Update: TVTropes Deletes All Rape Tropes

[Illyasviel]

So essentially, Google is acting as a force of censorship on the Internet.

After all those privacy debacles, Google+ kinda sucking and now this? I don't know what to expect anymore.

This third wave feminism stuff is getting out of hand. Are they really so desperate for accomplishments that they're resorting to making gamers feel bad?

 

[Jamous]

While it's good that the threads are going back up, and indeed good for Google to have a policy on that sort of terms, surely it'd be much better to actually look at the pages in greater detail and see what they're actually about before getting the plug pulled.

 

[NortherWolf]

So essentially, Google is acting as a force of censorship on the Internet.

After all those privacy debacles, Google+ kinda sucking and now this? I don't know what to expect anymore.

This third wave feminism stuff is getting out of hand. Are they really so desperate for accomplishments that they're resorting to making gamers feel bad?

No, gamers make everyone else feel bad. Including me, and I'm a god damned gamer.
But after the debacle with Women vs Tropes and the rpg-net threads I've been reading the past weekend and much of this week have made me think that gaming has very little right to exist...because hey, rather defend rape than not come across like creepy fuckwads because "FREE SPEECH MEANS I GET TO CALL YOU ******!"
When there's no responsibility, the shit just gets thrown without purpose.

 

[him over there]

While it's good that the threads are going back up, and indeed good for Google to have a policy on that sort of terms, surely it'd be much better to actually look at the pages in greater detail and see what they're actually about before getting the plug pulled.

Not looking at them in more detail is actually Fast Eddie the site owner's fault. He merely blocked all pages with the word rape in it because of laziness. That's why mind rape was lost but all rapists are murderers stayed.

 

[Xangi]

Absolutely disgusting. They should be ashamed of themselves. Freedom of speech overrides some petty offense at a topic one may find undesirable.

TV Tropes has been going off the deep end for a while now. This is the nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned.

Rape in real-life is wrong, disgusting, and a crime.
Rape in fiction is fantasy.

Is it really that hard to see?

It's arguable at this point that if rape is your fantasy you are part of the problem, and should probably hand back your balls until you can be trusted with them again...

However, rape in fiction is a complicated thing. Whether it is justified in its presence is determined by how it is included and why.

To go with the currently publicised example of Tomb Raider, the reason that game should not include the attempted rape scene is twofold.

First because the reasons the producers have given for including it are absolutely inappropriate. Their assumption is that a presumed male gamer will be incapable of projecting themselves as Lara, and so they intend for the player to want to "protect" her instead. This is, naturally, a massively sexist approach to writing a female character and writing for a male audience and does no favours to anyone. No-one comes out of that looking good or feeling good.

Second because it is part of a trend which extends far and wide beyond gaming that if a Bad Thing happens to a character to push them into extreme action or an extreme change of character, and that character happens to be female, the Bad Thing will incredibly frequently be rape or attempted rape. This does not, naturally, happen to male characters even nearly as frequently. Once again, it's a sexist way to write a female character. As soon as the character has a vagina there is no need to expend further effort writing an interesting and unique scenario for them, you can just throw some rape in there and have done with it. I guarantee you that when the inevitable Uncharted prequel comes out Nathan Drake will not be shown to kill his first man because he was about to be the unwilling star in an amateur remake of Deliverance.

The writers of Tomb Raider have signalled with this scene that they don't think their male audience can connect with a female character adequately, and that they're not going to really try to make her a uniquely strong character with a unique backstory. Hell, even Samus' PTSD in Other M was better than this, at least it was something unique to her that flowed from her backstory (even if the entire rest of her portrayal was dire claptrap).

The argument here though, is not whether rape in fantasy is acceptable, but whether the documentation of its existence should be censored. If you think that saying something exists and providing examples of it is unacceptable, well, you're kind of just flat out wrong.

