In the real world, it shouldn't be necessary for anyone to be against rape. That should just be the factory setting of humanity, and anyone claiming different or trying to justify a real world context can take a hike as far as I'm concerned.
That said, this is a fictional world with its own rules pertaining general morality, sexuality as a currency and social qualifier and rules of engagement.
This is also a microcosm, an insular reality that is looked at with surprise and maybe even disgust by other contemporary surviving/reforming civilisations and cultures.
Kateryna and the traveling merchants are from other places and cultures and they are unfamiliar and a bit shocked to learn how things go in what remains of Egypt.
The main argument for things being the way they are is twofold:
1)Hypersexual society. Maybe it's the result of how the world/humanity was evolving before the big reset, maybe it's the work of the early settlers who were a bunch of perverts, maybe it's to do with the need to repopulate and the fact that a violent society means a high mortality rate... But the fact is that sex is everywhere, it's normalised and pretty much a way for people to interact and establish relations and even power dynamics. Very little is off the table and society as a whole is entirely cool with it. Specific individuals may have a different view, if and when functional to the story. Or maybe they didn't have a tv and there isn't much else to do.
2) the spoils of war go to the victor, and sex is and can be seen as a way to both impose dominance but also declare the end of hostilities. The losing side knows it's going to happen and that somebody is going to have to take one for the team. Much like in other settings the losing general gets his sword broken and his rank stripped, in Zeta somebody is going to take it where the sun doesn't shine.
That's why, psychology of the character aside, Asha doesn't bite Z's dick off when he takes her after having defeated her.
He beat her and gets to play with her as he sees fit.
That's the backdrop against which Kitty is "violated".
How to potentially use sex or the lure of it is even a topic of discussion between Shani and Mandisa.
In all of these scenes however, much freedom is given to the players as to how they go about it or if they do anything at all.
Is it a flimsy excuse to justify a lot of sex scenes? Absolutely. Is it something that could never be accepted in the real world?
I would like to hope so, but history, even recent history, teaches us otherwise.. Not that that's an excuse.
That said, lore-wise and in terms of narrative, I like to think it holds up fairly well.
In that framework, there's one scene that I am still unhappy with, and that's Kyra's introduction, where Z has the possibility to boink her when she's clearly unconscious. I think it sits on the wrong side of the consent/rule-of-the-strongest line, and I'm thinking of eventually fixing it, but that's not a priority at this time.
As for the futa content... I'm personally not interested/invested at all, and wouldn't really know how to convincingly portray such a character or justify potential relations with the existing characters. Are there crossdressers or trans people in Zeta? I don't see why not. Do we need to put them in the game? I'm not particularly feeling it and I'm not in favour of adding it purely to satisfy a specific player demographic, especially if it doesn't add anything significant to the story. This game isn't really a vehicle for representation and we're also not trying to cater to each and every fetish out there. That said ZetanDS may have different ideas and decide to put it in, in which case we'll try and make it work in a believable way.
) and Zetan is in fact humanity's future as the world is headed that way.
