Someone’s getting his DS confiscated
Fire Emblem Fates has some questionable stuff in the Marriage options. The characters being referenced here are actually the protagonists adopted sisters.
Someone’s getting his DS confiscated
At thirteen he’s probably not buying his own games yet so looks like someone didn’t do their research.
I’d normally agree with you, parents should be looking into that kind of stuff, but in this it sounds like it’s just a side quest, therefore, how would they know? It likely didn’t affect the rating at all, and unlikely to have advertised it anywhere when looking up the game before buying it (sense it’s not related to the main plot), so unless they’re playing through the entire game itself, which seems a bit extreme..
Unless there’s any blatant nudity and sex scenes involved the game probably slid by with a T rating. Which, if the kid had money on him means he could definitely have bought it himself.
Personally, I also find the context of everything in the game more important than just “this character looks young and can be married.” Like, question one is she even that young? We’re talking about a person in a video game. Even just art style wise there’s a lot of wiggle room here. Question two, who is the playable character? If it’s some grown ass adult asking a 12 year old to marry them then sure, that’s a bit much. More likely, if she’s 12 so is the character and probably the target audience, so I doubt they’re doing anything besides “Let’s get married!” “Okay!”
She’s old enough to have a kid or two, then leave them in a pocket reality where time flows differently for long enough to have the kid grow old enough to join the party as another team member.
IIRC she is actually old enough to do all this, but she is definitely presented with a much younger look and attitude than the rest of the cast. Fire Emblem Fates and Awakening both had a character like this, and it was… at least a little disturbing. (And in Awakening, that character was also the dragon shapeshifter, so if you wanted your character to have two dragon kids that was who you had to hook up with.)
My marriage picks (in order of playthroughs) were:
Jacob/Kaze – It was Jacob until I found out about Dwyer’s abysmal personal ability and switched to Kaze instead (Birthright Luna Classic)
Setsuna – Setsuna is Best. (Birthright No-Death-Resets Challenge Luna Classic)
Niles – Surprisingly good support (Conquest No-Death-Resets Challenge Luna Classic)
To be fair, the kid has a valid point here. If he’s going for a more age-appropriate matchup, there shouldn’t be a problem. As long as it keeps the mature stuff to a suitable minimum.
It’s basically just anime logic, she’s not actually said to be twelve, and the player character can potentionally look just as young.
And the most explict the game gets is some revealing costumes and cleavage in cutscenes.
It’s not as bad as it looks basically, though you wouldn’t know that without looking deeper and the first impression really is bad – and Benny’s wording didn’t help.
Ideally Avery would talk to him about it and do his research so he can come to his own conclusion, though as a kneejerk reaction this makes sense.
I was going to say the same thing. Technically, which is less age-appropriate for a 13-year-old—romantically pursuing the character that looks and/or acts 12, or romantically pursuing the character that looks and/or acts 25?
Not that it’s really worth overthinking, but particularly in a “dating sim” like thing the inappropriateness of the romance choice varies considerably based on the age of the player.
Another factor in the argument is that thematically, the setting is meant to be partially indicative of medieval Europe. Marriages at those ages are not uncommon historically.
Mostly among the nobility, though, where it was political (and might well go unconsummated for some time, for practical reasons of “older teens less likely to die in childbirth”). From what I’m digging up, late teens and early-to-mid 20s is more common if you weren’t noble and your family got more use from you working around the house/farm/workshop/loom/etc.
As a 27 year old mother who get continuously mistaken for a 15 year old I’ve always gotten very offended by the argument that you shouldn’t have a character that looks young even if they are ment to be older in the story. Because that basically saying people like me shouldn’t be represented.
I think it’s because characters like that typically flirt dangerously close to the border of acceptable vs pedophilic. Fire Emblem Awakening had trouble with this with Nowi who is over a thousand years old, but looks and acts like she’s 9 or 10. Her reasoning being that thinking about the bad isn’t going to help anyone and that the best thing she can do is get stronger and enjoy herself while doing so.
It’s cultural – they have a whole loli fashion thing where adult women dress up and make themselves look younger.
I find it weird and a bit squicky, but as long as no actuall minors are getting exploited I don’t really care.
