Unfortunate Implications Citation Discussion

I thought the rules were that we can allow personal blogging sites only if it's from multiple people? Since the point is to show multiple viewpoints and not every issue is picked up by major news outlets.

I'm more referring to the fact that for the first bullet, the citations require you to sit through a good hour and a half to even find what the example's talking about, while the second cites someone who seems significantly more niche.

It is possible to link specific times in YouTube videos so you could just do that.

I repeat, a good hour and a half. I'm not listening to two people tear down a show I've never even seen just to find some timestamps.

Oh, my bad I thought you already knew the exact time they did, understandable you wouldn't want to. Perhaps someone else could do it.

This was added to Critical Role: Campaign Three by SparkyYoungUpstart.

* Unfortunate Implications: A good number of viewers voiced displeasure with the title sequence introduced in episode 7. They felt that the video, which featured the cast dressed in pith helmets and keffiyehs, was unintentionally drawing on the imagery of Europeans colonizing SWANA^note South-West Asian/North African nations. Along with the setting of Marquet being inspired by such nations and cultures, the video reinforced concerns these critics had going in that this campaign would fall into cultural appropriation.

keyblade333 deleted it with the edit reason:

I can find other threads that agree with the Twitter user cited (haven't gotten around to it yet, but I was there when the drama exploded), and an editorial from Dicebreaker (not sure how reputable that is) as well. I was there on Twitter when the drama broke out. The original citation happened to be the one that blew up because a former cast/staff member of Critical Role retweeted it and disagreed with it.

Speaking as a person of color (not SWANA but ASEAN, whose country was colonized by people in similar costumes as some of the cast members) I personally disagree with keyblade333 and think the example is valid specifically because the lead cast members of CR are all white. They made a major misstep in wanting to shout out the media franchises they loved. They weren't intentionally being racist or hateful, but the choices were extremely questionable in the face of a nearly all-white principal cast ^note guest star Robbie Daymond identifies as multiracial/indigenous according to his Twitter bio playing in a SWANA-inspired setting, essentially profiting off of "being inspired by" the real-world cultures. The cast and creative team may not have meant any harm, but because of their different backgrounds and lack of similar lived experiences, they did not or could not predict that the opening would receive backlash.

Can I reinstate this entry with additional citations?

Edited by annieholmes on Jan 1st 2022 at 10:43:22 AM

The linked source is vague enough that it seems to suggest that any Fantasy Counterpart Culture written by someone who's not a part of said culture in real life is offensive.

I found this on RWBY: Fairy Tales

• Unfortunate Implications: "The Warrior in the Woods" received a fair amount of flack by some fans due to the show having the Silver-Eyed Warrior with a lighter skin tone, causing some to believe the Warrior was white-washed. This is ignoring the fact that the boy resembles Taiyang and the Warrior resembles Ruby and Summer.

No citation. Easy cut.

That, and it argues against itself.

There was some controversy in the fandom about it, but the framing of the episode does make it clear that Taiyang is acting as an Unreliable Narrator for the episode because of his two lost loves, as the Warrior's appearance is a mixture of the two women he lost, and he's in tears by the time he's ended the tale.

Given that most of the controversy aired on social media, I'm not sure reliable citations are possible.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jan 3rd 2022 at 3:32:15 PM

From YMMV.Warrior Cats

• Unfortunate Implications: The series has drawn criticism for its handling of the Tribe of Rushing Water, which is frequently seen as analogous to Native American tribes. In addition to suffering from some hefty Badass Decay, the differences between the Tribe and the Clans are treated poorly, with the former being presented as more primitive and weaker, often requiring the latter to save them from external threats, making the Clans come off as analogous to White Saviors. The essay also calls out the series for anti-indigenous racism, cultural appropriation, and colonialism.

Does this violate the "The citation should be in a reputable source. We'd prefer you cite something a bit more formal than someone's Tumblr blog. Anyone can write a blog post and then call it a "citation"."? Also it's a conflict that is somewhat driven by a very Vocal Minority of Moral Guardians who seem to be "terminally online" and discourse-addicted.

Here's the thing, right? I was skeptical too. But they bring up a lot of really convincing arguments. The tribe is repeatedly depicted as being stubborn, full of weaklings who need Clan cats to do everything for them, while not having any personalities of their own aside from the incredibly neglectful and selfish Stoneteller. The series has been criticized for racism issues before, but the Tribe's issues seem to be the deepest cut. It's telling though that during the recent Frecklewish debacle, there was a bunch of people who used the hashtag to instead point out that Indigenous audience members have been trying to argue the racism stuff for years and haven't gotten as much attention from the rest of the fanbase. Whether that's a sign of genuine issues or an over-sensitive Vocal Minority is subjective, I guess, but I definitely think people are onto something. (Admittedly, I'm shocked that the other issues aren't on there, too. Warriors has recurring issues with things like sexism, ableism, and general bias that the fans point out all the time...)