Like I said before, google didn't make them cut it because "rape is bad guise!". They made them cut it because tvtropes is having a mssive image problem right now because of its userbase. The combination of no notability and no negativity has created a horrible hugbox community where horrible people are protected from being ostracised because of "Free speech". The site has had all kinds of festering evil in it, people who have told open white supremacists "dude that's fucked up" have been banned while the racist gets off scot free. They have a fetish thread that has over 300k posts and is constantly on the front page. It is full of rape apologists and fetishists. Naturally this leaks onto the main wiki. Combine this with tropers blatant anti-intellectualism that keeps the trope pages from being about analysis and renders them merely lists of times a thing happens and you have pages that serve as nothing more than a directory for their favourite rape fetish works with a dubious disclaimer at the beginning.

Google isn't bailing because of rape, they're bailing because tvtropes is full of people who have warped their own wiki and are borderline advocating rape and rules lawyering the fact that their rape fetish fan fiction has a plot therefore it isn't a depraved piece of shit. They simply don't want to associate themselves wit that.

Just gonna say, /b/ still somehow gets ad revenue, I think TVTropes could find some way to as well. Also, whether we find it acceptable or not, freedom of speech DOES allow them to say whatever they want. They can be the most backwoods, dog-fornicating, rape-fetishizing, small-animal-torturing idiots around, but it allows them to say whatever they want.

Perhaps I'm desensitized to all of this, but while I do understand the image problem, I don't condone their actions taken to help it.

 

[John Funk]

The nerd/geek community right now is in the middle of a phase of self-examination when it comes to the use of sexual violence as a storytelling device in media for one, and the treatment of women and female characters for another.

I see the deletion of these Rape Tropes articles as a plus point, the gaming community is in a state of self reflection at the minute after E3 and its probably for the best that the gamers formulate their own opinions on this hot topic instead of regugitatating a trope a 14 year old from Alaska wrote in their spare time.

Take some points from a trope yes, but think for yourself.

Can you tell me what happened at E3 with female reporters, I feel like I'm living under a rock or something.

This Kotaku article [http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/06/513794/] about the treatment of (at least one) female journalist at E3.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

The nerd/geek community right now is in the middle of a phase of self-examination when it comes to the use of sexual violence as a storytelling device in media for one, and the treatment of women and female characters for another.

I see the deletion of these Rape Tropes articles as a plus point, the gaming community is in a state of self reflection at the minute after E3 and its probably for the best that the gamers formulate their own opinions on this hot topic instead of regugitatating a trope a 14 year old from Alaska wrote in their spare time.

Take some points from a trope yes, but think for yourself.

Can you tell me what happened at E3 with female reporters, I feel like I'm living under a rock or something.

This Kotaku article [http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/06/513794/] about the treatment of (at least one) female journalist at E3.

Thanks for sending me the link. Having skimmed it, that's it?. A PR guy just assumed that someone couldn't play a game? That hardly seems like something to make a big deal out of.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I noticed this a while ago, was wondering what happened. Hmm. Well that sucks. Couldn't they have changed the title of 'mind rape' to something else, seeing as it didn't really have anything to do with actual rape.

 

[John Funk]

The nerd/geek community right now is in the middle of a phase of self-examination when it comes to the use of sexual violence as a storytelling device in media for one, and the treatment of women and female characters for another.

I see the deletion of these Rape Tropes articles as a plus point, the gaming community is in a state of self reflection at the minute after E3 and its probably for the best that the gamers formulate their own opinions on this hot topic instead of regugitatating a trope a 14 year old from Alaska wrote in their spare time.

Take some points from a trope yes, but think for yourself.

Can you tell me what happened at E3 with female reporters, I feel like I'm living under a rock or something.

This Kotaku article [http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/06/513794/] about the treatment of (at least one) female journalist at E3.

Thanks for sending me the link. Having skimmed it, that's it?. A PR guy just assumed that someone couldn't play a game? That hardly seems like something to make a big deal out of.

