382 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

There are all kinds of things people class as rape these days. Look up fraud rape/rape by deception. It means getting consensual sex by pretending to be someone you are not (not dissimilar to the Leliana thing) but has since been expanded to lying about any aspect of someone's life. So a guy tells a woman he's a millionaire, she has consensual sex with him, then finds out he isn't a millionaire. Turns out that the guy just raped her.

 

How about this. Find one case where this happen, actually. Because this argument is nonsense. The idea of consent by fraud as a basis for liability for rape exists, but this isn't the legal ground for it (which concept originated in the context of lying about having a serious STD). 

[In Exile]

So whilst the cut Leliana content could be described as rapey, it wasn't Leliana who was being raped in that scenario. It's pretty backwards to consider Leliana the victim, as nothing happened to (the real) her.

 

Except for the fact that it did - she had her physical form used as a sex object by someone else (one, the desire demon, and two, the (unknowing) Inquisitor). The rapist in that scenario isn't the Inquisitor, but Envy. 

[KainD]

I for one am tired of all those war heroes who sacrificed years of their lives for their country whining about how they'd like a little warning about whether a story will force them to relive debilitating memories of some of the most awful trauma humans can experience. 

 

Is this really what we need to cater to? Avoiding problems instead of encouraging people to accept things that happened and moving forward? 

[In Exile]

Really bad comparison. Allergies are not cured by being exposed to the product that you are allergic to, mental problems are. 

 

This is silly. Mental problems aren't cured by forcing you to relieve the same trauma - we don't "cure" PTSD by forcing soldiers back into active war zones. Treating any condition requires, by necessary definition, dealing with the subject matter that is the cause of the problem, but that's also true for allergies. You don't treat - because you can't actually cure - allergies by forcing someone to have an allergic reaction. You manage it by having them avoid allergens. You don't have people avoid the subject matter with which their trauma is connected to, but you do it in a very controlled environment and under the care of trained professionals using methods backed by voluminous research. 

 

"Read this novel about the horror of war" isn't how we treat PTSD. 

[Laughing_Man]

The idea, which you either get or don't, is that for someone to have sex with a physical copy of you is a violation. It's far beyond awkwardness. You either believe that or you don't - and by the sound of it, you don't. But the issue isn't what you believe. The issue is whether you believe people feel this way, and whether you believe their feeling this way is the intent behind your work. I expect that your answer will be that their feeling this way isn't legitimate, so you wouldn't care.

 

But the actual point of the story has nothing to do with the ultimate conclusion Bioware reached. It has to do with the fact that the writers wouldn't have realized that there was another side to the issue without a more diverse perspective. Why would you be against more information?

 

Because Leliana is one tough cookie, and the kind of reaction you are describing would have been supremely out of character for her.

She has likely suffered much worse in her time as a Bard.

 

This over-sensitivity to something which wouldn't have mattered to this character, and shouldn't have mattered to anyone else,

is another example for Bioware bending backwards and ignoring valid and interesting story elements for essentially no good reason other than

pandering to a tiny group of the professionally offended.

 

Where the hell was this sensitivity before the ME3 ending came out? Where was the extreme care for even the most minute of outrage triggers?

[SnakeCode]

Except for the fact that it did - she had her physical form used as a sex object by someone else (one, the desire demon, and two, the (unknowing) Inquisitor). The rapist in that scenario isn't the Inquisitor, but Envy. 

 

Yes, the rapist in that scenario was Envy, but the rape victim wasn't Leliana. It was the Inquisitor.

[In Exile]

Because Leliana is one tough cookie, and the kind of reaction you are describing would have been supremely out of character for her.

She has likely suffered much worse in her time as a Bard.

 

She was raped. She upfront tells you this in DA:O. How Leliana, as a rape survivor, will deal with this is not something you can just divine out. At best, her writer knows. And that's about it. But I get that you're pretty ignorant about how this type of trauma actually works. 

 

Do you think, for example, Navy SEALs weak because they can suffer from really serious PTSD? 

[In Exile]

Yes, the rapist in that scenario was Envy, but the rape victim wasn't Leliana. It was the Inquisitor.

 

That's true. I didn't see it that way because my perspective was to narrow. I wouldn't see it as coerced consent (on my part) if a demon did that to me. 

 

Edit: 

 

I should qualify. I mean that's true insofar as I agree that the Inquisitor was a victim. I disagree that Leliana wasn't a victim. 

[Il Divo]

Is this really what we need to cater to? Avoiding problems instead of encouraging people to accept things that happened and moving forward? 

 

I've been a defender of the Sansa Stark scene as depicted on GoT S5 on artistic grounds. But at the same time, that doesn't mean being hit with a sudden burst of trauma is a great form of therapy. It's bit like pointing to that scene where they give Alex the treatment in A Clockwork Orange and telling him it's "curing" him. Giving people the rough equivalent of the Ludovico treatment isn't likely to help them, beyond making them resentful.

