Discussion I’m having with a SuBLimeManga editor on Twitter.
oh my fucking god
please consider how fast and loose they view “non-con” when purchasing their titles, people. JR? NO RAPE THERE! Raping your friend til he passes out? THERE IS LOVE LATER SO IT’S KEWL! DATE-RAPE-BY-DRUG? Well he wasn’t going to consent any other way soooo… :D
why??? ? ? ?
lord help me, shitty “opinions” aside are you completely unworried about damaging your company’s image/reputation?
Seriously like. There was no need for them to go into detail about what they did and didn’t think was rape. There is such a thing as acknowledging something has dodgy themes and ambiguous consent (or no consent at all) and still enjoying it for reasons X while condemning it for reasons Y. There’s no need to show your ass on twitter while wearing the face of your company like this.
I can only lose respect for Sublime after reading their interpretation on non-con. Either say you’ll publish it or you won’t, don’t try to weasel out of it by claiming non-con and rape are subject to interpretation. If someone did not agree to sex, and was forced to have sex, no matter the motive or emotions of the perpetrator, it’s non-consensual.
People are entitled to like what they like, and to their own opinions, but in this case it’s ridiculous that they do so under the guise of the company they work for. They’re speaking as the face of SuBLime, which is unfortunate because that makes me, and many others, associate their personal opinion as company guidelines/policy.
I want to support English licensing, so it’s a huge shame that a company would allow someone to say such things under their name. Fencer-x and I briefly discussed how it should be mandatory for companies to require sensitivity training before allowing an employee to handle media relations. Social media may be new compared to other forms of customer communication, but it’s huge and far-reaching; it can both make and break.
In the case of SuBLimeManga, I cannot in good conscience purchase their products, no matter how much I may want some of their licensed titles. They’ll need to make a public effort to correct their policy, image, and sensitivity, before I’ll be able to consider purchasing again. I can only hope others hold them up to the same standards and expectations.
this is disappointing. I’ve been looking forward to them publishing the english titles but if they’re going to be asses about warnings i may just keep my money.
They could’ve very easily just kind of business-spoke their way out of it with responses like, ‘We’re always looking into new ways to make sure our customers know exactly what they’re purchasing’ or something, but the “cutesy” way they chose to respond and the flippant manner with which they addressed noncon/sexual assault/rape demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of those topics in the first place, and in a genre so rife with it, you’d think that would be pretty well unacceptable.
I will still support them……. There’s not many company’s out there that do BL/Yaoi manga. Yeah could have handled this a little better I agree but it won’t stop me from buying the manga they work on!
I cannot even.
sitting here unable to can with you
Not because they will still support SuBLime—“beggars can’t be choosers” and all that, and it’s entirely likely that this one person is not the mouthpiece for the entire company and doesn’t reflect their views. I certainly hope that this is something that makes people reconsider supporting SuBLime if they have other choices, though, or even writing SuBLime and pointing out that This Isn’t Cool. Be the change you want to see and all that.
But not once did I see any condemnation for the things the Twitter manager said from that comment other than ‘they could have handled it a little better’. UMM YEAH. THEY COULD HAVE BEEN A LITTLE MORE SENSITIVE AND NOT SAID ‘rape is subjective’.
you think?
Geezzz keep your pants on, can’t go against you no matter what huh?? Anyway I think she talking about the manga world, not the world we live in! And yeah I still think THEY COULD HAVE BEEN A LITTLE BETTER! But I also could care less about rape in the manga I read, so their you go…. May not be able to ever agree on this!
thanks for clarifying your profound lack of understanding the issue :)
Adding rape to a manga does not mean that the mangaka does not condemn rape. it’s a plot device. if you are going to ban all of the inhumane plot devices, then what you get are sensitized/clinical works.
You hate SuBLime for being not sensitive about this. What about voicing this to hundreds of mangaka that use rape as a plot device. Even the best BL/yaoi mangaka out there have used this in some of their works.
Rape as a plot device is fine. The fact that it’s seldom presented as a violent crime or condemned and instead uplifted as romantic is not.
I don’t hate suBLime. I never said they were bad, even. They obviously made some poor choices in who to let run their twiiter account, but I said several times that’s what I thought it was.
And you think I don’t say anything to the mangaka who do use rape-is-love to advance the relationships in their manga? lol do you even know me?? Or…??
No one is banning anything. Are you just making up shit as you go along to try to make this into more than it is—which is a company representative handling a discussion on sexual assault in manga exceedingly poorly??
