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It's an ugly and distasteful topic to have spent so much time on modelling. The problem with saying that we are all happy with death and mutilation so it's silly to worry about the lesser crime of rape is that rape is not like murder or other physical assaults, it's a rather different beast in my observations.

The concept of rape has a profound effect upon people, there's something deeply affecting and instinctual about the reaction of disgust towards it, which is why it is taboo. We've all seen war films where people die, but a rape scene in a film can be incredibly powerful and upsetting to a lot of people not least people who have actually suffered from rape.

I really don't think this is the sort of thing we want to do with our plastic men. It's similar to people who make excessively gory scenes which glorify torture and horrible deaths, but rape probably stirs up even more unpleasant feelings again. Sure this is a game where people die and get blown to bits, but that's true of many computer games. Ironically it's fairly easy to kill people in games and not feel greatly affected by it, it's easy to dissociate yourself, but in games where you are supposed to rape people (such as the controversial Rapelay) the idea alone is enough to make me sick because it goes to a level that merely running people over in GTA does not.

I don't think this scene is particularly clever or insightful, it's highly distasteful and unpleasant and even more so is the fascination of the eldar as a sexual being with large breasts. I think you're on very dangerous ground to create a scene or painting and then overtly sexualise the rape victim, it creates a very mixed message, are we supposed to enjoy the appearance of the eldar despite the fact she's about to be raped or are we supposed to somehow emphasise with the soldiers, is it supposed to excuse them? I seriously hope not, and what I'm left with is someone creating a scene that is desperate to be controversial while being unable to detach themselves from the adolescent "look bewbs!" approach to modelling female figures in any setting.

But nobody is suggesting writing a set of rules to say 'After loosing combat by more than five wounds all the remaining models are gang rapped by the victors.' It is not being put into the game it is a diorama depicting a potential act. And on you point about what children are playing, if my kids strated to pretend to crucify their friends to the front of the Land Rover I would be very worried, yet if I post a pic of my Khorne Rhino with an Imperial Fist crucified on the front no one will care that much.

padixon wrote:The difference to playing games with toy soldiers doing war/murder and toy soldiers in a rape scene in this context is HUGE.

Yes they are both terrible, but play fighting and war are waay more acceptable than rape.

Imagine a different context. Imagine young boys outside that play everyday with shooting each other with toy guns, sword fighting, and plain having a fake battle (every kid has been doing this since the beginning of time, because we are wired to do this), now imagine those same boys, grabbing a young girl (possibly your young daughter) and pretend rape her, then pretend rape her everyday they see her.

I don't care what country you are from or what culture or taboo's are present/lacking. There is a line you draw when it comes to THAT kind of violence. It is a violence of control, humiliation, and absolute dominance that goes beyond war, but to a far more personal level. Any rape help groups, survivors, and councilors will tell you this. Rape is NOT a game and has no place in any game.

I see what you mean, and I concur that rape and war are not the same when put in the context of children playing.

But would you want to see children playing "torture" or "genocide" or "officer executes the prisoner" games? I hope you would not. And while I also agree that 'we are wired' to play games of fighting, I doubt this includes the above-mentioned examples.

But those topics are fine in modelling and wargaming ficton.

What I am saying is not that rape should be an okay topic for wargaming fiction. What I am saying is it should be just as acceptable or unacceptable as a fictional topic as torture, genocide or executing helpless prisoners or civilians.

So either you condemn both or neither, and if you do the former, you probably should stop posting on a forum dedicated to games that include those topics in their fictional context.


Addendum: rape certainly has a more profound effect on the victims psyche than murder, since in the latter case, there is no psyche left to damage. But that is even besides the point: have you never found an image of actual torture affecting you emotionally? We often don't mind violence in movies or games because the victims are, essentially, extras without any personality whatsoever. But as soon as someone with whom we identify becomes a victim, we suddenly react emotionally. And rape in movies or games never happens to the bad guys.

padixon- I think you just summarised very well what I wanted to say myself. Thanks

Exactly, but don't higher levels of violence disturb you? For example if you saw a movie with a guy getting shot, and there was no blood because of the budget you wouldn't even blink. But a movie with a whole family getting butchered by a guy with an ax is far more disturbing. Both are murders, but one is graphically more disturbing. Now take that up another notch and have the guy with the ax systematically rape the family while butchering them...The movie is now very violent and very disturbing.

