site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7647 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • 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.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

https://x.com/Schlock_Ness/status/2111728192113217959/photo/1 Here's the picture people are objecting to.

I don't play these games so I don't care but I agree this looks like a trans male. The dead gaze has school shooter vibes. Which would annoy me if it was my franchise. The only game where I've personally not played it because the characters were ugly was new world, but thats an MMO where your character is supposed to represent you and your experience in that world

That design looks fine to me. There a certain look to the Twitter-friendly woke reboot female protagonist, and it's not present here; I figure the chud half of the outrage machine has just gone through its own purity spiral, and arrived at a consensus that everything short of the cookie-cutter babyfaced vaguely Asian kitten with giant tits and random holes in the outfit must be part of the media conspiracy to keep them down.

Castlevania had a borderline trademark on the Japanese fake-aristocratic-Western androgynous bishie look with its male characters for the longest time. Going for something that fits with the "prince-like" Takarazuka female CEO dressed like a British bellboy aesthetic is a perfectly reasonable mirror image of it.

I don't think she looks trans. You could probably graft her head onto a body with no breasts and she would pass for a bishounen, but that's just being androgynous. She's just built like a fighter.

And I could totally understand this line of defense: "Rose looks like a modern pentathlete because she has to be one to do all the things she does in the game, we wanted her to look like she can actually muscle up all these ledges and swing all these swords". No one complains that Brienne of Tarth wasn't hot enough.

No one complains that Brienne of Tarth wasn't hot enough.

Brienne of Tarth being the opposite of hot was an entire plot point in the books.

I think it looks male only if you have over-sensitized your brain on anime.

All ratios are realistic for a muscular woman who trains seriously for athletic purposes, not for thothness. Waist to hip ratio is more feminine and shoulder to head ratio is near exactly the classic ratios for an adult woman, (1 2, see p. 27 for what went for American ideal in 1930s] Face is very feminine. Boob-size unrealistically large. Most male-ish features is the arms and hand structure, the left right hand is probably 1 sd larger than average.

I definitely don't watch anime, but I participate in gender critical twitter so I'm probably more visually sensitive to androgyny than necessary. The in-game shots from the same post look less masculine, but the splash image I linked the face looks very masculine to me because of the brow ridge. Also the aforementioned body ratios.

Also the aforementioned body ratios.

I am scratching my head in frustration, because I have no idea what body proportions you all are thinking of. The average Western woman, who is overweight? Here is the crude proportion study I posted in a reply in the other subthread, I added a real human female, Sydney Sweeney, who presumably has great and based shoulder / waist / hip ratios.

The magically corrupted hand is more male than female, and the other arm has lower fat percentage than is considered attractive, which may throw people to look for uncanny valley.

Brow ridge ... eh, I think it is the unfortunately placed flock of her anime hair-do.

/images/17924388793642309.webp

That adult woman suffers from the same ailment as Hank Hill. She has no ass.

That’s a dude, right? Right?

The only game where I've personally not played it because the characters were ugly was new world

One thing I prefer about Western MMOs is the more mundane / ‘ugly’ character designs. I think it’s in part because I associate Korean MMO style beautiful character creators with Korean MMOs, and therefore entirely nonsensical (even by Blizzard standards) storylines, dull grinding, terrible quests and predatory microtransactions / p2w.

I definitely think BioWare took it a step too far with years of weirdly ugly characters in games, but Western MMOs are a more workmanlike kind of dull. And I just hate the anime aesthetic all East Asian games seem to have (even Dark Souls when they occasionally decide to have a non-hag female character), I hate it more than anime itself where there are at least some gems.

I'm with you. i've never enjoyed anime aesthetic. World of warcraft has always been in the gaming sweet spot of what I like things to look like (I also don't enjoy pixel ar). All of my wow characters ever have been cute or pretty except I had a bank alt Draenei that looked like Mr Clean because I found that funny.

I think there's something a little off about her in this image, but it's not 'trans' by any stretch. I think maybe her head is a bit small compared to the rest of her body? That's all I can pinpoint. Very weird that people read this as trans.

Muscular redheads just don’t hit the same since the Cornell scandal. Poor girl ruined an entire phenotype.

I think there's something a little off about her in this image, but it's not 'trans' by any stretch

For what it's worth, that image definitely pings my trans-dar.

I think maybe her head is a bit small compared to the rest of her body? That's all I can pinpoint.

The hands and arms are very large; the neck is covered; there's not much of a waist; the face is a little on the angular side. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that cartoon heroines have traditionally been exageratedly feminine and this one is not.

The arms are definitely not large. Even for an athletic female I consider them thin, never mind what you would typically see on an athletic male build. I can agree with the small waist, but that's about it.

Arms are okay. In my opinion, the left right hand is bit too large.

The arms are definitely not large

I disagree, but anyway, what about the hands? Doesn't the person's right hand look very large to you?

The obviously corruption-infested right hand? Why wouldn't it be larger than normal?

Look, I 100% agree that game devs are going out of their way to make less attractive women in games, but that image seems fine. Even being primed with "some people say this character looks trans" I can barely see it and would never have made that connection myself.

This seems like people who are SO all in on "game devs make all characters ugly" that they cannot back off to "many game devs make most female characters unattractive, even if there are exceptions" and cannot take a win. And worse, they will likely hurt their own cause. The enemy will do everything in their power to make this THE central example of the complaint and then say "see, they complain about nothing you can ignore everything they have to say and should probably join us in celebrating anything that makes them madder".

When people on the right see the level of offense that is railed against as "racist" or "sexist" or the ever expanding definition of "rape" they rightly conclude "things must be pretty good if this is what they are complaining about, the demand for racism clearly exceeds the supply". I don't see why the reverse would not be true in this case, especially given that the left controls all of the legacy game media with the power to amplify preferred viewpoints and/or suppress rivals.

It's culture war overdose. No one would call her looking like a trans male 20 years ago. Hell, not even 10 years ago. There's a word for a woman with short hair and "jaw too sharp" or whatever: it's called a tomboy.

I wouldn't have had the vocabulary to describe it 20 years ago, but I think the uncanny valley element might still have been there. I can only claim a casual familiarity with figure drawing references like Loomis, but the proportions are very male. Waist-to-shoulders, arm length, hand size seem wrong, for example.

But it's not inconceivable that it's just an artist that has different ideal proportions (there is variance: see Reubens), maybe on the basis of their surroundings, or that the classic texts aren't being taught. There is a decent variance within the population, too: serious women's rugby players look different than gymnasts or runners.

I can only claim a casual familiarity with figure drawing references like Loomis, but the proportions are very male. Waist-to-shoulders, arm length, hand size seem wrong, for example.

Funny that you should say that, because I was thinking of Loomis' references too, and thinking how more stylized current ideals are than in his time.

Let's do a proportion study, * Figure Drawing for All It's Worth * vs Castlevania.

/images/17924337256581552.webp

nearly exact match, especially if you adjust for perspective, and Rose has nearly 1.5x wider hips.

I suppose I could see that some part of the backlash are people with a very ingrained artist background getting wrong vibes from the proportions. I wouldn't see any difference without side by side comparison.

And in any case, as you said, there is a variance. Isn't it more realistic that a woman with mannish proportions would be better suited to the job of an adventurer?

Yeah, some people just prefer their character designs a bit androgynous.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats