This is a game where you can take someone and . . . beat him to death with his own eyeballs, and yet the idea of sex is off-limits.
. . . I just find it curious how mass, incredibly gory violence is okay but sex is not.
Oh, for Armok's sake. Violence is waaaaaaay less tabooed than sex. Imagine yourself as a kid, watching some gory action movie. Will you feel yourself guilty? Hell no, you would be enjoying the process all the way without fear of being caught watching. Now imagine yourself as a kid, watching some movie with a lot of sex scenes. Do I even need to explain further?
Yes, I believe you do. If you have a gut or emotional reaction to a sexy movie, or to the idea of a kid watching that movie, that's fine, you're perfectly entitled. But unless you can
justify your reaction, unless you can
explain why your emotions should have bearing on a logical argument, then your opinion is nothing more than that--one person's opinion. It brings nothing new to the table, and so convinces no one.
(Tangent: It's like those people who oppose breastfeeding in public, under the logic that "It's disgusting!" That seems to be literally their entire argument: They say, "It's disgusting," and then they just
stop, they have nothing more. As if they expected the entire debate to be over because one person thought breastfeeding was icky.)
Back to sex-sensitivity. It's time to trot out the GRRM quote:
“I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it and people swearing off. To my mind this is kind of frustrating, it’s madness. Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.”
Personally, I have no idea why American culture is so a-ok with violence and so horrified by sexuality. Given the choice of what my hypothetical child would grow up viewing as a
positive human behavior, I for one would FAR rather have them be comfortable with two people being intimate and giving pleasure to one another, than be blase about two people engaging in bloody, savage violence against each other.
. . . But because of today's culture of rape apologists, willing to downplay real attacks as "twenty minutes of action" and the like, I absolutely will not accept any attempt to portray sexual assault as something that is "okay" for the player to do, or even "allowed".
That's an extremely paternalistic viewpoint. You seem to want to control what other people do in their own homes with a single player video game.
That's a valid point, and I suppose I am on the side of the Thought Police in this particular case. I once saw a meme that summarized a related argument in this fashion:
Playing Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney doesn't make me a lawyer . . .
Playing Surgeon Simulator doesn't make me a doctor . . .
Playing Starfox doesn't make me a pilot . . .
Playing Diablo III doesn't make me a wizard . . .
Playing Guitar Hero doesn't make me a rock star . . .
But playing Grand Theft Auto will inevitably make me a criminal?
But let me respond to that. I am not worried about Adventure Mode DF turning players into brutal killing machines ready to deal out ultraviolence at the slightest provocation. No one (well, hardly anyone) is afraid of a bloodthirsty lunatic suddenly going berserk with an axe anymore. That's because, these days, we're all afraid of a bloodthirsty lunatic suddenly going berserk with an
assault rifle. Melee violence seems merely a quaint, relaxing interlude by comparison. And romanticizing medieval combat (which has been done for hundreds of years) has not provoked a real-world epidemic of armored swordsmen running amok. In short, the violence of Dwarf Fortress does
not represent a threat capable of destabilizing or harming modern society.
On the other hand, suppose that Adventure Mode DF
did include rape, and allow it to be committed against enemies (or other creatures) who lacked the ability to resist. The game already allows the maiming and killing of even sentient beings, and a character who is strong enough can perform these executions
casually, as an everyday event. To allow the player to rape these creatures risks causing the two acts to achieve parity, in the player's mind: He is already inured to killing bandits, it's what the game is about. What if he slowly comes to regard the idea of raping them first as being similarly commonplace, or even expected? Now, I'm no sociologist, I don't have the statistics at my fingertips, I can't tell you exactly how many rapes are committed each year, but I'm pretty sure that it's
too many. And while it's easy for a player to tell fantasy from reality as far as dueling a goblin is concerned, that distinction tends to blur when you have to have to morally distinguish raping a prostitute from . . . raping a prostitute.
So yes, call me paternalistic if you wish. Accuse me of wanting to police how individuals play a single-player game in their own homes. But all I'm arguing for is that Toady simply
not include a way for combat to turn sexual in the game. Introducing sex is OK, just don't let it mix with the violence. If players want to play rape games, that's their call, but in my view DF would only be cheapened and degraded by such an inclusion.
This suggestion is not going to generate much in the way of useful, intelligent discussion. It has been, currently is, and will continue to be mostly just arguing over prudishness and/or perversity.
The opinions and arguments presented in this thread may seem old hat to you, but for some they may be relatively new, or at least thought-provoking. For my own part, I never thought that in this day & age I would have to
debate that rape is a bad thing to encourage, so this has been (and may continue to be) an interesting rhetorical exercise for me. I assume that Toady gave up trying to read this thread by the time it overflowed the 1st page, and indeed, I highly doubt that we could come up with any sex-related gameplay suggestions that he hasn't already weighed. But as long as there are intelligent points of ethics to be considered and discussed, I will most likely consider and discuss them.