Its essentially a mental scale. I agree a toy being crucified on a rhino is a bit disturbing, but you can take that up a notch or two can't you?

The question is should you. This is a game, and we all have our limits. Rape is a limit that should defiantly not be given context in this game because it just goes too far, even uber violent scenes can go too far.

I stick by what I said earlier, rape has no place in any game.

I could take it or leave it, color me unimpressed.

I/E GW can pop out the dark eldar range, one of wich has a couple of slavewomen on it, a range of "Wych Elves that are top heavy and in some quarters, painted naked, and the whole rip off the face and wear it as a mask line of clothing.

Ad nausium.

We've seen slannish with and without T and A, along with the multiples of the imperiums way of dealing with the Alien, the demon and the heritic. ( Pentient engine, arcoflagellent, inquisition factions with and without demons...)

To me, it is someone taking the work to the extreme, and running with it just to get a rise out of others.

Great effort, but I'd be impressed if the subject of the excersize was a Tau, a genestealer hybrid, or a slannish demonette.

Using an Eldar is, to me, just so CPT Obvious that it isn't really worth the effort, IMO. It might be just me, but this is the right sort of a piece to get the wrong sort of attention from the PC police, and give yet another hand wringing liberal yuppy type something else to ban. "Heaven forbid you let your child play 40K.... They are a bunch of rapists and murderers if you play that game..."

I can already see the fallout that this crap is going to produce.

That's probably what bothers me most, the fact that this hobby has such a bad reputation as it is without all the sex and gak, and we just keep creating more and better reasons for people to keep judging us all by.

Sidstyler wrote:That's probably what bothers me most, the fact that this hobby has such a bad reputation as it is without all the sex and gak, and we just keep creating more and better reasons for people to keep judging us all by.

To be honest I have never heard wargamers being referred to as those who are obsessed with sex, drugs and rolacola it is more sad, balding, beardy little men painting in a badly lit room having nerd rage about toy soldiers.

The thing is I don't know why everyone is crying rape for. There's no rape in the picture, so why is it disgusting for? Is it because it's got boobs and some folks don't like boobs?

See, my point is people are presuming. There's a guy under doing his belt - maybe he's undoing it to whip the xeno bitch before that guy shoots her in the head?

Now, even those Guardsmen were engaging in a sexual act with that xeno scum and a gun pointed as said alien then it would be too graphic and disgusting..

Ed_Bodger wrote:

Sidstyler wrote:That's probably what bothers me most, the fact that this hobby has such a bad reputation as it is without all the sex and gak, and we just keep creating more and better reasons for people to keep judging us all by.

To be honest I have never heard wargamers being referred to as those who are obsessed with sex, drugs and rolacola it is more sad, balding, beardy little men painting in a badly lit room having nerd rage about toy soldiers.

Oh, you'd be suprised.

D and D is the tool of the devil, if you ask some of those PC types. If you start playing it, according to some, you will sprout horns and bark at the moon.

The fact that people take something to the extreame without thinking of the reprocusions, and then you have yet others who take the reprocusions to the extreme is what it all boils back down to for the rest of us.

What we get to look forward to is what JJ is going to say in his next Standard Bearer... "Oh, you silly kids, please don't !@#rape the eldar. They are much to fragile for that. For good !@#raping, try a Snotling."

And then to top it off, the beardy little men tag doesn't help much, when you have some of the extremes of people that we do in the hobby.

You need to see true nerdrage to believe it.

Such great skill yet such a crappy idea

padixon wrote:Exactly, but don't higher levels of violence disturb you? For example if you saw a movie with a guy getting shot, and there was no blood because of the budget you wouldn't even blink. But a movie with a whole family getting butchered by a guy with an ax is far more disturbing. Both are murders, but one is graphically more disturbing. Now take that up another notch and have the guy with the ax systematically rape the family while butchering them...The movie is now very violent and very disturbing.

Its essentially a mental scale. I agree a toy being crucified on a rhino is a bit disturbing, but you can take that up a notch or two can't you?

The question is should you. This is a game, and we all have our limits. Rape is a limit that should defiantly not be given context in this game because it just goes too far, even uber violent scenes can go too far.

I stick by what I said earlier, rape has no place in any game.

That is an opinion I can respect.

