So here's the dealio - apparently the jannies over at half-KIA decided that it'd be in their best interest to nuke Scrivonaut's post about the latest episode of Splash Damage shortly after he posted it. They claimed it was going to run afoul of the SEKRIT ROOL about not saying anything bad about you-know-what-group. I didn't even know it had been posted until the podcast turned up in my podcatcher app over the weekend and I noticed it this morning on the way to work.
As such, here's the text of what should have appeared over on plebbit (which I would normally copypasta here), and a link to the Patreon page with the podcast:
Military shooter Battlefield 2042 has a character named Emma who looks like a woman but goes by they/them pronouns. We talk about this pandering tokenism in a game that glorifies warfare, of all things, along with Riot’s decision to eliminate chatting with opponents in League of Legends, CSI pushing its anti-Gamergate narrative, Dave Chappelle landing in hot water for his trans jokes, Superman becoming bi, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series including black hobbits, and plenty more.
Standard disclaimer - I'm not Scrivonaut nor am I associated with the podcast, I'm just a fan that feels the show deserves a signal boost
Just got started listening to the show this morning on the way to work, haven't gotten too deep into it yet, but based on the topics on the roster, here's my thoughts:
Pandering tokenism in games is inherently more racist than straight-up leaving out "representation", because it's effectively reducing the character to only the color of their skin, their bits between their legs, or whether they want to rub those bits on someone of the same sex. It doesn't give a damn about the character's motivations, its backstory, or anything else, and it turns them into a series of checkboxes on a list that are there so the developer can avoid getting put on blast and the Diversity Officers in the company can get headpats from their wokie clique.
Chat in League has been toxic AF for ages, so I can't say as I'm surprised that Riot shut it down. That being said, I can remember back in the day of the early Internet that people actually grew a thicker skin and threw back the insults just as good as they got, instead of whining about how much that hurt their widdle feewings.
CSI... Man, I can't believe I ever watched that show back in the day. It's become so massively out of touch with reality it's mind-boggling.
Chappelle did nothing wrong, and if your movement is so weak that you get all butthurt over being joked about, then your movement isn't worth a damn.
"Superman" (read: Jon Kent) having his switch flipped to Bi is only half the fuckery. DC took his boyfriend and gave him super powers as well. The power? The ability to become intangible, so absolutely nothing bad can ever happen to him in-universe. Yep, they made his boyfriend "Fridge"-proof, because ghawd forbid that anything bad ever happen to a gay/bi/alphabet person in fiction.
Black hobbits. Let's let that one sink in for a bit. Black hobbits. Now, granted, I could see a potential place in the Middle Earth canon where there might be hobbits that are of a darker skin color, but considering that the majority of LOTR story happens in a part of Middle Earth that is effectively an analogue for Medieval Fucking England, explain to me exactly how the fuck there are supposed to be black hobbits in the shire?
AKA the Pygmies. Gotta get some representation before they're all eaten.