Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

Spoiler

Funny how I found out about this yesterday randomly on twitter.

 

Non-spoiler thoughts on the Assassin's Creed: Odyssey DLC stuff:

There was always going to be a disconnect between the canonical version of the protagonist and the player-interpreted version of the protagonist. It's the same issue anyone who played Knights of the Old Republic or Jedi Academy, for example, should be pretty familiar with. Your Revan, Exile, or Jaden isn't necessarily the one that's going on the books for the Star Wars franchise going forward, and neither is your version of "the Eagle-Bearer" in Assassin's Creed. You can play as the male Alexios, but canonically the Eagle-Bearer is Kassandra; you can play as a ruthless dick, but canonically Kass is typically helpful and kind; you can romance only a single gender of your choice, but canonically Kass is aggressively bisexual. And so on. Unless you go for the Mass Effect route—with save file transfers across every new release, and broad strokes to an impersonal degree throughout any supplementary material—it's kind of inevitable, and I'm generally* fine with that.

But the dev team committed the cardinal sin of breaking the in-the-moment illusion of control that choice-based RPGs like this are all about. And man, they heavily, heavily marketed Odyssey on that promise of absolute narrative freedom. I can understand wanting a definitive story. But you can't just give the player the ability to reject the canon path for their own adventures, their own romances, and their own happy endings, then pull the rug out from under them ~100 hours in and unilaterally impose such a significant change on everyone's playthrough with no regard for the personalized narrative they've crafted for themselves. Especially not when it involves such a significantly personal decision, and the heavy real-world implications and feelings that foisting that choice on someone who unequivocally didn't want it would obviously raise.



*Assuming there's parity at play, not Star Wars' preferred method of "Every custom character is canonically a straight white [human] dude. Except the Exile, I guess, since nobody really cared about KotOR II anyway. She's still straight and white, though, let's not go too crazy here."

 

Is that the case with Odyssey? The Origins Animus can work direct from the historical character's DNA so the modern day character, when there is one, doesn't have to be a descendant anymore so adoption is no longer out of the question nor is the protagonist predestined for parenthood.

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Myes. Also Ubisoft still has a problem with women. Kassandra is the canon lead, not that you could tell from any of the game's marketing.

Evie Frye shunted off centre for Syndicate's cover.

And I came away from Origins thinking Aya should have been the main character.

 

Sorry for the late reply and a bit sorry to bring this up again.

Regarding Avater so was I more thinking about how many complained that the military should have won; should have used more inhuman weapons; that they should comeback and just atom bomb Pandora; and/or created reasons why it was wrong for the human good guys to try to stop the company from mining unobtainium; etcetera.

Are we talking about the same thing here? I'm talking about Creole languages, not any dialects, and that’s something you can found outside the Atlantic area. Is that also what you are talking about and just used the wrong word or are you talking about something else?

Just wondering, what "things associated with nomadic peoples" ?

Yes, you need to spell it out.

I'm bad at getting what people are talking about if they don't mention it, at least in discussions, and have a tendency to focus on the thing mentioned. If you say Japanese 80’s predatory business, I will focus on that and what’s close to that. Thai language (especially when I can’t hear it’s Thai) is not something I associate Japanese 80’s predatory business (or Japan really) with in any way.

Okay, if you say so.

[/QUOTE]Secondly: here comes the false equivalency. There is a big big big big difference between possible Swedish stereotypes, and having your villains be a collection of things your country has used as racist propaganda and dehumanization towards a specific people within just the past few decades. Lucas loves WWII and WWII era culture, pretty sure he is well versed in what America used as tools to dehumanize the Japanese; he should be aware of why ***** like that is offensive and should be shied away from. If he was aware then that raises even worse questions.[/QUOTE]
Sorry, but I think you lost me here a bit. As I understood it so did we not talk about the WWII propaganda representation of Japan – which depict the Japanese in notably different way from both the TF and how Japan was portrayed during the 80’s/early 90’s. Maybe it’s just that I’m a bone head but how do the WWII propaganda fit in here?

Alright, here I'm confused, how do the Niemoidians have slanted eyes?

I will have to disagree to the “just stolen” part, many of them have been cut up, refitted, and/or mixed with other stuff before bringing it to the fence.

Beside being both being high, how are they reminiscent? Or is it the both are high part you are meaning?

1) I don't understand why you seem angry with that they are telling people where they took their inspiration from? Should it not be the other way around?
2) Why is it more problematic?
3) As a student of the Slavic-cultures/history I would like to point out that she was also dressed in an costume inspired by late Imperial Russia fashion.

