Unfortunate Implications Citation Discussion

This was recently added on YMMV.Genshin Impact.

• Unfortunate Implications: The game was caught under fire for its portrayal of the hilichurls, which, while they are inspired by indigenous tribes, came off as racist instead. Relevant articles here, here, and here.

Are these cited articles valid?

My stance is that multiple citations from different websites pointing to the same issue is as valid as one really solid citation, because the point is to show that it's not just one troper showing concern.

I do think it suffers from Weblinks Are Not Examples though- I don't want to click the articles to know why people think they're racist.

Well, it's kinda difficult to pothole these articles to separate issues because they all bring up the very same points (Hilichurls as a negative stereotype to dark-skinned indigenous people, Ulfr being a pedophile to Flora, etc.).

You can just list those issues in the entry after linking the articles early in the paragraph, as you already did.

Alright, here's the rewrite. How does it look?

• Unfortunate Implications: When a few news articles pointed out the issues regarding the game's portrayal of the Hilichurls as "savage dark-skinned tribes", it was caught under fire by the fanbase for coming off as racist instead, especially from people of indigenous descent. Other issues include Kaeya and Xinyan (the only playable characters with colored skin) being portrayed as scary and intimidating, as well as an NPC named Ulfr having a creepy crush on Flora (who is a child), despite the latter being a holdover from pre-release that the developers forgot to update since Flora was initially planned to be an adult woman.

(On a side note, I nearly lost the rewrite to Data Vampires because my laptop unexpectedly crashed in the middle of editing. Thankfully, I was able to copy-and-paste the cache version of the rewrite.)

Edited by DivineFlame100 on Apr 10th 2021 at 1:23:51 AM

It looks much better now.

Wait, hold on, wasn't there a case made in the ATT thread that lead you here that the subject of the block may actually count as "Importing Drama", which is against the rules, and thus trumps any valid citations of Unfortunate Implications?

Edited by HashiriyaR32 on Apr 9th 2021 at 6:23:20 AM

From Teen Beach Movie:

• Unfortunate Implications: The ending of the second movie is rife with them. First, while it's perfectly in-character for Mack to encourage Lela to do what makes her happy, her encouraging her to change the movie before she goes back causes a big butterfly effect where history changes and she and Brady no longer know each other. She obviously knew this would happen, or she wouldn't be seen as forlorn as she does before history changes. So, did she really love Brady like she claimed, or no? Second, the entire point of the first movie is negated because she changed history. Third, a lot more than just their lives would change from history changing. Fourth, people who were invested in the first movie and the second movie until the ending are supposed to be happy because the characters are still alive, even though they'd be very different people and don't know each other? Really? There are way too many questions asked from the ending and it's frustrating. Even the socio-political changes Lela: Queen of the Beach might've made, being a feminist movie now, back in 1962 are left up in the air.

What is this entry trying to say, and how does it qualify as Unfortunate Implications? There are no links to any sources or even mentions of critics or reviewers who believe the above, which doesn't help its credibility.

Edited by Shadow8411 on Apr 8th 2021 at 10:12:45 AM

That sounds like Fridge Horror or Fridge Logic. I can't quite tell as I don't know the movie and the entry's kind of rambly.

I have seen the movie, and this is a reach. The ending is infamous because reality gets rewritten, meaning the two leads never met because the movie they fell in love watching didn't exist as they knew it. But there's no indication that Mac knew what would happen by changing the movie, and Lela spent the entire movie being troubled with her 60s Stay in the Kitchen world compared to the modern feminist world; Mac being a feminist was just encouraging Lela to not keep following the script of her movie and to be the person she wants to be.

Now, none of this really matters. The lack of citation means it's an insta-cut.

I've cut it and cited this thread.

The Unfortunate Implications example in YMMV.Genshin Impact got deleted by Boobiesgalore without discussion. Should I restore it? I already sent them a message.

For the Unfortunate Implications entry for Genshin Impact.

I found these tweets here that spoke and cleared up on some of the subjects that were spoken in the #boycottgenshinimpact tags (Mainly about Kaeya and Xinyan) as misconceptions from impressionable fans.

Link 1: https://twitter.com/aintengelica/status/1379408455040069641 Link 2: https://twitter.com/Impu41ty/status/1379484240262393860?s=20 Link 3: https://twitter.com/AsianGuyStream/status/1379457356833120258

These fans are also under the misconception that Xinyan is an equivalent of a black person, rather than a East asian equivalent of people with complexion like hers in real life. (Link of a Chinese celebrity who had a similar complexion as Xinyan in real life: https://twitter.com/CBeautyface/status/1253697145053429760)

Kaeya's case is revealed to be a mistranslation as the other languages spoke nothing of Kaeya looking "exotic". And simply call him "foreign" as he first arrived Mondstadt wearing an equivalent to Khaenriah clothing.

The original tweet (Link: https://mobile.twitter.com/venluvr/status/1379248857486331904) that suggest that Hilichurls are likely based on the indigenous people seems to have been deleted now, with the original poster deactivating. And the tweet also ignored the in-game lore where there's a section and literary archive dedicated for Hilichurl culture, to show that Hilichurls aren't all "savage" creatures, with NPC Ella Musk who dedicated herself studying the Hilichurl language.

