1241: The Trouble with Rule 34

Lest you’re unfamiliar with one of the most notorious “Rules of the Internet”, Rule 34 states that “There is porn of it. No exceptions.” In other words, if it exists, someone, somewhere, somehow has generated some form of pornographic version of it. It may be “official”, it may be a fan work, but one way or another there is some sort of pornography based around absolutely anything you can think of.

My issue with Rule 34 is not that it exists, nor the fact that it’s true in an alarmingly high number of cases. No, my issue with Rule 34 is somewhat more psychological in nature.

Let’s back up a moment. Currently I’m playing Ar Tonelico Qoga on PS3, a game that features a mechanic in which characters take their clothes off in order to become more powerful. (It is justified in the game’s lore, to its credit, but yes, it is totally fanservicey.) Consequently, you spend a hefty amount of time in the game looking at the cast in their skimpies — particularly the female characters.

And yet do I want to see them actually completely naked? Do I want to see them — if you’ll pardon the explicitness for a moment — getting fucked roughly from behind or covered in jizz? Well… no, not really.

Why not, though? I find the characters themselves attractive — enough to want to spend virtual time with them, enough to genuinely agonise over decision points that require me to pick between them, and enough to project my own feelings about various issues and people onto them — so why don’t I feel the need to look at erotic material featuring them?

Well, the simple answer is… because of all the reasons I listed above. In a good character-led game (or movie, or TV series, or book, or whatever) you develop a close, intimate bond with the characters involved. In many cases, you spend a significant portion of time with them, and usually at a point in their life that is somehow meaningful or important in some way. This “important” moment could be anything from coming to terms with something small they’ve been in denial about for a long time, or it could be saving the world alongside them. Either way, you’re there with them, and you feel close to them. All right, maybe you don’t, but I do.

Consequently, unless you’re the sort of person who has a somewhat… physical relationship with your closest friends, to suddenly throw nakedness and banging into the mix can be somewhat… jarring. If my virtual time with these people has been, up until this point, entirely non-sexual (or at least, not explicitly sexual), I find it a bit weird to suddenly see them in this whole other way, and not at all comfortable in many cases. Kind of like, say, if I had a sister, suddenly saw her naked and got turned on in the process. (I don’t, haven’t and wouldn’t, before you rethink your friendship with me.)

Which is kind of weird when you think about it, sister stuff aside. (Kind of wish I hadn’t mentioned that now.) Being physically intimate with someone else is… well, the clue’s in what I just said. It’s intimate. If you’re very close with someone you love, chances are you want to have sex with them. (Sometimes you want to have sex with people you don’t love, but that’s an entirely different matter.) And yet I have no desire to look up erotic images of, say, Finnel from Ar Tonelico Qoga (pictured to the right), even though she’s a character I feel close to and can relate to in many ways having spent the last 56 (at last count) hours of gameplay with her.

I wonder why this is? It’s perhaps the fact that a lot of pornography (“real” or otherwise) is presented from a third-person perspective, making the viewer feel somewhat detached from the action. (Exceptions do, of course, exist.) Taking this interpretation to an extreme, I could probably argue that looking at an erotic image of, say, Finnel getting banged would feel like I was watching someone else having sex with her, rather than finding the image of her naked body in any way arousing, or feeling like I was the one in a physically intimate situation with her.

An exception to the feelings I describe above comes in the realm of eroge — visual novels with erotic content. In this case, the lack of “discomfort” I feel at seeing the characters in compromising situations is perhaps more understandable — it is, in many cases, in context. It’s not out of character for the protagonist of a visual novel and his loved one to want to indulge in some nookie to show how much they’re into each other. In many cases, the actual sexual content is teased and built up to with sexual tension — for all its faults and ridiculousness, I found that My Girlfriend is the President was actually very good at this, for example; the ero scenes were undoubtedly erotic, but I didn’t find them satisfying because of that — no, I found them satisfying because they marked a turning point in these characters’ relationships, or saw them showing a side of themselves that “the public” didn’t see.

In other words, in these cases, the sex doesn’t feel out of place or out of character because of the context. It makes sense. The relationship between the characters (and between the characters and player) is built on the understanding that these are people for whom sex is A Thing, and that they’re probably going to want to do it at some point. With that expectation in place, it somehow feels less awkward. (Until someone walks in on you watching an H-scene, of course.)

