Same here. Reddit recently introduced me to this subreddit, and for whatever reason, I thought my older brothers and sisters would be more... thoughtful and level-headed.
Hey, I'm not Gen Z but I can assure you this sub is heavily botted and brigaded by older people. I only come here to lurk, and I'm breaking my rule to be quiet here.
They're doing it to you all on purpose. Don't buy into the idea that all your peers suck!
Here from r\all, what what I've observed lately, I've noticed that there's been a bit of a shift in the usage of "woke" to become a replacement for something being "preachy" and/or "insisting upon itself", rather than what most right wing people use it for as "any message, action, or believe that the left says or does".
For example: right wingers say (in their "Go Woke, Go Broke" woke warning game list) that the Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 game is "woke" because it features DEI based characters in the Ultramarines (Gadriel being Asian and and Chairon being Black; even though the lore never says anything about Ultramarines being a racially locked Space Marine chapter) and for Major Sarkanna being a "woman holding an improbable position of authority".
However it seems like a lot of people with a "younger colloquialism" would say that the game isn't "woke", because it doesn't portray itself with any heavy handed philosophies or preachy morals. (which yeah, I know, it's still 40k, but that's a whole another debate all together).
It was "woke" and well written. However, using woke is just stupid these days since it's been coopted by far-right extremist morons as a short hand and a way for them to hide their real bigoted, sexist and racist opinions.
Avatar was well written and defended lot of progressive ideas.
Its characters are diverse, but they don't constantly throw it in your face. Their identity/background comes up organically in the story, and they don't force it in to the dialogue every 5 seconds.
I need yall to think deeply about the state of American political culture now. Not everyone, but many people would very much have anti-woke opinions on this show if it premiered brand new today (the show was over 10 years old when it came out on Netflix so I don’t count it as being “released today”)
A blind girl who kicks everyone’s ass? JD Vance would hop on twitter and call it a DEI show
S3 when Aang goes to the fire nation school and learns about how they blatantly lie to the kids about the history of the genocide of the air nomads? Libs of Tik Tok would call it woke
People like Katara and Uncle Iroh teaching Zuko to be more sensitive and realize his mistakes? Andrew Tate would say that it’s the woke left feminizing men
It’s not everyone but there’s definitely a population out there that would have these opinions and there’s no reason to pretend like that’s not the case
The fire nation schools episode wouldn’t get criticism. They don’t have that level of media literacy - conservatives love shit like The Boys and Fallout.
I literally had someone tell me they didn’t like the show because of feminist propaganda, and that was a few years ago. So I definitely believe this exact thing would happen
Unfortunately I live around people and have a parent that uses "collage educated" as an insult, so I'll name a few I can see:
lots of Asian influence (namely China, from what I remember)
the water tribes are based on the inuit people (the indigenous people of the arctic and subarctic regions like Alaska, Canada, Russia, and, iirc, Greenland).
Certain people think that including poc in stories, even in stories based on or from that culture or having fictional cultures with influences from non-white countries is "DEI bullshit"
3) the air nomads are heavily influenced by Buddhist monks, and the water tribes pray to the moon and ocean, the spirits that represent the ocean and water being Tui and La, which represents balance, Yin and Yang, (which is even explicitly shown in the southern water tribe by the koi fish), and practice Totemism.
The Gravy Seals tend to think that anything that is or even alludes to theology that isn't My Specific Version Of Christianity™ is trying to corrupt the children or is satanic.
4) Toph was born blind, a major disability, and despite her parents trying to keep her from using her earth bending, she practiced in secret and was good enough to beat a professional, grown, able bodied man at earth bending wrestling, a sport that heavily relies on vision, despite being only 12ish.
Y'allqueda don't really think grown women, even professional sports players, can be physically better than men at anything, let alone young girls or ones with disabilities, and would see Toph as some kind of impossiblity and "woke feminist agenda!"
5) the kyoshi warriors are all women and girls. See previous explanation for what and why some people would see having women and girls as fighters is bad
I'm sure there's more, but that's just the ones off the top of my head.
