Sketch, that's super offensive to boot and you should bloody well know better. It's like a backwards-talking version of "It's not rape if she enjoyed it." Rape victims are not required to conform to your notion of what a rape victim should be like. Nor do rapists need to conform to your idea of what they're like, either.
I'm sorry, I don't really follow how this is offensive considering the note we have describing the event. Sam does not describe herself as violated, being taken advantage of or in any way opposed to the event. The event did not lead to a fight, nor did Sam and Lonnie break up over the event. While the event could be construed as rape, it is not, because Sam did not consider herself raped.
I think the primary authority on whether a sexual advance is a violation is still the person who is on the receiving end of that advance. Not every time a woman touches her unsuspecting husbands butt it's an assault on the husband, nor would it be the other way around.
While it was a shitty move by Lonnie to start this sexual advance while Sam was asleep, it is still on Sam as the primary person to decide whether this was rape or she was comfortable with that sexual act. She appears to have been A-OK with it, so how is it on other people to disagree with her and call it a rape when she does not?
I think the primary authority on whether a sexual advance is a violation is still the person who is on the receiving end of that advance. Not every time a woman touches her unsuspecting husbands butt it's an assault on the husband, nor would it be the other way around.
But see that's referring to two people already in a relationship. The situation in Gone Home is the first time for two people who are just getting to know each-other.
it was a shitty move by Lonnie to start this sexual advance while Sam was asleep
I was a shitty move. If we can agree on that, then I'm happy. That's as far as I want it to go.
But see that's referring to two people already in a relationship. The situation in Gone Home is the first time for two people who are just getting to know each-other.
At this point of the story it seems that Sam and Lonnie have been in a relationship for a while. Lonnie takes the next step in that relationship, rather aggressively but Sam still seems okay with it. I do not see a reason to call this a rape if the supposed rape victim appears to be perfectly fine with the incident.
I'm not saying it was done on purpose. The line was pretty clearly a throw away and not even intended to be read. But knowing the group who made it I think they could have done a better job at forming the girl's relationship without it being problematic.
My friend explained a similar event in Young Avengers where a they introduced a male couple and then explained it away as a magical curse later.
Your 'friend' mislead you then. The characters were an openly gay couple. The Young Avengers was rebooted and there was less emphasis on this relationship yet the characters were still gay and they added a bisexual to a group. A better example can be found in Warren Ellis's Midnighter and Apollo from the Authority.
The other problem is Lonnie's running away from the military. People had this debate for real around the time the game came out. There was an argument if women are to emotional for combat. Lonnie is one of the only female members of the US armed services in a video game and she runs away because of a romance.
The discussion was centered on the lack of women allowed in direct combat roles during Desert Storm / Shield. Not whether they were 'too emotional'. As many studies have shown, men have no emotions whatsoever, hence making the best soldier.
You can't just settle for any form of representation just because it's representation. Gone Home as a queer story, is a bit like Sonic Boom as Sonic game. You run, you jump, and you platform but it doesn't fulfill my Sonic relate needs and it's got issues. Gone Home has issues.
That's a bit of an exaggerated comparison but I hope that makes sense.
Nope. It might also help to run a spell check and read your sentences out loud to make sure that they make sense grammatically. It is very hard to decipher what you are trying to communicate.
I'm sorry, I don't really follow how this is offensive considering the note we have describing the event.
I'm not claiming anything about the event, I'm putting it on sketch about his way of talking about it in that case, talking about how shaken up she was, and how shortly after she was talking about getting off with her girlfriend in future, and thus it's probably not rape. He's definitely got a point, but it's still a super fucked up way to argue it, especially when you consider that it's certainly not particularly unusual for rape victims who had a pre-existing romantic relationship with their rapist to continue that relationship, and continue sexual interactions with that person. He could have trivially made the same argument in a different way, but he did not, and I called him on it, that simple.
My point is simply that I have not really encountered this argument except in the context of attacking the "double standard" of feminism. It's categorically brought up by shit-stirrers, MRAs, and people who have a bone to pick.