I fully agree that the PT should have had more Asian actors but I will have to disagree about the TF’s costumes, they are not that Asian. Robes and hats are something that appear all over the world and the robes used for the TF don’t really have an Asian style to them, many of the hats are mitre like (even called that in the Visual Dictionary) and f.ex. do Lott Dod look like an off-color bishop.

Also, I have to admit that I still don’t see how TF is a “stereotype of Japanese business”, beside the whole business part.

Is impotent Asian men a classic trope? I know there existed a trope regarding Asian women as somewhat of doormats (when they are not Dragon Ladies, and even then they can be swayed/seduced by the manly, white lead) but I did not know that about Asian men.
To me it felt more like the old trope that evil businessmen have no problem ordering around people bellow them or having people killed off to increase/protect their profit but when it’s their life on the line they are real cowards. Like Bartholomew Bogue in The Magnificent Seven (2016) to use a resent example.

Okey, when you said "many of their cities being stereotypically Asian" I did not get that you were talking about the names. Alright, then I can agree that they look like words from Asian languages.

You have a point, at the same time (if we want to be generous) it could also be because SW is overall rather heavy influenced by Japan and Asian philosophy with many queasy Asian sounding names all over the place

Fellow, lighten up a bit, if we can't make a joke based on the wording of each others post in-between serious sentences it easily gets to heavy.

Yes, that what I meant.

And it is somehow a parallel to the Japanese academic system in what way?

You know it took me a couple of days to understand what you meant since my first thought was “what’s strange with worker drones, the nemoididnas are established to begin in larva form and brought up in hives. Having worker drones just continue the insect theme".

No offence taken, thanks for your answer and I hope I have not been offensive in turn.

I will have to disagree here, there is plenty of fashion beside suits and ties and blue jeans and T-shirts that USA have had since its creation, but anything fitting for a space fantasy royal court may be a bit hard to find.

What fashion and outfits are you thinking about? Asking this as a designee interested person.

What Ulicus said.

We will have to agree to disagree here.

How is Mama "tone-deaf, offensive, and, frankly, racist"? Asking because I don't get it, she was just another Hutt to me (if size XXXL)

What Lucas quote are you referring to? Asking because I can't find it.

I thought it was more of a classic Noir twist: we all expect the main bad guy to betray the Femme Fatale that he has promised to escape with but she double crosses him before he can cross her. Money and revenge, standard Noir motivations.

Personally I think creator can use real life/historical cultures/nations/sub-cultures as inspiration for fictive cultures but they should not just rip them right of and just make them non-humans, give them space-guns and/or different animals around them. They should change the culture in some way/s - combine it with other; give them some kind of thing that the original inspiration don't have; highly change their appearance; take away the thing/s that it's most famous for that you don't need for the story; etcetera. It should not be obvious at first glace that they are a space version of the cultures/nations that inspired them, that's my problem with the Ryn, I read their description in The New Essential Guide to Alien Species and directly thought that they were highly inspired by the Roma and there was very little (ignoring the physiology) that made them feel as anything else then just transplanted Roma. That they were supposed to be the creators of space tarot makes them feel (to me) as even like a caricature of the Roma in a way.

I agree since I (who have not played the game) did not even know you could play as a woman before it was mentioned here

 

Plus Evie and Aya and the lady that Arno was with were all so much cooler then their respective counterparts.

 

Unity is actually my favorite AC, and Elise and the other angry traitor Assassin are my two favorite AC characters, across the line.

 

It’s a lot of fun to play with a buddy, after years of bug fixing. And that’s really the only fun time.

 

I think this (and a lot of your questions to vnc, too) might come from an unfamiliarity with some American stereotypes and how they've historically been portrayed in pop culture. Nal Hutta in that episode was very clearly the American Deep South, and the characters rode an airboat through the bayou before arriving at Mama's hut, where they were greeted with an incredibly over-the-top caricature of an overweight Southern woman. And her voice and mannerisms felt like a caricature that was straight out of a 1930s or 40s cartoon full of blackface cornbread-baking and watermelon-eating stereotypes (think Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat, a 1941 cartoon full of blackfaced caricatures who are all lazy and immobile like Mama...). I'm not asserting ill intent on the part of the production team --- I'm sure they were going for broad Southern stereotypes in general rather than specific ones about black people --- but I'm still baffled that nobody involved saw the finished product, considered historical context, and thought "Yeahhhhh that's a little much."

