Snoot Game cleanup

Considering how discussion is going and liking the game apparently makes you a bigot, i support the page for the game being cut at this point. This is really the war between real-life people at this point, with most of the actual content of the game largely doesn't matter.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Oct 7th 2023 at 10:52:49 PM

"liking this game apparently makes you a bigot" - I mean, it's literally a hastily-written Fix Fic about someone else's OC in which the problem that urgently needs to be 'fixed' is the character identifying as Non-Binary. That's it. The developers could not have made their intended message any clearer.

I mean I do feel like there's meaningful discussion to be had about it, but half of my points were ignored and I got snipped twice for acknowledging personal attacks against me in this thread, so this forum doesn't seem like it wants to foster any such discussion.

For example, I directly addressed this in my first post in the thread. At no point in the game is the goal to convert Fang to a girl. You can make plenty of valid arguments that the game is nonbinary-phobic. That isn't one of them.

Edited by Boredman on Oct 7th 2023 at 5:05:16 AM

Yeah, totally. It's not a 'goal', it's just that if they continue to identify as Non-Binary then you get a bad ending and if they stop identifying as Non-Binary then you get a good ending.

Totally not, like, the goal of the game or anything.

That's exactly what I mean when I say your approach is reductive. You're completely ignoring the Hows and Whys in the story and all the character motivations, and solely looking at a couple facts in the outline of the story.

The approach is reductive because the work is reductive. Your reading is extremely charitable when the work has never hidden that it is a Shallow Parody of a work that hadn't come out with am anti-lgbt bent as the main moral of the work. If you enjoy it for the gamelay or find something in it that is good, then you can enjoy it. Nobody can stop you, and I'm not going to call you a bad person. Lots of people enjoy media that has issues, even the late Roger Ebert said "it's not what a movie is about its how it is about it". I just can't see this page bringing anything good to tvtropes nor having this discussion good for this site.

Edited by Wildcard on Oct 7th 2023 at 6:29:49 AM

"The goal of this game isn't to convince this character that they're not Non-Binary!"

The bad endings are literally dependent on the character continuing to identify as Non-Binary and the good endings are literally dependent on the character no longer identifying as Non-Binary.

"Well, that may technically be 100% accurate, but it's a very reductive approach!"

Or maybe, just maybe, my approach genuinely isn't reductive. Maybe the parody-game made by 4channers based on the announcement - not even the release, just the announcement - of a video game starring a Non-Binary character, a parody in which identifying as Non-Binary = Bad Ending and not identifying as Non-Binary = Good Ending... maybe it actually is just genuinely a bigoted work with the most blatant anti-NB intentions, themes, undertones, overtones and everything else, and anyone outside of the fandom is able to recognize this?

You asked me this question earlier in the thread, so I think it's worth asking you as well. Have you played the game or experienced the story?

No, it's not dependent on the character stopping being nonbinary. The game uses a points system for Anon and Fang to determine the ending.◊ Each of the choices that gives one of them a point is an opportunity for personal growth, and there's nothing about gender in these decisions.

Edited by Boredman on Oct 7th 2023 at 5:37:41 AM

Snoot Game is pretty smart about never saying it outright — there's never a scene where Anon tells Fang outright to detransition — but one scene come close.

There's a vital scene on the roof where Fang is preening, interrupted by Anon, and begins to vent at him about their life. The "correct" options in this scene is to stay quiet and let Fang get everything out. Fang eventually gets frustrated by Anon's lack of response, grabs him by the jacket and yells at him, and this dialog happens:

Huge problems here. For one, if there were other trans and nonbinary characters in the story, and they were being portrayed positively, then they could provide a strong contrast to what Fang is going through to telegraph there's something wrong with Fang's transition. That doesn't happen; Fang is the only non-cishet character in the whole game. On top of that, Anon is implied through dialog to not even having heard of nonbinary people before, let alone met one, so how could he tell something was wrong with Fang at all? There's no frame of reference to what this "happens naturally" looks like, for him or the audience.

But Anon's little speech goes on, saying he too "tried to be somebody else" and claiming there are people just like Fang "forcing their egos" instead of being "who they really are". And it's after this scene, if you've done everything else right up to that point as well, that Fang begins detransitioning.

Edited by WolfNanaki on Oct 7th 2023 at 6:35:55 AM

A couple problems with this.

Firstly, I agree than Anon's response to Fang can be easily read as saying being trans is wrong. The developers not adding any other LGBT characters as a counterbalance isn't a good look for them.

But Anon's not just talking about Fang's gender here. He's talking about her whole persona that she's built for herself, as an edgy genderqueer punk rocker who's going to make it big and show the world.

Second, as far as I'm aware, this scene happens LONG before Fang does anything to "detransition". This was the rooftop scene near the middle (Ch 6 in the script), and Fang doesn't start identifying as female until the prom announcement, which is at the start of the endings (Ch 12).

Reading the dialogue, she does refer to herself as Naser's "big sister", but she's also talking about the event several years prior when she accidentally let Naser get injured and nearly killed.