(There's also the fact that we still have the nation Natlan, which is inspired by Native American culture, coming by in the far future)

I'd say that the part about the Hilichurls maybe of concern since YMMV, but it seems that at this point, the loudest voices clamoring for the "boycott" are just from impressionable fans who just want to seem "woke".

Some hours after the trend died down, some of the more vocal advocates of the "boycott genshin impact" movement said this to other genshin players who are speaking their native language (In this case, Indonesian). (Link:https://twitter.com/beiynq/status/1379748578340392960) So it made me wonder whether the "boycott" is a serious issue or is it just something more Western fandom centric.

And from what I see of those playing in Asia, and some players in the west, they don't seem to give much mind to the controversy.

There are legitimate concerns that the devs should work for with the game itself and the story telling in it, I admit that, but seeing who the Vocal ones are in this controversy just made me doubt the credibility of how legitimate the concerns are.

I don't have the context of the game to really go through all that, but I will say that a story can have good intentions and have some in-text justification for certain writing decisions, but Unfortunate Implications can still apply if the way it's framed can be taken as offensive, especially if the justifications rely on context that a casual fan may not know.

Why are we using random twitter threads as an UI source. Plenty of things their rage and don't go anywhere their a short time afterwards. Plus huge misconceptions can be in them?

Edited by miraculous on Apr 10th 2021 at 12:03:00 PM

most of the controversy to do with "Boycott Genshin impact" started from twitter as far as I know with the subject being the most talked about in twitter than it does in other social media sites from my search. Some of the game news sites such as polygon, kotaku and forbes also cited some twitter threads in their news.

Could we use those articles instead. At least since we have official stuff to use instead.

~transparentanswer

Out of all the articles cited, the Polygon and Forbes articles are ok to use when discussing the misunderstandings behind the controversy. The Kotaku article, on the other hand, I'm iffy on using because one paragraph mentions "SJWs", which is a common buzz term used by alt-right groups, so it might be politically biased.

> "Fan arguments have run the gamut from declaring every grievance legitimate to the standard culture wars tactic of ranting about SJWs and insisting that games—notably based on reality and capable of influencing reality, especially when cross-continentally popular—are completely divorced from reality."

Ah I see. Sure. I was just giving the link for kotaku as an example earlier. Not for citing purposes.

I recently removed a Power Rangers example as there wasn't a proper citation as to why it was considered Unfortunate Implications, but I want to check if any of these qualify.

• Unfortunate Implications:
  • The original Black Ranger was black and the original Yellow Ranger was Asian (the producers did not realize what they had accidentally done until several episodes in, when it was too late to change anything). This is furthered evidenced by The Galaxy Ranger Promo that Saban made for Bandai in 1992 (likely made of original footage made for a Bioman pilot) in that Zach was Biorhythm Green and Trini is Biorhythm White. Definitely an example that's talked about a lot, but the link towards this is dead, though it is explained in the second link in the next example.
  • Then there was the writers' later decision to stress Tommy's Native American heritage considering he was the Red Ranger in Zeo and Turbo. While not as discussed, there was definitely some controversy over having the Native American ranger be the Red Ranger and the link does a good job explaining this. Maybe merge with the first example.
  • Parodied in this CollegeHumor video, which portrays Zordon as a Politically Incorrect Hero who designates his recruited team's Ranger colors based on minority. In addition to deliberately choosing the black recruit and the Asian recruit to be the Black and Yellow Rangers, he appoints a Jewish recruit to be the Green Ranger because of the stereotype that Jewish people are obsessed with money, he makes another black recruit another Black Ranger, and he makes a female recruit the Pink Ranger just because she's a girl. I'm inclined to think that parodies do not count under any capacity, especially from ones not associated with the official product.
  • As of Megaforce, the "only one black person per team, but no limits on white or white-passing people" dynamic is starting to come under serious scrutiny after an incident where actress Sundai Love was apparently told this was the reason they wouldn't cast her. I've heard of this, but this wasn't a part of the final product and was more behind the scenes, is that enough to be considered keeping or does it being real life disqualify it?

I think behind the scenes attempts to avoid Unfortunate Implications can still be listed since that is an official citation of sorts.

Cut the third one. T Hat just seems to be a joke.

One of the citations given in the UI entry from YMMV.Godzilla Vs Kong comes from Cracked, which IIRC is not a valid source of citation. The entry does have another (and probably more valid) citation from Strait Times, but the full article can only be read by subscribers. Does anyone know a different source?

Edited by Adept on May 3rd 2021 at 4:33:13 PM

This is on NightmareFuel.Encyclopedia Brown:

Unfortunate Implications: Lindylou Duckworth, a tough seventh-grade girl, punches a younger boy (Chauncy van Throckmorton) for sassing her during football practice and then drags him into the woods and makes him strip. He finally runs away when he's down to his underwear.

Edited by fragglelover on May 6th 2021 at 2:33:31 PM