Unfortunate Implications Citation Discussion

Done and done.

I wrote this in Unfortunate Implications for Dragon Ball GT: A Hero's Legacy

• Unfortunate Implications: Some members of the community has seen a sexist subtext in the film, at least in regards to how Super Saiyan is handled. In Dragon Ball GT, despite multiple moments for the opportunity for Super Saiyan to be introduced to Pan, this was never done because by the director's own admission she was written as a Damsel in Distress in order to be saved by her grandfather (comparing the idea to old woman Rose memories of Jack in Titanic (1997)). However, the fact that only male members of both Goku and Vegeta families archive such transformation is seen with a negative light in the community, especially as Goku Jr. has even fewer Saiyan cells than his grandmother yet he can tap into the transformation just fine.

And I wanted to add an example for Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac:

• Unfortunate Implications: Shun's gender change invoke this kind of subtext. In the source material, Shun is considered the most feminine of the Bronze Knights not only because of the good looks, but because the character is a pacifist and sensitive, therefore not filling the stereotype of a male hero. Not to mention that, due to poor treatment from Toei Animation in animated works of the franchise, Shun is treated as a weakling that needs his older brother to save him constantly. Making the feminine male character characterized as being a weakling that needs to be saved into a woman just changes one problem for another, inviting female Shun to be a Faux Action Girl by design. If the director really needed to change a knight's gender, Hyoga wouldn't have brought as much backlash by comparison.

While I will have to erase the Dragon Ball example due to lack of citation, the Saint Seiya example has a citation (thanks Wikipedia) in here: Netflix's 'Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya' and the problems of representation in media.

Edited by Tomodachi on Jan 1st 2020 at 8:04:08 AM

From YMMV.The Rise Of Skywalker:

• The callous regard many characters have for C 3 PO is this from an in-universe perspective, and isn't good commentary for how poorly treated robots are in the story. C 3 PO is no stranger to casual mockery from the main heroes, but the way his memory is casually wiped (C 3 PO offers an alternative last second, but is mind wiped mid-sentence as a joke) and then his new personality is treated as an inconvenience, may leave a sour taste in the mouths of some fans. It's one thing to be annoyed by C 3 PO's eccentric behavior, but even post-memory wipe Poe's grit towards the robot doesn't change in the slightest, even though that is deeply insensitive to what is essentially the death of his old mind. If a human had lost their memory, one would imagine Poe would show more deference to them, but since C 3 PO is just a robot nobody cares.

Besides lacking citation, this one seems like a stretch to me. It had already been established that Threepio can restore his memory from a backup. It's more like a case of the flu than death.

It's also hard to take the implication that robots aren't treated like people seriously as an unfortunate one when, in Real Life, robots, well... aren't people.

Edited by HighCrate on Jan 3rd 2020 at 5:58:04 AM

• Unfortunate Implications: Shun's gender change invoke this kind of subtext. In the source material, Shun is considered the most feminine of the Bronze Knights not only because of the good looks, but because the character is a pacifist and sensitive, therefore not filling the stereotype of a male hero. Making the feminine male hero into a woman for representation, despite the fact Shun is already popular with the LGBT crowd and women to begin with, is considered a poor decision and a heteronormative move. ^note Netflix's 'Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya' and the problems of representation in media.

I rewrote the example to better reflect the content of the article. I added too much natter in my original entry.

Can I add now, or should this be rewriten?

Edited by Tomodachi on Jan 7th 2020 at 7:18:06 AM

Maybe rewrite it more to make it more clear that the entry is about communicating the opinions of existing commentators rather than a statement of fact. Aside from that I think it's neutral enough in tone.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jan 7th 2020 at 10:57:02 AM

That's a little hard to parse for someone not familiar with the work. If I'm reading it correctly, the character of Shun was male in the original work, but changed to female in an adaptation? Is that correct? I want to make sure I've got the basic facts straight before I make suggestions on how to rephrase for clarity.

Edited by HighCrate on Jan 7th 2020 at 12:17:25 PM

that's right, Shin is male in the manga, but the Netflix adaptation changed his gender, a controversial move to the fanbase.

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification. It might read a little more cleanly to folks not familiar with the work if you established that more clearly up front, something like this:

• Unfortunate Implications: Shun, a male hero in the original manga, was changed to female in this adaptation. The original male Shun had stereotypically "feminine" traits such as pacifism and sensitivity, and was already popular with the LGBT crowd and women. Many fans believe the change in the character's gender reinforces stereotypical gender roles.

You could add the link to the citation somewhere in the last sentence.

However, the site you linked to above has a poor privacy report with Wheel of Trust and is marked as potentially malicious, so you might consider finding a more reputable source to link to if possible.