Because she was a woman, yes. It's less this individual incident and more a conversation about how the industry views women journalists / treats them as though they aren't legitimate.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Because she was a woman, yes. It's less this individual incident and more a conversation about how the industry views women journalists / treats them as though they aren't legitimate.

I don't think its fair to say that a few PR guys represent then entire industry. As for the journalist being offended, that's their choice I guess.

 

[Jamous]

While it's good that the threads are going back up, and indeed good for Google to have a policy on that sort of terms, surely it'd be much better to actually look at the pages in greater detail and see what they're actually about before getting the plug pulled.

Not looking at them in more detail is actually Fast Eddie the site owner's fault. He merely blocked all pages with the word rape in it because of laziness. That's why mind rape was lost but all rapists are murderers stayed.

What? Why would someone do that? Surely that's just hurting his own site? Or am I simply hopelessly naive when it comes to my understanding of webhosting? Either way, it seems to be an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Oh, and also what I meant about Google checking before pulling the plug was seeing whether a site's actually 'explicit' or not, as I'd certainly not call TVTropes explicit simply for discussing the rape tropes that show up throughout fiction. But maybe that's again just myself and my naivety.

 

[Illyasviel]

...

No, gamers make everyone else feel bad. Including me, and I'm a god damned gamer.
But after the debacle with Women vs Tropes and the rpg-net threads I've been reading the past weekend and much of this week have made me think that gaming has very little right to exist...because hey, rather defend rape than not come across like creepy fuckwads because "FREE SPEECH MEANS I GET TO CALL YOU ******!"
When there's no responsibility, the shit just gets thrown without purpose.

Because, rather defend rape... than not come across like freaky fuckwads?

What are you trying to say here?

TVTropes chronicling what medias in which rape(s) have occurred in is not participating in rape and is not encouraging rape. They aren't being in anyway complicit with any type of activity associated with rape. Its just a list. Its not even a biased list. Even putting aside First Amendment rights, ITS STILL JUST A LIST. Now if only the rape list was super long and super detailed while the majority of other trope lists have less than a half-dozen examples each, okay, there's something going on here. Its still legal and protected by the First Amendment, but it would be odd. Except that's not the case. They've treated that topic like every single other topic in their vast catalogue of topics.

They're not saying rape is a particularly evil trope and they're not saying 'lol rape.' All they said is this is rape, this is how its a trope and this is a list where you can see an example of this rape as this trope.

That's it.

So what exactly are you defending? Why don't we just ban everything that can be offensive or subjectively make you seem like a 'freaky fuckwad' to somebody else?

A list of Holocaust victims? A list of Japanese who were held in internment camps during WW2?

That would be dumb. Right? Right.

And they are being censored for it. Sure its an unintentional byproduct of a poorly written policy, but that's still censorship. I have a problem with that.

First wave feminism, voting and social rights. A great, important step forward. Second wave feminism, workplace equality and more social equality. Terrific. Third wave feminism. Censoring, not even a discussion about rape, just a list of mostly FICTIONAL rapes? What are we really accomplishing here? Are real feminists even celebrating? "FUCK YES, WE FINALLY GOT RID OF THAT TERRIBLE, MEAN, SUPER-EVIL LIST OF FICTIONAL RAPES ON THAT ONE WEBSITE!" Why then, are we putting words in their mouths? Are you sure you're not just white knighting this?

 

[NortherWolf]

...

No, gamers make everyone else feel bad. Including me, and I'm a god damned gamer.
But after the debacle with Women vs Tropes and the rpg-net threads I've been reading the past weekend and much of this week have made me think that gaming has very little right to exist...because hey, rather defend rape than not come across like creepy fuckwads because "FREE SPEECH MEANS I GET TO CALL YOU ******!"
When there's no responsibility, the shit just gets thrown without purpose.

Because, rather defend rape... than not come across like freaky fuckwads?

What are you trying to say here?