I was referring more to how it was received over here by western audiences.
Personally, I had avatar marry her in Awakening even though Tharja is my favorite because A) Gaius X Tharja and B) her supports with Robin are adorkable.
I would say you should look at how often anime is put out with young girls being ultra sexualized…
Yea, in the east this isn’t that much of a deal, the west is more prudish in this regard even when the subjects are just cartoons is what I’m saying.
Like the things we get from there are often already censored or tuned down in localizations.
Goddammit I had a big post and the site glitched the fuck up.
tl;dr it’s not as accepted as the common narrative in english speaking countries says it is. The markets for this are very specific and small, and most of the things made for those markets are low cost inherently or made at a lower cost than what it would normally cost. This is *especially* true in video games.
And then you have Senyuu, which takes this concept and lampshades it so hard that the bulb shatters into a billion pieces.
I think you should look at the cultural differences between western and eastern cultures. 14 is legal age in japan 16 to work in a soapland.
no, please don’t, anime characters are a a cartoon, an exagerated portrayal of people ina fantastic world, saying liking an anime character equals wanting to have sex with underage children is wrong, please let’s not go down that path
Eh? I don’t think you understood what I said. I wasn’t going down any paths; merely commenting on the reception of a character archetype.
I am weary of people that think a cartoon is a real person and condemn others over liking a cartoon however they chose to like them
but yeah, I get your meaning, in the end it’s nothing more than how people may think about the character
I’ll go as far to say that i’d rather people with those kind of tastes get their kicks from cartoons rather than… other ways.
believe me, we don’t interlope, they are both exclusively different things
Pretty much what you said. I honestly don’t see the harm to it if it allows someone to get their jollies without compromising an actual real-life human being.
Yeah, personally I felt marrying Nowi was really iffy – she’s obviously presented as childlike, to the point that even her daughter looks and acts older – but the flip side of that was that my character got to have two dragon daughters so that’s where that went.
Hell yes to female Morgan having dragon powers (female Morgan is just better than male Morgan all around though)!
I felt that the supports that they used for Nowi/Nah were well-chosen for highlighting Nah’s upbringing (completely without dragon parents and raised by non-related humans) versus Nowi’s upbringing (parents are dead, but suggested that she did live with them for a time) and how their personalities were shaped by their pasts.
Also just for funs: (don’t worry, it’s safe for work) http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=040813
So people who didn’t play this have a reference.
As someone married to a woman the approximate size of a 12-year-old who has looked 10-20 years younger than she is for her entire adult life, I agree 100%. The “it’s not creepy if we tell you she’s an adult” thing can be (and is) taken too far, but not everyone who is attracted to petite women who superficially look considerably younger than they are is a pedophile.
My now husband was given the pedofile and jaibait attacks a lot when we first got together (I was 18) at the time and similar stuff had cost me relationships before that. So no I won’t accept the cultural BS I’m a white woman I don’t have a drop of Asian blood in me. There are 13 year olds at the local middle school with bigger chests and hips them me. The “she looks twelve” argument is something that has been used against me so no this your a paedophile if you like this is literally telling people like our sex lives are disgusting.
Mind, the characters mentioned don’t just look young but also act that way. It’s the later which triggers people’s squick radar more than their appearance I think.
That’s certainly true in some (many?) cases, although while I know nothing about Fire Emblem, I skimmed some character summaries and at least one very-underage-looking-and-mostly-acting character who’s actually very, very old apparently has an in-character reason for acting childish most of the time, and does in fact have a daughter.
No idea how that comes across in execution, but it does at least seem to be playing with age and maturity expectations rather than just being creepy.
A contrast in the opposite direction is Holo from Spice and Wolf, who is supposed to look 15 according to the novels but universally acts very mature so there’s no squick factor at all.
Yea I’m just pointing out that these characters aren’t just small or young looking, they are deliberately designed to be child like – that’s an important distinction with them and the above posters young looking girlfriend’s or whoever.
Like it’s not just something that happened by chance, the designers know exactly what they are doing so the “well some people really do look that way” excuse does not fly.