 

Mama is Pearl from Blade (a white man)



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Visually they may have taken some influence from Pearl, but the voice, the accent, and the entire package (she lives in a hut in the swamp) is very much Kentucky-Fried old-cartoon Southern Mama.

I mean... listen to this voice. Somebody involved had to realize that they took it a little too far.



Edit: If she had been in The Phantom Menace I don't doubt that she would have received as much attention as Watto, Jar Jar and the Neimoidians, but in 2010 the biggest publication that had random TCW episodes on its radar was IGN.

 

Hold up. You're all the way right about Evie and Elise. Like, specially Elise, cuz **** Arno.
But! Let's not throw my man Bayek under the bus, he was *AMAZING*. Best protag of the series, don't @ me Ezio fans. I love Aya too, though. I really want that Rogue-ish leaked...rumored...fan-proposed(?) sequel with Aya as main and Bayek as the backup to be legit thing.

...but why??

 

I'd kind of forgotten about Mama. Probably as a form of denial.

Mama and Ziro are... similar problems. The Hutts in general seem to tick these boxes -- consider the Hutt council in TCW was a riff* on Mafia stereotypes, so pile another cultural identity problem on the Hutt heap. Many of us here recognized Ziro as a Capote riff*, but, at the same time, just about anyone watching TCW and cognizant of Capote would also be sophisticated enough to know that if you DON'T know who Capote is, he's going to read as a queeny stereotype... so who is this riff* for? Well, it's for Lucas, pretty much alone, and another big example of just how piecemeal his pastichery was at that point. It's funny to him, and more or less either confusing or offensive to most viewers. You know what's weird, though? The one major Hutt who doesn't fall into one of these traps or another is the original. Jabba's a stereotypical crimelord, sure, but he's a pretty original creation in a way that shows off how the PT really missed the boat.

*I keep saying "riff" because my posts are long and I don't want them longer, but "riff" is a mild, kind term for these types of things in TCW. They're actually straight up "lifts", character or personas ported straight into Star Wars with little tweaking except for a species switch. Capote's now a Hutt, Paul Lynde is a snake thingy, Peter Lorre is a Senate cop, and Clint Eastwood? He's Duros.**

**Okay, Cad Bane's not really as direct a lift as a lot of other examples, but that joke had to be done.

 

Cad Bane is a direct lift of Lee Van Cleef, according to the Databank.

 

I can see where you're coming from. I don't see it as a problematic diversity issue so much as a plain quality issue, though. "The next episode is going to be one big tribute to Moebius!" ... OK TCW there were a few cool visual things but you forgot to write an actual story for this episode and you're doing a p*ss poor job of covering up the fact that you're just treading water as you drag this plot out into a four-episode arc purely for the sake of having another four-episode arc.

Jesus, Season 5 was bad.

 

I’m actually playing through AC Origins now. Only about 20 hours into the game but so far I really like Bayek as a character. Great voice acting, really like his upbeat/positive personality even after the tragedy of losing a child. Story so far is really good.

Aya is really cool though, I did like the one part where you play as her sailing on a war ship, I don’t know if there’s a lot more of that or not, if not that’s a shame, she would make for a very cool playable character for future games.

Another character I wish was playable is Reda, the kid merchant you run daily gear missions for.

 

Flix and Orka are married.

 

Is that a thing they've said outright yet?

 

No, but in the last episode they took the day to go visit Flix's mother, and brought gifts.

 

No but c’mon.

Actually Flix and Orka actually tie nicely into what I was gonna say about the TCW Hutts—I don’t think the archetypes they represent are a problem as much as them being almost the only examples of them—Ziro in particular being an effeminate male-identifying character is actually kind of progressive FACPOV but Hutts are coded so thoroughly as vile and evil that it undoes the positive aspects of it. It was the same thing with Moff Mors—there’s no reason an individual lesbian character couldn’t be overweight and lazy but when she’s the only lesbian it’s easy to read as a larger comment.

So to the extent that Flix and Orka are coded as an older gay couple it’s actually pretty important that they’re still basically good guys, and relatively “cute” and inoffensive species as well. Of course seeing a human couple portrayed that way would be even better, but they’re definitely a step up from Hutts.

 

Ziro is also purple and wears makeup and a cute feathered headband. Like. Jeeze.

 

I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that's what they're going for with Flix and Orka, I just wasn't sure if someone had said anything about it officially.

 

Oh for sure I just wanted to say where I was coming from on that comment.