now'. It's actually something common to Japanese media covering this trope (basically, they don't make it your problem). Kodaka in particular has done it a couple times.

Otherwise, though, the main romance is a lesbian one, but this isn't treated as noteworthy in basically any way. (It's possible to read it that way, but I don't think that's what he means.) There's also a male character that gets catfished; the drama there is, well, that he got catfished, not that it's a guy on the other end.

My apologies for the vagueposting; I don't intend to be some sort of vagueposting king, running over anthropomorphic deer with my truck after consuming the 7 ice-cold beers.

I don't know, I don't get particular enjoyment out of straight or gay relationships, most media I prefer isn't really improved by relationships though. Stories well told in my opinion strip out most things that aren't critical and romantic relationships are either very critical to the story or should be basically minimally addressed imo. And if it's a story where the relationship is critical, which I probably wouldn't want to read in the first place, I'd probably prefer it to be something more relatable like a straight relationship.

Previous discussion

Is it really that disgusting for a straight man to think about having sex with a man?

Scientific study from year 2017 (news article):

  • 120 male participants viewed photographs in six categories: neutral items (e. g., a binder clip); disgusting items (e. g., a bowl full of maggots); man+woman public displays of affection; man+woman kissing; man+man public displays of affection; and man+man kissing. Afterward, their disgust was measured through levels of a digestive enzyme that appears in the saliva of a stressed human.

  • A statistically significant increase in enzyme level was found only when comparing man+man kissing to neutral items (p < 0.2 %), comparing man+man kissing to man+woman public displays of affection (p < 2.0 %), and comparing disgusting items to neutral items (p < 3.6 %). This result was obtained among all participants, not just among the ones who self-reported as disliking homosexual men in an online survey that was administered prior to the experiment.

Presumably, actual sex would prompt an even greater response than mere kissing.

I feel like this came up in the previous discussion too, but there is the almost uncontrollable null hypothesis that it's still all subtle social conditioning (since it seems that disgust responses towards interracial relations were once similarly common but now I wouldn't be surprised if even a bona fide KKK member would struggle to muster visceral disgust at a WM*F couple making out). Of course if true this is a boon to the progressive case for deep social engineering.

Why would social conditioning be the null hypothesis?

Well, a wordcel beloved of many here once quipped that the sovereign determines the null hypothesis, and the current sovereign surely is not on the side of aversion to homosexuality being natural or inevitable.

More prosaically, if what you are seeking to prove is that homosexuality is unnatural, then the outcome that gut responses are not against it due to nature is a null result.

Not nature is not the same as socially conditioned though. Theres other options.

Not to mention I don't think you can socially condition people into finding things gross, well besides on an individual basis like a clockwork orange but that wouldn't scale. Disgust reactions seem very visceral and deep seated.

Not to mention I don't think you can socially condition people into finding things gross

I can't, society at large surely can. Apart from the examples that already came up, there are the food cases of raw fish, animal meat, insects, milk and a variety of fermented products, of which I'd wager the majority of humans on the planet experiences disgust reactions to at least one of. How does your model of disgust reactions as something natural explain that?

More comments

There's a conflict within the left between the faction that believes that beauty and art is acceptable, as long as it promotes the correct slogans, and the faction that glorifies the grotesque and believes that beauty is intrinsically linked with fascism.

This ain't no trans conflict. It's a conflict between these factions.

Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

You've been banned once for being egregiously obnoxious and this, if anything, is more obnoxious.

What is the content here? Basically "Look at these ugly trans girls" in some niche media nobody else cares about.

I know, not literally "nobody." (Yes, I am in fact familiar with light novels[ETA:visual novels, those too] and probably many other people here are as well.) But this is still not anything of significance. It's somebody redrawing some anime characters as trans, and we should care why? Because you don't like trans? Because you want a disgust reaction?

And I specifically warned you previously that "some rando on the Internet did a thing and I want to rant about it" is not worth starting a thread.