However, to me, a crucified and obviously tortured human nailed to the front of a rhino, or an inquisitor executing an innocent whose only mistake was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (thus seeing a daemon, for example) is no less disturbing than rape. In fact, I would regularly cringe at the thought were it not for this kind of fictional distance one develops when reading fiction.

The idea that people would violate others, especially the idea of a regime that employs systematic violence like that, is absolutely horrid to me, whether it involves rape or not. As a story, however, not connected to any real person, I can read or see or hear it and even enjoy it.

Maybe it is a subconscious connection to real friends, real persons that makes it unbearable to see such a scene as a model? And in that case, that is more likely to happen regarding rape than regarding systematic violence or people tortured, because it is less likely to know people who have been tortured or murdered than people who have been raped?

Wow, you lot are arguing about something that isnt even in the diorama.

All's I see is some great models about to get stabbed by a sneaky Eldar hottie. You know what the Guard are thinking but it hasnt happened yet. Get over it.

Quote from artist:

Well, this is aggressive contact indeed. Outcomes are unpredictable...

Says it all really.

Sure it could go bad for her. But it hasnt in this diorama. Its the 'idea' that it could happen that makes people uncomfortable.

Now, I think ill go look up some Slaanash and Dark Eldar models...

Love the diorama.

You go girl.

Where do you draw the line?

To the people who say they dont have a problem with it because it depicts what happens in war, what would you feel if it was a figure of a child instaed of the Eldar? That happens in war to...

This hobby is about playing fantasy games with toy soldiers, what does the diorama have to do with that?

I know where I draw my line and this is way past it...

Mick

This hobby is also about painting and modelling, which has awful lot to do with the diorama. It is also about storytelling, which has an awful lot to do with the diorama. Take a broader view.

No.

At the end of the day its glorified toy soldiers with guys way older than they should be, sitting around making pew pew noises. Its not a deep artistic project funded by the Holocaust Museum. Its not art to make you think.

Its a game that has Hello Kitty space marines. Seriously get a grip.

Art is what you think is art. And if the person who made this diorama decided he wanted to do art, then he did - in his world. And in mine, too. Art is not definable.

Paraphrased: Art cares neither whence the inspiration, nor whence the materials flow.

Frazzled wrote:No.

At the end of the day its glorified toy soldiers with guys way older than they should be, sitting around making pew pew noises. Its not a deep artistic project funded by the Holocaust Museum. Its not art to make you think.

Its a game that has Hello Kitty space marines. Seriously get a grip.

So....

The art in the GW art books isn't art?
GD entries, despite looking amazing, aren't art?
Shakespeare, being a written words, isn't art?
Music isn't art?
Michelangelo's painting on the Sistine chapel isn't art because it stems from religion?
Art isn't art because it is always inspired by something else that isn't art?

Thus, in your statement, art doesn't exist. If you want my opinion, art is all or nothing. I can see it every where from the sounds of where I live and work to the colour of the buildings where I live. Real good art makes you think and look. This diorama has spawned multiple, multi page threads about it talking about the moral and ethnic complications of the piece, for me, this means the diorama is good art.

Skylifter wrote:Art is what you think is art. And if the person who made this diorama decided he wanted to do art, then he did - in his world. And in mine, too. Art is not definable.

Paraphrased: Art cares neither whence the inspiration, nor whence the materials flow.

Blah blah. Its such a bland definition that anything and nothing is art. If I pee in the dirt and take a picture. Is that art?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

wizard12 wrote:

Frazzled wrote:No.

At the end of the day its glorified toy soldiers with guys way older than they should be, sitting around making pew pew noises. Its not a deep artistic project funded by the Holocaust Museum. Its not art to make you think.

Its a game that has Hello Kitty space marines. Seriously get a grip.

So....

The art in the GW art books isn't art?
GD entries, despite looking amazing, aren't art?
Shakespeare, being a written words, isn't art?
Music isn't art?
Michelangelo's painting on the Sistine chapel isn't art because it stems from religion?
Art isn't art because it is always inspired by something else that isn't art?

Thus, in your statement, art doesn't exist. If you want my opinion, art is all or nothing. I can see it every where from the sounds of where I live and work to the colour of the buildings where I live. Real good art makes you think and look. This diorama has spawned multiple, multi page threads about it talking about the moral and ethnic complications of the piece, for me, this means the diorama is good art.

