In all my time running this blog, I expected to have it taken down for the same reasons I did my Tumblr page: some concerned parent or parent-minded person complains to the staff because they mistook my message for being about pornography. I must reiterate that such was never my intention. This is about equal treatment and giving everyone a fair shot.

I was never expecting the subject of what I am about to talk about to be the reason my blog could be deleted. But then, here we are. What I am about to say could get my blog terminated, but I don't care. If I don't say something, that'll go against my values. And if I can help to raise awareness of this issue, then so be it.

Recently, Sony has been receiving a lot of criticism for the sequel to their acclaimed title The Last of Us, for a variety of reasons that don't quite fit the nature of my blog. However, when the game was finally released, it was discovered that a graphic sexual scene had been placed in the game. Now, this wouldn't normally be a case to talk about... except for the fact that Sony has had a history of censoring other titles on their game systems for far less explicit content, raising the question of why The Last of Us Part II gets to keep their content as it is.

The closest example I can think of is a case in Devil May Cry V, a game that uses a very similar art style of The Last of Us Part II, and has a few cases of nudity in it. However, that game, despite being less explicit than the other, was censored on Sony's platform, and only theirs. The art style is largely the same, a realistic style, but one is kept, the other is not. Why is that?

It could be that the case occurred in the nation of Japan for DMCV. Japan has largely been the subject of many an attack from the “woke” crowd, mainly for not conforming with the western style of doing things. Another reason could be in the nature of the scene. The Last of Us Part II is a game centered around making the player suffer through agonizing sequences of brutality and depression. It is a game to shock and offend, not to entertain. As I said before, disgusting acts of violence are considered acceptable in the west, while beauty is a sin. It is a truly Orwellian idea that the ugly is beautiful, but it is all too common in the art world, where literal garbage is held up as art.

Or perhaps it is in the nature of the staff. Naughty Dog has a direct line to Sony's headquarters, and so Neil Druckman, it's chief executive, can thus do as he pleases through nepotism. After all, some people have said that the game is simply exploring Druckman's desires, including some fetishes of his. I mean, they say that if SJWs didn't have double standards they would have none, and they do say that for a reason. Virtue signaling, in a way, serves the same function as buying loud cars to compensate for impotence: they show off something you don't have. So, Druckman could be trying to show his virtues to his friends in the industry by banning lewd women, whilst hiding his own dirty, bloodstained laundry.

The most interesting thing is that the other consoles do not have this alteration. Obviously PC users can patch the content they lost back in, though they don't need to since it's already uncensored and rated Adults Only. But the interesting thing is the Switch version of most of the censored games... isn't. The company once known for censoring games with objectionable content, the company that Sony placed as an alternative with its more mature content... has more lenient standards than Sony. It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad, but I'm laughing anyway.

As beauty is phased out of western culture, only the ugly will be given the ability to do things the beautiful can no longer do. To me, that sounds an awful lot like privilege. But whatever it is, it isn't equality.