So, in a previous post, I addressed how of the seven gaming sites that had attempted to defend Fire Emblem Fates’ Soleil Scenes at that time, six of them had spread one or more outright lies about the content of those scenes.

To recap, the only article that didn’t was Destructoid’s, which I’ll remind you was just a community blog the site decided to promote. The blog post was terrible, but at least it didn’t contain blatant falsehoods. (That I noticed at least.)

The other articles, at Gamer Headlines, Niche Gamer, TechRaptor, Gameranx, Kotaku, and Gamesnosh, all did. And these weren’t just community blogs. These were articles written by staff members, and in the case of Gameranx and Niche Gamer, written by the Editor in Chiefs themselves.

I tweeted about this, and it got some attention, and then the head of Niche Gamer, Brandon Orselli, (who has something set up to notify him any time his site’s name is mentioned on twitter) got back to me and said he’d correct the mistake in his article. Inspired by this, a conversation I had with some friends, and a discussion with a gater I’d been debating (who was actually quite helpful in finding sites that had written about the game, expect another post about that eventually), I decided to contact the other five sites directly, and see how, or if, they would respond.

Let’s get into it:

Niche Gamer:

Before I get into the other sites, a bit more about Niche Gamer. As mentioned, Brandon Orselli of Nicher Gamer approached me himself and corrected the article. Well, one mistake in the article that is. He fixed the part that claimed Soleil asked the main character to help her with her problem, and by “any means” possible.

Later on, when I was tweeting someone else, it became apparent that there was a further mistake in Niche Gamer’s coverage. Their article also claimed that the main character explained that he had to drug Soleil without her knowing about it first, or the drug wouldn’t work. This never happened, and Niche Gamer’s own translation included in their article showed this. I tweeted at Brandon again, and this additional mistake was then corrected.

It should be noted that this is at least the third time they’ve had to edit their article to fix mistakes like this (by the time I’d even become aware of their coverage, they’d already had to remove the claim that Soleil was actually straight.) So, not exactly a good thing. But hey, at least they are willing to fix the mistakes when they are pointed out to them, which is more than I can say for some. But Niche Gamer’s opinion that the scenes are harmless stands, and so thus does my low opinion of their article.



Kotaku:



Kotaku’s article, like every one of the six sites mentioned, included the claim that Soleil asked the protagonist to help her overcome her “weakness” for cute girls. The repeated lie, I called it in my last post.

I tweeted at Stephen Totilo, EiC of Kotaku, though not the writer of the article himself. The next day, he responded to me that the article had been corrected and an additional update to address criticisms of it added.

Here’s the update:

This is, in my opinion, a pretty pathetic update. Because the article got criticized for a LOT more than just the factual error, by a lot more people than just me, and the update pretty much sidesteps all of that. It also even tries to downplay the falsehood, saying how Soleil didn’t “explicitly” ask for help, as though details like that aren’t important in an article all about issues like consent and DRUGGING SOMEONE. (Also, it should be noted, Soleil didn’t even bring up the subject of her problems herself, and was hesitant to even talk about them to the protagonist.)

Overall, a crappy update, and a crappy response to the criticism. But hey, at the very least, they did remove the blatant falsehood. That’s pretty much the bare standard we’re working with here.

Gamesnosh:

Gamesnosh was one of the sites that sourced the lying imgur post I talked about in my very first post about this issue.

I tweeted at the official Gamesnosh twitter, and got no response. I also posted a comment on their article, and got no response. However, while they never responded to me directly, it is clear they saw what I or someone else sent them, because they updated their article. Their article now begins with this disclaimer:

This is one of the most disingenuous, cowardly updates I’ve ever seen. It is complete and utter crap. If you look at the first version of their article, archived here, it was not just to highlight that there are “multiple interpretations” of the article.

They were taking the single imgur as fact, without the slightest question, and were mocking other sites for trusting tumblr at the same time.

Indeed, even though they changed some of the language in their updated article, and removed the absurd claim that Soleil was actually straight, the article is still full of constant mocking of other sites for doing “poor research” and assumptions that everything in the imgur is not just “another interpretation” but solid fact. Also worth noting, they still claim that Soleil asked the main character for help.

This is the most pathetic, token effort Gamesnosh could possibly have done.

Gamer Headlines:

I attempted to contact Gamer Headlines, and at first had no luck. I never received a response from their official twitter (and in fact I’m not sure anyone even monitors it, it seems like it just posts article links and nothing more) and my comment on their site got flagged for spam or something, and is still pending approval as of this moment.

However, I noticed the writer of the article had his twitter account listed at the bottom of the article, and so I tweeted at him directly. He got back to me, and I showed him some of my sources and links explaining the issues with the imgur he used as a source. Which ultimately left him still unclear on things, and kind of regretting that he waded into the subject at all.



After some conversation with him, he agreed to add a disclaimer to the article, which you can see below.

I have some issues with the disclaimer. I don’t think it goes far enough, considering the issues with the imgur and article. I think the article should have been removed entirely, or at least some of the specific issues with it addressed.

But, I can at least appreciate that he realized the messed up and went in half-cocked. He recognizes he messed up in writing the article. That is more, far more, than Gamesnosh did with their terrible update.

TechRaptor:

I tweeted at the official TechRaptor twitter, explaining some of the faults with their article. I focused on the clear factual errors, and not the other issues, like the absurd interpretation that Soleil is straight (which was not based off of the lying imgur post that claimed she was pretending, but rather by some of the strangest logic I’ve ever seen.)