There's gay people, women leaders, governmental brainwashing, political execution, political persecution, oppression, genocide, disabled characters, and anti violence themes.
Or at least these are a lot of things labeled as "woke" to be in media now. Not that I agree with that. I'm sure there's more, that's just what I can remember.
If we take the same parameters that people use on all other shows we have:
A blind little girl that crushes everyone in battle and is considered the best at her skill at 12.
A vegetarian protagonist.
A gay couple.
A character that's insinuated to be trans.
Another teenage girl that became better than everyone at her skill at 14, is the love interest of the protagonist and is better than him at said skill, even teaching him.
An entire mini character arc dedicated to making a teenage dude less misogynistic by getting destroyed in combat by one teenage girl.
Korra in its entirety, she's a non white main character LGBT woman who even was disabled at some point.
Edit since some people pointed out a few more:
The literal introduction of Katara and Sokka is her calling him out for being a sexist asshole.
The whole part about the northern water tribe being a patriarchal society where women can't fight and Katara (Again as I've said before, a teenage NON WHITE girl) changing their views and beliefs.
Another teenage girl that became better than everyone at her skill at 14, is the love interest of the protagonist and is better than him at said skill, even teaching him.
Not to mention she was literally banned from learning more about her abilities due to patriarchal beliefs/tradition so her solution is literally "I am going to fight the headmaster of the school and try to win to show that gender doesn't matter." As a result, the old belief/tradition is revoked and girls in northern water tribe are now taught more than just healing.
You’re also forgetting that in the literal first episode Katara has a huge rant about Sokka being an asshole, calling him sexist, because he doesn’t treat her like a human. He keeps pestering her about just being a woman and that he’s the “man of the tribe”.
This is ultimately what leads to Aang being discovered. It’s funny how this thread hasn’t mentioned this yet.
They DID release this show "today" on Netflix. They nerfed Sokka's arc and completely botched genuine discourse around people being morally gray and growing out of being misogynist.
Personally I'd argue the problem with todays storytelling is characters have to be flawlessly good or bad and then spoon fed morality.
I know you Redditors LOVE to sit on the moral high ground, but for once can't we approach these topics with some nuance? Modern story telling is more often than not lazy ass pandering.
I hated what they did to Sokka. Personally I think it's great that the original show has him being a stereotypical sexist boy that grows. Sokka getting embarrassed by the warrior women is a great moment early in the series
I'd argue the opposite. Just look at all of the "why the villain is just misunderstood" movies. All evil is hand-waved away as trauma. People can't just be selfish anymore. The problem is just straight up bad writing and the profit motive trumping creativity.
You can. I think the current trend is for most villains to have a tragic and misguided justification for their evil in modern media. Evil for the sake of pure greed and malice is pretty rare to see in media these days.
I agree, the trauma explains how they became a villain, it’s viewers who then say, “so villain was right, because they were traumatized.”
Viewers won’t accept “they had their reasons, but we’re wrong,” a lot of the time, especially if a villain is likable and well-designed. Either the villain was bad, or the villain was justified.
Everything is handwaved as trauma these days. Literally everything. A coworker told me she orders coffee in a certain flavor because of trauma. Like what????
Most of the time someone is complaining about 'woke' or DEI shit in a story it is because of bad storytelling or fear it represents possible bad storytelling. When a story or game comes out and its good the people complaining about it having progressive themes usually shut up pretty fast.
Nah. If that’s what you think you’re not paying attention to modern media. Look at Severance. Every character is flawed and gray. Motives are challenged, changed, and challenged again. Look at some of the top rated shows of the last 5 years. Mare of Eastown, Better Call Saul, Bluey, Succession, Yellowstone, the Bear, etc. Every character is complex and on a morally gray sliding scale. Every character, regardless of their station in life has relatable aspects to their arc or motivation.
The Avatar remake was bad. It was pretty universally panned by both critics and fans of the original animated version.
