I never said she was a knowing liar. My point is that people's perceptions can be wrong, and their memories flawed, even at the best of times. So it's a good idea to be skeptical. So when Alice says her boyfriend was there, and he ran away, because he was a coward; these are all different truth claims. The existence of the boyfriend has a really low bar, that is easy enough to believe. But the claims on his motive? That's different. Because unless the boyfriend yelled out his innermost thoughts and told her his motivation while he did so, she really can't know that for certain.
Also, even if the boyfriend ran away from cowardice as she claimed, cowardice is not malicious. If all the MC knew is that the boyfriend was afraid and ran out of fear,
that's not a good reason to abandon them if they need help.
Also, in regards to Alice's claims of motive; the game later proves she was incorrect. As it turns out her boyfriend wasn't a coward, he was malicious; he staged the whole thing. So the game
proves me right, we should have doubted Alice's claims to know the motive behind her boyfriend's actions.
I don't buy it. Self defense statues are very broad. How broad? You can take a gun, go across state lines, antagonize peaceful protesters, get scared, shoot them, and still claims 'self defense'. So this isn't anything close to being outside of a 'reasonable' or legitimate self defense claim. In fact had the MC shot the rapist, this is almost the epitome of 'good guy with a gun' vigilantism that gets lionized. It is Alice and the MC's word versus the rapist. Again, he'd be far more likely to get a parade than jail time.
Also, if the MC is 'wealthy', and 'wealthy people own airports', I'm sure he could afford any and all medical bills associated with the rapist's beatdown. So even if he had to pay them, sacrificing that money would be a drop in the bucket, and still worth it if it got a rapists off the street before they victimized another. Again, failure of the author here. They wanted to make the MC stupid rich so that money was no concern; that also means that being sued for money is no financial threat. The MC has 'Fuck You' money, he can afford a good lawyer, he won't be destitute and homeless for fighting a rapist to defend a victim. The MC has all the cards stacked in their favor, so if despite all that he acts as he did, then he's some combination of stupid, selfish, or greedy.
I'm not the one who wrote the character this way, I'm just observing and judging his actions. He was brave to step in and save Alice, he was callous to not even try to do the same for the boyfriend. To leave the rapist there and not involve police, and allow for future victimization, is negligent in the extreme. To be more concerned with the potential (and very nebulous) consequences to his license is supremely selfish. To think that any of this would have negative consequences, in spite of his vast wealth, makes him very stupid.
Only if you think not helping those in obvious need are assholes. If the MC kept on walking and didn't help Alice, would that make him an asshole? If yes, then how is him not helping the boyfriend different?
Spoiler: The difference is the author knows the boyfriend is a sociopath who staged the whole thing, and has the MC act in accordance with that knowledge. If the KC knew that going into the event, he'd be justified in not helping the boyfriend, and wouldn't be judged an asshole for not helping.
Remember that neither Alice or the MC know at the time that the event was staged. To the best of their current knowledge, in the moment, the boyfriend is in danger and needs help. Help they could have given, but didn't. There are plenty of words I could use to describe that level of callous disregard and inaction, 'asshole' just happened to be the one I chose. But whatever word you pick, it doesn't change the the fact of their actions. They knowingly abandoned the boyfriend to his fate when they thought he needed help. People we think of as 'heroic' wouldn't have done that.
Spider-Man or Super-Man wouldn't have done that. Hell even 'wealthy' playboy billionaire Bat-Man, Mr. 'I beat up criminals to cope for the death of my parents' himself, almost certainly wouldn't have done that.
Except we have every reason to doubt her, and the game proves it, when it pulls the rug out from under her claims and shows that the whole event was staged anyways.
Missing the point. The 'cowardice' of the boyfriend was a ploy, in reality he was malicious. But that's besides the point. In the moment, Alice thinks he's a coward. In the moment, the MC only knows what Alice can tell him. Even with the limited knowledge that Alice has, the MC should try to find and help the boyfriend.
Unless you rewrite the entire event, and incorporate a third-person perspective so that the audience can see the events themselves, there is no getting around the 'hearsay' problem if the MC arrives on the scene after the fact. So you'd need to redo the scene in such a way that the boyfriend was obviously malicious, which undermines the later reveal of his sociopathy. Conversely you can rewrite it so that the MC actually tries to do the right thing. Have them call the cops, have him go and try to find the boyfriend. Even if he fails, then at least he tried. But as of now, the MC didn't even try to help or call the police.
Right. That's kinda the point. The fans are here giving me shit and facepalming my posts because they all know the boyfriend is a sociopath, and are judging his actions based on knowing that he staged the event. I didn't know that. At the time, neither would Alice and the MC. That they both act like assholes, in a way that could only be justified if they KNEW the boyfriend was a sociopath who staged the whole thing, is a failure of the author and the narrative. They're acting with complete moral authority, because the author 'knows' their actions are justified given the reality of the situation; the problem is that in the moment, neither the characters nor the audience has that 'knowledge'. So they're acting in accordance with things they don't know at the time. In the moment, that makes them huge assholes. The later revelation of this knowledge that back-fills and justifies their actions after-the-fact is just lazy writing.
C'mon, you can do better than that. Did you try reading anything more than just looking at the Google search results?
I can't read the paper itself, but at least read the abstract from this study.