 

The purpose of the trigger warning conceptually-at least is that it lets people make an informed decision about whether they are able/willing to approach that content on their own terms.

[KainD]

This is silly. Mental problems aren't cured by forcing you to relieve the same trauma - we don't "cure" PTSD by forcing soldiers back into active war zones. Treating any condition requires, by necessary definition, dealing with the subject matter that is the cause of the problem, but that's also true for allergies. You don't treat - because you can't actually cure - allergies by forcing someone to have an allergic reaction. You manage it by having them avoid allergens. You don't have people avoid the subject matter with which their trauma is connected to, but you do it in a very controlled environment and under the care of trained professionals using methods backed by voluminous research. 

 

"Read this novel about the horror of war" isn't how we treat PTSD. 

 

Alright fair argument, I will agree. Warnings it is then. 

 

 

Do you think, for example, Navy SEALs weak because they can suffer from really serious PTSD? 

 

I am more interested in how they get the PTSD. I know what it means to have uncontrollable panic attacks, when your rational mind understands that nothing life threatening is going on, from having experience with drug side effects, but those were chemically induced. 

Do you have relevant knowledge on the subject in a few words, or do I have to go and read on it for a while? 

[Laughing_Man]

She was raped. She upfront tells you this in DA:O. How Leliana, as a rape survivor, will deal with this is not something you can just divine out. At best, her writer knows. And that's about it. But I get that you're pretty ignorant about how this type of trauma actually works. 

 

Do you think, for example, Navy SEALs weak because they can suffer from really serious PTSD? 

 

Am I ignorant? Are you sure? You don't know me, what I do for living, or what I went through in life or had the chance to see.

 

Yes, sometimes even minor things can trigger a painful past for a trauma victim, but that's hardly the case here.

Leliana is hardened by what she went through, even her softer version is a master spy and a general badass,

she didn't break even under the tender mercies of the torturers in the alternate timeline version.

 

The fact that her faith is strong, probably helped.

 

This? It wouldn't even touch her.

 

But even if it did have an impact on her, I don't see the problem, you can still write about the issue and work with it.

Not everything should be sunshine and daisies.

[In Exile]

I am more interested in how they get the PTSD. I know what it means to have uncontrollable panic attacks, when your rational mind understands that nothing life threatening is going on, from having experience with drug side effects, but those were chemically induced. 

Do you have relevant knowledge on the subject in a few words, or do I have to go and read on it for a while? 

 

The basic idea is that it's a type of anxiety disorder (not unlike panic attacks, and PTSD can involve panic attacks) with a spectrum of reactions that can both come on uncontrollably and be 'triggered' by exposure to subject matter tied to the root event(s) that led to the PTSD. 

 

The general explanation for it, at a theoretical level, is that it's a time of memory encoding. Remembering traumatic events is adaptive, because it helps us avoid them. Fear and anxiety put us on guard and help us avoid them. That it shatters you over the long run emotionally is not relevant, so long as you reproduce. 

[In Exile]

Am I ignorant? Are you sure? You don't know me, what I do for living, or what I went through in life or had the chance to see.

 

Yes, sometimes even minor things can trigger a painful past for a trauma victim, but that's hardly the case here.

Leliana is hardened by what she went through, even her softer version is a master spy and a general badass, she didn't break even under the tender

mercies of the torturers in the alternate timeline version. This? It wouldn't even touch her.

 

But even if it did have an impact on her, I don't see the problem, you can still write about the issue and work with it.

Not everything should be sunshine and daisies.

 

To the first point, that's all speculation. When I say you're ignorant, I don't mean that you didn't experience trauma. I mean that you can't possibly know the mechanism by which people actually experience this kind of trauma to predict what people will find traumatic. Science currently can't. That's Nobel Prize in medicine level work. 

 

To the second point, of course you can still write about it. The issue for Bioware wasn't whether they should in some self-censorship sense. It's whether they wanted to write on the topic. The conversation amounted to "Hey, a whole bunch of people are going get something totally different out of that scene." and "Oh, well, crap. We don't want that at all. We should change the scene."

[KainD]

The basic idea is that it's a type of anxiety disorder (not unlike panic attacks, and PTSD can involve panic attacks) with a spectrum of reactions that can both come on uncontrollably and be 'triggered' by exposure to subject matter tied to the root event(s) that led to the PTSD. 

 

The general explanation for it, at a theoretical level, is that it's a time of memory encoding. Remembering traumatic events is adaptive, because it helps us avoid them. Fear and anxiety put us on guard and help us avoid them. That it shatters you over the long run emotionally is not relevant, so long as you reproduce. 

 

Ok so - true story: I like doing extreme activities sometimes, but I once broke my spine while falling from an aggressive zip-line. I did not have a problem returning to that place and riding that zip-line again after my spine healed. Why? 
What was missing for me to develop a PTSD? It was the most painful experience I had in my life, I legit thought I was going to die. 

