A game is being "woke" any time it compromises the integrity of the story or setting to conform better to woke demands for "representation."
- Gratuitous, unnecessary negroes
- Anyone ever saying, "LOL, white males, am I right?"
- Setting-inappropriate diversity supersquads
- Token queers, especially in a historically inappropriate setting
- Trannies, anywhere, ever
- Awkwardly censored speech
- Fridge-shaped women with side-shaves
- Ultra-women who are instantly better than men at everything in a realistic setting (i.e. not Bayonetta or whatever)
- Ahistorical or setting-inappropriate tolerance of homosexuality
- Setting-inappropriate or ahistorical feminism.
So I gave this some thought, and came up with my own.
Skykiii's Scale of Wokeness
Level Minus One - Stuff I'm just not even gonna count.
-The creator being woke on Twitter. If its not in the actual game, it doesn't count.
-Cases where the "woke" element is something you have to go searching for. These could easily be something the creator was pressured to put in.
-At the risk of giving Wokies an "out," I'm gonna rule that certain things only count if they fit what we would normally think of as that thing. For example there's many games and other works where a character can change gender either due to magic or superscience that might as well
be magic (Ranma 1/2, Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender, the Might and Magic series) but it doesn't feel right to call these "trans representation."
-By the same token I personally exclude cases where the creator was clearly not trying to make a statement, like Poison from Final Fight or Bridget from Guilty Gear.
Level One - "Meh" level. This is for stuff that might not even be "woke" depending on the context.
-Main characters or important side characters being non-white, non-male
-Women being able to hold their own against men.
-Women who don't need men or aren't particularly obsessed with them, but aren't exactly bitchy about it.
Level Two - "Starts to Raise Eyebrows." These are things that
could represent an agenda, but sometimes are just an author needing character motive or a way to move the story along, or may simply be logical in-context.
-Evil money-grubbing characters.
-A woman who complains about it being a man's world.
Level Three - "Starting To Get Annoying." At this point the agenda is unavoidable.
-The woman is always right, any man who sides with her is portrayed positively and any who disagree are made out to be scum of the Earth.
-Trans characters in major roles. This deserves special mention: in practice, there's nothing achieved by having a trans character because most of the time the audience doesn't even
know they're trans (look at how many people think Poison from Final Fight is just a girl),... so if the audience
does know, it means the character must've gone out of their way to make it known somehow, and there's no reason to do that unless you're using it to make a social statement.
-Someone, at any point, feels the need to tell you what their pronouns are, or ask another character what
their pronouns are.
-Endless whinging about white man's evils.... and the white man never defends himself or refutes any of the claims (or if they do, they're painted as evil).
......................... This list could use some refinement. Maybe I'll come up with something better later on.
And again I'm keen on avoiding "false positives." Shantae is not a girlboss, Rex Nebular is not trans representation, Richard Rose from Sunset Riders is not an example of an evil white capitalist (especially not since the good guys in that game are bounty hunters), etc...
THREAD TAX: Aero the Acro-Bat deserves to be remembered way more than Bubsy does.
