[spinningD20]

This is not explicitly stating that it is rape by any means, and I don't interpret it that way. It seemed to me that Maria and Setzer had a history already and he was stealing her away from her opera life, which she may or may not have wanted, we are not told whether or not she even wanted to work at the opera house, or what those conditions were. Casting characters in these negative lights without explicit proof is just silly. Especially after you get the backstory on Setzer and his love interest - nothing else in the game paints him as character that would do something awful like that.

The grounds for "FF6 has rape in it!" seems super super shaky. It feels like the sort of thing where people are decided that Satsuki & Mae from Totoro are really "dead and ghosts" during the entirety of the movie. It's silly.

Don't scare people away from a classic for things that aren't true.

[jstarfish]

> Especially after you get the backstory on Setzer and his love interest - nothing else in the game paints him as character that would do something awful like that.

Did we play the same game? However you define "rape," Setzer was an amoral gambler and rogue whose idea of romance was kidnapping and forced marriage. His relationship with Darril was mostly one of sport. He planned to kidnap the opera singer, was duped into kidnapping Celes instead, and was only willing to help them save the world or whatever if Celes married him. She only got out of that by challenging him and literally beating him at his own game (gambling).

Setzer was misogyny incarnate...Darril, someone he had an actual "relationship" with, was only ever his girlfriend. The opera singer, he wanted to marry on sight. Dude's priorities were seriously fucked.

[spinningD20]

Let me rephrase... Regardless of the interpretation of intent, this was not "rape in ff6" or "discussing rape", and "rape" is not in ff6.

If I heard as a parent that a game has rape in it, I am thinking "there is a scene in which a character is raped", and there is no way I would let my kids play that game, regardless of the rating, until I felt they were mentally or emotionally ready to be exposed to such an awful scene.

This is not rape in a game or anything like that. Speculation or interpretation of events or intent is FAR different than a scene literally displaying such an act.

So, my commentary in this thread has been to clarify, there is no such scene in this game, and any interpretation or speculation is just that. It does not explicitly actually occur in the game.

[JohnBooty]

I don't think it's silly of you to bring this up. In fact I think it's crucial to reexamine nonconsensual stuff in fiction, even kids' fiction. But I don't think I agree with your conclusion here.

It's true: in the real world a forced marriage is more or less explicitly rapey.

But at some point we as a society decided that in light works of fantasy we don't need to really need to follow every single thing to its logical real-world conclusion.

I mean, was there rape in Super Mario Brothers? The antagonist is quite the princess-kidnapper.