Transgenderism of course is the biggest gas-light of them all, but feminism broadly is filled with some of the most bald-faced untruths of any political ideology.

This is purely waging the culture war. What is "beliefs I don't like are stupid and bad" offering to discuss. Agree/disagree? And the feminism rant was a complete tangent from the main rant, which was "Trans bad." "Trans bad" because... someone redrew moe anime girls to look ugly.

You've run up a number of tempbans, your discourse in general is low quality dragged-in-from-some-Internet-rathole bullshit like this for you to rant about Things You Don't Like, and from a less obnoxious poster I'd just say "Knock it off" but you're already a ban evader we gave a long leash to because we dislike pulling the trigger when there is a small hope someone will actually improve this incarnation.

You're banned for a month. I should probably just make it permanent because almost certainly you will come back and do more of this and make us pull the final trigger in short order, or else you'll just roll a new account. In the extremely small likelihood that you actually care to modify your behavior and participate in a more meaningful way, know that the purpose of the Motte is not just to dump rants about things you don't like and rail about how much you hate your enemies. A disturbingly large number of posters have trouble accepting that, but few go on such a speed-run of shitting the place up every time they start a thread.

It's somebody redrawing some anime characters as trans

Besides the point but it seems that the redraw wasn't intended to be trans but rather "more realistic" which I suppose is more indicative of the artists reality then anything. Or perhaps she's doing that typical artist thing where they declare their own personal aesthetic preferences as scientific or realistic or whatever word will make their preferences sound objectively correct. I have some creative hobbies and meeting these kinds of people in them is never a pleasant experience.

The idea that DDLC is niche media that nobody cares about is really bizarre.

This is equivalent to having someone post about Star Wars and you say 'I've heard of Star Trek but Star Wars? Yeah, you can google it up, but there's absolutely no reason to post about such a niche property. Banned for a month!'

He was not banned for posting about niche media.

What is the content here? Basically "Look at these ugly trans girls" in some niche media nobody else cares about.

I think OP's post is a bad post, but I think your take is also a pretty bad strawman. DDLC is the most influential VN made by western devs (soon to be overtaken by TCOAAL) and arguably the most influential in the english speaking audience. When it went viral it firmly penetrated into the normiesphere.

The fansom has shrunk since then but I still think this incident is quite an interesting scissor statement that manages to piss off different people for different reasons.

Obviously I think OP is wrong but I have to accept that it's hard to grasp what is truly at the core of this situation.

DDLC is the most influential VN made by western devs

It is the #1 most popular (as opposed to most liked) OELVN on VNDB, but only by a tiny margin over Katawa Shoujo. Admittedly, it's a biased sample insofar as non-weebs who read DDLC wouldn't tend to visit VNDB.

(For anyone reading this who's confused: Katawa Shoujo is not actually Japanese, despite the Japanese title. It was made by 4chan, and originally in English, though they did translate it into Japanese afterward.)

Yes, I am in fact familiar with light novels

Confusing them with visual novels casts some doubt on this assertion.

I do actually know what both of them are, but you are correct, brain produced the wrong token output.

Now, what if they were designed to look like real girls? Obviously they would look like this, right (edit: this is one of the original redesign posts)? Well no, because they obviously look like cross dressing men here. The fact that those redesigns look like men is now being denied by real girls who look nothing like those men.

As someone who is not familiar with this style of art, I'm having a difficult time understanding what here is meant to be sarcastic and what isn't. Would you mind laying out your point a bit more plainly?

I am being plain. The redesigns look like men. Some users pointed that out and redrew the design to look like 3d girls. Then some girls who look nothing like the men started gas lighting saying that they think they look like the men drawings and not like redrawn girl versions.

The redesigns look like men. Some users pointed that out and redrew the design to look like 3d girls. Then some girls who look nothing like the men started gas lighting saying that they think they look like the men drawings and not like redrawn girl versions.

