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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   25590 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

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One angle I'm somewhat surprised hasn't been brought up much is that this set-up will almost certainly lead to the "problematic" optics of a non-Japanese person running around slaughtering a bunch of Japanese people. Video games are largely a power fantasy so the player character is going to be generally depicted as by far the strongest being. In the best case scenario, the Japanese will be depicted as weak and passive, needing a "foreign savior". I can imagine the outcry on the left would be swift if this were a game starring, say, a European warrior in 15th century Africa.

Even as someone who feels like "problematic" gets overused, I'd say those optics are more than sub-optimal. I remember having a conversation with someone about a similar potential issue arising with the God of War series, which sees former Greek solider Kratos slaughtering a series of mythical gods (first the Greek pantheon, then the Norse). We were discussing whether it would be difficult to continue the series beyond European pantheons while keeping Kratos as the main character because it just seems like the optics of a white guy traveling to Japan, India, and Mexico and killing a bunch of their local gods would be harshly criticized as a narrative faux pas in this day and age.

I'd be curious to know how positions on the two series correlate. If people were largely basing their opinion on "principle" I'd expect the largest groups to be:

1.) "It's a video game. I don't care if it's about an African guy killing a bunch of Japanese people, or a Greek guy killing a bunch of Japanese gods."

2.) "Optics are bad. I'd prefer a story set in Japan to star a Japanese samurai and I'd prefer a story set in mythical Japan to star a Japanese character."

Does anyone here fall outside of these two and if so why?

One angle I'm somewhat surprised hasn't been brought up much is that this set-up will almost certainly lead to the "problematic" optics of a non-Japanese person running around slaughtering a bunch of Japanese people.

It won't matter in any appreciable way. Some leftists might not like it, but the people who really drive the energies of the progressive movement will, in any conflict between protected groups, come down 100% on the side higher in the progressive stack. This was clear to see during the affirmative action debate, where suddenly children of Asian immigrants were white-adjacent/part of the privileged class.

I have the following well-worn preference cascade hierarchy

  1. My rules. In this case, race blindness.

  2. Your rules, enforced fairly. In this case, all races are treated as protected classes.

  3. Your rules, enforced unfairly. In this case, white people are uniquely disrespected. Black people, uniquely sanctified. <--- we are here

I prefer 1, then 2, then 3.

I don't think that's a preference cascade.

Today I learned. Thanks. Edited my comment.

"problematic" optics of a non-Japanese person running around slaughtering a bunch of Japanese people

For sure the battle lines would be completely inverted if he were white.

There was a bit of this with the first Nioh game, though I don’t think it had the popularity of the AC series and it was made by Japanese developers. It got introduced to me as a “white savior” game.

At least William Adams has a decent amount of actual historical documents about him (and written by him!). Yasuke has about 6 lines total, that say he was gifted by the Portuguese to Oda Nobunaga, and then returned to them after Oda Nobunaga's assassination.

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