The only time it's called a rape is in my copy pastas.
Why are you copy pasting arguments? What purpose does that serve?
More to the point:
What is the intent of your debate here? By bringing up this "controversy," what are you trying to say? What's your point? What's your thesis?
Are you trying to say that Gone Home itself was controversial? Why? Most good media are controversial in some way. Are you trying to say something about the treatment of women in games and by games media? If so, what?
Simply saying "hey guys that game is controversy" without any real point beyond that isn't constructive.
Further, the fact that your argument was a copy/paste, and that it follows a straight up playbook for derailing conversations about this game into "debates" about feminism and double standards, casts a deep shadow on any point you may be trying to make.
You started this discussion with:
[People] tend to ignore the rather disturbing story: a relationship with unwanted sexual advances and accusations about women in the military. I always wondered if Lonnie was a man would the response to the game have been the same.
So what point ARE you trying to make? You began by calling the game categorically disturbing (over a tiny detail in one story thread involving homosexual women) AND bring up a secondary and even more minor "women in the military" thread to back that "disturbing" category.
Then, in the same breath, you rhetorically wonder if the game would have been as well received if this hadn't been about a woman.
Really hard to believe that you're arguing earnestly or to any real point.
As I said in my last post, I feel like people are settling for less than decent representation. Just because it a game represents a gender preference other games do not commonly doesn't mean automatically it deserves loads of praise and admiration, especially when it does it in a half-assed way. This and The Last of Us (Which has a load of it's own problems) are the only games that try to Realistically portray a Woman X Woman relationship. What am I supposed to learn about those relationships from this game? People Not in a Sexual relationship getting naked on while they're sleeping is not normal. Games are not accurately representing the homosexual community. This game is one of the only ones trying to accurately represent homosexuality, but it fails. How hard could it possible be to do this right? The game Rewarded for trying did it wrong. Few other games even try. That's sad.
This game is one of the only ones trying to accurately represent homosexuality, but it fails. How hard could it possible be to do this right? The game Rewarded for trying did it wrong. Few other games even try. That's sad.
I disagree, and I think you're coming at it from the wrong angle. It didn't set out to accurately represent homosexuality, it set out to tell one story about a portion of a young woman's life, and primarily her homosexual relationship - a goal in which it succeeded, since that's literally exactly what it did.
There's no one way to represent homosexuality that you can really fail at, either, or more accurately, when you ask how hard it could possibly be, the answer is "It's practically impossible, in the sense you mean it."
The experience that one person has can be and often is radically different to another's - that's why it's an LGBT(etc) community, rather than a checklist of experiences that you must tick off to qualify. Does it fail at representing homosexuality? Yes, but in the sense that every bit of fiction and non-fiction that describes a gay person's experience fails to - because there isn't one single, true representation, and it failed to provide what doesn't exist. Homosexual people are exactly as diverse - well, other than in their sexuality, I suppose - as regular people, as are their stories.
Even if we assume that your interpretation of the game RE: if Lonnie's initial sexual advance was rape or not is true, then it's still a perfectly fine representation of that person's experience as a homosexual - being gay isn't all sweetness and musical theatre. Bad shit can happen. Bad shit does happen. Gay people can be raped by other gay people, can be in abusive relationships, and shit, can just be all around bad people.
Being homosexual, in and of itself, doesn't mean anything more than who you prefer to bang, and thus the complaint that it failed to accurately represent homosexuality is basically the same as saying Larry Laffer and the Leisure suit Larry games fail to accurately represent straight people. I mean, I've certainly never been hit by a taxi on my way to visit a prostitute who has a stunningly fatal STI, Been married, or become the hero of a tropical island. In fact, it was bitterly cold and the weather was awful.
...people are settling for less than decent representation. Just because it a game represents a gender preference other games do not commonly doesn't mean automatically it deserves loads of praise and admiration, especially when it does it in a half-assed way.
So you're saying that this game's primary attribute is that it depicts "realistic homosexuality," and that this (in your opinion poor) depiction is the sole reason the game was praised?