Thanks for clarifying this. For what it may be worth, when I saw the character renderings, it did not occur to me that there was a trans acceptance angle. The characters looked kinda unattractive and mannish to me but I would have guessed that it was due to the artist being a lousy artist.

That being said, I concede that progressives sometimes push their agenda in deniable ways.

It's unfortunate that I kinda like women with features that could be described as "handsome" or "boyish." And even I can spot the gaslighting.

I honestly just chalk it up to the original fan artist not being very good at figure drawing. I read enough badly drawn webcomics in the early 2000's to not see much strange in an accidentally "mannish" or "ugly" drawing of a female.

I genuinely feel like this is people making a mountain out of a molehill. Like, do we really need to transvestigate fan art that is in no way associated with the actual game? Someone made some bad art online, and some people apparently like it. You can judge them for their bad taste, but what are we doing here?

I honestly just chalk it up to the original fan artist not being very good at figure drawing. I read enough badly drawn webcomics in the early 2000's to not see much strange in an accidentally "mannish" or "ugly" drawing of a female.

That's also what I thought.

I genuinely feel like this is people making a mountain out of a molehill. Like, do we really need to transvestigate fan art that is in no way associated with the actual game?

For me, it's an interesting idea: That someone is using fan art to push a progressive pro-trans agenda. And to mix metaphors, perhaps the molehill has a slippery slope.

For me, it's an interesting idea: That someone is using fan art to push a progressive pro-trans agenda. And to mix metaphors, perhaps the molehill has a slippery slope.

I just do not buy this. We live in the era of Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson. If people want to make progressive reinterpretations of characters they do so, openly and proudly.

There is no way that the fan artist here could have known that if they made slightly mannish images that so many people would go to bat for them, showing off their faces as "evidence" that teenage girls really do look like that.

I just see it as a combination of a bad artist, and teenage girls having low self esteem and body image issues, and accidentally creating the perfect toxoplasma moment.

I just do not buy this. We live in the era of Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson. If people want to make progressive reinterpretations of characters they do so, openly and proudly.

There is no way that the fan artist here could have known that if they made slightly mannish images that so many people would go to bat for them, showing off their faces as "evidence" that teenage girls really do look like that.

I just see it as a combination of a bad artist, and teenage girls having low self esteem and body image issues, and accidentally creating the perfect toxoplasma moment.

After I made that comment, I went and looked at the other work of this creator. As an example, it includes illustrations of someone who is clearly a man who is wearing a cutesy little sailor outfit (including a miniskirt). Having had a chance to reflect, I would interpret this as art designed to appeal to those with a fetish for cross-dressing, autogynophilia, etc. That same fetish (in my opinion) drives much of the trans agenda, but given the context I am not ready to conclude that there's any political agenda being pushed by this particular creator.

Are you certain that the correct response here is anything other than "take a breath, put the phone down, and go outside" ?

It's summer time, get a fishing pole and go do some catch and release.

It's summer time

Not here in Oz, it's not! I'll admit Victorian winter isn't that cold by Euro/US standards, but it's still wet and dark.

  1. This could apply to any culture war post.

  2. Abandoning the field is a sure way to let your opponents succeed in whatever they're doing. And if you think the culture war is inconsequential, this is a strange place to be posting.

One would hope we aspire to more than to be some internet person's outlet for "look at how stupid this single internet user is".

We were being told it's a single internet user, or just a couple crazy kids on the Internet, for years. It then turned out that, among many potential consequences, expressing a contrary opinion can get you fired. Trying this argument again is just insulting to anyonr whp hasn't spent the last 10 years in a comma.

2 is basically saying "if you do this you will lose the culture war". Isn't the whole point of the "don't fight the culture war" rule that you are not allowed to act like you are primarily motivated by winning it? So maybe this is a strange place to be posting if you are swayed by that point.

I don't think that's quite right. It's saying 'don't fight the war'. So don't try to drive out your opponents, don't chimp out, don't dox, don't dogpile.