Get real. Its a well painted bit of toysoldiers designed to get your chubby warm. nothing more. All these high nose comments are cute.
It may be art, I'll grant you. But its strictly juvenile meh.

Well, then define art. Good luck.

reds8n wrote:

Ed_Bodger wrote:I posted a much more complete answer in the DCM forum but basically I think it is a great diorama well modelled, well painted and thought provoking.

How is it thought provoking ?

the one thought i had was 'basement dwelling pervert'

just because it happens in reality, and probably does happen in the 40k universe doesn't mean the maker of the peice is trying to make a message. he probably has a fetish, just like fanfic bdsm writers aren't doing it to make an artistic point, they are just getting their rocks off

BluntmanDC wrote:

reds8n wrote:

Ed_Bodger wrote:I posted a much more complete answer in the DCM forum but basically I think it is a great diorama well modelled, well painted and thought provoking.

How is it thought provoking ?

the one thought i had was 'basement dwelling pervert'

just because it happens in reality, and probably does happen in the 40k universe doesn't mean the maker of the peice is trying to make a message. he probably has a fetish, just like fanfic bdsm writers aren't doing it to make an artistic point, they are just getting their rocks off

Exactly. If I want reality I'm not playing 40K. We're talking killer fungi for crying out loud.

Here's the part that gets me. The painting and conversation is absolutely excellent. But instead of OMG BEWBIES! if they had a fully clothed eldar survivor there the Pants down Guardsman #1 doing something slightly different it would be excellent. The diorama of discovering an eldar xenos survivor alone would have been excellent, and would have allowed viewer the ease to review the artistic aspects. But now its just "OMG BEWBIES look what they're gonna do Heh heh." It went from discussing Rafael to Beavis and Butthead.

Frazzled wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:

wizard12 wrote:My previous post

Get real. Its a well painted bit of toysoldiers designed to get your chubby warm. nothing more. All these high nose comments are cute.
It may be art, I'll grant you. But its strictly juvenile meh.

I don't think it is juvenile. On diorama in real life, the eldar would suitable covered. We'd have to look very closely to make out the fine details such as the breasts, the soldier undoing his belt, the knife, the expressions on the soldiers, ect,ect. Juvenile, would be if the elder's breasts were incredibly, stupidly large, completely uncovered along with less of her armour and the soldiers all looked as if Christmas had come early and were in the middle of the act.

Would people not be talking about this so much if the elder was fully dressed? Maybe; but then the guardsman holding part of the breastplate is out of the diorama and as oadie mentioned, he plays an important role in the piece.

But we're all entitled to our opinions; and I doubt peoples opinions on this subject will change. Therefore, this thread will go on for eternity (or maybe slightly less time).

wizard12 wrote: if the elder's breasts were incredibly, stupidly large,

..they're not ? Really ?

Very well painted and I find the work no more offensive than the subject matter is when presented in book or movie form. This is just a medium you don't usually see it in. Would it be acceptable if they had blown her to bits and were smacking each other with her body parts? I will say though that it is an ugly topic.

reds8n wrote:

wizard12 wrote: if the elder's breasts were incredibly, stupidly large,

..they're not ? Really ?

Exactly.

Gridge wrote:Very well painted and I find the work no more offensive than the subject matter is when presented in book or movie form. This is just a medium you don't usually see it in. Would it be acceptable if they had blown her to bits and were smacking each other with her body parts? I will say though that it is an ugly topic.

No its still wouldn't be acceptable and at the risk of getting boring view this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women or google The Rape of The Sabine, or Leda+Swan.

The diorama on show is poorly executed and posed.

It is offensive and that's not even thinking about the subject matter.

Frazzled wrote:

reds8n wrote:

wizard12 wrote: if the elder's breasts were incredibly, stupidly large,

..they're not ? Really ?

Exactly.

Oh, I'm sorry for paying attention to the whole diorama instead of the eldar's breasts.

wizard12 wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

reds8n wrote:

wizard12 wrote: if the elder's breasts were incredibly, stupidly large,

..they're not ? Really ?

Exactly.

Oh, I'm sorry for paying attention to the whole diorama instead of the eldar's breasts.

try to play the superior Dance now are we? As OMG Boobies plays center stage for the entire diorama, you're either lying, or you're blind. Which is it?

Ed_Bodger wrote:Reds8n you obviously haven,t been to Wales if you think humans won't rape animals (although they claim the sheep like it and push back)