The Pr0n is on your mind...

Disclaimer: This post contains questionable content, so if you feel offended... do yourself a favour and grow up a bit before surfing the internet.

             

Some days ago, scrambling in the ideological melangerie that is BoardGameGeek i found a very interesting post by a very active user of the comunity when regarding games with fanservice.

The comment itself was refering Tanto Cuore, a deck-building board game with an anime theme where you are a mansion master and have to employ your maid staff. And, like anything involving maids and anime, the game offers the classic fanservices of the trade. 

Simon Lundström (Zimeon) answered the post of a user wondering why people feel disturbed about games with suggestive depictions of men/woman.

"Running the risk of sounding obnoxious, I think what people ACTUALLY have something against, is the fact that they're drawn. It's considered unhealthy to be attracted to fiction. Or something."

Simon stroke true in one of the concepts that has always bothered me about social apreciation for suggestive art (i´m not even saying erotic).

The offending cards from Tanto Cuore

For some reason, our society considers that is morally acceptable to behead a man in 3d full definition but not to show some skin... okay that is something we´vegotten through in previous posts here at Missing Spagonia. But once we get to actually show some skin, most bystanders consider that it´s acceptable to have photos or videos of girls/boys in suggestive poses for recreative purposes (we´re animals after all... how can´t we be attracted by an attractive member of the opposite sex?). But if the same exact same poses are drawn, the situation changes a bit...

Some months ago I was talking with a fellow colleague at work and showed him some of my drawings (the SFW ones)... his comment, while I knew was just mocking me, caught me off guard:

- Oh, so you´re one of those guys who faps to drawings?

The comment directly implied that being attracted to drawings was invalid. It was not healthy. Probably it would stand somewhere dark in the plethora of filias between S&M, incest and even maybe Zoofilia.

Why is it that being attracted to artistic depictions of humans is not as valid as being attracted to a video or a photo? Photos and videos are a newborn technology compared with the thousand years of tradition of sculpture or painting. Seduction through art came a long way before kids could go to the news-stand and convince the shopkeeper to sell them a Playboy under the clandestinity of a hoodie and some dark glasses.

Who decided from one day to the other that feeling attracted to drawings was wrong? I mean, come on... do you think that 50 Shades of Gray sold that much due to it´s profound literature? Drawings, as well as writing are the basic ways the human expresses feelings that he cannot voice out loud. Through art and literature we give birth to fantasies that usually are not possible or morally right in our society. They are a way of transgression that reaches to our most primary steps in Maslow´s pyramid of needs. 

Before there was video, or photo, even pencils or inks, there was human imagination! Those were the good times for pr0n... where everything was made possible by your mind. In your mind is where arousal lies, floating in the fluid liquid of emotions next to fear, love and hatred. We can be scared by books! We can hate throught poetry! We can express indignation or even dignify gods through drawing! Feeling aroused from a drawing is a natural reaction too. Art is just a conductor. The pr0n lies in your mind!

Different knifes for the same bread

On the same lines above, another discussion on BoardGameGeek, this time on KanzumeGoddess. Many people stated that strangely enough, when playing games with suggestive depictions, the most adverse reactions are from the male sector in the table.

Let me put you in picture... you walk into the table and find a guy and a girl playing this game. Both of them have these cards in front of them. How will they react to the passer by?

Let's see who is ashamed...

Well, girls are by now more than used to see sugestive depiction of girls (i´m not saying they agree to being depicted like that, just saying that they are more confortable around them). Guys on the other hand seem to feel quite more unconfortable: What if someone comes by and sees me with this scantilly clad female on my hand? What he/she would think of me? Would he/she think i´m into drawings?

Guys shift and shuffle on the chair, not because of the drawing making them ashamed, but instead they are ashamed of an external passerby perceiving them as depraved or immoral. They will be probably okay playing this alone or at home with close friends, but they would not dare to play in a cafeteria or bring it to a new player group witch they are not yer acquainted with. 

Oh... so you're into THAT!

Girls usually don´t have that problem even when holding cards of seminaked males, because no one would usually would associate the ideas of girls+onanism (yeah, girls masturbate too, but for some reason society seems oblivious to that), and usually fanservice is not targeted at them (which i particularly find stupid because everyone knows that rabbid fangirls are the most powerful force to reckon in the universe, just look at the absurd sale numbers of products targeted at them).

Also, when girls have suggestive products, they are so proud of showing them that it makes me equally proud for them for having the courage to admit publicly they are not ashamed of showing they like their fanservice share. 

Going back to the double standards, the same is also applied to sculpture. If we glance at the miniatures of Kingdom Death Monster´s survivors.

Oh... that's some sexy... paintjob!

While it is clear that the four figures are "dressed" exactly with the same amount of nothing if you show the models separately to a bystander the reaction would be probably on the lines below:

Male models: Oh, those are some cool sculpted minis. You are going to paint those?

Female models: Teehee... now i know why you were interested in this game!

Summing up, it´s no longer important why did you get the miniatures in first place, the public opinion will always see females as a sex fantasy object and taunt you by exposing that you might be atracted to something inanimate, something that ironically has been a valid standard in human culture for thousand of years...

So if you are one of those people who squirms in the table, or is ashamed of playing games with suggestive themes i strongly suggest you revisit your core values. If you like the idea or what it implies, it doesn´t matter if it´s art, book, or whatever media you are using, you shouldn´t be ashamed of it. If you are aroused or attracted by suggestive art, it means that the author has reached his goal with his art piece. By negating that is condemning the author to ostracism and not recognising that he did an awesome work: Transmiting the pr0n to your mind!