Discussing goals and tactics is fine I think.

You might argue that 'if we don't talk about this, we concede' implies that talking about it is fighting, but that's the syllogism that got us to the point where it's almost impossible to discuss in the first place.

I have never played it and am not planning on it, because I am a snob, but from what I have gathered, it's like the anime girl version of Depression Quest.

Not quite. It's a visual novel, but it's a lot more game-side of visual novels (failure modes, bad ends, some basic minigames, a meta bit where using out-of-game contexts matters). I won't pretend it's some great and mechanically deep game, but it's not the schlock that DQ was.

And in terms of story, it's favored among the tumblrite set because it's a metaphor for mental illness, but only one (short-lived) character is specifically depressed. The rest are more psychotic, and the actual narrative for them is much more externally driven as to why they're going increasingly nuts. Will admit there's a very self-referential deconstructive bit, though it's less gooner or anti-gooner and more Undertale-like as a comment about video games in general.

If you want a plot synopsis, the Random Encounters song covers it in less than five minutes (and is very catchy).

I... didn't play every route (again, not a great game, I'm not in its target audience), but I don't remember seeing that quote, and it'd be a little weird in-context -- especially in the middle of the game, the surviving girls are definitely not just the cute bits floating around dereferenced.

I'm also not sure those are official updates. DDLC had a big redraw thing (that got some controversy) in the COVID era, and some pretty slop ports, but I'm not seeing any talk on their reddit about anything new coming down or any new hires. I didn't think there was much left for them to do; the paid version already had some goofy 'explained too much about the setting' content thrown in as a 'secret'.

I agree that it's weird art, even by the modern standards (or even old Excel Saga standards).

the Random Encounters song covers it in less than five minutes (and is very catchy)

I'd never seen that. And seeing it now leads down a rabbit hole of different original songs about Doki Doki Literature Club rendered in Minecraft style, at least half a dozen of which have tens of millions of YouTube hits each. Despite the creepiness of the game, there's something super-wholesome about these sorts of inventive fan communities going off and doing their own things, connected by and occasionally going viral on the internet. It's like the Chaotic Good version of the "toaster fucker problem".

Strange how much pushback you are getting for reporting on a revealing example of distortion. As you have already stated Doki Doki Literature Club is a fake VN, but considered real by its fans, instead of them thinking of it as belonging to the EOVN genre. The piece of media in question is by its fans thought thusly due to them lacking direct knowledge of what it was referencing, something perhaps even its authors did.

Fans of this work are mostly consuming echoes of shadows, parodies of stereotypes they never experienced expressed sincerly. (Some French 20th philosopher probably wrote about this. Also about this specific work, some blogger, but I can't find it right now.) Because they never experienced sincerity, they can't see anything wrong with further parody. If this work is by them indistinguishable from sincere works, it stands to reason they would not perceive the difference between sincere fanart of it, and unitentional parody.

As you have already stated Doki Doki Literature Club is a fake VN, but considered real by its fans, instead of them thinking of it as belonging to the EOVN genre.

I'm a casual fan of visual novels, and I don't see much point in distinguishing visual novels this way by region of origin, the same way we do with manga vs. comics or anime vs. cartoons. Visual novels largely originated in Japan, so most will be Japanese by default, but I'm not really sure that I would call something like DDLC or works like that 4chan visual novel, Katawa Shoujo, "fake" visual novels. They're just visual novels that weren't made in Japan.

Like, we can discuss them as works of arts by region the way we do with phrases like "French cinema", or "South Indian cinema", but it would be silly to say that French films are "fake" films because the first films were screened in New York City or something.

The comparisons in the original OP to Champagne don't make sense, because I don't think even the Japanese think of "noberugēmu" as a characteristically Japanese art style, even if it is far more popular in Japan than in the West.

Because they never experienced sincerity, they can't see anything wrong with further parody.