Edited by HighCrate on Jan 7th 2020 at 12:43:23 PM

I saw this in Lifetime Movie of the Week:

• Unfortunate Implications: Men are evil unless they're either gay or slavishly/brainlessly devoted to their women. Good women are super helpless, dumb and whiny, and if they toughen up it must be through lots of abuse. If a good woman is strong, she must also be a self-righteous asshole to anyone who opposes her. Any woman who's prettier than the heroine and unafraid to show it off is an evil whore who deserves punishment, if not death. What a man or a "bad woman" are crucified for, a "good woman" will get away with. And it goes on, and on, and on...

It was in the “tropes common to the subgenre” folder, yet it doesn’t have a citation. I don’t know what to do with it... Also I’m pretty sure this item isn’t a trope. It’s a YMMV reaction.

I'd say remove it for lacking citations. The entry also feels like someone is using it to complain.

Sadly, is the only source I can find related to the topic.

I could quote the article title, and not link it like a professional bibliography.

Edited by Tomodachi on Jan 7th 2020 at 3:00:22 AM

• Unfortunate Implications: The Oompa Loompas were originally an African Pygmy tribe who lived in squalor and ate bugs before Wonka came along and had them work in his factory for chocolate rations. You can probably figure why the movies hastily changed them to orange-skinned green-haired Fair Folk.

This is commented out on YMMV.Charlie And The Chocolate Factory due to a lack of a citation. It counts due to the Values Dissonance— all adaptations have tweaked them to be less racist.

Is this article about Reylo through the lens of all 3 Sequel Trilogy movies a good enough source for UI? It's difficult to find articles that discuss the implications of the relationship after TROS came out.

It doesn't take much Google-Fu to find a citation for that one. If you want to unhide it, Google "Oompa Loompa African pygmy," pick one of the many articles pointing out the Unfortunate Implications, and add a citation link to the example writeup.

Yes, I'd consider that an acceptable citation.

Edited by HighCrate on Jan 22nd 2020 at 8:47:26 AM

Ehhh, i don't like how that article brings up Beauty and The Beast though.

If it's approaching the subject from a blatantly biased perspective (e.g. an editorial from what can easily be determined to be a loony character fan or bitter shipper of a rival pair that got quashed, and we've had a few Medium citations that were of that nature), then I'm thinking it should be excluded no matter how high-profile the website.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jan 22nd 2020 at 7:13:18 AM

Can't think of any particular reason why that would disqualify it. They use beauty and the beast as a point of comparison, but pretty quickly move on to talking about what happened in the sequel trilogy films themselves.

I read the article all the way through and can't say I noticed any particular bias, shipping or otherwise.

By the way i wanna bring up an issue with citations, that being dead links, cause for example Kyle Kallgren's review of Shame was linked back when Blip was still up and now it's long gone and i can't find the review on Youtube.

I also had to take off a citation on the YMMV page for The Conjuring cause it linked to a dead Yahoo article.

Yeah I didn't think this particular article was too bad, but it's definitely something I've seen elsewhere, even from seemingly higher-profile websites.

I managed to find a mirror of Kyle's review on Archive.org and replaced the link to Blip.

Does a Kyle Kallgren review quantify as a sufficient source?

Depends on how many people agreed with his opinion.

Just found this example on the main page:

Avoided in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Marluxia was originally intended to be a woman, but once they started to develop the game's plot, the developers realized that having the only two women out of a group of thirteen^note this was long before Xion's character was created plotting to overthrow the men in charge and subsequently getting killed for it by another male wasn't going to go over too well.

The KH wikia doesn't cite any resources and wouldn't be a useful source in the first place. After some cursory googling I haven't found any interview where Tetsuya Nomura is talking about Marluxia's gender. I take it we should comment this one out?

I didn't find unfortunate implications on KH:COM's YMMV page, but it did have the gender bit under viewer gender confusion.

Edited by shadowmanwkp on Jan 24th 2020 at 4:31:34 PM

It's a pretty old commentry I remember seeing discussions and flamewars over since back in the days of Livejournal. I'm inclined to believe it, but I understand wanting a better source.

Found in Arknights:

• Unfortunate Implications: One of the Operators in the game uses "Lappland" as a callsign and alias. "Lapp" and "Lappland" are, in the 21st century, considered derogatory terms in many contexts for the Sámi people and their homeland of Sápmi. This is almost certainly completely unintentional on the part of Hypergryph, and they were just using a name they felt was "cool"; there is absolutely nothing stereotypically Sámi about the character in question, and she has much more to do with the vaguely American-coded Texas and other Penguin Logistics members than anyone; she is largely just a "cool, mysterious, emotionally obsessive swordswoman"-type character (who is also likely built in part around a Casting Gag back to Granblue Fantasy).

No citation seems to be sourced.