Fiction: Defending the Indefensible
More and more people struggle with basic concepts.
I had assumed this would be a common-sense position, but it seems in more recent times there are a concerningly high number of people who struggle with the simple concept of separating fiction from reality. It reminds me of those short videos where someone was ‘confused’ by how reflections work, though thankfully, they didn’t bark at it like my dog does every time he so much as catches a glance of himself in it. At this point, I feel like he does this deliberately just to be annoying.
At first, it was something I just noticed on X, and as a platform now known for nothing but rage baits, of course, you will have some people who take stupid positions if it means netting them some easy money. The content they usually post about is stuff that most would agree is weird, out there or just plain degenerate. Dare I say, the Japanese creators of various anime and manga seem to be in active competition with each other on who can make the most raunchy high school-themed show. That is, in the end, just their excuse to do more slapstick-style humour. It’s also crazy that in these shows, they nearly always find some way to reference Fate. Whether it’s the Gate of Bootylon or this sequence from the Nukitashi OP.
And that’s not mentioning the absurd amount of hentai that covers tags that will lead you to question if the entire country at one point or another spent a long weekend in whatever place the Event Horizon went to. Now here’s the thing. A lot of this isn’t for me, even if I have a high tolerance for out there shenanigans, that doesn’t mean I would ever want something censored because ultimately it's harmless fiction.
Unfortunately, what we now have is people actively going out of their way to render a lot of serious words utterly meaningless. Let’s be honest for a second, the only reason you see people call someone an incel over them liking an anime girl is because it’s currently trendy to do so. Much like coomer became gooner, and so on and so forth. The problem here is all this in relation to fictional characters. You have people losing their minds over the slightest bit of skin while repeating the same tired old arguments that often have them referring to ‘well, what about cats drinking milk!’ or other such examples to justify why they think it’s totally normal to not separate fiction from reality. Spoiler, it’s not normal, in the same way as failing to grasp why people enjoy roleplaying in games like Hell Divers. The obsession with politicising everything has done a number on dividing fanbases, and social media doesn’t help as the algorithm actively forces these people to butt heads.
The other issue that is quite concerning is Collective Shout and its connection to various payment processors. They recently celebrated burning a dozen or so books - or wait, sorry, I mean raunchy video games. My bad. But, Mr Mad, you might say, those naughty, degenerate games depict some of the most awful things imaginable. Yes, and so does every other piece of fiction, whether it be books, video games, or TV. In WaW, you are actively a witness to the Nazis' march on Stalingrad, not to mention what comes after as you take the fight to Berlin. Then, of course, there’s Cyberpunk with its abundance of disturbing questlines, GTA with all its criminal activity, and Saints Row too, before it lost its teeth, and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.
The thing is, they aren’t just going after the easy targets; they are going after fairly well-known games and franchises too. They apparently went after Detroit: Become Human and Sword Art Online. Honestly, I feel for Aussie gamers who have to endure this collective nanny state bollocks.
The real problem with payment processors acting as more than just a way to facilitate legal transactions is that they now feel they can dictate what you consume, all the while seemingly playing ignorant to the other platforms that use them and also feature questionable content involving real people. I saw an X post that even alluded to fiction somehow being worse than the real deal, which is just insane to me.
The ultimate point here is that in all things related to fictional content, I am anti-censorship. I also don’t think some literal who group or payment processors should get to dictate the content of video games or other media when they are not just outsiders, but they also look down upon gamers as a whole. Because then, where does it end? Have we really fallen so far that we now have to protect the delicate feelings of those whose grasp of fiction is as tenuous as their grasp on reality?