I have played several Japanese visual novels, and I appreciated DDLC as a fun little horror parody of the medium.

I don't actually think the existential horror of Monika's existence as a sentient side character in a video game is nearly as good a horror beat as when the childhood friend commits suicide, and all your saves are deleted, so you can't reload from a previous save to make a different choice. As someone who had learned to play VNs a particular way, make choices, restart when I got a bad ending, the fact that the game took away that option and made you live with the consequences of a story beat was really effective meta storytelling, whether DDLC is a "real" VN or not.

As someone who had learned to play VNs a particular way, make choices, restart when I got a bad ending, the fact that the game took away that option and made you live with the consequences of a story beat was really effective meta storytelling, whether DDLC is a "real" VN or not.

Funny you should mention that...

There is an ongoing debate over whether Doki Doki Literature Club was a direct rip-off of the then-untranslated Japanese VN Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi (for the record, the author of DDLC said it was only pointed out to him how similar they were during the polishing phase), which did that beat much better.

In DDLC, Sayori's suicide is totally unavoidable, so it's not playing fair to guilt the player for it. Totono does not force you to do the two things you get guilted for; you can choose to avoid them (indeed, one of them's almost impossible to do by accident).

You posted all this dumb shit about anime dating games (get control of your life, for god's sake) and didn't mention who did this redesign you're shidding and farding about. It was just, literally, some guy. Why did you waste everyone's time with this? Do you have autism? I don't even care if I get banned anymore.

Weird hill to die on, but ok.

It's a horror game wearing the costume of a dating game. That's its claim to fame.

No, its claim to fame is that JAST took seven years to translate Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi and has a litigious policy regarding fantranslations, so the inferior DDLC hit the English gaming community first despite coming out four years later. (Admittedly, also that DDLC was free.)

(The time from when JAST C&Ded the fantranslation of Sumaga to releasing it is longer than the entire production cycle of Duke Nukem Forever. How much longer? Well, I dunno, because they still haven't yet, but I think we recently passed the 15-year mark.)

Obviously this is unimportant. Just don't read if you don't like the subject matter (I don't know what it is about anime that seems to annoy so many non-fans, as if most people here don't waste their time with movies, TV, sports watching, and video games, which are all equivalent). It was just food for thought, it doesn't seem any worse to me than the median thread here in this regard? Don't we have media threads, for example, on the Odyssey movie, or gamergate++, pretty routinely? I skip more than half the threads I'd say because they don't appeal.

I don't think people are singling out anime here. I've played DDLC and enjoyed it.

But most of the other threads on the Motte touching on multimedia products are talking about the actual product itself, which is high budget, has backing by a major corporation, and there is always an opportunity cost where the resources going into these mammoth productions are not going to art that would appeal more to the non-woke or people on the right. There's more justification for them being in the culture war roundup than a "literally, who?" fan artist making bad fan art.

(I say that, even as I also tend to avoid a lot of those kinds of threads on here due to a general lack of interest.)

On one hand, I feel like I properly advertised the post as being about something unimportant and small scale. On the other, I also want to reject the attitude that individuals are categorically unimportant and worthless. The artist is a literally-who, but in the grand scheme of things, so is Blizzard corporation, or whoever. The idea that we must receive some kind of permission from above in the form of enough funding, enough recognition, enough attention, before we think, comment, and care, to me, is wrong. We should not let our minds be beholden to the collective in that way. I think we can produce fruitful thought by observing individuals who are not authorized by the blob to have millions of dollars or millions of eyes on them or dozens of published articles written on them.

I think that the issue is that the more niche you go, the sillier it seems to try and have a big hullabaloo.

To use an example from the other side. A while back feminists were up in arms on Tumblr about this picture, depicting a well-endowed, tan bimbo transforming into a more modestly endowed nerd. They said it was racist, sexist, etc.