Edited by Boredman on Oct 7th 2023 at 5:51:17 AM

No, I have not played the game. Just saw a playthrough on YT, and it really is what I say it is. I've read about the point systems and note there are only 4 endings and no good lgbt representation. It is a dogwhistle on a shallow parody. It really is that bad.

I don't think the page should be cut unless you include the softcore lewd scene involving high schoolers. I don't think bigotry alone should warrant a cut. If attracts a significant amount of the wrong attention like Stonetoss than I guess cut.

MAJOR RETRACTION: I just learned about someone in the this thread being doxxed. I now vote for a cut. That kind of attention needs to be cut off completely.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Oct 7th 2023 at 10:06:04 AM

Unfortunately I'm unsure if cutting the page is actually going to prevent its detractors from being doxxed. Its defenders will just look elsewhere to target them.

And to be honest, the doxxing thing was horrible but the person doxxed wasn't just some ordinary troper on this forum. It's highly likely they were doxxed for being involved with GVH and fighting against Snoot Game elsewhere, not just for posting on this thread.

Not that the attention we're garnering is good. It does remind me of what happened with Stonetoss. It's just... let's look at all the facts here.

Yeah cut this. Someone got doxxed over it, it ain't worth mentioning anymore.

This is a fair point but also this TVTropes page is by far the most attention that Snoot Game has gotten on the wider internet, so... it would at least be minimizing the number of people at risk just by minimizing the number of people who are aware of the work? I had never heard of it until it popped up on TVTropes, and am willing to bet that this is also the case for 90% of the people here. Also just bluntly, I know that when fandoms get big then assholes and asshole-ish behaviour are inevitable, but if a work this obscure has a fandom that is doxxing people, then that is really not a good sign about either the work, or about... like, do we want people who look up this game to be coming to TVTropes?

I mean, I'm not disputing any of that. This is just not the first time I've seen people get anxious over offsite harrassment threats that aren't actually targeting random tropers. The people on this thread will be fine and there's no reason to panic because one person got doxxed for reasons besides this conversation.

I'm just asking people to calm down and think about this.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 7th 2023 at 1:16:53 PM

I'd been lurking in this thread every now and then, but do you have a source about someone getting doxxed over Snoot Game?

I would like to read the source to get more info.

See this post by Wolf Nanaki.

x3 Not trying to scare-monger, just that even if the doxxing was related to ongoing criticism outside of this thread, then both of these conclusions are still true.

Certain members of the Snoot Game fandom - which again, is not notably large enough to excuse "Well, there's so many of us that there's bound to be a few bad apples!" - have doxxed someone who they think was overly critical of the game.

Certain angry fans of Snoot Game on 4chan are absolutely aware of and monitoring this thread.

You weren't really the one I was talking to, though. It was the whole "someone in THIS THREAD got doxxed for being in THIS THREAD" mindset that I was trying to dispute.

Like, objectively yes someone who posted in this thread did get doxxed and this thread is attracting negative attention. I just really feel like people tend to jump the gun whenever these things happen, because most often it's not actually as serious or as immediately threatening as people think. I won't say that anyone who wants to cut the page to stop the drama is wrong — I just want people to stop immediately assuming that the doxxing happened because of this thread specifically, when it was really more to do with the outside context.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 7th 2023 at 1:34:02 PM

It's hard to tell for certain, but I get the impression that the Snoot Game fandom is larger than this thread would make you think. There seems to be substantially more fanart and rule34 of Snoot Game compared to the source material of GVH. A number of Snoot Game fans are also GVH fans.

Given than liking Snoot Game can lead to a lot of aggressive scrutiny, fans are bound to keep more quiet about it. It's so bad that fanart of the characters is examined for minor design differences between GVH and Snoot Game, then used to judge the artist.

At least from my browsing of a handful of other websites, the general attitude toward Snoot Game is drastically less negative than what this thread expresses. Especially in Latin American communities, where it seems like half the fandom resides.

And I don't know exactly how to handle the drama. We should mitigate harassment, but at the same time, bad behavior by some fans shouldn't be used to tarnish the whole thing. Steven Universe became really infamous for the toxicity in its fanbase, but it's also a massively more famous work with a much larger fandom.

It's unfair that few anonymous slimeballs are allowed to torpedo the whole thing for everybody else, fans, critics, or otherwise.

Edited by Boredman on Oct 8th 2023 at 3:30:32 AM

I think a large chunk of that is because Snoot Game came out long before Goodbye Volcano High did, meaning that unlike Goodbye Volcano High which only had a trailer and some vague character descriptors/images (most of which were rewritten anyway), there was already a source material to pool content from to create fandom works.

Anyway there does seem to be some crossover between the two games respective fandoms. Like I've seen fanart of Snoot Game characters with Goodbye Volcano High characters.

Also if the page is staying, question. Is there like an equivalent to the trope "Expressive Ears" for wings? Since often times Fang and Nasers wings will change to reflect their emotions. For Naser it basically ends at aggression but Fang has different wing positions for, angry, sad, embarrassed, elated, ect.

Edited by TP11 on Oct 8th 2023 at 2:49:58 AM

Locking this as utterly derailed and as it's inviting personal attacks.