enagers deciding that a swear or
two, or a nipple seen through clothing, or even worse, something
(gasp!!!) "vulgar" are just too much for their gentle libidos to
handle, and they swear off any such material, often without even experiencing that which
they're swearing off.If I even have to tell you why I don't think that's right, I have to ask what you're doing reading QBXL Magazine.
I think most of my readers would agree that QBXL Magazine, as a whole, doesn't really break that many barriers. Sure, we'll toss out a swear once in a while, and our Face Off column is shaping up to be quite the insult-fest, but overall, QBXL draws a line in the sand about what is in good and bad taste, and I think most people will agree with our policies as they are expressed by the editorial content of the magazine. We don't do this soley because of some puritanical desire to be "good", but because it's hard to make something genuinely funny while disgusting your audience. A good example would be that I personally have some extremely strong feelings about 9/11 and the Iraqi war which certainly don't make me a popular guy in political discussions, but I try my damndest to keep them out of these pages, mostly successfully. Of course, none of this matters to the guy who saw my self-imposed "R" rating and turned right around and walked out the door. The fact that I have one of the most impressive tech sections around(In my opinion, of course), with many concepts and algorithms designed specifically by QBXL staff for this magazine won't impress someone who never read any of that because they saw "Rated R" and ran away as quickly as their legs would carry them. In fact, even the fact that my porn and genocide based QBXL Extras managed to remain light and tasteful wouldn't even appeal to them, because they never made it that far. This is why I feel it's a shame that these "kids" are acting like they have the parent of a 7 year old hanging over their shoulder, and refuse to bother seeing even the slightest maturity or coarse language in anything they consume because of some self-inflicted taboos they have had driven into their skulls time and time again, and it's almost certainly the cause of the oversensitive male nerds forming groups to counter female stereotypes in games I was talking about last issue(Remember? The ones with no sense of humor?).
Another, less personal, example of this would be Na_Th_Ans flawed yet playable platformer "Jill the Goddess". To date, only two sites would even dare review this game, because there are about six cartoon nipples in the introduction. Ignore the fact that the game uses a unique mythological base for it's storyline, forget that it's one of the few worthy platformers in QB today, forget all that, because it's got nipples. It
doesn't
matter that the clothing is certainly instrumental in setting up the
setting (not all nudity is supposed to be an autoerotic event, guys!),
ignore the fact that historically and functionally speaking, the nipple
revealing clothing in question would have certainly been appropriate
for the setting of this place, ignore the characters and their
place in this multifaeceted, intrieguing world of corporeal goddesses
who rule the land as kings might, because these people wrote it off long before they
ever got to play it or even see the introduction in question.This is absolutely horrible. As QB programmers, writers, and artists mature on an artistic scale, the players and readers are remaining in the sixth grade, refusing to accept even the lightest growth within it's ranks, for unfathomable reasons. Everything with any more violence, coarse language, or nudity than Super Mario Brothers is cast out in the same way that a video store might put it's XXX selection of video cassettes inside a curtain; the problem here is that we're not talking about X rated literature or video games. We're talking about games and literature that would be hard pressed to get a PG-13 rating in theatres being shunned, unfairly, using unfathomably low standards, and the worse part is that these people are choosing it to be this way, free of "parental involvement". Admittedly though, more than one major QB site's administrators seems to believe their duty is to act as a chaperone for "the little ones", enforcing this pathetic ideal and further enforcing a community devoid of any maturity whatsoever.
If this is the way QB is heading, count me out. I'll just sit here on the sidelines, making my "Rated R" magazine and playing Na_Th_Ans "perverse" Jill the Goddess, waiting for the whole community, if not the whole world to remember what year it is, and start acting accordingly. It's not the 1800s freind. Culture moved on.
But hey, what do I know? Just as soon as you're done watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, get to writing another complaint about how horrible people who would add a nipple or a swear to their games are. I'm waiting with bated breath for their arrival.
-SJ Zero thinks these kids need to stop listening to their parents!
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