But it was just a niche bit of fetish art, made by a niche fetish artist, that had accidentally escaped containment and reached a far larger audience than it was ever intended for. There was no larger political message in it, and the only artistic purpose was to help a small subset of fetishists get off to a debimbofication/nerdification image. I'm not even saying that that is beyond criticism or critique, but almost none of the feminist critique was coming from a well-informed place where anything they said was anything more than initial knee jerk reactions to seeing something they had no context for.

I agree with you, that people should be allowed to comment on, criticize and pay attention to small creators. There's no "you must be this big to ride", but I still think there is a discretion that is good to exercise when dealing with a strange tempest in a teapot.

But it was just a niche bit of fetish art, made by a niche fetish artist, that had accidentally escaped containment and reached a far larger audience than it was ever intended for.

As far as I can tell, this was not fetish art, and there are normal looking girls on tiktok insisting that they think they look like that. So it's a bit more normie/mainstream than your example, even if it's ultimately inconsequential.

Bit of a "lurk more" moment, I'm afraid!

It's a reversal of a older fetish meme. The original has the nerd pick up the book, turn into the bimbo. Bimbofication. Neither it, nor she, is that deep.

The reversed form ("Nerdification"? "Debimbofication"?) is perhaps making a statement (rah! Rah! Books!), but it's also a remix of the original fetish art consisting of just reversing the order of the frames.

And now there are lots of other remixes too -- they're separate people and dating!

It's true that you're not supposed to get off to either version, exactly, but the remix is 100% fetish art by volume, sssooo.

Edit: I think I have failed at reading comprehension; you didn't mean the (de-)bimbofication comic, but the original post's doki doki redraw. I'll leave my error, but apologize for my illiteracy!

It's a reversal of a older fetish meme. The original has the nerd pick up the book, turn into the bimbo. Bimbofication. Neither it, nor she, is that deep.

Do you have a link? I've always thought this was the original image. At first I thought you mean "meme" in the original sense of the word, but it seems you had a specific image in mind.

The only dynamic element they have is a tradition of branching choices, which anime and manga cannot do.

Japanese Wikipedia indicates that a few gamebook/choose-your-own-adventure manga works have been published.

Ah, good point, I remember some of those as a kid. Not manga, but paper choose your own adventure. But the base rate of branching stories in VNs is >95% I'd say and in manga it's the exception, obviously.

So tell me if I understand this correctly. The controversy is that a fan artist, in no way affiliated with the original game, made bad Doki Doki Literature fan art where they made the teenage girl characters look mannish?

This truly seems like a tempest in a teapot to me.

Like, whenever I learn about a controversy on any social media site that I'm not on (and that's basically all of them), I always feel like I'm getting news from a parallel world slightly worse than ours. Is this seriously a controversy? Was the fan artist particularly well known or influential before this? Why should literally anyone not involved in the flame war on Tik Tok care one iota about this?

This truly seems like a tempest in a teapot to me.

That's why I called a mise en abyme.

Why should literally anyone not involved in the flame war on Tik Tok care one iota about this

The idea is that it reflects greater trends.

The artist in question has about 400,000 followers, so, more than BAP on X.

The artist in question has about 400,000 followers, so, more than BAP on X.

My limited understand is that Tik Tok followers are different from followers on older sites like Youtube or X/Twitter. I remember hearing some influencer on a podcast or radio show say that Tik Tok follower counts are so inflated that advertisers and brand deals had to adjust in response.

I suspect a lot of Tik Tok followers are bots or fakes, more so than on other sites.

But even so. I just feel like going after a random fan artist feels like such small potatoes for the culture war in general.

Like, what does this battle accomplish in the larger culture war one way or the other? There were always going to be bad artists who made cringey art, and tried to defend it in social justice terms. Why feed the toxoplasma and take up arms in this case? When it's not even the actual video game studio doing the culture war thing, I don't see what anyone is hoping to accomplish here.

I just thought it was funny how people are gas-lighting about the art looking like men. It says something about human nature and the culture war more broadly.


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