This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Okay, but Yasuke kicks ass. He’s a semi-mythical figure from one of Japan’s most famous historical periods. As a result, I’ve seen callouts to him in some weird places.
Even if true, which I doubt, it’s by the standard of the day erasure. The first Japanese centered AC storyline doesn’t feature a Japanese lead. Imagine the uproar if the first AC set in Africa didn’t feature a black African man as the lead. And really I don’t see Yasuke as that famous. He wasn’t featured in any media or historical documentaries or video games or anything else prior to 2020. This despite Anime and Japanese gaming being huge and samurai being second only to ninjas in the part of Japanese mythology exported globally. I find this impossible to take seriously. If he were that famous in Japan, surely he’d have shown up before the current mania for making visible minorities star in every piece of media made. I suspect that what really happened is that the production team went to Japan and went through the archives looking for a Black Man who they could make the star of their game and then polite Japanese archivists agreed that of course the Black Samurai was super famous and of course was a bad ass until the white people left and they laughed behind their back.
Yasuke appears in Nioh, a 2017 game developed in Japan, as a boss. But the context to this is...
Yasuke is a factoid about the Sengoku period. Nioh's plot is framed around a long string of factoids about the Sengoku period. Quite similar to how Assassins Creed plots work, except with Youkai instead of Assassins and Templars. You even play as William Adams, who is another Sengoku factoid. Koei Tecmo practically specializes in games about random Sengoku factoids in general, so even having relatively obscure ones show up is not particularly notable.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Unfortunately, the scarce historical record that is available about him suggests that he was simply a Jesuit novice from Abyssinia. Not exactly kickass category, I'd say.
More options
Context Copy link
Less than any of the associates of his owner for one year, but they weren't Africans so they all meld together in the minds of non-Japanese due to outgroup homogeneity bias. The Japanese have a slight reason to care about the Black guy in question, since they already know most of the more important people of that time and place. American obsession with Yosuke is elevating bar quiz trivia to the level of actual history.
Well, yeah. Isn’t that what asscreed is all about?
I don't think so?
I'm as much to slag on Odyssey as anyone for basically ignoring fem!MC's gender when it should have mattered in a notoriously sexist society, but AC has consistently to this point picked representatives from the culture of the setting as the primary MCs, and to varying degrees used their identity as part of the culture as a significant part of the storytelling. The Italian Renaissance wouldn't have worked as well without an Italian straight out of a noble revenge story, American Revolution utilized it's half-native-american quite deliberately to illustrate that the revolutionaries were the heroes of not necessarily everyone's story, gangster London is a class struggle of the undercrust. Odyssey is blatantly a Greek heroic epic by and of a greek, right down to the notorious fighting of family.
None of these would have worked nearly as well were the character a cultural outsider, as the protagonists aren't simply protagonists of their game, but of the culture rising above the socio-political moment the stories take place in. The Italian Assassin subverting the Church in the Renaissance is also the Italian culture taking that step towards subverting its dogmatic influence through reason and, well, the enlightenment. It's an Italian cultural victory, through an Italian cultural representative, in an Italian manner.
Yasuke the black samurai/ninja isn't going to be the most Japanese protagonist of one of the most culturally salient periods of Japanese identity, particularly when the reason for choosing him derives from American, not Japanese, identity politics.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link