Though it should also be said that nothing actually explicit happens or is even mentioned in the games themselves so it’s not quite as creepy as it sounds, some of the designs are just questionable, which is why I and others make fun of them here.
Pulling from a non-anime point of reference, but a character who I think does the “energetic petite person” trope right is Sydney over at Grrlpower.
She’s kind of obnoxious in her hyper-spastic behavior and she hits all the “manic high-energy” tropes on the nose, but she’s not presented as child-like or in a “sexualized innocence” sort of way just because she’s petite.
Darn, before you mentioned, I *did* always envision Sydney as a teenager subconsciously……
The only thing that keeps me from siding with your argument is having seen what you said- which is true and valid- twisted and manipulated into “arguments” to justify adults who believe it is their right to engage in adult relationships with children and people underage. It’s a sick,poisonous slippery slope that people use to get away with sick behaviors while justifying punishing people who have nothing to do with such things. I, for the most part, stay away from it. People do as they will and I might side eye you a bit but unless you flip a very specific set of red flags, I could care less what you and who you do it with in a consenting adult relationship or a squicky fictional one. What gets me mad is the unfair punishment of people doing nothing wrong while people who are doing wrong use that exact same arguments to get away with their crime. It’s not fair and it is not just.
Man, hearing that makes me glad my wife is a lot older than me and we started dating when she was in her 30s. I’ve seen photos of what she looked like in her early 20s, and if I had been older than her and met her then, I shudder to think of what kind of looks I’d have gotten.
@kitenkaiba Preach~ I’m short so people make the “You look 16” joke a lot and joke about my significant other being a pedophile even though they’re younger than me. Respect for all body types
@TomTheBom yeah and don’t even get me started on the comments I get when we’re out with our baby…
It’s not just the looks, but the attitude of this character in both Awakening and Fates. They both have a really childlike, naive demeanor, to the point that the daughter of the one in Awakening is pretty critical of her mother and the relationship that conceived her.
Depending on the art style, everyone through their 40s in anime look young until they hit the elderly category, then they instantly loose 30% of their height and transform into a wrinkled prune like it was a moon princess. 14 go 50 all look around the same age.
Glad I’m not the only person to have noticed this.
Dude having dated a Japanese woman whom I initially though was in her early 30s(I was 35 at the time) (she did not disabuse me of this) I later found out she was 15 years older than ME (it explains why we got along so well). That happens in real LIFE. They go from 12 to 20 in a few weeks then stay looking roughly 20 till they hit 60 years old then they go from 60-100 REALLY fast.
I’ve been married to a Japanese woman 19 years older than myself (who can usually pass as the same age as me) for coming up on 20 years and visit relatives in Japan regularly, so I have a pretty good idea of what Japanese women around the age of 60 look like.
Looking at the WWII or baby-boom generation, they got old-looking a lot younger than that. Women hitting 60 these days, it’s pretty darned surprising how good many of them look.
i remeber a comic about that let me see if i can find it
Found IT! http://imgur.com/gallery/OcRKK
this is exactlly the one i was thinking of
And meeting the Smiths yea, just hope they won’t try to force him to befriend Selkie. Just having them over and expecting to do polite chitchat during dinner is obviously fine though.
am i the only one concerned that carrie is talking that shy even to her own kid…and that benny is adressing his step-father by his last name? teenaged brattyness aside, i´d say theirs is *not* the most harmonic family life.
It’s been established that she has trauma issues and a complicated past, with everyone wondering what happened to her husband. It hasn’t been very long since this started (based on selkie’s orphanage stay I’d guess 5-7years). Ptsd can be a problem for life. I guess what I’m saying is it’d feel really unrealistic to me for her to suddenly yell loud when we’ve seen she’s a shy soft spoken person by nature, plus having ptsd.
Avery is his first name, Carrie also called him that in the last strip.
Calling your step dad by name seems pretty normal to me, but then I always called my parents by first names too.
good Christ had I DARED to call my folks by their first names id be farting teeth.
…why?
In America, particularly in the South, one does not call one’s parents by name. It’s seen as extremely disrespectful (roughly on par with not using an honorific when speaking to a stranger in Japan). Additionally, in the American South especially, striking one’s children is seen as an acceptable punishment, even for verbal disrespect.