Yeh well said, we can see the stark difference between the shows because the live action was literally released last year.
Completely killed any nuance the story had and made so many characters one dimensional.
I hate forced diversity in tv shows when it ruins the story, avatar TLA is one of my favourite shows though because it has diversity and it makes sense from a world building standing.
It can be both. Star trek today, for example, suffers from what I like to call "circus show representation" rather than actual representation and/or exploration.
It can feel like they trot someone out in the middle of a plot they have nothing to do with and say "look!", then check boxes rather than actually represent or explore issues/difficulties, and then send them away to never be seen again. and then there's explosions and a needlessly boring season plot about a super weapon. every season. every progressive element is only tokenly there. It feels incredibly insulting.
but also brave new worlds is better about it, and the kid show is quality, and lower decks was actually pretty damn good about representation. there are definitely positives here and there. and many shows today are written solid. I've seen a few shows written with a solid understanding and delivery of people's struggles.
i think calling out the bad and celebrating the good should be the default. the representation-but-handled-like-an-idiot shouldn't be used as an excuse to dismiss proper representation. it's hard to critique things unless you explain that before critiquing.
It's not even morally grey, Sokka was a freaking teenager. The unspoken rule is that every teenage boy's got at least a little misogyny in them. And that's fine... Ok maybe not fine but normal atleast. The trick is, like Sokka, you grow out of it eventually.
Yep. So many character arcs completely ruined by trying to make it more palatable for today and it just sucked. No idea why they made Suki a horny teenager, Katara is just a god at waterbending from the start, doesn't have to struggle ever, same thing with Aang. So fucking bad all the way through. I understand why the creators left the project.
The problem with modern storytellers is that most of them are hacks. The industry hasn’t recovered from the writers’ strike and it shows. On top of that, a lot of content is probably written by lazy AI.
A blind, fragile ten-year old girl who acts aggressively masculine is the greatest earth bender ever? She even invents a whole new style of bending just because? Like there's already a super powerful, 100 year old earth bender introduced in season one, and they have metal bending be invented by a disabled, gender non-conforming little girl? Give me a break. This woke mary sue snowflake is just the woke hollywood mob trying to force diversity and inclusion.
Do people on Reddit just love to imagine up things that would piss them off? You all are making comments about something that literally can’t happen and making up your own scenarios of people hating this show. Honestly, what is the point of even thinking about this? The show came out 10 years ago and its beloved. It’s not possible for it to come out today so why are you guys even entertaining the idea just to complain about something that won’t happen?
So depressing that this generation was given unlimited access to information and instead of doubling down on progressivism and progress decided to backslide into boomer conservative because ‘checks notes’ “woke is cringe”. Pathetic.
As a millennial, I have to cut you guys some slack. Social media algorithms prioritizing engagement through sensationalism & rage-bait has played a huge part in radicalizing much of America.
My generation was raised before the rise of Twitter/Facebook/etc, before Trump, before “independent” media replaced well respected news orgs like the New York Times with partisan slop. We know what normalcy looks like, and most of us should know better.
Gen Z, on the other hand, has never known anything else. I worry about how I might have turned out had I been born a decade later.
Tbh, I’m surprised at how many gen z’ers seem to have resisted the right wing propoganda machine, given the media environment you grew up in.
I always thought the show was based on Tibet (being the mountainous regions of the Air Nomads), and China’s (the Fire Nation) rather tenuous relationship.
Could be wrong, but pretty certain you are right with Air people being Tibet, but pretty sure Fire Nation is Japan, Earth Kingdom is China, and Water Tribes are like native Siberians or something.
Culturally speaking, the creators of the show have mentioned the Fire Nation as being inspired by a mix of China and Southeast Asia (Thai, I believe). The Earth Kingdom is also inspired by China, but also has a lot of Korean influence as well.
