7echnka

honestly i was feeling horrible during clear and noiz’s routes bc 1. clear literally forces sexual intercourse on aoba as his dying wish, that’s literally morally wrong asf + emotional manipulation ?? help, and 2. noiz was SO disrespectful he kept being mean with aoba and then the end was all rainbows and sunshine and they got together as if he never also forced himself on aoba??…..

let’s not forget koujaku! horrible man too, he forces himself on aoba too, it’s not consensual. it’s just as bad as mink, even worse emotionally, imagine if your best friend did that to you?.. and yes i know the circumstances of the scene, but unfortunately all these scenes have circumstances, even minks’ ones..

mink has done horrible things but god is this fandom immature, y’all can say you don’t like him (and that’s normal!!! this is called personal preferences) but people straight up saying he’s not revelent to the plot pmo so bad.. like he’s here for a reason.. mizuki ain’t a route for a reason too (mentioning him bc more and more ppl r saying they want to replace mink with him)

i fucking hate how all the cast and ESPECIALLY virus and trip are put on a piédestal and that their actions are never acknowledged and neither discussed by this fandom… oopsie, y’all do talk abt it! however all your doing in comparing it to mink’s actions to somehow excuse them for some obscure reason…

realistically, if mink had the looks of koujaku or noiz, yall wouldn’t be talking like that about him, yall would be excusing his actions like what’s happening with the other characters. i highly doubt that y’all’s physicall preferences are rooted in internalized racism

on another note, i’ve seen people say that narratively mink is badly written bc he’s full of harmful stereotypes.. and i do agree, he’s the embodiment of many stereotypes abt native americans and african people. HOWEVER y’all glaze the rest of the game, y’all are only calling out the harmful stereotypes that mink suffers from, but y’all never mention the fact koujaku is ALSO full of stereotypes about japanese people (dude wearing a kimono, exotism, being part of the yakuzas, shy abt his feelings (that’s an actual stereotype given to japanese people.. this sort of « shyness »). obviously it’s important to nuance bc clearly the degree of harmful stereotypes mink and koujaku suffer from is different.

but the list could go on, even noiz is portrayed in a stereotypical way : european (and ppl from the west) being depicted in a weird extravagant way from (im referring to his piercings) from a japanese perspective (gaijin culture or wtv), or even the fact he’s german and pretty much looks like an arian guy.. weird

i don’t actually care abt these stereotypes because otherwise i wouldn’t be able to enjoy the game.

but im calling out how differently y’all treat characters and the way y’all denounce injustice and stereotypes only when it serves to defend your weak narratives

i know this fandom is halfway made of minors (there are maybe even more minors than 18+ players) so im not gonna argue further because i know how immature fandoms can be, especially when a fandom is constituted of people whose brain is half developed

finally and more broadly, dmmd is a game with heavy themes and many morally wrong stuff in it. it’s not hidden or anything, it’s explicit that its content is weird and don’t twist my words, im not saying y’all can’t take this game to heart, but y’all need to understand that when you indulge and like content with lots of morally wrong elements you cannot objectively say that this or that character is worse because of this or that when there are characters just as flawed as the one y’all target (in this case it’s mink).

y’all seem to not understand the nuances between each characters and that the stuff they’ve done to aoba is as bad as what another character has done to him..

being abused by your best friend who you viewed like a big bro figure does more damage to your brain than being abused by some stranger.. but who even i am to rank what’s worse and better. anyways here as well im pointing out the double standards

if you’ve read everything thank you, if you want to reply you can

I can’t say much on the topic of the unfairness from the fandom regarding to Mink being giving a lot of flack more then the others that are more lighter skinned compared to mink. But I do see that a mile a way since I’ve seen fandoms having big issues when morally grey characters happen to be dark skin. So it was expected but still not okay.

Yes, mink did fuck up shit but Koujaku & Noiz force themselves onto Aoba too when he clearly was not wanting to engage at first on Noiz’s end. As a Noiz Stan I am, I do acknowledge that how he treats Aoba was NOT okay. And never will be.

It’s okay to not like a character, nor be unhappy with what they do. However, if you’re giving unfair treatment but be more forgiving for the others who do similar things - you’re not only being immature but also unfair because they don’t happen to be the majority.

Overall, the game hasn’t really age well over time since its first release, but that’s okay. I think it’s important to acknowledge these aspects but we can still enjoy the game as long we don’t encourage or normalize these issues it has. It’s like with Danganronpa. Where it’s a messy game & ROOTED with problematic stuff. I’ve loved that franchise since I was in my early teens! But as I got older - lord old mighty did I not feel right about them because they rightfully made uncomfortable & didn’t line with who I was as a person.

That said, I still enjoy the franchise because I have nostalgia & I still hold a lot of love for it.

Always remember to have nuance people, like this poster said. We need to keep in mind when engaging media like DMMD. You’re allowed to like or dislike a character but remember that you should not let that be rooted in hate or prejudice. It’s not that hard to dislike something without being hateful. Trust me. As someone who chooses to be kind, it really ain’t that hard to be kind. Both IRL & in fiction.

With all that spoken for, personally, I like Mink now after sitting with him as a character. Sure, I don’t like what he does, but I know that characters have done similar things but I still love them & that goes for Mink too! I would definitely say he has the best character development next to Noiz in my personal opinion.

Sweet Pool can be seen as an allegory of adolescence: a story that tells us in it’s own fantastic way about the hardships of searching for our own identity and a place where we belong. About what it means to go through so much physical and emotional changes, to face the intensification of our desires and to cope with the expectations that befall on us once we leave our childhood behind.

In this review I will be developing this idea as well as writing a plot summary, main characters guide and explaining how the game works.