You're ignoring every other significant aspect of the game and focusing on a single inconsequential detail. You're also assuming that "depiction of homosexuality" is basically the only reason anyone talked about this game.
Name another game that was a free exploration of a space from which to uncover a latent past story. Then, explain why THAT is not the reason the game was so praised.
Name another game that was a free exploration of a space from which to uncover a latent past story. Then, explain why THAT is not the reason the game was so praised.
Dear Esther was an extremely similar sort of epistolary narrative exploration game, and skimming the reviews that Metacritic and gameratings used, most of them laud it more for telling a compelling, emotional story than the gameplay itself.
Comments
I think the primary authority on whether a sexual advance is a violation is still the person who is on the receiving end of that advance. Not every time a woman touches her unsuspecting husbands butt it's an assault on the husband, nor would it be the other way around.
While it was a shitty move by Lonnie to start this sexual advance while Sam was asleep, it is still on Sam as the primary person to decide whether this was rape or she was comfortable with that sexual act. She appears to have been A-OK with it, so how is it on other people to disagree with her and call it a rape when she does not?
More to the point:
What is the intent of your debate here? By bringing up this "controversy," what are you trying to say? What's your point? What's your thesis?
Are you trying to say that Gone Home itself was controversial? Why? Most good media are controversial in some way. Are you trying to say something about the treatment of women in games and by games media? If so, what?
Simply saying "hey guys that game is controversy" without any real point beyond that isn't constructive.
Further, the fact that your argument was a copy/paste, and that it follows a straight up playbook for derailing conversations about this game into "debates" about feminism and double standards, casts a deep shadow on any point you may be trying to make.
You started this discussion with: So what point ARE you trying to make? You began by calling the game categorically disturbing (over a tiny detail in one story thread involving homosexual women) AND bring up a secondary and even more minor "women in the military" thread to back that "disturbing" category.
Then, in the same breath, you rhetorically wonder if the game would have been as well received if this hadn't been about a woman.
Really hard to believe that you're arguing earnestly or to any real point.
People Not in a Sexual relationship getting naked on while they're sleeping is not normal. Games are not accurately representing the homosexual community. This game is one of the only ones trying to accurately represent homosexuality, but it fails. How hard could it possible be to do this right? The game Rewarded for trying did it wrong. Few other games even try. That's sad.
There's no one way to represent homosexuality that you can really fail at, either, or more accurately, when you ask how hard it could possibly be, the answer is "It's practically impossible, in the sense you mean it."
The experience that one person has can be and often is radically different to another's - that's why it's an LGBT(etc) community, rather than a checklist of experiences that you must tick off to qualify. Does it fail at representing homosexuality? Yes, but in the sense that every bit of fiction and non-fiction that describes a gay person's experience fails to - because there isn't one single, true representation, and it failed to provide what doesn't exist. Homosexual people are exactly as diverse - well, other than in their sexuality, I suppose - as regular people, as are their stories.
Even if we assume that your interpretation of the game RE: if Lonnie's initial sexual advance was rape or not is true, then it's still a perfectly fine representation of that person's experience as a homosexual - being gay isn't all sweetness and musical theatre. Bad shit can happen. Bad shit does happen. Gay people can be raped by other gay people, can be in abusive relationships, and shit, can just be all around bad people.
Being homosexual, in and of itself, doesn't mean anything more than who you prefer to bang, and thus the complaint that it failed to accurately represent homosexuality is basically the same as saying Larry Laffer and the Leisure suit Larry games fail to accurately represent straight people. I mean, I've certainly never been hit by a taxi on my way to visit a prostitute who has a stunningly fatal STI, Been married, or become the hero of a tropical island. In fact, it was bitterly cold and the weather was awful.
You're ignoring every other significant aspect of the game and focusing on a single inconsequential detail. You're also assuming that "depiction of homosexuality" is basically the only reason anyone talked about this game.
Name another game that was a free exploration of a space from which to uncover a latent past story. Then, explain why THAT is not the reason the game was so praised.