We dont't have to imagine it, it happened with the Netflix adaptation. The animated show had characters with actual flaws. I had a problem with the Netflix adaptation. Why? They removed Sokka's misogynistic comments/personality completely taking away from his character development. To me that's just a load of crap. He goes from being a selfish misogynistic young man to learning about humility, selflessness and finding himself in the world in the animated series.
To me that is POWERFUL. Removing things we don't like because they make us feels bad takes away the need for learning how to grow as people to overcome our flaws. My issue has never been DEI or "Woke" it's needlessly juvenile decisions about what we can or can't see even if it's at the cost of valuable plot points. Imagine how many young men can relate to Sokka these days. Selfish, misogynistic and arrogant. You don't see the value in a story that shows growth from that? To me a character isn't supposed to be some item you check off a list. That's vapid.
I never... NEVER even considered "woke" perspective until someone put the thought in my head that characters were being typecast based on color and gender. Who was that someone? Largely: POC community and extreme feminists. They started it, and if I can't speak when I see the vast majority of old white dudes in shows as idiots or assholes, then that makes them hypocrites.
Avatar was a great show. I didn't even think about diversity until I was introduced to the idea. And God help me if I watch that show again with this poisonous perspective, and come to hate the show though the eyes of a hateful ideology.
The DEI concept is great--love the inclusion. But the DEI PERSPECTIVE is fucking cancer and needs to be eradicated.
Honestly not really. People don't freak out and scream woke whenever they see a non white person. The show is consistent in making sure that every group represented fits the internal logic of the world. On top of that the writing was actually pretty good, and managed to address some pretty adult topics without having to talk down to the audience
From the comments it seems people have 2 different definitions of woke.
Definition 1 is base on Inclusivity and diversity with a wide range of culture and narratives. That's like the og definition of woke.
However, the term woke has more or less changed in the past few years to now mean a show that forces diversity and inclusion even if it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot and storytelling, Wich usually suffers bad writing.
Nobody can agree on what "forced inclusivity and diversity" is except for a minority of any kind existing. If there's no plot reason for it, it's "shoved in their face for no reason." If there is a reason for it, it's "not relevant to the main plot."
We saw this with Korra. People literally do not understand how relationships work lol.
It just isn't a real thing. People are literally just making shit up to get angry. You can't win the argument because people who give a fuck about things being 'too woke' purposefully keep definitions vague to fit their narrative at any one point in time.
Definition 1 there is accurate, and includes most of the shows from people who use the second definition.
Definition 2 is people labelling any bit of inclusion they don't like as "forced" to mask their bigotry.
There's no such thing as forced diversity. If the writer/writing team wanted to include representation of someone, that's their choice, it's their work.
forces diversity and inclusion even if it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot and storytelling
That's not how I'm seeing it applied in this thread.
It seems "woke" is the region on the Venn diagram where the "I don't like this media" circle and "this media contains diverse characters" circle overlap. Commenters seem to mostly like Avatar, therefore it is not woke.
Avatar opens with Katara calling Sokka sexist for the mere crime of expressing a preference for traditional gender roles. Episode 4 has Sokka encountering female warriors who are better fighters than him (how unrealistic) and has him dressing in drag (indoctrination! feminization of our boys!) to be more like the strong women. This shit alone would be enough to get the culture warriors foaming at the mouth if Avatar were newly released in the current political climate.
What's actually happening here is that all the chuds decided they liked Avatar before they became culture warriors.
No, because that's a difference between diversity (which is what ATLA has), and woke propaganda which tries to insert real world politics into non real world shows and 'drive change'. That's the difference.
Arcane was made today. It features a cast full of strong female characters, black characters, and same sex relationships. Are you saying Arcane is bad? Because that would be a wild take.
Sokka's whole feminism arc would be ruthlessly ragged on as beta cuck soy boy shit or something equally stupid.
Why does Katara want to learn to fight? Why can't she just be happy in the healing tent? Lol, I can hear it now.
"It's not woke, it's well written."