Perhaps I’m alone in this, and everyone who loved Final Fantasy VII as much as I did when I was younger is happily wanking away to contextless animated GIFs of Tifa giving Cloud a soapy titwank. I don’t know. And I have a strange feeling no-one would admit to it even if they did!

#oneaday Day 919: Friendship Is Magic

I’ve been delving a little into the Brony community recently. As an open and “out” fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I felt it behooved me (no pun intended… all right, maybe a little) to actually try and engage with the wider community of fans. As such, I Googled for Brony communities and came across the Friendship Is Magic forum, which I promptly signed up for.

I haven’t been an active member of a forum since, ooh, about 2006 or so, I guess, when I was a relatively well-known member of the Times Educational Supplement forums. They were a good place to blow off steam about educational and general life issues as well as just chatting to like-minded people from a pretty wide variety of backgrounds — albeit usually with an interest or involvement in the teaching profession. I haven’t logged in there for a very long time now for a multitude of reasons, just one of which is the fact that social media has mostly taken over the functions that dedicated online communities once had.

But I was determined to make a go of it on Friendship is Magic. I introduced myself in the relevant section and started replying to a few threads. While I don’t think I’ve made a “name” for myself as yet, I like to think that my relatively few contributions so far have been noticed — and meanwhile, it’s given me a good opportunity to observe the Brony community from within.

You see, I had no idea what a “Brony” really was. Who are these people? Are they actually anything like me, or is the only thing we have in common a love of a show that is ostensibly for little girls? I was hoping to find out through joining the forum — and, as an aside, keeping an eye on the results of the intriguing Brony Study research project, which has been aiming to clarify attitudes both towards the community from without, and towards various pertinent issues surrounding the fanbase from within.

Thus far my (purely anecdotal) observations have been interesting. Bronies cover a wide and diverse array of human beings — young and old, male and female, and varying degrees removed from what society would deem “normality”. Some Bronies use 4chanesque dialect (“newfags”, “copypasta” et al), others use a clear, straightforward and polite means of communication. Some Bronies like to act “in character” and roleplay their original pony creations on the forum as a means of escapism; others are simply themselves; others still take the middle road and incorporate Ponyville dialect (“everypony”, “fillies and colts” et al) into their posts. Some Bronies love the show and actively participate in the huge creative community that has sprung up around it; some simply appreciate the content that others have created; others have no interest in it whatsoever.

In short, there’s not really a single unifying characteristic that it’s possible to point to and say “that’s a Brony” — besides an appreciation for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, of course, and a seemingly-genuine sense of tolerance, acceptance and understanding, regardless of a person’s background and regardless of the depth of their affection for the show and its surrounding subculture.

Then, of course, there’s Rule 34, the aspect of the fandom that tends to get the most attention from outside. (If you don’t know what Rule 34 is, you need to brush up on your Rules of the Internet. Borderline NSFW and will probably offend everyone. No porn, though.) Indeed, when radio personality Howard Stern set out to explore the fandom in a recent show, an undue level of attention was given to certain parts of the community who generally prefer their activities to be kept behind a closed stable door, shall we say. This naturally and understandably upset those Bronies who don’t participate in that particular aspect of the fandom, and even prompted voice actor Tara Strong (who voices series protagonist Twilight Sparkle) to defend the entire community (and particularly the “Rule 34” crowd) on Twitter.

While the “Rule 34” stuff isn’t to my taste, I’m not about to denounce anyone for either enjoying or being involved in making it. It’s easy enough to avoid if you don’t want anything to do with it, and it’s there if you do. If it’s not hurting anyone, then knock yourself out, I say. Live and let live. Stern’s logic was based on a flawed assumption: the idea that if one fan likes something that is seen as “deviant” in some way, then clearly they all do! This is clearly, as I’ve seen even in my limited dealings with the community at large, absolute nonsense. Bronies, just like any community, come from a wide variety of backgrounds and each indulges in their passions to a varying degree. No-one’s approach to their fandom is “wrong” — assuming it’s not causing anyone (including the person themself) any distress — and if it’s a good outlet or means of getting away from the stresses of the day then, well, keep on cloppin’.

…wait, clopping means what?