Shortly after that, the writer of the article (Georgina Young) tweeted at me and some others in a different context, so I decided to take up the subject with her directly.

A reminder, her article stated that Soleil asking the protagonist to help her, and to do so “by any means.” When I asked Georgina about this on twitter, she claimed that this was her “interpretation“ of the scenes. When I pressed her further, she said to refer to the translations she included in her article.

The translation she included was the pastebin one, seen here. As you can see, Soleil never asks for help, and certainly not “by any means.”

When I pressed her even further, she said that “the implication is she brought up the subject because she wants help. In Japanese you don’t explicitly ask.“ She stated again that “Her bringing up the subject is how you ask for help.“

I should note that I have brought this up with someone who knows Japanese, and confirmed my own feeling that yes, bringing up a subject instead of directly asking for help is in fact a very Japanese thing to do. But there are three issues with this.

One, when dealing with something as touchy as consent, drugging, and possible implications of conversion therapy, it’s important to be precise. Saying “she asked the main character to help her” and “she brought up something bothering her, which I viewed as an unspoken request for help” are two different things, and it’s very important to distinguish between them when dealing with something like this.

Two, consider “by any means.” Even if you accept that bringing up the subject was an unspoken request for help, “by any means” is stretching things way, way beyond the breaking point. There is simply no way to interpret the scene as “by any means.”

Three, everything I said in the two proceeding paragraphs is irrelevant because Soleil didn’t even bring up the subject. Yes, that’s right, she didn’t bring it up! The male avatar is the one who brought up the subject, after he noticed Soleil sighing. Soleil was even hesitant to talk about it.

But hey, she sighed in a place where the main character could see her. Surely that serves as consent for him to do whatever the fuck he wants to “cure” her, right?

Let me be clear about something though. Whether simply sighing in front of the main character was viewed as “asking for help by any means” by Georgina, I do not know. She never addressed the fact that Soleil didn’t bring up the subject when I tweeted it to her. She mentioned that she’d check the Japanese again, then tweeted about how her lunch break was over and she needed to get back to work.

After that, she never got back to me. But her TachRaptor article was being shared around on twitter a lot, and mocked (mostly for other things, unrelated to the factual errors.) And she tweeted about how much happier she was when no one on twitter knew who she was. So I didn’t want to pester her, and tweeted her one final time, asking if I could take it that she stood by the article as it was written.

She never responded. I tweeted at the official TechRaptor account (which had been tagged in during my entire conversation with Georgina), asking them if they stood by the article. They never responded.

But as of the time I write the post, the article remains uncorrected.

Gameranx:

I had a hard time getting any response from them. I tried posting on their article, but my longer comments got flagged for spam twice (it seems disquis has issues with long comments) and as of the writing of this post, still have not been approved. I tweeted at their EiC and the writer of the article, Ian Miles Cheong, but got ignored time and time again.

Finally, a couple days ago, he responded to me in a single tweet, asking me what lies he had published. To remind you all, here are the lies he posted:

That Soleil was fainting on the battlefield. That she asked the main character to help her. That she’d given him the go ahead to use “whatever means possible” to cure her. That the main character explained the potion wouldn’t be effective if Soleil knew about it beforehand, giving that as the reason he didn’t tell her about it. That the main character’s plan ultimately worked and cured her of her fainting problem.

I explained the lies to him again. A gater jumped in, trying to use Niche Gamer’s article, but I explained how their translation actually supported my claims (this was when I realized the other mistake in their article, which was then corrected literally while I was arguing with the gater about whether it was a mistake.)

I showed Ian three different translations, the original pastebin one, a youtube video Ian’s own site had referenced in a later article, and the Niche Gamer one. I told him how all three were consistent and revealed the blatant falsehoods in his article.

He never responded any further. His article remains unchanged.

This is especially galling for a lot of reasons.

One, Ian and Gameranx is the only site out of the six to not even attempt a token response. Every other site at least gave a token disclaimer, or made some attempt to defend their reasoning. Ian and Gameranx? Nothing. Clear evidence of their article’s multiple lies was shown, Ian saw it, and the response was nothing.

Two, the Gameranx article is probably responsible for a lot of the false information going around. His article was one of the first to defend the game, going up on July 2nd, a few hours after Gamesnosh posted theirs. While some early articles sourced the imgur and its lies, Ian’s did not. Instead, it invented brand new lies.

The claim that the protagonist explained the portion would not work if Soleil knew about it before hand, and the claim that Soleil didn’t just ask for help, but help by “whatever means possible,” both appear to have originated with the Gameranx article. These lies were then echoed by other sites, such as Niche Gamer and TechRaptor.

And finally, Ian, after posting an article full of blatant lies and contributing to a whole lot of information about the game going around, had the gall to tweet things like this.

Pointing out falsehoods is fine, Ian. But you did the exact opposite. You told a bunch of lies, and acted like you were some hero for doing so.



EDIT: I’m updating this post slightly to mention that, some time after I mead this tumblr, when I was tweeting about the issues I described above, Ian Miles Cheong did briefly respond again, though not initially to me directly.

He claimed he wasn’t actually wrong, and that the translation was a “matter of interpretation.” This is despite the fact that he never actually put up a translation that supported any of his claims, and that three different translations, two of them specifically by people defending the game, contradicted his claims.

And of course, he made no changes to the article.