I just learned to call my parents by name because that’s what everyone else called them (like “go ask Jane” rather than “go ask your mom”), and while I know that’s not the norm, actually getting offended for that… that just sounds awfuly formal and weird.
Though it does explain why some folks are taking offense at Selkie’s or Bennie’s speech if they had to put up with crap like this from their own parents.
As a northerner now living in the south it was a tough transition for me to wrap my head around this concept. Up where I was raised I was taught to call my parents’ friends by their first names. It was acceptable to refer to my parents, aunts, uncles and even grandparents by their first names if you were speaking in a group and wanted to make sure the right person was being referred to. Down here kids get in trouble if they don’t call adults sir or maam. I compromise by asking other adults how they want my children to refer to them. Most commonly I see folks allowing children to call them by first name IF they preface it with a title (Mr. or Miz or Miss). The majority of my friends who have dealt with step parents (or step kids) have no problem with the child calling the adult by his/her first name. The only ones I’ve known who ended up calling the step parent mom or dad did so when the birth parent was either deceased, totally out of the picture, or the step parent entered their life when the child was younger than 3 years old.
oh hell no . Yes ma’am No ma’am yes sir No sir Mr or Mrs or Ms or miz. (yes you get that right or else) Calling an adult by thier first name is a sign of equality and as a child YOU aint. I STILL refer to people I do not KNOW as mr or ms Even if they are half or more my age.
In ultra-liberal Northern California *snrk* this was the case as well.
Yeah… About half of all parenting in this country is a weird, formal power trip in which the parent will enact punishments and deny reasonable requests simply for the sake of being in control, being ‘The Parent’, enforcing subordinate status, or just teaching ‘life ain’t fair’ with no other logical reason.
Heck, in my neighborhood, one kid called her parents “ma’am” and “sir.”
(The rest of us kind of thought that her parents might be abusive. They also insisted everything be Ultra Clean in their house at all times (like, her room looked like a fake bedroom for a photography set) and they had loads of white carpets. THESE WERE NOT NORMAL PEOPLE and we kids judged them. We judged them hard.)
Personally, I’m cool with “[kid’s name]’s mom” as a form of address from non-related friends of my kid.
as they should have.
Avery isn’t his biological father, though. Benny might not see him as his dad, but as his stepdad, even if the reverse isn’t quite true.
Might not necessarily be disrespect, just that Benny doesn’t feel right calling him “dad”.
Guessing you mean first name. If so, it’s pretty common (at least here in the states) for kids to address step-parents by their first name.
only if you are a pissant twerp. (which i was for a LOOONG time)
I address my current step-father (Mum’s third husband) as Dad. He’s amazing, and I love him a lot. Her second (my brother’s dad) was nearly always first name. My biological father has been first name for as long as I could pull it off “accidentally” because he did not deserve the title.
Most adults considered (and still do) me to be overly formal and polite.
Actually, every stepparent I know of (and I had a lot of friends with stepdads and stepmoms) was referred to by first name by the kids unless they were adopted. (one actually transitioned from one to the other when the adoption took place.)
It would be considered presumptuous for a stepparent to say “call me dad”– it was always the choice of the child. My girlfriend was told this after her stepdad married her mom– and her response was “hell, no, I HAVE a Dad…” and under her breath “…and he’s not YOU.”
My cousins referred to their stepdad (my uncle) as “Dad” but that was their choice– I have noticed one of my cousins has now reverted to calling him “Bob” even though he called him “Dad” when we were younger– I’m not sure if drama was involved in that decision. I *do* know a decision was made to NOT adopt the children so they retained their deceased father’s name.
I addressed my stepfather as dad. But that’s because he earned it. He might have been a terrible husband, but he was a good father.
That game sounds really gross. DX Maybe it’s for the best that it be taken away.
Like that’s not based on a real life game is it? D=
Fire emblem fates, though really, many jrpgs and most anime has stuff like that.