The same crowd says the same shit about Arcane as if Arcane doesn't include brown, queer, and disabled people. People seem to really enjoy seeing what they want to see and NOT seeing what they don't want to see.
lol, the reason this show was successful was because the writers knew how to build an interesting fantasy world with likable flawed characters. They were able to interweave social issues of things like prejudice or oppression into actual tangible themes; the characters were written like this to move the story forward, not to check some boxes about diversity and inclusion.
I think this show could absolutely be made today, and it would still get the praises it originally earned. Because it’s just a good show, not much to it.
I notice that the "woke" criticism tends to be fringe whenever something is genuinely good and well-written. You still get some of it, but its only ever magnified when something is low quality. Avatar is a masterpiece and 9/10 people would say that "yeah, this is diverse and liberal, but its diversity done right in ways that make sense."
It serves as a depressing realization at the fact that we live in a time where discourse surrounding almost every single piece of media entertainment has become politicized thanks to the ideological reactionaries who more or less have become the SJW stereotype they mocked a decade by being extremely sensitive against any form of diversity.
"every single piece of media entertainment has become politicized thanks to the ideological reactionaries"
kinda ironic considering this is a bait thread posted specifically for a few people to circle jerk over how people MIGHT have reacted to a 25 year old piece of beloved media...
a piece of media that is incredibly inclusive, and does a great job of exploring some very dark areas of life with great story telling, while not feeling shoehorned or forced...something some modern media seems to struggle with.
The fact that this show is as beloved as it is, when damn near the entire main cast is either “non-white” or disabled is actually a credit toward the people that are always being called racist and homophobic for hating on shitty shows and remakes.
It’s not about the diversity and inclusion, it’s about trying to cover up your shitty writing with it. If you’re actually a good writer then it can add to your show like ATLA, instead of being your crutch that you can attempt to use to discredit your critics.
If you think the people don't critique shows for diversity rather than their actual quality you would be dead wrong lol. The reason the show wasn't perceived that way is because at the time there wasn't a movement that made an effort to preemptively discredit any show for being too woke.
Did y'all forget that people preemptively hated on into the spider verse and some people still dislike it because it's woke? I remember that. Good writing doesn't save these shows from a wave of critique based solely on race, it just eventually drowns out the anti-woke haters. But that doesn't mean that those people are right to judge shows just because of diversity.
Racists have always existed and yeah they still hate on things beforehand for being diverse. But the "anti-woke" criticism comes out way more for mediocre or bad pieces of media. If something is really loved by everyone, they'll be less likely to say it's "too woke" because then it makes wokeness sound like a good thing. If it's bad, then they can immediately say "oh yeah look what wokeness did, it ruined it".
So what about when you have shitty writing and just white characters? Is the content bad because of a lack of diversity? Or is it just shitty writing?
Jesus christ, woke people aren’t asking for content to be automatically praised if it has diverse characters. Idk why people are so fucking jaded about this. All we are asking for is for bad content with diverse characters to be given the grace of being criticized for the bad writing, NOT the diverse characters. All that does is vilify minorities who are already severely underrepresented.
The fact that this show is as beloved as it is, when damn near the entire main cast is either “non-white” or disabled is actually a credit toward the people that are always being called racist and homophobic for hating on shitty shows and remakes.
It isn't. Literally the entire anti-woke argument boils down to: new thing bad, old thing from my childhood good. If this show actually came today in the exact same form, it would be bash as woke trash as every show that has characters of any ethnicity Americans consider a minority or disable characters.
This'd be battle royale central. There'd be people complaining that Zuko gets shown as sympathetic, that Iroh doesn't get punished for being a war criminal, that a brown teenage girl is stronger than her older brother, that the brown guy is the only one without special powers, that no white people, that Zuko and Aang should be treated as white, that the main lead is a soft kind-hearted boy, there'd be people calling for Sokka's head for how he treats the Kyoshi warriors, that Azula is stronger than Zuko, that Azula not being redeemed is misoginy, and even more stuff. Genuinely glad this aired when this kinda discourse wasn't a thing, or at least I wasn't online enough to find it
Anti-woke mentality is such tired narcissist behaviour. I am seriously concerned for the next few years. Way too many anti-intellectual dumbasses not even trying to put an effort into understanding and just opting for denial/hatred due to personal insecurities or outright shit world views.
