You can smell my finger

[beatbandito]

I'd actually rather keep responding to your rage posts now until this all just gets locked. I'm definitely petty enough to deny you the last word, even though you so kindly asked me to not bother responding.

[Mongrel]

Royal and I weren't talking about endings necessarily,

What were asking you prove is your assertion that the reviewer had some kind of false or incomplete review of the game, the assertion that you're making.

And the only example you gave was the ending and, I'm sorry, your description of the ending and their description both line up.

You just seem incredibly aggressive about how someone else interpreted a game you watched, to the point that you're accusing them of not actually playing it and only taking the opinion they did to generate clicks, which does not seem fair or accurate.

No matter what you or I think about the game, it's unfair to say the reviewer didn't finish it when they cite the specific ending you yourself said is the true one. You can disagree with the take without accusing them or anyone of having not experienced it fully.

That quote from the article makes it sound like they did in fact get the true ending

Do you think I said "Pretty much this, yeah." in response to just the post I quoted (and then requoted today) or to the quote river you've chosen to insert here?

[beatbandito]

Do you think I said "Pretty much this, yeah." in response to just the post I quoted (and then requoted today) or to the quote river you've chosen to insert here?

I legitimately meant what I edited the post to say. I would love to have an actual discussion about the game and how it reflects trauma. But we're not. The only conversation I'm allowed to have is explaining why my point is different than the article.

Saying that "this isn't about portraying trauma, but portraying it thoughtlessly" is going past my point. I don't think the game is portraying it thoughtlessly, and just talking about the article's take is accepting that it must be thoughtless before anyone actually talks about the game itself.

Maybe it is thoughtless though. We wouldn't know, since the entire conversation for everyone else was only through the lens of the review. And please, legitimately I'm asking you to reread my original post. Yeah, I'm sassy about how Kotaku presents information but is it really so unclear that I'm saying I don't think the article is representing the game well?

[Mongrel]

Do you think I said "Pretty much this, yeah." in response to just the post I quoted (and then requoted today) or to the quote river you've chosen to insert here?

I legitimately meant what I edited the post to say. I would love to have an actual discussion about the game and how it reflects trauma. But we're not. The only conversation I'm allowed to have is explaining why my point is different than the article.

Saying that "this isn't about portraying trauma, but portraying it thoughtlessly" is going past my point. I don't think the game is portraying it thoughtlessly, and just talking about the article's take is accepting that it must be thoughtless before anyone actually talks about the game itself.

Maybe it is thoughtless though. We wouldn't know, since the entire conversation for everyone else was only through the lens of the review. And please, legitimately I'm asking you to reread my original post. Yeah, I'm sassy about how Kotaku presents information but is it really so unclear that I'm saying I don't think the article is representing the game well?

I did read your original post and I accepted its premise at face value, including your version of the ending. I've already said as much ITT. But I also accepted the information that Brentai provided and which you clarified or confirmed.

Even as you have described it, in far more charitable terms, this still sounds like a terrible game. I'm sorry. Personally, it just sounds objectively harmful to me, certainly terrible enough that the thought of experiencing it firsthand just to confirm that to someone else's satisfaction seems absolutely absurd.

Is it possible that you are taking our attacks on a game which sounds awful even by your more generous assessment, as a personal attack on you for having played it?

[beatbandito]

...no, I got frustrated that when I read and responded to the posted article with my opinion on it and the game the first two responses tried to tell me that the article sounded right. I think I've made that point several times by now, including my last two responses.

[Mongrel]

Well, I'm sorry then. I believed everything you said, but I still also agree with Royal and Friday's takes that this sounds like some twatwaffle creator has buried a bunch of trauma porn in a wrapping of pseudo-psychologial pap (unoriginal pap at that).

I have no interest whatsoever in a game that requires you to spend a significant chunk of its playtime drugging your character's wife and beating and murdering people as the core means of solving the weird central incest-ception mystery. Nor do I think that the incredibly hoary old cop out of "it was all a dream!" redeems this experience in any meaningful way.

If you got something else out of it, cool, but I'm not going to pick through that turd for the corn.

[beatbandito]

I have no interest whatsoever in a game that requires you to spend a significant chunk of its playtime drugging your character's wife and beating and murdering people as the core means of solving the weird central incest-ception mystery. Nor do I think that the incredibly hoary old cop out of "it was all a dream!" redeems this experience in any meaningful way..

Okay well I don't think those aspects are true, and I think that you should listen to more than just one article, and opinions of people that only know the game from that one article.

[Newbie]

So I'm of two minds about content warnings. Obviously they're good and valuable and the little disclaimer at the start of Doki Doki Literature Club performs a critical function, etc., but Boyfriend Dungeon presents an odd new situation: the game has a notification that you'll get periodic messages from "Mom" and if this would cause you discomfort, you can turn them off from the settings menu. This is also great: my spouse Julie lost her mom a few years back, and she mentioned that the letters from Mom in Animal Crossing were now a little distressing.

The surprising part of this is that by providing this option, fairly or not Boyfriend Dungeon cultivated this appearance of complete accommodation in which players can protect themselves from any possible source of stress. Based on very little information about the game, people concluded that it was "safe" and couldn't harm them. However, it sounds like the major conflict in the game involves issues of stalking and harassment and general creep behavior—this is the impetus for the plot, so it's not like you can just turn that content off with a toggle the way you can with the optional messages from home. Because of the expectations set by one kind of optional content, the main plot caused a backlash. It's a precarious situation.