It is based on a real life game (Fire Emblem: Fates), but I’m mostly poking fun at it’s quirks. It’s chiefly a tactical/strategy game where you train and deploy your choice of units to fulfill battlefield objectives, but it has the option of units building Supports with each other as they fight alongside each other.
Higher Support improves combat assist bonuses, culminating in marriage if the two units are capable of S rank (which yields the maximum combat bonuses and produces a child unit who can inherit their stat proficiencies and combat skills).
The Fates entry in the series has some… interesting options among the Player Avatar’s marriage choices which I’m poking fun at here, but it’s entirely avoidable and even if you do play that path it’s really tame in terms of in-game presentation.
Elise, the character I’m referencing here, doesn’t ever really say or do or have anything said or done TO her in-game that’s suggestive. Just, “I love you, lets be together forever!” sort of thing.
Okay good. Cuz that actually terrified me for a second. DX
Go look at Dating sims.
Great anime about dating sims. Kaminomi (the World God only knows)
Methinks Avery hasn’t seen enough Dating Sims from Japan. That’s kinda “normal”
I wouldn’t call those “normal”, but then again, I’m an old phart. The only sim I’ve seen is Magical Date and it was just… …weird.
On one hand, I’m chuckling at the typical 12 year old boy behavior, on the other I’m a little skeeved out that that is considered normal behavior. I’m really glad my little brother grew up with three older sisters. He avoided the whole “Females are objects thing” all together. Also, it’s pretty normal in the States to call your step parent by their first name, and as someone who suffers from PTSD myself, his mom’s behavior is realistic.
So what Avery is saying is that he was fine with playing a (fantasy) War Simulator were your characters mow through hundreds of not-always-faceless characters…but wants to draw the line at marrying one of those soldiers because they “look 12”. Morals are weird. XD
Agreed.
America, where it’s fine to show young teens killing each other for the amusement of the Upper Crust in a PG-13 movie, but flash a pair of boobs for 3 seconds and you immediately earn an R rating.
I think if the game’s “quirk” hadn’t come up while they (the parents) were talking about the son meeting and interacting with a girl who is 8 and if the 12-13 boy hadn’t been such an argumentative jerk and had used different words to express his dislike of the idea the whole game confiscation wouldn’t have happened. It’s not the game’s content that’s the problem so much as it is the kid being in his teen-tween moody angry phase and talking back to his parents incorrectly. Least that’s my understanding of what Avery is saying/doing. Because that’s what I would have done and why.
Carrie is too adorable ^_^
On a side note I’ve gotten some hilarious responses from Fates with my marriage choices. Azura in Conquest led to cut scenes where the protagonist didn’t recognize his wife, who he had two children with, when she changed outfits and where she referred to him as her “good friend.” Scarlet in Revelation led to scenes where the protagonist reacted to a certain cut scene involving her being hurt (to put it mildly to avoid spoilers) like it was a bigger deal that Ryoma was going to be upset by it. He also forgave the one who hurt her and referred to her as his “good friend” during that cut scene.
And with this comic, I thought of the “Whomp!” strip where Ronnie asks a tween girl on an airplane if she’d decided who she’s marrying yet – cue fist from her misunderstanding father.
Not sure who to be madder at. I choose the author.
Yeah, screw that guy
That guy is a jerk! Who has a David name these days anyway!
DavidJerkFaceWillis? 😉
Damn you, Willis!
That Willis! Always eating the last piece of pizza!
Just noticed she’s got Selkie’s added-esses accent.
Wait until Smith realizes that the player character is related to both Princess Dcups *and* Jailbait.
*spoiler* Luckily not actually related, just adopted (well, abducted actually, but details…).
In Benny’s defense, not wanting the girl that looks like she’s 12 is a very good way to go through life. I mean he could put it better, but baby steps I guess. He is absolutely right, 12 year olds are a bad end.
I dunno why everyone is going off on the game. Don’t mind the game. Benny’s attitude bugs me. THAT is what I have been commenting on. He is bein’ a rude dude.
Dave, buddy, pal.
Everyone knows that Reina is the true waifu.
My Fates marriages have been Saizo Azura Camilla and Gunter. Three of those were bad decisions.
There really anything about this situation that can be justified properly.
Not even Smith’s actions,