This is also one of the reasons why the current rules regarding citations really frustrates me. A lot of solidly written arguments and common talking points get brushed off as being fringe opinions solely because of the website they're posted on. Warriors as a community is pretty big but also pretty niche at the same time. You don't get a lot of big name reviewers talking about things. You'll never see official news outlets cover Warriors related controversies. The fandom exists mostly on YouTube and certain forum, art, and roleplay sites. It's not the sort of fandom that has outlets beyond personal blogs or videos to share opinions about.

For the record, a YouTuber has also discussed the tribe, and her video is here, and she touches on very similar issues, albeit without outright calling them racist.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 22nd 2022 at 2:15:06 PM

Funny this comes up again. I came across this old ATT report where the repeated argument is that "paid reviewers are credible sources while bloggers are not," rather than "it proves that it's not just one person's belief." I always believed the reason Twitter and Tumblr posts were banned was due to the auto-erotic troping risk, but using multiple sources would evade that. And paid reviewers aren't automatically more "right" than people on social media, they just have access to a wider audience.

Yeah, that's how I feel too. There's no reason a Tumblr blogger can't be accurately discussing a widely-shared belief about the work with evidence based reasoning, and there's no reason a paid New York Times reviewer wouldn't ever go in with a pre-concieved bias. A lot of news outlets have especially been accused of bias on one side of the line or another, so it stands to reason that they're just as likely to echo fringe opinions as regular fans are- the only difference is, they reach a wider audience and so seem more reputable. Outrage drives clicks, after all. If anything it might be more beneficial for "real" news outlets to exaggerate things in order to stir controversy and get ad revenue, unlike fans who are just posting blogs about the works they like and dislike.

You talked before about making a thread about this; it might be time to do that.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 22nd 2022 at 2:27:15 PM

I'm definitely of the opinion that requiring multiple unrelated sources would be a much better way of avoiding the "troper with an axe to grind uses their own blog as 'evidence'" problem than simply declaring some sources more valid than others.

I have created a thread on what I am calling the "quantity versus quality" citation dilemma.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jan 23rd 2022 at 3:09:12 PM

This showed up for the YMMV page for Santa Inc. this morning:

• The fact that two Jewish actors made an entire series making every Christmas character absolutely awful. Some viewers have even gone as far as to accuse them as making this series just to spite Christians.
• Despite championing "diversity", one of the main complaints the show had was the fact all of the Reindeer are black stereotypes.

No citation is given.

I have seen the first used but uh but it's just very short comments on the internet which I don't think would be a citation anyway (that and I really don't want to link those as uh some of aren't from uh great people when you remember what happened to the trailer comments.....)

Without citations of any kind, they're toast. The first entry is specifically an eyebrow-raiser because they could easily just say that making everything associated with Christmas bad has bad implications but they really had to make it about the creators being Jewish...

I found this in YMMV.How I Became Yours:

• Unfortunate Implications: As this review states, this story is written by a woman who portrays the women she writes as completely useless without men. Either that, or said women pull all kinds of crap on others either just to get the men to look at them, or to punish other women for taking away "their" men's attentions.

I also found these commented out below the entry:

• Not to mention that Diaz completely removes Suki from the plot, instead giving Sokka a "happy" ending with the extremely Chickified Azula... but then steals Suki's design to create two servants, one Mai's maid another Toph's.
• All the heroic women wear European-style fancy dresses. Mai is the only one to retain the show's Asian themes, and she's the villain.
• How I Became Yours is a World of Buxom... except for the antagonist Mai.
• Azula is told that her entire purpose is to give birth to a child, and that even her relationship with Sokka was manipulated by the gods.
• On a more subtle level, the fic erodes Katara's and Azula's agency by having their brothers blame themselves for the girls' actions. Sokka says that Azula getting stabbed is because of him, despite him having no hand in the events that lead to it. Zuko hopes the gods will forgive him for his and Azula's actions and save Azula.

If anything, the Female Misogynist pothole needs to be removed due to it being NRLEP.

Well, we can delete the subbullets, at least.

I also noticed that the link in this entry now leads to one of those shady survey things. Did the link even count in the first place?

I dunno, but at this point we can just axe it unless a good source can be unearthed.