I will wager to guess as Gen Zers you are missing some cultural context for why so many are rejecting woke:
I'm Gen X. Grew up 70s and 80s and 90s. The world I grew up in was all about colorblindness and judging people as individuals. And big on free speech and equal rights and equality of opportunity.
But none of those values were forced on us. While popular media reflected the sentiment of the time, it also wasn't preachy and cringe and in your face about it. Because people back then just wanted to tell good stories, not advance a political agenda.
That's not the case any longer. The constant barrage of political messaging has made people like me hypersensitive to it, to the point where many like me will jump to conclusions about a movie or TV show because it has that preachy neo-progressive smell to it. We've been hyper-conditioned to expect it.
THAT'S mostly why Avatar might be seen as woke today. Though once people actually watch it they will realize it's not and I think even the boomers would appreciate it. Anybody who still thinks it's woke after that I will agree is a bona fide racist.
As for me, when the Avatar cartoon came out I ignored it because by that time I was an adult and it being on Nickelodeon I always assumed it was a kids show. It wasn't until recently with the Netflix live action that I got into the franchise. And I knew right away the original show wasn't woke because of the era in which it was created. I didn't have to brace myself for cringe and it was nice.
Exactly this. When something is consistent presented in that way. It becomes very annoying especially when your reality doesn’t match the one media is trying to paint to you.
Also, why does something being preachy and in your face the same as it being cringe and forced upon you? Couldn't you say the same about every pop-culture controversy in every generation regarding the "forced on us" comment? Punk rock was deemed demonic and "forced on the kids" for a time. What does "woke" even mean at this point? Purposeful inclusion for the sake of diversity and representation? And if so, how is that bad?
I watched it through but I think we can all admit there was a quality dip after the first season. The plot was decent but the writing and animation dropped off pretty decently.
This is an entirely new world that combines cultures from all over the planet. It's not taking something that already exists and making a bunch of changes to it. That's what people don't like.
Tell that to the Star Trek community. It takes place in the future, so anything could happen. But anytime a new gay, black, female etc character shows up as a main character the “omg it’s woke” crowd trips out of the closet and can’t stop about “forced diversity.” Theres a lot of people whose threshold on anybody different stops at 1-2 side characters that they can easily fast forward past if they are uncomfortable.
Obviously the fire Nation is just trying to bring everyone together so there's peace. The only reason they bully everyone as a nation is because it brings struggle and struggle makes people strong. They just want to make everyone strong. Blah blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit
The thing with Avatar, though, is that most of the "woke" stuff was logical.
Toph is blind and a badass. She works hard to "see" through her feet, but there are limits to those skills (see the insect hive in the desert).
Katara teaching Aang stuff is logical. She's been a water bender for years -- Aang is trying to learn three elements in what, four months?
Sokka is a classic "not the powerful chosen one" side character. His arc is predictable but good. It's logical that he's jealous of Katara and Aang, and based on his tribal culture (which is depicted as at least somewhat patriarchal), it makes sense that he exhibits light misogyny at the outset.
Personally, I feel the romance was shoehorned in. But nothing about the show was really "woke" for the time past Toph's condition...which wasn't her character's only note.
There have been shows since that have blind or gay or girl power or misogynistic characters...but that's the only interesting thing about them. That's when it starts to feel "woke" or preachy. I think David from Schitt's Creek is hilarious, but his homosexuality isn't the only (or even most) interesting thing about his character. He's not woke or preachy.
Growing up with this taught me to inclusive, tolerant and to never give up.
I'm practically conservative but do not align with the party. Neither conservative nor liberal parties align with what this show taught me.
It taught me most people believe they are doing the right thing even if it may be objectively wrong.