[Mongrel]

I have no interest whatsoever in a game that requires you to spend a significant chunk of its playtime drugging your character's wife and beating and murdering people as the core means of solving the weird central incest-ception mystery. Nor do I think that the incredibly hoary old cop out of "it was all a dream!" redeems this experience in any meaningful way..

Okay well I don't think those aspects are true, and I think that you should listen to more than just one article, and opinions of people that only know the game from that one article.

Well, I already explained that I was listening to you. Should I repeat myself yet again? I believe your description of the particulars of the game.

I just haven't seen any specifics mentioned that would actually give me a positive opinion of this game. Your argument has essentially been "It's not that bad", so to me we're just arguing about how bad a bad game it is. What's been offered to tell me why in the hell should I like it?

[beatbandito]

Then we're back to the question of what trauma you're allowed to include in media and what is unallowed always. Because the reviewer is saying it's misusing this trauma, or it has no purpose. And I'm saying the trauma is necessary for the purpose of the experiencd the full game with all endings cultivates.

If I hadn't actually been reserved would that have changed your mind? Because that's what it feels like, the review's complete dismissal of the game needed to be met with a complete lauding and shining endorsement.

Its not really good enough to get that from me. It's technically flawed in a lot of ways the review doesn't even cover. It's not great dialogue, even with the actors they got. And ultimately the final experience is up to the interpretation of people experiencing it, and not everyone will react the same way to the same experiences, especially when they specifically about causing and experiencing trauma.

But hey, you already read one opinion by some rando that said it was a bad game. So clearly the best I can offer is that it's not that bad, but still bad. Even if the title of the piece is claiming the game has a terrible ending, and still uses framing that is, at best, misrepresentative of the game's world at that point of understanding. But also uses a quote from the "true ending" that factually is not from the true and final ending.

[Mongrel]

I am trying very hard to remind myself right now that you genuinely believe you're not deliberately being disingenuous. Because it really really really feels like you are not in fact reading a goddamned thing I'm saying.

Forget the Kotaku review. DROP IT. I have, in good faith, already mentally classified the Kotaku article as misleading at best, and I did this after your post back at the beginning of page 2.

My opinion of the game is predicated on YOUR DESCRIPTION.

YOURS.

[Mongrel]

And no it's not about what's ALLOWED. No one's calling for some fucking gatekeeping bullshit on here, at least not for something like this when there's way deeper depths to depravity.

It's usage.

But that's all for Friday's thread, which I'm assuming she's waiting until this cools off to make.

[beatbandito]

Oh, so your negative assumption of the game has just come from my repeated posts about how the game shouldn't be assumed to be negative just based off reading about some of the content.

And you chose to express that by repeatedly calling it thoughtless, and even the creator a "twatwaffle" and telling me it's not actually about the ending. Which it very much is from my perspective?

Damn, clearly I was just speaking wrong instead of you not actually getting my point.

[Mongrel]

Fuck this.

All you have is snide sarcasm, assumptions, and a complete and total refusal to accept that others may be posting in good faith.

I don't care if you don't believe me, but IMO you absolutely are taking this personally and for no fucking good reason.

I don't need this fucking Guild gaslighting bullshit.

[beatbandito]

Is gaslighting when you tell me that you came to an assumption based off what I said, I explain that's not what I was saying, and you claim I've made some snide, sarcastic assumption of... My own words? Of your interpretation of my words that I've been trying to clarify or correct?

Because I don't know how you can honestly believe that you insisting on what I've said in spite of me directly explaining that you've either misinterpreted or just plain got it wrong is actually making a point. You can't be telling me that your opinion is based on my words, and I'm getting my own words wrong, with any kind of actual faith in discussion and not just having a position you feel the need to defend.

[Mongrel]

Is gaslighting when you tell me that you came to an assumption based off what I said, I explain that's not what I was saying, and you claim I've made some snide, sarcastic assumption of... My own words? Of your interpretation of my words that I've been trying to clarify or correct?

Because I don't know how you can honestly believe that you insisting on what I've said in spite of me directly explaining that you've either misinterpreted or just plain got it wrong is actually making a point. You can't be telling me that your opinion is based on my words, and I'm getting my own words wrong, with any kind of actual faith in discussion and not just having a position you feel the need to defend.

This is plain gibberish.

[beatbandito]

At least you admit you don't understand that one, instead of trying claim your interpretation of my words was more correct than my intent.

[Mongrel]

Last time I checked, failures in communication are not automatically assumed to be the recipient's by default.

[beatbandito]

"Failures in communication" also aren't "gaslighting". You keep saying "yes I got your post" over and over as if that's enough, while the rest of your point completely ignores or undermines any actual content and intent of my posts.

[Newbie]

Do y'all think the conversation is still gonna go anywhere, or are you just going to relitigate the miscommunication, assumptions of malicious intent, and assignment of blame that appears to have gone on this thread such that the most productive thing that could happen right now is a lock? Maybe it's the drugs talking—I had my wisdom teeth extracted like two hours ago—but I don't see us dragging this car wreck back onto the road. I like all of you and we are all losing this argument. I think we need to shrug and start over.