Oh my God it's this thread. I remember coming across some... nevermind, I don't want to other websites I go to. Not right now. Even if it was related to Carpe Fulgur.
While the censorship seems kinda pointless. I mean, it's not like you can see anything during the bath scene. At least I mean, it looks good. It's like, on picture. If people want the original they can go download it. The towels look good, people use towels in baths. It's really no big deal as far as I'm concerned. When I first saw that part, I had no idea it was only in the Carpe Fulgur version. And when I saw the original version, wasn't it already "censored" in a way as well. You didn't see anything, there was conveniently placed fog over the chest. It is kind of weird though how the media shows boys and men's chests all the time in the media and nobody bats an eye. But that the chest belonging to anyone with xx chromosomes is so sexualized that it's seen as indecent and sexualizing. And therefor lolicon content, or something like that. You know, not that ever being sexually attracted to breasts is a bad thing. But who said people aren't ever just as attracted to the chests of males? It's a little bit of a double standard. If I got some magic spell turned on me tomorrow and I was turned into a girl, aside from enjoying making money off of the media attention I'd inevitably get, I can't say I'd be too happy about being expected to wear a top and this tiny, thigh-bearing bottom rather than a good ole' pair of swim trunks.
Personally, I wouldn't have spent the time making the towel when it doesn't even show their chest to begin with and shouldn't even be a big deal. But it's not a big deal to me. It's one cute scene in the game and is cute either way.
And did we really go into the subject of Tera Online Elin here, really? Oh this makes me nervous. Treading on some real sensitive territory here. I think the situation is much different though. En Masse and Frogster ticked off all sorts of people with what they did. And the situation is just different in general, both for and again. For starters, in Fortune Summoners, it is a single picture. You can download that original picture to your hard drive very easily. And the amount of programming it would take to program it back in would be minimal in comparison to Tera. Tera is an online game, and their changes affect what everyone sees. The changes are not a single picture, but clothing textures for an entire game. Aside from the skin showing, the re-textures are a shoddy job with clipping and all sorts of problem. From what I am aware, they have only changed the outfits of the Elin, and the other races retain hypersexualized clothing. For many people, it seems like too much or not enough. Plus the Elin shorts just look like a hack job and have clipping to boot. It's not like people even have a choice on the complicated texture they play as other than breaking the EULA. And even so, it's a change being, again, applied to all. It's not one scene. I get the feeling that most people would be a lot happier if there was a button to switch between the original and more clothed textures, put some decent clothes on all of the female races, and made actual decent clothes for the Elin that don't look like a hack job. I'd like it if all the women wore decent clothes, I'd like to have that and all have clothes that aren't a hack job.
Then there's the fact of the matter that Tera is a hypersexualized game itself. Therefor by proximity looks a lot more like the skin showing is sexualized than Fortune Summoners. Dexter's Laboratory shows Dexter's bare buttocks. But no one bats an eyelid because it's not seen as sexualized. But Tera is a clearly hyperviolent, hypsersexualized game. They even play this up in the Tera trailers. This makes things look a lot more, again, like the sexualization of the Elin. Arche and her friends just are not sexualized and there's really no good reason to interpret them as such. There's also a difference in the fact that Arche and friends are clearly kids and the Elin are made into this ambiguous "super old person that looks really young" thing. I know you're probably thinking "so, what if it looks like a kid", while I worry about what reasons someone might have for seeking out such material, there are real life people with Dwarfism. I know a lot of people think it's exactly the same and won't hear otherwise, but I'd much rather have someone who is given some youthful characteristics but is made to be an adult in some ways, sexualized, than a clear, fictional, but clear child being sexualized. Really, the more ways a "petite" or "short" female is sexualized, seems adult, the happier I am. I would be a lot more comfortable with the famous Boys Love manga Loveless if Ritsuka wasn't clearly a 13 year old. It's like, the most famous Boys Love work, but it clearly contains a sexualized minor. At least Honey and Clover is a little better in some ways, by having their character in an adult college setting. It could still be better though, by giving Hagu, clearly at the center of her own harem situation, a more adult personality. I also wouldn't mind her being slightly taller, but mostly, her personality comes off as too childish for me to be entirely comfortable with any sexualization of. Not that her body is objectified or anything, but she's clearly portrayed as a desirable adult woman who the other characters naturally fall in love with. Which is a little problematic, given her personality. But this is all better than Arche, in my opinion. I do not want to see Arche sexualized. She is a kid. And while I don't think the bath scene is sexualization, I certainly don't want to see her sexualized.