TVTropes chronicling what medias in which rape(s) have occurred in is not participating in rape and is not encouraging rape. They aren't being in anyway complicit with any type of activity associated with rape. Its just a list. Its not even a biased list. Even putting aside First Amendment rights, ITS STILL JUST A LIST. Now if only the rape list was super long and super detailed while the majority of other trope lists have less than a half-dozen examples each, okay, there's something going on here. Its still legal and protected by the First Amendment, but it would be odd. Except that's not the case. They've treated that topic like every single other topic in their vast catalogue of topics.

They're not saying rape is a particularly evil trope and they're not saying 'lol rape.' All they said is this is rape, this is how its a trope and this is a list where you can see an example of this rape as this trope.

That's it.

So what exactly are you defending? Why don't we just ban everything that can be offensive or subjectively make you seem like a 'freaky fuckwad' to somebody else?

A list of Holocaust victims? A list of Japanese who were held in internment camps during WW2?

That would be dumb. Right? Right.

And they are being censored for it. Sure its an unintentional byproduct of a poorly written policy, but that's still censorship. I have a problem with that.

First wave feminism, voting and social rights. A great, important step forward. Second wave feminism, workplace equality and more social equality. Terrific. Third wave feminism. Censoring, not even a discussion about rape, just a list of mostly FICTIONAL rapes? What are we really accomplishing here? Are real feminists even celebrating? "FUCK YES, WE FINALLY GOT RID OF THAT TERRIBLE, MEAN, SUPER-EVIL LIST OF FICTIONAL RAPES ON THAT ONE WEBSITE!" Why then, are we putting words in their mouths? Are you sure you're not just white knighting this?

I'm saying the gaming hobby as a whole doesn't seem to be mature enough to handle rape without an unhealthy dose of misogynistic BS served alongside it.
And while I missed those pages when they were up, everyone seems to argue that they pretty much were "Rape fap material here. Lololol."
White knighting, defending to get laid? Yeah, pretty fucking sure here. I've just reached a rather depressing insight about the two hobbies (tabletop rpgs and videogames) that I've been a part for most of my life.
And that insight is: Gaming, no matter how much gamers rage agaist stereotypes by the media, in filled with those very same stereotypes.

Question, if the Holocaust pages amounted to "Lulz here there be holocaust stuff"...You think that someone WOULDN'T tear it down?

Thing is, maybe it's because i*m a dumb, backwater Swede...But I don't see those waves of feminism...All I see is men and women striving for equal rights, and on one end a small number of women who're political zealots, while there's a huge number of men on the other who at best seem to think. "Well, things are good now! Oh yes sireeee! All fine! LALALAAL!" Or, "Women should be fucked so that they're happy."

 

[him over there]

While it's good that the threads are going back up, and indeed good for Google to have a policy on that sort of terms, surely it'd be much better to actually look at the pages in greater detail and see what they're actually about before getting the plug pulled.

Not looking at them in more detail is actually Fast Eddie the site owner's fault. He merely blocked all pages with the word rape in it because of laziness. That's why mind rape was lost but all rapists are murderers stayed.

What? Why would someone do that? Surely that's just hurting his own site? Or am I simply hopelessly naive when it comes to my understanding of webhosting? Either way, it seems to be an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Oh, and also what I meant about Google checking before pulling the plug was seeing whether a site's actually 'explicit' or not, as I'd certainly not call TVTropes explicit simply for discussing the rape tropes that show up throughout fiction. But maybe that's again just myself and my naivety.

There isn't anything explicit on the site per se but the userbase is filled with all kinds of horrible people and that eventually crops up on the wiki. It's a reputation thing. Plenty of tropers have admitted to being rape fetishists in the 300k+ post fetish thread so it kind of creates an air of dishonesty and depravity regarding the rape trope pages since it's a user editted wiki.