[Laughing_Man]

To the second point, of course you can still write about it. The issue for Bioware wasn't whether they should in some self-censorship sense. It's whether they wanted to write on the topic. The conversation amounted to "Hey, a whole bunch of people are going get something totally different out of that scene." and "Oh, well, crap. We don't want that at all. We should change the scene."

 

That's valid for almost everything you write, the fact that this exact point is where their sensitivity to different reactions woke up is telling.

Essentially, they seem to care much more about concerns and reactions of a certain type, while ignoring others.

[In Exile]

That's valid for almost everything you write, the fact that this exact point is where their sensitivity to different reactions woke up is telling.

Essentially, they seem to care much more about concerns and reactions of a certain type, while ignoring others.

 

That's their point. It's true for absolutely everything. They reason they used this example was because they wanted to get at the scale of how diversity of perspective works - i.e., they could have unintentionally written a rape scene, which is a big deal, in the same way that writing a torture scene or any kind of scene like that would be in any type of media.

 

As to your last sentence, I mean, yeah, absolutely. People care a lot more, for example, about portrayals of religion than reactions to the hairstyles chosen by the art team. And that's absolutely normal. It would be bizarre for people to treat all topics equally, when they're clearly not.  

[In Exile]

Ok so - true story: I like doing extreme activities sometimes, but I once broke my spine while falling from an aggressive zip-line. I did not have a problem returning to that place and riding that zip-line again after my spine healed. Why? 
What was missing for me to develop a PTSD? It was the most painful experience I had in my life, I legit thought I was going to die. 

 

AFAIK. there's no answer to that question. I'm no longer current with the literature and haven't been for some time, but to answer it would require knowledge of the mechanism through which PTSD is caused. And we lack it to any meaningful predictive degree (much like with most chronic illnesses, see e.g. asthma and contrast with e.g., ulcers historically and presently). 

[KainD]

People care a lot more, for example, about portrayals of religion than reactions to the hairstyles chosen by the art team. And that's absolutely normal. It would be bizarre for people to treat all topics equally, when they're clearly not.  

 

Can't really say that, depeneds on the person. Like you said perspective. 

 

AFAIK. there's no answer to that question. I'm no longer current with the literature and haven't been for some time, but to answer it would require knowledge of the mechanism through which PTSD is caused. And we lack it to any meaningful predictive degree (much like with most chronic illnesses, see e.g. asthma and contrast with e.g., ulcers historically and presently). 

 

I guess there is no point in poking around trying to learn more about PTSD then if there are no concrete answers, oh well. 

[In Exile]

Can't really say that, depeneds on the person. Like you said perspective. 

 

 

I guess there is no point in poking around trying to learn more about PTSD then if there are no concrete answers, oh well. 

 

To the first point, you're very much right. I didn't mean to say this is some absolutely natural scale - just that it's normal for people, once they decide two things are not equal, to treat them unequally. And if two things are truly unequal, it is not necessary wrong to treat them unequally. 

 

To the second point, there's a lot of answers, just not definitive. But as I say, it's like asthma. It would be strange to avoid learning about asthma because the causal mechanism is 100% known. 

[Laughing_Man]

As to your last sentence, I mean, yeah, absolutely. People care a lot more, for example, about portrayals of religion than reactions to the hairstyles chosen by the art team. And that's absolutely normal. It would be bizarre for people to treat all topics equally, when they're clearly not.  

 

I'll spell it out for you: They show much more care when it comes to "social justice" topics and are being overly politically correct about them.

Anything related to gender, sexual relationships / acts, racism, etc.

 

It makes for a very... tame, and rather unrealistic and less-immersive experience.

 

They don't seem to care as much about other potentially controversial and contentious topics.

[Zatche]

They don't seem to care as much about other potentially controversial and contentious topics.

Such as?

[In Exile]

I'll spell it out for you: They show much more care when it comes to "social justice" topics and are being overly politically correct about them.

Anything related to gender, sexual relationships / acts, racism, etc.

 

It makes for a very... tame, and rather unrealistic and less-immersive experience.

 

They don't seem to care as much about other potentially controversial and contentious topics.

 

One, that's not actually true, because it's quite clear that they approach e.g. religion and politics in the same way. Look at how both ME and DA handle the idea of atheism vis-a-vis Christianity or its expy. 

 

But beyond that, you're actually wrong about the conclusion, especially the value judgment about what is "realistic". The immersion point is subjective. But realism is a nonsense buzzword typically used to cover up your value-laden judgment about, often, history and human interaction. 

 

That's beyond the incredibly narrow range of actual horrible things that people usually limit "realism" to mean (e.g. sexual assault of background characters). 

[Lady Artifice]

Just keeps getting creepier.

[Synthetic Turian]

Just keeps getting creepier.

 

 

Because, why blink?

[Mdizzletr0n]

There was a little bit of racism sprinkled in there as well if I remember. Stupid KKK.

Too often, the two are one in the same.