People, as is stated in the rules where SpaceDrake says not to call the girls lolis. Some people have formed different definitions of what a "loli" is. If someone doesn't like breasts or isn't particularly fond of secondary sex characteristics, there's nothing wrong with that. People have orientations towards women or men, who is to say that people wouldn't have an orientation towards people who's bodies, personal identities, or so forth, fall more outside of the binary or norm? I know my feelings don't lie in the gender binary. But there's a responsible way of going about it, and there's all different shades and degrees of "wrongness". I'd personally rather see more cases where the "lolicon" trend and people who say "I just like cuteness and don't like large breasts or secondary sex characteristics" was brought out in things like Black Rock Shooter, Kannnagi, Kobato, and so forth, than things like Kodomo no Jikan. But perhaps that's just me. What this says about Fortune Summoners and Tera Online. Is that Tera Online is a lot more controversial than Fortune Summoners. Fortune Summoners is about kids being kids and the adventures they have. Earthbound is about young boys and arguably has more sexualization than Fortune Summoners. Tera Online clearly has a race that is not stated as a child, put on the same level with the other adult and sexualized races, but is very short and has a large, round head, flat nose, and so forth. And not only in physical appearance, but has a fairly high voice pitch. This is very different because it looks like sexualization, and blurs age and aesthetic considered appropriate for many people.
Then there's the fact that, in advertising and promotion, En Masse and Frogster appear to have done nearly everything in their power to pretend that the Elin or anything cute does not exist. The Tera world actually has a lot of cute stuff, not just the Elin. However, in almost all advertisements, the Elin are entirely, wholly absent. The Popori are also infrequently shown. Great green and blue landscapes are often ignored in favor of things which look darker and grittier. While on the other hand, Japanese and Korean clients actually play up the presence of the Elin, Popori, and cuteness or colorfulness that exists within the game. Simply but, everything in this with Tera and the Elin has been fairly controversial, and has done a lot to irritate the fans with En Masse. Not to mention many fans irritated with each other. And it's a whole mess of things people are irritated about, even though trolls on both sides like to oversimply arguments. I doubt most people at SomethingAwful would have anything for contempt for this guy and his arguments, but I find this video to be a rather interesting take on the whole controversy from the "anti-censorship" side. Be warned, it could definitely offend or creep you out.
In general, though, Tera isn't that interesting of a game to me, though. I'd much rather play Fortune Summoners. A game with heartful values about friendship and family. Tera is a sleazy game that looks like a grindfest with better combat. I'm remotely interested, but to be honest, if I were going to be an Elin, I think I'd rather play one in Skyrim. I really debated on whether to buy Skyrim, as I'm not much of a wRPG fan and Bethesda has already made a ridiculous amount of money off of that game. But in the end I figured it would not be going lower than $30 for several years, and since I wasn't getting an opportunity to change my mind for a long time, I'd might as well spend $30 on a chance to ride around Hatsune Miku on Rainbow Dash. So, if I want some of the "Tera experience", I think that Skyrim will hold me over for a long time. Also, I don't want the original textures back in Tera Online unless there's a button that allows you to switch between. What I'd rather have is all of the females to have decent, non-revealing outfits that look good and not lazy, and actually look like armor or something that would offer actual battle protection. I wouldn't mind an in-game button to revert to the original textures, but to be honest, I want an option for tastefully done, heavier armors and clothing.
Wow, that's an atrociously large amount of text. However, there's a lot to be said about this sort of material. I feel quite a can of worms was opened up when Tera Online was compared for Fortune Summoners.Edit: Apparently, people were more contrasting Fortune Summoners "censorship" and Tera Online. My mistake. I didn't read the whole thread. I also talked way too much about Tera, oops.