 

[Jamous]

While it's good that the threads are going back up, and indeed good for Google to have a policy on that sort of terms, surely it'd be much better to actually look at the pages in greater detail and see what they're actually about before getting the plug pulled.

Not looking at them in more detail is actually Fast Eddie the site owner's fault. He merely blocked all pages with the word rape in it because of laziness. That's why mind rape was lost but all rapists are murderers stayed.

What? Why would someone do that? Surely that's just hurting his own site? Or am I simply hopelessly naive when it comes to my understanding of webhosting? Either way, it seems to be an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Oh, and also what I meant about Google checking before pulling the plug was seeing whether a site's actually 'explicit' or not, as I'd certainly not call TVTropes explicit simply for discussing the rape tropes that show up throughout fiction. But maybe that's again just myself and my naivety.

There isn't anything explicit on the site per se but the userbase is filled with all kinds of horrible people and that eventually crops up on the wiki. It's a reputation thing. Plenty of tropers have admitted to being rape fetishists in the 300k+ post fetish thread so it kind of creates an air of dishonesty and depravity regarding the rape trope pages since it's a user editted wiki.

Eh, I suppose that's more understandable, but still; the content of the site itself seems pretty decent regardless of what the userbase is.

 

[repeating integers]

If you read the forums, you could see where former members who jumped ship like myself got their reasoning.

EDIT.

I thought I recognized that username. Blitzwing, weren't you banned from the Tvtropes forums a while ago? Certainly explains a few things.

Sooo... you're not gonna respond to any of Treblaine's good points? Because your fixation on and focused hatred of pedophiles and "creepy" people is beginning to get... well, creepy.

"Freedom to act like a pervert" indeed. Newsflash: On the internet, that's exactly what you have. Deal with it.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

I'm on TV Tropes -right now- and I can still access any article with "Rape" in the title.

Either Google is just censoring TV Tropes from their searches, they're slow at deleting the articles or nothing is being done.

Captcha: good for nothing

 

[Soviet Heavy]

If you read the forums, you could see where former members who jumped ship like myself got their reasoning.

EDIT.

I thought I recognized that username. Blitzwing, weren't you banned from the Tvtropes forums a while ago? Certainly explains a few things.

Sooo... you're not gonna respond to any of Treblaine's good points? Because your fixation on and focused hatred of pedophiles and "creepy" people is beginning to get... well, creepy.

"Freedom to act like a pervert" indeed. Newsflash: On the internet, that's exactly what you have. Deal with it.

That wasn't a response to Treblaine. Anyways, if you all want to keep blaming big bad google, go right ahead. At least their threats are getting Fast Eddie to listen. He wants to keep his precious website running, he'll have to clean out the trash. And I'll enjoy listening to all the people whining about censorship.

TvTropes brought this on themselves.

 

[saintdane05]

You guy's read that TVTROPES is reinstating this stuff, right? Its like, in the article.

Also, the fetish stuff was moved to a sperate wiki.

OT: To me, this doesn't matter. It was only about a maybe 3% cut of content. I still love the site, and I still think it is one of the greatest sites on the internet.

 

[repeating integers]

If you read the forums, you could see where former members who jumped ship like myself got their reasoning.

EDIT.

I thought I recognized that username. Blitzwing, weren't you banned from the Tvtropes forums a while ago? Certainly explains a few things.

Sooo... you're not gonna respond to any of Treblaine's good points? Because your fixation on and focused hatred of pedophiles and "creepy" people is beginning to get... well, creepy.

"Freedom to act like a pervert" indeed. Newsflash: On the internet, that's exactly what you have. Deal with it.

That wasn't a response to Treblaine. Anyways, if you all want to keep blaming big bad google, go right ahead. At least their threats are getting Fast Eddie to listen. He wants to keep his precious website running, he'll have to clean out the trash. And I'll enjoy listening to all the people whining about censorship.

TvTropes brought this on themselves.

Yeah, I knew you weren't responding to Treblaine, I was just wondering if you were going to.