Whether you live in the arctic, the bayou or with badger moles, the only way to move forward is by opening your heart and mind to the people in the world around you even if you don't agree or like them.
it's interesting that you actually can't find anything about it back then. you can see a bit of anger at avatar the movie with big blue people for being leftist, but no outrage over the show.
of course this isn't a thought experiment, we had a show with a gay woman avatar and people were sexist about it actively even before the reveal.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure the Asian influence is so strong that none of the characters could be considered white. A lot of people would definitely have a problem with that nowadays
I’m sure some would, but I bet it would be a lot less than you think. High quality goes a long way to undercut prospective culture war oriented critics.
Yes they would absolutely. I don't understand the people that watch great media like ATLA with great messaging and a compassionate worldview overall. The messaging has always been incredibly progressive
Keep in mind, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, CCR, are also all "Woke" by today's standards, and when you tell boomers they will act like it's far worse today, when in reality, they have had their brains cultivated to believe it's somehow different.
I grew up in the 90s and these morons think Green Day and Rage Against The Machine are suddenly woke and therefore changed, when Green Day was tongue in cheek mocking anti-gay stigmas and Rage Against The Machine's most popular song is about how the cops are essentially the KKK.
The ones that call everything woke for petty reasons would call it woke.
But there's a clear difference between them and those who only call stuff woke when it's clear it's trying to push forced instead of natural diversity of Left Wing Politics.
This is what people don't understand when others say stuff being actually woke is a problem for them.
These are the same people that don't understand why Franklin from GTA 5 gets way less hate than Yasuke in AC Shadows.
Not every minority character needs to be also disabled, gay/trans, have that black panther haircut, a stereotype, an "activist", have hatred/disdain of men/white people/heterosexuals, make it extremely obvious they're a minority, be put in just because, etc. This is what makes media woke.
Franklin belongs in GTA 5. It's not controversial to say black people live in L.A. Meanwhile, Yasuke's history is too ambiguous and controversial, plus we all know when people asked for an AC game in Japan they wanted to play as a Japanese male. Call it bigotry or whatever you want, you're kidding yourself if you think people wanted to play as Yasuke. Also yes, there's a Japanese female character too, but the problem is still Yasuke being there instead of a Japanese male who naturally fits the time of the game. Yasuke was clearly chosen on purpose and it wasn't to "tell his story" especially with the writers having an absurd left wing bias and being addicted to identity politics.
I think people are confusing progressive and "woke"
There's a difference between a well written story with a diverse cast of characters vs forcing diversity and using it as a crutch or a big deal that affects a poorly written story.
Another thing people do not like is making big changes to the original material. Just for example if they made Snow White black instead of... white, like her name and depictions for all of the last century. Just make a brand new story based around a black princess at that point.
DEI is just a word people use when race/gender/etc virtue signaling is used to cover up bad writing, force ideas without an actual good story, filling a quota (like a token minority person that doesn't actually do much to the main plot but is basically just there to say hello so the writers can say they included diversity), etc.
Naturally there are people who will use it as a dogwhistle to use when calling out anything they don't like or if they're actually racist/sexist/etc. But the majority of people don't think of it that way IMO.
--
It's been something the gaming community argues about.
For example if a hyped game came out, it sucks, people find out the company made DEI hires of unqualified people for the dev team. Yeah. people will get pissed since why would you hire unqualified people to make your game?
People don't care about race or gender stuff as long as the main core is addressed.
When you're writing a movie, your goal is to make a well written story.
When you're developing a game, your goal is to make a fun game.
These are common sense things. It doesn't matter if your game has a bunch of minorities, gay people, etc. Is it fun as fuck? combat is good? story is good? graphics are good? Then fuck yeah we gaming.
I'm sure there are others who'd hate a good game/story but most people wouldn't care. They just don't want a game they were excited about, paid for, set aside time to play, etc. To suck ass because of, or covered up by, woke agenda.
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u/Cdave_22 Feb 11 '25
This mod loves Avatar