You must be registered to see the links
The present study examines changes in women's sexual activity and behavior following sexual assault and the relationship between alcohol abuse and postassault promiscuity. Although many researchers have focused on avoidance of sexual activity following an assault, some have suggested that women may exhibit an increase in sexual activity postassault. Such outcomes are not mutually exclusive possibilities but may instead reflect subtypes of sexual assault victims. A significant percentage of assault survivors did report increases in sexual activity following trauma. Assault survivors also reported increases in posttraumatic alcohol consumption relative to a comparison sample of motor vehicle accident survivors. In both groups, increases in posttraumatic alcohol usage predicted increases in posttraumatic sexual activity, suggesting that use of alcohol as a coping strategy may result in an increased likelihood of engaging in risky sexual behavior. If true, this maladaptive coping mechanism could help to account for some instances of revictimization.
How much is a 'significant percentage'? No idea, can't access the paper. So sure, it is a thing, largely coupled with increased drinking and other coping mechanisms. But again her blowjob wasn't happening because it made more or less sense for her character, it happened because the author wanted his audience to get some lewds for that update and there is a quota that needs filling. That's kinda of a larger problem with the episodic content delivery structure of the vast majority of these crowdfunded erotica games. You are expected to do a certain amount of new lewd content each update, regardless of whether or not that makes sense for the characters or story.
Again, I still think it's super gauche and lazy. Even if you wanted to take the 'more promiscuous as a form of coping' angle, the fact of the mater is that there isn't any 'coping' going on. She isn't drinking, the narrative doesn't give any inkling to her inside thoughts, there is no portrayal for the audience that she is perhaps struggling with the events and is maybe not completely sure or 100% comfortable with giving the blowjob but perhaps feels obligated to? That would at least be something, some acknowledgement that the events that happened had consequences, and weren't just a plot point.
Here is this big bad traumatic event, with no lasting consequences. Which undermines the event itself. Why should Alice be so upset with her boyfriend if she was so trauma-free as to give the MC a blowjob less than 24 hours after the fact? If she is so untroubled by the events that she can perform sexual acts with a near total stranger, then at the very least she should be able to let her boyfriend get a word in edgewise to explain himself. You can't have it both ways. She can't both be so traumatized as to act that way against her boyfriend, and simultaneously so trauma free to act that way towards the MC.
But no, the rape was just a plot point. She needs to yell at her boyfriend because the plot needs her to, because he is a sociopath (she doesn't know that). The plot also needs her to give the MC a blowjob because we need to hit our lewds quota for this update. So far, Alice is less a character, and more a plot device. Her actions don't read as organic, she just does what's required to move the plot forward. That is a consequence of weak writing and lack of strong characterization.
Right off the bat, love his work, and that was a great PBS short. I probably gonna be watching a lot more of these.
But I think you're missing the point, because that whole video on Moral Luck basically agrees with me.
Right off the bat it covers 'ought implies can'. Right. In the moment, the MC could intervene to help Alice, so he ought to. Likewise the MC, having demonstrated that they are more than capable of intervening and doing good (successfully rescuing Alice), learns of someone else in trouble (the boyfriend). He can help them, so he ought to. But he doesn't even try, and thus I judge him for his moral failure. That the author didn't is not my problem.
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The MC saved Alice, then just because Alice calls her boyfriend a coward, the MC does nothing to even attempt to help the boyfriend. He didn't attempt to help the boyfriend and fail, he simply didn't even try. At best the makes the MC terribly inconsistent, his hero switch able to be turn off with but a single phrase from a sexy redhead with doe-eyes. The MC had his disposition to help undermined by someone else telling him that the person who needed help was a coward.
How does that not make the MC an asshole? I'd put someone who 'only saves potential fuck-buddies and lets everyone else rot' into the asshole category.
So to get back to your example, that's two people with the same disposition and actions, but one gets judged harsher than the other because bad luck caused their equally bad decisions to have worse consequences.
That's not what's happening with the MC. That's not what happened in my example with the loaded gun.
In my loaded gun example, the person has the disposition and intention to use the gun and does so. Even according to the video, it's the underlying disposition, not the consequences, that really deserve praise or derision. Not killing someone because the gun wasn't loaded does not change that fact that the person was willing to pull the trigger with the intent to kill. I can kinda see the connection in that the gun being unloaded resulted in nobody dying, which would be judged less harshly than an actual death. Which makes sense, murder is worse than attempted murder; but both are a moral indictment of the person willing pulling the trigger. The person's disposition was okay with them becoming a murder, even if by luck they didn't.
My point with the MC is that they're pulling the trigger, and only later do we learn the gun wasn't loaded; but that doesn't negate that he still pulled the trigger. He's still morally culpable for his disposition and his actions, even if the consequences turned out to be less so. In the moment, he made the choice to abandon the boyfriend, the very same thing Alice accused her boyfriend of doing. So at face value, the MC is no better than the boyfriend at the time. I'd argue that he's actually worse, since the MC demonstrated that he's actually capable and not a coward. He's clearly more capable to help than the boyfriend was, and yet he took the same action; he abandoned someone who needed help. In that light, the MC (in the moment) is worse than the boyfriend, according to the knowledge the audience has at the moment. The MC could have helped, and he ought to have helped; but chose not to. 'With great power comes great responsibility', and in that moment, the MC turned his back on his responsibility. That later we learn the whole thing was staged by a sociopath doesn't change the moral calculus that was made in the moment.
The MC doesn't get bonus good-boy points for abandoning the boyfriend, just because the gun wasn't loaded.
I'll leave you with this. If the mugging and rape had not been staged by the boyfriend, and he was in-fact just an innocent run of the mill coward, would Alice and the MC's actions be justified? Would they be assholes in that situation? Why or why not?
